A European's move towards Japan
Today is a national holiday in Japan: Bunka no Hi or Culture Day. It is meant to promote culture in general, in particular the arts, but also includes science. Since I have written about this before, I will simply share a nice culture related image by a Japanese artist.
The painting/calligraphy is by Bankei Yotaku, a 17th century Zen master of the Rinzai sect.
Today is a holiday in Japan, the Shubun-no-hi, celebrating the autumn equinox. I have written about it in the years before, so I will not repeat myself, but instead I present you with a beautiful woodblock print of the moon. 
It is called “Bat Before the Moon” and was made around 1910 by Biho Takashi.
It’s a holiday today – and not just any old holiday, but a brand new one!
2016 marks the first occurence of yama no hi or Mountain Day, where the Japanese are encouraged to “get familiar with mountains and appreciate blessings from mountains.”
Since this is the most modern Japanese holiday, there’s no big and ancient story behind it that I could tell, except that the Japanese Alpine Club had something to do with it. It was chosen deliberately for August 11th, at the beginning of the Obon week to give people an extra day off. By now, there is a holiday in each month except June, and I wonder if the Japanese government will fill that gap eventually.
Of course, the most important mountain in Japan is Mount Fuji, and I am sure I will not run out of pictures here for a long time. Although I have passed Mount Fuji several times on my way from Kyoto to Tokyo and back, so far, I have not seen it myself. The mountain was always covered in clouds (after all, it is 3,776.24 m high), or it was pouring down altogether. So, I cannot share any of my own photos, but, there is enough Japanese art to share.
The image below is by Takeuchi Seihō (1864 – 1942) a painter from Kyoto. 
The Japanese summer is hard to bear. The temperature itself is not extreme (in my view, that is) but the humidity presses down on people more than is comfortable. To help them surviving the heat, the Japanese have come up with a very special type of summer clothing, called the jinbei. 
Essentially it is nothing but a kimono, cut off at the hip, with shorts added to at least partly cover the nether regions. There is no obi belt for the top; instead, four ribbons are attached that are tied together, which makes the top sit rather loosely. The cloth is usually soft cotton dyed in various hues of blue, mostly with a subtle stripe pattern.
If you look closely at the picture above, one thing that makes the jinbei so cool to wear are the open stitches between the sleeves and the body. This particular one has the same open stitches at the side of the body as well, but the majority of jinbei I have seen do not have them. Also, there are holes underneath the armpits where the seams have been left completely open – this is a standard feature of women’s kimono as well, by the way. These planned holes allows for extra circulation of air at a time when every bit helps.
Wearing a jinbei is very comfortable even in the biggest heat, but: it is a men’s garment, and even men are supposed to wear it only at home. It is not considered in good taste to wear it anywhere outside of the house especially when mingling with other people, but at Gion matsuri’s yoiyama, some young people wear them regardless. Nowadays there are even jinbei for women, in much more flashy colours and with the obligatory flower print.
However, personally I prefer the subtle patterns of the men’s jinbei, and I will probably go out and buy myself another one since they are so much more comfortable than shorts and T-shirts.
Today was the Saki Matsuri parade of Gion festival. A friend invited me to her home on Oike dori, where we could watch the parade from her balcony. It was a nice Gion matsuri party with food, drinks and air conditioning inside, because even though it was overcast and hazy, both temperature and humidity were quite high. I even made the effort to properly honour the occasion and wore a yukata, a Japanese summer kimono – but I’ll write about this experience some other time.
I have written before about Gion matsuri and the parades in quite some detail, so this year I’ll simply post a handful of photos from a different view-point. Enjoy!
Last Thursday I went to Kibune with friends of mine. Kibune is a tiny little village situated in the mountains north of Kyoto. Okay, it’s not really a village – there is not space enough for that. Essentially there is a mountain, then a river, a road, and another mountain. Along a rather short part of the river/road, maybe 4 kilometres, houses were built wherever they could fit – and there is not much space left for this.
The fact that there is not much space has led to the biggest attraction of Kibune: its kawadoko dining. From June to September, platforms are built over the river where people can sit and have lunch or dinner – always enjoying the natural air-conditioning of the cool water flowing right underneath their seats. Kibune can be as much as 5 degrees cooler than Kyoto, which makes it a welcome retreat for people plagued by the unbearable August heat. Riverside restaurants are expensive since most of them serve kaiseki – Japanese Haute Cuisine – but there are also a few on the other side of the road. There are also a couple of ryokan for people to stay overnight, but since the valley is not very wide, the river is very noisy in parts, and I wonder if you actually can get some rest there.
The other great attraction of the village is Kifune Shrine (yes, with an F for some reason). According to myth, it was founded in the early 5th century by the mother of the legendary first emperor Jinmu. She took a yellow boat (Ki-fune) up the river from Osaka, and where she landed, she founded a shrine. It is dedicated to the deity of water and rain, and since the 9th century, people have been worshipping Takaokami-no-kami exclusively as the god who could send rain or withhold it. To appeal to the deity, horses were offered to the shrine, black ones to make it rain, and white ones to stop it.
Another, more grisly ritual connected with Kifune shrine is the legendary Ushi-no-toki-mairi. It started out as innocent worship at the shrine in the hour of the ox (between 1 and 3 am), but it changed into a practice to lay a curse on a person. Still done at the same hour, people were supposed to wear headgear with candles and drive nails into a nearby tree – preferably through a straw effigy of the person to be cursed. There are a number of legends dating back to the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and there is even a Noh-play dramatising the story of a scorned woman who, after heeding the advice received at Kifune shrine, turned into a demon to take revenge.
Even if you don’t seek revenge on anyone, Kibune is worth a visit. The mountains are covered in cedars and cryptomerias, and they are so enormous, that there are places where they reach across both river and road to form a roof of leaves. At this time, the greens are lush and beautiful, but there are also maple trees, which must be a wonderful sight during koyo. It is a bit tough to get there though without a car. The Eizan railway has a stop at Kibune-guchi, and from there it is maybe a 30 minute walk uphill to the shrine. It is worth it though I think, especially in the off hours when there are not many people, the whole setting is very quiet and energising.
Last weekend, I indulged myself – once again… There was an open house near Kyoto University, and since the house was a semi-traditional Japanese one built some 80 years ago, I just had to see it.
In fact, it was not just one house, but three buildings on the same plot of land. There was one very large main house with 10 rather large rooms on two floors. Then there was a much smaller house with three rooms in total, and some sort of shed in the back of the garden. Here are some pictures from the agent’s leaflet:
It turned out the house was built for a professor of Kyoto University by a quite famous architect of that time, Koji Fujii. Fujii was one of the pioneers of ecological building in Japan, and he certainly had a keen eye for details. The ceilings are restrained but beautifully decorated with differently colored wood; There are tiny windows at the right spots, and there is even a reading room/office with built-in desks right at the windows, still original.
It is not a truly traditional Japanese house, but it is not one of the westernised homes with European exterior that were so popular in the Taisho era and among the university professors either. It is a very well designed Japanese house with modern influences, and this fusion is so well done you don’t even notice them. For example, on the ground floor are rooms with normal wooden floors as well as rooms with tatami. The latter are raised significantly higher as usual than the former, so that if you are sitting in seiza on the floor, you are at eye level with somebody sitting on a chair outside.
The state of the house is not good, unfortunately, but not quite as bad as the last one I visited. On the other hand, since it is more traditional, the interior is rather dark with the small windows and the paper covered shoji, and the wood which is mostly painted dark does not help much to be honest.
Still, I hope there is somebody who buys the house and renovates it properly instead of simply tearing it down and building another bloody mansion on top… I wish I could save this house from certain destruction, but I don’t quite have the money for it. Anybody who has a spare million Euros for me?
It is universally known that rice is very important in Japan and all over Asia, and 87% of the world’s total rice production is harvested in Asia. Rice was first domesticated in China around 10.000 years ago but has since become the staple food for millions of people.
In old Japan, farmers were considered so important that in the hierarchical feudal class system of the Edo period, peasants held the second rank – right below the samurai, but above the third rank artisans and the merchants, who made up the fourth and lowest rank. And during that time, rice was used as a measure of somebody’s wealth.
For example, the income of the daimyo – feudal lords – and samurai was counted in koku – bales of rice. Originally, one koku was about 150 kg, and the idea behind it is that one bowl of rice holds 150 grams of rice, and that 1 koku – which would be 1000 bowls of rice – would be needed to feed a single person for one whole year.
If you do the math, this makes about 2.7 bowls of rice that a person could eat per day, which is only okay if you are on a severe diet; but of course, rice was not the only thing people were eating. In fact, there is a story that Ieyasu – the first Shogun of the Edo period – preferred to eat other grains because they were cheaper…
Back to wealth: In the Edo period, each feudal domain was assessed by their potential rice income, called kokudaka. This was done by bestowing fiefs that had been won in the war on allies or loyal retainers. Later, the kokudaka also determined the order of precedence at the court of the Shogun.
Only if a fief had an income of at least 10.000 koku, its fief-holder could be called a daimyo. The largest income of any daimyo was the Kaga or Kanazawa domain in Honshu, with 1.025.000 koku per year. This was the only fief with more than one million koku, and to this day, there is a million-koku festival in Kanazawa town to celebrate the return of their lord as a millionaire. Only 20 daimyo had a kokudaka of more than 200.000 koku, including the Shogun, whose income was some 4 million koku per year. To put this in perspective: altogether, Japan produced some 30 million koku annually.
After the Meiji restoration, in 1891, the koku was redefined to be 180 litres of rice, but soon enough, income was measured in money rather than in rice. Today, koku are still in use in the lumber industry as a cubic measure, but beyond that, they have been relegated to old stories and museums.
The Waiting Years
Fumiko Enchi
Tomo is the wife of Yukitomo Shirakawa, a public servant in Fukushima, who is rapidly climbing the political ladder. Their two children do not keep Yukitomo from being a womanizer, and at some point he even orders his wife to find him a suitable mistress. Unwilling, but unable to stand her ground against her despotic husband, Tomo goes to Tokyo and after painful deliberations decides on Suga.
With the young girl’s arrival Yukitomo adds a new luxurious wing to the house and Tomo more and more finds herself in the role of household accountant. Both women soon arrange themselves with the new conditions forced upon them, but they change again when Yumi takes up service in their house and Yukitomo cannot keep his hands off her.
This is a very quiet novel, focusing on the women of the household. Though there are no open power struggles between them, and Tomo retains her elevated status of “wife” at all times, the common suffering of the women under Yukitomo’s reign is ever present. I enjoyed reading it, as it gives an almost psychological diagnosis of all persons involved, but if you are looking for action, this novel is not for you.
Fumiko Enchi (1905 – 1986) was born in Tokyo. Since she was a sickly child, she was home-schooled and was taught English, French, and Chinese literature; through her grandmother she got to know the classics of Japanese literature. With 21, her first play was published, and from 1930, she began to write fiction, to not much acclaim. After a hiatus in and after WWII, she started to write again in the early 1950s, and finally received recognition as one of the most prominent Japanese writers of the Showa period.
The book is available on amazon – enjoy!
I recently bought another futon in a shop nearby. Futons are not really heavy, but quite bulky, even though they are usually transported folded into thirds. For some reason, the package did not have a handle, which makes carrying a futon, even over a short distance, a bit cumbersome.
However, the Japanese have a solution for this: plastic strap-on handles (for want of a better word). Essentially you wrap some string around your package and then hook in the handles. It’s harder to describe than it actually is, just have a look at the picture.
This makes carrying a large bundle like my futon comparatively easy. I have also seen those handles used with normal cartons, as long as they are not too heavy. Isn’t this a very neat, simple and practical solution – quite Japanese in fact!