Season's Greetings from a Classical Japanese Poem Lover

Dec. 25, 2009

Season's Greetings
from a classical Japanese poem lover

with

photos of

the four seasons of Tokyo (from the top):

cherry blossoms and a restaurant at Yotsuya

a tree-surrounded square at Azabu-Juban

a Japanese-style garden with a pond at Roppongi

an alley along Meguro River

a mother and a boy strolling on a street at Shirogane

a ginkgo tree avenue at Jingu-Gaien

a boutique at Daikanyama

an old building on a slope at Ebisu

a "hagoita" fair at Sensoji Temple

illuminated Christmas trees on a Ginza street

“Hagoita” fair boosts joyful mood at Tokyo temple for New Year

Dec. 19, 2009

“Hagoita” fair boosts joyful mood at Tokyo temple for New Year

Japanese are busy preparing themselves for the New Year’s Day around this time of the year. Jobs for them to do for the year-end and New Year’s holiday season include writing postcards for New Year’s greetings to be delivered on the first day of January, making dishes ready for guests, cleaning the whole house and buying gifts for family members, friends and others. Japan’s economy remains in a fix, but an animated mood was dominant in areas around Sensoji Temple, a famous tourist spot in Tokyo, this week with the approach to its main gate lined by about 30 shops set up for an annual fair of decorated “hagoita” battledore or rackets for Japanese badminton.

Playing battledore and shuttlecock is a traditional New Year’s game for young girls and children. The play is said to have originated from court people in the 15th century. Some of the customs and games for the New Year’s holidays have become outdated, but some are still observed. Girls sometimes actually play hagoita badminton, but the fair at the Buddhist temple attracted people hoping to buy decorated hagoita as gifts for girl babies for their health or as New Year’s ornaments. An old shopkeeper was talking to an elderly customer at one hagoita stand. “May I help you, mom?” “I’d like to have a nice one for my newly born granddaughter.” “Must be your first grandchild ‘cause you look young.”

How many nights to sleep before the New Year’s Day?
When it comes, let’s play kite flying. Let’s play top spinning.
Come to us quickly, please, the New Year’s Day.
How many nights to sleep before the New Year’s Day?
When it comes, let’s play ball bouncing. Let’s play badminton.
Come to us quickly, please, the New Year’s Day.
(A personal translation)

This is a song included in a book of songs for kindergarten children published by the Education Ministry in 1901.
Decorated hagoita rackets usually feature images of heroines and heroes of popular traditional “kabuki” plays. The relief-like images are created by pasting many colored pieces of silk cloth stuffed with cotton on rectangle plates of wood. At the three-day fair, the shops were carrying various kinds of hagoita rackets, from miniatures to big ones. Prices ranged from less than 1,000 yen to over 100,000 yen. When deals were done, shop clerks clapped their hands for a celebration while wishing the customers a happy new year. Customers and shopkeepers alike were seen hoping that the colorful items would not only brighten their life but also help dispel evils for Japan in the New Year.

Exhibition on Classical Poetry Shows Future Cultural Model for Japan

Dec. 12, 2009

Exhibition on Classical Poetry Shows Future Cultural Model for Japan

Visitors were gazing at two 800-year-old manuscripts by a noted ancient waka poet and his father displayed as part of about 500 items at a much publicized exhibition in Tokyo. The documents were among the five National Treasures from the late Heian to early Kamakura periods provided at the exhibition, “The Reizei Family: Keepers of Classical Poetic Tradition,” at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The two manuscripts, placed side by side in a glass case, were the three-volume poem anthology “Shui Guso” personally compiled by Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) and the “Korai Futeisho,” the notes written by Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204) about poetic style since the old times.

Waka poetry, a purely Japanese poetic form dating back to the sixth or seventh centuries, basically consists of a total of 31 syllables in five lines.
Also on display were three other National Treasures—the hand scrolls of the diary Meigetsuki kept by Teika from his young age to just before his death and two manuscripts of different Imperial waka poem anthologies. The two-month-long exhibition provides a rare opportunity for ordinary Japanese people to take a firsthand look at valuable literary assets amassed and preserved by the noble Reizei house over the past eight centuries. The Reizei family, which still lives in Kyoto, originates from a grandson of Teika
Imperial poem anthologies were assembled in the names of emperors or retired emperors since the early 10th century. In a preface to the first Imperial poem anthology, one of the compilers wrote, “The seeds of Yamato (Japanese) poetry lies in the human heart and from it, grows a myriad of leaves of word.” This amounted to a declaration that the true expression of the human nature of Japanese is to be found in waka poems composed in the native Japanese language, not in Chinese poetic writing, says a brochure provided at the exhibition. For poets in the Heian period, to be named editors of Imperial poem anthologies was a great honor. They were even willing to risk their lives just to have a single poem included in those collections. The Reizei family and its predecessor provided three editors of Imperial waka anthologies.

In a spring night sky, the floating bridge of dreams vanishes
as a peak separates horizontally lingering clouds.
(A personal translation)

This is one of many famous poems composed by Teika in his turbulent years amid a transition of power from the nobles to samurai warlords. His poems feature elegant and alluring words with suggested feelings and lingering imagery. The poem about the spring night is a descriptive one on the surface, but it contains subtle, inspiring implications for readers. “The floating bridge of dreams,” which forms the second line in the original, derives from the title of the 54th and last volume of the Tale of Genji, which is known as the world’s oldest long novel. The volume depicts a broken love between Kaoru, the son of a princess who married Genji, the hero of the saga, and a young unfortunate woman named Ukifune. The title was so used as to expand on the romantic but sad atmosphere surrounding the two figures in the novel.

His poems were initially criticized as being excessively elaborate and polished, but Teika’s reputation was eventually established and his name was remembered as a great master of waka poetry.
The exhibition, which is under way from Oct. 24, is relatively academic with only a few visibly colorful items on display, but it has attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. This may be an indication that many Japanese are looking for something that helps them to reconfirm their roots in Japan’s history and culture. A similar euphoric move was seen last year when various events took place across the country to mark the millennial anniversary of the presumed completion of the Tale of Genji.
The history of the Reizei family has not been smooth at all. They had to undergone many periods of war. Faced with the danger of having its historically important assets scattered and lost from time to time, the family continued hard efforts to preserve and hand down its collection through the generations. War was not the sole thing that threatened the family and its cultural assets. They had to live in the days of misfortune from the Meiji era to until after the last war, when the waka poems of the Heian period came under criticism as anachronistic products made by aristocrats just to amuse themselves.
A fresh light is being shed, however, on the importance of the collection of literary assets kept by the family. The manuscripts left by Teika and his descendants have come to be widely known as the texts of many ancient literary works which are publicly available to today’s readers. The Reizei family transferred its secretly preserved assets to a new nonprofit corporation in the 1980s to make them available to the public. The exhibition was held on the occasion of the completion of a series of books to be published from their archives since then.

Japan has so far established itself as the world’s No. 2 economic power, but it is expected to be outranked by China in the not too distant future. What should be supporting Japan from now on? Will Japan be able to find a new supporting base in the current era of slow economic growth?

Calls are growing that Japan should beef up its “soft power” in order to explore a way for its future. Japan’s valuable, centuries-old cultural assets cannot be imitated by any other country. Cultural power backed by such property should become an important element that will help enhance Japan in the years or centuries to come. The ongoing exhibition may also provide a model for Japan to demonstrate itself as a leading country in the cultural field in the world.

Poverty threatening Japan’s society as new homeless people spread

Nov. 29, 2009

Poverty threatening Japan’s society as new homeless people spread

The time-honored stone building is part of the head office facilities of the Bank of Japan located a few kilometers north of Ginza, one of the busiest and most fashionable shopping centers in Tokyo. The two-story building faces a canal across a street to the west and above the canal runs an elevated expressway lane. The structure and a small bridge over the canal provide a good shelter-like environment for homeless people to live. Actually, “houses” of corrugated cardboard and wooden boards occupy some places around the bridge.
This is just one of the scenes one can see at corners of parks, station squares and other public places in Tokyo. As far as ordinary Japanese people are concerned, how the homeless live had been an unrelated problem until late last year, when a new breed of homeless people began to emerge amid Japan’s economic crisis.
Many Japanese companies resorted to firing contract or temporary workers in an effort to survive the global recession from late 2008 to this year. These workers’ contracts had been extended many times, giving them almost the same job conditions as those for regular workers, among them company housing. Some of them had no money to find their own housing and became homeless on the very day when their contracts were terminated. Eventually, they had to join the existing homeless people on the street.
Poverty is filtering into Japan’s society calmly and steadily. The Japanese government recently announced that Japan’s relative poverty rate had climbed to 15.7 pct in 2007. The rate represents the percentage of people whose annual income is less than half of the median of disposable income for each of the people, estimated at 2.28 million yen for the year under review. The finding means that one of every six persons suffers poverty in a country which had once boasted a stable society supported by many middle-income earners. The percentage was a staggering 54.3 pct for single-parent families.

A windy and rainy night, a rainy and snowy night. There is no means for me to tolerate cold during such a night. So, I nibble at hard salt and sip sake lees soup.

While coughing, sniveling and stroking my small beard, I tell myself cocksure there must be no one who is more talented than I. But because it is so cold, I pull hemp bedclothes over my head and wear all the short-sleeved clothes I have. Still I cannot warm myself. In a cold night like this, the parents of a person who is even poorer than I would be shivering from cold in hanger while his wife and children would be crying with weak voices. How do you make your living in such a situation?
People say the world is vast, but it appears to be small to me. People say the sun and the moon brightly shine on us and bless us, but they do not shine for me. Is this the case for other people, too? Or is this only for me?

I was born as a human being and I work just as other persons do. But I have nothing to wear other than sleeveless hemp clothes and seaweed-like ragged clothes. I have to live in a leaning, nearly collapsed house while having my father and mother sleep above my head and my wife and kids beyond my legs with straws placed as a mat on the ground. There is no fire at the kitchen and our rice cooker is left unused and covered with a spider’s web. They are begging for something to eat with feeble voices, but a whip-wielding village official’s voice is heard into our bedroom, just like the saying that a short thing should be cut even shorter. I wonder if leading a life in this world is really helpless like this.
(A personal translation)

This is a poem composed by Yamanoue Okura, a court official who was active early in the eighth century, when he was in his 60s. The long poem, which is included in Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, takes the form of a dialogue between two poor men. Unlike other waka poets of his age, who made poems about their beloved and kin or about noble persons, Okura left poems about the life of ordinary people.
The spread of people who have newly become homeless in Japan is attributed mainly to the global economic crisis that began in the autumn of last year. But some domestic structural reasons may also be cited for the phenomenon, such as competition-oriented business practices and a lack of social systems, something like a safety net, to rescue jobless people and get them back to the workplace.
The streets at Ginza are filled with many shoppers toward the year-end shopping season, but their purse strings appear to be tighter. People at the Bank of Japan buildings are racking their brains for a prescription to stimulate consumers’ demand and pull the economy out of the current deflationary spiral. But it is unknown if and how soon they will be able to find an answer to the question.

New challenge for Japan: Who is truly qualified to serve public? Govt people or citizens?

Nov. 15, 2009

New challenge for Japan: Who is truly qualified to serve public? Govt people or citizens?

The nature-loving woman died of a recurrence of cancer last year after living an exciting but simple life as an interpreter for U.S. artists and a member of a citizens’ movement in her hometown. She was 56 and survived by her husband and a 17-year-old son. She died while watching the sea of her hometown facing the Pacific from her bed. It was about two weeks after she returned from the United States to live her last days with her family and friends in Japan.
Members of a local citizens’ group organized against a high-rise condominium project tried to field the woman, who was one of its leaders, as a candidate for a mayoral election believing she was qualified to do jobs to preserve the nature of the town. But her poor health and other reasons prevented them from realizing the idea. The group won a half victory in their movement against the project. They succeeded in getting the local government to pass a law to ban high-rise structures in the scenic seaside area, but they failed to do so for smaller buildings.
Grass-roots or citizens’ movements are not new ones in Japan. Citizens’ movements became active in the 1970s. Movements by citizens and volunteers have spread widely in recent years to various parts of people’s daily life, including care for children, support for the handicapped, the sick and the elderly, education of young people and the preservation of the nature.

The phenomenon comes at a time when people have become eager to know who is truly qualified to serve the public. It has been generally believed that jobs for the public are performed by national or local government officials, but the notion has come to be doubted as bureaucrats’ behaviors and their quality as public servants are under criticism. This is a reason why Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama called for exploring what he termed a “new concept of the public” in his recent inaugural address to the parliament. Who is truly qualified to serve the public or the common good? And what is the public after all in today’s society amid diversifying values? The main player in today’s Japan should be a people-oriented network society, with ordinary people ready to help each other at various places and occasions, Hatoyama believes.
In Japan, the emperor system represented the ultimate value throughout the periods except a few centuries ruled by samurai warlords.

From today, I will never look back on myself.
I will move on as a great shield of the Emperor.
(A personal translation)

This is one of a series of poems composed by “sakimori” soldiers and adopted for Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu, compiled in the eighth century. Imamatsuribe Yosofu, the author of the poem, is believed to be a noncommissioned officer who led a small sakimori unit.
The emperor system and based on the system, bureaucrats’ strong clout on Japan’s politics were in force in the prewar period, or to be more precise, until after the end of World War II in a different manner. Prime Minister Hatoyama, inaugurated in September, aims at a thorough review of Japan’s postwar politics calling for redefining bureaucrats’ role in Japan’s policy making to let them support and facilitate people’s various activities.
The woman and her husband moved to California in the 1970s and started their life there almost from scratch. She found a telephone interpreter’s job with AT&T and her husband became a craftsman. Meanwhile, her younger brother and his pop music band had become popular in Japan when the couple was trying hard to establish their life in America. She became to be known as the pop star’s sister when she returned to Japan after about 20 years of life in the U.S. “I was always cautious toward people who approached me only because my brother is a celebrity. I had found myself used shrewdly by these people for their purposes. But I had made up my mind to use all means available to stop the condo project,” she wrote in her first and last book, published a few months after her death.
My wife knew the woman, Eriko Iwamoto, and met her a few times through a local citizens’ group to provide mainly home stay support to visiting foreign youths. “She was just a common person and she didn’t look like a celebrity’s sister. She was not arrogant at all,” my wife said. She wanted to live longer, but her life must have been satisfactory because her activity inspired many people to work together to protect their life and preserve the environment, her friends believe.

Japan’s food self-sufficiency and fate of rice

Oct. 28, 2009

Japan’s food self-sufficiency and fate of rice


Rice was always close at hand to Japanese people since the ancient times. The annual plant, which originally came from the Indochinese Peninsula, has continued to support people’s food life in the land which became to be known as Japan and formed a part of its traditional culture.
Japan was called the Land of Golden Ears of Rice in the Japanese myths.
Rice, ine in Japanese or called kome as a grain, is among the so-called five major cereals, which also include wheat, millet, foxtail millet and barnyard grass, but it is far more important than any other grains. A mythical episode says that a goddess named Ohgetsuhime produced the seeds of rice and wheat, and adzuki bean and soybean as well as silkworm from various parts of the body when she died.

Rice is in the ear and leaning in one direction in the autumn field.
I want to lean on your love in despite of bad rumor about us.
Bad rumor about our love bitterly pierces my heart.
I have never done this before in my life,
but I will wade across a river at dawn to see my lover.
(Personal translations)

These are poems composed by Princess Tajima, who left a few poems about her unforgivable love with Prince Hozumi, her half brother, in Manyoshu, Japan’s oldest waka poem collection. The year of her death is unknown, but she was believed to be in her late 20s when she died in 708. Prince Hozumi went out in heavy snow one day to visit the grave of Princess Tajima. He made the following elegy while having a distant view of her tomb on a hill in Yonabari, a mountainous area which was to the south of her former residence near the Imperial Palace:

She must be feeling cold.
Snow! Please do not fall so heavily on Ikai Hill of Yonabari.
(A personal translation)

Paddy rice blooms tiny white flowers from June to July. When it bears fruit, the ears droop down due to its weight.
Many of Japan’s traditional festivals are linked to rice as people continued hard efforts over the centuries to increase rice paddies by cultivating wasteland, controlling river flows and building irrigation canals. Farmers held festivals from spring to autumn while praying for and thanking for a bumper harvest for rice, not other grains. Rice was important not only for Japan’s food life. It was also an indispensable, pivotal product for economic activity until the end of the Edo Era. The rice-oriented economic system in the period led to the launch of a rice futures exchange in Osaka, the commercial hub of western Japan, in 1730. This was the first futures market in the world.
Rice is the staple food for Japanese people now. Rice has been so important a part of Japan’s society and tradition, but its fate is far from certain at present. The environment is becoming more serious than before for rice growers amid a continuous oversupply and declining prices, while consumers’ preference for food is diversifying.
Rice has been a politically touchy issue in the recent decades amid pressure from abroad to open Japan’s heavily protected rice market to imports. But Japan’s policymakers believe that measures should be taken to continue Japan’s rice production in order to maintain Japan’s food self-sufficiency and food security. They also believe that rice farming has numerous functions to play, preserving the natural environment and maintaining the rural community. Japan’s food self-sufficiency is picking up in recent years, but it remains as low as around 40 pct.
The Democratic Party of Japan, which has come to power after a recent election victory, has made clear a policy of introducing a producer-specific subsidy system initially for rice to cover a gap between rice prices and costs. But opponents and experts doubt if the system will work well, warning it may rather invite a moral hazard among producers. Japan is expected to need more time to find an effective prescription for saving Japan’s rice farming and making its rice and rice farmers internationally competitive.

Bush clover and slow, simpler life in Japan

Oct. 20, 2009

Bush clover and slow, simpler life in Japan

Bush clover, also called Japanese clover, is an autumn flower loved by many waka poets since the time of Japan’s oldest waka poem anthology Manyoshu. Japanese have many flowers and herbs to enjoy in autumn, maybe more than in other seasons. Bush clover leads the so-called seven flowers of autumn, followed by Japanese pampas grass, kudzu vine, a pink, Patrinia scabiosifolia, thoroughwort and kikyo bellflower in that order. The grouping originates from a poem composed by Yamanoue Okura, a poet of the eighth century who left many waka poems in the Manyoshu anthology. (An explanation about waka poems can be found in an author’s note in the blog post published on April 11)

When I count on my fingers the flowers in bloom in this autumn field,

I find seven kinds of flowers out there.
(A personal translation)

This is the poem made by Okura, who specifically lists up the seven flowers in another poem. The poem collection contains a total of 4,516 pieces of poems in 20 volumes. Of this, about 1,700 pieces mention the names of flowers or herbs. Bush clover, called “hagi” in Japanese, appears in 142 pieces, more frequently than any other species. Second was the Japanese apricot and third was “nubatama” iris.
Otomo Yakamochi, believed to be the editor of the poem collection, also composed a poem which refers to bush clover. He was returning a poem extended by a girl known as “Hekino Nagae." The poems of Yakamochi and the girl follow:

A cluster of bush clover in bloom in my garden:

I nearly mistakenly let it fall before showing the flower to my love.
When autumn comes, dews fall on the ears of “obana” (Japanese pampas grass).

I feel as if I were disappearing so quickly as the dews

because of the sorrow of love to you.
(Personal translations)

Bush clover, which belongs to the pea family, is a deciduous shrub and blooms from late summer to early autumn.
Hagi has been referred to in many poems not only in the Manyoshu era but also in the later periods Why has it attracted Japanese poets so strongly? The chief reason is its pretty shape, which fits waka poems, experts say. Hagi has a weeping habit and blooms a lot of tiny red-purple (sometimes white) flowers on slender branches. This has appealed to Japanese poets and people over the centuries.
Bush clovers seen in Japan are less brilliant compared to North American-grown species, many of which extend fountain-like flower branches in bloom. The Japanese species are also lower in height, about 3 to 4 feet. This is another reason for its popularity in Japan because Japanese like small and fragile things.
Despite its pretty, fragile look, hagi is a kind of “pioneer” plant and at home to poor conditions, such as dry soil. This eager-to-live, admirable appearance pleases Japanese people.
Tourist spots in Kamakura, south of Tokyo, attracts many visitors including those hoping to enjoy flowers on weekends. Hagi can be found at not only famous spots but also other places, sometimes on the roadside and on the fences of houses. Hagi should continue to be loved in Japan, maybe more widely than ever, because Japanese tend to prefer a simpler, slow life in view of the forthcoming environment-oriented age.