BEANS IN THE DEVIL'S EYE

On Friday night - which was Setsubun, the first day of the Lunar Spring - in keeping with an ancient Japanese tradition the visiting grandkids got the chance to shout "Out with the devil! In with good fortune!" at the top of their voices over and over while throwing handfuls of roasted soybeans out into the darkness from all the doorways of the house. It was interesting to see how they handled it.

A lot of folks are cynical about the rituals of tradition, especially ancient tradition, such as Setsubun is. Cynicism is one of the cheaper philosophies, requiring no real experience or thought (indeed, it is diminished by both). But anyone who has actually lived and perceptively experienced what is out in the world knows full well that there is value in traditional metaphoric/symbolic reminders of the ideal, and worth in speaking out for it.

There is uplift to ritual (the other side of science) as well, in thus asserting - as in Setsubun - that we have a measure of control over the presence or absence of "the devil" and over our own fortunes. It is of deep worth to remind ourselves of this and to teach our children that they too have individual power (not surrendered power, as to a political or religious organization) that can be personally brought to bear on behalf of goodness and bright fortune not only for themselves, but for their entire household and all its members, and by extension, society itself.

Setsubun is an anciently tacit – though noisy - erasure of animosities and a rebuke to the untoward. By flinging hard beans in the face of misfortune you are showing the night your strength, shouting out to the darkness without as well as within (the house and yourself) that you care about the entities that reside here, that you are responsible for and will defend this place, for this household and its members are shared in your charge.

WILD WATER

Went up to the 'secret' mountain spring to get some water this afternoon, the off-road way now passable since the 'heat' wave, the spring stronger than ever with that deep melting snow upmountain seeping into the ground, all that pure, cold delicious water gurgling out for free 24/365...

After we finish filling all the bottles and water cans, the instinct is to 'turn the water off' right away, not let it 'go to waste'; in the evergrip of human implication it's hard to bear that treasure just flowing away uncaptured in the silence of the mountain forest (the kind of water city people pay for bottles of), watch it keep on gushing out after all our containers are full, as though we were its purpose; it's a mind mirror in which we observe ourselves thinking these odd thoughts...

Then passing beyond the mirror and accepting all that wondrous stuff just spilling into the mud and running freely down the mountain like the wild animal it is. Reminds me of the feeling I had when I was a kid and raised an infant wild animal and had learn to let it go...

A little water, a little wisdom...

GREAT AS A NEW BIKE

Wheeling instinctively down the icy mountain road on my motorcycle this morning, body ever at the ready for instant checks and automicroadjustments, my unneeded mind took a break and drifted back to when I began to learn all this ice-wheel stuff, which was when at the age of seven I got my first bicycle, for Christmas, in upstate New York, which in winter has some sort of sister-windchill relationship with Siberia.

The bike was a truly "spiffy" (my grandmother’s word; I rode it first to her house) Columbia, the perfect scarlet (I'd never seen the perfect scarlet before) with ivory striping down the crossbars and fenders. It was a "26" (one spoke with disdain of childish "24s") and still too big for me, but as God clearly indicated to me at the time, there was no way I was going to wait till icelessness to take this baby out.

So out I went into the hoarfrosted teeth of Siberian morning on my new wheels and proceeded to slither and slide and slew and yaw and fall and get up again and pedal on along the slushy roads and icy sidewalks atop my sparkling new bike, it was cold and hard but great, and I made it to all the necessary wheres and back. Little did I know that I was preparing for decades further on the road, the occasional winter commute down an icy Japanese countryside mountain to catch a train into a Japanese city on the other side of the world, right next door to Siberia.

Ain't life every bit as great as a new bike?

A DISTANT FRAGRANCE TO THE AIR

Saw Mr. Butterscotch wandering around in the garden yesterday morning, flowing along in his golden robes like a mobile miracle across the snow, we could but stand and watch in silence... and last evening saw a wheatear bouncing cheerily on the bare branches of the weeping cherry, looking in the window. Then very early this morning while drinking my tea and gazing with a headful of dreams out the big kitchen window I'd swear I saw a woodpecker silhouetted against the brightening sky, listening to the limbs and trunk of the garden oak, but he was gone in a flash, so many trees to listen to for breakfast.

Then on the way out for a walk this morning heard a bird doing some major trilling from upmountain through the icy air which, since it's so dry, makes for a crisper sharper song; sounded like the songster fully appreciated that, because he was going at it like a dozen Mozarts. On the way of the walk I saw Mr. Butterscotch's tiny, pointy tracks loping like the curves of a slow river along the snowcrust - though I can't imagine what he may be finding to eat yet, there's no fast food around here...

The buds of myrtle, plum, cherry and forsythia are swelling, just showing the first edge of their true colors and there is that distant fragrance to the air, of a world in open beauty not all that far away...

Kyoto Journal #62 now out!

Out in winter night
sipping the sky
and the moon in my tea

AND PEACE IS WAR

"The terrorist surveillance program was highly classified, and information about it was improperly given to the news media. As the Attorney General pointed out this week, it's easy to imagine America's enemies 'shaking their heads in amazement' that anyone would disclose this information, thereby giving notice to those enemies, damaging national security, and putting our citizens at risk."

Yesterday Quote from the guy who gave the go-ahead to out Valerie Plame...

FIRE FROM A COLD DARK SKY

A couple of nights ago, while out on the deck in the silence under a clear sky I saw a meteor – not a 'shooting star,' but a much brighter, thicker, slower, more intense column of light - streak straight down from the sky directly in the east. It lasted only a second or so before it burned out in the unchanged silence, about a hand's length (at arm's length) above the horizon.

Standing out there alone in the darkness I was primally startled; but as quickly I realized, scientifically, what I had just seen. So I went back to my primal reaction and dug in, tried to think in the way our ancestors 50,000 years ago would have thought about such things as fire streaking from a cold dark sky, to imagine from out of that same darkness the answers they wove into their world as gods, and the sources of those gods... the myths came forth more easily than I'd expected they would, we are in fact so close to that source in ourselves... those gods and their source are in us all still... we carry them not far beneath the surface, just below the cultures, religions and manners that stem from them; they are far more ours, and more genuine to us, than the latter components of our general veneer.

The body and the mind know more than science can ever fathom...

A STORY FROM AMERICA NOW...

via AltWeeklies

And Another...

JAPAN GLUTTED WITH PURELY SCIENTIFIC WHALE MEAT

Japan's absolutely scientific whale research, which necessitates the epistemological slaughter of the imperiled creatures (like that general in Vietnam who saved that no longer extant village) has resulted in a whale meat glut.

Strictly out of concern for the welfare of their traditional cetacean friends, the Japanese researchers now have more totally scientific whale meat on the market than Japanese consumers are willing to consume for purely academic purposes.

Absolutely scientific whale meat prices are plunging. Gotta put the research results somewhere. Like pet food. The resulting – but completely scientific - desperation has led the eco-focused researchers to promote the consumption of utterly scientific whale meat in school lunches, a captive audience if there ever was one:

"Nutritionists have even developed child-friendly whale dishes, including whale meatballs, hamburgers and whale spaghetti bolognese, said Tetsuji Sawada of Wakayama's education board." (Can whalemeat ice cream be far behind?)

The kids can't turn that down. Especially the science majors.

"Even if we capture 2,000 whales a year for 100 years, it's OK because whale numbers are growing," says the strictly educational pamphlet Delicious Whales, distributed by the government-affiliated Japan Whaling Association. (‘Capture’ is the scientific term for ‘kill.’)

And the whale researchers just came up with that new superslaughtering grenade harpoon too. Reality just won't give some knowledge-starved scientists a break.

SHUT UP AND BUY SOMETHING

"I was very lucky to have seen that culture which showed me that a real community of shared labor is possible -- or at least was at one time in this country. And if I ever doubt it I can go up to those hill farms and look into the clouded old eyes and wrinkled visages of the people who once babysat me as a child and with whom I shot my first rabbit and quail."

Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown - Joe Bageant's beautiful take on loss of community in America

(Also see Revenge of the Mutt People)

IS AMATERASU OMIKAMI FIDDLING WITH JAPAN AGAIN?

It might not be her, though; it could be her notoriously troublemaking brother the Shinto god Susano-o-no-Mikoto, who is in charge of storms. Although Amaterasu (progenitor of the imperial lineage) was female, that fact somehow got lost over the millennia in the historic power struggle (think Susano-O) for the Chrysanthemum Throne, which now demands male lineage. It's a mistake to look for logic here, though, because traditionally, females haven't been able to pass on much of anything in Japan. Until not too long ago wives were the property of their husbands, and until very a few years ago, could not pass on citizenship to their children (which law Echo and I got around through devious maneuvering – the end result of which was that I had to adopt my own children - which episode I'll detail in a later post on the subject).

Anyway, as sketchily noted in these meager chronicles, Japan has recently been struggling with the stark possibility of having no imperial y-chromosome carriers available, not even one, to become Emperor a generation from now. The entire nation was just on the verge of debating the topic of thinking about maybe considering the possibility that perhaps a woman could conceivably on the off chance, if... but then Amaterasu gave things a teasing tweak, given that she's female; or Susano-O, what with his mythic rep, threw a deific spanner in the works: the wife of the Crown Prince's brother (Crown Prince 2?) just announced that she is 6 weeks pregnant, and now everyone but me and a few people I know is in a dither over the fact that maybe it'll be a boy (parliament burst into applause when news of the pregnancy was announced), and the entire spiritual worth of Japan may not have to be vested in a woman after all, perish the thought.

Now it seems to me that such an attitude would yank Amaterasu's chain bigtime, so maybe she's just causing this princess pregnancy thing as a tease to get even for all the sexist dithering that's been going on for a couple thousand years now. On the other hand, though, given the historically macho tradition here, which is straight out of Susano's bag of tricks (Imperial Heir Storm at Palace-- I can see the Heavenly Gazette headlines now), this is his last-ditch effort to maintain the status quo. So the way I figure it, if this is Susano-O’s fiddle, the child will be a boy; if it's Amaterasu's doing, it will be a girl. A girl who will have the unique misfortune of being born as a historically grave disappointment to an entire nation, but cousin to the Empress.

The whole thing is Amaterasu's fault anyway, for starting all this when she stirred up Japan out of nothingness, way back when the choices were still infinite...

SNOW ON THE ROOF

Only two days after Lunar Spring and already the whole countryside is giving up the snowghost. Late yesterday evening the snow that had been falling steadily all day changed to rain, which began melting the snow everywhere, most notably on our roof. As I was reading in the afternoon the cold white stuff up there began to break apart; each big slab would surrender its integrity, slide clacking down the ceramic roof tiles till it reached the edge, and fall onto the lower eaves, each cascade turning the whole house into a big snowdrum. Then, laced with icicles, it tumbled the rest of the way in a tinkling hiss to the ground, compacting the pile already there.

Perhaps the most amazing thing in all this was how much snow can fit on a roof. It is 1 a.m. as I write this, and the snow (now with some ice beneath it) that has been clinging to the higher places on the roof and is the last to go does not want to, and by virtue of its under-ice need not travel all that precipitately; plainly uncooperative, it is nudged slowly downward by the rain runneling beneath it, the maybe 50-pound slabs begrudging down the ceramic rooftiles a foot or two at a time until they can grab hold again and so rumble along in stops and starts, resounding like thick slate slabs over cobbles, all the way down to the roof edge then crashing to the ground. The thing is, I sleep just a few feet beneath that roof, and that's a long way to listen to ice slide right above your head. Each time I think: surely this is the last slab; there couldn't be any more snow up there. I've been thinking that since 5 p.m. That's how much snow there can be on a roof.

Normally none of this would bother me; I'd be sound asleep and not hear a thing. But because of this cold that's been trying to get me for the past week or so, I napped a couple of times today and my sleep is cruelly lighter. As to the what the kids have to do with all this (haven't I mentioned them?), whenever the littlies come to visit I get exposed to all the microbial cutting-edge stuff that's wafting around the viral kingdom's Kiddy Laboratory, sort of a full-time pathogenic Expo, in which I fully and gleefully participate. Blowing up the kids' balloons again for them, sharing cookies, wiping runny noses, getting sneezed at and coughed upon with loving abandon and all the other kid-vectors that crafty viruses take advantage of, within a day or two of the kids' initial visit I'm feeling a twinge in the gut, a quirk in a lung, a tweak in the nose, a croak in the throat, a rock in the head and such like minor warnings, and must begin my usual multi-fronted campaign against the various sieges under way, from most of which I emerge victorious, though battered; then comes the next onslaught. As this indicates, a great part of grandfatherhood is taken up by preparation and recuperation. Bed rest is big.

There: surely that was the last slab of snow...

DINOSAURING

Folks on the train not sleeping or reading are staring into their keitai (mobile phones) and nudging the tiny keys with their thumbs; others are pecking away at laptops; dinosaur me, writing by hand with my Moleskine and pen. There are deep differences in scribing via these modes that are yet to be explored...

Moleskine hacks

BEANS IN THE DEMON'S EYE

On Friday night, which was Setsubun, the first day of the Lunar Spring, Kaya and the twins got the chance to shout "Out with the devil! In with good fortune!" at the top of their voices over and over while throwing handfuls of soybeans into the darkness from all the doorways of the house. Kaya had done it before, but for the twins it was the first time. A year ago they couldn't throw anything but a rattle, and here they were with a ritual. It was interesting to see how they handled it.

A lot of folks are cynical about the rituals of tradition, especially ancient tradition, such as Setsubun is. Cynicism is cheap of course, requires no real experience or thought. But anyone who has actually lived and perceptively experienced what is out in the world knows that there is value in metaphoric/symbolic reminders (whether specifically factually valid or no) of the ideal and the worth of speaking out for it. There is uplift to ritual (the other side of science) as well, in thus asserting - as in Setsubun - that we have a measure of control over the presence or absence of "the demons" and over our own fortunes. It is of deep worth to remind ourselves of this and to teach our children that they too have individual power (not surrendered power, as to a political or religious organization) that can be personally brought to bear on behalf of goodness and bright fortune not only for themselves, but for their entire household and all its members, and by extension, society itself.

Setsubun is an anciently tacit – though noisy - erasure of animosities and a rebuke to the untoward. By flinging hard beans in the face of misfortune you are showing the night your strength, shouting out to the darkness without as well as within (the house and yourself) that you care about the entities that reside here, that you are responsible for and will defend this place, for this household and its members are shared in your charge.

However deeply I personally wish to continue on this philosophical tack, let me get back to the kids. Kaya had done Setsubun before, so grabbed goodly handfuls of beans and flung them far, shouting with the great gusto of the newly empowered, as the adults were doing a bit more familiarly; Miasa took a small handful of beans and started eating them while watching the action; Mitsuki sort of stood in the background, shocked by this sudden odd behavior in her elders, unlike anything she had ever seen, her mother and Kaya and Echo shouting at the top of their lungs into the darkness like that and throwing away perfectly good beans, completely out of character. It was a major eye opener for both of them.

It was all over in a few minutes, but it felt great and was impressive in all directions. Then the demons were gone and good fortune came pouring in, in the form of little faces smiling in the light. I'll bet next time M&M both dig right in, both bean and voicewise, now that they've learned what good it can do. Besides, by next year they'll be 50% more experienced.

THE TALE OF DOKONJO DAIKON

I've always loved daikon; as a vegetable it is very impressive of course, but it is also multiply delicious, whether grated, sliced, grilled, raw or as an ingredient in oden, and it makes a great range of pickles, among other of its uses. But seldom has a root vegetable been so honored as this stalwart individual in the small town of Aoi...

Clacking together each two
chunks of oak firewood
to get the sawdust off
I keep expecting kabuki

HETERARCHY

I've been in all manner of business situations in Japan for over 30 years now and I've never seen an actual angry confrontation, other than once by a clearly mentally unstable individual and once by me, when I was still very American. Those examples are not to be conflated.

"If we are to learn anything from the Japanese, it should be that reduction of conflict always produces a significant increase in efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life.

My study of Japanese business opened my eyes to the power of heterarchy. It is now obvious that all human organizations must master the power of the heterarchy. However, hierarchy is not the villain in this story. For American businesses to throw out hierarchy in a rush to embrace the Japanese way could be a worse mistake than to make no change at all. American businesses are the masters at hierarchy, and here the Japanese can learn something from them."

HETERARCHY: The Secret of Japan, Inc.

YOU'RE NO PURER OF BLOOD THAN ANYONE ELSE, FOLKS; GET USED TO IT

Dinosaurs may be extinct in the immediate sense, but their saurian reflections live on in the blood of many politicians of today, as evidenced here in the prehistoric thinking of former trade minister Takeo Hiranuma:

"If Aiko [daughter of the Crown Prince] becomes the reigning empress and gets involved with a blue-eyed foreigner while studying abroad and marries him, their child may be the emperor." We should never let that happen."

(Whereas if a male becomes the reigning emperor... there would be no such problem? I don't get the logic of that... Maybe imperial males are innately less attracted to foreigners, or more easily conditioned?)

As a blue-eyed, full-blooded foreigner I take offense, of course - what an insulting thing to say - but my worldly blood gives me strength. I have a far more important question: where do they find these people? How do these people attain high office? Seems to be happening all over the world; surely the Japanese, fully intermingled members of the human race and with full access to its wisdom, can come up with something better than pretensions to sanguine sanitation?

I must add the disclaimer that, even though I am a member of the blue-eyed club, and a bona fide mongrel foreigner (here in Japan, 98% of the world is foreign), I have no designs on the daughter of the Crown Prince; she's way too young for me, though no doubt there is a blue-eyed four-year old mongrel earthling boy somewhere who would catch her eye...

And what would be lost to such a future union but the yammering of pureblood wannabes like Hiranuma? I say go for it, Aiko: live your own life, marry whoever calls to your heart, and ignore the dinosaurs. I'd say the same thing if you were male. Welcome to the whole world.

MORALS IN THE MORNING

I was on my way to the office today through the cold city morning where all was gray and misty in the stone and glass canyons filling with the day's noise; empty-windowed buildings closed up tight behind shuttered doors only now beginning to screech open; the sun aslant, peeking in undecided— in short, a time for moral misgivings, jettisoned scruples, uncertainties of every stripe— when out of the raucous mist there came an elder man, leaning on a cane, who tottered up to a couple of those big-eyed, lustbright porn stickers the nightslime glue to everything along the streets (to be found by others awash in the ebb tides of darkness), pulled them from the street sign pole to which they were stuck at eye height (atop the glue of a thousand previous stickers), tore them into pieces and threw them right there on the ground, then tottered on, a living Don Quixote making his daily morning rounds. Good for you, elderfellow.

AD ALTARE DEI

For those who might be interested in particular vagaries of a Catholic boyhood of the ancient 1940s, just posted this at TheBlogBrothers.com...