Japanese preparing for New Year’s holiday season in mixed mood

Dec. 28, 2014

Japanese preparing for New Year’s holiday season in mixed mood

With Japan’s economy coming to a crossroads to pull out of the years-long deflation, Japanese people are preparing for the New Year’s holiday season in a mixed mood.

Some of Japan’s major economic indicators, including the  closely followed Nikkei stock price index, are picking up, but many Japanese consumers are uncertain about whether the economy is actually on a recovery track, allowing them to loosen their purse string toward the year-end and New Year’s shopping season.
 The coming year of 2015 is a year of sheep, one of the 12 zodiacal signs in Chinese astrology. The sheep is a rather gentle animal. The saying is that big changes will occur in society in the year of sheep, with old things in people’s life to be replaced with new ones.
 In Japan, public offices and major businesses are closed for six days around the turn of the year--the last three days of the passing year and the first three days of the coming year. To be happier to holiday goers, the forthcoming six-day period is sandwiched by weekends on both side.
Shop operators are hoping that the longer string of holidays will help generate more consumer demand in a festive mood.
Food stores are filled with ingredients for “osechi” dishes for the New Year, such as beans, shrimps and seaweeds. But the yen’s depreciation in the past months has made imported ingredients costlier.
 In front of a florist on the Kawabatadori shopping street in Fukuoka, the most populous city in Kyushu, southwestern Japan, were a variety of New Year’s decorations and items, including “kadomatsu” pine branches with bamboos. At a nearby doll shop were miniature lucky figures of sheep.
A few beaming young girls were seen drawing fortune telling lots before a statue of the god of marriage on the street.

To celebrate the beginning of the new year, let’s accumulate happy things toward 1,000 years of prosperity, just like piling up sacred “sakaki” branches. 
(A personal translation)


 This is a waka poem composed by an unknown author and contained in the Kokinshu waka anthology edited in the 10th century.
Government people insist that the economy is definitely getting out of deflation, but critics say that the apparent improvements in economic activity, are benefiting only the rich.
The coming year represents the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, which broke out between Japan and the United States and its allies in December 1941. Battles between Japan and the United States came to a point of no return in 1943, a year of sheep, when Japan started following a path toward a defeat.
 The forthcoming year of sheep is hoped to bring about happiness to as many people and as many regions as possible, closing　a division between the haves and the not-haves in Japan. 

Kakashi straw figure festival enlivens calm mountain village in southwestern Japan

Nov. 14, 2014


Kakashi straw figure festival enlivens calm mountain village in southwestern Japan

Yamakuni Town becomes a huge open-air theater of “kakashi” straw figures during the post-harvest season every autumn, attracting over 50,000 tourists from neighboring regions.

Visitors can find kakashi figures, which are equivalent to scarecrows in the West, standing here and there in Yamakuni, located in the central part of Oita Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan.
This year’s Yamakuni Kakashi World, the eighth of its kind, was launched for a one-month run late October, with about 1,200 vivid kakashi figures placed to welcome visitors in a nostalgic atmosphere in the rural landscape.

Kakashi display sites have been set up at 17 places mainly in harvested rice fields and parks. Themes for each of these sites change every year, and figures for this year depict such scenes as a wedding ceremony in the old days, an autumn festival featuring portable shrine bearers and spectators, a kid “kagura” play dedicated to the gods and a series of farm work.
Individually placed kakashi figures also can be found at empty lots and corners of gardens and elsewhere.

Yamakuni Town, currently a part of Nakatsu City, sees its population on the decline, down to approximately 2,600 as of March 2014. Villagers’ power put together for the annual event enlivens the otherwise lonely region.
Traditional kakashi dolls are those standing with a single leg and a straw hat in rice fields to dispel sparrows and crows.

The kakashi festival in Yamakuni dates back to 2003, when two old couples placed unique kakashi brides and bridegrooms on post-harvest fields in the back of their houses. People in the neighborhood followed suit. The custom then spread to other parts of the town, and the Yamakuni Kakashi Village event, then called so, started in 2007.

In front of the open-air wedding ceremony site at the Koyagawa district were two old women, who were on hand to serve hot tea and fruits to visitors.
“We learned how to make kakashi figures from the couples and started making kakashi dolls by ourselves,” said one of the women.

A kakashi display site in the Tsuyahime (Princess Tsuya) district features various scenes of rice growing, from horse-driven spadework and rice planting to harvesting. Among the figures there were kids playing with a big bamboo basket.

A tourist was gazing at the basket curiously, whispering to her friend, “I haven’t seen a bamboo basket this big. What was that for?” Their doubt was solved by an old farmer who was there to welcome tourists.

The basket, with a capacity of 7 koku (one koku is equivalent to about 180 liters), was originally used to contain cocoons, said the farmer. “People around here were raising silkworms until the 1930s, but the business ceased after that, because it became unprofitable,” he said.

At a garden in front of a farmer’s house in the Morizane district were kakashi kids climbing up a persimmon tree. “My wife is good at making kakashi dolls like those out there,” the farmer said. Kakashi figures have wires inside and so, their legs, arms and other parts can be easily bent to desired shapes by bending wires appropriately, his wife said. “Because I was tomboyish in my childhood, you know, I like making these figures,” she said smilingly.

Many villages and towns in Oita Prefecture have boastful unique products, but Yamakuni lacks strongly appealing, original products. Further, similar kakashi festivals can also be seen in other regions in Japan. But straw figures made by Yamakuni people are more real and more humorous. The kakashi works instantly remove a psychological barrier between visitors, mostly city dwellers, and villagers, generating a friendly atmosphere throughout the town during the festival. 

French aviator's aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (2)

Oct. 30, 2014

French aviator's aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (2)

The story about Japy’s ambitious flight and the friendship which emerged from his meeting with Sefuri inhabitants took a fresh turn in 2013, when a female Japanese reader organized a reading performance about the episode in Paris and Beaucourt.

After the conclusion of the twinning contract, interchanges between Sefuri and Beaucourt were at a low ebb, due in part to difficulty in actually receiving each other’s mission. The 9.11 terrorist attacks of 2001 in the United States also forced them to postpone related programs. In the meantime, Sefuri merged with the neighboring bigger municipality of Kanzaki in 2006. At present, Kanzaki has a population of 32,000, including about 1,700 in the Sefuri region.

The reading performance has helped to revive momentum for interchanges between Kanzaki and Beaucourt. Kanzaki City officials, led by Mayor Shigeyuki Matsumoto, have spent busy days preparing to welcome Beaucourt Mayor Cedric Perrin and Nicolas Japy, a grandson of Japy’s elder brother, on the occasion of the performance.

Yuko Aoki, the Japanese reader, has written a text for the performance, Les Ailes d’André (André’s Wings), by herself. The canon-like performance is played in Japanese and in French by two readers, Aoki herself and Vanda Benes, a French actress and stage director.

Her project emerged from a casual conversation with her long-time French friend, Jenny Kimura, as she happened to be a remote relative of the Japy family through her mother. The performance in André’s birthplace in September last year was timed to coincide with the annual Japy festival there and played before dignitaries in Beaucourt and a group of Japanese friends of Aoki, including a couple from Saga. The incident has been remembered in Beaucourt so strongly that one street in the city is christened “Sefuri-Saga-Japon.”

Aoki, who worked with Japan’s public TV channel NHK for over 30 years, currently serves as president of the Reading Center in Karuizawa, the sole facility of its kind in Japan. She expects to continue the reading performance at a total of 11 places across Japan through November.

Aoki’s reading campaign culminated in a performance held at a public hall in Kanzaki in late October in the presence of Nicolas Japy and his family, his wife and two daughters and a son.  The Beaucourt mayor partially joined the reading.

The visiting Japy family also realized their long hoped for meeting with the author of the book before the performance; they dined with the 89-year-old former elementary school teacher at a comfortable Japanese-style hotel in Saga. The author took the occasion to present a copy of her book to Nicolas.

The aileron of Japy’s aeroplane which Nishikawa saw at her old school is currently stored at a display facility in Sefuri. Another wooden piece of the airplane, the upper part of the broken vertical stabilizer, had been held at a villager’s home, but this is also stored at the same facility. The aileron measures 152 centimeters in length and 42 to 52 centimeters in width, while the part of the vertical stabilizer is 70 centimeters in length and 22 centimeters in height.

The two “witnesses” of the incident were on display for visitors at the reading performance in Kanzaki. Also on display were four pieces of old photos, including the one showing Japy lying on the bed just after he was rescued from the crash site.

These photos were provided by a woman who lives near Fukuoka and whose father served as an interpreter for Japy while he was in Sefuri. “My father could speak several foreign languages. Maybe, this is why he was called to the place where the French aviator was receiving care,” Akiko Takada recalled. Because her father died of a war-related disease outside of Japan in her childhood, she cannot clearly remember what her father talked about Japy. “But I remember this. My father told me, ‘When I began to talk to Monsieur Japy in French, he looked so delighted,’” she said.

Japy continued to dream of visiting Japan again, but he could not. The airman devoted his remaining life mainly to training young pilots and developing air routes in Tahiti and other places. He died of heart attack in 1974 when he was strolling on the shore in Finistére, Bretagne, northwestern France. He was 70. Gondo confirmed this by obtaining a copy of a local newspaper article about his demise.

The reading performance took up not just Japy’s aborted flight but also the history of the Japy family and that of Beaucourt. The two readers, playing as friends in their 50s to 60s, were mutually talking about their dreams for their second stage of life while linking them to Japy’s passion for life and his courage.

The reading performance in Kanzaki was preceded by an opening event, in which 23 Sefuri Junior High students performed a short play depicting how Sefuri villagers, their ancestors, rescued Japy. The school has been performing the play every three years since 1994 as part of cultural festival programs, according to Principal Kazuhiko Kubo.

“We hope that our students will inherit this moving story over years by performing the play,” he said. “The beauty of the town of Sefuri is condensed in the story.”

The year of 2016 marks the 80th anniversary of the incident, which has linked the two municipalities in Japan and France beyond time and space. Nishikawa, a mother of two daughters, is trying to help organize programs in commemoration of the heroic incident for the particular year, soliciting support and ideas from as many citizens as possible. She hopes that the episode will contribute to strengthening friendship and humanity among young people on both sides.

French aviator’s aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (1)

Oct. 30, 2014

French aviator’s aborted but ambitious journey links people 15,000 km apart in Japan and France (1)

The girl was always looking up at the red, rectangular object put on the wall of the poorly lit corridor in front of her classroom, without knowing it was so important an item that would later lead to a twinning between her native place and a small French city. “We were playing and running around there every day, but nobody told us what the object was,” said Kiyo Nishikawa, who was then a pupil at Kuboyama Branch School in Sefuri Village, Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan.

She recalled. “It was when we were third graders. One day, our class teacher told us, ‘Decades ago, an airplane with a man from France aboard crashed in the Sefuri mountains and villagers in Sefuri, the people you know, tried hard to rescue the airman. It sounds so great, doesn’t it?’” Then, she realized that the object was a part of the crashed airplane, actually a wooden aileron on the left wing.

French aviation pioneer André Japy was on a 15,000-kilometer flight from Paris to Tokyo in November 1936, with a prize of 600,000 francs at stake. As the distance had to be covered in 100 hours, Japy took off from Hong Kong in bad weather on the last leg of the flight early in the morning of Nov. 19, and his Caudron Simoun, registered No. 7078, got caught in turbulence over the East China Sea. He gave up flying direct to Tokyo and looked for an airfield to land in western Japan, but his plane was struck by a violent wind down to the steep southern slope below the peak of the 1,055-meter Mt. Sefuri.

Japy, then 32, was seriously injured and hovered between life and death, but he was rescued alive by inhabitants in Sefuri. Rescuers reached the crash site through trackless paths, braving rains and fogs in darkness. It was about four hours after the crash.

Japy had suffered deep wounds in the forehead and had the left thigh and the left hand broken. Those who rushed to the scene included local firemen and a police officer as well as farmers and charcoal burners. An on-the-spot investigation made two days after the accident revealed the fuel tanks on both sides had been empty. The altimeter had shown a reading of 820 to 850 meters, according to police records. To be lucky to Japy, among those who reached the scene was a local physician, who told those people to bring the injured on a makeshift stretcher slowly and carefully down to his clinic and quickly gave him a first aid treatment there. Japy was later moved to a national university-affiliated hospital in Fukuoka, about 50 kilometers northeast of Sefuri.

A book compiled by a children’s book writer, who lives in Saga City, in 1991 gave a detailed account of how Japy was rescued and how warmly he was received by Sefuri inhabitants when he revisited the village before returning to France four months later.

The story, notably the bravery of people in the small village for rescuing Japy, was handed down from generation to generation in the airman’s birthplace, Beaucourt in the Territory of Belfort, northeastern France, as André hailed from the Japy family, well known for its contribution to the town over centuries. The situation was somewhat different in Sefuri; the story was not uttered actively among people in the village, partly because Japan and France became enemies to each other in World War II. The situation also may be linked to a Japanese saying: Good deeds should be laudable, when done not openly. This obviously made Sefuri people involved hesitant about talking about the incident.

A monument was built by the villagers at the crash site in 1966, 30 years after the incident. But Chiaki Gondo, the author of the book, had to spend almost five years for investigating the incident once again, looking into old materials and documents and interviewing more than 100 people.

Impressed with the philanthropic spirit of the villagers and Japy’s courage for the journey, Gondo hoped to introduce her book, entitled “Fly! The Red Wings,” to someone who may be interested in the dramatic episode in France.

Her hope was realized three months after the release of the book. Her younger brother, who was a business executive, met two friends of his in France. These people helped to present copies of the book to the French government and Beaucourt City, paving the way for Sefuri and Beaucourt to enter into a sister city affiliation in 1996, exactly 60 years from Japy’s abortive but ambitious flight.

Nishikawa, the former schoolgirl in Sefuri, grew up and became an elementary school teacher, but the story about the French airman seldom came up to her mind, until she met Gondo at a ceremony on the closing of her old school in 1998. “At that time, I came to know that Mrs. Gondo has been visiting the monument on the anniversary of the incident every year.” This led her to endeavor to make the episode widely known to young people in Sefuri so that the story will be handed to the next generation.

The first aid treatment made by the Sefuri physician, Shigeto Ushijima, for Japy proved to be appropriate, and this helped him to recuperate miraculously. Since he was grateful for the care provided by Dr. Ushijima, a letter of thanks was presented to the physician in the name of the then French ambassador to Japan, A. Kammerer.

In the course of research for writing the book, Gondo visited Ushijima’s house, though he had moved to a different place several years after the incident. The letter of thanks came up in discussion between the two, and a few weeks later, a copy of the letter, written in French and dated on Dec. 26, 1936, was sent to her via the Sefuri Village office, according to Gondo.

She could obtain a lot of information about Japy at his home, but she found that the physician and his wife were living a very humble, publicly unknown life. “This made me feel so choked up,” she recalled tearfully.

Tanushimaru grape farmers trying to adapt themselves to new consumer tastes

Sept. 28, 2014

Tanushimaru grape farmers trying to adapt themselves to new consumer tastes

Grape production is a time- and energy-consuming job. About 150 grape farmers in Tanushimaru, southwestern Japan, are busy growing the very juicy, big grain Kyoho grape from early spring to around August, not just fertilizing grape trees but also bending their branches in the favorable direction, thinning out young fruits and covering bunches of grapes with white bags to protect them from rainfalls and bugs.

Tanushimaru Town, which became part of Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, in 2005, is the birthplace of Kyoho grape production, which was realized after years of hard work by a group of young farmers in the town from the 1950s to the 60s.

Japan’s grape production amounts to about 185,000 tons a year. The Kyoho is currently the most popular grape species in Japan in terms of acreage. Grape farmers are trying to be more aware of changes in consumers’ tastes, further refining their growing techniques. Particularly, reflecting consumers’ preference to easy-to-eat, seedless products, they have come to use various agents and hormone drugs. This has made some grape growers rather concerned about their future business.

The Kyoho grape is an indigenous species developed by a Japanese cultural scientist in the 1930s. The Kyoho species, so named by the developer, had not been commercially produced until Tanushimaru farmers succeeded in growing the grape with big fruits in 1960.
The success came only after three years of studies by the group, who had launched an unprecedented farmers’ research laboratory for farmers, with the support of Michishige Ochi, an agronomist who inherited the work of the Japanese developer.

The Kyoho grape boasts of its big grain size. So, Kyoho farmers have been less enthusiastic about turning out seedless products. Seedless Kyoho products are available now.
Such grapes are produced by soaking young bunches of grapes into a cup containing a vegetable hormone which halts the growth of seeds. Then, a different growth hormone has to be used to enable them to have big grains without seeds. Sometimes, a coloring agent is also used. "People say they (the agents and others) are harmless, but their continuous use is unfavorable to grapes," said a vineyard owner, whose father was one of the young grape farmers who joined the inauguration of the research group. His vineyard uses no chemicals, growing grapes as naturally as possible, he said. 

Tanushimaru attracts tens of thousands of grape lovers every summer. About 60 vineyards in the town are open to tourists from July to September to let them enjoy grape gathering under the trellises. Kyoho grapes usually have a dark purple color, but light green and pink ones are also available.

People can pick up as many grapes as they want at these vineyards. No admission fees are required, and they can buy their catches for 1,000 yen to 1,300 yen per kilogram. As grape production is coming to an end this year, grape farmers in Tanushimaru are already thinking about what kind of products should be satisfactory to consumers in the coming year.

Minamioguni, southwestern Japan, boasts of harmonious coexistence of people and nature

Aug. 30, 2014

Minamioguni, southwestern Japan, boasts of harmonious coexistence of people and nature

Minamioguni Town, a mountainous region in the southwestern Japan prefecture of Kumamoto, is proud of being an original member of the Most Beautiful Villages in Japan union, a nonprofit organization launched in 2005.

The union is modeled after a similar grouping inaugurated in France in the 1980s. The movement then spread to other European countries. In Japan, seven towns and villages which have a population of 10,000 or less, including Minamioguni, got together to demonstrate themselves as communities who are out to preserve scenic landscapes and rich natural resources with the backing of environment-conscious local people.
The union accepted other eligible communities across Japan in later years. The number of member towns and villages increased to 54 in 2013.

Minamioguni, with a population of about 4,400 and an area of 11,000 hectares, has a lot of widely known tourist spots, notably the Kurokawa hot spa retreat and the Senomoto Heights which commands a good view of the active Aso volcanic mountains. But it also boasts of more casual spots which are attractive to nature-loving tourists.

The Hill of Oshitoishi, with mysterious rocks scattered around, is one of new handmade tourist spots in the town. The hill, at an elevation of 845 meters, had been little known to outside people until what appear to be petroglyphs, or rock engravings in the prehistorical age, were confirmed on some of the volcanic rocks in 1989 by local education board officials. Later, the petrolyphs were authorized by a UNESCO-affiliated rock art academy, and the site was found to be the remains with nine groups of artificially placed rocks. As an access road to the site was opened a few years ago, the hill has become famous as a “power-giving spot."

“If you are interested in our town as a Most Beautiful Village in Japan, I would say you should also visit the Hiranodai Heights,” a local tourist association official said. Hiranodai is located to the east of the Kurokawa hot spa valley. There are nature trails and a village of log houses in a quiet atmosphere on the foot of the heights. An observatory is high up to the heights.
Tourists may also be recommended to drop in at a farmers’ market with various vegetables fresh from the garden and dine at country-taste restaurants staffed with local people. Farmer-run inns are also available at some locations in the town.

The launch of the Most Beautiful Villages in Japan union came at a time when mergers of towns and villages were recommended across Japan from the 1990s under Japan’s local government realignment policy, which, critics say, made it difficult for small but nicely preserved communities to protect their natural landscape.

The Hill of Oshitoishi used to be a pasture co-owned by farmers to reap grass for cattle. Local people worshiped the rock garden as a sacred place for a god of water and held rites regularly on the top of the hill. They have inherited the site from generation to generation. Most people in the area still live on cattle growing. They have preserved the environment around the hill over years, burning off dead grass, improving paths and doing other jobs together.

The hill has no gates and fences. Handwritten guides, set up along the access road, read "Go forward carefully, please." or "Soft shoulders!." Tourists are asked to pay 200 yen as an “admission fee” at a reception house below the hill. Oshitoishi, the main rock so called, is marked with a sacred straw rope. The rock is 5.5 meters high and 15.3 meters around, and its vertex points to the North Star.

A rock on the western end of the hill, called Hasamiishi, has a slit through which the son can be seen setting on the winter solstice and from the other side, the sunrise can be seen on the summer solstice. A nearby rock, called Kagamiishi, has petroglyphs engraved on its face to the south. Because the main rock apparently has a magnetic force, compasses irregularly move, when placed near the rock. People had believed that it rains when the one climbs up the rock. “When I was a kid, we were always told by elders not to climb on the rock, particularly in the rice harvesting season,” said a farmer who mans the reception house.

Tourists can borrow small compasses at the reception house. While showing how to use the device, the reception house keeper, who is one of the 40 co-owner farmers, told visitors, “Please feel the force of Oshitoishi, and you will be empowered with its strength.”

It is uncertain if every visitor can feel the strength of the rock, but tourists should find themselves being refreshed while feeling smooth winds on the hill and thinking of the life of ancient people believed to have deified the rocks.