Wasshoi! Magazine #5 by Wasshoi! Magazine

KEYNOTE

WASSHOI! Interdisciplinary Magazine on Japan

BILINGUAL SHORT STORY WASSHOIMAGAZINE.ORG/MAGAZINE • ISSUE 5, WINTER 2022/23 Yokai! The Foreign Father of

ARTICLE REVIEW Ōmameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands

Japan’s Pre-War Parliamentary Diplomacy

Japanese Ceramics

Arita or Seto Ware?

Luigi Zeni

Japan’s Pre-War Parliamentary Diplomacy and the IPU

Kaori Itoh

(Transl. Amelia Lipko)

Negotiating Modernity Underwater: Women of the Sea in a Changing World Part I

Shuhei Tashiro

In Search of the Truth(?): The Kubotas’ Illustrated Report on the First Sino–Japanese War

Arend Bucher

POPULAR CULTURE / REVIEW

Ōmameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands 大豆田永久子と三人の元夫

Fengyu Wang

FILM

BILINGUAL / REVIEW

Equilibri affettivi e spirituali in Under the Stars di Tatsushi Ōmori

Ilaria Malyguine in collaboration with Nippon Connection

Emotional and Spiritual Balance in Under the Stars by Tatsushi Ōmori

(Transl. Luigi Zeni)

ESSAY TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 6 22 54 34 4 POLITICS ANTHROPOLOGY

EDITORIAL

ARTS

HISTORY

HISTORY HISTORY / POPULAR CULTURE 48 FILM

/ KEYNOTE

Transportation and the Castle Town in the Mōri Clan Domain under Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Hiroki Nakahara (Transl. Amelia Lipko)

ARTS

The Foreign Father of Japanese Ceramics: A Walk Through Gottfried Wagener’s Appointment as a ‘Hired Foreigner’ in Japan

Laura Vermeulen

POPULAR CULTURE

World Literature from Left to Right: Bilingual Authors and Their Influence on Japanese Language

Sara Odri in collaboration with Kotodama

MUSIC

ARTS / POPULAR CULTURE / ESSAY

In The Land of All Things Heavy: The Underground Doom and Sludge Metal Scene in Japan

Patrick Pozzi

SHORT STORY

Yokai! (French / English)

Marty Borsotti Illustrator: Enrico Bachmann

62 68 80 90 98 HISTORY HISTORY

BILINGUAL LITERATURE

Another year has passed and much has changed. Two years of tremors have marked the life of our magazine; born amidst a global pandemic, it was barely one year old when a war broke in Europe. News fatigue, political instability and much more have numbed many people’s hearts. Despite all this, we keep shouting to the world: ‘Wasshoi! Wasshoi!’ and have already reached our 5 th edition. We will fondly remember the past year, 2022, for two main achievements: the publication of our first thematic issue, on Love in Japan , and the acquisition of an ISSN identification (2813-3617), a cornerstone in the building of our project. The chorus of Wasshoi! is getting louder, as many young and talented enthusiasts have joined our group. The issue you are about to read was made possible through their passion and hard work!

Dr. Kaori Itoh, assistant professor at Hiroshima University, does us the honour of starting this new issue with a piece dedicated to Japan’s pre-war parliamentary diplomacy. Shuei Tashiro follows with a chronicle of an attempt to export Japanese ama divers to colonise Korean territories in the late 19 th century, and the tensions that arose as a consequence. Moving on, through the work of Kubota Beisen and his sons, Arend Bucher explores how illustrated prints were employed as a journalistic medium during the coverage of the first Sino-Japanese war. Fengyu Wang then reviews the TV series ‘Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-husbands’, a tragicomedy about the bizarre everyday life of Omameda Towako, who slowly reconnects with her three (!) former husbands. Ilaria Malyguine, in collaboration with Nippon Connection,

EDITORIAL

Aurel Baele, Luigi Zeni, Marty Borsotti

follows with a bilingual review of the movie ‘Under the Stars’, adapted from the novel ‘Hoshi no ko’, which narrates the hardships faced by a young girl born into a family deeply involved in a religious cult. In his article, Hiroki Nakahara takes us further back in time, introducing the history of Hiroshima and its castle, a topic brought from his PhD research. Next comes Laura Vermeulen, who provides us with her case study of Gottfried Wagener, a lifelong hired foreigner who became a central figure in the development of modern Japanese ceramics making. We are pleased to continue our collaboration with the Italian magazine Kotodama with an article provided by Sara Odri, where she delves into the complex and interesting world of Japanese bilingual authors and their relationship with the Japanese language. Patrick Pozzi will

bring us onto a whole new with an essay on the Japanese underground doom and sludge metal scene, showcasing a selection of bands that will help us better understand this subgenre and the uniqueness of the Japanese artists involved. Finally, Marty Borsotti concludes this issue with a short story inspired by Japanese folkloric ghost tales.

Thus, we have nothing more to say than to wish you pleasant reading, and by now you know the drill, right?

Wasshoi! Wasshoi!

ARITA OR SETO WARE?

Luigi Zeni

Some of you might have recognised the style of the ceramic tea kettles on the cover page: the distinctive blue and white porcelain, reminiscent of Arita ware, produced in northwest Kyushu. Arita ware is typically associated with export ceramics, imported extensively into Europe from the second half of the 17 th century via the Dutch outpost in Nagasaki.

However, these particular tea kettles were produced in Seto city, far from the town of Arita! Seto lies in Aichi prefecture, close to Nagoya, and is another important ceramic centre in Japan – no less than one of the Six Ancient Kilns ( rokkoyō 六古窯 ). As a matter of fact, a revival in the production of porcelain ware took place in Seto at the turn of the 18 th century, after the ceramist Tamikichi Katō ( 加藤民吉 ; 1772–1824) went to Arita to learn manufacturing techniques and glazing methods, such as underglaze blue cobalt decoration. Following his return to Seto in 1807, his endeavours in renewing the porcelain industry were praised to the extent that a shrine was dedicated to him in the same city with the name Kamagami shrine ( kamagami 窯神 literally means ‘god of kilns’).

Ceramic enthusiasts will discover more to enjoy in this issue of Wasshoi! . The cover image fits well with one article, written by Laura Vermeulen, which deals with the topic of ceramic industry and manufacturing methods in 19 th century Japan, redefined by Western scientist and technician, Gottfried Wagener.

7 ESSAY

Fig. 1 The exterior of IPU’s current executive office in Geneva.

JAPAN’S PRE-WAR PARLIAMENTARY DIPLOMACY AND THE IPU

Kaori Itoh

What is the IPU?

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is an international organisation with a 130-year-long history that unites parliament members from 178 states. With the aim of fostering common understanding towards international issues in an amicable way, it organises yearly conferences where the participants tackle various problems in a lively debate. While nowadays it is not uncommon for MPs to serve organisations working for the benefit of multiple nations, the IPU can be considered a pioneer for introducing such parliamentary diplomacy (Fig. 1). It was established in 1889, when a Frenchman, Frédéric Passy, and an Englishman, William Randal Cremer, came together to found a salon-like international organisation, gathering together Western legislators who supported the ideal of pacifism. At first, they sought to create a forum for political negotiations. They fervently believed in a movement of internation -

al arbitration as a means to avert war at a time of global political instability, when major world powers were turning against each other, taking part in an arms race that made politicians rack their brains about the increasing military budgets. The IPU’s early successes were the contribution to the First Hague Conference in 1889, which came from a proposal by Russian Tsar Nicholas II and, subsequently, the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 1901. Ever since, the IPU has been spreading the ideals of internationalism and pacifism, providing a platform for discussion about a range of international issues concerning parliamentary systems, demilitarisation, economics, colonialism and other topics.

9 HISTORY / KEYNOTE POLITICS

Membership and Background of the IPU

Japan, or namely its House of Representatives, joined the IPU in 1908, thus becoming its first Asian member state, and has remained a member ever since (Fig. 2). However, not because it supported Passy and Cremer’s belief in pacifism and internationalism – quite the opposite – it was the result of a growing mood of nationalism in Japan at that time. The Russo-Japanese War, which started in 1904, had led to tax increases that made everyday life more difficult, while embellished war reports raised people’s expectations towards favourable peace terms, making them strongly dissatisfied with the conditions of the treaty that was eventually proposed. This discontent resulted in outbreaks of riots in Japanese cities, most notable of which was the Hibiya incendiary incident. These movements,

led by politicians from the opposition party, called for a firm attitude in international matters. They criticised the government’s diplomatic efforts for being monopolised by the Meiji oligarchy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contravening article 13 of the Meiji Constitution, which states that the Emperor has supreme authority over diplomacy. Thus, Itō Hirobumi, who drafted the Meiji Constitution, disapproved of the parliament’s participation in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and Imperial Ordinance However, even if this meant that, according to the Constitution, parliament should not be able to make a decision over whether to enter the treaty, the aforementioned movement still strongly sought for diplomacy to be based on public sentiment.

Members of the House of Representatives who held this belief decided to go overseas on behalf of the people in order to personally observe the state of international affairs and use the acquired information as a basis on which they could raise disputes and criticisms at the Imperial Diet assembly. At the beginning of the 20 th century there already existed various means of international travel, such as by ship or by the Trans-Siberian Railway, yet moving from the Far East to the West was not an easy feat, even for politicians. The IPU was able to help such MPs by officially organising their trips abroad and getting them in touch with Western politicians eager for discussion (Fig. 3). One could say that Japan’s parliamentary diplomacy at that time, rather than a means of solving problems, served as a tool

for critics of the government, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular, to expand nationalism. Even when the main political groups or individuals responsible for parliamentary diplomacy changed, this basic characteristic, distinctive of pre-war Japan, persisted.

< Fig. 2 Attendees of the 1908 IPU conference in Berlin. Fig. 3 Delegations from Japan and the US photographed in 1913.

Thus, many of the Japanese MPs who first joined the IPU were nationalists, so their understanding of its founding principles, pacifism and internationalism, was rather poor. The IPU’s secretary general, Christian Lous Lange (Fig. 4), was troubled about its relationship with Japan. After the First World War began in 1914, halting the IPU’s activity, Japan, even though it did not suffer much direct war damage, suspended its relationship with the IPU, which definitively confirmed Lange’s doubts. He desperately tried to keep a neutral stance during WW1 and connect the member states, so he thought it important to find a middleman who would understand the pacifist ideals of

the IPU as well as being well-versed in Japanese internal affairs. That person turned out to be Miyaoka Tsunejirō (Fig. 5), a lawyer from Tokyo and a special correspondent for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which was supporting the IPU economically at the time. Miyaoka was a former diplomat and could tell Lange in detail about Japan’s internal affairs and its political system. He was also able to use his own personal connections to promote appreciation for the IPU among Japanese MPs. Interestingly, this is what he perceived as problematic in the relationship between the IPU and Japan:

There are two points which I would recommend to your attention. First, Japan is young in la vie international[sic]. Secondly, Japan is young in her parliamentary life. Because Japan is old in her history and her civilization many Europeans make mistake in treating her as an old nation. In many ways Japan has juvenile temperament with all its drawbacks as well as its advantages. […] Japan’s parliamentary experience is young. We are just passing through a remarkable period in the constitutional history. Our national parliamentary system is twenty-three years old, but a sort of a system of party government is only just beginning to exist. In this embryo stage of parliamentary experience, parliamentarians naturally change very rapidly. It is only the bureaucrats attached to the Chambers that do not change. The upper House is also stable, but the lower House is continually changing. 1

1 Letter from Miyaoka to Lange, March 17th, 1913 (Box 235, Archives of the IPU, Geneva).

As mentioned before, while the House of Representatives (the lower house) belonged to the IPU, the upper house of the Imperial Diet, the House of Peers, did not. Miyaoka points out that because the House of Representatives often holds elections and is dissolved, the MPs switch continuously, making it structurally difficult for a person to develop personal connections with another country, or international organisation, and conduct diplomacy over a longer period of time. Consequently, Miyaoka recommended that Lange persuade the House of Peers to join the IPU, because its term of office was relatively long and it was formed by the

elites including the Kazoku peerage (the hereditary peerage in the Empire of Japan, between 1868-1947), boasting many MPs that were well acquainted with Western customs and had learned foreign languages. Importantly, Miyaoka did not believe that inter-parliamentary diplomacy should be conducted by MPs chosen by the people, but by the aristocracy and the older Establishment – and indeed, the IPU in that period did strongly resemble a salon-like organisation for western nobility.

Fig. 4 Christian Lous Lange. Fig. 5 Miyaoka Tsunejiro.

However, the House of Peers did not accept the IPU’s invitation immediately. Although Tokugawa Iesato, who was its president at the time, had a positive outlook on membership, the House of Peers repeatedly rejected the proposition. It is not clear why, but we can suspect it was because of the economic situation following the Russo-Japanese War, doubts about the idealistic pacifism of the IPU, and resentment about the fact that the House of Representa -

tives entered the IPU first. Eventually president Tokugawa and other volunteers from the House of Peers joined the organisation in 1928. As we can see, Japan and the IPU had to overcome many problems connected, among other things, to their opposing beliefs and ideologies, as well as differences in the characteristics of the House of Representatives and the House of Peers, making their relationship not an easy one.

International Activities of Imperial Diet Members during the Interwar Period

Once the First World War had finished, self-reflection on the fighting led to the creation of many international organisations, with the League of Nations at the core. An era that attached importance to multinational cooperation within various fields began. The IPU transformed as well, detaching from its salon-like western nature and becoming a more global organisation, uniting the parliaments of Eastern Europe, South America and the Middle East. Japan, namely the House of Representatives, returned to the IPU in 1921 to once again delegate multiple MPs abroad. The IPU organised a conference once a year in a major city in

one of the member states with the aim of discussing international politics, disarmament, minority issues, and other topics of interest, but the conclusions had no politically binding force. What is more, the members of each delegation came from both ruling and opposition parties, so the opinions and viewpoints of the representatives often differed even within their own groups. This lack of real agency enabled the IPU to keep a distance from the League of Nations, but at the same time weakened its influence on politics and diminished the power of its words. On the other hand, it did allow representatives of various parliaments to speak freely and take

an active part in discussions during the conferences. While the Imperial Diet existed (1890–1947), approximately 200 Japanese legislators from both houses participated in the IPU. Although some members of parliament looked at the IPU with scepticism, considering it too uninfluential, there were also many MPs who felt it significant in the era of internationalism to maintain friendly relations with members of other parliaments, understanding how important it was to guide international politics by putting together various points of view (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6 A look at the 1925 IPU conference in Washington.

Some Japanese MPs started forming friendships with foreign legislators, using them as a foundation for their own activities abroad. A member of the House of Representatives from Kagoshima Prefecture, Nakamura Kaju (Fig. 7), graduated from New York University and then lived in the US for many years; he worked as a journalist for the

Japanese-American Commercial Weekly newspaper before being elected to the house in 1924. The following year, he was delegated to participate in the IPU conference organised in Washington and Ottawa. Nakamura expressed his appreciation for and expectations of the IPU in the general debate during his first conference:

It is true to say that democracy is the growing tendency of the world. In such an age, international affairs are no longer the monopoly of foreign offices and trained diplomats. Along with the development of democratic ideas in international matters, modern methods and devices of communication are exercising a potent influence upon the peoples of the world. But a century, even fifty years ago, diplomacy was carried on quietly and often secretly between courts or governments and through accredited ambassadors or ministers. Today with the aid of parliaments and public meetings, of daily newspapers and the freedom of speech, of cable and radio, the peoples of different countries speak directly to each other. In such an age, peace among nations depends not merely upon the attitudes of governments and diplomats, but upon the mental state of the peoples. Democracy, therefore, imposes upon the people a great responsibility not merely in domestic politics, but also in the domain of international relations. We feel therefore that it is incumbent upon the Inter-parliamentary Union to make valuable contributions through its members, who are direct representatives of the peoples concerned, to the erection of the temple of international peace upon the solid foundation of democracy. 2

2 UNION

INTERPARLEMENTAIRE

COMPTE RENDU DE LA XXIIIe CONFÉRENCE, 1925, p.585 (Box2, Archives of the IPU).

The above speech encourages the development of ‘democratic’ diplomacy based on the public sentiment of the citizens, which connects fundamentally with the ideology of the Japanese MPs who first participated in the IPU. Nevertheless, such a practice was becoming an important means of fostering international understanding and facilitating communication. In other words, Nakamura’s ‘democratic diplomacy was not a simple derivation of nationalism, but served to promote internationalism: to inspire in people an active interest not only in domestic matters, but also in international ones.

Nakamura decided at this point that he should be politically active abroad. He participated in the pre-war IPU conferences and became more closely affiliated with them than any other member of the House of Representatives, forming relations with MPs from many countries. He paid much attention to international issues and was particularly concerned about the unresolved problem of Japanese emigration to the US, which remained a grave matter es -

pecially during this period. He investigated the actual living conditions of Japanese emigrants in North and South America and tried to educate his compatriots on the hardships that they faced through a self-published magazine, at the same time fiercely criticising the government’s migration policies at the Imperial Diet assemblies. This gained him the nickname ‘internationalist ’and passionate support, especially among Japanese immigrants.

Fig. 7 Nakamura Kaju.

Disturbances in Internationalist Collaboration and Japan’s Parliamentarianism

As is commonly known, Europe in the 1930s experienced a drastic breakdown in internationalist collaboration due in part to the rise of fascism. The situation in Asia was strained as well, with international tensions involving mainland China, especially after the Manchurian Incident of 1931, and in 1933 Japan announced its withdrawal from the League of Nations. The question of how to rebuild international relations after this declaration became a huge issue. The IPU, too, discussed how to handle Japan’s South Pacific Mandate. Before the 1935 Madrid conference, a committee gathered and drafted a resolution to deny Japan the continuation of the mandate. When the first tidings of this submission arrived in Japan, some claimed that they should leave the IPU if the resolution were to be adopted. Italy had temporarily withdrawn from the organisation in the previous year, so it was a possibility for Japan as well. However, the Japanese delegation con -

ferred with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other related authorities, and decided to appeal to the other delegations to abandon the resolution before it could be brought up for discussion. Even if it were to be implemented, they nonetheless decided not to leave the IPU. By no means did the Japanese delegation make light of the influence that the IPU’s decisions had on international opinion; on the contrary, they decided to use the IPU as a chance to foster understanding for Japan’s viewpoint from other countries. 3 Unexpectedly, their withdrawal from the League of Nations led Japan to exchange opinions on the international arena of the IPU, acknowledging it as a platform for making their claims known to others. Furthermore, the mandate resolution was successfully abandoned thanks to the workings of Nakamura Kaju and colleagues, so, the relationship between the IPU and Japan did not suffer any real strain after all.

3 A telegraph from 28th July 1933, number 7570, ‘ Daigishi no dōsen ni kan suru ken ’ ( Bankoku giin dōmei kaigi kankei ikken , volume 2 in possession of Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan), a telegraph from 28th August 1933, number 8277, ‘ Dai 29 kai bankoku giin kaigi shussekisha no dōsen ni kan suru ken ’ (as previously).

The speeches of Japanese MPs from the second half of 1930s clearly show how they actively wanted to familiarise the international community with Japan’s standpoint through the IPU. For example, Hatayama Ichirō, who attend -

ed the 1937 Paris conference, stressed in his speech that Japan’s parliamentary system would not waver even if faced with a political crisis with the following words:

It is true that Japan to-day, without exception from other countries, is facing a crisis of a political and economic character. As to the political crisis, at the outset, I can assure the members of the Congress that our parliamentary system will live through the present difficulties. From our point of view the constitution which was promulgated by the Emperor Meiji and by virtue of which was constituted the present parliamentary form of Government has a special position in the mind of the people. Even in the present crisis no one has questioned the principle upon which is built our national life. This conception is of a fundamental character in our political life. 4

MPs who emphasised the robustness of Japan’s parliamentary system in this way often attached importance to cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States. In other words, this attitude and strong belief in parliamentarianism demonstrates how different Japan’s viewpoint was from the anti-parliamentarians represented in Germany by Nazis burning down the Reichstag. Japanese MPs argued through the IPU that it was an utter misunderstanding to equate the German or Italian political systems to that of Japan. Their efforts to foster a relationship with the United Kingdom and the United

4 UNION INTERPARLEMENTAIRE COMPTE RENDU DE LA XXIIIe CONFÉRENCE, 1937, p.374 (Box3, Archives of the IPU).

States is further proof of this. A speaker of the lower house, Koyama Shōju, expressed a wish to organise an IPU conference in Tokyo, to invite members of various parliaments so that they could come into contact with the real Japan and form a new opinion of it. 5 This proposition came to nothing because of the outbreak of Second World War, but the idea alone makes it clear that Japan had certain expectations from the IPU.

5 Shōju Koyama addressing the president of IPU, Carton de Wiart, on 26.07.1939. ’ 1940 nen ni rekkoku kaigi dōmei kaisai enki ni kan suru ken ’ in Documents related to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, volume 24 (in possession of Secretariat of the House of Representatives).

The IPU and Japan After the War

In 1945, Japan had lost the war and by forfeiting sovereignty it had lost the capability to participate in the IPU. The organisation tried to make it possible and approached Japan about it, but the Japanese firmly held to the resolution that they would only re-join after having reclaimed sovereignty, eventually returning to the IPU in July 1952.

The post-war political measures regulated Japan’s parliamentary system of governance, the main example of which was the establishment of a new constitution. This made the debate about how to conduct diplomacy and organise parliament even more animated than before the war. The methods of Yoshida Shigeru, who had driven the Japanese government’s diplomacy in the second half of 1940s, were criticised by his political opponents, Hatoyama Ichirō and Kishi Nobusuke, as being self-righteous and secretive, as they called for the development of ‘diplomacy led by the citizens’. Once Hatoyama and Kishi gained political power, this idea, advocated before the war by the governments ’critics, started being introduced more and more firmly into government-led diplomacy. This tendency was also made clear in a speech by Ikeda Hayato, who succeeded Kishi right before the first

IPU conference in Tokyo, 1960. Ikeda gave the opening address as prime minister, expressing his wish that the IPU would continue to support the continuous development of ‘diplomacy led by the citizens’.

On the occasion of the Tokyo conference, the relationship between Japan and the IPU became closer than ever before. A central role was played by Fukunaga Kenji, an influential politician who served as Minister of Labour under Ikeda’s administration. Fukunaga became a member of the IPU’s executive committee and lead it to explore such topics as the problem of nuclear disarmament and space law. He also became well acquainted with the Soviet Union’s parliamentary representatives through the IPU and later developed bilateral parliamentary diplomacy between it and Japan: for example, leading the Japanese delegation to the Soviet Union in 1964. Fukunaga’s endeavours supported and complemented Ikeda’s diplomacy, which aimed to suppress the cold war while striving for cooperation and economic collaboration with the United Nations. After this, Fukunaga continued his close relationship with the IPU, which led to the organisation of a second conference in Tokyo in 1974.

In this way, the post-war shift in political systems and dynamics internalised ‘diplomacy led by the people’ through government measures. Parliamentary diplomacy with IPU, which in the pre-war period was merely an offshoot of international politics, came to fulfil the role of backchannel diplomacy that complemented government actions. From the second half of the 1960s, bilateral and multilateral parliamentary diplomacy gained momentum outside of the IPU, involving not just ruling parties, but also opposition parties and nonpartisan figures. To this day numerous Japanese members of parliament have come to be active in the field of public relations, conducting diplomacy in various settings.

NEGOTIATING MODERNITY UNDERWATER: WOMEN OF THE SEA IN A CHANGING WORLD

Part I: Colonial Encounters, Intersectional Struggles: A Transnational History

Shuhei Tashiro

Custodians of one of East Asia’s oldest occupations, the ama divers have long built traditional livelihoods by gathering shellfish and seaweed. This tradition, however, seems on the brink of disappearance in Japan today. How have the ama got where they are? What can we learn from them? This article series will trace the historical processes through which the ama’s modes of living and working both in and above the water have been transformed in the face of various, sometimes violent, forces of the emerging modern world. What constitutes the tensions and synergies between national identities, women and men, and humans and other species within and beyond Japan’s borders? First, in this article, we will look into a transnational history of the ama by considering how women divers on both sides of the Korea Strait encountered and negotiated colonial experiences in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

‘On her first visit to her mother’s hometown Kita-Sanriku, Aki encounters her grandmother and discovers she is an ama diver. So begins Aki’s journey to becoming an ama herself…’ Almost ten years have passed since NHK’s 2013 drama series Amachan ( あまちゃん ) swept Japan. To many, this asadora 朝ドラ (morning drama) provided a fresh, contemporary picture of the lives and struggles of the women divers. But one question seems to remain: are young people choosing to become ama divers like the protagonist Aki?

The ama are professional freedivers who gather shellfish and seaweed for a living. 1 It is one of the oldest existing professions on the archipelago: archaeological evidence suggests that people dove to catch abalones thousands of years ago. The genders of these early divers are unclear – most likely, both men and women dove. In fact, the word ama was used to refer generally to both male and female freedivers.

1 Female ama divers are referred to as 海女 , meaning ‘women of the sea’, as opposed to the male 海士 , though both are pronounced ama . Alternatively, 海人 and 蜑 , both also pronounced ama , have also been

used. Today, female ama make up the majority of ama divers operating in Japan. For this reason, ama in this article refers to female divers equivalent to the Japanese 海女 , unless otherwise specified.

23 HISTORY ANTHROPOLOGY

The Ama: Past and Present

Few ama actively documented their lives in old historical records, but we can trace them through literary appearances. In the Man'yōshū , 2 over 80 waka poems mention the divers, a testament to how popular they were in the imagination of urbanites. Later, Sei Shōnagon suggests that the profession has become a female-centered livelihood ( ama 海女 , literally ‘women of the sea’). In the Makura no Sōshi , 3 she expresses her admiration for the brave woman whose life-risking plunge into the dark, raging sea ‘almost brings her to tears’–while the male collaborator on the boat, likely the woman’s husband, has the easiest job and is ‘indescribably pathetic’.

While this might be too harsh an assessment of the collaborative ama technique known as funado , there is no doubt that ama practices require considerable skill, experience, and audacity. This perilous occupation would go on to become deeply intertwined with the spiritual lives, myths, and folklore of the people on the archipelago. Since the medieval period, the ama of the Shima Peninsula, one of the hotspots among ama villages, began to deepen their ties with the Ise Shrine. They became the primary suppliers of noshi awabi , abalone offerings of special significance to the Shinto tradition. Myriad myths have also developed not just among but about the divers: historians have, for instance, pointed out the ama ’s possible link with the Urashima legend. 4 Many folklorists, ethnologists, and anthropologists have argued for the uniqueness of the ‘ ama culture’, whilst often entwining it with origin myths of the Japanese nation.

This allegedly unique tradition, however, seems on the brink of disappearance. In the mid-20th century, there were more than 20,000 ama divers across Japan. Today, the number has plummeted to about 2,000. This rapid decline has rung an alarm bell: researchers, activists, and the ama themselves are now working hard to gain UNESCO cultural heritage recognition. Part of the impetus has been to follow the Korean divers on Jeju Island, who won such recognition in 2016 and with whom Japanese ama share a history of colonial migration. Here, is it possible to understand ama divers not just in terms of their distinctiveness but through their connections with the world beyond Japan? How did Korean divers negotiate rising tensions in Japan? Might this shared history of transnational migration help us formulate new questions–and answers–to our collective task of crafting a more relational world today?

2 Man'yōshū 万葉集 is an eighth-century collection of Japanese poems ( waka 和歌 ).

3 Makura no Sōshi 枕草子 , or The Pillow Book , is a book of essays, observations, and poems written by Sei Shōnagon 清少納言 in the late tenth and early eleventh century.

4 This is one of the most widely-known Japanese fairy tales in which the protagonist, Urashima Tarō 浦島太郎 , rescues a sea turtle on a beach and is, as a reward, taken to an undersea palace ( Ryūgū-jō 竜宮城 ).

Ama Divers in Korea: Colonial Ambitions, Troubled Encounters

To understand how the ama ended up in Korea, we need first to consider the historical landscape of Meiji Japan (1868–1912). Stories of modern Korea-Japan relations often begin with Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910. This is because this date marks the beginning of Japan’s fully-fledged imperialism, or in other words, military expansion on land. This historical narrative, however, overlooks an important form of modern expansionism that not only came prior to 1910, but took on modes of colonial expansion other than military or terrestrial. It happened at sea–as part of the fishing industry.

In the mid-Meiji era, fishermen and ama divers across Japan were faced

with increasing problems. In the 1880s, coastal ecosystems in western Japan suffered from denudation, a form of undersea desertification leading to the decline of seaweed. At the same time, the demand for valuable seaweed such as tengusa (a key ingredient of tokoroten , or Japanese jelly noodles) soared, resulting in over-harvesting. In response to these changes, the Meiji government made it state policy to expand its fishery operations to Korea (known as Chōsen-shutsuryō 朝鮮出漁 ) under an unequal treaty. Working closely with commercial capitalists, the nascent empire sought to make big money in neighbouring waters through organised migration.

Fig. 2 Left, a naked female diver hands an awabi shell to a man and a boy waiting in a boat; right, three men with deformities sit around a fire. Woodcut attributed to Jūsui, 1789.

Now, these fishery owners hired skilled divers and coordinated batches of hundreds of ama before crossing the Korean Strait. For the ama , going overseas must have brought about anxieties; but at the same time, the abundant resources in Korean waters promised a fortune. Bright futures awaited the divers, who dreamed no less than their employers of returning home one day with rosy fame and wealth.

The ama were now part of a dangerously invasive colonial enterprise. On Jeju Island, known to be one of the few places outside Japan where women operated as occupational freedivers, the Japanese and Koreans clashed frequently. Strong tensions arose due to the Japanese scuba divers, who used technical equipment to catch and extirpate most of the local marine fauna in the decade leading up to the ama ’s freediving operations. In 1891, fishermen from Jeju Island organised riots against the Japanese divers, which resulted in several locals being killed. The Korean residents stood up in protest and fury, but the Japanese summoned imperial naval ships to intimidate and subdue them. Force ensured profits.

Such violent encounters were also linked to cultural clashes. For instance, the locals and Japanese ama divers differed in the way they dressed and behaved. The Korean islanders, who followed Confucian morals, covered their skin, adhered strictly to age hierarchies, and separated female and male spaces. In contrast, the Japanese divers dove virtually naked (for practical purposes) and broke the gender code on the island. This led the locals to develop much contempt toward the invaders. The latter, in turn, looked down on the Jeju divers for their low technological standards (e.g., the absence of underwater goggles), justifying their own presence. Friction persisted over time, so much so that most ama lived and slept on their ships for fear of attacks by the locals.

Colonial fisheries continued after the 1910 annexation. These few decades set off a series of transformations on both sides. On the Korean end, there came a surge of women divers. According to some anthropologists, the women divers of Jeju Island had only harvested seaweed as a fertilizer for on-land farming prior to the Japanese

invasion. The colonial encounter, however, opened up a fully-fledged fishing industry that exported vast hauls* to Japan and the wider world. More and more women, in turn, took advantage of this emerging economic niche.

Similarly, the Chōsen-shutsuryō changed myriad aspects of Japanese ama operations such as an increasingly capitalist contract system, but above all, the question remains as to the degree to which the divers were complicit in the expansionist enterprise. Certainly, they served as important actors in the invasive venture whose benefits sponsored later imperialist aggression. Things become rather complex, however, especially when considering the fol -

lowing: the ama were themselves subject to monetary exploitation by their employers, who underpaid the divers for their own profits. Here, one point seems clear. Their migratory labour across Korean waters marked the beginning of an essentially modern era: to dive now meant to be part of a transnational network of social, economic, and political forces far beyond the confines of their local shores. This modernity travelled in both directions.

Fig. 3 A Japanese diver in the white diving suit that became widely used after migrations to Korea and until wetsuits were adopted in the 1950s and 1960s.

Chamsu Divers in Japan: Precarious Labour, Intersectional Struggles

How did the Korean divers experience these rapidly changing tides? Jeju Island is known to have been the only place in Korea where women played an important role in occupational freediving (originally called chamsu 잠수 ) prior to the Japanese invasion. History, however, tells a more complex story. According to the anthropologist An Mi-Jeong, both men and women dove prior to the dynastic era of Joseon (1392–1897). With the establishment of dynastic rule and the Confucian patriarchy, however, came a transference of ‘low-class’ labour to women. The uniformity of gender among chamsu divers, An asserts, is a ‘political product’. 5

During and after Japanese colonial rule, the working conditions for chamsu divers underwent important changes. On the one hand, the wider commercial routes and rising demand for sea products presented new economic opportunities for the divers, whose population surged throughout the early 20 th century. Girls and women were valued in the community, as can be seen in the Jeju proverb, ‘If a newborn is a girl, celebrate it with a pork-meal party; if it is a boy, kick his butt’. 6 The onslaught of Japanese fisheries, on the other hand, left the island with severe resource depletion. The chamsu now had to look elsewhere. Eventually, some boarded the Kimigayo Maru , a new cargo liner that launched in 1922 to connect Jeju and Osaka.

‘Coming to Japan at age 20, and without even an average life, I walked on the bottom of the sea with a coffin. Together with seagulls, I have lived through this year and that year, but this body, once young, has aged, under the sea’. 7

5 Mi-Jeong An, 済州島海女の民族誌「海畑」という生活世界 (Chiyoda, Tokyo: Alphabeta Books, 2017), 32.

6 Ibid, 35. My translation.

7 Yong Kim and Jungja Yang, 海を渡った朝鮮人海女房総のチャムスを訪ねて (Chiyoda, Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobō, 1988), 90. My translation.

These are the lyrics of a song composed by a migrant chamsu . Although the lives of these migrant divers do not surface frequently in records or media, we can see glimpses of their experiences in Japan thanks to several key works of documentation. In this article, I follow one such contribution, a book titled 海を渡った朝鮮人海女房総のチャムス

を訪ねて ( The Korean Women Divers who Crossed the Ocean: Visiting the Chamsu in the Bōsō ) by Kim Yong and Yang Jungja (1988). Both of Zainichi roots, 8 the authors follow and interview Korean divers across the Bōsō Peninsula. How and why have migrant divers continued walking on the bottom of the sea with a coffin? The stories from the book delineate the turbulent lives of women in permanent precarity.

For the chamsu , sources of precarity were ample. Firstly, many of them lived in poverty, and their economic instability, in turn, made them targets for discrimination:

Secondly, the very nature of their labour was prone to instability. Many chamsu relied on the help of Korean managers who negotiated with Japanese authorities and landowners over fishing rights and property. Without proper local knowledge, however, these managers were at risk of frequent fraud and deception. When the fisheries coop (or kumiai ) took control of most fishing operations in the mid-20 th century, they frequently excluded the rights of chamsu divers from their legal framework. Ethnic prejudice kept the Korean migrants away from secure diving grounds.

‘The Japanese look down on us Koreans; they don’t consider us human. They’d say, ‘Oh, here’s a poor beggar.’ No house, no nothing; they don’t even speak the language’. 9

Furthermore, we must not forget that these women usually undertook the strenuous task of being at once a breadwinner, mother, and wife. It was not uncommon for their husbands to fall into gambling, turn to domestic violence, or disappear after their arrival in Japan. Most of the family burden fell on these women, who were also responsible for raising multiple children in a foreign land. Often, these children were born not in the hospital but in their own tiny huts, meaning they would grow up as invisible citizens deprived of social or political rights.

8 Zainichi 在日 (literally, “staying in Japan”) is a word used to refer to those ethnic Koreans who are permanent residents of Japan and either immigrated during Japan’s colonial rule over Korea or are their direct descendants.

9 Ibid, 26. My translation.

Economic poverty, ethnic discrimination, gender and family strains: these intersectional struggles haunted the Korean divers who crossed the ocean. I have used the past tense in this section since the source is more than several decades old and there are believed to be significantly fewer chamsu in Japan nowadays than in the mid-20 th century. Yet this assumption can be quite misleading. Many of the living conditions described here continue to weigh on the remaining chamsu today, perhaps even more so. What do their lives look like today? For that, we need more stories.

Regardless of how much their circumstances have shifted, one thing will not change: the lives of these Korean women have been inextricably entangled with those of Japanese ama and their colonial history. Not only were they colonial migrants; many chamsu were also forced labourers of imperial Japan. They contributed to the production of gunpowder by harvesting much-needed seaweed in the years of the Pacific War. Institutional forces uprooted them from their social and economic settings. The chamsu, then, confronted and negotiated their new realities in their own ways. These efforts did not come without deep wounds, poignantly depicted in the rest of the song quoted above:

‘Count with the fingers I shall, it has been 39 years since then. I decide to visit my hometown, but my father, my mother, and my brothers are all gone, dead, there is no place to return to, what can I do, tears come up, I visit my mother’s grave, only to find weeds growing thick and wild, big brother, big sister, I call their names, only to face the silence, not even ‘welcome home’, I search for the way home, but the tears won’t let me see.

I look in the north and the south and the east and the west, only to find that there is no one giving me the simple wish, of “have a safe journey”.’ 10

10 Ibid, 91. My translation.

Fig. 4 A diver gathering seaweed underwater.

Shared Histories Beyond the Ocean

Even a look as cursory as this article should suffice to say that, in contrast to how they are portrayed in Amachan , the lives of the ama are not as simply peaceful or joyful, nor as uniquely Japanese as some claim. Rather, behind the scenes is a shared history of transnational encounters rife with tension and anxiety. On the one hand, as they became involved in the state colonial fisheries policy, the Japanese ama not only went through economic exploitation by their managers, but spent night after night on their ships fearing clashes with Jeju locals. At the same time, the invasion led the Korean chamsu to migrate to Japan; many lost their connections with family and friends, and found themselves in extremely vulnerable conditions. In other words, women from both sides of the Korea Strait were drawn into often-violent circumstances by forces of the emerging modern world. And on top of all this were the inherent physical dangers of their work–the chamsu and ama continued to walk on the bottom of the sea with a coffin. Yet it would be wrong to see these

historical processes as only a story of despair or confrontation. It is also a story of their connections, shared traditions, and capacity to navigate through a changing world. I have interviewed an ama currently working and living in Mie Prefecture. Recalling her time at the last international Ama Summit, the ama told me that the Korean and Japanese divers came together and immediately shared a deep sense of friendly connection despite language barriers. ‘We share the same ocean. That is why we are friends’. 11 In the past, the crossing of the ocean brought about separation. Today, that same ocean is bringing people together despite all their differences. And this shared ocean only comes alive in the presence of the strength and tenacity with which these divers have negotiated their turbulent lifeworlds. It is perhaps by telling more stories about these lives underwater that we can begin to imagine the continuity–and renewed future–of this shared East Asian heritage.

11 An ama (anonymous) in an interview on 22 May 2022.

IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH(?)

The Kubota's Illustrated Report on the First Sino-Japanese War

The First Sino–Japanese War (1894–1895) was a turning point in Japanese history. For Japan, the power balance of East Asia had shifted as the once powerful and influential Qing dynasty was defeated by another Asian power: the Empire of Japan. Considering the importance of this war, Japanese newspapers, such as the Kyoto Asahi Shinbun, dispatched journalists to the front to observe and document developments of the ongoing war. As a result, articles, reports, photographs, and woodblock prints were continuously published, while painters were also sent to the front to create visual reports. One such example is the Illustrated Report of the Sino–Japanese Battles ( Nisshin sentō gahō 日清戦闘画報 ; 1894–1895). 1 This woodblock-printed report was published in eleven volumes by Ōkura Yasugorō ( 大倉保五郎 ; 1857–1937) and drawn by Kubota Beisen ( 久保田米僊 ; 1852–1906) and his two sons, Kubota Beisai ( 久保田米斎 ; 1874–1937) and Kubota Kinsen ( 久保田金僊 , often 金仙 ; 1875–1954). This article discusses the production details of the report, shedding light on its war representations through comparison with other popular media of the time.

Historical Background: The First Sino–Japanese War

Bilateral tension between Japan and China grew during the early Meiji period (1868–1912) as Japan tried to become influential on the mainland. Initiating relations with Korea was their first step in this, but given Korea’s tributary relationship with China, this proved difficult. Following ongoing interference by both Japan and China in Korea’s national affairs, the Tianjin Convention was signed in 1885. This treaty meant that the two nations would withdraw their troops from Korea, and would notify each other in advance should they dispatch troops in the future. While the two countries kept a close eye on Korea, tension was temporarily subdued.

1 Literally, the Japanese reads ‘Japan–Qing’, which distinguishes it from the Second Sino–Japanese War. Generally in English, Sino–Japanese is used as a translation. In this paper, therefore, it refers to the First Sino–Japanese War and not the Second.

35 HISTORY / POPULAR CULTURE ARTS

Arend Bucher

Nevertheless, China and Western nations soon tried to gain influence over Korea again, and in 1894 the Donghak Peasant Revolution broke out as a result of the dissatisfaction felt by many Koreans towards their government. Both China and Japan sent troops into Korea to intervene, leading to military conflicts on 23 rd , 25 th and 29 th July. As a result, war was declared on 1 st August 1894. On land, the war took place in Korea and North East China, while

naval battles were fought in the Yellow Sea. The Treaty of Shimonoseki was concluded on 17 th April 1895, heralding the end of war, in favour of Japan. However, the fighting was not yet finished. Taiwan, which was conceded to Japan as a result of the war, did not accept Japanese rule. Accordingly, Japan went on to occupy Taiwan until November of the same year. Only hereafter can the First Sino–Japanese War be said to have completely ended.

Journalism and Media in Meiji-period Japan

Media, as in popular or mass media, has a fairly long history in Japan. Already from the beginning of the Edo period (1600–1868), there were illustrated books and loose printed pictures being sold mainly among commoners in the big cities. The latter were called ukiyo-e 浮世絵 (pictures of the floating world), or nishiki-e 錦絵 (brocade pictures) when printed in a full-range of colours. These prints can be seen as the precursors to modern popular media in Japan. Ukiyo-e lived on through the Meiji era, combining earlier fashions with new dyes, themes, and styles, influenced by the import of Western culture and goods. Ukiyo-e spread gossip and led fashion trends throughout its history, but from the 1850s onwards, news on Westerners and their culture started to be distributed through this medium. Information on earthquakes, wars, and international expos, too, was shared via

woodblock prints from the late Edo period and throughout the Meiji period. In this sense, the prints were comparable to newspapers, even tabloids.

Closer to news reporting were the kawaraban 瓦版 (tile prints) and shinbun nishiki-e 新聞錦絵 (newspaper brocade pictures). The former were sheet prints made using engraved tiles, while the latter were classic woodblock prints. Both combined image and text to spread news and gossip, often diluted with humour or sensationalism, forming something between an ukiyo-e and a newspaper. In short, one can say that even before the import of new, Western media during the Meiji era, a native foundation was already present and that it was developed further when Western methods were employed alongside domestic ones.

Among these Western innovations were the newspaper, photography, and lithography, of which the first was the by far the most prolific. Newspapers, in the modern sense, began to be published in Japan in 1868, and in 1871 the first daily newspaper was launched: the Yokohama Daily Newspaper ( Yokohama Mainichi Shinbun 横浜毎日新聞 ). By the end of the 1870s others followed, and magazines on all sorts of topics we published as well.

Photography had already been introduced to Japan as early as 1848, rising slowly in popularity during the 1850s and 60s. After the necessary exposure time was drastically shortened, thanks to dry gelatine plates, photography was used as a way of reportage from the early 1890s onwards. Natural disasters and the upcoming Sino–Japanese War

became the first main subjects for this new use of the medium. However, most war photographs depicted post-battle scenes or images otherwise unrelated to the fighting.

Fig. 2 Kubota Beisen 久保田米僊 and Beisai 米斎 . Chinese horse riders in battle, p. 20 from An Illustrated Report of the Sino-Japanese Battles, vol. 3, 2 December 1894; published by Ōkura Yasugorō 大倉保五郎 . Woodblock printed, ca 17 x 24 cm.

Lithography, another reproductive medium from the West, was first used in Japan in the 1960s, for Christian propaganda and for Western-owned newspapers (such as the Japan Herald). Once the Meiji period began, the military and the Ministry of Education ( Monbushō 文部省 ) used it for publishing textbooks. By the end of the 1870s, the technology was also being applied to printing magazines, inserting pictures, commercials, and more. The medium’s success was utilised during the Sino–Japanese War, where lithographs depicting the war were printed, too.

One might wonder whether some media had to succumb to others, but during most of the Meiji era this was not the case. The Western media were often still developmental, so each medium had its own characteristics, with its own merits and demerits. Only by the late Meiji period had Western technology improved enough that some media, for example woodblock prints, had to give way and become niche.

Kubota Beisen was born in Kyoto, and went into training under Suzuki Hyakunen ( 鈴木百年 ; 1828–1891) to become a nihonga 日本画 (Japanese style painting) artist in the Shijō style ( Shijō-ha 四条派 ). Though educated as a nihonga painter, Kubota showed interest in other media and activities as well. Not only did he master oil painting, known as Western style painting ( yōga 洋画 ), but he also drew cartoons and took on jobs for nishiki-e designs and illustrations in guidebooks. From 1878 on, he was in contact with people from various newspapers and magazines, and in 1889 he even founded The Kyoto Daily News (Kyōto Nippō 京都日報 ) with some comrades.

The journalist Tokutomi Sohō ( 徳富蘇峰 ; 1863–1957) launched The National Newspaper (Kokumin Shinbun 国民新聞 ) in Tokyo in 1890. 2 A year earlier,

Tokutomi had asked Kubota to join his company, as Tokutomi thought highly of Kubota’s work, and so the latter started working as a journalist in Tokyo. When the situation escalated in Korea, he was sent there together with his son, Kubota Beisai, by The National Newspaper in June 1894. Alongside contributing sketches and articles to the paper he was affiliated with, Kubota sold his work to other companies. He did not, however, stay very long at the front. By the end of July, Kubota had already temporarily returned home due to illness. He went back to the front in mid-August, but in early October travelled to Hiroshima, where he painted in the presence of the emperor at the imperial headquarters, never to return to the front.

Kubota Beisen: An Artist at the Front

From the time Kubota Beisen moved to Tokyo for work, he was aided by his two sons. The three together will be referred to, here, as the ‘Kubota studio’. The oldest son, Kubota Beisai, had gone to high school in Oakland, USA. After his return in 1889, he was schooled in nihonga , Chinese classics, and Japanese poetry in Kyoto, and subsequently went to Tokyo in 1892 to join his father. There he learned Western style painting and worked for kabuki magazines and print publishers. In June 1894 he set sail for Korea together with his father.

The second son, Kubota Kinsen, was educated at the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting ( Kyōto-fu Gagakkō

京都府画学校 ), which was co-founded by Kubota Beisen in 1889. He was also instructed by his father and went along with him to Tokyo almost immediately. There he, too, worked for The National Newspaper. Initially, he did not go to the front, but since his father had already returned to Japan by October, he was sent in his stead.

A Naval Battle Between Japanese and Chinese Warships ( Nisshin kan gekisen no zu 日清艦激戦之図 ), 1893?; published by Komori Sōjirō

森宗次郎 . Ōban triptych (left sheet) nishiki-e

2 Previously, another Kokumin shinbun existed. However, this one was not founded by Tokutomi.

Fig. 3 Shunsai Toshimasa 春斎年昌

小

Kubota’s Children

An Illustrated Report of the Sino–Japanese Battles

An Illustrated Report of the Sino–Japanese Battles ( Nisshin sentō gahō 日清戦闘画報 ; hereafter NSG), is a series of picture books drawn and authored by the Kubota studio and published by Ōkura Shoten 大倉書店 , or more specifically, Ōkura Yasugorō ( 大倉保五郎 ; 1857–1937), from 1894 to 1895 in eleven volumes. The earliest volume was published on 1 st October 1894, and the last one on 6 July 1895. 3 The books measure 17 by 24 centimetres (height by width). Each volume consists of two main parts: a woodblock-printed section containing a handwritten introduction and an average of thirteen to nineteen pictures, followed by a section devoted entire -

ly to written information on the war, made using movable metal type. This writing serves as background information and complements the illustrations. From the fifth volume onwards, the pictures are accompanied by English captions printed using the moveable type, suggesting a possible foreign demand. 4 Indeed, Ōkura Shoten is known for exporting reissues of Japanese art to the West in book format, even displaying them at world fairs. It is thought that Kubota Beisen got in touch with the Ōkura company when they published books on Shijō paintings (for export), the painting school to which Kubota belonged.

Purpose and Historical Reliability

When looking at a series of books like this, questions arise over whether it is a reliable historical source, what the purpose of the authors and publisher was, and how it fits into the contemporary media landscape. The first is of course problematic, as it is impossible to make something objectively truthful. Especially in this case, where the images were usually drawn from the perspective of the reporter, implicitly supporting a certain point of view. Still, another issue arises. When reading the introduction to the first volume, written by Kubota Beisai, the overall goal of the series seems rather clear: he starts off by explaining how valuable it is, though often difficult and frustrating, to record current traditions and historical events, especially in a time of rapid change and modernisation (as the Meiji era was). 5 In other words, it seems as if

Kubota Beisai was aware of the importance the family’s work might hold as a historical record. He even goes on to openly criticise other painters and ukiyo-e artists in general for their often lax attitude towards depicting the truth. In this way he points out the possible harm it might bring to the historical understanding of future generations. Furthermore, he discusses his experience as a war reporter, how everybody at home inquires about what life is like at the front. He states that he wishes everyone could know about it, perhaps through his pictures. Thus, the purport of this work appears to be a historically accurate report.

Fig. 4 Kubota Beisen 久保田米僊 , Beisai 米斎 , and Kinsen 金仙 . Copy of a Chinese print of the Battle of Juliancheng, p. 26 from An Illustrated Report of the Sino-Japanese Battles , vol. 6, 29 January 1895; published by Ōkura Yasugorō 大倉保五郎 . Woodblock printed, ca 17 x 24 cm.

3 These dates are based on those that can be found in the NSG copies of The National Diet Library and those in Ōtani Tadashi and Fukui Junko, Egakareta Nisshin sensō: Kubota Beisen ‘Nisshin sentō gahō’ eiin/honkokuban (Osaka: Sōgensha, 2015).

4 The combined use of moveable metal type printing and woodblock printing happened regularly in the late Meiji period. It was mainly used to add English (or other Romanised) text to images.

5 The westernisation of Japan in the Meiji period is also called bunmei kaika 文明開化 , often translated as civilisation and enlightenment.

Yet a few facts contradict this. To begin with, Kubota Beisen was not present at the front for a large part (see above), and nor did his sons, Beisai and Kinsen, witness all the events. The Battle of the Yellow Sea (vol. 4), most of the fifth volume, half of the seventh volume, the tenth volume, and the majority of the eleventh ( gaisen hen 凱旋編 , or triumph volume ) were not drawn based on their own first-hand experiences. Moreover, war reporters were generally not present at the battles themselves, but watched from afar or based their reports on the stories of soldiers and what they could see after the fighting. This becomes clear in the illustrations contributed to their articles in The National Newspaper. These mainly depict landscapes and commoners, not the battles themselves. The pictures in the illustrated report, however, do regularly depict the battles, often intimate -

ly. So there seems to be a discrepancy between what the two forms of media represent, despite being produced by the same people. Though the purported goal of the series is to be truthful, it is in fact a rather heroic, glorified version of the war, similar to many war prints created at home during that time. Ultimately, it cannot be seen as a reliable historical source. Why there is this contradiction between the pictorial content and the written introduction is not clear. A simple possible answer could be that marketing it as a reliable source was more appealing to customers, and would yield more revenue. What is also curious is that the name of the series emphasises the fighting and action of the war instead of the war as a whole, by using sentō ( 戦闘 , battle) instead of sensō ( 戦争 , war). This is interesting as sensationalism remains a contentious topic to this today.

Other War Picture Books

The NSG was not one of a kind. Japan already had a well-established tradition of picture books, dating back to the early Edo period, and Ōkura Shoten was not the only shop to produce illustrated books on the war. When looking at the advertisement section of newspapers from that time, one can immediately see how other companies dedicated themselves to publishing reports on the war in a variety of ways. The Kubota studio’s work was also published across two volumes by Minyūsha 民友社 , the larger company that ran The National Newspaper, as A Record of the Sino–Japanese Armies ( Nisshin gunki 日清軍記 ; 1894–1895). The cultural historical magazine, The Illustrated Report on Manners and Customs ( Fūzoku Gahō 風俗画報 ), similarly published volumes on Korea and Taiwan. Other companies, like Hakubunkan ( 博文館 ) and Shunyōdō

( 春陽堂 ), published illustrated reports with copperplate-printed photographs. Furthermore, some companies published volumes without pictures, at least according to the descriptions in their advertisements: for example Sino–Japanese War History ( Nisshin senshi 日清戦史 ) by Keizai Zasshi-sha ( 経済雑誌社 ).

Whether or not all of these companies sent their own reporters to the frontline is not clear, but in the end a total of 193 Japanese reporters were sent to document the Sino–Japanese War, among them 16 painters and 5 photographers. 6 In other words, it is clear that the Japanese journalism world was flourishing, with a wide variety of reports by different publishing companies as a result.

6 Ōtani, Tadashi, ‘“Nisshin sentō gahō” no seiritsu to sono naiyō ni tsuite’ in Egakareta Nisshin

sensō: Kubota Beisen ‘Nisshin sentō gahō’ eiin/honkokuban

(Osaka: Sōgensha), 435

NSG in Woodblock Prints?

It is said that the Sino–Japanese War woodblock print artists often used NSG as an informational or inspirational source for their designs. A striking example of this would be a print by Kobayashi Kiyochika ( 小林清親 ; 1847–1915) depicting The Battle of Pyongyang (15 th September 1894), which strongly resembles pages sixteen and seventeen of the third volume of NSG (Fig. 5 & 6). However, it remains uncertain whether the war prints really used this book series as a source, and the extent to which such is visible.

Foundation for this argument seems to be lacking. Interestingly, very few pictures bare a resemblance in composition, perspective, design, or specific subjects. Only six prints strongly, and five others slightly, resemble the NSG drawings. Given that there are approximately 160 images in NSG, only 6.8% of the NSG drawings could have perceivably served as a source material. 7

Fig. 5 Kubota Beisen 久保田米僊 and Beisai 米斎 . The Battle of Pyongyang, p. 16-17 from An Illustrated Report of the Sino-Japanese Battles , vol. 3, 2 December 1894; published by Ōkura Yasugorō 大倉保五郎 Woodblock printed, ca 17 x 48 cm.

Besides the numbers, there are other factors that need to be taken into account. The printing industry was a fiercely competitive one. Publishers wanted to be the first to publish works on a new topic. In comparison to newspaper articles, other books (that were advertised in newspapers), and many individual woodblock prints, the NSG was released rather late, when most of the depicted events had long since passed. Logically, most publishers would not wait for the NSG to be published just for reference sake.

Moreover, strikingly, four out of six of the strongly similar pictures depicted events that none of the Kubotas reported on. In two of these cases, the publication dates confirm that the prints were issued before the NSG. Instead, it could be said that the Kubota studio used war prints as a source for events at which they were not present. Another explanation could be that the Kubotas and other print artists used the same separate report as a source. Or it might well be a coincidence.

Taking the above into account, the series did most likely not serve as a pure reportage, with the purpose of conveying new information. Rather, this report might have been aimed at people with an interest in war prints as a collector’s item. This is strengthened by the fact that Kubota Beisai introduced the series as being more reliable than many other visual materials. It also seems probable that it was directed at people who preferred nihonga above Western style paintings or the average war prints, as the Kubotas were the only nihonga artists at the front. So, though the NSG is a fascinating part of publishing history and there are many beautiful pictures in there, caution is needed when interpreting its contents, regardless of Beisai’s claims

7 For this article, the author analysed all the drawings of the ten NSG volumes (the triumph volume does not depict war scenes, so is not included) and compared them to Sino–Japanese War related prints from various databases and books that depicted the same topics.

Fig. 6 Kobayashi Kiyochika 小林清親 Japanese army launches a night attack on Pyongyang ( Waga gun Heijō Shin'ei o osou 我軍平壌清営襲 ), October 1894; published by Matsuki Heikichi 松木平吉 . Ōban triptych nishiki-e

ŌMAMEDA TOWAKO AND HER THREE EX-HUSBANDS 大豆田とわ子と三人の元夫

Fengyu Wang

Here’s what happened this week:

Ōmameda Towako loathing the windowpane when it slid out of the frame…

Ōmameda Towako pouring salt into the coffee of her ex-husband…

Ōmameda Towako watching her ex-husbands fighting using broccoli…

Ōmameda Towako waking up in the morning with her ex-husband…

Screenwriter Sakamoto Yūji’s ( 坂元裕二 ) 2021 TV drama, Ōmameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands , starts off with its protagonist (played by Matsu Takako 松たか子 ) trying to unlock her late mother’s laptop to find a good photograph for the latter’s funeral. Hindered by the security question – the name of their first pet – she resorts to contacting her three ex-husbands, some of whom she hasn’t seen for a long time. Quirky, clumsy, but otherwise quite loveable in their own respects (thanks to great performances by Matsuda Ryūhei 松田龍平 , Kakuta Akihiro 角田晃広 , and Okada Masaki 岡田将生 ), they reconnect with Ōmameda, rekindle old passions, and reappear in her life as endearing old acquaintances, often bordering on personae non gratae. The assembling of the eponymous four (abbr. Mameotto まめ夫 ) opens a whole series of unexpected

Written by

Sakamoto Yūji

Starring

Matsu Takako, Matsuda Ryūhei, Kakuta Akihiro, Okada Masaki

Directed by

Nakae Kazuhito, Ikeda Chihiro, Taki Yūsuke

Number of Episodes

Release

Spring, 2021

Production Network

Kansai Telecasting Corporation

events and encounters, filled with dynamic dialogues, whimsical epigrams, and sporadic critiques (both mutually exchanged and self-inflicted) that are just as intense, and as farcical, as the exes’ broccoli fight.

FILM POPULAR CULTURE / REVIEW

Fig. 1 Illustration after the poster of Ōmameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands , Kansai Telecasting Corporation 関西テレビ. Illustration: Fengyu Wang.

From the most trivial to the absurdly theatrical conflicts, each of Mameotto ’s ten episodes opens with a comic montage, narrated by an amusingly candid yet scandalising voiceover. On one occasion, Ōmameda opens a kitchen cupboard overhead only to be greeted by a cascade of spaghetti pouring out of its packet; on another, she is taken into a police car with her neighbours looking on, while the voiceover joyfully chimes in: ‘Ōmameda Towako riding that thing that only the chosen people can take.’ Playing with the weekly format of TV drama, these vignettes, with the voiceover announcing ‘I will show you this week’s events in detail’, are both a parody of news reportage and an audio-visual appetiser. Presented in such a series of stylish snapshots, they capture your attention, raise your expectation, and put you in a mood for more quips and skits and high drama. However, as the episodes unfold, what appeared most dramatic in the previews often turns out to be surprisingly mundane once events are played out, situations quite naturally caused and then resolved in the flow and folds of life, one already full of urgency and tribulation. It is those trivial, everyday bothers that carry the emotional resonance while driving the narrative. Ōmameda’s most cordial exchanges with other characters, especially her new

dates (guest stars, each a surprise and a treat), concern shared experiences of only the smallest things – the unsynchronised body-turning exercises, or the soy sauce bags that are impossible to tear open without spilling all over. Just as we identify with Ōmameda when she turns a cling film roll over and over to find its loose end, these small things bond characters with each other as much as they connect them to us. Ōmameda’s hindered relationship with her daughter Uta (Toyoshima Hana 豊島花 ), however, is also manifest when she fails to connect with the latter by trying to share her experiences with smartphones. To questions like ‘don’t you have that kind of photos on your phone that you took by accident?’, teenage Uta reacts with only a confused and callous ‘no’.

Filled with quips and quibbles, Mameotto is lauded as a vanguard of the so-called ‘idle talk drama’ ( zatsudan dorama 雑談ドラマ ). Similar to the ‘mumblecore’ subgenre, trendy nowadays in American independent cinema, 1 the ‘idle talk drama’ also features chatty, discursive dialogue that evokes the casualness of everyday life. Without an overarching narrative or tightly crafted plot, characters instead develop through a series of atomic, sometimes unrelated events that formulate the larger, more intimate fabric of their personal lives. But unlike its American counterpart, ‘idle talk drama’ does not shy away from stagy, artful designs and devices.

Thought-provoking, epigrammatic reflections are scattered all over the series and sometimes spilled lightly over sips of sake. The remark by Ōmameda’s

best friend Kagome (Ichikawa Mikako 市川実日子 ), that ‘divorce is proof that one can live without lying’, snaps back critically at the social stigma attached to being a divorced woman, but is delivered with such leisure as she tipsily tends a piece of meat on a barbeque grill.

1 Mumblecore films are most known for unscripted, naturalistic dialogues and delivery, low-budget production, and anti-climatic plotlines. Emblematic of this subgenre, among others, are Joe Swanberg’s 2007 drama Hannah Takes the Stairs , and Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s 2013 comedy Francis Ha . For more on mumblecore, see Dennis Lim, ‘A Generation Finds Its Mumble’, The New York Times , August 19, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19lim. html, and David Denby, ‘Youthquake: Mumblecore movies’, The New Yorker, March 9, 2009.

Fig. 2 The three ex-husbands of Ōmameda are having an idle talk. Illustration after a screenshot of Mameotto, Ep. 1. Illustration: Fengyu Wang.

Such deliberateness is also manifest in the flow of narrative. The three potential dates for the ex-husbands are introduced in such a concerted manner at the end of the first episode, that they seem like a triple dea ex machina, critically customised for this triad of solipsistic divorcées. Coy, inert, tangled up with the past, the three men struggle to proceed with their new lives, let alone their new dates. They keep falling back on their ex-wife Ōmameda while constantly accusing the other two of having ‘lingering affections’ ( miren 未練 ). After weeks of probing and provoking, the three ladies finally manage to corner the deserters during a dumpling party, with their soul-shaking interrogation: ‘can you imagine dating someone like yourself?’ As the three divorcées finally start to reflect hard on themselves and brace for change, the three women leave the party and soon after – just as resolutely, but in a quiet and abrupt manner – exit the show to move on with their own lives. All of this takes place while the biggest mid-show conflict of Ōmameda’s career and relationship is playing out elsewhere, but as the audience we never get to see how it’s resolved. Instead, in this wonderfully conceived Mameotto episode where Ōmameda herself is almost entirely absent, we stare at a bizarre gathering of the orbiting characters, making dumplings as well as life decisions. And when we come back to her side of the story towards the end of the episode, the life of Ōmameda, too, has already moved on.

It is against such a fractured, discursive backdrop that other serious themes of Mameotto play out: workplace conflicts, friendship, motherhood, and death. It is Ōmameda who hangs up a call from her friend’s covetous relatives with a most candid ‘dumbass, dumb dumb dumbass’, and the same Ōmameda who, upon finding out her late mother used to have a secret lover, decides to pay that person a visit to learn more of her mother’s past, and to bring her own daughter, Uta, with her. It is Ōmameda who manages to infiltrate the organisation committee of a character’s funeral to make sure the latter’s favourite song gets played for the ceremony, and, while the other mourners all stare at the departing hearse in solemnity, lets out an ever clear and bright shout, calling the deceased’s name one last time. What makes these moments powerful, be it comedic or emotional, seems to lie in the very unpredictability of life itself – the abrupt arrivals and departures of people, the unplanned encounters and reunions, the twirls and swerves dealt by fate. Sakamoto’s resistance to a traditional narrative is a light-hearted yet cordial attempt to capture these endless flows of life.

Mameotto is not Sakamoto’s first ‘idle talk drama’ to feature a quartet of chatty characters entangled in a loose love square. His 2013 The Best Divorce ( Saikō no rikon 最高の離婚 ) depicts two married couples reconsidering their own failing relationships through mutual reflections. The humorous interactions are supplemented with subtle portrayals of individual solitude. The theme of irreconcilable obsessions is further explored in his 2017 series, simply titled Quartet ( Karutetto カルテット), where four string musicians, at a low point in their lives, form a music group in a small countryside town, while gradually falling into unrequited love with each other. As if trying out mathematic permutations, Sakamoto has been exploring the many unsolvable love puzzles of four-person relationships.

Admittedly, the developed elements of ‘idle talk drama’ in Mameotto are indeed not effective storytelling – they

render the narrative sporadic and scattered, and disturb a coherent understanding of the design and purpose of plot, should there be any – but they are nonetheless affective . They deny us the pleasure of knowing all about Ōmameda’s life, or her ex-husbands’, but in return, we are offered the little moments that we long for each ‘week’, be it a bursting soy sauce bag or a hopeless roll of cling film. We long to see more of our life in Ōmameda’s, and maybe that is Sakamoto’s actual trick. In the same way that it’s not Ōmameda, but some unidentified narrator (voiced by Itō Sairi 伊藤沙莉 ) who assumes the role of a report-like voiceover, we as audience, too, are only outsiders peeking into Ōmameda’s life. As if to confirm it, at the end of each episode, our protagonist looks to the camera and returns our gaze. There she announces the title of this drama we are watching that is her life: ‘until next week, Ōmameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands !’

Fig. 3 Ōmameda announces the show’s title for the one last time. Illustration after a screenshot of Mameotto , Ep. 10. Illustration: Fengyu Wang.

DON ’TMISS OUR NEWPIN!

THOSE WHO DONATE MORE THAN 20€ / CHF WILL ALSO GET OUR BRAND-NEW PIN AS A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION.

DONATE thANK YOU

EQUILIBRI AFFETTIVI E SPIRITUALI IN UNDER THE STARS DI TATSUSHI Ō MORI

EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL BALANCE IN UNDER THE STARS BY

TATSUSHI ŌMORI

Under the Stars (2020), film del regista Tatsushi Ōmori (1970-), adattamento del romanzo Hoshi no Ko (2017) di Natsuko Imamura (1980-), narra le vicende di una famiglia che, in seguito all’esperienza traumatica della malattia della secondogenita neonata, entra a far parte di una setta religiosa. Già nelle prime scene del film si vede il simbolo distintivo del culto: un’acqua miracolosa, chiamata Venus Blessed Water, ritenuta fonte di svariati effetti benefici, grazie alla quale i genitori sembra siano riusciti a far guarire la figlia da un eczema. Nelle scene iniziali del film si vedono i genitori occupati a lavare la bambina con l’acqua miracolosa e gradualmente viene mostrata la guarigione della piccola, i cui passaggi sono accuratamente annotati dalla madre in un diario. La piccola Chihiro, protagonista del film, sarà accompagnata dall’acqua di Venere per quasi tutto il resto del lungometraggio.

Sin dalle scene iniziali trapela la volontà del regista di mostrare in maniera molto delicata e sensibile lo stato psicologico di preoccupazione e stress che ha portato i genitori della protagonista a cercare il supporto di una setta religiosa, aderendovi. Chihiro sembra essere la causa dell’adesione a questa fede, e sarà cresciuta ed educata con le regole ed i quotidiani rituali del culto che, secondo i genitori, le ha salvato la vita.

Directed by

Tatsushi Ōmori

Duration

109 minutes

Starring

Mana Ashida

Genre

Drama

Released date

October 9, 2020

FILM

BILINGUAL / REVIEW

Ilaria Malyguine in collaboration with Nippon Connection (Transl. Luigi Zeni)

Under the Stars (2020), directed by Tatsushi Ōmori (1970–) and adapted from the novel Hoshi no Ko (2017) by Natsuko Imamura (1980–), tells the story of a family who join a religious cult after the harrowing experience of their second daughter being born sick. From the very beginning of the film we see the distinctive symbol of the cult: the miraculous Venus Blessed Water. It is believed to have various healing properties, and is used by the parents to cure their daughter’s eczema. In the opening scene, the parents wash their daughter with the miraculous water. She gradually heals as the mother takes meticulous notes in a diary. Little Chihiro, the film’s protagonist, carries the water with her for almost the entire movie.

The intent of the director is apparent from the outset. He attempts to show in a subtle and delicate way the worry- and stress-induced psychological states that drove Chihiro’s parents to seek support from a religious cult, and eventually join it. As the apparent cause of her parents’ conversion to the faith, Chihiro is educated as to the rules and daily rituals of the cult that her parents believe saved her life.

Fig. 2 I genitori di Chihiro sono impegnati in un rituale quotidiano / Chihiro’s parents are engaged in a daily ritual. < Fig. 1 Movie poster.

Trattando tematiche legate alla vita settaria di una famiglia, Under the Stars si inserisce all’interno di un filone tematico affermatosi dalla fine degli anni ’90, frutto della temperie culturale creatasi in Giappone dopo l’attentato del 1995 alla metropolitana di Tokyo perpetrato dalla setta religiosa Aum Shinrikyō 1 . Il periodo post Oumu jiken (Caso Aum) fu caratterizzato da un radicale allontanamento della popolazione giapponese dai nuovi movimenti religiosi, ma anche dalle religioni tradizionali. In questo periodo furono realizzate interpretazioni cinematografiche molto indicative dello spirito dell’epoca. Sebbene con inclinazioni stilistiche alquanto variegate, esse hanno messo in luce aspetti legati alle

vicende e al contesto dell’attentato e alle sue ripercussioni, facendo emergere la presenza di quello che può essere definito come un vero e proprio trauma collettivo per i giapponesi. A questo riguardo possono essere menzionate due pellicole: Distance (2001) di Hirokazu Koreeda (1962-) e Love Exposure (2008) di Sion Sono (1961-). Gli anni 2000 sono un periodo in cui i sentimenti di paura e diffidenza nei confronti del religioso dovevano essere ancora molto forti. I film di Koreeda e Sono presentano entrambi un topos narrativo dove vengono mostrati uno o più personaggi assistere in maniera pressoché impotente alla progressiva assimilazione di una persona cara all’interno di una setta religiosa.

Dealing with themes related to sectarian family life, Under the Stars fits within a narrative that emerged in the late ‘90s, reflecting the prevailing mood that followed the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack by the religious sect Aum Shinrikyō. 1 The period after Oumu Jiken (The Case of Aum) was characterised by a radical detachment from both traditional and emerging religious movements. This in turn led to many films being produced that tried to capture the spirit of that time. Although somewhat varied in their stylistic inclinations, they depicted various aspects of the attack, its repercussions, and its broader context, bringing to light what can be defined as a collective trauma for the Japanese people. Two films come to mind in this regard: Distance (2001) by Hirokazu Koreeda (1962–) and Love Exposure (2008) by Sion Sono (1961–). The

2000s was a period in which feelings of fear and mistrust towards religion were still prevalent. The films by Koreeda and Sono present a narrative where one or more individuals witness – in an almost powerless manner – the gradual assimilation of a loved one into a religious sect.

1 Setta fondata nel 1984 da Asahara Shōkō, che nel 1995 arrivò a contare 10'000 membri in tutto il Giappone. Il 20 marzo del 1995, cinque membri della setta si inoltrarono su cinque linee della metropolitana di Tokyo durante l’ora di punta, portando con sè borse contenenti gas sarin e ombrelli con i quali bucarle. L’attentato causò tredici morti e centinaia di feriti.

1 Sect founded by Asahara Shōkō in 1984 which counted 10’000 members from the whole country in 1995. On the 20th of March 1995, five followers of the sect entered five subway lines in Tokyo during rush hour carrying bags with sarin gas and umbrellas to pierce them. The attack caused 13 deaths and hundreds of injured.

Fig. 3 Un momento di tenerezza tra la piccola Chihiro e sua sorella / A tender moment between little Chihiro and her sister.

Con Under the Stars , a distanza di 25 anni dall’attentato, osserviamo invece qualcosa di nuovo: la protagonista del film è legata ad un culto sin dalla sua prima infanzia, e i riti connessi ad esso fanno parte della sua quotidianità. Attraverso Chihiro viene proposto allo spettatore lo sguardo di una persona che dall’interno di un’ipotetica setta si confronta con l’esterno. Diventando adolescente, la ragazza inizia a relazionarsi in maniera più attenta con persone estranee alla famiglia e alla setta di cui la ragazza fa parte, cosa che le permetterà di prendere gradualmente consapevolezza delle contraddizioni che sta vivendo, fino a far scoppiare la bolla di certezze e illusioni in cui è cresciuta.

Le interazioni che la protagonista ha con una compagna di scuola, e con il maestro di matematica, fanno

emergere in maniera molto forte sentimenti tuttora attuali per i giapponesi. Le costanti frecciate dell’amica nei confronti dei genitori di Chihiro denotano incomprensione, mentre l’ancora più importante figura del maestro in una delle scene del film arriva a criticare aspramente i genitori della ragazza, facendo emergere diffidenza e disprezzo verso la loro credenza e verso i bizzarri rituali che pedissequamente eseguono. Queste presenze attorno a Chihiro non sono affatto casuali, perché sono personaggi che incarnano una mentalità radicata in un contesto sociale ancora estremamente condizionato dalla paura e dalla diffidenza verso i culti, e quindi una gamma di sentimenti che dagli anni ’90 non smettono di abitare le coscienze delle persone.

Under the Stars , 25 years after the attack, takes on a different perspective: the main character has been part of a cult since early childhood, and its rituals are part of her daily life. Through Chihiro, the viewer experiences the behaviour of someone who interacts with the external world from within the framework of a cultist upbringing. While growing up, the girl starts to engage more attentively with people outside of her family and the sect, which leads her to realise the many contradictions she is living with, thereby bursting the bubble of certainty and illusions in which she was raised.

The relationships Chihiro has with her classmate and mathematics teacher evoke strong feelings that resonate with Japanese people today. The recurring negative remarks from the classmate concerning Chihiro’s parents show a lack of understanding, while the teacher – an even more important person for the protagonist – at one point goes so far as to harshly criticise the girl’s parents, thereby emphasising the mistrustful disdain held towards their beliefs and the bizarre rituals they slavishly perform. The existence of such people around Chihiro is not arbitrary, as they embody a socially embedded mindset still heavily influenced by fear and distrust towards religious cults – a range of feelings that have not left the collective psyche since the 1990s.

Fig. 4 Chihiro con in compagni di scuola / Chihiro with her classmates

Un'altra linea narrativa che attraversa il film riguarda un aspetto fondamentale e onnipresente nei film incentrati sul tema controverso delle sette religiose: lo sgretolamento dei rapporti umani. Il compito di incarnare questo dramma è stato dato a una figura importante e vicina a Chihiro, la sorella maggiore, che sin dalle prime inquadrature del film vediamo assistere alla malattia e alla guarigione della sorellina, accompagnata dalla conversione dei genitori. La ragazza ad un certo punto della trama decide di andarsene di casa, e non tornerà più dalla famiglia. Il trauma della perdita viene tuttavia presentato dal regista Ōmori in maniera inusuale. Non si tratta più di una persona che abbandona la famiglia o il partner come conseguenza di un indottrinamento religioso, bensì l’esatto contrario: la ragazza decide di abbandonare la propria famiglia perché non sopporta più l’ambiente settario nel quale suo malgrado ha dovuto crescere per una buona parte della sua giovinezza.

La scelta radicale della sorella si pone in antitesi con la protagonista Chihiro, che non prenderà mai una posizione netta e definitiva riguardante

le sue convinzioni religiose o il suo rapporto con i genitori. Questo ci fa intuire che gli aspetti drammatici legati alla tematica settaria e religiosa fungono in realtà da cornice al nocciolo centrale che alimenta il sentimento trasmesso dall’intero film. Seguendo le vicende e le peripezie di Chihiro assistiamo ai primi passi incerti che la protagonista intraprende sulla via di un inevitabile percorso di formazione e di crescita che si apre con l’adolescenza.

Con Under the Stars abbiamo modo di osservare un’analisi molto acuta di quella che, in parte, può essere la percezione attuale dei culti e delle sette da parte dei giapponesi. Tuttavia, sebbene si possa essere tentati di definire questo film come un’opera volta a mostrare paure ed incertezze sintomatiche di un’epoca ancora inconsciamente condizionata dall’attentato di Aum Shinrikyō; la tematica che infine assume maggior valore è la fragilità degli equilibri affettivi all’interno di una famiglia, coronata però da un sentimento di redenzione, quando, nonostante le sofferenze e le difficoltà, appare la consapevolezza di un loro possibile recupero.

Fig. 5 Chihiro e I suoi genitori ammirano il cielo stellato / Chihiro and her parents staring at the starry sky

Another thread running through the film concerns a theme often found in stories of religious fanaticism: crumbling human relationships. The task of embodying this dramatic trope was given to Chihiro’s older sister, an important and close figure in the protagonist’s life. Early on in the film, the sister observes Chihiro’s illness and recovery, and her parents’ conversion to the sect. Eventually, the girl abandons her family, never to return. However, the trauma of this loss is explored by the director Ōmori in a way that differs from other works on this topic. It does not portray someone who leaves their family or partner to join a religious cult, but rather the opposite: the older sister leaves because she cannot bear the sectarian environment in which – against her will – she has had to spend a large part of her childhood.

The sister’s radical choice stands in stark contrast with the main character Chihiro, who never takes a clear stance concerning her religious beliefs or her relationship with her parents. This calls into question whether the dramatic el -

ements brought about by the sectarian theme serve, in fact, to facilitate the exploration of a broader subject: growing up. In following Chihiro’s journey, we experience the hesitant first steps of the protagonist as she walks the inevitable path of learning and self-discovery that begins at adolescence.

In Under the Stars we see a meticulous exploration of how Japanese people might currently perceive cults and sects. However, whilst it would be tempting to define this film as a work intended to show the fear and uncertainty of a generation still unconsciously influenced by the Aum Shinrikyō attack, the predominant theme that eventually emerges is the precarious nature of family. This, it must be said, culminates in a feeling of redemption when – despite all the suffering and hardships – the possibility of reconciliation eventually appears.

TRANSPORTATION AND THE CASTLE TOWN IN THE MŌRI CLAN DOMAIN UNDER TOYOTOMI HIDEYOSHI

Hiroki Nakahara (Transl. Amelia Lipko)

Hiroshima city was established by the Mōri clan, known for their role as military commanders during the Sengoku period (1467–1615). The research on its history usually revolves around the construction of Hiroshima Castle and its surrounding castle town, commanded by the head of the Mōri clan, Terumoto, which has long been connected to the latter’s strong will to shift to a new system of governance. However, not much attention has been paid to the relationship between the Toyotomi administration and the Mōri clan 1 , which I would like to remedy in this paper. With this aim, I will analyse the relevance of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s order to build new routes during the Kyushu Campaign, and new castle during the Imjin War. This should allow me to investigate Hiroshima at a stage when it had, so to say, not yet become a city. Nevertheless, in this issue I will focus on the first point and only touch upon the second one in issue number six.

Transportation Policy in Preparation for the Kyushu Campaign: The Construction of the Gozasho in Akamagaseki

In July of the 13 th year of the Tenshō era (1585), Hideyoshi, who had become kampaku 2 , began preparations for the Kyushu campaign (to subjugate the Shimazu family from the Satsuma Domain), which was planned for the following year. On 10 th April of the same year, a shogunate license approved by Toyotomi Hideyoshi ( Memorandum of 14 articles) was issued to Terumoto Mōri, enumerating various policies, which Terumoto was supposed to implement. Toyotomi drafted the Memorandum with the intention of dispatching troops from Kyoto and Osaka to Kyushu. In it he gave instructions regarding the abolition of checkpoints on land and sea 3 , the repair of roads leading to Kyushu, as well as the preparation of the Gozasho 4 .

Notes

1 ‘Shinshū Hiroshimashishi, Volume II: Politics’ (Hiroshima City Hall, 1958), ‘Hiroshimakenshi tsūshihen III kinse I’ (Hiroshima prefecture, 1981).

2 Chief advisor to an adult Emperor.

3 Facilities set up at strategic transportation points for collecting taxes or conducting inspections.

4 Buildings and establishments to be used by Hideyoshi – there were many different types of them, but mostly they were simple facilities built for a temporary stay or rest.

HISTORY

In this context, the problem arose over how to cross the Kanmon Straits in order to move the army from Honshu to Kyushu. Although not much attention has been paid to it so far, it is interesting to note that Terumoto Mōri ordered the preparation of rice to compensate the workers who participated in the construction – 100 hyō (app. 6000 kg) in Akamagaseki, Nagato Province, and 20 hyō (app. 1200 kg) in Yamaguchi, Suō Province. The historical source from which we know these facts can be found in a new publication, Kunishi monjo , in possession of the Waseda University Library, which reads that the construction here refers to the establishment of Hideyoshi’s abodes in Akamagaseki, in

July of Tenshō 14. Therefore, we can assume that Terumoto accepted the policy and plans of Toyotomi in the same month, which was relatively quick, and arranged for his lodgings in Akamagaseki.

Thus, Tenshō 14 was a strategic moment for the Mōri clan, as well as the period when they planned how to facilitate the passage through the Kanmon Straits. What is more, after being informed of Toyotomi’s administration policy in preparation for the Kyushu dispatch, they arranged for Hideyoshi’s accommodation to be built in Akamagaseki. This can be evaluated as resulting in the development of control in and around Akamasseki.

Transportation Policy in Preparation for the Kyushu Campaign: Traffic route maintenance in San'yōdō

In December of Tenshō 14 (1586), Toyotomi Hideyoshi acquired the position of Chancellor of the Realm, thereby becoming practically the most influential person in Japan. Since his move to Kyushu was drawing near, the issue of where to set up the Gozasho was raised.

In an ordinance supposedly issued on the New Year of Tenshō 15 (1587) by Terumoto Mōri, he determined that an abode for the kanpaku was to be built in Akasaka, Bingo Province. He ordered the provision of 10 workers for each piece of land worth 100 kan (art. 2), along with carpenters, blacksmiths, and other craftsmen depending on how many lived in a given territory (art. 3), to use bamboo and wood from the grounds belonging to shrines and people’s houses according to their needs (art. 4), and to levy from each district building materials (art. 5 and 6), fuel (art. 7), and fodder for horses (additional clauses). This historical document was addressed by Narinobu Katsura, Motonobu Ogata, and Motosuke Sasabe, known as ‘the magistrates for the change of lodgings’, who were officials entrusted with the task of outfitting San'yōdō for Hideyoshi’s move from the capital to the provinces – their duties did not only revolve around accommodation, but also the construction of roads and bridges.

A similar ordinance was passed down in the house of the Hani clan, 5 employed as the district governor of Saba, Suō Province ( Shoke manjo Katsura kafu , now in possession of Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives). The probability that the same private secretary wrote the original copy is quite high. Because this historical document could have been used anywhere (as long as one changed the first article, the addressee, and the classical Chinese section), we can assume that it was not promulgated to one specific region but to the whole San'yōdō area. When comparing the first articles, we see that the levy unit for distribution of assignments during the construction of lodgings and houses is referred to once as ‘village’ ( ryōson ), and another time as ‘district’ ( ichigun ). It must have been the result of adjusting the decree to suit the governance system of each part of San'yōd.

5 One of Mōri clan’s controlling mechanisms in Nagato Province and Suō Province.

Furthermore, just like ‘the magistrates for the change of lodgings’, Hani were not only ordered to build an abode, but also entrusted with the construction of roads, which is confirmed by the example of Sakuraojō, Aki Province.

Thus, in Tenshō 15, with Toyotomi’s move to Kyushu drawing near, it became increasingly significant to secure traffic routes to Kyushu, so not only lodging facilities were built throughout the San'yōdō region, but also roads and bridges. This project took into consideration the specific conditions of each region and the differences resulting from the administrative division into villages, towns, and districts.

As outlined above, the military mobilization of the Toyotomi regime led the Mori clan to construct the Gozasho and roads and bridges at Akamaseki in Tensho 14 and Sanyo-do in Tensho 15, which resulted in the strengthening of territorial control. So, the Kyushu expedition, from the preparatory stage to the sortie stage, was an opportunity for the Mori clan to promote the construction of transportation routes.

To conclude, in this issue we principally examined the transportation policies of the Mōri clan in connection with the Kyushu Campaign. In Issue #6 of ‘Wasshoi!’, we will build on this knowledge to analyse the construction of Hiroshima Castle and its surrounding castle town.

THE FOREIGN FATHER OF JAPANESE CERAMICS

A Walk Through Gottfried Wagener’s Appointment as a ‘Hired Foreigner’ in Japan

Laura Vermeulen

Terminology of the different types of ceramics mentioned in this article

Cobalt oxide ( sanka kobaruto 酸化コバル

ト): An additive used in porcelain glazes, which provides the blue pigment cobalt blue.

Cloisonné ( shippō 七宝 ): Cloisonné (wired) is created by first attaching wires of gold, silver, or copper to the body in the shape of the design. Then, cloisonné enamels are applied to the inside of the wired outlines. A process of first applying enamel and then firing the piece is repeated until the outlines are completely covered.

Cloisonné enamel ( shippō iroe 七宝色絵 ): Cloisonné enamel is a glassy glaze burned onto a metal base material, mostly consisting of copper, but gold and silver can be used for transparent enamel. Enamel consists of a mixture of silicate and lead oxide, with metal oxides as colourants (e.g., cobalt oxide).

Mud cloisonné ( doro-shippō 泥七宝 ): Mud cloisonné is an opaque kind of glaze made of an oxidizing lead and white jade to increase the thickness of the glaze, for which minerals were used as colourants. This glaze was rather unsuitable for larger surfaces, and thus often required support wires to hold up the cloisonné.

The Importance of ‘Hired Foreigners’

With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the government began the considerable task of westernising and modernising Japan, with the goal of gaining parity with the West, and then using that parity to renegotiate unequal treaties. A crucial part of this process was hiring experts to rapidly acquire the necessary western techniques, and integrate this knowledge into national institutions, companies, and schools. Therefore, the Meiji government actively invested in the employment of foreigners in Japan, referred to as ‘hired foreigners’ or oyatoi gaikokujin 御雇外国人.

Initially, the directive was to end their contracts as soon as Japanese scholars and experts had the ability to replace them. However, Wagener was one of the exceptions, becoming a lifelong hired foreigner, and aiding the ceramics industry until the end of his life by modifying its production process towards cost efficiency, while also emphasising its beauty.

69 ARTS HISTORY

Gottfried Wagener, Chemist and Math Teacher

To properly understand how crucial Wagener was in the modernisation of Japanese pottery production, it is necessary to first look into his educational background. Gottfried Wilhelm Wagener was born in Hannover, Germany in 1831 and pursued a degree in mathematics and natural sciences, while simultaneously attending a local craft school for two years (1846–1848). In 1852, he received his doctoral degree in Göttingen and taught mathematics for the next eight years in Paris, whilst studying several languages including French, Danish, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch.

Despite his impressive track record, he had little luck finding sustainable employment. For example, in 1860 Wagener moved to Switzerland to teach mathematics and natural sciences at the technical school in La Chauxde-Fonds. However, due to a revision of the school system in 1864, he was compelled to quit the institute after only

four years of teaching. Wagener also endeavoured to open a chemical business in Paris with his younger brother in the same year, and worked with his brother-in-law to improve the blast furnace, but both companies failed. It was then that Wagener’s close friend and Swiss Consul in Japan, Rudolf Lindau (1829–1910), set him up with Russel & Company, an American trading house. He was requested to assist with the establishment of a laundry soap factory, for which he travelled to Nagasaki in 1868. Nevertheless, the business did not take off since in that time, laundry was still done with plants or lye ( aku 灰汁 ) and people were not yet familiar with the use of industrially produced laundry soap. Nevertheless, as Japanese officials were able to witness Wagener’s talent for industrial engineering, he was quickly given a position in Arita, which had remained one of Japan’s major ceramics production centres since the seventeenth century.

A New Perspective on Materials

Wagener’s appointment as a hired foreigner started in 1870, by the request of Governor Hyakutake Sakuemon ( 百武作右衛門 ; 1821–1892) of the Saga domain, to support potters in Arita. Although Wagener’s stay in Arita lasted no longer than four months (from April to August), he had great success, introducing cost-efficient alternatives for base materials used in the manufacture process. Cost-efficiency was essential for ceramic production areas, such as Arita, to keep up with the domestic and international competition of the ceramics export industry (especially in terms of the increasing demand from the West), for which Wagener’s industrial engineering skills were crucial. In the end, Wagener’s contributions not only helped to modernise the production process, but also proved essential to the industry surviving subsequent economic turmoil.

Most well-known is Wagener’s introduction of an industrially produced alternative to cobalt oxide. Cobalt oxide is an additive used in porcelain glazes, which provides the renowned blue pig -

ment, cobalt blue. The industrially manufactured product served as a substitute for the expensive ’China pigment’ ( tōgosu 唐呉須 ), which at that time still imported from China. Moreover, he revised the glaze mixture used for porcelain and suggested replacing the solvent oak ash with lime, which further reduced the costs. In addition, Wagener initiated the use of coal-fuelled kilns ( sekitan-gama 石炭窯 ) to replace firewood and charcoal kilns; the excessive use of pine wood increased the risk of overcutting the forest, which increased the risk of flooding. Additionally, chopping and storing pine wood was very costly and took a lot of time. However, Wagener’s initial design of the coal kiln had minor flaws, as flame power would only come from one side and would be too concentrated to maintain a stable temperature. Matsumura Hachijirō ( 松村八次郎 ; 1869–1937), a student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, later fixed Wagener’s design flaws: the kiln was fired from both sides so that flames could pass evenly under the floor, with the heat pushed up and down along the round ceilings of the kiln. This updated design was published in the Journal of the Ceramic Association of Japan (Dai Nihon Yōgyō Kyōkai Zasshi 大日本窯業協会雑誌 ).

The Beauty of Glaze

In what is thought to be around 1875–1876, Wagener started his research on cloisonné, with the goal of bringing out its vivid colours and true beauty. At the time, he was a member of Ahrens & Co (1869–1886), a German trading company that had settled in Yokohama. For this research project, Wagener recruited Tsukamoto Kaisuke ( 塚本貝助 ; 1828–1897), an expert in cloisonné technology and from Owari (now Aichi prefecture), to collaborate on the improvement of enamel glazes. Their newly developed ‘transparent glaze’ succeeded in bringing out the colour spectacle of the cloisonné, more so than its predecessor ‘mud cloisonné’. Mud cloisonné ( doro-shippō 泥七宝 ) is an opaque kind of glaze that consists of an oxidizing lead and white jade to increase the thickness of the glaze, for which minerals were used as colourants. However, this type of glaze was difficult to maintain and therefore often required support wires to hold up the cloisonné. In contrast, the new ‘transparent glaze’ ( tōmei-yū 透明釉 ), de -

veloped by Wagener and Tsukamoto, is very similar to contemporary cloisonné glaze. It consists of nitrate, silica, and lead oxide and is fired at high temperatures. The glaze is transparent and can thus be coloured with oxidized metals. This newly developed glaze brought out colours much more vividly than mud cloisonné, which was comparatively lacklustre. With further development throughout the 1880s, the beauty of modern Japanese cloisonné captured the attention of the West during world’s fairs as well as that of the Meiji state at domestic exhibitions.

A great example is Namikawa Sōsuke ( 濤川惣助 ; 1847–1910), a cloisonné expert involved with Ahrens & Co since 1877, who received an award for his cloisonné during the Paris World’s Fair of 1889 and the Third National Industrial Exhibition of 1890. Fig. 2 shows a collection of Namikawa’s work from 1890, which demonstrates how the bright colours can be seen even from a distance.

Fig. 2 Cloisonné folding screen by Namikawa Sōsuke.

Commemorated in Kyoto

In 1878, Wagener was invited to become a teacher of physics and chemistry at a medical school in Kyoto, while at the same time teaching about chemical products at Seimikyoku 舎密局 (1870–1881), an educational institution focusing on scientific research. His stay in Kyoto lasted three years, during which he pursued his research on the coal kiln and succeeded in building the first kiln that could be fired by both wood and coal. Moreover, this kiln was built with the first refractory bricks ( taika renga 耐火煉瓦 ), used specifically to withstand high temperatures.

Fig. 3a Gottfried Wagener in Okazaki Park, Kyoto.

After Seimikyoku’s abolishment in 1881, Wagener returned to Tokyo to start his career at the Tokyo Vocational School ( Tokyo Shokkō Gakkō 東京職工学校 ), established in the same year. His contributions in Kyoto, nevertheless, have been immortalised in Okazaki Park, Kyoto (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3b Gottfried Wagener in Okazaki Park, Kyoto.

His Magnum Opus: Asahi-yaki

With the experience gained over the years as a hired foreigner, Wagener pursued his ambition to develop an entirely new kind of pottery. He embarked on this endeavour in 1883 together with Ueda Toyokichi ( 植田豊橘 ; 1860–1948), who he appointed as his assistant at the faculty of Chemistry in the Tokyo Vocational School ( Tokyo Shokkō Gakkō 東京職工学校 ), now known as the Tokyo Technical School ( Tokyo Kōgyō Daigaku 東京工業大学 ). Ueda noted down the findings of their research and wrote about his experiences with Wagener in his book Wagener’s Biography ( Waguneru-den ワグネル伝 ), as well as in a few articles published in the Journal of the Ceramic Association of Japan in 1894. With this project, Wagener wished to establish a ware that could capture and depict the vivid expression and complexity of brush strokes in Japanese paintings. Wagener and Ueda based their research on the several types of faience or tin-glazed pottery, which utilised a white glaze suitable for painted

decoration, a technique already known in the West. Yet a common issue with faience is that there are often cracks in the glaze – something that Wagener wanted to overcome. An underglaze that could maintain colourful drawings had not yet been properly developed in Japan, which made their research all the more groundbreaking.

What followed was a delicate process of finding the perfect interplay between base material, glaze, and paint. The glaze proved to be the biggest challenge, as the balance between the fire temperature and glaze could cause it either to flow or become too hard. If the glaze shrank too much after cooling down, in relation to the base material, either the glaze or base could crack. Furthermore, the paint needed to be made, which in turn had to be in accordance with the glaze, as there was the risk of the paint melting into the glaze and disappearing. The paint also had to adhere to the base (Fig. 4).

Glazecannot shrinktoo much comparedtothe base intoPaintcannotmelt theglaze

Paint has to adhere to the base Fig. 4 Visualization of the elements in the production of Asahi ware.

PAINT BASE GLAZE

With a general lack of instruments, kilns, and manpower at the faculty of Chemistry, the implementation of Western materials and techniques proved necessary, as during their experiments Wagener and Ueda used the technique of plastic moulds ( sekkō-gata 石膏型 ) instead of potter’s wheels, and the paints included materials brought from abroad. Eventually, the research was temporarily moved to the Koishikawa district in Edogawa, where Wagener concerned himself with the expenses for the settlement, as well as the employment of several workers, such as a potter, a painter, and people in charge of the kiln. In 1885, their research resulted in success, and samples were sent to the Tokyo Prefectural Exhibition on Silk Textile, Ceramic and Lacquerware ( Tōkyō-fu Kenshi Orimono Tōjiki Kyōshinkai 東京府繭糸織物陶漆器共進会

a grand exhibition to promote the in dustry. First, their work was stamped as Azuma ware ( Azuma-yaki 吾妻燒 ), but it was later changed to Asahi ware ( Asahi-yaki 旭焼 ). i

In 1887, the collaboration between Ueda and Wagener came to an end. Nevertheless, developments with Asahi ware were continued by craftsmen, who further refined the glazes and colours. Asahi ware can be considered the culmination of Wagener’s efforts and accumulated knowledge in ceramics, as well as a personal reverence for the beauty of traditional Japanese art. His exceptional research on Asahi ware is therefore officially recognised as Certified Chemical Heritage by the Chemical Society of Japan ( Nihon Kagaku-kai Nintei Kagaku Isan 日本化学会認定化学遺産 ) (Fig. 5), which acknowledges worldclass heritage related to chemistry from Japan.

i There was potentially a phonetic overlap between azuma 吾妻 and the name for a paint/painting used in Imado ware ( Imado-yaki 今戸焼 ), at the time simultaneously exhibited at the Tokyo Prefectural Exhibition on Craft ( Tokyo-fu Kōgeihin Kyōshinkai 東京府工芸品共進会 ) in 1887.

Fig. 5 Asahi ware. Gottfried Wagener, Father of Modern Ceramics

Throughout his appointment as a hired foreigner, in addition to his many con tributions to domestic and interna tional exhibitions and institutions as a teacher and advisor, Wagener aided the ceramics industry tremendously. He redefined its traditional manufacturing methods whilst maintaining respect for the beauty of Japanese craft, for which he conveyed a fierce passion. Wagener can be considered a shining example of a hired foreigner, as he always worked together with Japanese experts, who subsequently were able to refine his work and properly integrate it into the Japanese context. Additionally, Wagener’s supply of Western knowledge, materials, and techniques proved to be a necessity that should not be underestimated. Although Wagener’s endeavours have mostly been forgotten in the West, his industrial heritage is remembered and celebrated to this day in the world of Japanese ceramics

Aichi-ken Tōji Shiryōkan. Gottofuriēdo Waguneru to bankoku hakurankai

Place of publication: Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, 2004.

Matsumura Hachijirō. ‘Tōjiki sekitangama nitsuite.’ Dai Nihon Yōgyō Kyōkai Zasshi 39 , no. 466 (1931): 690–92.

Murata Masayuki. Japanese Crafts of the Late Edo and Meiji Periods: Masterpieces of Skill and Beauty . Kyoto: Tankosha, 2006.

Ueda Toyokichi. ‘Ko Waguneru hakase kinen kōen (i): Asahi-yaki nitsuite’. Dai Nihon Yōgyō Kyōkai Zasshi 46, no. 546 (1938): 292–94.

Uyeno Naoteru. Japanese Arts & Crafts in the Meiji Era . Tokyo: Pan-Pacific Press, 1958.

WORLD LITERATURE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Bilingual Authors and Their Influence on Japanese Language

Sara Odri in collaboration with Kotodama

‘Did not literature arise out of the deep desire to do something wondrous with a language? In my case, it was a desire to be born once again into my language so as to appreciate and explore it anew. As I spent ungodly amounts of time assembling futile strings of words in languages that remained foreign to me, this desire had grown inexorably, year by year, until my craving to write in Japanese now seemed intense enough to move mountains.’ 1

Two Nobel Prizes for Literature, One New Perspective

In 1968, Kawabata Yasunari ( 川端康成 ; 1899–1972) was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was awarded ‘for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind’. 2 The Western audience expected an exotic piece of literature based on concepts and traditions distant from their own, and the ‘great sensibility’ of Kawabata met those expectations.

The short sentences filled with a unique kind of mysticism, and his obsession with emptiness, death, and loneliness - all attributable to Zen Buddhism - shaped the idea of what Japa -

nese literature could offer at the time. In 1994, the next Japanese writer to win the Noble Prize for Literature was Ōe Kenzaburo ( 大江健三郎 ; 1935) an author who deals with political and philosophical issues, such as social non-conformism, and who confronts Sartre’s existentialism. In just 26 years, the choice of Ōe following Kawabata suggests an alteration in the perception of Japanese Literature. The Nobel Prize Speech of Ōe, titled Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, was a subtle nod to Kawabata’s earlier acceptance speech, Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.

1 Mizumura Minae. An I-Novel , trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter (New York, Columbia University Press, 2021), 82.

2 “The Nobel Prize in Literature 1968,” Nobel Prize Outreach, Accessed November 28, 2022.

81 POPULAR CULTURE LITERATURE

Shishosetsu from left to right – Mizumura Minae

< Fig. 1 Open books lot.

The titles are similar, but the contents of the speeches are as different as the two authors’ styles: Kawabata quotes Zen Buddhist monks Dogen 道元 , Myoe 明恵 , and Saigyo 西行 , who were active between the Heian (794–1185) and Kamakura periods (1185–1333), affirming how his own mindset relates with the classical Zen tradition of waka 3 ; Ōe by contrast identifies himself as more in line with Western ideologies, quoting the Irish poet W.B. Yeats and George Orwell among others. In his speech, Ōe recognises Kawabata’s aim to ‘identify himself’ with the ‘aesthetic sensibility pervading the classical literature of the Orient’, but immediately afterwards he emphasises that he himself feels a more spiritual affinity with Occidental thought. 4

Winning two Nobel Prizes surely elevated Japanese literature, but it would be wrong to say that those two victories were the initial spark. As early as the 16 th century, European missionaries in Japan showed great interest in the local literature, translating poetry and Japanese classics to be used as textbooks for priests learning the language. 5 So the curiosity and the historical need to understand texts in Japanese came long before the literary prizes, but what the two Nobels did was to put a spotlight on Japanese literature, to underline its duality and the differences that emerged between 1968 and 1994. The discourse around Japanese literature was not limited to Japan anymore, it became wider: new readers around the globe wanted to be part of it; new voices demanded that their ideas be included. The gained perspective showed to authors that the written word was more powerful than the differences in language and culture, that what was born as local could still achieve global recognition.

Notes

3 Waka ( 和歌 , ‘Japanese Poem’) is a type of poetry in classical Japanese literature, deeply influenced by Chinese poetry. It is divided into five verses of respectively 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, for a total of 31 syllables. It appeared in Japan in the late 7 th century and developed among the court. The Man'yōshū ( 万葉集 , ‘Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves’) is the oldest extant collection of Japanese waka with over 4,500 poems compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. See: Morris,

Mark. ‘Waka and Form, Waka and History.’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46, no. 2 (1986): 551–608. https:// doi.org/10.2307/2719143.

4 Ō e Kenzabur ō , Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures (Tōkyō: Kodansha International, 1995), 113.

5 Donald Keene, ‘"TRANSLATION": The First Japanese Translations of European Literature, The American Scholar 45, no. 2 (1976): 271–277.

World Literature and the Globalisation of Local Culture

This trend continues today as Japanese literary works are being translated into an ever greater number of languages; their authors do not let national borders prevent them from writing to a large, heterogeneous audience. Also, as part of the globalised world, Japan has seen authors like Tawada Yoko ( 多和田葉子 ; 1960) leave the country and write in other languages besides Japanese, while at the same time Japan has welcomed numerous foreign’ writers, such as Hideo Levy (1950), who have found themselves more comfortable using the local language in their creative processes. In other words, a transformation from ‘national’ to ‘transnational’ - from ‘local literature’ to ‘world literature’ - has occurred.

World Literature involves readers from different nations and backgrounds, and resonates beyond its original language and cultural spheres. 6 Consequently, the development of a global literature can be seen as the desire to form a new audience and to

connect with different cultural practices. It is clearly a phenomenon that correlates with globalisation, advanced by forces like migration, trade, colonialism, religion, tourism, and so on. This has created a circulation of ideas and concepts, which increase connectivity and the interdependence of regional cultures. 7 In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson states that the popularisation and diffusion of translated versions of local, national literature is surely connected to globalisation. However, what he stressed is that, even after they become part of global literature, those literary works inevitably maintain a relationship with the language, literature, and ideology of their countries of origin. The book is initially a touchstone of local culture, before it turns into a standard for the local community, and only after will it become part of globality. It moves from local, to regional, to global. 8

6 Damrosch, David. ‘What Is World Literature?’, World Literature Today 77, no. 1 (2003): 9.

7 Ibid.

8 Benedict Anderson, ‘Radici culturali’ and ’Le origini della coscienza nazionale’ in Comunità immaginate: origini e fortuna dei nazionalismi , Trans. Marco Vignale (Bari; Roma; Laterza Edizioni, 2018), 36-57.

Notes

Bilingual Authors Against National Borders

In the specific case of Japan, the attention has lately shifted towards authors that are trying to open Japanese literature to the world and earn worldwide acknowledgement. What the aforementioned Tawada and Hideo have in common is the fact that they are both writing in a language that is not their mother-tongue: thanks to this, they manage to open a more profound dialogue between languages and identity as they try in an active way to cross over traditional boundaries.

In 1992, Hideo Levy became one of the first Americans to write literature in the Japanese language, an author who put his bilingualism under the spotlight in an endless search for his own cultural identity. He was born in 1950 in California to a Jewish father and a Polish Catholic mother. Levy’s background is transnational as he studied in Taiwan, the United States, and Japan for several years, hence his proficiency in English and Japanese. His first work, 星条旗の聞こえない部屋 , A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard , is mainly written in Japanese, but with occasional English sentences and Chinese phrases (in hieroglyphs with glosses that transliterate them in Japanese syllabaries). 9 The writing style allows Japanese readers to perfectly understand the text, but the abnormal presence of ideograms, kana and alphabet in the same page gives a deep sense of estrangement. This significant plurality of languages is used to describe the life of the protagonist, Ben, who struggles to find his own identity as he is constantly exposed to a multitude of languages and traditions. Ben is in fact an alter-ego of Levy: having both grown up

in a plurality of cultures, there is no single language or place that prevails for them over the others, so they feel rootless. Paradoxically, Levy’s sense of alienation reinforces the idea of separate, classifiable, single languages, each defined by specific borders. Through his work, Levy creates a visual and lexical distinction between Japanese, English, and Chinese, so the languages appear independent and distanced, but at the same time the possible comprehension of the text makes them interact in a new, harmonious way. His novels are quite an interesting case of transnationalism and bilingualism.

Fig. 2 Hideo Levy, Seijōki no kikoenai heya Kōdansha, 2004.

Mizumura Minae ( 水村美苗 ; 1951) is a Japanese author famous for her relationship with the Japanese language and identity. She moved to the United States with her family at the age of 12, but never seemed to adapt to the new country, and, as she herself said, ‘turned her back on English, keeping the necessary contacts to a minimum’. 10 By doing so, she immersed herself in Japanese literature with the aim of not letting go of her roots, even if she was far from her country. The book in which she reflects on all of her doubts about the 20 years spent in the United States is called 私小説 ― from left to right ( Shishōsetu – from left to right , literally An I-novel – from left to right ) and was published in 1995. It is an autobiographical story, but more than being the story of how Mizumura became a writer, it is the story of how she became a Japanese writer. 11 She was aware that writing in a language other than English may be a disadvantage, but did not let this discourage her. In The Fall of Language in the Age of English she explains her point of view about the matter, stressing that the choice between the English language and whatever non-English language is not a choice between two equal languag -

es, but it represents a choice between a lingua franca and a local language. 12 In Shishosetu from left to right she tries to separate the two worlds and two languages she had been living in, and the result is a work that may be defined as purely bilingual: it is written horizontally (literally, from left to right ) in Jap -

9 Numano Mitsuyoshi, ̒Toward a New Age of World Literature: The Boundary of Contemporary Japanese Literature and Its Shifts in the Global Context,̓ Gendai bungeiron kenkyūshitsu ronshū 1 (2009), 193.

10 Mizumura Minae. ̒Authoring Shishosetsu from Left to Right,̓ 91st Meridian, Accessed November 18, 2022.

Notes

11 Ibid.

12 Mizumura Minae, ‘People around the world writing in external languages,’ in The Fall of Language in the Age of English , trans. Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter (New York, Columbia University Press, 2017), 7283.

Fig. 3 Mizumura Minae, Shishōtsu from left to right . Chikuma Shobō, 2009.

anese with English sentences scattered all around the text. The English part is limited in quantity, but necessary to the understanding of the novel. The result is a novel that attests to the linguistic asymmetry between the two languages: English readers are not likely to understand the Japanese parts of the book; in contrast, Japanese readers are likely to understand the English parts. What she did then was to empower Japanese, the local language, to the detriment of English, the universal language. 13

Tawada Yōko, born in 1960 in Tokyo, is another example of a bilingual writer whose style is characterised by a creative use of language. She majored in Russian Literature at Waseda University, and after graduation she moved to Hamburg, Germany, where she has been living for 20 years. She writes books in both Japanese and German. The protagonists of her books are often found in foreign contexts, where at the same time they struggle to understand the locals and to be understood in a language that is not their native one; their paths follow the very same experiences as the writer. 14 Often bilingualism in modern Japanese literature is limited to the inclusion of ‘foreign’ terms, but the bilingualism of Tawada Yōko is more inventive and audacious; it goes beyond the simple use of unusual words. Language is at the centre of her own literary production as she mixes idioms, creates new expressions, and makes interlingual word plays and puns: the use of multiple languages at once allows her to experiment with their linguistic aspects and to create a dimension where the spatial, temporal, and personal boundaries merge. The concept she bases all her bilingual

literature on is exophony, the practice of writing creatively in a language other than one’s mother tongue. In 2012 Tawada published an essay in Japanese about this theme called エクソフォ

ニー母語の外へ出る旅 ( Exophony: A Journey Outside the Mother Tongue ). In the essay she talks about her experience and illustrates the benefits this practice could have on writers. From the point of view of a Japanese speaker, exophony could help dismantle the nationalistic concept of Japanese as an impenetrable but beautiful language; it could be used to adopt or avoid certain stylistic elements, or to view a language and its

Fig. 4 Tawada Yōko, Exophony: bogo no soto he deru tabi . Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten, 2012.

characteristics under a new light; finally, it could eliminate the risk of being lost in translation. So, for Tawada, writing in a language that is not one’s native is a necessary stage for reaching new levels of consciousness over language itself. Not being bilingual, but experiencing other languages is important to transcend the importance attributed to one’s mother-tongue. 15

Levy, Mizumura, and Tawada try to cross a border that is national, cultural, and linguistic. They are liberating their Japanese readers from the traditional frameworks which confine them within the Japanese language system and culture; at the same time, they are setting a model for other contemporary authors who juggle between two languages and two identities. Examples may be Iranian writer Shirin Nezammafi, second non-Japanese writer ever to win the Bungakukai Shinjinsho Award 16 in 2009 with her novel 白い紙 ( White paper ). 17 The Chinese-born novelist Yang Yi 楊逸 and the Taiwanese writer Li Kotomi りことみ also produce works in Japanese, becoming the only

two non-native Japanese speakers to win the prestigious Akutagawa prize, respectively in 2008 with the novel 時が滲む朝 ( A Morning When Time Blurs ), and in 2021 with 彼岸花が咲く島 ( An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom ). 18 Another interesting contemporary poet is Professor Yamasaki Kayoko 山崎佳代子

She lives in Belgrade, Serbia, where she writes poetry and essays in Japanese as well as in Serbian. She is also one of the main literary translators from Japanese to Serbian and vice-versa, becoming a real life bridge between those two different cultures.

Setting aside the different cultural backgrounds, what binds these bilingual authors together is that they are all following the path that will eventually lead to a more global literature: making Japanese literary works more accessible by translating them, or including them in a wider linguistic context, is not only eliminating the stereotype of the Japanese language as something impenetrable to non-native speakers, but also operating on a more structural and semantic level.

13 Ibid.

14 Numano Mitsuyoshi, op. cit., 194.

15 Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Mother-Tongue in Modern Japanese Literature and Criticism: Toward a New Polylingual Poetics (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 128-131.

16 The Bungakukai Shinjinshō ( 文學界新人賞 , ‘Newcomers in Literature Award’ ) is a contest for new authors organized by the monthly literary magazine Bungakukai ( 文學界 , ‘Literary

Notes

World’) in Tōkyō. The list of winners from the first editions of 1955 can be found here (Japanese).

17 Juro Osawa, ‘Japan’s Joseph Conrad Works for Panasonic,’ Wall Street Journal , July 2, 2010.

18 Yamazaki Satoshi, ‘Taiwan-Born Novelist Li Kotomi Nabs Akutagawa,’ The Asahi Shimbun, July 15, 2021.

How Bilingual Literature is Changing Japanese Language

In a more practical sense, it is possible that the growing presence of bilingual authors in Japan has triggered some questions that will eventually influence the language itself. Particularly interesting is the conceptual duality regarding the semantic content of the terms 母国語 / bokoku-go and 母語 / bo-go . In 1955, the first edition of the Japanese dictionary Kōjien 広辞苑 defines the two terms almost synonymously as ‘language of one’s motherland’ for bokoku-go and ‘language of one’s original land’ for bo-go . In the following editions of the Kōjien other nuances were added, but it was in the late 1960s that secondand third-generation Koreans living in Japan began to problematise their postcolonial linguistic condition: growing up in Japan, their ‘mother-tongue’ was Japanese, but their bokoku-go , the ‘language of their motherland’ was not. 19 This problem was also applicable to the bilingual writers of the 1980s, such as Levy, Mizumura, and Tawada. By presenting the possibility of creating literature outside one’s bokoku-go , they did not just operate a change in the literary aspects of Japan, but also on a deeper, more cultural and linguistic level. The growing consciousness around this topic showed a change in the daily use of those two terms: considering bo-go and bokoku-go as interchangeable words makes an assumption that cannot be considered universal, and which therefore becomes unacceptable.

If it is true that language plays a fundamental part in shaping the individuality of a person, it is also true that the discourse around identity is much more complex: personal experiences, cultural background, trauma, and ideology all play a part in building someone’s

identity. This is why, even if bilingual authors - as a collective - share their peculiar relationship with language, their individual experiences as writers are extremely personal and unique.

Some bilingual authors, like Hideo Levy, are struggling with identity crises that transpire throughout their works. Others, like Mizumura Minae, are turning their backs on the languages of the countries to which they have moved, keeping the necessary contacts to a minimum and focusing on their mother-tongue, even if they have settled thousands of miles away from where it is spoken. And there are authors, like Tawada Yōko, who use the perspectives of a non-native speaker towards other languages as the starting point for a new writing style.

All these approaches to bilingual writing, while distinct, have created a new way to exist in the Japanese literary environment, to the extent that they have actually managed to influence some cultural and linguistic aspects of the Japanese language itself. The fact that this trend is still visible today has demonstrated that the Japanese language is not inaccessible; on the contrary, it is open and capable of creating a literature that can be considered global. The shift from ‘national’ to ‘transnational’ has finally occurred

19 Takayuki Yokota-Murakami. op.cit., 132.

Suggested Novels

Mizumura, Minae. A True Novel . Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. New York: Other Press, 2014.

Tawada, Yoko. Scattered All Over the Earth . Translated by Margaret Mitsutani. New York: New Directions, 2022.

Li, Kotomi, Solo Dance . Translated by Arthur Reiji Morris. New York: World Editions, 2022.

IN THE LAND OF ALL THINGS HEAVY

The Underground Doom and Sludge Metal Scene in Japan

Patrick Pozzi

Hard rock and heavy metal music have long been a part of Japan’s popular culture, with western bands achieving significant success amongst Japanese audiences, often more than in their native countries. It is no secret that Mr. Big and other American outfits from the 1980s were ‘big in Japan’. But as far as Japanese heavy music goes, local artists have had just as much resonance both nationally and internationally: Loudness and X Japan have, for example, made a name for themselves in the glam metal subgenre. Ningen Isu ( 人間椅子 ) 1 have also gained a certain popularity abroad, although their lyrics are in Japanese. More recently, Babymetal have taken the spotlight among heavier Japanese musical exports with their unique blend of J-pop and modern metal. But there is much more to discover for listeners who are willing to dig a little deeper and look into lesser-known subgenres of heavy metal in Japan. This article aims to present one such subgenre, namely the niche of doom and sludge metal.

The terms ‘doom’ and ‘sludge’ metal hark back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when British and American bands like Black Sabbath (in particular their seminal 1971 release, Master of Reality), Pentagram, and Blue Öyster Cult changed the face of modern rock music. By taking the classic rock and blues sound that was popular at the time and using down-tuned electric guitars and slower tempos, they were able to produce heavier, darker melodies underpinned by droning guitar riffs. This sparked a whole new genre, known as doom metal, pioneered in the United States by acts such as Saint Vitus or Trouble in the 1980s. Later in the same decade, as well as during the 1990s, new subgenres started to emerge. Certain bands pushed the envelope by focusing on even heavier sounds – featuring screamed vocals and darker lyrical themes (which dealt, for instance, with drug addiction, death, depression, and

nihilism). This took the shape of what is known as sludge metal, a style of music brilliantly showcased in the album Take as Needed for Pain by the American band Eyehategod. Other artists chose a more melodic and psychedelic approach, which led to the birth of stoner rock. The album Welcome to Sky Valley by the U.S. band Kyuss is, for example, widely considered a staple in this subgenre. The impact of these bands and records did not go unnoticed in Japan, where a number of musicians chose to

1 Many of the band names and album titles mentioned in this article are in English, with the Japanese counterparts being phonetic transcriptions in katakana that I chose to omit. I added the Japanese names and titles only when they are the originals.

91 ARTS / POPULAR CULTURE / ESSAY MUSIC

follow suit. But what is so unique about these artists compared to their western counterparts, from which they draw inspiration? What sets them apart? Are they simply a by-product of a larger, international music scene or did they somehow make the music their own? Here is a personal selection that I hope will answer these questions.

三上達人

Fig. 2 Mikami Tatsu is the founder, bass player, and sole constant member of Church of Misery

Church of Misery Coffins

Formed in 1995 and based in Tokyo, Church of Misery are now one of the most notable Japanese doom metal bands. Still active today, they strike the listener with groovy, bluesy guitar licks reminiscent of late 1960s and early 1970s hard rock and proto-doom acts, such as Leaf Hound and Blue Cheer. Pummelling drums and distorted basslines deliver an in-your-face sound that epitomises doom metal as a genre. Most of their songs are dedicated to infamous serial killers, which adds to the mystique of the band and shapes its image with gruesome lyrical themes. Fans of Black Sabbath and classic psychedelic rock enthusiasts alike will find interesting songs in Church of Misery’s back catalogue.

Recommended album: Master of Brutality

Recommended song: ‘Ripping into Pieces (Peter Sutcliffe)’

Coffins were formed in Tokyo in 1996 and – compared to the other artists listed in this article – focus on a more death metal-infused approach in their musical production. While still including the typical aspects of doom and sludge metal, the band also use faster tempos and growling vocals that bring them closer to the style of bands such as Obituary. Fans of these genres will definitely appreciate the sheer aggression and intensity of the band’s material.

Recommended album: Beyond the Circular Demise

Recommended song: ‘Terminate by Own Prophecy’

Boris Corrupted

Perhaps the most audacious and experimental band in this list, Boris was founded in 1992. Named after a song by the American band Melvins, this Tokyo outfit plays a unique blend of several genres, which encompasses doom and sludge metal, as well as noise rock and ambient music, and has earned them cult status. Their eclectic style, displayed in an extensive catalogue, makes them rather difficult to categorise. Boris might appeal to fans of alternative and experimental music, as well as to anyone who enjoys more ‘adventurous’ sounds both within and without the world of doom and sludge metal.

Recommended album: Flood

Recommended song: ‘Part 3’

Hailing from Osaka and formed in 1994, the enigmatic Corrupted – known for not giving any interviews and focusing solely on the music – play a very aggressive and intense brand of doom metal, with guttural vocals and slow, heavy tempos drenched in feedback and noise, which resembles the style of bands such as Eyehategod. Their extreme approach sets them apart from most other artists in the genre, providing a truly cathartic experience for all listeners with a passion for heavy music. Interestingly, most of Corrupted’s lyrics are in Spanish, although some of their songs are in Japanese, German, and English.

Recommended album: Paso Inferior

Recommended song: ‘Paso Inferior I’

Greenmachine Birushanah (毘盧釈那)

Formed in Kanazawa in 1995 and named after the Kyuss classic Green Machine, this band merge the heaviness of sludge metal with the aggression and speed of hardcore punk and thrash metal. The result is a forceful style of music that features blistering guitar solos and screamed vocals over bone-crushing riffs. In terms of sound, Greenmachine are reminiscent of American bands such as Fistula and Buzzov•en, and might appeal to fans of faster tempos and punk rock.

Recommended album: Mountains of Madnes

Recommended song: ‘The Haunter’

Without a doubt the band with the strongest ties to Japanese culture among the ones included here, Birushanah was formed in Osaka in 2002. Their very distinct style blends the distorted guitars and intensity of sludge metal with Japanese traditional scales and fretless bass. The distinctive trait of their songs – which are sung entirely in Japanese and feature both clean and screamed vocals – is the use of metal percussion, which gives a tribal and experimental touch to their work. Birushanah are highly recommended to anyone who wishes to discover an original take on heavy music.

Recommended album: Makyo ( 魔境 )

Recommended song: ‘Mabutairo no Tabibito ( 瞼色の旅人 )’

Fig. 3 Wata of Boris performing live

Eternal Elysium

Formed in 1991 in Nagoya, Eternal Elysium have made a name for themselves as one of the most important Japanese bands in the underground doom metal scene. Compared to the more extreme bands mentioned here, their style is rather traditional and akin to that of groups such as Cathedral and Saint Vitus, with clean, melodic vocals and plenty of groovy guitar riffs inspired by the likes of Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult. Their songs also feature some elements of psychedelic rock, which provide for a highly interesting listening experience. Their more approachable sonorities make them a perfect gateway band for anyone who would like to delve deeper into the genre.

Recommended album:

Spiritualized D

Recommended song: ‘What a Difference a Day Makes’

What is so fascinating about the Japanese doom and sludge metal scene is the backdrop against which it takes place: this cultural phenomenon might be seen as a response to the harsh reality of life in Japan in the 1990s, marked by economic stagnation and social insecurity, as well as by the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack.

But going back to the beginning of this article, how do these artists differ from their western counterparts? Every band is unique in terms of sound and songwriting, and each one of them brings new elements and ideas to the table. However, in general, listeners may find that there is nothing particularly ‘Japanese’ about the majority of these artists, and that all musicians and bands put their own twist on the music when tackling a specific genre, regardless of their country of origin. Nevertheless, I would argue that it is not all about the music. What is so fascinating about the Japanese doom and sludge metal scene is the backdrop against which it takes place: this cultural phenomenon might be seen as a response to the harsh reality of life in Japan in the 1990s, marked by economic stagnation and social insecurity, as well as by the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack. 2 The grim lyrical themes with which doom and

sludge metal grapple encapsulate an uneasiness, one reflective of a broader state of turmoil. Moreover, while these genres are not exactly mainstream in the West either, in Japan they make up an even smaller niche in the world of heavy metal. Therefore, in a way, the doom and sludge scene in Japan is a pop culture import, reinterpreted by a handful of local artists in a setting with a unique musical tradition. It is, on a small scale, a testament to the cultural richness of the country. As a matter of fact, it could be said that choosing not to conform to traditional values – in this case by embracing a style of music that has little to do with Japan per se – is in itself a cultural stance and an expression of identity that is quintessential to all subcultures anywhere in the world. The existence of such an artistic movement in Japan is thus highly remarkable and definitely worth discussing.

2 For a detailed explanation of the 1995 Toyko subway sarin attack please refer to the footnote 1 from the film review 'Emotional and Spiritual Balance in Under The Stars by Tatsushi Ōmori' on page 57.

YŌKAI !

For the English version turn to page 108

Marty Borsotti Illustrator: Enrico Bachmann

Dans l’article d’aujourd’hui le surnaturel vient s’incruster dans le récit de voyage, à l’expérience s’ajoutera donc une part de construction mentale. J’espère que vous pourriez me pardonner cette liberté artistique. Quoi de mieux, donc, que de commencer cette histoire comme tout récit d’épouvante : Cette histoire a bien eu lieu telle qu’elle est rapportée.

Je venais de terminer ma visite au temple du pavillon d’argent, situé au bord est de Kyoto. Alors qu’il faisait particulièrement beau pour être un après-midi de décembre, j’hésitais quant au déroulement de ma soirée. Les échoppes autour du temple avaient fermé alors que le dernier groupe de visiteurs commençait sa visite. Il était à la fois trop tôt pour rentrer à l’auberge, mais peut-être trop tard pour une balade, car le soleil commençait déjà à tirer sa révérence. Sans le savoir je m’apprêtais à vivre une expérience qui, avait-elle eu lieu cent ans auparavant, aurait constitué une parfaite histoire d’épouvante à base de monstres du folklore japonais, aussi connue sous le terme de Kaidan ( 怪談 ). J’étais donc planté devant le temple du pavillon d’argent, contemplant l’idée de parcourir un chemin se trouvant à la gauche de ce dernier, j’aurais pu profiter du crépuscule pour contempler la ville. D’autant plus que ce dernier dégageait une atmosphère fort bien sympathique. A juste titre d’ailleurs, car il s’agissait de la célèbre promenade des philosophes, qui, à plusieurs reprises, a été élue comme un des plus beaux chemins de tout le Japon.

Alors que l’hésitation me bloquait sur place, j’aperçu un drôle de personnage à l’embouchure du chemin, me faisant des signes de la main. Intrigué, je me rapprochai, attiré par son appel. Devant moi se tenait un vieux papy sur la soixantaine, pas très propre sur lui, mais pas crado au point de faire le rapprochement avec un clochard. Certes, il ne sentait pas bon et sa barbe négligée n’aidait pas sa cause, mais, à sa façon de se tenir, il aurait très bien pu être un artiste ou un retraité célibataire, tout ce qu’il y a de plus normal. Il n’hésita pas à prendre la parole avec un classique ‘Weh a Yù Furom – d’où venez-vous ?’ tout excité à l’idée de parler avec un étranger. Instinctivement je lui répondis que je venais de France, bizarre, car normalement je me revendique comme italien. ‘Ah de la France ! J’adore la France’ (sans blague) me rétorqua-t-il et, sans rien ajouter de plus, il commença à fouiller frénéti -

ILLUSTRATED

STORY

SHORT

lait-il bien pouvoir sortir pour en être à ce point agité ? L’espace d’une seconde j’espérai ne pas être tombé sur un exhibitionniste, mais ma crainte s’effaça rapidement quand, d’un large sourire, il sortit une poignée de petits cailloux. J’avoue avoir buggé un moment, ne comprenant pas le but de mon interlocuteur. C’était bien la première fois que l’on m’appelait de loin pour me monter des cailloux. Et ce flux de pensées à bien dû se manifester dans mon expression car, rapidement, ce bonhomme m’invita à regarder de plus près son trésor, enentonnant fièrement « Le noir et blanc à 300 yen, le couleur à 500 ». A bien les regarder, les cailloux étaient gribouillés, comme si l’on avait essayé d’y dessiner des paysages.

« Ah… »

Tout s’expliquait. Ce drôle de personnage était content à l’idée d’avoir attrapé un poulet de touriste à qui refourguer ses œuvres d’art. Et il n’avait pas tort sur ce point, car, pris complétement au dépourvu, je ne voyais pas comment m’en sortir autrement. Mais bon, j’aurais pu encourager son art en lui offrant quelques pièces, essayais-je de me consoler tout en indiquant le chef-d’œuvre en noir et blanc. Tout en me remerciant il me poussait à prendre aussi sa pièce colorée, non

100

sans sortir moi-même davantage de pièces, mais cette fois-ci je réussi à résister à son encouragement. Généreux oui, mais pas couillon. Et très gentiment je lui fis comprendre que le mécénat qu’il venait de trouver n’était pas des meilleurs. Une fois la transaction terminée, l’artiste n’arrivait plus à contenir sa joie, et il exprima sa frénésie dans une profusion de remerciements. ‘Mershi Bôkû’ me lança-t-il une dernière fois en me saluant d’une révérence.

Tout ce théâtre laissa le temps au soleil de tirer, lui aussi, sa révérence, et je me trouvais maintenant presque dans le noir. Mais, comme je me trouvais déjà à l’embouchure du chemin des philosophes, la curiosité de découvrir ce qu’y si cachait eut raison du bon sens. Le décor y état particulièrement suggestif, presque captivant, tant était fort le contraste entre le côté droit, donnant sur la ville, la lumière, et le noir absolu du côté gauche, longeant les pieds de la montagne.

101

Ce chemin marquait la frontière entre deux mondes, l’humain et son habitat d’une part et le l’indomptable sauvage de la montagne, considérée comme un lieu de transition entre le royaume des hommes et celui des divinités. Au Japon, ces précisément à la montagne que l’on peut rencontrer les plus fortes puissances surnaturelles, et, depuis toujours, les ascétismes et autres pratiques du bouddhisme ésotérique y ont lieu pour les canaliser et les dompter.

Plus je m’enfonçais dans le chemin, plus les ombres de la ville se mélangeaient au noir de la montagne, alors que les lampions s’espaçaient. Bizarrement, aucune trace d’autre gens, je me retrouvais seul, au noir, plissant des yeux pour ne pas tomber dans le ruisseau longeant la promenade. Un héritage du processus de sélection naturelle fait que le cerveau humain, placé dans le noir, s’imagine toute sorte de choses terrifiantes pour stimuler l’instinct de survie. Et mon cerveau ne chôma pas ce soir-là, en rendant l’espace environnant un ensemble mouvant de silhouettes obscures. Sauf que, en m’arrêtant quelques minutes, je m’aperçus que cette sensation n’était pas uniquement le fruit de mon activité neuronale, quelque-chose s’agitait bel et bien dans la montagne. Les pointes des arbres basculaient en écho à un remue-ménage de feuilles mortes au sol, mais il n’y avait pas un fil de vent pour expliquer tout ça. Les bruits ne cessèrent de croitre en intensité, comme si un nombre grandissant de personnes se pressaient et se bousculaient sur ce tapis de feuilles. Soudain je me rappelai que, dans la culture nippone, la nuit est prérogative du royaume des monstres, et les hommes n’y ont pas leur place. Le timing ne fut pas des plus joyeux. Ces bruits de pas provenant de la montagne en devenaient presque assourdissants alors que je m’empressais d’arriver au bout du chemin, et retourner à la civilisation. Les têtes mouvantes des arbres semblaient décidées à m’accompagner tout le long.

Il ne restait plus de place pour le doute, je venais de croiser une marche démoniaque, une procession de monstres. Ce vieil homme qui m’avait attiré sur son chemin devait être leur chef, le Nurarihyon, ce monstre qui s’amuse à prendre l’aspect des hommes pour leur jouer des mauvais tours. Je conservais néanmoins un faible espoir que ces monstres en parade n’allaient peut-être pas m’emporter, ils auraient pu faire preuve de clémence envers ce pauvre étranger qui avais acheté les œuvres d’art de leur seigneur. Mais j’étais bien conscient que la magnanimité ne fasse pas partie de leurs traits distinctifs.

103

Dans ce crescendo d’anxiété due à ces mouvements sinistres, soudainement, au loin, s’allumèrent une vingtaine de flammes, voltigeant dans le noir. Était-ce là les étincelles des lanternes portées par les éclaireurs du cortège des monstres ? Est-ce que continuer mon chemin dans cette direction était vraiment une bonne idée, ou est-ce que je courais ici à ma perte ? Rebrousser chemin n’aurait pas été très judicieux non plus, car je n’aurais fait qu’exposer mon dos à leurs malédictions. S’il fallait tomber sous l’emprise des monstres de Kyōto, autant le faire de face. Les bruits s’intensifiaient alors que je me rapprochais du cœur du cortège. Puis, soudainement, tout s’arrêta, comme en réponse à la présence d’un intrus. Les lanternes se figèrent sur place et, dans un gros coup de vent, la marche démoniaque s’évapora, laissant à la place un petit temple. Très certainement ce fut l’intervention des bouddhas, pourfendeurs des maux terrestres, qui chassèrent les monstres hantant les lieux, sauvant au passage ce touriste tombé un peu par hasard au milieu de leurs conflit.

Avant de quitter les lieux pour rejoindre une route beaucoup plus éclairée, je décidai de rendre hommage à la divinité vénérée dans ce temple, et la remercier pour sa protection. C’est le cœur soulagé que je quittai le chemin des philosophes, heureux de ne pas être devenu le sujet d’une histoire d’enlèvement par des esprits.

Aujourd’hui, en repensant à cet épisode, je me dis que les ombres mouvantes que j’apercevais dans les arbres étaient surement dues aux singes qui peuplent les montagnes de Kyōto. Aussi, l’apparition soudaine de flammes voltigeant en l’air n’était rien d’autre que le résultat du système centralisé du temple, programmé pour s’allumer à une certaine heure, une fois la nuit tombée. Rationnellement je sais que ce sentiment d’anxiété que j’éprouvais était le fruit des projections que faisait mon cerveau pour combler le noir dans lequel je me déplaçais. Mais n’est-ce pas plus intéressant de conserver ce souvenir comme s’il s’agissait d’une histoire d’épouvante ? Après tout, c’est ici que réside toute la puissance de ce genre d’histoires, causée par l’activité de ces monstres.

Vous ne trouvez-pas ?

106

Today’s story is entwined with the supernatural, as it will relate something that cannot be fully explained through logic, something that happened to me. Some may say that it all came from my imagination, but please allow me to indulge in a little theatricality as it seems all ghost tales begin with the promise that ‘this account really happened as it is written below’.

It was a rather warm December evening and I had just finished visiting the Silver Pavilion on the eastern border of Kyoto. I was among the last group to enter the temple and by half past five my visit was already concluded. It was too early to head back to the inn, but every shop in the surrounding area had closed already, so I was left conflicted about what to do next. I was certainly not expecting to encounter anything out of the ordinary, but I was about to become the main character in my very own Kaidan 1 . There I was, standing in front of the Silver Pavilion as the sunlight began to fade. Being a lover of strolls, I was tempted to wander along a charming path to my right, the notorious ‘Philosopher Path’.

As I considered this, I noticed a weird guy standing at the entrance of the path, vigorously waving at me. Intrigued, I approached him to see what the fuss was about, and before me stood an old geezer, perhaps close to his seventies, who was far from handsome. He had a peculiar smell, and his beard was quite neglected, but he looked more like a bizarre artist or an old bachelor, as opposed to a homeless man. He rapidly addressed me with a classic ‘where are you from?’, excited to speak with a foreigner.

I politely replied that I came from France, which was odd thinking about it now, as I usually tell people that I am Italian.

‘Oh! France! I love France!’ he said, then began frantically looking for something in his pockets.

I must admit I had to refrain from smiling awkwardly, since he made quite a spectacle. What would appear in his hands once he was over with his search?

1 Kaidan, or Kwaidan ( 怪談 ) refers to Japanese folkloric ghost stories, often characterised by the appearance of monsters ( yōkai 妖怪 ). A notorious example of such stories in the west is the anthology Kwaidan (1904) by Lafcadio Hearn (1850 – 1904).

109

YŌKAI!

ILLUSTRATED SHORT STORY

Marty Borsotti Illustrator: Enrico Bachmann

ing from ear to ear. It was the first time in my life someone had called me over just to show me some stones, and my perplexity must have been visible as he promptly asked me to look closer.

While proudly showing his treasure he fired numbers at me: ‘three hundred for the black and white, five hundred for the coloured one’. Indeed, these were not mere stones, but oddly scribbled ‘pieces of art’ which vaguely resembled pictorial scenes.

'Ah…'

Now everything was starting to make sense: the old geezer was so excited because he had finally found a foreigner to sell his art to. And he was not mistaken, as I was caught off guard and could not think of a smart way out of it. On the other hand, giving him a couple of coins would not harm my finances, and so I pointed to one of his black and white masterpieces. Noticing his strategy had been successful, he insisted that I buy the coloured ones as well, at which point I was able to draw a line. I may be generous, but not a fool, and I politely refused his offer, making him understand that he had not stumbled upon that rich of a patron. As soon as he’d pocketed the money, the old geezer could no longer contain his joy, and he thanked me repeatedly with

110

big gestures. Bidding me farewell one last time with a ‘Mershi Bōkū’ – thank you very much in a weird French – he bowed deeply. What a weird encounter.

All of his shenanigans had made me lose track of time, allowing the sun to set and leaving me in the dark. I should have listened to my brain and caught the bus home, but I was already at the entrance to the path, and something was urging me to keep going. The scenery was captivating: the strong contrast between its right side bordering the city, the light, and the absolute dark of its left, the foothills of the mountain. It felt to me like this path represented a border between two worlds, the humans’ domesticated one, and that of the untamable mountain. The same mountain is considered in Japanese belief systems as a transitionary place between the humans’ realm and the deities’. I could not refrain from thinking that the most powerful entities dwelled in such mountains, and since ancient times ascetics have lived there to appease and channel supernatural powers.

111

The deeper I trod down the path, the more urban shadows began to merge with the pitch dark of the mountain, as the light grew scarce. Oddly enough, I could not sense anyone else there. I was alone, following canal on my left. I read somewhere that in darkness the human brain is overloaded with scary thoughts to boost self-preservation. And, I must say, that night my brain did not fail in its task, transforming my surroundings into a moving ensemble of silhouettes. However, as I paused to make sure I was only imagining things, I noticed that something really was moving in the deep shadows of the mountain. Trees were heaving in response to the eerie stir of dead leaves, but there was no breeze to justify what was happening. A noise kept growing, as if people were gathering all across the mountain, making a commotion. Inadvertently, I remembered that, in Japan, night is a place where humans have no rights, that it belongs to monsters and supernatural beings. What an awful time to remember such a thing. I walked faster as the noise of rustling leaves became almost deafening. I needed to return as soon as possible to the realm of humans, where I belonged. Moving treetops followed me all the way through, as if they did not want to let me go. I had no more doubts: I had stumbled upon a demonic march, a procession of monsters. I was lured by that old geezer who must have been their chief, the Nurarihyon, a monster who likes to dress up like old men to mess with humans. I held on to a faint hope that this monster parade would not abduct me, that they would show mercy towards that fool of a foreigner who kindly bought the art pieces off their chief. But deep inside I was well aware that magnanimity was not a trait of these creatures.

113

In this crescendo of anxiety, a stream of small fires appeared far away, floating in the ether. Were those the lanterns held by the monster parade’s pathfinders? Was it a good idea to keep walking in that direction, or was I heading towards my end? Going back was no longer an option, as I would expose my back to their curses. If I should fall under the bewitchment of Kyoto’s monsters, I would prefer to face them. Noises were getting louder as I stepped closer to the cortege. Then suddenly, everything stopped. Had they noticed me? The fiery lanterns ceased wavering and with a strong gust of wind, the monster parade faded, giving way to a small temple. That must have been the intervention of some Buddha, slayer of evils, who chased away the demons infesting the place, saving a poor foreigner in the process. I was relieved to finally return to somewhere inhabited, but before heading home I decided to make a small offering to the deities venerated in that temple. While stepping onto a brighter road I could not help but sigh in relief, having escaped the sad fate of the protagonist of a tale of monster abduction.

Thinking back to that day, I tell myself that those moving shadows in the treetops must surely have been monkeys living in the mountains surrounding Kyoto, that the sudden appearance of floating flames could be explained by the lighting system of the small temple, programmed to flare up at a predetermined hour. Thinking rationally, the anxiety I felt was nothing but a response to the projections made by my brain, as a way of filling in the darkness. Nonetheless, would it not be more charming to cherish this memory as a ghost story? After all, there lies the might of such stories born of monsters’ activities.

Don’t you think?

116

Japan’s Pre-War Parliamentary Diplomacy and the IPU

Negotiating Modernity Underwater: Women of the Sea in a Changing World

Fig. 4 © 柯金源

In Search of the Truth(?): The Kubotas’ Illustrated Report on the First Sino–Japanese War

Equilibri affettivi e spirituali in Under the Stars di Tatsushi Ōmori

The Foreign Father of Japanese Ceramics: A Walk Through Gottfried Wagener’s Appointment as a ‘Hired Foreigner’ in Japan

World Literature from Left to Right: Bilingual Authors and Their Influence on Japanese Language

In The Land of All Things Heavy: The Underground Doom and Sludge Metal Scene in Japan

ISSN 2813-3617

Wasshoi!

Contact

Chief editor: Luigi Zeni

Georg-Kempfstrasse 6

8046 Zurich

Switzerland

118

Chief editor

Managing editors

Content editors

Luigi ZENI, Switzerland

Aurel BAELE, Japan

Marty BORSOTTI, Japan

Fengyu WANG, Germany

Freya TERRYN, Belgium

Momoka ASANO, Japan

Copy editors

Julian BENTHAM, United Kingdom

Penelope BENTHAM, United Kingdom

Tim BENTHAM, United Kingdom

Translator

Graphic designer

Web developer

Social media manager

Communication manager

Digital marketing manager

Illustrator

Contributors

Amelia LIPKO, Switzerland

Riccardo LOPES, Switzerland

Paola CITTERIO, Switzerland

Manuel Jose FLORES AGUILAR, Japan

Aurelia ANTONINI, Switzerland

Giovanni BALDI, Italy

Enrico BACHMANN, Switzerland

Arend BUCHER, Belgium

Hiroki NAKAHARA, Japan

Ilaria MALYGUINE, Switzerland

Kaori ITOH, Japan

Laura VERMEULEN, Belgium

Patrick POZZI, Switzerland

Sara ODRI, Italy

Shuhei TASHIRO, Japan

119

Wasshoi! Magazine #5

ARITA OR SETO WARE?

JAPAN’S PRE-WAR PARLIAMENTARY DIPLOMACY AND THE IPU

What is the IPU?

Membership and Background of the IPU

International Activities of Imperial Diet Members during the Interwar Period

Disturbances in Internationalist Collaboration and Japan’s Parliamentarianism

The IPU and Japan After the War

Suggested Reading

NEGOTIATING MODERNITY UNDERWATER: WOMEN OF THE SEA IN A CHANGING WORLD

Part I: Colonial Encounters, Intersectional Struggles: A Transnational History

Ama Divers in Korea: Colonial Ambitions, Troubled Encounters

Chamsu Divers in Japan: Precarious Labour, Intersectional Struggles

Shared Histories Beyond the Ocean

Suggested Readings

IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH(?)

The Kubota's Illustrated Report on the First Sino-Japanese War

Historical Background: The First Sino–Japanese War

Journalism and Media in Meiji-period Japan

An Illustrated Report of the Sino–Japanese Battles

Purpose and Historical Reliability

Other War Picture Books

NSG in Woodblock Prints?

Suggested Readings

ŌMAMEDA TOWAKO AND HER THREE EX-HUSBANDS 大豆田とわ子と三人の元夫

DON ’TMISS OUR NEWPIN!

EQUILIBRI AFFETTIVI E SPIRITUALI IN UNDER THE STARS DI TATSUSHI Ō MORI

EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL BALANCE IN UNDER THE STARS BY

TRANSPORTATION AND THE CASTLE TOWN IN THE MŌRI CLAN DOMAIN UNDER TOYOTOMI HIDEYOSHI

Transportation Policy in Preparation for the Kyushu Campaign: The Construction of the Gozasho in Akamagaseki

Transportation Policy in Preparation for the Kyushu Campaign: Traffic route maintenance in San'yōdō

Suggested Readings

THE FOREIGN FATHER OF JAPANESE CERAMICS

A Walk Through Gottfried Wagener’s Appointment as a ‘Hired Foreigner’ in Japan

Terminology of the different types of ceramics mentioned in this article

The Importance of ‘Hired Foreigners’

A New Perspective on Materials

The Beauty of Glaze

Commemorated in Kyoto

His Magnum Opus: Asahi-yaki

WORLD LITERATURE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Bilingual Authors and Their Influence on Japanese Language

Two Nobel Prizes for Literature, One New Perspective

Notes

World Literature and the Globalisation of Local Culture

Bilingual Authors Against National Borders

How Bilingual Literature is Changing Japanese Language

Suggested Novels

Suggested Readings

IN THE LAND OF ALL THINGS HEAVY

The Underground Doom and Sludge Metal Scene in Japan

Church of Misery Coffins

Boris Corrupted

Greenmachine Birushanah (毘盧釈那)

Eternal Elysium

YŌKAI !

« Ah… »