A European's move towards Japan
Once again it’s the Emperor’s birthday today – and a Japanese national holiday in its honour. There are a few things I need to take care of before Christmas, so I don’t have anything planned. I might have a special birthday chocolate to help celebrating though…
Happy Birthday Your Majesty!
Today is the holiday Kinro Kansha no Hi, which means Labour Thanksgiving Day, and I cannot believe I have not written about it before! This national holiday was established in 1948 in order to mark a number of changes in the Japanese constitution, for example the expansion of worker’s rights.
On this day, people are to celebrate labour and production, and to think about the environment, peace, and human rights, which is admittedly a rather interesting combination. Mostly, work is celebrated though, and today many children in Tokyo show their appreciation of the local koban – tiny police boxes located in almost every neighborhood – by bringing drawings to the policemen stationed there.
Of course, the whole thing is just a modern disguise for a much older tradition, called the Niiname-sai. This is an ancient harvest festival, which can be traced back to the Emperor Temmu (around 650 CE), but allegedly has already been celebrated by the Emperor Jimmu (living around 600 BCE and more legend than real). Other scholars trace the festival back almost 2000 years, when rice cultivation was introduced to Japan from China.
Anyway, on this day, the emperor would dedicate and sacrifice some of the newly harvested rice and cereals to the gods, and also taste the new rice for the first time. And even though the name of the festival and its customs have changed, the emperor is still doing that – albeit in a private ceremony.
Last Sunday I spent in Otsu, the capital of Shiga province, which lies on the shore of Lake Biwa, maybe 30 minutes east of Kyoto. Otsu, for a short period in the 7th century the capital of Japan, is still home to the largest harbour on Lake Biwa, which itself is the largest freshwater lake in Japan. However, the city is rather stretched out along the shore, and thus has the feeling of a little town despite its 350.000 inhabitants. There are a number of famous sites there, but I did not do any sightseeing this time.
Instead I went to enjoy Otsu matsuri with some friends of mine. Otsu matsuri has its origins at the beginning of the Edo period at the turn of the 17th century; the first time it was officially recorded was 1624. It is similar to Gion matsuri in that there are large floats that are paraded through the city, but there are also differences. 
The hikiyama of Otsu matsuri are about two storeys high, that’s somewhere between the size of the yama and hoko floats of Gion, and they are similarly decorated with beautiful tapestries on the outside. They only have three large wheels, which makes them more easy to manoeuvre by the people who are pulling them – yes, I have seen some women doing that as well!
On the second floor of the hikiyama, which can be reached by a staircase at the inside, only men are allowed though. Traditionally, only the first sons of families that lived around the storage house of each hikiyama were allowed to take part in the matsuri, but this has changed recently, and other young men may now participate too. When the floats are moving, they play a tune with flutes and drums that is similar to the one at Gion matsuri – to my ears, at least.
The most interesting part of the 13 hikiyama however, are the wooden displays on the second floor. Those are karakuri ningyō, mechanical dolls, and they depict, or rather, act out, a scene from a well-known fairytale or story, mostl of them originating in China.
One of the exceptions is a float with a doll representing Murasaki Shikibu, the authoress of the famous Tale of Genji. It is said that it was in Otsu – more precisely in Ishiyama Temple – where she began writing on her novel some time in the beginning of the 11th century. 
We were invited to one of the houses that “own” one of the floats, and we could go to a second floor balcony and watch the parade from there, meaning that we were eye-to-eye with the dolls and the men playing the instruments. From such an elevated postion you can see that the dolls were operated manually as the men crouched down, but that did not take away the beauty of the performance. I especially liked the one depicting how to catch a Tai (a lucky fish of golden colour), and because each performance was repeated twice in front of our balcony, I could even catch the decisive moment on camera. 
Today is Taiiku No Hi, the Japanese national “Health and Sports” holiday. As this is one of the recurring Happy Mondays, I have written about it before; and because I don’t want to repeat myself, here is a nice old photo depicting a traditional Japanese sport: 
The two girls are playing hanetsuki, a form of Badminton, albeit without a net. The goal is to keep the hane – the shuttlecock made from a little hard ball and a few feathers – in the air as long as possible, using only the wooden hagoita. The game is usually played by girls around New Year’s, and the longer the hane remains in the air, the longer the protection thus incurred will last. These days, the game itself is less popular, but the hagoita are still sold. Traditionally their backs show famous Kabuki actors or other celebrities. Hanetsuki can be played by many people, or by one person, but woe befalls the one who drops the hane – her face will be marked with black ink!
The photo above was taken by Kusakabe Kimbei (1841–1934), a Japanese photographer.
Today was the start of the 93rd NHK asadora. An asadora is a quite unique Japanese form of TV drama series; its name derives from asa – morning – and dora – short for dorama, the Japanese spelling of drama. Those asadora air daily except Sunday, and they are very short – only 15 minutes for each episode. Even if you miss one of them, there is always a rerun on the same day at noon, and if you miss that one too, there is usually lots of repetition included in each episode so that you can catch up easily. Altogether, the whole series takes six months, so there are two asodora each year.
Since the beginnings of the asodora in 1961, the plot almost always follows the same stereotype: It centres on a young female heroine who is going through great lengths and possible hardships in order to chase her big dream. In the end, she will fulfill all her desires, of course. Some of the stories are even based on real life events.
The nice thing about an asodora is that the heroine is usualy played by a young and hitherto unknown actess. I have heard that there are even public auditions, drawing thousands of young girls, something like “Japan’s next asodora girl” or so, and that this one single role can considerably boost a career.
Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you all this and how come I even know about such thing – after all, I don’t even have a TV. Well, the current asadora edition, called “Asa ga kita” (meaning either: “Morning has come” or “Asa has come”, Asa being the name of the main character), revolves around a young woman from Osaka who becomes well known because of her incredible skills with a soroban. And as young actresses don’t have to know anything about soroban these days, they need teachers. And it so happens that said teacher is the one I have been taking lessons from for the last two years. Yes, I do feel quite proud!
Thus, I know even more background: The shooting takes place in Osaka, and Sensei has been teaching there since June or even May. He says that the whole production is very flexible and that, if the viewers don’t like the direction it is taking, things may still be changed and redone. In the worst case this will mean that he will have to teach until the very end of the airing in March.
Although it must be very tiring for him, he is also very enthousiastic, and he has received permission to make some sort of fanpage for Asa ga kita, where he talks about soroban, of course. This webpage, by the way, is the reason for our last two soroban-related excursions. Most of it is in Japanese of course, but there are also little tweets and stories in other languages and lots of interesting, soroban related photos. There are also a few English pages, but I know that there are more to come – after all, the person responsible for those is yours truly… 😉
Today is the last holiday of this year’s Silver Week, the autumnal equinox, which is called in Japanese Shubun-no-hi. Three days before and after the equinox is the time the Japanese call higan, which can be translated as “the other side of the river of death”. At this time, people pray for the repose of their dead ancestors and make visits to the family grave where they place small offerings. A popular offering is a rice dumpling covered in red bean paste (of course), called ohagi. Also around this time, when autumn begins, red amaryllis begin to bloom, and the Japanese call them higanbana – equinox flower.
It’s national holiday in Japan! Actually, there are three national holidays in a row this week, which means the Japanese call this the Silver Week in imitation of the Golden Week, a string of three national holidays in early May.
This Silver Week starts today with Keiro-no-hi, the Respect for the Aged Day, and there is Shubun-no-hi to celebrate the autumn equinox on Wednesday. Apparently the Japanese government is trying to get their citizens to like them better, so they inserted another national holiday without great name in between, tomorrow.
I have written about Keiro-no-hi extensively last year, so I will not repeat myself, but rather present more Japanese art! This time, it’s two masks used in the Noh theatre, now in the possession of the Museum Rietberg in Zürich. The old woman on the left dates back to the 18th/19th century, and the old man on the right even to the 16th/17th century. 
Both photos are courtesy of Andreas Praefcke, taken from wikimedia commons.
As promised on Monday, here is my report about the soroban class’s trip to Ono. Ono is a small town near Kobe which calls itself the Town of Soroban. Indeed, we have visited one soroban museum, two soroban factories and one master who makes handmade soroban, there is a soroban shrine and a bridge with soroban theme, and you can buy soroban senbei… But, let’s start at the beginning.
When we arrived in Ono after a two hours drive from Kyoto, we first went to the soroban museum. There is a huge soroban showing the current year on their parking lot outside, so it is hard to miss. Their general displays were nice, but once you have seen Ogaki-san’s soroban collection, there is not much left to surprise you. I did like the display of the various roots of the soroban, from Egypt, the Middle East, and China though.
Also, somebody obviously had too much time on his hands in which he built a small model of Himeji castle out of thousands of soroban beads. 
One room of the museum was dedicated to the process of soroban making, which until today is still largely manual work. There were machines on display, and photos of workers, the numerous parts of a soroban and the materials they are made of, i.e., different types of wood and bamboo. I knew that soroban beads are made from wood and are cut out of thin wooden disks, but I did not know that at that point already they would be provided with their holes… 
Afterwards, we went to see an acquaintance of sensei’s, who owns a soroban factory, and there we could see some of the machines in action. Unfortunately, this particular factory does not make the beads, but even so, there are lots of soroban in different states of completion lying around everywhere. Although the factory is quite small – there are less than 10 employees only – they produce 18.000 soroban each year – and a variety of different wood toys on top of that.
In this factory, you even have the possibility of making your own soroban. As this activity is geared towards kids, there are numerous colorful choices for both the frame and the beads. We were invited to make our own soroban; sensei made a red one with white beads, I made a green one with all beads in all colours of the rainbow, and here is my friend working on his yellow soroban. 
We visited another soroban factory as well, where we learned that soroban making – as probably most of the crafts in Japan – has carried division of labour almost to the extreme: For a really good soroban there is one master who makes the beads, another one who produces the rods, and a third one who makes the frame. Interestingly, although they are so thin, the bamboo rods have a lighter inside and a darker outside, and it is very important that the outside of the rods (which once pointed to the outside of the bamboo plant) is installed towards the top of the soroban, as it is obviously harder than the inside…
Both factories naturally also had a display of soroban, from the very old to the brand new ones. My favourite was the sample that was made to showcase all the different colours of the wood – the wood here is not painted – but in the olden days, the white beads would have been made from bones or shells. 
After a short stop at a soroban master who works in his garage, we went to visit the other sights of the city: From a small bakery we bought senbei with soroban motif burned onto the top, and we took pictures of bridgeheads showing soroban, of course. Finally, inside an obviously both expensive and popular onsen, there was a soroban shrine; an unofficial one, unfortunately, so prayers won’t really help, although there is indeed a god of soroban – but he resides only in China. 
Although the day was very tiring, it was great fun too. Before we went home, we enjoyed another speciality of Ono’s: For dinner, we had special fried noodles called hormon yaki soba. But that is a tale for another day…
Living in Japan is hard work! No, I’m not referring to the fact that all that Japanese people do is working, because mostly it’s not true, at least not in Kyoto. I mean that being simply a resident in Japan is hard work already. Only yesterday, I have received mail from those two:
May I introduce you to Sensasu-kun (Censusboy) on the left and Mirai-chan (Futuregirl) on the right, who are the mascots for this year’s census in Japan. Before you ask, no, you cannot do anything in Japan without mascots, not even – or rather: especially not – if you are the government.
Apparently, every five years, every resident in Japan, whether foreign or native, is asked to take part in the census. At first I was a bit worried, but everything could be done online and in English, there were lots of explanations in case anything could possibly be unclear, and the whole thing indeed only took the ten minutes they promised at the front page.
The questionnaire surprised me on various levels. First of all, it was extremely short. There were only 14 questions in total, and only one of them had a subcategory if you answered the first part in a specific way. I dimly remember a census I had to fill out in Austria 20 years ago or so, and that was a lengthy list of questions covering several pages.
For the one I filled in today, at first you had to answer questions about all the persons living in your household: Name, birth year, nationality, marital status, etc. It was interesting that the questionnaire was not anonymised in any way, but then again, if everybody must participate, there’s probably not much point in it. Also, there were no questions that could in any way be construed as private: No questions about religion, preferred mode of transport, which party you’d lean towards, how often you’d go to museums, theatres, sports events, not even the exact birthdate or birthplace were required.
With the typical Japanese sense of priority, the main part of the questionnaire, 7 or 8 questions, was about work: Which work do you do, where do you work, what is the name of your workplace, what kind of business is that, and what exact position do you have there, etc. The interesting part was about my type of work: As the owner/director of my own company, according to this census, I am neither employed nor self-employed. In between those two categories there was an extra one “Board member of a company etc.” The non-working housewife-student-and-pensioners category was at the very right, by the way (so as not to be confusing for me either, I guess).
The last two questions asked about the type of house I was living in – and there was the one and only subcategory, wanting to know on which floor my apartment was. That was it, the whole thing. It seems to me that all the information is already available though, and I cannot help wondering whether it would not be easier to check the existing databases rather than create a new one. On the other hand, it’s probably good to every now and then weed out all those zombie records…
Today is a special day in Japan. It is called doyou no ushi no hi, which literally means dog-day of the ox-day, or less literally Midsummer Day of the Ox. The name goes back to old times, when each month in the year was named differently, each day and hour (and even cardinal directions) were named after the Chinese zodiac… Anyway, dog-days is a good description, because this time of the year can be quite unbearable. And indeed, today was probably the hottest day so far in this summer, with 35 degrees, 60% humidity and bright sunshine. Of course, in the normal Japanese summer this is not a particularly special thing, but some reason which I could not find out, today is celebrated.
Today, Japanese people traditionally eat an unagi dish – unagi is the name of the Japanese eel – and it is said that eating unagi today is especially good for your body and increases its stamina and overall health. As unagi is my favourite Japanese food, I would not want to miss this occasion to have some. Unfortunately, there is some sort of disease befalling the Japanese eel, which makes it very expensive these days, and a lot of eel is even imported; however I thought that every now and then I was in for a treat…
At first I thought I’d simply get some unagi sushi from the supermarket, but I had to go to town anyway, and I timed it so that I could have lunch in a restaurant selling a number of different unagi dishes, mostly unagi donburi (hot eel on top of a bowl of rice flavoured with soy sauce. The restaurant was busy but not overly crowded, and most people had today’s special, which came in a red square box.
I cannot attest to the health benefit of my lunch – yet – but it was certainly very delicious!