How to prevent your castle from getting invaded, Tip #1.1

When the city of Matsue was founded shortly after the historical battle of Sekigahara which thrust Japan into the Tokugawa system of government, protecting one’s samurai lord from attack was of prime importance. Therefore the entire city was planned around the castle–and protecting it.

Thankfully the castle is still unscathed by anything more than time, and while many of the other measures are clearly no longer in effect so as to allow free flow of commoners into the castle grounds, you can still find evidence of these measures throughout the city. For instance, if I take the neighborhood route on the way home from work, I run into this.

Where did the road go? I could have sworn I saw a bridge around here!

Oh, there it is.

In modern times, we’d write this off to pour city planning, but infact this was intended to make continuing straight on a little more difficult. This way, when armies are invading, they have to slow down to march around a tight corner before they can continue across. There are a couple other sites like this in town, and this one is called “Sujikaibashi”.

To the north of the bridge, there was a clearing so that the samurai on the defense could have an easy place to start shooting them with arrows. Furthermore, the bridge was engineered in such a way that it could be very quickly burned down when enemies were approaching.

The area had it’s practical everyday uses, too. This is what remains of the steps now to the canal for everyday water transport.

Another view from the north…

And a view looking west–depending on the time of day, you could blind approaching attackers!

 

That’s not all we add it to

 

“A Ton of Rice”

This is a story from Chizu, Yazu County, in Tottori Prefecture.

A long time ago, there was an old man and an old lady who struggled through a very meager life. Everyday the old man went out to collect firewood and sell it and then use the money to buy rice. He wasn’t always able to sell it, though. When he had anything leftover, he would take it to the Chizu bridge. There, he’d say, “I offer this to Otohime, the Princess of the Dragon Palace under the sea” and then ceremoniously chuck the wood into the river before going home.

One day as the old man was about to head home, someone called out to him. “Excuse me, sir!” the stranger said. “I am a servant of Otohime in the Dragon Palace, and she has sent me here today. We had been having terrible problems getting wood for the castle, so you constant gifts of firewood helped us quite a bit. As thanks, Otohime told me to give this to you.” So saying, he pulled a gavel from his sleeve.

“A gavel?”

“Yes. Say what you want, then strike the gavel, and it will make anything for you. However, it has its limits–you can only use it three times.” The stranger then handed it to the old man, and immediately disappeared.

As the old man was taking the gavel home, he tripped and broke his sandal. Sighing, he decided to give the gavel a try. “One sandal,” he said, then struck the ground with the gavel, and immediately a wonderful sandal appeared. Wow! This really does work! he thought as he excitedly put on the sandal. But I can only use it three times. What should the other two things be?

On his way home, he noticed how dull and hard to use his axe had become, so he decided to try the gavel again. “One axe,” he said and struck the gavel, and there appeared a golden axe. Once again quite impressed, he took the golden axe home.

Upon his return, he asked his wife, “Old Lady, what’s the one thing we need?”

The old lady replied, “Old Man, we don’t have any rice to eat!”

“Then we should ask for rice!” he exclaimed, and raising the gavel he said, “Rice, a ton of it, Old Lady!” and then struck the ground.

Once he did so, a rather beautiful old woman appeared in front of them.

Oh no, thought the old man. There’s not even enough rice for my own Old Lady and I to eat, let alone to let this woman eat! Now what have I done?

At that moment, the beautiful lady sat straight up, and a couple grains of rice dripped out of her nose. Just as the old man and the old lady pondered how strange that was, another grain dripped out of the woman’s nose. Then another. And another. And another. And another.

Quite soon the grains of rice were spilling all across the floor and filling up the room. When it looked like it had accumulated to about a ton, the beautiful woman seemed to melt into the pile of rice, and disappeared. Given the wording of the old man’s request, she might have originally been rice herself.

 

The Kojiki a.t.b.b. – To Yomi and Back Again – Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Yes, you could think of Yomi quote simply as “hell”–as in, the place everyone is doomed to go to once they leave the world of the living.

In same ways, being in Yomi is like still being alive, because you have a body and there is food to eat, but unlike the living world, it’s unclean and filled with not very handsome creatures. In Shinto, cleanliness is practically a moral code, so that makes it a despicable place.

Continued here in Part 3!

 

Welcome the Kami-sama! Welcome the peoples!

In 10th month, most of Japan must go without their local kami, because they are all convening for their yearly meeting to decide how they’ll be influencing people in the year to come (more or less on an individual basis). Out here in the old Izumo province, however, we celebrate Kamiarizuki (literally, “the month with gods”) because they gather at Izumo Taisha (the second most important Shinto shrine).

Having kami around is generally a felicitous thing, so paired with the three day weekend, there were plenty of things to do in Matsue this weekend. I didn’t make it to everything I was invited to, but I fit in quite a bit. You’d think it would be hard to draw a crowd for anything going on because of how much is going on, but there was some giant outdoor gathering for everyone this weekend.

For starters, the Daichakai (“Big Tea Party”). I had been looking forward to this one for a while. Different schools of the tea ceremony set up tents around the castle grounds to do constant introductions of their respective styles.

A little hard to have an intimate ceremony with that many people, but it works.

The way it works is that you buy a ticket (or three), then turn in the ticket at the reception area of whatever style you want to try. They give you a colored and numbered ticket to turn in at the next open ceremony (the color indicates which time slot you have, the number is for organization purposes). There is typically a tent to wait in or observe flower arrangements. Once they start, everyone finds a seat in a rather orderly fashion, and one host prepares the tea while another explains the actions and decorations and characteristics of their style. The first and second guests (typically) receive tea prepared in front of everyone, while the other guests receive tea prepared behind the scenes by other practitioners. Before received the tea, everyone eats a fancy little wagashi (traditional Japanese sweet, which comes in all kinds of clever shapes and colors, and is usually identical in their level of sweetness–as in very, very sweet). In contrast, the tea is usually very bitter, but the contrast is refreshing.

Inside the tents, everyone is seated on a nice clean chair, and the ceremony typically goes pretty fast, meaning they probably serve several hundred guests over the course of two days. Instead of paper cups, in my experience every guest got to use a fancy cup/bowl, since appreciating the tools is also an important element of the tea ceremony.

This is Houenryu, which was very popular. This was more of an east-west fusion, with black tea instead of green tea, and European style China instead of traditional Japanese tools.

I didn’t participate, but I did enjoy the glimpse of tasteful fusion I did get.

I tried Soshinryu first, which served the tea in a more Chinese fashion–a delicate cup filled with loose leaves, which you keep pushed back with a matching lid as you sip the brew. It was served with an orange and pink and purple wagashi evoking maple leaves and filled with anko (sweet azuki bean paste).

After that I tried Fumairyu, the local style started by Fumai-ko. That had a lot of wabisabi influence (this is a rustic Japanese aesthetic that appreciates imperfection), and was a matcha (thick green tea made from powdered leaves), and had an orange and purple wagashi that looked simple like a piece of gyoza, and was once again filled with anko.

The following morning I went out to Meimei-an (the historic tea house), as this is one of the rare occasions when you can actually take part in a tea ceremony inside. It was removed from everything else and hidden away up a hill, so it certainly felt more formal. This was the Musha-Koujisenke, which was also matcha and had a green, purple, and pink wagashi coated in a sticky azuki bean concoction.

Lucky for me, kimono attire was not required. An umbrella would have been nice, though. Ninja rain attacks out of nowhere.

After the Daichakai, we went down to the south side of town for the annual Oden Summit. Oden is a seasonal food, and while there is a usual menu of Japanese ingredients, it pretty much consists of any collection of food items served in a hot broth (usually a fishy kind). It’s not quite like soup–you don’t eat it with a spoon, but take bites of the items and they gush with broth. It’s a bit of a comfort food, if you’re used to it.

This is closest to what comes to mind when I think of oden, though not necessarily shaped like Himeji castle (not a pine tree).

There were several Matsue vendors (with everything from traditional to Italian style), but also vendors from other prefectures (and Korea). I tried a couple traditional varieties and a kimchi one, but the curry flavored oden was my favorite.

After that, we checked out an event that seemed to have something to do with Nikoniko Doga (which is like, the Japanese version of YouTube, only with more active promotion? Does that sound like the best way to put it? I don’t have an account, so I don’t know…). It seemed to be aimed at a younger crowd, but there were plenty of people showcasing products and companies and organizations from everywhere.

While attendees at the Daichakai were dressed in fine kimono and western formal wear, youths here were also putting extra effort into the way they dressed. I liked seeing both styles!

There were performing groups and individuals on stages, and a group learning a dance to a pop song, and some famous (?) people giving autographs who people lined up to meet them, and then some wandering performers.

Practically across the street from the Oden Summit and lining any available space between the art museum and Lake Shinji, there was the Mizube Arts Festival, full of food and craft and clothing vendors, and jungle gyms for kids, painters working on giant canvases, and performers (both on large and small stages, or just on the grass with microphones, costumes, choreographed fighting and dramatic background music).

Also, notice that island in the distance behind the stage? This is one of the only weekends when you can visit it. So I did! But that’s a post for another time.

—

By the way, the kami aren’t actually here yet. They still meet meet according to the 10th month of the old Japanese lunar calendar, whereas the humans have switched to the Gregorian calendar.

 

I’ve been a little tied up… literally.

You can hardly tell I’m foreign from the back, right? Riiiiight. 

I’ve been interested in kimono for several years, and while I perhaps know more than the average person about the aesthetic and history of this piece of Japanese culture, I’ve never formally studied it–as in, I wouldn’t really be able to dress myself without lots of assistance. 

And, this November, I’m entering a regional competition to dress myself in an especially decorative one in under eight minutes. Crazy? Maybe a little. I’ve been practicing for about a month now, and yesterday I finally put on a kimono and an obi (the belt) instead of only one or the other. It only took a couple hours…

Thankfully when I take part in the competition, I’ll already be dressed in 16 of the 25+ pieces of clothing and accessories and tools I’ll be using in the completed outfit, so I won’t need to worry about all the prep time and take down. Furthermore, I’m using a special competition-oriented tool called a “biyousugata,” which allows me to fold the obi into a “fukura suzume” (stuffed sparrow) shape in front of me before mounting it onto my back. 

More documentation of this endeavor to come. For now, suffice to say that wearing kimono is just as much of a fuss as it looks. There have already been evenings when I need to drag myself to go practice and inwardly gawk at just how many pieces are necessary to (hopefully) create the ideal shape, and times when it’s painfully obvious how slow I am at folding large pieces of fabric. Yesterday I even had a nightmare about sagging pieces of fabric at my hips.

But once I put the kimono on and listen to it swish around me, I finally remember, “oh. These are fun. I do love these.”

It can be a bit of an acquired aesthetic, but feel free to ask any questions you want about this culture while I document my progress. I might or might not have answers, but we’ll see!

(Thank you for the photo, XiaoMan!)

 

 

 

Bio: “Fumai-ko” – Matsudaira Harusato

Besides all the kami and youkai, there have been some famous humans here too. Today I’d like to introduce the man on the banner of this blog, the seventh lord of Matsue, Matsudaira Harusato, a.k.a. Matsudaira Fumai (1751-1818).

He’s frequently referred to by his artistic name with an honorfic noting his status: “Fumai-ko”

The Matsudaira clan was not the first to rule Matsue, but they did have the longest succession of leaders during the relatively peaceful Edo period (1603-1868). Fumai is known of course as the ruling lord for 39 years, but also well known as a tea master–so much so a master, in fact, that his created the Fumai-ryu tea ceremony style. He was well known for collecting tea ceremony objects, and he designed the Meimei-an Tea house northeast of Matsue Castle.

When he took office, rumors were spreading about the Matsudaira clan soon losing power because of their terrible financial situation. He therefore enforced several strict budgetary measures and had the region focus on raising and using local products, such as ginseng and cotton. He encouraged thriftiness among the common people, and is credited with introducing Bote-Bote Cha to the local diet to make the most of limited food resources.

Rustic peasant cuisine turned local speciality: azuki beans, mushrooms, tofu, rice, and any other seasonal bits of food boiled in a frothy tea. Add flowers if desired! I like the idea, but I can’t say I’d enjoy eating this everyday… or ever again.

Fumai’s measures turned out to be very successful, and the Matsudaira treasury was built back up.

However, he was a hobbyist–and tea can be an expensive hobby. The amassed fortunes didn’t wind up lasting long because he dipped into the treasury to splurge on old tea tools. But we still get to enjoy those tools today!

 

They’re getting better at English, and I am not

Part of my job is to visit schools and give presentations about America (which so far has meant introducing a broad array of American facts and culture within 15 minutes). I can usually start with simple English like “Hello, nice to meet you! My name is Brittany. I am from America” and 5th and 6th graders will usually understand pretty well (though I can throw them off by saying I’m from the USA).

I had thought the warning was mostly aimed at ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers), but what everyone told me two months ago is true–the way I speak English is changing, and it’s making me self-conscious!

First of all, I now speak Japanese more often than I speak English, and when I speak English with people face to face, they’re usually accustomed enough to Japanese that I can get away with a few Japanese phrases here and there. When I was making a business phonecall to America last week, I noticed that I was throwing in Japanese fillers (“etou” instead of “um” or “let’s see”), and I can only imagine what the person on the other end was thinking if she picked up on it.

When I do speak English with non-native speakers, I find that I speak differently than when I would with other Americans. Besides just speaking slower and using simpler sentences, I think I might also be using strange intonation to differentiate the words…? (Or maybe studying tonal languages (which Japanese is not) has trained me to hear everything in tones?)

What really makes me self-conscious, however, is when I speak with other native speakers from other countries. You get used to saying “car park” instead of “parking lot”, but what throws me off is when people giggle about my American pronunciation. I’m not offended, I just never noticed it! I’m from Colorado, we’re too square to have accents! Don’t I speak proper, understandable Hollywood English!?

It will probably be funny to hear how much more my English changes (or degrades) after a year of being here. At least my Japanese will continue to improve, right…?

 

The Kojiki a.t.b.b. – To Yomi and Back Again – Part 1

They’re also known as “Izanagi-no-Mikoto” and “Izanami-no-Mikoto.” The use of the term “pair” here is a little flexible. Yes, they were a spousal couple, but also a sibling couple. In ancient mythology, incest doesn’t tend to be an issue, and there will be more of it. Let’s move on and not let that bother us–after all, kami aren’t human.

Unlike other many other myths about how the world was created, the Kojiki (and its counterpart, the Nihonshoki) only focus on Japan. The rest of the world is impure and full of barbarians, and frankly not worth considering (or so the exclusion would imply). Ancient Japan was not simply known as “The Land of the Rising Sun,” but as “The Land of the Gods”.

It was a rather complicated process, and at some points so graphic that in one of the first English translations, parts of the dialogue were translated into Latin instead!

Continued here in Part 2!

 

Youkai: Betobeto-san

What is a youkai?
A youkai is a blanket term for a Japanese monster. It may or may not include demons and ghosts, as these have their own terms, but they also get included in the general mix of inhuman creatures who make up much of Japanese folklore and who are responsible for mysterious happenings. Kami (gods) are similar in that they are spirits who influence our daily lives and may be angered or pleased, but while a kami might be considered pure, a youkai would be a more impure, occult creature–many look like deformed humans or objects, and this strangeness can make them quite unsettling. However, that also makes them interesting, and has driven people throughout history to name and classify them.

More recently, Japan has gone off the kawaii deep end, and has a culture of cuteness now. Those youkai have turned into more friendly, amusing creatures with unique characteristics that might interfere or interact with our lives, however innocently or maliciously. In fact, I believe that we wouldn’t have gotten Pokemon if not for Japan’s history of classifying varigated monsters and being driven to collect and organize them–and, more recently, to make them cute.

Mizuki Shigeru, however, has presented youkai in such a way that they are popular and lovable, while still menacingly creepy. He is one of the first manga artists to write about youkai (among other topics), and even in his old age now, he continues researching monsters and spirirts in cultures around the world and writing about them. He is best known as the creator of GeGeGe no Kitarou, which is worth introducing in a separate entry. Mizuki-sensei himself has a very interesting history, and which is worth a seperate entry as well.

For now it will suffice to say that he was born in Sakaiminato, a port town here in the San’in region. When he was very young, he loved spending time with the old, very religious woman who assisted his family. He affectionately referred to her as “Nonnon-baa” (“Religious Granny”). She told him stories about various youkai, including Betobeto-san.

This story originally came from Nara Prefecture, but it seems Betobeto-san (“Mr. Footsteps”) has been heard all over Japan. If you’re walking along at night and you hear the sound of clacking geta sandals, beto beto beto, coming from behind you, it means you’re being followed by this youkai. So long as you stop and politely say, “Betobeto-san, after you!”, it will pass by and leave you alone.