Summer holidays

It's definitely been a while since I've written in the blog! Hello to everyone from last semester and welcome to all those who arrived this semester. During the summer I spent about a month travelling around Japan, and whilst it cost a lot of money I had a good time. Two weeks were spent catching up with friends and seeing some countryside I hadn't seen before, and the following two weeks were spent with my girlfriend. After about 5 months of being apart I was very happy to see her again, as you'd expect. :) As it was her first time in Japan we visited a lot of well-known spots, especially in the Kansai region. Throughout my month-long holiday I was able to see quite a lot of places - Matsuyama, Tokushima, Kobe, Himeji, Kinosaki, Amanohashidate, Hikone, Kyoto, Nara, Mt Koya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Miyajima, and I even passed through the small but well-known town of Obama in Fukui-ken. ;) Here are a handful of photos from the summer:


This first photo isn't so interesting in itself, but it was taken inside a Kyoto townhouse, in which my girlfriend and I stayed for two nights. It's run by Iori, an organisation co-founded by author Alex Kerr which aims to preserve Kyoto machiya and give travellers a brief but wonderful experience of staying inside one. It's far more spacious than a hotel and with much more privacy than a ryokan... unfortunately you have to pay a bit more for these privileges!


This is Kinosaki in northern Hyogo-ken, a beautiful little onsen town where everyone spends the evening walking around in yukata and geta between various hot springs baths in the town. Even the train ride from Himeji through the countryside was fantastic. The baths themselves in Kinosaki aren't too bad, but the water quality in Kumamoto is much better. ;)


One of the vine bridges deep in the Tokushima-ken countryside. The car ride through the mountains is nauseating, but well worth it.


Oku-no-in cemetery at Mt Koya is easily one of the most stunning places I've visited anywhere in the world, unfortunately photos don't do it justice. There's a remarkable amount of history within the cemetery and is apparently quite a surreal and eerie place to visit during the cold and misty times of the year.


I absolutely love whisky, and Japanese whisky has (quite deservedly) been receiving a lot of attention in recent years. I had a brilliant day out at the Suntory Yamazaki distillery between Osaka and Kyoto. Not only are Yamazaki tastings free during the tour, but the whisky bar is unbelievably cheap... so the day descended into a bit of a summery golden haze. This above photo was taken in the "whisky library".


Me fooling around in Nara.


The Awa Odori festival in Tokushima every August 12 - 16 is brilliant, and absolutely enormous. I attended the festival in 2005 and since then had been looking forward to experiencing it again. There's something unique about the atmosphere and energy of that festival I haven't felt anywhere else in Japan, or in the world, for that matter.


My girlfriend Holly and I, on the boat to Miyajima. :)

See you guys next Friday!

Second assignment - Minamata disease

I hope this fits the criteria of the assignment!

Anyway, the source material I'm referring to is an article from the Asian Economic News website, published August 27 2001: "China to learn about Minamata mercury poisoning".

As a result of China's rapid industrialisation and economic growth, they too are repeating what has happened in numerous other regions which have gone through such a rapid change, namely, allowing environmental issues to take a backseat to development. Subsequently, many parts of China are having to deal with mercury and other pollutants being released into the environment at a dangerous rate.

In light of this, the city of Minamata and the Chinese city of Zhangjiagang, "designated as the first environment model city by the Chinese government", promoted an exchange in an attempt to share information on environmental issues, and according to the article, the city of Minamata intends to further this plan in an attempt to help other countries deal with similar poisonings.

Unfortunately I haven't looked much further into the issue to see what resulted of this, or whether these exchanges have spread further across the world, but if there were few good things to come of the Minamata poisoning then this would certainly be one of them. "The mercury poisoning occurred at the height of Japan's economic boom. We would like to tell China not to make that mistake," a Minamata official said.

So bizarre you couldn't make it up

Came across this at The Japan Times website the other day:

'Cute ambassadors' roam globe to promote Japan's pop culture

Three female "ambassadors of cute" appointed by the Foreign Ministry have started traveling abroad to introduce Japanese pop culture to young people overseas.

One of the "kawaii ambassadors," Shizuka Fujioka, the "magician clothing coordinator" known for her school uniform outfits, took part in an event in Thailand in March. The other two will hit Paris in July.

[...]

"I think it will be in Japan's national interest if there is at least one person in the host country who thinks I'm pretty," [Fujioka] said.

(source)

Congratulations on setting your gender back 50 years, Miss Fujioka.

I'm not sure how the wider Japanese population feels about something such as this. There's certainly no denying that Japan pop culture is a source of soft power and a cultural asset, but to me it's still about as cringe-worthy as Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin or Ken Done paintings being cultural ambassadors for Australia.

「諸君の中に一人でも俺と一緒に立つ奴はいないのか。」

In light of some recent discussion concerning authors and stories, I felt it was apt to bring up a particular topic which I was originally going to mention in my post about Constitution Day and controversial symbolism - Yukio Mishima.

I'm certain that most people in Japan of at least a high school graduate age are aware of Yukio Mishima, even if they aren't familiar with his work. It's difficult to give a nutshell summary of his life, but as briefly as I can, he was a Japanese author born in 1925 who had a childhood spread between being raised by his grandmother who rarely let him venture outside or participate in "boyish" activities, and his militaristic father who held a disdain for any sort of effeminate behaviour. Mishima falsified medical conditions to avoid being drafted to fight in WW2, and against his father's wishes, furthered his passion of writing into and beyond his teen years. He penned numerous novels, plays and short stories, and later in life developed an interest in bodybuilding, ultra-nationalism, and eventually formed his own private militia, the Tatenokai. On November 25, 1975, Mishima and members of the Tatenokai attempted to stage a coup d'etat at a Self Defence Forces base in Tokyo, aiming to reinstate the Emperor as the political power of Japan through an address on a balcony to the soldiers below. Upon its failure, Mishima retreated into the building, committed seppuku, and was beheaded by one of his followers.



First of all, I admit that I haven't even come close to reading a sizeable portion of his work, so extensive (and occasionally impenetrable) is his oeuvre. But whilst his novels tell genuinely captivating tales, I find the story of Mishima himself far more fascinating. The transformation from a timid, frail, and effeminate young man into a brutal, narcissistic nationalist with a fascination for death, combined with his not-so-closeted homosexuality, is rather unique. However, it seems he is often brushed off by many as simply being a "crazy man" or "a bit strange".

To me, Mishima is also one of many pieces in the puzzle of Japan's struggle to assert and identify itself in the postwar period. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, comfort women, Nanjing, SCAP Occupation, Yasukuni Shrine, history revisionism, etc., all play into this issue (and is an enormously broad topic about which volumes can and have been written!). Unto this, Mishima seems to have been adopted by numerous right-wing groups in Japan as a sort of inspirational figurehead (have a look at this link) despite his contrasting belief that Emperor Hirohito should have taken responsibility for those who died during the war.

Now, having said all that and having made a huge segue into right-wing groups, one point I'd like to get across is that I can't stand these twits. Not because of their politics or radical ideologies, but mainly because of the noise pollution they create. I'm not quite sure how the police manage to turn a blind eye (or rather, a deaf ear) to such a disturbance, as these groups would undoubtedly have their vehicles and equipment confiscated if they attempted to drive around blaring slogans and music in other countries. On a similar level, the police seem completely uninterested in reining in various bousouzoku bike gangs creating all kinds of noise at 4 o'clock in the morning, but appear quite willing to stop foreigners on their bicycles for no apparent reason...

Right, it's about time I went to bed!

Sexy sumo carwash

Not for the purposes of social commentary or serious discussion or anything of the sort... just for a laugh!

Research assignment

Depending on the nature of this research assignment I may end up choosing another quote, as this one is a bit unusual, or perhaps completely inapplicable! The quote comes from a novel titled Love and Death, written in 1939 by the Japanese writer Saneatsu Mushanokōji. I haven't actually read the novel itself, but instead found the quote in Misunderstanding: Europe vs Japan (Chuokoron-sha, Tokyo, 1982, p.135) by Endymion Wilkinson. The following is written from the point of view of the story's protagonist, Muraoka, who writes home from Paris:

Wherever one goes one sees only Occidentals... somehow I have the feeling that we are looked down upon... A solitary Japanese among a group of Occidentals is hardly an imposing figure. This is due to a large extent to our not being suited to Western style clothes, but even if we try to make something of the color of our skin and our physique, we still have very little to boast about. Nevertheless, I am confident that from the standpoint of spiritual power and intelligence we are not in the least inferior. The majority of Europeans love pleasure too much. Few of them have any faith in a future life. For the most part they live idly from day to day.

Despite this being a work of fiction, Wilkinson asserts that it is reflective of the "popular sentiments" towards Europeans held by the Japanese during the 1930s.

East vs West

Just a very brief post - came across a website today with a series of simple diagrams contrasting the (supposed) ways in which Westerners and Asians will approach particular situations:

http://buburuza.net/2008/12/culture-east-vs-west/

As it mentions, the person who created these images is a person who was born in China and has studied in Germany. Whilst I feel a lot of the red images are certainly representative of life in China, I don't agree that it "applies to all Asians" as the website states. Similarly, I don't believe that all the blue images are true of all Western people.

However, it's still an amusing concept and makes you think about these things a little.