Rolling them bones in Heian Japan

YESTERDAY I wrote that there’s no telling what might turn up when people start rummaging around in a storeroom in Japan. There’s also no telling what they’ll dig up from an archaeological site.

Here’s an example: While shoveling around in the Okuzono ruins in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, recently, researchers uncovered a die made of rock dating from the late Heian period (11th to the 12th centuries) and about 50 small stones that had been processed for use in sugoroku, go, and hajiki.

Sugoroku is a board game that was brought over from China and has two variations to the rules. One is almost identical to backgammon, and the other is similar to Snakes and Ladders. Hajiki is a Japanese form of marbles, and everyone knows what go is.

The ruins are about 500 meters southwest of the Daizaifu Tenman-gu, a well-known Shinto shrine that had already been around for a couple of centuries before they started shooting the local version of craps nearby. The city’s Committee on Education (which is responsible for archaeological matters) said it was possible the location was a former worksite for people who made games and game equipment. They think the items might have been presented in dedication to the shrine or sold to important people who visited there.

Each side of the die is about 1.1 centimeters across. The opposing sides of modern dice add up to seven, but the arrangement of the numbers on this die is different: on the opposite side of the 6 is a 4, for example.

The stones are of different materials and colors and range in size from 0.8 to 2.0 centimeters.

The part of this story that interests me is not that the Japanese used dice. They, along with the rest of the world, have played dice games for millennia. The part that intrigues me is that the archaeologists think they might have been sold at a religious institution—and no one is particularly surprised.

What the heck–many Shinto shrines in Japan have long held festivals for offering home-brewed sake to the divinities. Now it turns out they also countenanced dice games too, some of which surely involved friendly wagers on the side!

Matsuri da! (83): The iron chefs live!

LONG-TIME FRIENDS know that the Japanese can transform almost any behavior into an act of reverence at a Shinto festival, and here’s yet another example: Slicing and serving sushi.

The Sushikiri Festival (literally sushi-cutting) is held every 5 May at the Shimoniikawa Shinto shrine in Moriyama, Shiga, in supplication for a good harvest, health, and protection from disaster. It is now a national intangible cultural folk treasure.

Rather than professional sushi chefs, the slicing is done by two young men clad in traditional haori (half-coat) and hakama (divided skirt), as you can see in the photo. They use 20-centimeter-long metal chopsticks to hold the fish with their left hands while they carefully cut the fish with exaggerated motions using a 40-centimeter-long knife held in their right hands. (It is unusual to see metal chopsticks in Japan; most are wooden. The metal variety are more frequently seen in Korea.)

The fish on the menu every year is the funa, of which there are several varieties, none of which has a familiar English name (though many of them end in “carp”). The sushi is first cut for and served to the head priest of the shrine and the chairman of the local citizens’ association. In fact, they’re sitting in formal Japanese style directly across from the two men, though they’re not shown in the photo. (Try the second photo here to see them.) The fish is later distributed to the parishioners who’ve come to participate.

And this funa is not just the run-of-the-mill sushi; this treat has been fermented for three or four years before it’s served. The process originally came from China and has been used in Japan for about 1,000 years. The fermentation creates an odor that many people find unappetizing, but the dish has become a noted product of Shiga. (You can read more about it here and here. Those with a scientific turn of mind might find this to be of interest.)
　
The official story is that the festival, formally known as the Omi-no-Kenketo Festival (the sushi cutting is just one part of it) originated when funazushi was given to a divinity who drifted ashore to the banks of Lake Biwa on a raft 1,300 years ago.

But there are other stories too. Shimoniikawa is one of the six shrines in the country with Toyokiirihiko-no-Mikoto, the eldest son of the Sujin Tenno (emperor), as the enshrined deity. Some versions have it that the food was originally served to Toyokiirihiko, which would make the event closer to 2,000 years old.

Suijin is supposed to have been the 10th Tenno, but no one is sure that he actually existed. His reign years are given as 97 BC to 30 BC, which Japanese historians think is implausibly early. (His recorded life span of 119 years is just as implausible.) Accounts in the Nihon Shoki ascribe some of the same exploits to both the legendary first emperor Jimmu and to Suijin, which lead some to believe that the deeds of a Sujin who might have existed were attributed to Jimmu.

Incidentally, the Shimoniikawa shrine was in the news in March this year when it was confirmed that a Buddhist temple bell found in the storage area for the shrine’s mikoshi in May 2007 is the oldest example of a bell with both Japanese and Korean designs discovered in the country.

Cast in 1419, it is the sixth bell of this type to have ever turned up in Japan. Shown in the second photo, it is 40.6 centimeters tall, 23.9 centimeters wide, and weighs 11.2 kilograms. Reports say that it was used in the “Buddhist temple hall”, which suggests the shrine was once a joint Shinto-Buddhist facility of the kind that no longer exist, though that wasn’t explicitly stated. The Japanese decorations are the dragon heads at the top of the bell, while the Korean motifs are the plant and flower designs on the rest of the bell.

And that just goes to show: There’s no telling what you’re liable to stumble over when you start poking around in a storeroom in Japan!

A millenium of elegant pursuits in Japan

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar Wilde

WE’VE ALL SEEN THE NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHS of young Japanese girls in thrall to the fashion extremes of baroquely decorated fingernails, sun lamp skin tones, white eye shadow, and hair the color of beach sand.

But we all know that the modern newspaper is to information what McDonald’s is to nutritious food, and the priority content for the dailies is still that old stand-by, the man-bites-dog feature.

Though it’s the truth that those girls and their male counterparts do exist, it isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s just as true that there still exists here an active interest in an artistic milieu distinguished by a centuries-old sophisticated elegance. All you have to do to see it is point your camera in a different direction and look.

The following events held within the past 10 days are examples of what I mean.

Geisha Fashions

A historical fashion show was presented on the first of the month at Yoshino Park in Kagoshima City, featuring models dressed in the clothing of geisha from the Kanto and Kansai regions at the end of the Edo period (1603-1868). (Kagoshima is in the extreme southwest of the country, and not very close to either the Kanto [Tokyo] or the Kansai [Osaka] regions.)

An added treat was that the park’s cherries were nearing full bloom, so the visitors were able to combine the beauty of a hanami, or flower-viewing party, while drinking in the beauty of the outfits and the models.

The show consisted of two models exhibiting the Kanto outfits and two showing off the attire of their geisha sisterhood in the Kansai. Each was on view for 15 minutes apiece, giving the other three plenty of time to change clothes. (That’s essential with kimono.) Meanwhile, a local instructor in kimono dressing explained to the audience the characteristics of the two styles—including details down to the different methods for tying the obi, or belt—as well as the customs of the age.

Unlike contemporary fashion shows, the audience was allowed access to the models in costume after the show to take photos and to examine the patterns more closely. One woman in the audience, captivated by the experience, said that the kimono were even more gorgeous under the cherry blossoms. Now there’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth!

The Genji Show

The Tale of Genji (also on the right sidebar), commonly agreed to be the masterpiece of Japanese prose literature and the world’s first great novel, is now 1,000 years old. To commemorate its millennium, an event was held in Otsu, Shiga, where Murasaki Shikubu wrote the work at the Ishiyama Temple, which was established in 749. The opening ceremony was a fashion show at a hotel on the shore of Lake Biwa, featuring clothing worn by nobility during the Heian period (794-1185).

Afterwards, those in attendance were treated to a boat ride to the Ishiyama Temple—this is Japan, of course it still exists—to recreate a visit said to have been popular among the Heian nobles. That was followed by a colorful parade in front of the temple gate.

As part of the commemorative events a Genji Dream Gallery was set up on the temple grounds. On display were embroideries depicting famous scenes in the story and robots recreating the characters. This is Japan, of course there were robots!

Hanezu Dancing

Kyoto demonstrated yet again that it is still the capital of sophisticated elegance at the annual Hanezu Dance performed by 21 girls aged 10-12 at the Zuishin-in, a Buddhist temple in the city. Hanezu is said to be a word that describes the color of plum blossoms, which are the inspiration for the headgear the girls are wearing in the photo.

The dance is held to commemorate the early Heian waka poet Ono-no-Komachi, who seems to have been born up north in Akita (where a Shinkansen train and a variety of rice are named after her). She spent the last years of her life at the Kyoto temple, however, and is remembered for her erotic poetry.

The dance itself, which the girls performed four times, recreates the event for which Komachi is still best known. The high-ranking courier Fukukusa no Shosho was madly in love with her, and Komachi promised that she would become his lover if he visited her every night for a hundred nights. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The courier came callling faithfully every night, but failed to make the date once towards the end. Some versions of the story have him becoming ill on the 99th night. The desperate lover was overcome with despair and died. And when Komachi learned of his death, she was overcome with sadness.

As well she might be! Zama miro, as some Japanese could have said–it served her right for playing that age-old game and missing out on the chance to find out just how good a man can be!

But the Japanese don’t say that—it’s just my old Western philistinism reemerging from hibernation. Instead, they’ve kept the story (and her poetry) alive, again for more than a millennium. In fact, novelist and butch militarist Mishima Yukio was so taken by the tale he adapted for the modern stage an older Noh play about her, called Sotoba Komachi. (Here’s a review of his version and here’s a text of the original.) And grade school girls dance in honor to this erotic poet on the grounds of a Buddhist temple that was founded in the year 991 and still exists today.

Really, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims don’t know what they’re missing!

Waka Drinking Party

While the female waka poets played games of love, their male counterparts used to indulge in elegant pursuits of their own, one of which was called kyokusui no en (or sometimes gokusui no en).

This palace amusement originated in China long ago, and became popular in Japan during–you guessed it–the Heian period. Here’s what happens: the poets gather by the side of a brook that passes through a garden. A cup of sake is filled, placed on a platform designed to look like a waterfowl, and floated down the stream. The poet must dash off a poem on the spot, in brush and ink no less, and must drink the sake if he fails to come up with a poem by the time the tray bobs by.

In other words, this is the world’s most cultured drinking game. Fortunately, waka are only 31 syllables long, or else there would be a lot of drunken louts lying on the grass with very little poetry to show for their efforts. (Which is what happened to a lot of Western poets, come to think of it.)

A kyokusui no en was reinstituted in 2001 to celebrate the 1,800th anniversary of the founding of the Ikuta Shinto shrine in Kobe in the year 201—yes, it still exists—and this year’s version was held earlier this week. The party consisted of poets in period costumes and about 300 visitors. The poets included seven members of the prefecture’s waka club and Ido Toshizo, the governor of Hyogo, all of whom wrote waka on the theme of the family.

Hey, if grade school girls can dance in honor of an erotic poet at a Buddhist temple, then grown men can certainly write poetry and drink at a Shinto shrine if they want!

Four different events in four different cities in fewer than 10 days…looks like a pattern to me!

If your taste runs to those girls with the gloopy fashion and makeup (and let’s face it, they wouldn’t resort to camouflage if they were all that attractive to begin with), then all I can say is, bon appétit! They aren’t the only game in town.

Postscript
A representative from the Japan Waka Club came to Kobe for the Kyokusui no En, and contributed the following poem before the sake cup floated by:

老いふたり
かそかに生くるわが家にも
光あれよと白梅の咲く

I might have the line breaks wrong on that. I pretty much stick to translating modern Japanese, not having much time to study the older forms of the language nor the talent for poetry. But it would be fun to see what someone else can come up with!

And don’t pass up the photos of the Ishiyama Temple!

National Diet Library photo exhibit

THE NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY is now presenting an e-exhibit of photos from the Meiji and Taisho eras (1868-1925) selected from its archives. Here’s the best part: the explanatory material is in both Japanese and English. The photographs are of sites in the Kansai region, which includes Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

If you’re a sucker for historical photos, now’s your chance! You’ll find the English version here.

There’s also a permanent link to the National Diet Library on the right sidebar.

Kicking the smoking habit in 19th century Japan

ONE OF THE FIRST no-smoking signs in Japan has been discovered in a Shinto shrine in Hokuto, Hokkaido.

Well, it’s not really a sign—it’s actually called an ema in Japanese, or votive tablet, and it hung in a local farmhouse about 120 years ago. Two young men wrote a prayer on it asking for the strength to swear off smoking. The tablet is 60 centimeters high and 30 centimeters wide, and contains a 50-centimeter-long kiseru, an old-fashioned pipe that was used to toke single hits of tobacco. The pipe is made from the wood of the Japanese angelica tree, otherwise known as aralia elata.

The tablet was found hanging on the wall of the main hall of the Fumitsuki Inari Shinto shrine, which was built in the early 19th century. If anyone knows how it got from the wall of a farmhouse to the wall of a Shinto shrine, they’re not talking. Also written on the ema is the date and the names of the two men who offered the dedication. It often happens in Japan that examining one aspect of a historical matter brings several others to light, and this is no exception–a little digging discovered that one of the men was the descendant of the first farmer to successfully cultivate rice in Hokkaido in 1692.

The local historian who found it (the 83-year-old gentleman on the right in the photo) observed that it was an interesting example of folk history that conveys the struggles people went through to give up the habit, and that it might be the first item of its kind found in Hokkaido. The historian, incidentally, has been visiting Hokkaido’s Shinto shrines since 1989 to examine about 500 of these tablets. According to the Japanese Tobacco and Salt Museum, several old votive tablets using kiseru have been discovered throughout the country, which leads them to believe it was once a custom to offer a prayer for some help in kicking the devil weed.

The Museum should know: take a look at this older post on the institution, or visit their website here or on the right sidebar.

Did the ema work? Who knows, but they were probably as effective as nicotine replacement therapy, nicotine chewing gum, nicotine patches, inhalers, nasal sprays, the prescription drug bupropion hydrochloride, videos, support groups, toothpicks, or beating the dog. Statistics show that 90% of the long-term smokers who quit did so by going cold turkey!

Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims?

IF YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE the newspaper narratives, the Japanese nation denies or chooses to ignore its behavior during the first half of the 20th century, while the Koreans were innocent victims of that behavior.

That might be the price one pays for choosing to swallow the mass media product, but then sometimes the antidote to that particular poison can be found in a surprising place—such as a Korean newspaper!

Here’s an example: Earlier this month, the Choson Ilbo of South Korea published an article titled Were Koreans Oppressors in the War, or its Victims? The piece gives readers a glimpse of a reality more complicated than that usually presented in the popular press.

It is in fact a review of a book recently released in South Korea called A Metahistory of Korean-Japanese Disputes over Historical Awareness. (It doesn’t seem to be available in Japanese yet.) The newspaper (poorly) translated their own article into Japanese, and I’ve tried to render it into English because I think the information it conveys should be more widely known. Please keep in mind that what you see after the process went from Korean to Japanese to English (and in one excerpt from English to Korean to Japanese to English) is probably not what people higher up the linguistic chain got.

The Choson Ilbo chopped up the review into three separate pieces for some reason, so I’ve put them all into one place. I’m not sure how well-written the original was, but the situation is what it is. Hereafter, the voice is that of the reviewer, Yu Seok-je.

*****

A 19-year-old youth born in the colony of Korea volunteered to serve in the Japanese military. He rose to the rank of first lieutenant in the army and became a member of the kamikaze special attack squadron. Before leaving on his mission, he made a sound recording of his will for family members back home. The disc on which that will was recorded was discovered decades later. The voice cutting through the noise on an old record was by no means filled with sadness. It was the powerful voice of a first lieutenant in the Japanese army who pledged his loyalty to “His Majesty the Emperor”, and wished for the health of his parents. After his death in battle, he was enshrined with 26,000 other Koreans in the Yasukuni Shrine.

There was a surprising response to a television documentary broadcast three years ago that contained this information. Previously, one constant in Korean society was that the mention of the word Japan, with its negative image, would create a frenzied reaction. This time, however, there was no reaction at all.

Why was that? It was because these people were victims who, it was claimed, died an unjust death, while at the same time, serving as officers in the Japanese military and shouting Tenno Heika, Banzai! (Long live the Emperor!) In the decades-long debate about the faction friendly to Japan (during the colonial/merger period), dominated by the Korean-Japanese problem, there were no means available to offer an explanation about them.
　
The editors of this book are Kan-Nichi Rentai 21 (Korea-Japan Solidarity 21), a group consisting of Korean and Japanese intellectuals launched in 2004 to seek a new Korean-Japanese relationship appropriate for the 21st century. They are searching for a means to achieve solidarity by examining themselves and achieving a more mature viewpoint that transcends the antagonistic relationship that has arisen between the two countries. In brief, they now want to leave behind the intolerant nationalism with which one party views the other for a closer study of history. That’s why the authors of this book have chosen to step back from knee-jerk nationalism itself and develop a new viewpoint of their own through self-reflection.
　
The book So Far from the Bamboo Grove (In Japanese, Yoko’s Story) touched off a dispute about historical awareness last year. (Note: This is a semi-autobiographical novel by Yoko Kawashima Watkins describing a Japanese family’s escape from northern Korea at the end of World War II. The father was serving there as a government official during the colonial/merger period.) Commenting on the book, UC San Diego literature professor Lisa Yoneyama said, “Yoko’s Story closely resembles that of A Little Princess (a 1905 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett). Both have the backdrop of a colonialist history that is not American and leave the impression that the United States is not connected with the history of colonial rule. That’s why mainstream American society appreciated Yoko’s Story as a book depicting the suffering of war. In this book, the historical background of Japanese colonial rule in Korea is wiped clean. This is related to the lack of historical awareness in the United States of their own colonial domination of others.”

Also commenting on Yoko’s Story was Professor Shin Hyon-gi of Yonsei University: “The dispute regarding this book began drawing nationalistic battle lines over the war in memory. Moreover, there was a sense of outrage that the Japanese, in their memories, considered themselves the victims. If you think about it carefully, however, (you’ll wonder) is it true that all Koreans were victims and all Japanese were always the victimizers? Talking about the experience of cruel persecution and ordeals is one way to achieve a collective identity. A clear line of distinction is drawn between the “good Korea” and the others, who are the villains. But crushing the memory of the Japanese does not mean that the memory of Koreans has won.”

Thus the book extends the horizon of thought into “troubling territory” that had been viewed as taboo in both countries. The victims in the victimized country have raised their voices to censure the victimizers in the oppressor country. But neither the victims in the oppressor country nor the oppressors in the victimized country are visible in this construct. No clear distinction can be made between victimization and victimhood, and the construct is both compound and multilayered. When the nationalism of both countries is in conflict, there is no place for one to stand in the rapids.

The Japanese wives have been forgotten by nearly everyone. Professor Kano Mikiyo of Keiwa College asserts that the problems of the past are by no means resolved. In the latter half of the 1930s, the policy of forming a unified whole of Japan and the colony of Korea (in Japanese, the naisen ittai policy) led to the strong encouragement of intermarriage. There were 5,458 marriages between Koreans and Japanese from the years 1938 to 1943, and of these 3,964, or 73%, were between Korean men and Japanese women. Most Japanese women stayed in Korea (after the war), and according to a 1975 survey, 73% of the remaining 956 women were in the economic classification of poverty or extreme poverty.

Professor Kano said, “The backdrop to the tragedy of these Japanese wives is the tacit acceptance of their fate in the patriarchal systems of both countries. In Japanese society, Korean men, who were ethnically weaker, were stronger both socially and culturally in gender terms under the patriarchy. Fixing up these men with the women of the stronger (Japanese) group exacerbated their self-esteem as males. Did this really achieve a balance by promoting equality?”

Considerations of the “troublesome territory” continue. Professor Lee Yon-hun of Seoul National University was critical of the explanation written in a South Korean history textbook that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”.

In regard to the argument that the Class A war criminals should be separated from the rest of those venerated in Yasukuni Shrine, Prof. Takahashi Tetsuya of the University of Tokyo worries this would be a “dangerous scenario”. “After the Class A war criminals were separated, the war dead who were involved in Japanese invasions overseas before 1928, and who had no connection with the invasions after 1928, would remain enshrined. Once the Class A war criminals were removed, if the Yasukuni Shrine were to become operated by the state and visits by the Tenno (Emperor) were possible, it could be used as a device for supporting Japanese military activity.”

The critical weakness of this book is that the opinions and assertions of the 18 Korean and Japanese authors, and the logic of those assertions, are not unified. One possible interpretation is that the lowest common denominator for the authors is simply that they have removed themselves from the line of sight of nationalism, with which many people have been permeated. As the book itself states, if that is the case, as heated disputes with a multiplicity of viewpoints rage with no one offering a conclusion or a proper answer, its significance can only be discovered by considering it as one attempt to identify their common ground.

Endnotes

I’m not sure why Mr. Yu thinks the lack of a unified voice is a drawback; it is inevitable there will be a wide range of viewpoints in an issue such as this, and I think it is worth drawing attention to them.

The group Korea–Japan Solidarity 21 recently published a textbook examining the war that was written by Japanese, Korean, and Chinese historians. Nothing by that group is available on Japanese Amazon.com, however.

It is interesting to note that a textbook is apparently in use in South Korea with the claim that “Japanese imperialism stole 40% of Korean territory”. Who knew that such a textbook existed? Yet everyone knows about a Japanese textbook that glides over the same period in history–everyone except students in Japanese schools, because only a miniscule micropercentage of them even use it.

It is unfortunate that all the Japanese cited in the review are academic leftists; Prof. Yoneyama in particular seems to have permanently pitched a tent out in left field. Here is her profile on her university’s site, in which she tells us as much about her cat as she does her “partner”. The professor is rather upset at the success of So Far from the Bamboo Grove, as you can tell from this article in the English-language version of The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper. Here is a plot summary of A Little Princess; I haven’t read either book, but to think the two are comparable seems like something dreamt up by a college literature professor with an axe to grind and time on her hands. She’s offended that Ms. Watkins wrote the book, and she’s offended that Americans like it.

Extend the logic of her argument and one would expect her to be attacking Gone with the Wind for its portrayal of slaveholders on a plantation during the American Civil War.

It is worthwhile for people outside Japan to realize that viewpoints such as those of Prof. Takahashi exist, even though the scenario he postulates here is as likely to occur nowadays as a cow jumping over the moon. His Japanese language website describes him as an enthusiastic participant in the Peace Boat voyages to South Korea and Pyeongyang. (Members of their cruises also met several times with Yasser Arafat.)

The Peace Boat project was the brainchild of a group that included Tsujimoto Kiyomi, a member of the lower house of the Diet in the Social Democratic Party (formerly the Socialist Party). She was forced to resign in a financial scandal, and was later reelected through the proportional representation system. She is also suspected of, at minimum, having ties to the Japanese Red Army terrorist group. Others think she funneled them money.

It would be interesting to know if a wider spectrum of Japanese political opinion is represented in Korea-Japan Solidarity 21. There are other currents in contemporary Japanese-Korean relations, after all. For example, former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, a conservative/traditionalist, is the chair of the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians’ Union; an assistant executive director of the same group is former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo!

Japan’s Okina-mai: The old man’s dance

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING IN THE WATER in Nara. Dancing isn’t usually an old man’s pastime, unless it’s a sedate fox trot at a senior citizen’s home or on board a cruise ship. But the performance of the Okina-mai—literally, the Old Man’s Dance—is almost as old as the hills in that city and is still performed today. It dates from the Nara period in the early 8th century.

As the name of the era suggests, Nara was where the action was in Japan in those days. Could the period have been so vibrant that even the old guys were inspired to trip the light fantastic?

It might have been, but it would be difficult to tell from watching the Okina-mai itself. The dance is thought to be the origin of Noh, the performance of which is rather stately and formalized. Now an important intangible folk and cultural treasure of the nation, the Okina-mai is performed annually every fall at the Narazuhiko Shinto shrine.

The story goes that the song-and-dance was first presented to cheer up the convalescing Kasuga’o, the son of the Imperial prince Shiki-no-miko, who himself was either the seventh or the third son of the Tenji tenno (emperor), depending on whose story you believe.

As you can see from the photo, the dancers wear masks, but that development didn’t occur until about 500 years later on during the Muromachi period. The Japanese have never been shy about playing around with their traditions–even ones that are 500 years old.

Today the Okina-mai is performed outdoors at night on the shrine grounds, with the site illuminated by small bonfires. That might well be another relatively recent development; if the story of the origin is true, it doesn’t seem likely that a convalescent would have been carried outdoors to watch an 8th century musical in the chilly autumn weather.

Then again, Okayama Zen’ichiro of Tenri University published an article in 2004 titled “On (the) Okina-mai Dance of Narazuhiko Jinja Shrine and Dongdong Koryo”. Unfortunately, the text of the article is not on line, but the latter seems to have been a Korean court dance. Is Prof. Okayama suggesting there are similarities? It might not be out of the question—there was a significant migration from the Korean Peninsula to the Nara area in the 8th century.

Be that as it may, you’ll find a brief explanation of the masks used in the dance with a photo here. (“Gigaku” in the text refers to an ancient mask show that was brought to Japan from China by a Korean musician, and let that be a lesson to you about East Asia!) And here’s a YouTube video showing the Okina-mai performed at a different location. (Note: It’s nine minutes long and the narration is in Japanese.)

Kasuga’o eventually recovered, but his brother was the one who went on to make a name for himself—he became the Konin tenno. And their father Prince Shiki made another contribution to Japanese history by composing six of the poems collected in the Manyoshu, the oldest existing anthology of Japanese poetry. (The most recent datable poem was written in 759.)

Last year’s performance of the Okina-mai attracted about 600 people. That’s a pretty good turnout to watch a 1,300-year-old-dance for old men!

Sentaku: Getting Japan to choose

日本を今一度せんたくいたし申候
I want to clean up Japan once and for all.
- Sakamoto Ryoma

THERE’S A REASON the activist group Sentaku chose this statement by Sakamoto Ryoma (1834-1867), a citizen-activist himself, as the inspiration for its activities and the name of its organization. Sentaku in Japanese means both to choose and to clean. (They are homonyms.)

Sakamoto lived during a time of yeasty ferment in Japanese history—the old order had succumbed to entropy, and a new order was struggling to be born. When Commodore Perry brought his black ships into Tokyo Bay in 1853, Japan was a technologically backward nation whose political structure was the very essence of top-down rule. It had been governed for 250 years by the Tokugawa shoguns, hereditary military dictators who strictly enforced the country’s isolation. Local government consisted of about 260 feudal domains, and an oppressive class structure stunted the nation’s growth.

A self-described “potato digger from Tosa” (now Kochi Prefecture) and a masterless samurai, Sakamoto at first wanted to expel the barbarian foreigners, but later came to admire the Western system of representative government and free trade with other nations. He played a key role in the events that led to the downfall of the Tokugawa regime when he and others convinced the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, to resign rather than face open rebellion. That finally placed Japan on the road to modernization and interaction with the world.

Sakamoto expressed the motive for his desire to make Japan choose when he write in a letter to his sister that his intent was to “clean up Japan once and for all.”

It’s Yesterday Once More

Today, Japan’s stagnant political system shares some of the characteristics of the terminal stage Shogunate that Sakamoto wished to scrub out. Entropy has had its way with the postwar paradigm of the so-called Iron Triangle: rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (the original grand coalition), the bureaucracy, and business interests working hand in glove.

This system once worked to Japan’s advantage because it allowed the country to pull itself up by its bootstraps in the space of a generation from the havoc wreaked by the war and climb into the ranks of the advanced industrialized nations, creating in the process the world’s second largest economy.

But the arrangements that allowed Japan to remake itself have become an obstacle to its continued progress now that success has been achieved. No iron triangle has the flexibility to permit a country to move swiftly and freely in a modern global economy and to reap the benefits of the unfettered talents of individual citizens acting on their own behalf. Iron becomes encrusted with corrosive layers of vested interests more interested in gaining the political upper hand and feathering their own nest rather than in the national welfare.

The behavior of national government is stifling the emergence of the reforms necessary for the sustaining the country’s prosperity and well-being, and the political class at the national level is more often part of the problem rather than part of the solution. While significant elements within the ruling LDP would follow the path to reform created by its icebreaker, former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro, they are stymied by the party’s ties to the bureaucracy and vested interests.

There are reformists among the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, but the party lacks integrity in both senses of the word–it is composed of incompatible elements incapable of action as a cohesive unit without strict top-down party discipline, and its behavior in the Diet as a party seems designed only to create a Nagata-cho sturm-und-drang that would allow it to take power. Had the near-desperate electorate of Japan approved of their behavior, they would have given the party a mandate to form a government years ago.

But as in the latter days of the Tokugawas, a yeasty ferment is at work in today’s Japan that would transform Japan from the ground up.

One problem plaguing Japanese politics and society is that the traditional reliance on top-down control creates a tendency toward what the French call dirigisme, or government control and intervention, especially in business activity or the economy.

There’s no better illustration than the story former Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro told about his experience as the governor of Kumamoto Prefecture when he tried to move the location of a bus stop. “For an advanced country,” he explained, “this is embarrassing. To move the stop a few hundred meters, I had to send a delegation to Tokyo. In Japan, you can’t tie your own shoes without official permission.”

Many in Japan fed up with this state of affairs see in the current political stalemate an opportunity to finally generate a wave of reform from regional areas that would engulf and wash the center. The Sentaku group was formed with the same intention as that expressed by Sakamoto Ryoma: to clean up Japan by having it choose.

Sentaku: Choose Clean!

Officially launched on January 20, the group’s full name roughly translates to The People’s Federation for Cleaning (Choosing) Japan by the Regions and Individual Citizens.

One of the group’s founding members and its representative is Kitagawa Masayasu, who understands local Japanese politics from the inside out. A former governor of Mie Prefecture who retired voluntarily from politics after serving two terms, he is now a Waseda University professor and head of the Waseda University Political Platform Research Institute.

This is not a spur-of-the-moment commitment by Mr. Kitagawa—he has been involved with promoting bottom-up government in Japan for some years. In a speech earlier this decade, he declared:

“The excessive concentration of government and business organizations in Tokyo has resulted in a serious decline in the health of the regions. Those local governments with the intent to create reform will work together to change our social systems from the local level. Rather than fearing mistakes, it is more appropriate for us to move forward with a positive attitude and correct any mistakes. Fair competition among regional governments will surely spur our communities to engage in the reform of society.”

He is aware of the magnitude of his task. In an interview conducted a few years ago, he noted:

With local politics, it’s bad enough that the media doesn’t cover the chief executives, but they don’t even cover the prefectural assemblies. That’s both the national media and the local media.

At the Tokyo press conference held to unveil the group in January, Mr. Kitagawa explained that Sentaku was an organization for promoting true political reform for the next lower house election, expected sometime later this year. Considering Mr. Kitagawa’s long commitment to local reform and the ideas of the people he has brought on board, it seems likely that the organization’s efforts will continue after the election.

Sentaku’s parent organization is the Citizen’s Council to Create a New Japan, whose membership consists of leading figures in the private sector. That group has focused its efforts on having political parties and groups throughout the nation formulate specific policy platforms and present them to the public to offer them a choice. These goals are congruent with Mr. Kitagawa’s current efforts at the Waseda institute he heads.

At the inaugural press conference, Mr. Kitagawa seemed to be channeling Sakamoto Ryoma when he said:

“Today’s Diet is incapable of conducting debate that seeks a choice from the citizens and a systemic policy. Both the regions and the citizens still view the central government as their lord and master. We will provide a platform for encouraging serious debate among the parties and politicians.”

Specifically, Sentaku’s goals are the following:

• Reform citizen awareness, including the Japanese approach to living and working
• Achieve devolution to break free from (the ties of) the bureaucracy and central government authority and to achieve responsible political leadership
• Promote citizen debate focusing on policy that is based on regions, areas, and individual citizens, and rework the concept of the state. Cast aside the postwar democracy that leaves (policy decisions) to the politicians. Make the parties create and present specific platforms.

Mr. Kitagawa stressed that the group has no plans to endorse candidates. “We’re not a party. We’re offering a venue for debate.” He also noted Sentaku was not necessarily opposed to the idea of a grand coalition of the type discussed late last year by Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro.

Addressing Sentaku’s agenda for the immediate future, he said:

“We should have each political party present their platforms about major issues on which no agreement has been reached, and hold a general election for choosing a policy-based government.”

He also stated during the press conference:

“We are aware that this is an extremely important year that will determine Japan’s future. Yet, looking at current conditions in the government, the ruling and opposition parties, and the Diet, we are forced to say that they are far removed from the citizens’ expectations…Our past group has promoted the verification and evaluation of the platforms of the political parties, but the situation today is that those activities are insufficient. The role of Sentaku will be to seek the parties to fulfill their responsibility to explain by formulating policies and actively expressing our opinions from the citizens’ perspective in the process of creating platforms.”

The politician turned professor is not leading a solitary charge. The roster, background, and views of other founding members of the group offer an intriguing glimpse of the yeasty ferment at work at the subnational level in Japan and the diversity of the country’s political and social thought. Here are profiles of some of the members.

Matsuzawa Shigefumi

Mr. Matsuzawa is in his second term as the governor of Kanagawa Prefecture (where the city of Yokohama is located). He is a graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, an academy for training a new generation of politicians with a long-term vision for the nation’s future. It was established in 1979 by Matsushita Konosuke, the founder of consumer electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial, when he became distressed by the direction of Japanese politics a generation ago.

A former member of the small Progressive Party (formed by the members of a slightly larger group who chose not to merge with the LDP), he became the youngest prefectural assembly member in Kanagawa history. Mr. Matsuzawa later joined the opposition DPJ and won election to the Diet, and was quickly enlisted into the party’s shadow cabinet. A proponent of Constitutional reform and a resolute stance against the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens, he ran against Kan Naoto for the party leadership, but lost. He left the DPJ in 2003 and won election as governor later that year. His political hero is former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr. Matsuzawa describes his vision for Sentaku:

“The perpetual crises generated by the two major parties are not the way to save Japan. Our objective is to have the national government implement true reform in their platforms. We will pressure the political parties to create real platforms and ask the citizens to make a choice. If devolution continues, we can smash the centralized authority of the bureaucracy and create a dynamic Japan.”

Yamada Keiji

The Governor of the Kyoto Metropolitan District, Mr. Yamada has chaired a committee in the National Governors’ Conference focusing on the devolution of governmental authority.

Furukawa Yasushi

When elected governor of Saga Prefecture in 2003, he became the youngest governor in the country. Mr. Furukawa initially entered governmental service when he joined the former Ministry of Home Affairs, now the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. He has extensive experience in working with local governments to implement reorganization and promote local development. He was asked to consider running for governor of other prefectures, including Nagano Prefecture, where he was once assigned, but returned to serve in his home prefecture of Saga.

Higashikokubaru Hideo

The bien pensant pundits of Japan are quick to dismiss Mr. Higashikokubaru (on the left in the photo) because of his previous career as a comedian and the boorish, roughhouse behavior of his younger days. A former protégé of comedian, film director, and television personality Beat Takeshi, known internationally by his original name of Takeshi Kitano, the man once known as Sonomanma Higashi was arrested in 1986 when he got carried away with himself during a visit with his boss and a few other cohorts to the offices of a weekly magazine to complain about its coverage of Mr. Kitano.

After this and several other unflattering incidents, Mr. Higashikokubaru literally decided to clean up his act. He suspended public performances, started practicing Zen, and was admitted to Waseda University in 2000. By all accounts, his academic record was superb, and he graduated in 2004 at the age of 46. The subject of his graduation thesis was election campaigns. When the former governor of Miyazaki Prefecture, Ando Tadahiro, was arrested for bribery, Mr. Higashikokubaru saw his chance and returned to his childhood home to run for office, winning handily against an LDP-backed opponent.

His ability to handle a crisis was immediately tested by an outbreak of avian flu in his largely rural prefecture, which accounts for the production of 25% of the chickens consumed in Japan. He also assumed office at a time when scandals involving slush funds were coming to light throughout the country and the Kyushu region in particular. Mr. Higashikokubaru instructed prefectural employees to come clean about any potential problems. He suceeded beyond his expectations: through his efforts the prefecture recovered roughly 91.5 million yen (about $US 883,500) generated by illegal slush funds, exceeding the 76 million yen he had targeted. The money included cash returned by the disgraced former Governor Ando and the family of the late former Governor Matsukata Suketaka

While his celebrity is undoubtedly a factor, his constituents are thrilled by his no-frills style and his tireless promotion of the products of his prefecture; at one point last year his disapproval rating was under 2%. He has become famous nationally for using a phrase in the local dialect, “Miyazaki wo dogenkasen to ikan” (We must do something about Miyazaki.)

Mr. Higashikokubaru’s current efforts mesh perfectly with the objectives of Sentaku. While campaigning for election, the governor repeatedly emphasized that his goal was to achieve political reform in the prefecture and spread those reforms nationwide. Explaining the rationale for joining the group, he said:

“I can’t see any national vision or strategy. Isn’t it time to question the approach of the country as a whole, when politics is so stagnant and confused? This (Sentaku) is not a third force between the ruling and opposition parties. Both the opposition and the government parties should offer policies easily understood by the citizens, and allow them to be the standard by which a government is chosen. I want to speak to the national government from a regional perspective.”

He also said, “The reason (the group was formed) was dissatisfaction and distrust in the national government. It will not be possible (to put) regional finances (on a solid footing) without a debate on the consumption tax. The citizens are seeking a real forum for debate.”

Some have suggested that one flaw in Sentaku’s original membership roster was their failure to include a person associated with the media. This suggestion overlooks that Mr. Higashikokubaru is a media magnet who attracts publicity with little effort. (See here, here, and here for previous Ampontan articles about the governor.)

Ikeda Morio

Mr. Ikeda is the former president and chairman of Shiseido, the major cosmetics company, and is now a senior advisor to the firm. He was a member of the so-called Education Rebuilding Council, a group established by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo for the reform of Japanese education, which was since disbanded by his successor Mr. Fukuda.

Mogi Yuzaburo

Mr. Mogi is the chairman of the food products company Kikkoman. A graduate of the Columbia School of Business in 1961, he thus became the first Japanese to be awarded an MBA. Kikkoman enjoyed extraordinary success under his leadership. Mr. Mogi believes in training people with an international perspective for the era of globalization, and thinks the key to success for Japanese enterprises abroad is to form ties with local communities and rely on local personnel instead of sending Japanese from the home office.

Koga Nobuaki

Mr. Koga is the primary representative of organized labor. He is the former President of the Japanese Electrical, Electronic and Information Union and is now an official with Rengo, the Japanese Trade Union Confederation

Sasaki Takeshi

The former president of the University of Tokyo, Mr. Sasaki’s area of specialization is the history of Western political thought. He tried to reform the structure of the university (known in Japan for its conservative approach) but was defeated for reelection. He was awarded the Japanese Medal of Honor (Medal with Purple Ribbon) for his service.

Sentaku has succeeded in attracting more reform-minded local politicians to its cause since its inauguration six weeks ago. These include:

Terata Sukeshiro

The popular governor of Akita Prefecture, he initially ran at the request of DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro when the latter headed the small New Frontier party. He won despite the opposition of the LDP, which has continued since his election.

Kada Yukiko

Shiga Prefecture Governor Kada has a doctor’s degree in agriculture and is the fifth woman to serve as the governor of a Japanese prefecture. Still in her first term, she campaigned on a platform of freezing public works projects, including the construction of six dams and a new Shinkansen station. (This stance is often a winner among the Japanese public and just as often earns the enmity of the long-entrenched political interests allied with the construction industry.)

Her political philosophy as governor is that leaders at the local level should transcend political parties and treat the prefecture’s citizens as their party, echoing the same theme presented by Mr. Higashikokubaru in Miyazaki Prefecture. Neither of the two major parties supported her during her election campaign–the DPJ, ironically, because of her opposition to the Shinkansen station. She wound up with the support of the Social Democrats, a small party that contains what is left of the former Socialist Party, and defeated the candidate backed by the LDP, the DPJ, and New Komeito.

Ms. Kada already has succeeded in freezing the construction of the Shinkansen station by refusing to prepare a budget for the related expenditures, which nearly embroiled her in a lawsuit that sought to recover damages.

Sentaku’s membership also includes the nation’s youngest mayor, 35-year-old Kunisada Isato of Sanjo, Niigata.

Joining in late February was Kojima Zenkichi, the mayor of Shizuoka City. Mr. Kojima explained that Japan was in a critical period in the second stage of reform for devolution. He said he wanted to work with the group to increase regional authority now that debate at the national level is stalled, which has created a sense of crisis among local governments. The Diet, said Mr. Kojima, is tied up in the issue of the gasoline tax and the road funds and there is little discussion reform or devolution. Sentaku, he believes, is the means to get the Diet to pay more attention.

To be fair, not every local politician is on board. Itoh Yuichiro, the governor of Kagoshima Prefecture, carped to the press, “I don’t know why (Sentaku) is necessary. It’s the job of the mass media to conduct debate regarding various issues and to create a venue for the exchange of opinions.” (Since Mr. Itoh was speaking to a reporter, it should be no surprise that his interviewer failed to follow up by asking why the mass media has so dismally failed to fulfill this function.)

Diet Liaison Group

When Sentaku was launched in January, Mr. Kitagawa also said he would seek the formation of a group consisting of members of the national Diet to work together to implement the group’s goals for the next lower house election:

We also will call on Diet members of all parties who agree with our activities and aims to form a new federation among themselves. We can provide the MPs with a platform for the debate required.

The formation of that group was announced on 3 March with the participation of 110 members from four parties, much more than the originally anticipated 70. Unlike the main Sentaku group, this is expected to be a temporary body for promoting the group’s aims in the next lower house election, expected to be held later this year.

The point was explicitly made that the Diet liaison group was not created to promote political realignment, which is the defining trend in Japanese politics at the national level and the backdrop to the tactical maneuvers of both parties that are ostensibly related to national policy. Prominent DPJ Diet member Noda Yoshihiko had this to say on his participation: “I am not one of those seeking a political realignment. I want to form a government without the LDP. I am interested in (a system) in which governments are formed alternately by the two parties.”

Kyoto Governor Yamada also explained the need for this liaison group: “The opposition of central government agencies has prevented debate on devolution. This way we can avoid the distorted connection with (the bureaucracy).”

Not everyone is sanguine about the prospects of success for the Diet liaison group. In an editorial, the Nishinippon Shimbun wondered if it would be able to focus on policy-based reform, considering that most Diet members are conducting themselves with an eye on political realignment. The newspaper also wondered whether this group would subvert the goals of Sentaku by serving as the means to accelerate the creation of alliances of politicians of different parties and lead to talks for another grand coalition. Indeed, the newspaper reported that one MP from Kyushu was instructed by his faction leader to attend the inaugural meeting for the specific purpose of confirming who was present.

Regardless of how its relationship with the Diet evolves, Sentaku now counts among its members 144 heads of local government, including 13 of the 47 prefectural governors. They have formed four committees to examine policy alternatives, including one for Diet reform and one for the reform of the bureaucracy and political leadership. The group has without question established a beachhead for itself as a vehicle for people of intelligence and accomplishment throughout the country who have long been dismayed at the inability of national politicians and other leaders to see beyond their immediate interests and recognize that without change Japan is headed toward a dead end. (Indeed, I am aware of no similar group anywhere else in the Western world; certainly no such group with anything approaching the credentials of Sentaku exists in the United States)

In the days of the post-bubble economy, the Asahi Shimbun asked executives of 200 Japanese corporations who from the past 1,000 years of world history, regardless of nationality, would be most useful in overcoming Japan’s financial crisis. The winner of the poll? Sakamoto Ryoma, the man who midwifed the birth of the modern Japanese state.

Most of the public shares Sakamoto’s desire to have the country choose a thorough cleaning, once and for all. The enthusiasm for Sentaku evinced by local politicians of different political backgrounds shows that the spirit for bottom-up reform is still alive and well.

This time, they might finish the job that Sakamoto Ryoma started.

The Imperial warehouses

THE SMITHSONIAN in Washington D.C. is sometimes referred to as America’s attic. While it is primarily the repository for items of historical value, it is also the storage place for objects that are more curiosity than treasure and part of the country’s cultural legacy only in the aggregate.

There is a group of buildings in Japan that serve a similar function, though they are not open to the public and not widely known. That’s the Gyofu, a cluster of wooden warehouses on the southern end of the Fukiage Gardens in the Imperial Palace.

They were originally used to store the spoils of war. Each of the five buildings in the group has a name that ends with the suffix –fu. In each of the five was kept the booty taken from overseas in military campaigns.

Specifically, the Shintenfu was the repository for items from the Japan-China war, the Kaienfu was for items from the North China Incident (the start of the second war with China), the Kenanfu stored the items from the Japan-Russia war, the Junmeifu held the spoils from the Siberian Intervention (1918-1925), and the Kenchufu was the warehouse for the plunder and souvenirs from the Manchurian and Shanghai incidents.

The Korosei Rock, a symbol of the relationship between T’ang Dynasty China and Bohai (a kingdom that existed in Northern China and the Korean Peninsula from 698-926), was taken from China to Japan during the Japan-Russia War and is still standing in the front garden of the Kenanfu (the building shown in the photo). All the other items from overseas were returned to their countries of origin after the war.

The buildings of the Gyofu still serve as warehouses, however; they are used for the storage of the possessions of the current emperor, some of the art donated to the country by the Imperial Household after the death of the Showa Emperor, and the implements used for palace ceremonies.

According to those who have gotten a glimpse of the interior of these buildings, they just have an open space with no dividing walls or shelving. All the stored items are placed seemingly at random inside.

Though the buildings are old, they were solidly built and are still in good shape. The people responsible for their design and construction were part of the Takumiryo, a group of builders and craftsmen in the former Imperial Household Ministry. That group was also involved with the construction of other parts of the Imperial Palace and the Tokyo National Museum.

The Gyofu are located in a part of the palace grounds where entry is highly restricted, so they are almost never seen by anyone without a reason for being there. But there is one exception: the Suwa teahouse in the East Gardens, a popular site for strollers that is open to the public. The building is actually the Kaienfu, which was moved to this location and rebuilt. It was decided to move it in 1968 when the plans for the East Garden were formulated because its distinctively Japanese appearance was thought to blend in well with the surrounding area.

It’s a shame the rest aren’t available for viewing by the public, but they are just storehouses, so they wouldn’t be the most appropriate place for public exhibitions. Then again, there’s no reason why the Korosei Rock should still be there. It should have been returned to China long ago.

The Chinese would like to have it back, of course, but to their credit, they seem to be asking for the return in the spirit of bilateral friendship rather than making strident demands. Here’s the Japanese-language explanation of the history of the object and the Chinese viewpoint on the website of the Chinese Embassy in Japan, as written by Xinhua. China sent a team to this country to examine the rock, but the Imperial Household Agency, perhaps the most backward government organization in the country, refused to let them see it. They gave the team photographs instead.

It’s an object of historical and cultural importance from China that belongs in China. Why should it be sitting on a plot of land