What to do in November in Japan

Nov., Kyoto: Special Temple Openings
Many temples which are usually not open show their treasures or gardens. See here for a list.

Nov., Tokyo: Tori-no-Ichi, Otori Shrine (Taito Ward)
Sale of kumade or bamboo rakes, to rake in good fortune.

November 2-4, Karatsu (Saga Pref.): Karatsu Kunchi
Interesting hikiyama floats with models of sea bream, dragons, samurai helmets and other paraphernalia are carried around town.

Nov. 3 (public holiday): Culture Day.
Originally the holiday dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, but now rechristened as "Culture Day." On November 3 the Emperor awards the Order of Culture to people of outstanding achievement in the fields of science, art or culture. There are also many art festivals and cultural activities nationwide, where lesser awards are given by all kinds of organisations.

November 3, Yumoto Hakone, Kanagawa: Hakone Daimyo Gyoretsu
A parade of 150 people in full period-dress recreats a daimyo (feudal lords) procession of the Edo-period (1603-1867).

November 3, Shitenno-ji Temple, Osaka: Shitenno-ji Wasso
A parade of thousands of people in historical costumes treks to Shitennoji. A new festival started in 1990 to stress the links of Osaka with the Asian mainland (in the past Shitennoji served as a diplomatic center for embassies from China and Korea).

Nov. 2-24 Tokyo: Nitten Art Exhibition in Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, Ueno.
Japan's largest annual modern art exhibition.

Mid. November, Arashiyama, Kyoto: Momiji Festival
Five boats with people in Heian costume, playing traditional music, sail down the Oi River in Arashiyama. Around this time the momiji or autumn leaves are at their best.

Nov. 15, nationwide: Shichi-Go-San (Children's Shrine Visiting Day).
The seven-five-three festival when parents with boys of five, girls of seven and boys and girls of three dress their children in bright kimono and take them to shrines where they pray for their children's future. In Tokyo: Meiji Shrine or Kanda Shrine.

Nov 21-28, Kyoto: Memorial Services for Shinran, Higashi Honganji.
The temple's main annual event. Priests chant while swaying back and forth, to imitate Shinran's passage on a boat through a storm.

Nov. 23., nationwide: Labor Thanksgiving Day.
Established after the war as a day to express gratitude for hard work done in the past year. Originally, Nov 23 was the day when since the Meiji-period the Niiname-sai, an ancient rice festival, was held. The Emperor would make an offering of the new harvest to the gods and himself taste the first rice of the year. The Niiname-sai is still held privately by the Imperial Family.

Exhibition of Buddhist Statues in the Tokyo National Museum

Until December 3, the Tokyo National Museum is hosting an exhibition of Buddhist statues in the so-called ichiboku style under the title Shaping Faith. Sculptures in the ichiboku style have been carved from one piece of wood instead of being made by fitting a number of wooden blocks together (and pasting over the lines between them with lacquer). Although the ichiboku technique was often used for the earliest Japanese wood sculpture, from the 11th c. on the block technique (yoseki-zukuri) developed by Jocho become more popular as this enabled sculptors to create larger and more plastic statues.

In the exhibition in the Heiseikan of the TNM 146 statues are on view, divided into 4 sections: Sandalwood sculpture, Single-block sculpture, Hatchet carving and Enku & Mokujiki.

• Images from sandalwood or other fragrant woods are also called danzo. They were originally brought from Tang China and later copied in Japan. The first danzo statue was brought to Japan in 595, the genre remained popular until the early Heian-period. Danzo statues are usually relatively small, as frangrant wood was scarce and expensive. The carving is always very fine. The exhibition has an Eleven-headed Kannon made in China in the 7th c. (property of the museum) and another one made in Japan, also an Eleven-headed Kannon, which is owned by a Kyoto temple. Both are only 40-45 cm tall.
• Single-block sculpture developed under the influence of danzo statues; the best examples date from the 8th and 9th c., although this type of sculpture continues to made until today. The difference with sandalwood statues is, that more common types of wood are used and that the statues are usually larger. Another point is, that while head and body are carved from one block, the hands, feet and other protruding parts are often carved from separate pieces of wood and later fitted to the statue. One more characteristic is that one-block statues have been hollowed out inside to prevent the wood from cracking and to make the statue lighter. Great examples in the exhibition include the Eleven-headed Kannon from Doganji in Shiga and a Meditating Bodhisattva with one leg crossed from Hobodai-in in Kyoto. The massiveness of the wood adds to the impact of both statues.
• Hatchet carving (natabori) is a technique where the round chisel marks are left on the statue, without smoothing it or applying a finish. Most samples date from the 10th-13th c., and the natabori style was geographically limited to eastern and northern Japan. The style has a great directness and simplicity. Usually hardwood is used, as the Judas tree or zelkova. In the exhibition you can see the Yakushi Triad from Hojobo in Kanagawa, which was made in the 10th c. and forms the earliest example of the style. The Standing Eleven-headed Kannon from Gumyoji is also very impressive. (Other excellent examples of the technique can be found in Iwate Pref, for example in Tendaiji).
• The works of the Edo-period priest-sculptors Enku and Mokujiki are in a naive style that borrows - certainly in the case of Enku, who studied the natabori statues of Northern Japan - from hatchet carving. They are roughly hewn scultptures, made with a few fast strikes of the hatchet. Enku reputedly carved 120,000 statues, as an act of piety and prayer, or to comfort people he met on his long travels.

Tokyo hotels

According to an article in the Asahi Shimbun, the many new, foreign-owned hotels that are taking the Tokyo hotel world by storm, will not hurt the established giants as the Imperial, the Okura and the New Otani.

The new hotels are superluxurious but have rates to match, often starting at 50,000 yen a night or even higher, almost double that of the Japanese hotels. Besides that, they are relatively small scale, often only 300 rooms as opposed to the New Otani's 1500, the Imperial with 1010 and the Okura 830 (by comparison, there are 688 hotels in Tokyo with a total of 88,000 rooms). And there are more foreign visitors coming to Tokyo (Thanks to the Visit Japan campaign? Or is it a sign the Japanese economy is out of the doldrums?): 6.7 million in 2005 compared to only 4.5 million in 2000.

The new five star luxury hotels include the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi Hills which opened in 2003; the Conrad wich came to another great skyskaper complex Shiodome in 2005; and the Mandarin Oriental which settled in Nihonbashi, also in 2005 (in the new Mitsui Tower that also houses the Mitsui Memorial Museum).

On top of that, the Ritz-Carlton will come to Roppongi in 2007, to Tokyo MidTown, the new project in Roppongi (on the former site of the Self-Defense Agency) and the same year the Peninsula will open its doors in Yurakucho, next door to the Imperial. In 2009, finally, the Shangri-La will debut in Marunouchi, in the Marunouchi Trust Tower which is now under construction adjacent to Tokyo Station. Most of these hotels (will) sit on the top floors of skyscrapers, offering a gorgeous view of the metropolis.

But the crucial point in the "hotel war" will be the service, which in a hotel as the Okura is unmatched. Will the new hotels be able to compete in that field, or will they cater mainly to foreign businessmen who perhaps find Japanese-style service too fussy?

Aoyama Jiro in the Miho Museum

The Autumn Exhibition of the Miho Museum features art critic and book binder Aoyama Jiro (1901-1979). Aoyama was born with a silver spoon and collected antiques from his early teens. But the man who was in the envious position that he never had to work had a sharp and critical eye and was generally praised as a genius. He also joined the mingei movement led by Yanagi Soetsu, and formed the taste of many contemporaries, as collector and author Shirasu Masako. The exhibition includes Chinese, Japanese and Korean ceramics that caught the eye of Aoyama Jiro as well as a display of the book covers he designed.

Besides the special exhibition, you can also see the Miho's antiquities from China and the Near East in a display that is none the less than mesmerizing. But above all, this is great chance to visit the Miho and enjoy the surrounding autumn scenery! Take your time to walk to the museum via the tunnel and bridge (as if approaching a hidden paradise) and enjoy the fantastic architecture by I.M. Pei. The museum is 50 min by bus from Ishiyama St near Kyoto and runs until Dec. 17. See the excellent Miho website for more details.

19th Tokyo International Film Festival

Today the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival opens (it will run until next week Sunday).

Among the opening/closing line-up is a new film by 91-year old veteran Ichikawa Kon, a remake of his own 1976 Murder of the Inugami Clan, after a complex detective novel by Yokomizo Masashi, featuring Ishizaka Koji as sleuth Kindaichi. Ichikawa Kon is less well known outside Japan, perhaps because he was more a mainstream director, but in the 50s and 60s he made such great films as The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, The Key, Conflagration and An Actor's Revenge, always after literary novels - see this interesting assessment of his work in Senses of Cinema.

There is also a new samurai flick by Yamada Yoji (Love and Honor - here is a report about the first screening from Sake-Drenched Postcards) - I very much enjoyed Yamada's first samurai film Twilight Samurai, but was rather disappointed by the next one, the repetitive The Hidden Blade.

The section Animecs of Japanese animation films includes the already released Paprika by Kon Satoshi (of Perfect Blue , Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers fame).

In the section Japanese Eyes 13 new Japanese films will be presented, including works by well-known directors as the renowned Aoyama Shinji (Crickets), but of course also many new directors will appear before the public.

In Winds of Asia, Asian film also gets a boost with none less than 37 films, including a retrospective on Malaysian director Yasmin Ahmad.

There will also be a retro on Imamura Shohei who died this year as well as Suzuki Seijun who celebrates his 50th year as a director.

Most films will be dubbed in English. For more information see the site of the 19th International Tokyo Film Festival or the informative article by Mark Schilling in the Japan Times.

A Maiko blog

Ichimame has been called "the first and probably only maiko to write a blog" and she is creating quite a stir, attracting about 1,000 visitors a day, according to an article in the Daily Yomiuri. Since last December, the eighteen year old Ichimame blogs twice a week, mainly short pieces about her daily life: her music and dance lessons, the annual customs and festivals in the geisha district, her hair ornaments and kimono. She tells about her nervousness before the Kitano Odori and other dance performances, she also writes about the Plum Festival in the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine. She even tells us that she has started studying English, in order to be able to talk with foreign guests. She writes in the Kyoto dialect, with lots of elegant –dosu and –mahen phrases.

But as soon as you look at the site, you will realize that this is not a private blog in which Ichimame reveals her innermost secrets, but rather a clever advertising campaign of the Ichi Teahouse where Ichimame works. For starters, Ichimame writes on the site of the teahouse (where you will find little else than her blog). The sleek site was apparently especially designed for it - no simple Wordpress blog here!

As the Yomiuri article also notes, the blog was in fact set up to inform young girls about the life of a maiko and so get new blood - not many teenagers are interested in the hard life of a maiko nowadays. This ploy was quite succesful and 100 reactions poured in, even from abroad. Ichimame's beautiful kimonos and kanzashi hair ornaments must have made many kids envious. One, a girl from Ishikawa Pref., has subsequently passed the tests and now has started training as a shikomi in the teahouse with the professional name Ichiteru - as is duly noted in the blog of Ichimame.

The Ichi Teahouse must have a clever mistress to resort to this interesting type of promotion. It may also be born from necessity, as the Ichi teahouse stands in the hanamachi that is least known among Kyoto's five pleasure quarters: the Kamishichiken, a small street leading to the gate of the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, in the northern part of the city, far from the hustle and bustle of Gion and Pontocho. The name “Kamishichiken,” “Seven Upper Houses” was derived from seven tea houses that were built here in the Muromachi period (1336-1573), using wood left over from the reconstrucion of the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine. This makes it the oldest geisha district in Kyoto. Now, there are only 14 geiko and 8 maiko left. The area does have its own dance performances, though, every year in spring the Kitano Odori and in autumn the shorter Kotobuki-kai. The theater, the Kamishichiken Kaburenjo, has a nice garden which in summer is in use as a beer garden (Ichimame tells us that the maiko serve by turns as waitress).

Cowboy Bebop

Japan is the last hypermarket at the end of the world, the great display case where everything that has been made anywhere anytime ends up, the ultimate dustbin of cultures and styles. That is not only true for the huge variety of articles in its shops, but also for its food which ranges from Chinese ramen to German Eisbein, from Korean kimchi to American hamburgers, from Italian pasta to Indian curry. And it is evident in its modern architecture which is a jumble of international styles where anything goes.

I was reminded of this when watching the anime Cowboy Bebop (both the movie and a number of episodes from the series), which is a tasty cultural mix of styles and influences. It is the story of a small group of bounty hunters called "Cowboys" in the style of the Wild West who operate in an science-fiction environment of the late 21st century and have the whole solar system as their base; "Bebop" is a fast, improvised jazz style developed in the 1940s and symbolizes the strong influence of music on the series, where installments are called sessions, many titles refer to a musical style or popular Rock and Roll song and even fight scenes are timed to music.

The solar system of 2071 in which the series is set is partly Chinese diaspora, partly Wild West, the cityscapes are inspired by both kungfu movies and Blade Runner. Small cowboy towns sit in the Martian desert where Spike, one of the characters, flies in his spaceship, the Swordfish, which in its turn is based on a WWII British torpedo bomber. Spike's style of fighting is taken straight from kungfu movies (and, interestingly, his character resembles Lupin III, another multicultural artifact). Much inspiration is derived from Western movies, but also from film noir and the abovementioned jazz clubs. In plots, homage is paid to such diverse movies as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Moonraker, Dirty Harry, and films by John Woo and Wong Karwai. The Cowbow Bebop film futures a Halloween parade but also a typical Moroccan neighborhood. In short, although the story does not go deeper than the surface, this is a intercultural delightful stew that does not fail to entertain.

(Written with information from the Cowboy Bebop article in Wikipedia)

Miyamoto Musashi - Lone samurai or samurai legend?

Why is swordsman Miyamoto Musashi so popular? We know almost nothing about him and what we know with any certainty is not very spectacular. Is it because he is the author of The Book of Five Rings? Or is it thanks to the novel by Yoshikawa Eiji and the films by Inagaki and other directors? It is a real enigma, especially as Musashi was not at all very well known in his own time and only seems to have gathered fame long after his death, the legend accelerating in the 20th c.

That legend then, is that not all there is? I often have the feeling that Miyamoto Musashi is not a real figure, but a blending of the scant facts from several, different persons: the legend of the young, hotheaded swordfighter has grown together with the life of the martial arts teacher of the Hosokawa clan in Kumamoto, and on the way sucked up the works of a painter called Niten. Or am I too skeptical?

Thanks to the Sunday-drama series of the NHK, 2004 was a Miyamoto Musashi year in Japan and Kodansha took that opportunity to ask Japanologist and translator (Hagakure; The Book of Five Rings; Taiko) William Scott Wilson to write a book about the legendary swordfighter: The lone Samurai. The author goes back to the original documents and tries to sort out their conflicting claims, which is no easy job. Too little is known for sure, too much is based on just one source without corroborating evidence. For example, we do not even know on which side the famous Miyamoto Musashi fought in the greatest conflicts of his time, the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and the two campaigns against Osaka Castle and the Toyotomi in 1615.

Wilson basically does a good job, but there is so little to tell about Miyamoto Musashi that he often has to pad his story by in detail relating historical circumstances and informing us about the lives of other people who lived in Musashi's time. This is in itself not bad, as it gives us the full historical and cultural picture, but the author goes too far when he speculates that Takuan, a famous Zen monk of the early 17th c., and Musashi must have known each other. That is not scholarship but fiction - in the novel by Yoshikawa Eiji Takuan figures as the teacher of Musashi.

The detailed discussions of several of Musashi's art works are welcome, but here, too, I have a lingering doubt: if Musashi was not considered as the artist, would these paintings still be discussed in terms of being painted with the "sharp eye of the swordsman?" Isn't that an interpolation from supposed facts?

The part I liked best in the whole book was unfortunately printed in smaller letters than what went before, as if it were less important: an overview of the growth of the Musashi legend, and the development of his story in Yoshikawa Eiji's novel and several films, all the way to a recent manga, Vagabond. Perhaps because I see Musashi as basically an interesting legend and a good story and consider him very problematical as history, to me this section should be the basis of all Musashi books instead of being treated as an appendix.

That being said, I am grateful to Wilson for including this detailed account (Lone Samurai is the only Musashi book that does so) and on the whole can recommend this book to all, newcomers and those who already have a basic knowledge about the subject alike, as an excellent introduction to the Musashi legend.