Category Archives: Japan

by Joel | 2 October 2010 · 12:58 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Moroheiya tempura, Henohenomoheji sake

A few weeks ago, I came across a food item in my local Japanese grocery store that was new to me. The package of deep-fried, dark green leaves was labeled “moroheya tenpura.” Of course, I couldn’t resist trying some. The leaves were crispy and oily, stuck together by their own slime, rather than by tempura batter. They tasted oily, slightly bitter—and very healthy!

The Japanese name for the leaves is usually written in katakana as モロヘイヤ moroheiya, ultimately from Arabic muluxīya but probably via some non-Arabic intermediary language with /o/ in place of /u/. The leaves of jute plants (Corchorus spp.), also known as mallow leaves, are widely eaten wherever jute is grown between West Africa and South Asia, and there are many different transliterations of its name in local varieties of Arabic: mulukhiyah, molokhia, mulukhiyya, malukhiyah, mloukhiya. It now shows up in Japanese cuisine, where it’s valued for its healthy slimy quality as well as high vitamin content.

The Japanese name for the plant (Corchorus olitorius) is shima-tsuna-so (縞綱麻 ‘stripe-rope-hemp’), also called タイワンツナソ Taiwan tsunaso ‘Taiwan rope plant/hemp’, ナガミツナソ nagami tsunaso (possibly) ‘long-body rope plant/hemp’, or simply ジュート juuto ‘jute’.

In Nagoya this past summer, we made a return visit to the exquisite Kyoukamo Restaurant (京加茂), famous thereabouts for its Kyoto-style kaiseki cuisine. You can see photos of what we ate and drank starting here.

Our affable hosts served two award-winning sakes this year, both in the West (Kansai and western Japan) division, where they were ranked like sumo rikishi. The first won the Ōzeki (‘champion’) prize and the second won the Yokozuna (‘grand champion’) prize. The latter had such a floral/herbal nose that it resembled an Alsatian Gewürtztraminer. When I asked our hostess for the name of the sake, she said, Henohenomoheji. I asked, “What is that supposed to mean?!” So she showed me the magazine page reproduced here, where the hiragana characters of the name sketch a human face beneath a triangular hat. Each への pair forms an eyebrow and eye, the も forms a nose, へforms downturned lips, and じ delineates the cheeks and chin.

The brewery is Akishika (秋鹿 ‘Autumn Deer’) of Nose Township, Toyono County, where Osaka Prefecture intrudes between Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures. The restaurant owner gave me their address and I decided on a whim to pay the brewer a visit on the last day of our trip, when I had a day to kill on my own and a still-valid JR railpass.

Well, it turned out to be well off the JR lines. I hopped a bullet train to Shin-Osaka, took an express to JR Amagasaki, took the JR Fukuchiyama Line uphill to Kawanishi-Ikeda, then walked over to Kawanishi-Noseguchi, the downhill terminus of the little Nose Dentetsu (owned by Hankyu Railway), where a lady at the ticket window said I would have to take a bus from the rail terminus at Myōkenguchi.

Myōkenguchi, the entrance to Mount Myōken (妙見山), consisted of little more than a parking lot, a post office, and a combination restaurant and souvenir shop. A bus was due to arrive soon, but it would take 30 minutes to get to the brewery and only ran once an hour. So, as a trophy for my misbegotten adventure, I bought a big bottle of Akishika-brand sake from the very friendly shop owners, who threw in a couple of empty バンビカップ ‘Bambi cup’ glasses as souvenirs, saying they were their bestsellers and not widely available. (I later discovered you can buy them online.) then I hopped the return train and transferred my way back toward Nagoya, where I left the sake bottle and cups at our hotel’s front desk, for them to pass on to the friend who treated us to that wonderful kaiseki dinner at Kyoukamo.

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by Joel | 23 September 2010 · 6:56 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Kamigata, Kudarimono, Edokko

Tokyo may be the center of modern Japan. All trains bound for the capital, whether coming from northern Japan or western Japan, are nobori-ressha ‘upbound/ascending trains’, while those bound for “the provinces” are kudari-ressha ‘downbound/descending trains’. But the older Kamigata (‘upper’) capital region of Kyoto and Osaka still had the upper hand, both culturally and industrially, well into the Edo period. Goods manufactured in Kamigata for customers in the Tokugawa capital were kudari-mono ‘downbound/descending goods’. I wonder when the directions were officially reversed. Was it after Edo became Tokyo (‘Eastern Capital’) during the Meiji era?

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 41-43:

The center of Edo was the shogun’s castle. At least until the Genroku period (1688–1704) the city was primarily the capital of the warrior. It was a teeming metropolis, a million strong, with men outnumbering women by more than two to one. Edo bustled with warriors, craftsmen, merchants, and performers from throughout the land. The upper class amused itself at the kabuki or in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters; the activities of the big spenders captured the public imagination.

The shogun, daimyo, and their retainers spent almost all their money in the city; Edo was a center of consumption. Originally, very little was produced there, neither daily necessities nor high-grade cultural artifacts. Instead, articles were imported from Kamigata, that is, from the Kyoto and Osaka area. Such goods were called kudarimono—quality products that had “come down” from Kamigata. Wares that had not “come down” were considered inferior: thus the origin of the word kudaran (“not come down”), meaning uninteresting or worthless. The sale of imported goods netted great profits for Edo branches of stores headquartered in Ise, Ōmi, or other provinces. From around the Genroku period these businesses, known as Edo-dana and located at Nihonbashi, Denmacho, and elsewhere, expanded greatly. This expansion signaled the rise of the Edo chōnin‘s economic power.

As mentioned earlier, Edo-dana were staffed exclusively by men who had come to Edo only to work. These men even saw to their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Unable to sink their roots in the city, Edo-dana employees remained perennial outsiders. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, a new type of individual appeared: the Edokko, a pure Edo chōnin, who was rooted in the city itself. The first recorded usage of the term Edokko occurs in a senryū [satiric, witty verse identical in form to more serious haiku] of 1771, and thereafter was used by many authors….

One finds no label corresponding to the Edokko in Osaka and Kyoto. No concept of an “Osakakko” or a “Kyotokko” exists; nor is there any parallel in Nagoya, Kanazawa, or Hiroshima. Thus we must ask why the idea of such a native arose solely in Edo. The answer to this question is simple. In Osaka, Kyoto, and other cities, almost the entire chōnin population corresponded to what the Edokko was in Edo. In the capital, however, a huge number of unassimilated provincials remained “outsiders,” providing a contrast to the distinctly native Edokko. During the city’s early years, this heterogeneous population grew larger and developed evenly; but by the second half of the eighteenth century a marked contrast between natives and nonnatives begins to appear. This contrast was not entirely missing in other large cities such as Osaka or Kyoto, but in Edo a much larger part of the population remained nonnative.

Within Edo there existed yet another distinction: the sharp contrast between the uptown (yamanote) and the downtown (shitamachi) areas. These terms can already be found in the hanashibon (storybook) known as Eda sangoju (Beads of Coral) published in 1690. The yamanote area was a diluvial terrace packed with warrior residences; the shitamachi area was an alluvial area with a concentration of chōnin dwellings. Since the chōnin class was further split between Edokko and a large population of Edo-dana “outsiders,” Edokko were constantly confronted with a large number of people unlike themselves. The unmistakable character of the Edokko developed within this social context.

The Edokko‘s sense of nativeness that emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century fostered the efflorescence of Edokko culture. This unique culture was, however, not created by Edokko alone. Instead, it resulted from the interaction of three groups, each of which complemented the others: the warriors, the provincial chōnin “outsiders,” and the Edokko.

My first younger brother was born in Tokyo, and so claims to be an “Edokko.” But my other two brothers born in Japan have never been labeled “Kokurakko” or “Kyotokko” after their birthplaces. Until I read the passage above, I had never thought to ask why not.

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by Joel | 19 September 2010 · 4:53 pm

Westernized Edo-period Woodblock Prints

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 70-71:

Gennai, who was well versed in Western art and painted in oils himself, was surrounded by a cultural group whose role in Edo-period culture can hardly be overestimated. Gennai’s coterie included scholars of Western learning, doctors practicing Dutch-style medicine, scholars of Chinese literature, calligraphers, and many others. The interaction of these men led to the creation of a number of ukiyo-e and books.

Nishiki-e were an artistic development that stood in sharp contrast to earlier Japanese prints. In Japanese painting before the age of nishiki-e, empty space was charged with great meaning. Use of blank areas was deeply related to the Buddhist notions of emptiness (kū), to specifically Japanese ideas of space (ma), and to Japanese philosophies of nature. These concepts are in turn related to the idea of nothingness (mu) found in Eastern thought in general. From the time of Harunobu’s nishiki-e, however, virtually the entire surface of the picture was filled with color. Moreover, many nishiki-e employed Western techniques of perspective. This denial of the Eastern concept of mu and departure from the design and coloration of previous Japanese pictorial art was in part the result of a familiarity with Western techniques of oil painting and copperplate etching. Not everything was taken from these sources, but the works of Harunobu, Haruaki, Sharaku, Utamaro, and Hokusai unambiguously show such influence. These men (with the possible exception of Sharaku) often attended the daishōkai [calendar designing and printing events] and were good friends with Hiraga Gennai, Shiba Kōkan, and Gennai’s outstanding disciple Morishima Chūryō.

The establishment of nishiki-e with perspective within the context of traditional “flat” Japanese painting was an epoch-making event in the history of Japanese pictorial art. Western techniques had here been completely absorbed into Japanese culture. Although the roots of these techniques could be traced back a century and a half to Western influence at the start of the Edo period. Western procedures now reemerged as something entirely new. Nishiki-e met with such unusual acclaim by the Japanese commoner population because Western techniques had been so thoroughly assimilated.

This process of assimilation also led to the nishiki-e fads in Europe and the United States. From the end of the Edo period to the early years of the Meiji era, a tremendous number of nishiki-e masterpieces were sold to foreigners. The works of Hokusai, which were perhaps the most Western in tone, were especially prized and often became the subject of scholarly studies.

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by Joel | 16 September 2010 · 8:27 pm

Edo-period Sinophilia & Hollandophilia

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 13-14:

There is yet another reason why Edo-period culture has not been properly appreciated: the influence of Chinese culture has not yet been properly understood. During the Edo period Chinese culture was highly venerated. Its deep and lasting influence was important, not just for Japanese Confucianism and Confucian scholarship, but for a whole range of other pursuits as well. The effect of Chinese poetry and literature, or of Ming and Qing dynasty art and scholarship, can hardly be overestimated. For example, the book Tianxia yitong zhi (Records of All the World) greatly influenced the fudoki (gazetteers) produced throughout Japan. This volume was published as Dai Min ittō-shi (Records of the Ming Dynasty) at the beginning of the Genroku era (1688–1704) by a warrior from the Wakayama domain. Similarly, the volumes Gai yu congkao (Gaiyō sōkō in Japanese) by ZhaoYi (1727–1814) were also profoundly influential. The respect for things Chinese lasted until the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), but thereafter the fact that Chinese culture had once been of great importance faded from memory.

Similarly, “Dutch learning” (that is, Western learning, rangaku) was also highly important during the Edo period. Over one hundred times throughout the Edo period, the chief of the Dutch settlement at Dejima in Nagasaki came to Edo to receive an audience and present gifts to the shogun. For some twenty or thirty days during the spring, the chief and his retinue stayed at the Nagasaki-ya, a lodge at Hongoku-chō. From around the middle of the Edo period, a number of cultured individuals made use of these few weeks to engage in unfettered cultural exchange widi the Dutch. Japanese were strictly forbidden to enter the Dutch outpost of Dejima in Nagasaki, but within Edo much free activity was possible. After the Meiji Restoration, however, the diplomatic relations maintained by the Tokugawa bakufu with the Dutch were overshadowed by the Meiji government’s policy of strengthening ties with England, France, Germany, and the United States. In turn, much that concerned rangaku was forgotten. Although cultural exchange with the Dutch was once of great significance, its conditions and historical role have only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. Such examples show that Edo-period culture demands reevaluation. The type of historical perspective suggested here should begin to make a correct appraisal possible.

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by Joel | 16 September 2010 · 6:54 am

The Strength of Edo-period Culture

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 8-9:

The strength of Edo-period culture is not to be found in extant artifacts of the era. Rather, its strength lies chiefly in its spectacular breadth and diversity. This was a period of unprecedented cultural prosperity. Even the general public took part in leisure pursuits and played an active role in the creation of new cultural forms. The average commoner read books or visited the theater; some even wrote haiku verses and senryū (seventeen-syllable comic verse) or performed musical genres such as gidayū, kato bushi, shinnai, or nagauta. Others went on pilgrimages sponsored by religious associations (kō) and toured distant places. The Edo period saw a rise in the quality of culinary fare that commoners consumed; clothing and housing too showed marked improvement. Even the poor managed occasionally to indulge in the luxury of purchasing a “custom-made” comb or an ornamental hairpin. The demand for such cultural items fostered the development of a highly refined handicraft industry. Never before had there been such an extraordinary variety of hand-made cultural artifacts in Japan.

Even in remote areas in the countryside or on distant, isolated islands, inhabitants cultivated rare varieties of flowers and trees and marketed unusual rocks or curiosities. As Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842) noted in his Akiyama kikō (Autumn Mountain Travelogue, 1831), people in every corner of the land were busy manufacturing local specialties. Such articles were being produced, one by one, by thirty million people. By the late Edo period this activity had stimulated an unprecedented development of the transportation network. Mountain roads, waterways, and sea routes were extended in all directions to every nook and cranny of the country. Indeed, the construction of footpaths during the late Edo period can be seen as a kind of symbol of this golden age of handicraft culture.

No doubt, Japan today boasts a high level of culture. But the price has been high as well: severe environmental pollution and the wholesale destruction of nature. Until the end of the Edo period, red-crested cranes could still be seen soaring through the skies over the city; swans and geese flocked to Shinobazu Pond in Ueno Park. Foxes and badgers were found everywhere, and cuckoos (hototogisu) flourished in such numbers that their song was considered a nuisance. Even during the late Meiji period the water of the Sumida River was clean enough to be used for brewing tea while boating. Human activity imparted only minimal damage to nature. Viewed in this way, Edo-period culture seems almost ideal.

Certain elements of the Edo-period cultural heritage were vulgar, no doubt, but a more comprehensive view of the period reveals an almost infinite number of admirable qualities. Nevertheless, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, governmental policies of modernization and westernization dictated a wholesale rejection of the preceding feudal era. Even the best elements of Edo-period culture were deemed outdated and vulgar and were thought to require prompt and thorough extirpation. That the true value of Edo-period culture could not yet be properly assessed had much to do with the lack of any inquiry into its origins and actual conditions. Recent research, however, has shown that Edo-period culture was outstanding in its own way and not at all inferior to the culture of earlier or later periods.

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by Joel | 6 September 2010 · 5:00 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Birds for Trains

“So what is a shirasagi, anyway?” I asked the JR clerk in Nagoya Station who had initiated our rail passes and booked reservations on the Shirasagi Limited Express to Hida Takayama. “Could it be a white rabbit (shira- ‘white’ + usagi ‘rabbit’)?” She had no idea. But I should have known it would be a bird.

Before the advent of the Shinkansen bullet trains in 1964, the most famous limited express train along the Tokaido Main Line was the Tsubame ‘swallow’. In fact, the Japan National Railways (JNR, 国鉄) used a swallow logo on its bus system and called its professional baseball team the (Kokutetsu) Swallows. Two other notable limited express trains we rode in those days were the Hato ‘dove’ and the Kamome ‘seagull’.

Most express trains were named for destinations, like the Miyajima Express that I used to ride home to Hiroshima from boarding school in Kobe, but the fastest limited express trains tended to be named for birds. The first bullet trains went for even speedier names: Kodama ‘echo’ (speed of sound), Hikari ‘flash’ (speed of light), and the latest, postmodern-sounding Nozomi ‘desire’. But regional bullet trains have revived a lot of the old limited-express bird names: Hayabusa ‘peregrine falcon’, Kamome ‘seagull’, Toki ‘crested ibis’, Tsubame ‘swallow’.

On our latest trip, we were in the Hokuriku region, off the Shinkansen grid, where the fastest trains are traditional limited expresses, so we encountered several bird-named trains that were new to me. Shirasagi can be translated ‘snowy egret’ (Egretta thula), although sagi labels the whole family of herons (Ardeidae), as in aosagi (lit. ‘blue heron’) ‘gray heron’ (Ardeia cinerea).

Coming back to Kanazawa from Nanao on the Noto Peninsula, we rode the Sandābādo/Thunderbird, whose name left me a bit nonplussed until we paired it with Raichō ‘rock ptarmigan’ (Lagopus muta), a limited express that runs from Osaka through Kanazawa to Toyama. Thunderbird began operations as Super Raichō (Thunderbird), and Raichō (雷鳥) literally translates as ‘thunder bird’. The rock ptarmigan is a symbol of Toyama Prefecture’s Tateyama, one of Japan’s 三霊山 Sanreizan ‘Three Holy Mountains’, along with Fujisan and Hakusan. (Doesn’t the Rock Ptarmigan sound like a good name for a smaller version of Ford’s SVT Raptor?)

Another limited express we rode between Kanazawa and Toyama was the Hakutaka, whose name is always written in kana, not kanji, and whose train cars carry an emblem with the English words “White Wing.” The name evokes an old Tateyama legend about a white hawk (白鷹, which would normally be pronounced shirataka), but also evokes the name of a long-distance train, Hakuchō (‘white bird’ =) ‘swan’ that used to run all the way from Aomori (where the swan is the prefectural bird) via Ueno and Kanazawa to Osaka. The name Hakutaka was independently used for trains running on the leg between Ueno and Kanazawa until that leg was disrupted by the extension of the Shinkansen toward Nagano and Niigata in 1982. In 1997 it was revived for limited express trains running along the Japan Sea coast between Fukui and Niigata prefectures.

The first Japanese long-distance trains to receive names seem to have been the Fuji and Sakura, which began running between Tokyo and Shimonoseki in 1912, but were not named until 1929.

The first train named Hato ‘dove’ was an express on the South Manchuria Railway (満鉄 Mantetsu) running between Dalian and the new (in 1932) Manchukuo capital, 新京 Shinkyō (now Changchun). The limited express on that route was named あじあ Ajia ‘Asia’.

POSTSCRIPT: The first trains named Hikari and Nozomi were Mantetsu expresses running between Busan (釜山) and Shinkyō (新京). (Japanese Wikipedia offers very detailed coverage of Japanese train systems, past and present.)

And, speaking of Imperial Japan, many of the same bird names were used for Hayabusa-class torpedo boats built between 1900 and 1904 that served so well in the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War.

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by Joel | 4 September 2010 · 11:40 am

Wordcatcher Tales: Two Lakes Ōmi, Near and Far

Japan’s largest freshwater lake, 琵琶湖 Biwa-ko ‘biwa lake’, got its current name from its elongated shape, which vaguely resembles that of the biwa, a Japanese lute, sharper at one end, rounder at the other. But the older name for the lake and the land around it (now Shiga Prefecture) was Ōmi 淡海 < awaumi ‘light (= freshwater) sea’. (Compare the native Japanese reading for 湖 ‘lake’ mizu-umi lit. ‘water-sea’ and the Sino-Japanese compound 淡水 tansui ‘freshwater’).

The older name, Ōmi, still shows up in a host of local place names—Ōmi-Hachiman (近江八幡), Ōmi-Imazu (近江今津), Ōmi-Maiko (近江舞子), Ōmi-Shiotsu (近江塩津), etc.—but nowadays it’s always written as 近江 lit. ‘near-bay/inlet/river’. (江 is the e of 江戸 Edo lit. ‘bay-door’.) What’s up with that?

Well, it turns out there was another notable freshwater lake near Hamamatsu in what is now Shizuoka Prefecture. To the Kinki hegemons of the Nara and Heian periods, it was the 遠つ淡海 Tōtu-ōmi ‘far freshwater sea’, later shortened to 遠江 Tōtōmi ‘far waters’, which was also the name of the surrounding province.

The lake closer to the capital was distinguished as the 近つ淡海 Tikatu-ōmi ‘near lake’, shortened in writing to 近江 ‘near waters’, but pronounced simply Ōmi, since it was, after all, The Lake (like ‘The City’).

Nowadays, the two lakes are no longer sibling rivals. A major earthquake in 1498 breached the narrow shoreline that separated Lake Tōtōmi from the ocean, leaving its waters brackish, though still very productive. It now goes by the rather prosaic name Lake Hamana (浜名湖 Hamana-ko ‘shorename-lake’), while Lake Ōmi sports a more poetic moniker, Lake Biwa: 琵琶湖 Biwa-ko ‘lute lake’.

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by Joel | 1 September 2010 · 5:06 am

On Rewriting While Translating

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 3-4:

In translating I have striven to remain faithful to the spirit rather than the letter of Nishiyama’s prose. Some therefore may wish to label this book an adaptation rather than a translation. Nishiyama writing style is stiff and often thrives more on a general tone of enthusiasm for the subject than on logical connections between sentences or paragraphs. Such a style, informed by the conviction that a good point bears repetition and that the relevance of an example need not be clarified until the very end of a section, entirely rules out literal translation. I have thus pruned judiciously, rewritten, rethought sentence and paragraph order, but refrained from adding anything substantially new to Nishiyama’s writing. The only exceptions to this rule are a few brief definitions of terms unlikely to be known to a nonspecialist Anglophone readership and, moreover, the endings of Chapters 7, 8, and 9. In the original, these chapters simply stop when Nishiyama has run out of things to say. Such a writing style, common enough in Japanese academic prose, often irritates Western readers, who tend to prefer more synthetic conclusions. In these chapters, therefore, I have added summaries of Nishiyama’s major points, thereby bringing the chapter to a smoother close while not adding anything new.

Since the studies translated here were not conceived by Nishiyama as forming one volume, much material is repeated. In some cases I have simply excised such duplication. The largest cut occurs in Chapter 6. Here I have eliminated or moved to other chapters most of the information that is presented in the first half of the original study, which repeats much of what has already been translated as Chapters 1 through 5. All major changes have been discussed with Professor Nishiyama, who himself occasionally suggested alterations and corrections.

Documentation in the original studies is often lacking and sometimes erroneous. In an effort to complete as many references as possible, I have started from scratch. Unless otherwise indicated, therefore, all notes are by the translator. Rechecking sources has allowed me to uncover several errors and misprints, which have been silently corrected after confirmation by the author.

The selection of illustrations and maps, the transcription of musical examples, and the production of the glossary are also my responsibility. Other editorial additions include dates and footnoted biographical information on individuals, details of geographical location of small towns and villages, variant names and performance dates of kabuki plays or musical works, and dates of publication of books. Names of individuals have presented a special problem, since Nishiyama endows the use of pseudonyms (geimei) with a special significance. Edo-period writers, actors, musicians, and artists often assumed a large variety of pseudonyms, forcing the translator to select one of several names for the sake of consistency. I have generally selected the name most likely to appear in biographical dictionaries.

Translating the titles of books or kabuki plays presents yet other obstacles. Titles of novels, plays, or collections of poetry are often the source of cryptic puns—and in cases where a work no longer exists, the exact reading and meaning of the title are anybody’s guess. For extant books I have usually followed the reading of titles found in the Kokusho sōmokuroku. Kabuki titles are given in the version most likely to appear in kabuki dictionaries; alternative titles are given in the notes. A rough translation of a title’s most obvious meaning follows the original in parentheses; when such a translation appears in italics, this indicates that the book has been published under this title in English. The reader should note that the names of Buddhist temples end with the syllables ji, in, tera, or dera; Shinto shrines often end with sha, gu, or miya.

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by Joel | 16 August 2010 · 4:30 pm

New Scholarship on Wartime Kabuki, 1931–1945

The latest issue of Asian Theatre Journal (via Project MUSE) contains a review (by UCLA’s Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei) of James Brandon’s myth-shattering new book, Kabuki’s Forgotten War: 1931–1945 (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2009). Here are a few snippets to give a flavor of how stunningly revisionist the book is.

It was in 2002, at a conference honoring the work of Leonard C. Pronko, that I first heard James R. Brandon present the extraordinary research he was doing on kabuki during what the Japanese call the Fifteen-Year War, the last four years of which encompass the Pacific War of World War II. I will never forget the shock waves in the room as he showed slides and told us about a wartime kabuki play called Three Heroic Human Bombs. Here were kabuki actors performing in 1932, dressed in modern military uniforms, looking for all the world like realistic film actors, carrying bombs as they slogged through mud and barbed wire toward a glorious suicide during Japan’s war in China. And then he told us about other new plays from that period, starring famous kabuki actors performing alongside (gasp!) actresses—not onnagata, but females from shinpa and shingeki. The actors wore realistic, contemporary costumes without a trace of kabuki’s makeup or wigs, and there was nary a musician in sight. How could these contemporary propaganda plays about military exploits and home front patriotism be kabuki? We all thought we knew what kabuki was, but suddenly the hard-earned knowledge of about a hundred scholars was totally shattered….

As Brandon correctly notes, the war years have been studied extensively from many cultural and political perspectives, but this is the first book in any language (including Japanese) to focus on the wartime history of kabuki. Despite a few notable exceptions, in most Japanese histories of kabuki, “the war years are simply erased” (p. x)….

The book demonstrates kabuki’s often enthusiastic complicity with Japan’s militarist and imperialist exploits during the 1931–1945 war years, and also puts the situation of kabuki in clear historical perspective. During the early, successful years of the war, kabuki actors and playwrights were in great demand, and they performed many jingoistic, patriotic works. Nevertheless, most actors chose to remember things differently after the war. Brandon quotes from Ichikawa Ennosuke II’s postwar memoir: “The five years of the Pacific War was a dark period, a time of suffering for performers.” Brandon then comments:

Like most others, Ennosuke did not see himself as a participant in the war. Forgotten were his morale performances in Manchuria, flying to China to gather authentic war material, and the many heroic-soldier roles he enacted in war plays. In portraying himself as a victim of the war and dwelling only on the horrors of the war’s end, Ennosuke (and others) erased the victorious years, 1931–1943, when life was good for kabuki artists because of the war.

During the war, kabuki continued its centuries-long tradition of “overnight pickles” (ichiyazuke), plays based on contemporary events that were written and staged within weeks or even days of the actual occurrence. An early wartime “overnight pickle” (when things were still very good for kabuki) dealt with the 1942 capture of Singapore aided by the daring exploits of a young Japanese man whom the popular press dubbed “The Tiger of Malaya.” Brandon notes that more than one hundred kabuki overnight pickle plays were written and set during the Fifteen-Year War….

Brandon argues that official support for such morale-boosting kabuki performances, despite overwhelming evidence that Japan was nearing a disastrous defeat, offers a case study supporting the contention that without the atomic bombing, Japan would never have surrendered. He notes that the Japanese cabinet voted numerous times to continue fighting despite the destruction of nearly half of Japan’s urban areas and devastating losses in the Pacific. He offers the bizarre case of playwright Kikuta Kazuo, who wrote many anti-American, prowar plays for both Shōchiku and Tōhō, as further proof that the government was in total denial regarding Japan’s imminent defeat. Kikuta described what it was like to be one of the last members of the Japan Dramatists’ Association to remain in Tokyo after massive American firebombing began in March 1945. The Bureau of Information considered the Dramatists’ Association’s purpose to be “to gain victory in the war.”

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by Joel | 15 August 2010 · 5:08 pm

Will Japan Surrender Its Economy This Time?

Japan surrendered 65 years ago today, after decades of initially triumphant and then draining military conflict marked by official denial of any possibility of losing militarily until the very day of surrender. A recent op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor by a financial investment researcher suggests Japan is going to lose its formerly triumphant economic “war” in the same way (with lessons for the U.S. and other debt-ridden economies).

Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe, but they are ignoring a more definite and significantly larger sovereign debt catastrophe that is about to hit the world’s third-largest economy: Japan.

The prelude to Japan’s current crisis began in the early 1990s when its housing and stock market bubbles popped, leading to recession.

For the next 20 years, using flashy names like Fiscal Structural Reform Act, and Emergency Employment Measures, and Policy Measures of Economic Rebirth, the government cut taxes, increased spending, and borrowed money to finance itself. Once or twice the government found fiscal religion and raised taxes; however, the economy stuttered and taxes again were lowered and the stimulus story continued.

Today, 20 years into endless stimuli, the Japanese economy is beset by the same rot it was then, except that its debt has tripled – the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) stands at almost 200 percent, double those of the United States and Germany, and second only to Zimbabwe….

A country that has ballooning debt needs to have an expanding economy to help the country outgrow its debt burden. Economic growth is driven by two factors, productivity and population growth. Though the Japanese economy may continue to reap the benefits of productivity, population growth is not in the cards.

Japan has one of the oldest societies in the developed world; every fourth Japanese person is over 65 years of age, and the population is shrinking. Due to cultural mores, workers are largely compensated not on merit but on seniority. Thus, young adults marry later in life, and have kids later.

This helps explain why the Japanese birthrate is one of the lowest in the world, a meager 1.37 per woman, well below the 2.1 figure needed to sustain a population….

Though debt has tripled over the past two decades, government spending on interest payments has not changed; in fact it even declined a little in the mid-2000s. This happened because the government’s average interest rate paid on its debt declined from more than 6 percent in the 1990s to 1.4 percent in 2009.

This is about to change. Historically, more than 90 percent of Japanese government-issued debt was consumed internally by its citizens, directly or through its pension system. In the 1990s, the savings rate was very high, pushing the mid-teens, but as people get older, they retire and start drawing down their savings and pensions. Today, the Japanese savings rate is approaching zero, and will probably go negative in the not-so-distant future.

The Japanese economy operates on the (soon-to-be-proved-false) assumption that the government will always be able to borrow at low interest rates. As internal demand for debt evaporates – and it’s approaching this level already – the Japanese government will have to start hocking its debt outside Japan.

When it does, it will face a rude shock in the form of higher interest payments. Japanese 10-year Treasuries now yielding 1.0 percent will not stand a chance against US or German bonds of the same maturities that yield 2.89 percent and 2.59 percent, respectively….

Along with China, Japan is the one of the largest holders of US government debt, and its demand for our fine paper will decline. Most likely, Japan will start selling Treasuries. And to make things worse, Japan will start competing with the US, not just in cars and electronics, but for buyers of sovereign government debt. Japan will export inflation, inflation will rise globally, and so will interest rates.

Had I written a similar article five years ago, I would have been “wrong,” as today the Japanese economy is still ticking. Timing bubbles – and Japan is in the late stages of an enormous debt bubble – is very difficult, as bubbles tend to last longer than rational observers expect. But every year that the Japanese bubble doesn’t burst and debt swells, the eventual pop just grows more catastrophic.

Japan is past the point of no return; its fiscal and demographic problems were created over decades and will take decades to be resolved. In the meantime, its citizens will pay the painful price. Japan is proof that a country cannot borrow itself to prosperity.