| japanese poetry
Here are a couple of pieces about Japanese poetry. The are both a must read. Even if you are afraid of poetry. The first one also heralds the triumphant return of that silver tongued devil — the Wonderchicken. The blogosphere is better for it.
Japan rocks.
Part one
No, really. I have a few friends, virtual and otherwise, over there, and they are quick to jump up the ass of anyone who's drunk the kool-aid and open their umbrellas. You know the type of travel-fanboys I mean, and my friends love to hate - men, mostly, who go to or end up in Japan to find something that they're missing for some reason, something they can't find wherever they are. These guys tend to fall in love - with the mythos, with a woman, with the culture, with the history, ex post facto or otherwise - and either sooner or later begin to buy into the casual Japanese certitude that the Japanese are just better than you. Better, stronger, faster, with tentacle and dismemberment porn that makes the next best tentacle and dimemberment porn offerings look like Curious George Goes To The Hospital. These fellows tend, in time, to become those annoyingly smug expats-in-Asia who are determined to overlook anything unpleasant in their adopted home, to blame the outsider, to spout platitudes that regardless of their high-minded elegance come down to 'it's not better or worse, it's merely different.' You know - the kinds of guys you want to bust in the fucking chops half the time, if only because they speak the language better than you do.
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Japan rocks.
Part two
Back to the capsule hotel I went, almost skipping with glee. I dropped my shoes in a locker this time, dropped the locker key at the front desk, retrieved my wristband key from one of the desk clerks, and rode the Super Fun Luxury Lift to the 6th floor. I figured I'd drink a couple of Asahis, then go exploring.
Back at the room, I closed the accordion door, climbed the metal ladder into my top-bunk capsule, leaned back, switched on the TV that protruded organically from the plastic wall of my coffin, cracked a can, took a deep and almost orgasmically satisfying pull of my long-anticipated Asahi, set it down on the little extruded-plastic shelf to my right, grinned and sighed.
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From Jonatha Delacour...
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Sadness
The exhibition catalog for Seasons: The Beauty of Transience in Japanese Art has as its epigraph an excerpt from Ki no Tsurayuki’s preface to the Kokinsh?, the first imperially-sponsored collection of Japanese poetry, published around 905 AD:
Japanese poetry has the human heart at seed and myriads of words as leaves… the song of the warbler among the blossoms, the voice of the frog dwelling in the water—these teach us that every living creature sings.
It is song that moves heaven and earth without effort, stirs emotions in the invisible spirits and gods, brings harmony to the relations between men and women, and calms the hearts of fierce warriors.
[...]
Yet the reluctance or inability to express one’s true feelings is not only a Japanese problem, although it was a Japanese—Ki no Tsurayuki—who 1100 years ago elegantly and succinctly portrayed this aspect of human frailty:
To the distant observer
They are chatting of the blossoms
Yet in spite of appearances
Deep in their hearts
They are thinking very different thoughts.
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