Iris – goinggaijin.com

Bright Future

One of my plans for Golden Week was to trim my garden, where enormous plants have taken root. Some of them were planted deliberately, I’m sure, others were not. It’s not that I don’t like hydrangeas, but those bushes can get very large, to the point of overwhelming everything else in my tiny “tsuboniwa” garden. Thanks to being sick, I couldn’t do as much as I had wanted to, but gardening is more of a slow’n’stead approach anyway.

However, my next door neighbor was much more successful in attacking his own wilderness (the house has been empty for a while). He cut down some of the trees and bushes near our shared fence, and it had a pleasant side effect: My kitchen and bathroom are so much brighter now!

That in turn means that I’ll have to more diligent with my cleaning, too… I wonder how long the new light is going to last, though: plants go surprisingly rapidly in our climate, and I might just be back to square one within a year or so. But for now, I’ll enjoy the new airy feeling – and keep cleaning!

Saginomori Festival

Saginomori Jinja is the shrine in my neighborhood, and it’s celebrating their main festival every year on May 4/5. This year was the first time I dropped by, and it was quite different than the festivals of larger shrines I’ve been to before.

I arrived a bit too late to see the departure of the children’s mikoshi. Just like the larger one two hours or so later, it was carried through the neighborhood to the “otabisho” where it was resting over night.

While I was waiting for the adult’s mikoshi to arrive, I noticed that in front of the shrine, a cone of sand decorated with a branch of sakaki leaves. The sand represents mountains where the gods live, the sakaki plant is said to connect the human world with that of the gods, and the white tamagushi paper is meant to convey the believer’s wishes to the gods.

Altogether, this cone of sand is where the gods are invited to reside for the time of a shinto ceremony. Outside of shrines, they are often set up in empty lots when a ceremony is held before a house is built. So, as such, they can be seen quite often in Japan.

After the large mikoshi had arrived, it was moved before the main hall of the shrine, and was placed directly over the cone of sand with the sakaki branch. Then, the priests performed a short blessing of both the mikoshi and the people who carried it. Afterwards, the path from the main hall to the mikoshi was shielded by large tarps, so that the god of the shrine could be transferred to the mikoshi without being seen.

I have experienced this transfer ritual before at Yasaka shrine, but that was in the middle of the night, and the lights were turned off, so no need for the tarps then. Anyway, once the god rested inside the mikoshi, there were two performances of sacred kagura dance. And finally, accompanied by the beating of gongs and drums, the mikoshi was carried away again through the neighborhood to the otabisho.

There were more dance performances the next day in the afternoon. Apparently, the one with the three girls is quite difficult, and I could see them count the whole time!

The final dancer used a wooden snake as an accessory (here in her left hand), and when I asked, she confirmed that this was a special and used only in the year of the snake.

I didn’t see the return of the mikoshi to the shrine that evening, but it was probably the same ritual in reverse to get the gods back into the main hall. It was a nice experience, and even though there were many people from the neighborhood, it was not overly crowded. These local events are always fun to go to, and while the larger events are every bit as traditional, these smaller ones feel more… real, somehow.

I’m Back!

As I said before my holiday, I spent a lot of time setting everything up for a week off, and I was quite busy on Sunday (27) until midnight or so to experience bliss offline. So much for my plans.

Reality hit me on Monday (28) with a cold that knocked me flat out for a couple of days and turned into a sinus infection by Thursday. “Holiday” indeed, and I’m still coughing. At least I didn’t have to worry about going online and coming up with daily social media posts. And those eight books I had prepared were handy too.

Other plans had to abandoned, even though I didn’t have to spend all week in bed. (Not that Pumpkin would’ve minded that.) I only completed 8 out of the 20 projects I wanted to tackle; these were mainly small-scale home improvements that didn’t take much time.

By this week I felt good enough again to go out again, so I dropped by my neighborhood shrine for their main festival. Interestingly, that’s the first time I’ve seen it, which means I’ll give you a full account this Sunday, if I don’t get sick again.

Which is unlikely, because now I have to get back to work and my body knows it can’t let me down in times like these.

All She Was Worth

Miyuki Miyabe

Jun and Shoko are set to get married. But when Jun finds out that Shoko had declared bankruptcy years earlier, she disappears without a trace. A relative on sick leave, inspector Honma, tries to track her down, but she is elusive, and then he discovers that Shoko might not be the person Jun had believed at all. In fact, it seems that Shoko was a new identity, assumed to escape loan sharks. How far had she gone to become somebody else – and will she do it again?

Written in 1992, the book explores the debt crisis many, not only young, people fell into when Japan’s bubble burst. And although some practices that are described are illegal today, the book feels modern and has a universal appeal.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I couldn’t understand how it was possible – as the book describes – for anybody to simply waltz into a city office and get somebody else’s family register, the most important document for a Japanese, without proof of identity. However, I have since learned that photo-IDs are a relatively new feature of Japanese bureaucracy and were not required at the time this book was written. This clarified a few things in hindsight.

Miyuki Miyabe was born in Tokyo in 1960 and started writing novels at the age of 23. In 1984, while working at a law office, she began to take writing classes and subsequently made her literary debut in 1987 with ‘Our Neighbour is a Criminal’, which won the 26th All Yomimono Mystery Novel Newcomer Prize and the Japan Mystery Writers Association Prize. She writes mysteries and historical fiction, among other genres, and her books were the basis for a number of films. All She Was Worth was her first novel translated into English.

Check out a fascinating mystery with undertones of social criticism and get it from amazon.

Busy Preparing…

With Easter safely in the past (I barely noticed anyway), a more Japanese holiday is coming up: Golden Week. It’s a string of holidays on May 3, 4, and 5 plus an extra one on April 29. This year, May 3 and 4 fall on the weekend, with one special catch-up holiday on Tuesday, May 6.

And I have plans to take a personal holiday from April 28 all the way to May 6. Naturally, I have other plans too, involving Pumpkin, house and garden, getting ready for summer, festivals of two local shrines I want to go to… not to mention the seven books I just ordered from the library, with an eighth already waiting next to my futon.

That means that I’ll need to get all my work done – in particular the social media posts for WUIK – until Sunday morning; in the afternoon I’m invited to a Noh performance, which will a perfect ending to my work / a perfect start into my holiday.

All this to say that I will post the usual book review this Sunday, but my next post after that will be on May 7, probably a holiday-roundup.

Happy Easter!

For once, Easter isn’t just passing by unnoticed, so: Happy Easter!

Other than Christmas, which has been thoroughly commercialized, Easter is not much of a thing in Japan. I guess that’s because it tends to fall somewhere between hanami and Golden Week, when the Japanese are busy with their own traditions. Also, there are only very few shops – mostly those that sell foreign goods – where you can get Easter-related merch like chocolate eggs or decorations.

Personally, I’m not very big on holiday decorations, so I tend to skip these occasions completely. However, a friend of mine gave me the above painting, so I put it on display as a nod towards Easter.

It’s a little female rabbit bowing politely at a tea ceremony. I hope the calligraphy says something appropriate… I’m still struggling with the kanji, and handwritten Japanese will probably remain elusive forever.

Weekend Project # 7

Last weekend, I took time out for some DIY home improvement: Finally, after three years, I fixed the ceiling in my bathroom! When I renovated the rest of my bathroom, I already mentioned that the ceiling looked dirty next to the brand-new white walls.

In fact, the ceiling was covered in the same wallpaper as the walls, and around the lamp it was badly discoloured. I now seriously wonder how long you’d need to leave the light on for this to happen?

In any case, I removed the ugly paper on the ceiling (which was much easier than dealing with the walls) and put on cheap stick-on paper with a suitable design instead. The result:

It’s not perfect, mostly because working overhead is difficult and because I can’t measure or count properly (so there’s a spot where I had to piece on an extra centimetre)… But overall, I’m very pleased with the result. Especially since the whole project took me less than an hour.

On to the next project!

Kamisaka Sekka

Kamisaka Sekka was born into a samurai family in Kyoto in 1866 as Kamisaka Yoshitaka. His artistic talent was recognized early, and he started to study painting within the Shijo school when he was 16. Four years later, he began working as a designer at the Kawashima textile company. Through his father, who had worked at Kyoto’s court, he became a student of Kokei Kishi, an Imperial Household artist, with whom he studied crafts and design. Kishi introduced Sekka to the traditional Rimpa style of painting, and today, Sekka is considered the last great Rimpa artist of Japan.

Thanks to the popularity of his designs, he was employed by the Japanese government to visit Europe in 1901. He was meant to research European crafts before the Glasgow International Exhibition, where it was planned to exhibit contemporary Japanese crafts.

In Europe, Sekka was introduced to Art Nouveau, which heavily influenced his later style. He also wanted to get to the bottom of the Western infatuation with Japonism at the time, and in turn, tried to incorporate Western styles and design ideas into his own work.

When he was back in Kyoto, he revisited his teachings in the Rimpa style. By now, traditional Japanese art styles had become unfashionable – Japan was just as infatuated with everything Western as vice versa – and was determined to revive it, merging Japanese tradition with (imported) modernity.

By doing so, he created a unique visual language with bold colours and dynamic compositions that make his work easily recognizable. However, the themes of his paintings remained rooted in Japanese tradition: landscapes, animals, and depictions of seasonal flowers or festivals dominate his work.

He also never gave up designing utilitarian pieces like tea bowls, boxes, writing paper and cards and other items for daily use. His works can also be found on folding screens, fusuma doors in shrines and temples; and he created many pieces suitable for kakemono (hanging scrolls).

However, a series of 60 woodblock prints called Momoyogusa (A World of Things) is considered Sekka’s masterpiece. It was commissioned in 1909/10 by Unsōdō, a publishing company based in Kyoto that focuses on art books (and still exists today). His prints depict a variety of landscapes, flowers, and classical scenes from literature as well as Sekka’s own unique ideas.

Kamisaka Sekka worked in many fields throughout his life, and in 1905 he started teaching at the Kyoto City School of Arts and Crafts. He also set up the forerunners of what would later become the Kyoto Arts and Crafts Institute. In 1913, he became involved in the Koetsu-kai, a tea ceremony created in honour of Hon’ami Koetsu, who is considered the founder of the Rimpa style of painting. Kamisaka Sekka died in 1942, aged 77.

Taisai Festival at Go’o Shrine

Last Friday, I visited a shrine festival for the first time in ages (thanks, depression…) It was Go’o shrine’s main festival which is held in honor of one of their enshrined deities, Go’o Daimyojin. Go’o shrine lies west of the Imperial Palace, and while the name literally means protect king shrine, it is better known as Kyoto’s pig or boar shrine, thanks to the ubiquitous pig statues on the grounds.

Go’o Daimyojin has his origins in Wake no Kiyomaro, a court official who, with the help of an oracle, settled a dispute concerning the imperial succession all the way back in 769. In return, he was deified as “Gracious Protecting Deity of the Emperor” and a festival in his honor has been held every year on April 4 since the Meiji era.

Unfortunately, there is not much I can say about the festival, as it is held behind closed doors in the shrine’s prayer hall. Court music could be heard and the customary chant of prayers, but that’s all I can report from this part of the ceremony, which lasted a bit more than one hour.

Afterwards, priests and guests gathered in a procession to the palace’s Kenreimon gate. There, the head priest recited a short prayer and read a document, and then everybody returned to the shrine.

Taisai - main festival - at Go'o Shrine.

That’s all I can say about the ceremony itself, but I will write more about Go’o Shrine in due course. However, I didn’t go home empty-handed (headed?): I learned last Friday that the guests wearing the brown happi above, who may take part in the ceremonies, are members of the Go’o Shrine Association, which membership most likely comes with a steep fee, sorry: donation every year.

Also, seeing the head priest in front of the palace gate led to an interesting observation that has eluded me until now: The priests’ clothes look like the dress of aristocrats of the Heian era. Even though I’ve been to many Shinto ceremonies, I’ve never made this connection before, assuming it is even true. I will have to investigate further.

Exhibitions, Art, and Maiko

Thanks to my friend who came down from Tokyo, I had quite a busy weekend. Together we visited two art/crafts markets and two exhibitions, walked under (almost) blooming cherry trees, had kaiseki (lunch), burgers (dinner), chocolate cocktails and other drinks (night out), and watched this year’s Miyako Odori.

It’s hard to pick the highlight of my weekend, but I think it was the “X-Ray Flowers” exhibition:

The venue was an old newspaper printing plant, everything was dark except the exhibits, there was a darkish-moody background music… The whole thing came together perfectly for a spectacular “experience”, that’s the only way I can describe it.

Miyako Odori was just like last year, the final dress rehearsal for the press and invited patrons. Unfortunately, we arrived late, so our seats were not as good, thus my photos aren’t as good either.

As far as sustenance goes, the chocolate cocktail with rum is my #1 this time. I also tried gin for the very first time, it wasn’t popular in Austria when I was a student, or maybe it was too expensive. There seem to be lots and lots of different flavours, one had a strong orange taste with I liked very much. This may require further research. I’ll keep you posted.