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Japan and beauty

May 12, 2013 / John D. / 2 Comments

One of my favourite writers about Japan, Michael Hoffman, has brought out a long article in the Japan Times today on Japan and notions of beauty, prompted by the current right-wing prime minister’s declaration that he wants to promote a ‘beautiful Japan’. What exactly he means is unclear, since his policies seem designed to foster the very opposite… monetarism, nationalism and the alienation of close neighbours.

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‘Beauty’ as beheld in Japan through the ages
BY MICHAEL HOFFMAN May 12, 2013 Japan Times

Dogu in the Kokugaku University museum

How far back should we take our story of Japanese beauty? We could, theoretically, take it very far back indeed — some 12,000 years, to the start of the prehistoric Jomon Period (circa 10,500-c.300 B.C.) and the emergence of the figurines known as dogū. These rank among the world’s oldest ceramic sculptures. They are starkly, shockingly beautiful; starkly, shockingly ugly too, as the nakedly primitive cannot help seeming to the civilized eye. Most of the figures depict pregnant women. Experts say they were probably fertility symbols — embodied prayers (to who knows what supernatural powers) for enhanced fertility.

Were they meant to be beautiful? Did the notion of beauty even exist then? A glimmer of it, perhaps? There is simply no knowing.

When Japanese civilization eventually awoke, it was to a sense of its own beauty. That’s unusual. Most early literature celebrates power rather than beauty.

But Japan was a “beautiful country” from infancy, a kind of Garden of Eden from which there was no Fall. Shy god meets shy goddess; they mate, and the goddess gives birth to “the Great-eight-island Land” — Japan.

Izanagi and Izanami creating a divine world from primordial matter

Then, says the eighth-century chronicle “Nihon Shoki,” “Izanagi no Mikoto (the god) said: ‘Over the country which we have produced there is naught but morning mists that shed a perfume everywhere!’ So he puffed them away with a breath, which became changed into a god named Shina tohe no Mikoto” — the wind god.

“Moreover, the child they procreated when they were hungry was called Uka no mi-tama no Mikoto” — the food god. “Thereafter they produced all manner of things whatsoever” — a vast profusion of gods and goddesses, until Izanami, the mother-goddess, was horribly burned giving birth to the fire-god. But life was triumphant even in death, for Izanami’s putrefaction and Izanagi’s tears themselves became gods and goddesses, the “Nihon Shoki” recounts.

To the earliest Japanese whose minds are at all penetrable today — perhaps also to the Jomon people; certainly to their descendants, the Ainu of Hokkaido — the land was sacred. Rivers, trees, mountains, soil were worshiped before gods were.

“Our poetry appeared at the dawn of creation,” says the preface to the Kokinshu, a 10th-century poetry anthology. It was a poetry of beauty. “Poets praised blossoms, admired birds, felt emotion at the sight of haze, and grieved over dew.” Note the past tense; the writer (Ki no Tsurayuki, a poet himself) is praising poetry that already in his day was one, two or three centuries old — dating back almost to the very birth of Japanese literacy.

“The song of the warbler among the blossoms, the voice of the frog dwelling in the water — these teach us that every living creature sings. It is a song that moves heaven and earth,” said Ki no Tsurayuki. Birdsong is sound. Human song is poetry.

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“Japan has become arguably the world’s ugliest country.”

That verdict is writer and conservationist Alex Kerr’s, in a noted book titled Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (2001).

Kerr was born too late.

“These islands were once lovely in a way we can scarcely imagine,” writes historian Hiroshi Watanabe in his 2010 book A History of Japanese Political Thought, 1600-1901. The few Western visitors who saw it before pell-mell modernization began in the late 19th century, he says, “spoke almost universally of feeling that they had been transported to a dreamlike and enchanted land, like something in a fairy tale. … Edo (renamed Tokyo in 1868) was already one of the world’s most populous cities. Yet in it there was neither a single horse-drawn carriage nor a single steam engine to be seen. It must have been remarkably quiet, even in daytime. … There were no gas lamps or electric lights. On clear nights the sky above Edo was ablaze with the Milky Way; on nights when moon and stars were obscured, the streets were plunged in darkness. As a rule, people got about on foot.”

Once a shrine like this would have had an appealing charm and beauty. Now it's hemmed in by urbanisation that reflects values quite different from that of traditional aesthetics

Kerr, some 150 years later, indicts and convicts the “state-sponsored vandalism” of the postwar “construction state” — a nation 40 percent of whose budget funds public works projects, as against 8-10 percent in the United States, 4-6 percent in Britain and France.

He highlights the resulting ravages: “Across the nation, men and women are at work reshaping the landscape. … Builders of small mountain roads dynamite entire hillsides. Civil engineers channel rivers into U-shaped concrete casings. … The River Bureau has dammed or diverted all but three of Japan’s 113 major rivers. … The seaside reveals the greatest tragedy: By 1993, 55 percent of the entire coast of Japan had been lined with cement slabs and giant concrete tetrapods.”

And all this, Kerr laments, in a land whose native Shinto spirituality “holds that Japan’s mountains, rivers and trees are sacred, the dwelling place of gods.”

The Liberal Democratic Party, father and custodian of the “construction state” through 54 years of nearly unbroken rule beginning in 1955, fell to a wave of popular disgust in 2009. The incoming Democratic Party of Japan promised “people before concrete.” The “construction state” seemed doomed. But the novice government fumbled, surviving a mere three years.

The resurgent LDP under Abe now touts an old policy dressed up in a new name: “Abenomics.” An early manifestation was a ¥20.2 trillion emergency economic stimulus package. Concrete is back. Is concrete beautiful? Two decades of economic stagnation can make it seem so, if Abe’s approval ratings — consistently between 60 and 70 percent — mean anything.

A new Japan is obscuring the beauty of the past

Nature poetry and worship

May 12, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

Heian-style poetry competition: close to nature, close to the heart of Shinto

In a Japan Times article on Beauty in Japan today, one of my favourite writers on Japan, Michael Hoffman, puts forward some interesting thoughts about early Japanese poetry and the attitudes to nature that it reflects.

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In the beginning, the Japanese worshiped nature. Most infant cultures do. To them everything is alive, everything partakes of birth and death; anything may call forth awe, fear, reverence. The Japanese were rich in awe and reverence but not in fear. They tamed nature in their thoughts long before they tamed it physically. They tamed it in their poetry.

The early Japanese domesticated nature as other, more rugged early cultures domesticated wild horses and cattle. Poetry was Japan’s bridle and yoke.

Japan’s first poetry anthology is the eighth-century Manyoshu. Its more than 4,000 poems were written over 300 years beginning in the fourth century.

Has any other embryonic culture ever been so quick to shake off the primal terrors? None surface in the Manyoshu. The nature portrayed is innocent, unthreatening, defanged. It is quietly, serenely beautiful:

“Many are the mountains of Yamato [Japan],/ but I climb heavenly Kagu Hill/ that is cloaked in foliage.” “I remember/ our temporary shelter by Uji’s palace ground, when we cut the splendid grass on the autumn fields.” ” ‘Kuan kuan’ cry the osprey on a sandbar in the river.” “A splendid land/ is the dragonfly island/ the land of Yamato.”

Naturally, there is sadness, too: “… my girl,/ who had swayed to me in sleep/ like seaweed of the offing,/ was gone/ like the coursing sun/ gliding into dusk,/ like the radiant moon/ secluding itself behind the clouds …”

But the sorrow of bereavement fades into the tranquil and consoling motions of the natural world.

Nature as depicted by the “Manyoshu” poets “was not lofty mountains, not desolate plains, not great oceans and not forests filled with wild beasts,” observed the literary historian Shuichi Kato (in “A History of Japanese Literature,” 1979), “but gentler places such as Kagu Hill, … fields, bays where boats passed to and fro between islands, and shallows where cranes made their cries. … Nature to them was not something vast and wild, but something small, gentle and intimate.”

"It is a god that watches over Japan — / Over Yamato, the Land of the Sunrise"

Is that true without exception? How could it be, with cone-shaped, snow-clad Mount Fuji towering over the land?

“Even the clouds of heaven, struck with awe,/ Dare not pass over that steep peak/ …It is a god that watches over Japan — / Over Yamato, the Land of the Sunrise …”

Much later there was a “back-to-Manyoshu” movement, led by 18th-century nativists who deplored the corruption they attributed to foreign thought.

One of them, Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769), in an essay titled “Thoughts on Poetry” (1764), wrote, “In ancient times people’s hearts were direct and straightforward. … But then the ideas and words of babbling China and India were introduced into our country.”

Under what he perceived as the baneful influence of Confucianism and Buddhism, “things became complex, so the hearts of those here who used to be straightforward were blown by a wind from the shadows and turned wicked.”

The remedy? We must, says Kamo, “each morning face the sacred mirror of old,” to see reflected there a world “without human artifice,” ruled by “gods who, with the ancient and tranquil great Way of this peaceful country, governed in accordance with heaven and earth and without regulation, fabrication, force, or instruction. The poetry of the ancients makes this clear, and our own poetry should be the same.”

Poetry that issues clear and fresh from the human heart, like a mountain stream

Aoi parade

May 10, 2013 / John D. / 1 Comment

The Saio-dai arrives at Kamigamo Jinja with her retinue

On May 15 the oldest of Kyoto’s Big Three Festivals takes place. The Aoi Matsuri is the city’s big spring event; the Gion Matsuri is the summer bonanza; and the Jidai Matsuri is the autumnal offering. In winter we take a break to enjoy Oshogatsu (New Year festivities).

Over 500 participants in Heian era costume; 36 horses; 2 ox-carriages – the Aoi procession starts off from the Former Imperial Palace around 10.30, and the stately progress means that it takes an hour to travel the short distance to Shimogamo Shrine.

The procession stretches out to be half a mile long, and consists of horseback warriors, foot warriors, courtiers, lower-rank guards, higher-rank guards, halberb bearers and dignitaries. At Shimogamo dances are performed for the kami and the imperial messenger delivers greetings. Around 2.20 the procession sets off for Kamigamo Jinja where it arrives around 4.30 and rituals are again performed.

In medieval times there were two processions, one for the imperial messenger proceeding from the Imperial Palace and the other for the Saiin (an unmarried female related to the emperor appointed to the shrines). Between 810 and the early thirteenth century, when the practice fell into abeyance, there were 35 such priestesses who lived in palaces somewhere between the two Kamo shrines.

In former times the procession of the Saiin would meet up with that of the imperial messenger, and they would proceed together to the shrines. Nowadays everyone sets off from Gosho (Former Imperial Palace), and the role of the Saiin is taken by an unmarried young female from a well-bred local family, who is known as the Saio-dai.

Last year I attended the beginning and end of the parade, and the photos below are the kind of thing you can expect to see next Wednesday. The weather forecast predicts sunshine with occasional cloud, and a nice warm 24 degrees. See you there!

The procession gets ready for departure outside the Former Imperial Palace. Here the ox-cart team wear hats adorned with hollyhock leaves.

The costumes are colourful, and so are some of the decorations borne by participants who are clearly enjoying the occasion. Will they still be smiling at 4.30 after the long walk to Kamigamo?

Star in the making? A child attendant of the Saio-dai

Some with high status get to ride on horseback

Saio-dai complete with a head-dress that may reflect that of shamanic-queens of prehistory

Kamigamo’s distinctiveness

May 10, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

Kamigamo's sanctuary with a painted komainu visible on the left

Kyoto’s Kamigamo Shrine takes the spotlight this month, since it’s co-hosting the Aoi Festival with its sister shrine Shimogamo.

The Aoi Matsuri is the oldest of Kyoto’s festivals, dating back to around 544 according to Nihon shoki. The name refers to Hollyhock leaves, once thought to have protective power, and the festival originated in appeasement of the Kamo deity at a time of bad weather which had ruined the crops.

Thanks to the shikinen sengu cycle of renewal, the shrine buildings are in excellent condition

The main event takes place on May 15, when participants in a parade wear hollyhock leaves on their Heian-era costumes. Before that there are rituals on May 12 at both Kamigamo and Shimogamo to welcome the kami and renew the spiritual power of the shrines.

Here follow some distinctive features of Kamigamo, culled from Joseph Cali’s guide to Shinto Shrines (Univ. of Hawaii Press).

1) Enshrined is a deity of thunder, Kamo Wake-ikazuchi, who first descended on the sacred Koyama hill towards which the shrine is aligned. The deity is the grandson of the Kamo clan founder, who was an ally of the Yamato clan and manifested as yatagarasu, the three-legged crow.

2) The shrine not only has a Honden (sanctuary), but a Gonden which is identical and stands opposite. This unusual feature is explained as ‘a spare’ should the kami need it. It’s used every 21 years when the shrine undergoes renewal in the shikinen sengu tradition (it used to involve complete rebuilding as at Ise, but nowadays consists of repairs). On the front wall of the Honden is a large painting of a komainu (see pic above), and the Gonden has a ‘shadow komainu‘.

3) Before the head priest reads out prayers, two priests announce the intention to the deity’s mother, Princess Tamayori, who is enshrined in a subshrine called Kataoka Jinja.

Sanctuary roof made of overlapping bark with the shrine's aoi (hollyhock) emblem

4) As at Shimogamo, there’s a special platform called the hashidono for the annual visit of the imperial messenger, who uses it to read out the official petition during the Aoi Festival parade on May 15.

5) There are two sand piles in the main compound with a sprig of pine at the top to represent the tree into which the deity first descended on the Koyama hill. (See photo below.) The two piles are thought to be a reference to yin-yang, as the shrine priests were once the foremost experts in onmyodo (Way of Yin-yang). The Merlin of Japan – Abe no Seimei (921-1005) – was taught by shrine priest Kamo no Tadayuki.

6) The shrine has 34 structures set on 170 acres. Two streams flow through the grounds, providing a sense of vitality and coolness, with ten bridges spanning them. The streams join to form the Nara no Ogawa where ablutions once took place. A poem written about it was included in the famous Hyakunin Ishu collection – “In the evening/ when the wind stirs the oaks/ at the brook of Nara/ the ablutions are/ the only sign of summer.”

7) From 810 to the early thirteenth century unmarried female relatives of the emperor served at the shrine as Saiin and maintained ritual purity. This was in the tradition of the undefiled shamaness of antiquity, known as miko. In the Aoi Festival her role is played by a young female from a good family, known as the Saio-dai.

8) Horse racing in Japan is said to have originated at the shrine, for in medieval times it formed one of the pre-events for the Aoi Festival. The horse-riding events to entertain the shrine’s kami were an occasion when Kamo clan members could show off their horse riding skills.

The characteristic sand mounds of Kamigamo, with sprigs of pine at the top to represent the himorogi vehicle into which the shrine kami descended on the sacred hill of Koyama

The Nara River flowing through the grounds, where once ablutions were carried out

The Kamo clan were fearless horse riders, and traditional horse events still play a large part at the shrine. It's even said that horse racing in Japan originated here.

Say what!

May 8, 2013 / John D. / 2 Comments

This news item seemed so unlikely I had to re-post it… English and Japanese share a common linguistic origin?!! It certainly didn’t strike me that way when trying to learn the language. But according to British scientists it seems they might go back to a common root… something sure to irk those who prefer to think of themselves as linguistically unique.

One striking recent example of linguistic nationalism is Tokyo governor, Mr Inose, who managed to insult the Turkish nation in spectacular style while talking down their Olympics bid. The Japan Times reports: “After the article came out, Mr. Inose tried to retract the content by claiming that Japanese is a unique language impossible to translate or contextualize…” Someone should draw his attention to the article below!

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European and Asian languages traced back to single mother tongue
Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form ‘superfamily’ with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim

Ian Sample, science correspondent
The Guardian, Monday 6 May 2013

Visitors to Ise Jingu stripping bark off a sacred tree as a keepsake - could that be one of the reasons why the word for bark seems to have ancient roots in a proto-language 15,000 years ago...

Languages spoken by billions of people across Europe and Asia are descended from an ancient tongue uttered in southern Europe at the end of the last ice age, according to research.

The claim, by scientists in Britain, points to a common origin for vocabularies as varied as English and Urdu, Japanese and Itelmen, a language spoken along the north-eastern edge of Russia.

The ancestral language, spoken at least 15,000 years ago, gave rise to seven more that formed an ancient Eurasiatic “superfamily”, the researchers say. These in turn split into languages now spoken all over Eurasia, from Portugal to Siberia.

“Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets were retreating,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University.

Linguists have long debated the idea of an ancient Eurasiatic superfamily of languages. The idea is controversial because many words evolve too rapidly to preserve their ancestry. Most words have a 50% chance of being replaced by an unrelated term every 2,000-4,000 years.

But some words last much longer. In a previous study, Pagel’s team showed that certain words – among them frequently used pronouns, numbers and adverbs – survived for tens of thousands of years before other words replaced them.

For their latest study, Pagel used a computer model to predict words that changed so rarely that they should sound the same in the different Eurasiatic languages. They then checked their list against a database of early words reconstructed by linguists. “Sure enough,” said Pagel, “the words we predicted would be similar, were similar.”

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors list 23 words found in at least four of the proposed Eurasiatic languages. Most of the words are frequently used ones, such as the pronouns for “I” and “we”, and the nouns, “man” and “mother”. But the survival of other terms was more baffling. The verb “to spit”, and the nouns “bark” and “worm” all had lengthy histories.

“Bark was really important to early people,” said Pagel. “They used it as insulation, to start fires, and they made fibres from it. But I couldn’t say I expected “to spit” to be there. I have no idea why. I have to throw my hands up.”

Only a handful of verbs appear on the list, but Pagel points out “to give”, which appeared in similar form in five of the Eurasiatic languages. “This is what marks out human society, this hyper-co-operation that we do,” he said.

From their findings, the scientists drew up a family tree of the seven languages. All emerged from a common tongue around 15,000 years ago, and split off into separate languages over the next 5,000 years.

“The very fact that we can identify these words that retain traces of their deep ancestry tells us something fundamental about our language faculties. It tells us we have this ability to transmit highly complicated and precise information from mouth to ear over tens of thousands of years,” said Pagel.

Back to the roots... did Jomon potters use a language closer linguistically to that of Europe at the time of the Ice Age?

Kamigamo horse race (Pre-Aoi 5/5)

May 6, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

The green green grounds of Kamigamo, as the horse riders parade in front of expectant spectators

The Keiba Shinji (aka Kurabe Uma Shinji) is a horse race which takes place on May 5 every year at Kamigamo Jinja. It started 920 years ago to please the kami in preparation for the main event of the Aoi Festival on May 15. More specifically, it’s intended to put the kami in a good mood prior to its descent to the shrine in the Miare-sai on May 12. (Kamigamo’s kami is Kamo Wake-Ikazuchi, a thunder deity which first manifested on the shrine’s sacred hill, Koyama.)

The two enigmatic sand piles at Kamigamo, possibly representing Mt Koyama in yin-yang terms

In the past the horses were wild and unbroken. Riders had no stirrup or saddle, but had to hold onto a belt around the horse’s body – much like a rodeo. It was a true test of a rider’s mettle. Fearlessness and doggedness were treasured, as much as the skills involved. The Ashikaga shoguns often attended, as did Oda Nobunage who was such a fan that he donated two horses to the shrine.

The course is laid out towards the north, in the direction of the sacred Koyama. A temporary shrine is set up, with two sand piles echoing the pair that sit in the main compound of the shrine. The horses gallop off at ferocious speed down the short course, generating a sense of energy intended to foster fertility in the coming year’s crops.

For participants there is a banquet before proceeding to the shrine where they petition for safety and victory. Riders and horses were previously matched in a rite on May 1 involving a type of iris (shobu, the name of the flower, also means ‘competition’). There are 20 horses and 10 matches, with a red team and a black team. Costumes are modelled on those of bugaku dance performers.

Some of the horses were notably nervy before the event, but when their time came they performed with aplomb. The fleetness of foot was impressive – a demonstration of horse power that serves as a reminder why the creature was chosen as a vehicle of the gods. The spectators were evidently pleased with the sunshine event; presumably the kami was too.

Horse riders are led to their places

Judges take their place (these ones relay the result from the finishing line to nearby scribes)

Officials and attendants of the horse association take up their places

Horses are taken up to the startiing point...

... and away they go (notice the two people on the roof with a good view)

Go, go, go!! Action photo from the official poster for the event celebrating the 920th anniversary

Shimogamo archery (Pre-Aoi: 5/5)

May 6, 2013 / John D. / 0 Comments

May 5 was a big day in Kyoto, with events at both the Shimogamo and Kamigamo shrines in preparation for the forthcoming Aoi Matsuri parade (May 15).

At Shimogamo the morning event is known as Busha Shinji (Warrior Rites), involving archery. Arrows are fired off with symbolic meaning, acting as agents of purification as they cut clean through the air. I arrived a few minutes late and found myself locked out of the shrine compound – first time I’ve seen them shut the gates at an event. The crowd inside were cordoned off behind ropes for safety reasons, and those of us on the outside were able to watch through the narrow holes in the railing.

Then in the afternoon there were horse races at Kamigamo as a means of invoking the kami’s protection for the forthcoming parade on May 15th. There was glorious sunshine, and the new growth of Kamigamo’s greenery sparkled with joy. The horses galloped over the short distance with amazing speed, and the crowd was regaled with an English-language commentary alongside the Japanese by shrine priest, Inui Mitsutaka.

By the end of a sunblessed day, there could be little doubt that the kami were positively smiling on this year’s Aoi Matsuri.

The front gate of the Shimogamo compound shut, as some visitors turn back and others peep through the railings

Before the event, the area is swept clean - a kind of purification for the purification event

Archers in period costume take their seats

The first arrow to be launched was a loud whistling arrow by the man in orange on the far side

A row of archers then let loose at a target one after another - and photographers took aim too