Iwa ni Hana

There was a time in my life when I used to live very close to a river. That was during a year when I got a scholarship to study as an exchange student at a certain university in the East Anglia part of England.

The view from my old university dorm in England where I could see a river flowing past.

But let me explain a bit about the general geography before I get to what it means to leave to live near a river. The town I lived in has a long history dating back to medieval times, and it has more churches than I could count. Having a lot of medieval churches in town means that you can tell the time by listening to the ringing of church bells, and during festival times like Christmas there would be extended tolling of church bells at midnight. I was also lucky in being assigned a dorm room with a view of a river that runs through the town. On sunny days, I sometimes saw real ducks swimming past.

Having a river means that there is humidity, and humidity means the formation of mists. So during certain times and under certain weather conditions, the entire town would be covered by heavy mists.

(more…)

Bakeneko (the cat spirit) in film and anime

This is purely a guess. If any one film inspired Nakamura Kenji’s anime Bakeneko (2006), it must be the B&W film directed by Shindō Kaneto [新藤兼人] dated 1968 and entitled Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko [藪の中の黒猫].

A scene from "Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko" (1968) directed by Shindō Kaneto.

Shindō Kaneto is best known for the film Onibaba (1964), of which Yabu no Kuroneko is said to be a “sister work”. The story is set in the late Heian era, in which a pair of mother and daughter working on a farm were raped and killed by a group of passing samurai who had just returned from war. Having struck a deal with some dark powers, mother and daughter return to the human world as bakeneko (cat spirits) in order to lure passing samurai to death. The plot thickens when the daughter’s husband, who had been taken to war by force, return with high honours as a samurai, and is charged by his superior to confront and exorcise the two bakeneko. He is surprised that the two bakeneko look so much like his wife and mother-in-law. Meanwhile, part of the deal that mother and daughter struck with the dark powers is that they must never speak to anyone of why they turned into bakeneko…

A screenshot from the OP of the anime "Bakeneko" (2006).

So I wondered, could the ban to tell their tragic story be what inspired the Medicine Seller’s catchphrase in the anime Bakeneko, which is:

モノノ怪の形を成すのは 人の因果と縁
よって、皆々様の 真と理 お聞かせ願いたく候
The katachi (form) of mononoke is caused by the karma and enishi of people. Therefore, would everyone please let me hear your makoto (truth) and kotowari (reason)?

(more…)

The modern Chinese middle-class home is just like the housing arrangement during the Warring States Period.

I once read somewhere that if one were to travel back in time to the kingdom of Han [韓], one would most likely to find that ordinary people did not live in houses on the land they farmed on. Instead, people lived in walled-in towns and traveled everyday to the plot of land they farmed.

Nightview of Haining Lily Apartments developed by the company Greentown China

If one were to travel to China in 2009, one would most likely find that middle-class people lived in privately developed housing projects similar to the “Lily Apartments” series developed by Greentown China. These “Lily Apartments” have been built in first-tier cities such as Beijing, as well as second-tier cities such as Haining, Zhenzhou and Hefei. Essentially, they are housing projects that have the capacity of containing 1,000 – 1,500 households. Naturally, they are gated communities for which you need a security pass to get in.

Take Beijing Lily Apartments, for example. You can see pictures of the place from the official website here. Within its walls, you would find just about anything you would expect in a small town – a shopping arcade, a park, a clubhouse, and even its own kindergarten and elementary school. You can also check out Greentown China’s official website to find out more about their projects in various cities. There are too many other similar companies developing housing projects just like the Lily Apartments for me to remember them all. My point is, that is what the typical middle-class Chinese home looks like these days. Just to stress this point, you can explore the websites of some of the latest projects in Shenzhen here, here, and here – and even then I have to emphasize that they are but a small sample of the whole building boom across the country. (I even remember hearing about several housing projects that come with their own medical clinics, though their names escaped me just now.)

(more…)

There ought to be a word for Japanese films in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens.

A screencapture of the official website of the film "Yamazakura" (山桜), based on a novel written by Fujisawa Shūhei (藤沢周平).

A while ago, I was watching Yamazakura (2008), an above-average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. Before that, I was watching The Invitation from Cinema Orion (2007), an average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. There are many other Japanese films in which the love story is characterized by what never happened (I mean this in a positive way). These films are a genre in themselves.

History’s sense of black humour

Before I go on, I would like to take a moment to mention the two people – Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I think it must be history’s sense of black humour that just when all the traditional barriers to love such as class, wealth, religion, race and nationality fell apart to a large extent (though not entirely) after the WWI, this pair came along and turned “freedom” itself into a barrier to love.

Personally, I found their idea of “freedom” dubious, but I suppose one must give them credit for managing to turn “freedom” into a prison. I say it is a prison because it seems that under their credo you have the freedom to do what whatever you like… except for the freedom to refrain from doing whatever you like.

Love and harmony

The Japanese humorist Harada Munenori [原田宗典] once mused in his writing that the translation of “love” as ai [愛] back in the Meiji era was a mistake; instead, the more correct expression should have been the word wa [和], or “harmony”. So instead of a girlfriend asking her boyfriend, “do you love me?” [愛してる?], she would ask, “do we harmonize?” [和してる?] and he in turn would reply, “yup, we are harmonized” [うん、和してるよ]. And instead of saying things “love will save the world,” you would say “harmony will save the world”.*

The below is just my opinion. If you look at the word wa, it is comprised of the words for “thousand” [千] and “mouth” [口]. In other words, harmony is made of a thousand voices. Naturally, these thousand voices may all say different things. This makes me think of Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, a manga series I have been reading. You can read more my introduction of this series here.

(more…)

An illustration of "Hakuouki", an otome video game to be adapted into an anime series in 2010. The character in the above image is Hijikata Toshizo.

Shinsengumi [新撰組] is popular in Japan for the same reason that maple leaves in autumn are much admired. Maple leaves are not flowers per se but for a very brief time in autumn, they are more beautiful than any flower on earth. Likewise, many members of Shinsengumi were not samurai-born, but for a very brief in history, they were more samurai-like than any real samurai.

The Shinsengumi boom

If I had to trace the beginning of the Shinsengumi boom, I would probably trace it back to the debut novel Moeyo Tsurugi [燃えよ剣] (1962) written by Shiba Ryoutarou [司馬遼太郎]. Shiba Ryoutaro (1923 – 1996) was a very prolific historic novelist and essayist and he was also reckoned to be one of Japan’s leading men of letters in the post-war era. Moeyo Tsurugi is a novel based on the life of Hijikata Toshizo [土方歳三]. If you ever were to Google for reader reviews of this book, you would come upon pages and pages of reader testimonies that they were moved to tears by this book – quite in spite of their usual skeptical and cynical selves. I also tried to read to it a while ago but personally only found it so-so (I much preferred to read Shiba’s essays instead – which I am enjoying at the moment and find them to be very sharp and interesting indeed).

Anyway, one of the reasons why Moeyo Tsurugi captured a wide audience is that it defines manhood in its ideal form. (So I am told.) In Japanese, they use the phrase otoko no bigaku [男の美学] to describe that ideal. Otoko means “man” and bigaku means literally “aesthetics,” but in this instance you may think of it as “the male ideal of beauty in the spirit” (as opposed to mere looks). Readers (men and women alike) find Hijikata Toshizo as a character attractive because his life is lived in that “male ideal of beauty in the spirit” – which in turn boils down into two words: love and honour. I do not wish to comment on the aspect of love in the post-war era that makes readers project their ideal on Hijitaka (because it is depends too much on the individual for me to generalize about), but I certainly can see why readers yearn for the spirit of honour that Hijikata stayed true to till he drew his last breath.

So it was little surprise to me that Hijikata Toshizo eventually ended up appearing as a character in an otome video game, which brings me to -

The otome game Hakuouki [薄桜鬼]

Not that this is the first ever video game in which the player gets to become romantically involved with members of Shinsengumi – there have been other titles such as Bakumatsu Renka・Shinsengumi [幕末恋華・新選組]. What piqued my interest was the name of “Hakuouki” itself, because there is a poetic yet creepy sound to it. Haku means “thin,” ou means “sakura,” and ki means “demon.” I have not played the game before, but my guess is that Hakuouki is probably short for hakumei no sakura no godoki oni [薄命の桜の如き鬼], or “a demon as tragic and short-lived as sakura flowers.” (This is just my guess – please feel free to fill me in if you have played the game.)

(more…)

A few months ago, I was scouted by a talent agency. It was during lunchtime in the office district. I went out to buy lunch and put on my MP3 player to listen to some language learning podcast as usual. Suddenly a man who looked as though he had already followed me for some distance touched me in the shoulder (because I did not hear not him) and introduced himself as a talent manager. After apologizing profusely, he gave me his business card and asked for my number. At first I thought this might be some sort of scam but he seemed to say nothing too exceedingly flattering about me (as I would expect from a scam). I gave him my business card.

He called several times afterwards to persuade me to take comp photos and sign up for a contract with his agency. After thinking about the consequences this may bring, I turned it down – mainly because of all the conflicts I can foresee with my existing career, but more importantly I think I have never been blessed with what the Chinese call tao hua yun [桃花運] to be successful in the entertainment industry.

Tao hua means “peach blossom” and yun means “luck”. On a mild scale, people with tao hua yun are well-liked wherever they go, especially by the opposite sex. This is quite irrespective of how good or bad they are or how they treat others. On the extreme end, people with tao hua yun are like sex magnets. A man who is well-endowed tao hua yun would inspire women to want to have his babies or something from the first moment they see him. Chinese astrologers traditionally see tao hua yun as a negative quality because of all the irrational impulses it might bring to disturb society’s order, but in modern times they seem to have come to regard this as a positive quality for popstars, musicians and the like to have, because tao hua yun may be a contributing factor to gaining adoring fans. On a tangential note, tao hua jie [桃花劫] describes the sort of love that leaves you ruined, typically in being fleeced of your life’s savings or being left with a mountain of debts. I believe the English word “lovefraud” which I saw coined here would be a close equivalent.

(more…)

I have always thought that the word 苦笑 [kushou] means (by dictionary definition and popular usage):

To smile at something that is bitter to you and look bitter while you smile.

But after watching a dozen films by Ozu Yasujiro (not all in one go but stretched over the space of several years), I am beginning to think that there is another level of kushou. A more subtle kind perhaps. It is namely:

To smile at something that is bitter to you and not look bitter while you smile.

For some reason, I have only spotted that smile in Japanese films so far. You will know that smile instinctively once you have watched enough of them (whether they are directed by Ozu or not, for his influence is lasting and widespread). It is the Kodak smile that you usually only see in advertisements of toothpaste, shampoo, cosmetics or the like. If a shot of the smile were taken out of the context of the film, you might even be fooled into thinking that the smile was induced by joy. But that smile always appears in some tragic context.

The first time I saw it was in Tokyo Monogatari (1953). It was a scene where an old couple visits their daughter-in-law, Noriko. Their son had died some eight years ago and Noriko, by her own choice, never remarried. She keeps to her own way in a rather depressing flat and has a clerical job to support herself. Her in-laws say to her, “The world is full of not very nice things, is it not?” And she smiles and nods. That is the Kodak smile that I speak of. It struck me that although they are talking about how the world is not a very nice place, her smile seems to say otherwise, as though the world is not just a not very nice place after all and there is more to the world than just being not a very nice place, and what that “something more” may be is unspoken and can only be guessed at from her smile.

(more…)

There is a word that I always encourage people who are studying Chinese and Japanese to ask every native speaker they come across for a definition in his or her own words, and that word is 縁. 縁 is pronounced as yuan in Chinese and en or enishi in Japanese (for the purpose of this post I will refer to it as en since I will be mostly making references to Japanese works). Chances are, you will find that the individual you ask will often turn out to have his or her own definition ready at hand that go beyond the usual definitions found in dictionaries.

The short version of my own definition would be “meaningful chance,” whereas the long version would be:

Meaningful chance that tracks you down with military precision like a missile, across vast expanse of time and infinite space, in order to throw you into the ambit of a specific person or a thing, whom or which you may be either meeting for the first time, or meeting again against all odds, in order to facilitate a result that may or may not come about.

En is different from “fate” – which is known as 命運 [ming yun] in Chinese and 運命[unmei] in Japanese. Fate happens for a certainty. En is less decisive – it is only a precondition (or a set of preconditions) that has the potential to facilitate a certain result.

Note also that I say meaningful chance – it is not random chance for no discernible purpose. When people talk about en, it is always implied that there is some deeper purpose or meaning. What comes to you by virtue of en is always something that leaves a footprint in your life.

Perhaps I should illustrate this with more examples:

(more…)

Spatial and Temporal Space

In English, the phrase ‘time and space’ goes together. In Japanese, one word encompasses both the meaning of spatial space (ie. the distance between point A and B) and temporal space (ie. the duration between two points in time). That word is 間 [ma].

But ma also has secondary meaning, and it is ‘luck’. If you want to say that so-and-so is a lucky person, you can either use 運がいい [un ga ii] or 間がいい [ma ga ii]. (運 [Un] is the more frequently used word for ‘luck’.) Likewise, if you want to say that so-and-so is an unlucky person, you can use either 運が悪い [un ga warui] or 間が悪い [ma ga warui].

In other words, you may think of the relationship between un and ma as this: Luck is really about having the right amount of time and space in between.

When I first observed this relationship between un and ma many years ago when I was just beginning to learn Japanese, I was reminded of how the Chinese astrological concepts of 旺 [wang] and 煞 [sha] essentially echo the same idea:

A Chinese astrologer may tell you that a certain person/object ‘wang’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you good luck in your life. But I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object is in the right slot in your life, then he/she/it will attract the other right pieces to fill in the remaining slots. In other words, your life will be enriched because all the pieces make room for each other and together they all fit.

A Chinese astrologer may also tell you that a certain person/object ‘sha’ you. This is typically translated to mean that the person/object brings you misfortune in your life. Similarly, I think another way of looking at it is that if that person/object occupies a place in your life, then you can be sure that i) all the other pieces in your other slots will have be pushed out just to accommodate this person/object, or ii) that person/object repels the other pieces in your life from coming to you at all, or iii) the other pieces in your life will fall apart even if they do come to you. Chinese astrology sees this as a misfortune, because your life becomes poorer than what it could have been.

This approach is somewhat in reverse to the western astrology (or at least what I have seen of it), which sees a person’s life as separate domains of love, career, family etc that do not overflow to each other; Chinese astrology sees a human being’s life as one integrated whole. (more…)