Dragon Ball

I love the manga Dragon Ball, well the original Dragon Ball rather than its many derivatives populated by power mad aliens intent on universal domination.

The first one was about a chubby ingenuous kid who didn't know his own strength and lived in the mountains far away from people, with his grandfather. After his grandfather's passing the little boy Son Goku, goes on an quest around a whimsical mythologized China seeking to retrieve his sole memento of his grandfather, a dragon ball stolen by thieves.

Unlike his egocentric teenage companion or the numerous villains, monsters, rivals and friends that he meets in his travels, Goku has no ulterior motives and pursues his goal of retrieving his grandfather's dragon ball artlessly.

Its a very funny simple story told leisurely with the recursive flourishes enjoyed by Japanese readers. Characters from Asian and Western legends show up along with people from other manga and video games as diverse as Frankenstein's monster and Pan from Virtual Fighter.

People tend to have eccentric names like Gohan (cooked rice) and Yamcha (dim sum) while practicing lucrative professions like Desert Bandit and Capsule Vehicle Inventor.

Son Goku is author Akira Toriyama's adaptation of Sun Wukung, the Monkey King from one of the four classics of Chinese Literature, Journey to the West. This book is itself based on the historical travels of the Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang who traveled to India in the 7th century CE to bring Buddhist canon back to China.

It's amazing what can come from a good idea.

Wooden Architecture and its impact on Society

As a country prone to earthquakes, Japan has historically used wood rather than stone as the basic building material with exceptions for places like castles. This architectural choice has the obvious drawback of making fire an ever present problem and its prevention, suppression and regeneration after, an import societal goal.

Since historical times this has made firefighters an important part of the large and crowded cities of Japan. This picture by Hiroshige who was a member of a firefighting family, includes a large fire tower watching over a racetrack in Edo.



Protection of existing wooden structures continues to be a high priority in places like Kyoto where posters like this one at Nanzen-ji try to pass on the message.



My ersatz translation is that Smoky the Bodhisattva prays that you remember, only you can prevent fires in Important Cultural Properties.



Here's a recruiting poster I ran across at a train station showing Sasuke hero and fireman extraordinaire Takeda Toshiro.

Walking around Japan one of the striking things is how the old temples and castles look so new. The reason is that they invariably are, with most having been rebuilt in the last century by the Japanese Government as a part of the country's cultural legacy.

Due to the many fires, earthquakes and civil wars that have plagued Japan over the centuries most all structures have had to be rebuilt multiple times usually based on previous plans, if available. This article has a very good discussion on the Japanese conception of authenticity in comparison to Western architectural principles. One place where I definitely agree with the Japanese idea of regular rebuilding is in software architecture, where in my experience enterprises keep obsolete structures around for too long.

One of the interesting results of this perspective is the idea of razing and rebuilding structures periodically as a spiritual practice, prevalent in both Buddhist and Shinto institutions. After the widespread destruction of Japanese cities from allied bombing in WW II, this viewpoint helped to create a vision of a New Japan that maintains the spirit of the country despite the destruction of the physical manifestation.

Wings of Defeat

I recently watched a very moving documentary called "Wings of Defeat" about Kamikaze pilots in WWII told through historical footage and interviews with 4 surviving kamikazes, all in their 70's and 80's. Despite their advanced age they're quite sprightly and remember vividly the harsh training and desperate political climate of those days.

The movie was made by Risa Morimoto and inspired by a part of family history unknown to her until recently. After the funeral of her favorite uncle, she found out that as a young man he had trained to be a kamikaze. Her difficulty in reconciling the individual she knew with the picture she had of kamikazes as fanatical suicide bombers led her to make this movie and to meet these four gentlemen.

All of the men are evocative in describing the fear and anxiety of heading for certain death, the relief at surviving another mission, only to realize that the future holds only more of the same. They also speak of their relationship with others in their group and the desire to not let down their comrades who had sacrificed their lives.

For me it reflected how totalitarian regimes can warp social values like group cohesion and self sacrifice while undermining the idealism of young men seeking to serve their country and defend their homeland.

The documentary airs next week on PBS on Tuesday May 5.

On a historical note, the kamikaze or "divine wind" were named for typhoons that saved Japan from conquest by the huge Mongol armada in 1274 and 1281 CE (an interesting study of scrolls preserved from that time is available here).



In Kamakura, the beautiful Zen Temple Engaku-ji was built in 1282 to pray for the souls of warriors on both sides of this conflict who had fallen in battle. The Chinese Zen Master Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan called Bokyu Kokushi(Teacher of the Nation) in Japan, himself a refugee from Mongol persecution, became the founding abbot of this temple. For me this peaceful temple seems a fitting end to this story.

The East is Red

Unlike the Maoist song of this name that glorifies the Cultural Revolution, this post is about a far more benevolent rebellion spreading across Japan, especially among the young. It's overthrowing the vestiges of a powerful Empire that's held sway in Japan and bringing heterogeneity to a closed society. This being baseball season I'm of course speaking of the Evil Empire of the New York Yankees and their rivals, the Red Sox of Boston.

The Yankees' clean cut, ruthlessly affluent hegemonic domination of baseball in America, coupled with their natural affiliation with their counterparts in Japan, Tokyo's Yomiuri Giants, made them the MLB team of choice for Japanese over the last several decades. Long time Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Seiji Ozawa was a notable exception but he doesn't seem to have converted many others in Japan to the Red Sox cause.

Change is apparent on the streets however as the Red Sox are becoming an increasingly fashionable counterculture option. Their idiosyncratic and individualistic persona personified by teams like the Cowboys of 2003 or the Idiots of 2004 provided a counterpoint to the Yankees unending air of conformity. Curt Schilling's bloody sock victory in 2004 proved their spiritual mettle and elicited the affection of self sacrifice loving, yet iconoclastic Japanese everywhere.


Fenway Park bar in Kyoto (blog)


With the coming of Japanese pitching star Daisuke Matsuzaka, reliever Hideki Okajima and former Dodgers closer Takahashi Saito the Sox have become much more familiar to the Japanese population. Continuing this trend, the Sox recently signed 22 year old Industrial League sensation Junichi Tazawa as part of their extensive scouting program in Japan.

It must be said that the team's amazing success in the last several years is an undeniable factor in their rising popularity. Despite Ivan Morris's superb work Nobility of Failure chronicling Japanese reverence for pure though unsuccessful heroes of the past such as Minamoto no Yoshitsune and the 47 Ronin, it is doubtful that Chicago's Lovable Losers, the Cubs will soon be joining that list.

Japan and Multiethnicity

An article in the New York Times this week on Japan's initiative to return guest workers back to their native countries elicited condemnation from readers in the attached commentaries. One statement by a politician that Japan should never become a multiethnic society especially inflamed commentators and resulted in accusations of national racism.

Japan is not only a uni-ethnic country it's also a unicultural society with homogeneity in thought, tastes and experiences across socioeconomic backgrounds. Walking around Kyoto makes one realize that this uniformity extends across the centuries with Japanese visiting the same landmarks at the same time of the year, eating the same foods and sharing the same experiences as their ancestors. This sense of continuity and nostalgia for it, appears to be a quintessential aspect of Japanese culture and thought.

Even in Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoo's cry,
I long for Kyoto.

- Basho

In Europe, France prides itself on being a multiethnic but unicultural country ensuring equality to all its citizens through the imposition of a unifying culture. However, the unwillingness of the State to admit cultural differences among ethnic groups and the imposition of French norms is cited as a cause of tension by North African groups and a basic factor in riots of the last several years.

In America we have a multiethnic multicultural society that believes in tolerance for the views of disparate communities and nationalities within our borders. Reading the comments about Japanese policy I gather that this tolerance does not extend to other states that wish to maintain uni-ethnic societies and probably unicultural ones as well. Its difficult to see how we can promulgate such changes in such countries where these views constitute part of the national character.

Every picture tells a story

The great East Asian scholar Edwin O. Reischauer said in his introduction to Yoshikawa Eiji's classic novel Musashi, that the stories a country reveres gives an accurate picture of their self-image.

To get a window into current Japanese zeitgeist go to mysoju.com, a site that acts as a portal to Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese dramas and movies. They have an interesting model of aggregating and organizing links to videos from sources like Google, Dailymotion and Yahoo without actually hosting any of the videos themselves.

Though most of the dramas are romances about 20 somethings finding love in Tokyo, I actually found several that were interesting. One is Nippon OL, which has as its backdrop the dread in Japanese offices of the outsourcing of jobs to China.

NHKs dramatization of Musashi several years ago is also there by the way. The story is so feminized and modernized that it bears no resemblance to the novel, the excellent movie by Inagaki Hiroshi or historical fact. It should really have been titled "Love in the time of Ieyesu".

The Visiting Vegetarian

Japan is not an easy place for a vegetarian as dashi (fish stock) is an intrinsic and ubiquitous part of the cuisine. A local person with knowledge of the dishes is invaluable when dining out.

Assuming you don't have that luxury I'll share my experiences in navigating through this environment and still eating interesting meals.

Sites
First thing to do is look at sites that identify vegetarian restaurants in Japan. I found several helpful ones:

• Bento.com covers Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe and has detailed reviews and pictures.
• The Happy Cow has reviews from readers for restaurants around the world including many Japanese cities.
• Sunny Pages covers Tokyo restaurants of all types including vegetarian and ethnic foods.
  

Ethnic Cuisines


When at a loss for appropriate food look for Indian and Italian restaurants which always have vegetarian items on the menu. I had the interesting experience of revisiting Nara after 10 years and instead of frightening people with demands in broken Japanese for vegetarian food, I found a very pleasant place called Ragamala just off the main arcade. The restaurant is decorated with old album cover of Classical Indian musicians such as Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar.



Traditional Japanese Cuisines

In the Kansai region of Japan (Osaka-Kyoto) a variety of vegetarian cuisines using fresh local produce were developed in Buddhist Temples based on Chinese models. Shojin Ryori is a vegetarian multicourse meal with an amazing number of dishes served in elegant containers. I also like Yodufu, a hot pot of tofu and vegetables.



In Kyoto I found many temples have tea houses where vegetarian food is served, an excellent way to alleviate both spiritual and physical hunger. I really enjoyed Ryuan-ji where you can eat an excellent meal looking out over a centuries old garden.



As stated previously, the use of fish and sometimes meat by products is very common and should be expected in most soups and broths outside of temples.