Cute Japan

Japan is “the country of cute.” "Cute" is the ideal image of women, "cute" are cars, clothes, cups, plates, bags, and even police boxes have been marked with cute characters. Kawaii, “cute” is a style and a taste, everything that is small and innocent. There are cute expressions, cute gestures and cute ways to move. It is much more than just a fashion, it is in fact a whole form of aesthetics.

Late 19th c. travelers from Europe or America saw Japan as a “doll’s country,” undoubtedly discriminating from their own so-called cultural superiority, but even modern Japan has a touch of “dolliness.” Is there any other country in the world where make-up for young man is a popular item? The cuteness is also a good export article to other Asian countries: from Hello Kitty, the now more than 30-years old kitten which is a 1 billion euro money machine for its owner Sanrio, to Doraemon, through children’s books, anime films and manga, in fashion and design, everywhere the Japanese ideal is being exported.

Cuteness is not only an ideal for children and young people, also middle aged women still try to look “cute.” Now this trend has even reached the elderly – good for industry as with the ongoing graying of Japan the future belongs to this age group. Japan already has 23,000 persons older than 100, but the birth rate has dropped to less than 1.2%.

Even the elderly can be depicted as “cute,” as was the case with the (now deceased) singing centenarians Gin-san and Kin-san. Ten years ago, these two broadly smiling grannies were at the slightest pretext pulled before the TV cameras. A CD with their songs even became a bestseller.

A new development is that today you can buy cute things especially made for the elderly. A good example is Yumel, a doll that has been developed for lonely grandmothers. The doll represents a five-year old boy, the ideal grandson. It can say cute sentences so that granny has someone to talk to in her quiet house. When she retires for the night with her doll, he even wishes her a polite “goodnight.”

Of course, the elderly in Japan are much lonelier than in, for example, my country the Netherlands. Like it or not, we are a country with close family ties, where every Sunday is “Granny Day” and where birthdays are celebrated with the whole family. That is also possible because we are such a small country, families can easily come together. In Japan, distances are much larger, the houses smaller. Family relations also seem more detached, one usually only meets grandma twice a year, at New Year and at the Buddhist Obon festival in August.

How distant family relations can be is demonstrated by a weird type of fraud, that as far as I know only exists in Japan. That is the “ore,ore” trick. “Ore” means “I” and is only used by men: suddenly granny is called by a man’s voice saying urgently “ore, ore,” “it’s me!” without mentioning his name. The speaker pretends to be the grandson who is in a terrible fix because he immediately needs money – for example, because he has to pay back a loan to the loan sharks or because he is involved in a traffic accident (when you cause an accident in Japan you have to present a gift of money to the victim). The voice mentions an amount and a bank account number and granny pushes her rollator to the bank to transfer her precious savings to her dear grandson, happy in the knowledge that she can finally do something for him.

Grandma in Japan is so lonely that she doesn’t even know the voices of her grandchildren. Although the police is clamping down now, this dirty trick has grown into a virtual epidemic, every year hundreds of millions are stolen from old folks and thousands of gullible grannies have been reduced to beggary.

Granny is so unpopular in Japan that she only receives phone calls from shady figures who are after her money. No wonder that she likes to have a doll who talks to her. Yumel, as this doll is named – “yume” means “dream” – costs about 70 euro and is sold by toymaker Takaratomy. The cute little boy has big eyes and a small nose and is dressed in a sweet playsuit with a hood, in pastel blue. There is also a cuddly granddaughter doll dressed in pink. It is possible to buy more clothes separately, so granny can dress her doll nicely up. Yumel has a vocabulary of 1,200 phrases in his chip. Via his sensors he recognizes the sleeping pattern of granny so that he “wakes” and “sleeps” in the same rhythm. Of course he constantly produces cute sounds and when he is sleepy his eyelids become heavy fro drowsiness. Yumel can also sing songs and ask for presents. There is one reassurance: this cuddly boy will not strip granny’s savings account.

Basho’s haiku in Nagoya: Tumbling in the snow

good-bye now,
I go snow viewing
till tumbling over

iza saraba | yukimi ni korobu | tokoro made

Basho

This charming haiku was composed at a snow viewing party at the house of one Yudo, a bookseller in Nagoya, on December 3, 1687 (January 5, 1688 in our calendar). Basho may have written the poem after the meeting when he was about to leave the house and venture into the deep snow for a real expedience of the white world, instead of only viewing it from the comfort of a warm room. Basho seems almost as excited as a child would be on the prospect of stepping into the fresh snow and slipping.

Haiku Stone: The haiku stone stands in the grounds of the Osu Kannon temple, opposite the Main Hall. The stone was put up by local haiku poets in the early 19th c. On the top the words Kasen-zuka are inscribed, because the back of the stone contains a renga in 36 verses by those local poets.
Address: 2-21-47 Osu, Naka-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi-ken. Tel. (052)231-6525
Access: Osu Kannon Station on the Tsurumai Subway Line (Exit 2).
Note: Antique market every 18th & 28th.

[Updated and revised archive post]

Hiroshige sketchbook found

A lost sketchbook / travel diary by ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige has recently surfaced in the United States, as the Daily Yomiuri Online reports. Called Koshu Nikki Shaseicho (“Diary and Sketches of Koshu”), it is only one of two sketchbooks in existence by Hiroshige, so it is an important find. The sketchbook dates from November 1841 when Hiroshige was travelling in what is now Yamanashi Prefecture and contains 18 sketches and a travel diary. The sophisticated sketches fully express the Hiroshige style, according to experts. The diary describes how Hiroshige, who was already famous at the time, was feted by local officials. The artist obviously enjoyed good food and sake.


The diary was discovered by Shinya Ichikawa, a researcher at the Bato Hiroshige Museum of Art in Tochigi Prefecture (by the way, itself a a fabulous small museum, in a superb design by contemporary architect Kengo Kuma). The important document will be on display at the Chiba City Museum of Art from Sept. 5 to Oct. 9, and then make the rounds of other museums in Japan. The sketchbook is owned by a collector in the United States.

Note: here is a link to translations from comparable diaries by Hiroshige, like the rediscovered work originally in the possession of Edward F. Strange.

Best skyscrapers in the world

In Europe you will not easily find any imposing skylines (but we have those cosy red-tiled roofs), while in Asia skyscrapers are shooting up one after another. Italian Luigi Diserio has made a list of his 15 favorite skylines and no wonder that 6 of the 10 best ones can be found in Asia.

No. 1 is Hong Kong with 43 buildings higher than 200 meters, of which 30 were built since 2000 (wasn’t there an Asia Crisis at the time?). Hong Kong possesses 15 of the world’s tallest buildings and the view of the city from Victoria Peak is of course nothing less than sublime. No. 2 is Chicago, where the first skyscraper ever was built in 1885. Shanghai scores third, not surprising for the fastest growing city in Asia; its top building now is the 486 meters tall Oriental Pearl TV Tower. No. 4 is New York, with 47 buildings higher than 200 meters still the skyscraper capital of the world.


Tokyo comes next at fifth position and the author remarks:

Its skyline has a number of unique characteristics that set it apart from other big city skylines, among them 15 structures at over 200 metres tall (including the Tokyo Tower which changes colors every night). But because of the density and vast size of the city, every corner appears to have its own skyline. (...) Tokyo is filled with neon lighting and unique, contemporary architecture, and like New York City is also often portrayed in movies for its aesthetic and eye-catching cityscapes.

No. 6 is Singapore, 7 Toronto, 8 Kuala Lumpur (Petronas Towers), 9 Shenzhen (in 1970 still a sleepy fisher’s village!) and 10 is Seoul (and the list continues, read the article).

If you love skyscrapers, also have a look at Skyscraperpage.com, which boasts beautifully drawn diagrams. Here, too, 7 out of 10 buildings are Asian. And, finally, here is another website even putting Tokyo in third place, after Hong Kong and New York!

Japanese fragrance recorder

For the French author Marcel Proust fragrances called up the strongest memories, also of forgotten things from a long past childhood. An accidental whiff of roses and you are a small child again, riding your bicycle in the old garden; the penetrating smell of charcoal fires and I am walking in the alleys of Kyoto, near the University on Yoshida-yama, 25 years ago.

But although what we see and hear can be perfectly recorded in digital form, our nose has been less lucky. Unless Japanese scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have their way. As reported by ITBusinessnet, Takamichi Nakamoto of the institute has invented an instrument that uses 15 sensors to analyse a fragrance, record it digitally and then reproduce the same sort of smell again. Such a contraption could be used in the food or cosmetics sector, he believes. Or when selling flowers online, customers could first smell them…

Unfortunately, it will still need some work before you get a flowery fragrance from your computer. Reproducing the various smells is the bottleneck: 96 small bottles with chemicals are needed, making the instrument rather unwieldy, to say the least. And the result still seems primitive compared to the sniffing range of the human nose.

So we have to wait many more years until we can use our mobile phone to make a fragrance print and put that in our blog…

The next Mt. Fuji eruption

We are right in the middle of the climbing season of Mt Fuji, so every night you will find a long line of people pulling themselves strenuously up the huge volcano. But there is also other news about the Fuji.

UPI has reported that scientists are getting worried that the volcano, which has been quiet since 1707, may be slowly readying itself to blow its top again. After all, in history eruptions were frequent and it has been quiet now for an eerily long time… And indeed, monitoring equipment has detected the occurrence of low-frequency earthquakes, which could mean that magna is building up…

The website of Volcano World tells us more about the volcano:

Mount Fuji is the archetype of the stratovolcano and probably rivals Vesuvius for the best-know volcano. The volcano rises about 3,500 m above the surrounding plain. Fuji has erupted at least 16 times since 781 AD. Most of these eruptions were moderate to moderate-large in size. The most recent eruption was in 1707-1708 from a vent on the southeast side of the cone. The eruption ejected 0.8 cubic km of ash, blocks, and bombs. Five historic eruptions have caused damage, including the 1707-1708 eruption, but no fatalities. Fuji had two large eruption (VEI=5) in 1050 and 930 B.C.

So are we in for another of those rare big eruptions? What will the economic damage be?