"I am become death, the shatterer of worlds"

Of all the articles I've read on the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, this article by journalist Larry Calloway is among the very best. The firsthand accounts by ordinary citizens who were shocked and stunned by the mysterious, otherworldly blast from the test bomb detonated in New Mexico in July 1945 make this article especially riveting.

Hiromi

East Village
Manhattan

On gossamer wings
a butterfly
arrives from across the ocean

I taught English in a junior high school during the three years I lived in rural Japan, from 1995 to 1998. During that time, Hiromi was one of my students. She was about 11 when we first met. Now she is a beautiful young woman of 23. Watching her grow up has been such a wonderful experience for me. I've also become friends with her mother and younger sister. They are like a second family to me.

Hiromi spent 10 months in Manhattan studying English at a language school. She returned home in February. On Friday, I had the good fortune to pick her up at the airport for a one-week visit.
Yesterday, we spent a great day having lunch and exploring Greenwich Village and the East Village, two of her favorite neighborhoods.

Her visit has rejuvenated me. Yesterday I was able to walk with little pain or discomfort, and her enthusiasm and fresh perspective on things were like a restorative tonic.

The timing of her visit was exquisite because I don't know if I will ever have the chance to revisit Japan, circumstances being what they are.

But seeing that her adventurous, indomitable nature and free spirit are thriving is really all I need to see.

Sage advice

I found this poem by Nanao Sakaki to be especially skillful. Sorry, the Wikipedia entry is in French.
One interesting thing about his life is that while in the Japanese army in World War II, he saw on his radar screen the B-29 that minutes later dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
That's heavy stuff.

Just Sit Here

If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot

That's progress (so get over it, Michael)

The small town in Japan in which I lived, laughed, loved, hated, cried, struggled, languished and thrived for three years no longer exists.
Physically, it's still there and is largely as I remember it, thanks to a recent bird's-eye view on Google Earth.

But its name has been stricken from Japan's roster of municipalities, a victim of a great nationwide consolidation of little villages and towns into bigger towns and cities, many complete with new names that sound sterile and squeaky clean because they're so new and pure and without baggage.

In 2006, Nosaka Town in Chiba Prefecture combined with Yokaichiba City to form Sosa City.
And in the process, local lore was lost.

Nosaka was formed in 1954 through the consolidation of two villages, Noda and Sakae. The first two kanji, or Chinese characters, of those names were blended to create Nosaka.
Yokaichiba, literally "eight day market," was named for the farmer's and tradesman's market held there on days ending in an 8. It, too, dates from 1954.

House entrance, Sawara City (now Katori City), Chiba Prefecture, Japan, 1997

Japan had tens of thousands of municipalities by the end of the Edo era in the mid-1860s, when the feudal period met its bloody demise. Those ranged from tiny villages of just a few homes to castle towns to great cities such as Edo (Tokyo), Osaka and Kyoto.
This dizzying hodgepodge has been winnowed down at intervals during the ensuing years so that now, just a few thousand distinct municipalities remain. There are fewer villages than ever.

I have no doubt that this consolidation, this simplification, this shedding of the past has cut some of the red tape that existed when there were more towns and villages, and has unquestionably saved money in the process.

But the connection to the past has suffered.
Novels, poems, biographies, period accounts, lovers' secrets make reference to place names that exist only in memory, if at all.
People have to qualify their answer when asked their hometown.

I'm sure it was like that in 1954, when Nosaka and Yokaichiba became strange new names, and in the great consolidations before that.
But a place name ties you to the land because it personalizes what you see as both yours and shared. You are a part of this place, and these are your fellow townsfolk. This is where you cast your lot. This is where new life is brought into the world, and where souls are launched into eternity.

Reality is impermanence and impermanence is reality. It's not a difficult concept to understand, at least superficially.
Feeling it in my bones, though, is another matter.

Another step on the path

Richard Rohrman-sensei, right, and me

My karate adventure moved a step forward today with my promotion to ikkyu (1-kyu), the level immediately before one tests for shodan, or first-degree black belt.

As with all promotion tests at the dojo where I train, this one was unannounced. When I walked in the door, though, the presence of several black belts, some of whom I haven't seen in a while, was a tip-off. I'm sure glad I ate my breakfast this morning.

I can't begin to describe the benefits I've derived through seven years of training in karate, including more than four in the style I now study, Okinawan Goju-ryu.

The camaraderie and instruction are exceptional, and my doctors have pretty much ascribed my ability to adapt to the rigors of parathyroid cancer in large part to karate. So, you see, my very life depends upon karate, but not in the usual way.

I can't move with the grace and flexibility that I may once have had in greater measure, but to focus on just that would be to lose sight of the meaning of karate completely and hopelessly. It's much more than that.

Passing this test enables me to say that I'm still here despite medical setbacks, and that life continues and the battle we all wage with ourselves is still engaged.

Now, it's time for a nap. I'm exhausted.

The victor writes the history; or, What is truth?

Today, on the 62nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, I got an e-mail from a friend in Japan.
It's a disarmingly sincere letter describing her feelings about the destruction of that city and of the far worse fate suffered by Hiroshima three days before.
Her views contradict what we in the United States are taught about the decision to use those weapons.
Are her opinions more or less "correct" than our own?
I think the real story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lies somewhere between her views and ours.

She also shares her views on whaling, terrorism and the war in Iraq.
Whether or not you agree with her opinions, I think her letter is a great reminder that arrogantly casting aside the opinions of others is what has gotten the world into the series of shitstorms that have rained down upon us over the course of human history.

I think the moral here is that nobody, no nation has a monopoly on the truth.
I believe the question Pontius Pilate asked of Jesus is arguably the most profound question we can ask ourselves: What is truth?

Here is her letter to me, which I have left largely unedited save for some minor corrections and clarifications in brackets:

*****

"There are no warlike people
just warlike leaders"
Ralph Bunche

back to 62 years ago ...
8/6 8:15 a.m. at Hiroshima by Enola Gay (B-29): Uranium type [atomic bomb]
8/9 11:02 a.m. at Nagasaki by [Bock's Car] (B-29): Plutonium type [atomic bomb]

I offered silent prayers ... for each day.

Recently, I knew that Bush thought U.S. was prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike terrorists first. I felt angry to hear that. Whenever he uses words [like] "justice," "terrorist," I doubt what is justice, what is the definition of terrorist. U.S. leaders have often justified their sophisms.

Why do they try to take the mote out of [the eyes of other] countries before trying to take the beam out of their own eyes? For example, whaling. They look disapproving[ly] at ours (nowadays, whaling of ours is very limited, but still we do a little for the purpose of an investigation in the sea) and seem they think us barbarians because we can kill whales who have high I.Q.
But I want to ask them, "Haven't you caught a whale? Whale is no, but cow is O.K.?"
Our ancestors had used almost 100% of their [whales'] dead bodies because we believed that was the least thing we could do to reward their sacrifice. On the other hand, U.S. used 20% of them mainly as fuel [whale oil] and dump 80%.

I can't understand U.S. leaders' double standard at all.

"Thanks to our atomic bombs, the world could stop the WWII, moreover, Japan could save millions of lives [by avoiding a bloody invasion of their nation]. Unless there two atomic bombs [are dropped], Japan would still continue [to fight] ...
It is said that this is American generals' thought.
I disagree.

I admit Japanese [in] those days were brainwashed, but we didn't have energy and resources to fight against U.S. anymore. It was clear that Japan would sooner or later surrender to U.S. without atomic bombs. The real reason to have used them was they wanted to know the power of them.

Try to use nuclear weapons in Iraq, and U.S. will know that they are in a dark and deep labyrinth which [they will] never be able to escape, which only leads to death.

This time the enemy is crazy radical group of Islam. They are different from us "yellow monkeys" [a common racist epithet used against Japanese during World War II era] who try to live [in a ] gray zone. ...

If we Japanese still have "Samurai Spirit," we should protect Iraq's citizens against the hegemony of U.S. Unfortunately, our leaders are faithful dogs of U.S., though.

Today, I have criticized scathingly toward your country, but I write this because I still have a hope in people [who] live in U.S. I worry and wonder the poorest sacrifices are the returnees from Iraq who suffer PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] now. I pray for calmness of their mind.

If we suppose [that the] spirit is permanent and I chose to be born as a Japanese, I should speak out what I have to tell others. I think so.

Wearing my teacher hat

Staff photo, 1997 or '98
Nosaka Junior High School
Nosaka (now Sosa City), Chiba Prefecture
Japan

Where's Waldo?

(The school motto roughly translates as, "If you think for yourself, you'll be stronger")

Love and hatred in Japan

I wrote here Friday that I had a love/hate relationship with Japan while living there, and a friend asked me why.

Before going off to Japan, I knew precious little about the country or the culture and couldn't speak the language at all. And a lot of what I thought I knew was peppered with typical Western misconceptions about Asia in general and Japan in particular.

And so, upon arriving there 12 years ago last month, I was struck by the degree to which Japan had adopted so many elements of Western society and had vastly improved upon them. All the modern conveniences -- the gadgetry and the electronics and all the other trappings of modern life -- were there in versions not yet on sale or even dreamed of in America. Even in the small farming town in the middle of nowhere that I called home, technology reigned (except, curiously, when it came to Internet connections).

And the less-appealing elements of American culture also were abundant, such as the fast-food outlets and the 7-Elevens on every corner and some of the vapid TV dramas that were so laughably dubbed.

In many ways, it felt like being home -- or, more accurately, home away from home. And naively, I expected these similarities to translate into a high level of understanding between the Japanese and Westerners.
Hey, they have McDonald's and dig our music and sports heroes, I reasoned. Surely they must be able to understand where I'm coming from in terms of the many pieces of cultural baggage I dragged along with me.

I couldn't possibly have been more woefully mistaken.

The veneer of modernity was very misleading. I didn't realize at the time that Japan had been a feudal society up till about 130 years prior to my arrival (130 years is a drop in the bucket), and that the same distinctions and mores that regulated people's lives in the old days are still present today, albeit tempered by time and war and economics.

And then there were honne and tatemae.
Tatemae is the public face you present at school, at work, anywhere outside your small circle of family and intimate friends.
With tatemae, never is heard a discouraging word. You may hate a co-worker's guts, but tatemae dictates that these feelings be kept completely in check. You wouldn't give this person the steam off your piss, but to all outward appearances, things couldn't be better between you and her.
Honne is returning home to tell your family what an incompetent, self-absorbed, unreasonable bitch she is.
Honne represents a level of candor only a select few people in your life will ever see.

Of course, something akin to honne and tatemae exists here in the United States. But I think it's diluted and not nearly as intricate, systematic and, to the newcomer, as ostensibly deceptive as it is in Japan.
It knocked me for a loop, and I was never quite sure where I stood with my colleagues in the junior high where I taught or in society at large. I wasn't even sure at times if my friends were really my friends.
I always felt off-balance.
I felt like a vase perched precariously at the edge of a table.

In time, I believe I came to understand honne and tatemae much better. I learned to recognize some of the physical and verbal cues that distinguished one from the other. I learned some of the nuances of body language that hint at a person's true feelings, and how even sounds -- yes, sounds, such as the sucking of air through one's teeth -- drip with meaning.
But looking back on that first year or so, my naivete embarrasses me to this day.

Twelve years ago, I was more outspoken than I am today. I know my friends and family are having a good laugh as they read that.
I was more self-absorbed. I fought for what I wanted, strove to do things my own way.
After all, in the United States the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
But in Japan, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
In time, I learned that a personal agenda could be pursued to a degree if I played by certain rules. I learned that even though potentially troublesome circumstances could have been staring me in the face, there was much less of a problem as long as the existence of these circumstances was not recognized. If I don't acknowledge it and my colleagues don't acknowledge it, then we can do a little two-step around the truth.
Besides, I was a gaijin, and gaijin aren't thought to be sophisticated enough to understand the nuances of Japanese etiquette and protocol.

I taught English in a public junior high school where the students, many of them the children of farmers, fishermen and shopkeepers, couldn't have given a toss about English. It was a subject they were required to study but conditioned to forget as quickly as they could. Many of those going on to high school kept up their diligence until the crucial entrance exams were passed. Many of those going on to a trade or a craft or to freedom from education altogether at age 16 couldn't have cared less about English and I couldn't blame them.

I felt that my role as an assistant English teacher was fairly useless, and over time I came to do just the minimum of what was expected of me professionally while I pursued my photography and my studies of Japan's language, religions and culture.
At first, I pursued this agenda unabashedly. Over time, I pursued it more tactfully, using social cues I had learned to bow out gracefully from certain personal and professional obligations.
Did this strategy work? Maybe.
Or perhaps my former colleagues still talk about that arrogant, opinionated, ungrateful, bull-headed, boorish American who ran roughshod over their feelings, traditions and expectations.

Anyway, the passage of nine years since my return to America has mitigated many of my unpleasant experiences in Japan. I've deconstructed and reconstructed the culture in that span to create in my mind a Japan that hasn't existed in generations.
My Japan is what younger Japanese would derisively call furukusai -- literally, something that stinks of the old.
In some ways, I've built a movie set that looks three-dimensional and realistic from the front, but behind the facade things are held together by strips of plywood that would give way in a stiff breeze.
The Japan of my mind is more a musty old museum exhibit than a living, breathing, dynamic, constantly evolving place. (I wouldn't have it any other way, though. I also pine for the lost America, the America that the gang of criminals in elected office has turned into a mockery, a parody of itself.)

I like to think that I understand Japan far better now than I did more than a decade ago. I like to think that given the opportunity to move there today, I wouldn't repeat many of the questionable choices I made.

Maybe, maybe not.

A dream in more ways than one

Nitta Yoshisada offering his sword to the Sun Goddess for her help in his attack on Kamakura, 1333. Woodblock print by Taiso Yoshitoshi.

During the night Wednesday, I dreamed that I was bidding my friends farewell. I was going to live once more in Japan. (I lived there from 1995-98.)

One of my friends from work responded with an incredulous "You're kidding!" before asking me if my health had improved to that extent.

I answered that it had.

And then I woke up, literally and figuratively.

The rest of my life probably will be spent near Manhattan.
I don't have a choice.
My doctors and surgeons are here.
I don't know of anyplace else where I can get this level of care for my medical situation.

And besides, the Japan that I love (and also hate) seems to exist anymore only in old Kurosawa films, antique woodblock prints and in the minds of dreaming fools like me.

Echoes

Rice planting, Nosaka Town (now Sousa City), Chiba Prefecture, Japan, 1996, by Michael

Every day, I'm visited by voices and visions from my years in Japan.
The memories remain alive and vibrant within me.
The sense of aesthetics that took root in me colors the way I view life itself.

Hints of incense remind me of lazy summer afternoons with a dear friend in Kyoto,
watching Arashiyama -- Storm Mountain -- turn blue then purple then green in the changing light.

The tinkle of wind chimes carries me back to my apartment balcony overlooking a sea of rice paddies shimmering emerald green in the brilliant sun.

Certain poetry rekindles the joyous solitude I felt inside bamboo groves.

A cicada's stridulations or a bird's call transport me back to forests of giant cryptomeria trees where the sunlight never fully pierces the canopy.

Physically, I'm half a world away now.
Spiritually, I never left.

"I fart in your general direction ..."

"Repelling a kappa with a fart"
Ukiyo-e by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1881
(With gratitude to my friend Jerry Vegder)

Here's another of my favorite ukiyo-e.
Click on it to enlarge it, and take a good look.
I love it for the unbridled laughter it elicits.
I love it also because it nicely sums up my philosophy these days.

It shows a pair of kappa creeping up on a fisherman and his pal.
In Japanese folklore, kappa (literally "river child") are smallish creatures with webbed hands and feet that inhabit rivers and lakes. They like to overpower unsuspecting people and tear out their liver through the anus.
Yuck.
They also love to eat children.
But they love cucumbers even more. Ever eat a cucumber-filled sushi roll? It's called a kappa-maki (kappa roll) in honor of our aquatic friends.
They're pretty mischievous when they're not stalking victims.
They like to peek up women's kimono.
They like to sumo-wrestle.
And they like to fart, noisily and most malodorously.

Ostensibly, these fishermen are in great danger.
But one of them turns the tables on the kappas and dispatches them with a mighty blast.
One kappa, holding his nose, is blown right back into the river. The other, also holding his nose, is swimming away for dear life.
The fisherman's friend looks none too happy, either.

My first karate teacher once told me that there comes a time in a person's life when he has to learn to say "F--- it, and f--- you." In other words, we need to put bedeviling circumstances (and people) in our life in perspective, refusing when possible and practical to let them continue to cause us so much grief. After all, it is we who have invited them to make such inroads into our psyche.

Right now and for the past several years, my parathyroid cancer has been the most bedeviling circumstance in my life. Like a kappa, it has the potential to do me in, and thus I have deep respect for it.
I can choose to live in fear and to stay away from rivers, metaphorically speaking.
Or I can say, "Blow it out your ass."

Kappas, you've been warned.



(If you enjoy ukiyo-e, please visit my friend Jerry Vegder's online gallery. He has many woodblock prints for show and for sale and also has illustrated archives of some of the masters of the art.)

New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree

This is one of my favorite ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints). It's by the great Hiroshige.
In Japanese folk beliefs, foxes (kitsune) are imbued with magical powers, among them the ability to change their physical form to trick silly humans into doing their bidding.
It was thought that on New Year's Eve, all the foxes in the provinces around Edo (modern Tokyo) would gather at the Oji Inari Shrine north of the city. The shrine was dedicated to Inari, the god of the harvest (and lots more). The foxes would meet at a tree near the shrine and change their dress into suitable shrine-visiting attire.
On their way to the shrine, they would give off kitsunebi (foxfire) by which farmers could predict the harvest for the coming year. And foxfire is real: We call it swamp gas; it's also caused by bioluminescent fungi.
But I like to think mischievous foxes are responsible.

This print is part of the Hiroshige series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" and was first published in 1857. I bought this modern reprint years ago in Kyoto.
Recent postings by my blog friends Robert Brady on Hiroshige and Tamar on a nocturnal encounter with foxes brought this print to mind.

Bob's and Tamar's postings made me wistful for a long-ago time before science had precise answers for nearly everything, when things we couldn't fully understand were given such evocative and creative explanations.
Let the foxfires burn.

Surgery day

My parathyroid cancer surgery is set for July 19.
It's a Thursday. And, according to the traditional Japanese calendar, it's a highly auspicious day luck-wise.

This calendar is based on the old Chinese lunar calendar. A feature of the old Japanese calendar that has been carried over to the modern one is something called rokuyo, which means six days, a six-day repeating cycle. Each day of the year is assigned one of six levels of auspiciousness ranging from worst (butsumetsu, or the day marking the Buddha's death) to best (taian, or great peace, a day for holding ceremonies and for visiting Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines and for having cancer surgery).
July 19 is a taian day.

My lucky day? Perhaps. Each day also is assigned to one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, and July 19 is a Day of the Tiger. I was born in a Year of the Tiger (Water Tiger, to be exact). That's got to be good. I'll take all the help I can get. Grrrrr.

It all sounds quaint and superstitious, but to this day big Japanese corporations won't schedule important meetings on butsumetsu days. Weddings are often avoided. Major decisions are postponed, if possible. These traditions run very strong, especially among older people. When I was living in Japan, the graduation ceremony at the junior high school where I taught was haphazardly scheduled one year. It fell on a butsumetsu day. The vice principal's nervous laughter upon discovering this faux pas belied some very serious, heartfelt misgivings. We were all very happy when the ceremony proceeded without the gymnasium roof caving in on us and without any other incident to mar the day.

I didn't pick my surgery day with taian in mind, but I certainly don't mind that it works out that way.
I just hope the kami ( gods) and I are on the same page.

Connections

I got a lovely e-mail yesterday from a California woman who visited my Web site of photos I took while living in Japan.

Her mother, who was born in the same small, rural farming town in which I lived, married an American GI following World War II. This is quite a coincidence because the town is very small. The woman believes her mother may have been married at one of the small Shinto shrines I photographed. The woman is preparing for a trip back to this town with her mother and her children, who will meet their cousins for the first time. The woman has few close relatives in America on her husband's side, so she feels especially close to her kin in Japan.

Receiving her e-mail rekindled all sorts of memories of my years in Japan. It especially brought back memories of the wall of culture shock I felt upon first arriving in Japan, made even more daunting by the rural area in which I found myself. I grew to resent the town, its inhabitants, its location -- in short, everything about it.

As I gradually became more flexible (beating my head against a wall got me only so far), I came to love, to truly love, living in the countryside. It's these memories that keep me going some days.

Over the past decade, I believe I have matured enough and become circumspect enough to make the most now of an opportunity such as the one I had of living in a small Japanese farming town.

Of course, I can't revisit the past. I had my chance. Eventually, I came to get the most out of it with the abilities and outlook I had at the time.

This woman's e-mail brought me back at light speed to a very special time and a very special place. It also reminded me of just how interconnected everything and everyone is.

De rerum natura

"Everything is interconnected. Magic is just a result that uses connections you don't see. ... Maybe the ultimate magic is enlightenment."

--Zen priest's admonition, as recounted in "Thank You and OK!" by David Chadwick

Slice of Japan

Japan never strays far from my consciousness and imagination. I haven't lived there in nearly a decade, but its influence upon the core of my being continues to be profound.

Today, I saw this ukiyo-e, or woodblock print, at a local antique store. It's by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the most famous artists in the genre, and was made in the mid-1840s, about a decade before Japan's feudal era ended and before its modern period began.
It claims to depict a scene from Chapter 34 of the "Genji Monogatari," or "Tale of Genji," written about 1,000 years ago and considered by some to be the world's first novel.
If it's a first-edition print, and I'm pretty sure it is, then I got it for a fair price. If it's a later printing, then a fool and his money have gone their separate ways.

But this print has absolutely nothing to do with the "Tale of Genji."
In the 1840s, a law was passed forbidding the depiction of actors and courtesans in artwork. The authorities thought people's morals were being corrupted.
It seems that to get around this, Kuniyoshi wrote a few token lines about Genji -- these appear as a poem in the large rectangular scroll at the top of the print. But the real subject of this print are two famous Kabuki actors (at left, Ichikawa Danjuro VIII, at right, Onoe Tamizo II) in a scene from the play "Kazari ebi Soga no Kadomatsu," which was first performed in 1842, just a couple of years before this print was made.

The ruse was pretty crafty and, obvious as it was, it worked: The government censor's circular seal of approval appears above Kuniyoshi's red one. But how? Those rectangular, pale yellow cartouches alongside each actor state the names of the characters they played: Soga Juro Sukenari, at left, and Kobayashi Asahina. And any educated Japanese would have known these characters don't appear in "Genji."
It goes to show that it's sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission.