ポートランド近郊で暮らすということは、米国有数のワイン生産地の中で生活するということにも当てはまりますが、それはワイン愛好家にとってどんな意味があるのでしょうか? ポートランドは、米国のワイン生産地のうち、それぞれ2番目と3番目の規模を誇る、ワシントン州とオレゴン州のほぼ中間に位置しています。この機会に他では味わえない、この地ならではの体験を満喫してみてはいかがでしょうか?
ポートランド近郊で暮らすということは、米国有数のワイン生産地の中で生活するということにも当てはまりますが、それはワイン愛好家にとってどんな意味があるのでしょうか? ポートランドは、米国のワイン生産地のうち、それぞれ2番目と3番目の規模を誇る、ワシントン州とオレゴン州のほぼ中間に位置しています。この機会に他では味わえない、この地ならではの体験を満喫してみてはいかがでしょうか?
Did you know that living in the Portland area means you’re in the middle of one of the largest wine-producing regions in the US? This unique area is located virtually at the center of Washington State and Oregon, the 2nd and 3rd largest wine-producing regions in the US, respectively. What does this mean for you as a wine-lover?
This piece by Gwynne Dyer is one of the best assessments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve seen. Far from the standard pap you get from the US media, a fiction foisted on us almost daily in which the persecuted and outnumbered Jews fight bravely against a savage horde of crazed Arabs bent on their singular destruction, his essay casts a refreshingly honest illumination on events as they actually are, where the Israelis and their “settlers” are the terrorists, and the Palestinians are the victims in an invasion that finds them ground further and further under the heel of an American-made boot.
First you’ve heard of it? Well, read on…
The Japanese language is in trouble. The arrival of the Digital Age finds it increasingly at the mercy of the media and the marketplace, each better equipped today than at any other time in history to shape society, culture, and the modern vernacular. The rush towards globalization and eager pursuit of the technological tools that facilitate it have created in Japan an environment of indiscriminate assimilation, where the foreign appellations for emerging technologies are cut-and-pasted from English directly into the various Japanese media. The language of Nippon is being subtly transformed through a reckless frenzy of linguistic borrowing, and rather than enrich the language, this katakana revolution will ultimately only dilute and pollute it.
Yoshida Kaneyoshi
was born sometime around the year 1283 into a family of hereditary
Shinto diviners. His considerable facility with poetry led to
an early position in the Kamakura court, where he served as a
steward to Horikawa Tomomori. Later, around 1313 and for reasons
unknown, he opted for the life of a Buddhist monk and changed
his name to the more religious-sounding Kenkou. An active poet,
he belonged to the traditional and conservative Nijou school
of poetry, and was later praised as one of the “four
deva kings” of the Nijou
school. It is not, however, his poetry for which he is best well
known, but rather a collection of essays known as the Tsurezuregusa,
or Essays in Idleness.
Tsurezuregusa
is a collection of zuihitsu, or “random
jottings,” and is considered
along with Sei Shonagon’s
Pillow Book to be one of the earliest examples of this
uniquely Japanese literary genre. The essays themselves, numbering
243 in all, vary considerably in length from a single sentence
in some cases to a handful of pages in others. They cover a broad
range of topics, and include anecdotes, observations, and reflections
on nature, humankind, and the path to enlightenment. His comments
on etiquette and style have especially endured, and he is credited
today with defining or elucidating much of what is considered
“Japanese.”
Most importantly, the work not only provides the reader with
a glimpse of life in medieval Japan, but also into the mind of
the author himself.
The work reveals a sensitive and
refined man who, though bound on the one hand by his status as
a Buddhist monk to lead the solitary life of a recluse, finds
it difficult to truly separate himself from the court and his
contemporaries, for which his interest is keen. Instead of leaving
the capital and all of its worldly trappings behind to live high
in some mountain retreat, he chose instead to reside on the fringes
of Heian-kyou, where much of society and his previous existence
was readily accessible to him. Kenkou delights in relating amusing
stories about court figures and their antics. In many cases,
though, perhaps to imply that there was in fact some distance
between himself and the actual participants or events he details,
he qualifies the anecdotes with a trailing “I
am told” or “…it
is said”. It is clear,
however, that he was in fact very active in some court circles,
especially those related to poetry, and that much of the information
he imparts could have been obtained first hand.
Similarly, he demonstrates an interest
in the endurance of court protocol and custom, and numerous essays
are offered almost as reminders of how something or other had
been traditionally done, and therefore should be done.
These pieces are sometimes accompanied by laments that the people
of his day no longer remembered the proper method or precedent
when dealing with particular situations. He wrote:
Nobody is left who knows the proper
manner of hanging a quiver before the house of a man in disgrace
with His Majesty. Formerly, it was the custom to hang a quiver
at the Tenjin Shrine on Gojou when the emperor was ill or when
a general epidemic was rampant.
Kenkou existed in a world of great
political flux, and the nostalgia that he feels for earlier, perhaps
more stable times often through. He seems particularly vexed
by the evolution of conventional speech away from forms he considered
traditionally appropriate. This was especially true in cases
where ritual speech had been corrupted into truncated, less formal
forms. An active poet since his youth and a member of the conservative
Nijou school, it should come as no surprise that innovation
and novelty held little appeal for him.
His knowledge of court customs was
thorough, and numerous essays are simply informative commentaries
on specific court practices of the time. Examples of this type
include detailed descriptions of the orientation of bed and pillow
in the emperor’s bedchamber,
the manner in which cords should be attached to loops on boxes,
and the means by which a person should be restrained prior to
being flogged. One has to wonder what purpose these were intended
to serve, if other than only to illustrate these practices for
the benefit of subsequent generations. If nothing else, they
represent Kenkou’s fascination
with such matters and perhaps reflect his belief that the world
was in a state of decay (mappou). As this degeneration
seemed to him to be characterized by the neglect of ritual and
tradition, it is possible to conclude that his transcription of
the customs of his time and those of previous generations had
an archival objective.
Kenkou’s
preoccupation with the court and worldly pursuits is quite at
odds with his status as a monk and recluse, and he seems unwilling
to fully embrace the ascetic lifestyle as, for example, Kamo
no Choumei did decades earlier when he became a priest. One
wonders why he took the tonsure in the first place if the hermitage
was not a way of life he personally favored. Even in his essays
about other monks he speaks of them more as an outsider than a
kinsman, and only a handful of his essays can be described as
expressing singularly Buddhist principles. The answer may be
found in some of the pieces, though, where he indicates that the
transition from public life to one of solitary contemplation of
The Way is incumbent upon men in their twilight years, and that
it is unseemly for the aged to mingle with the young, or priests
with society. Kenkou’s daily
rounds, conversely, brought him often into contact with other
people and the noteworthy events of their lives. This kind of
contradiction is not at all uncommon in the work, and some scholars
contend that the format itself, short essays written over an indeterminate
period of time, lends itself to such inconsistency. I am inclined
to agree with that assumption simply because doing otherwise requires
one to ignore the fact that our opinions evolve with time and
are wholly relative to the situation at hand. Still, reading
in the same hour two passages that begin “Nobody
begrudges wasting a little time”
and “A man who wastes
his time doing useless things is either a fool or a knave”
may give one pause for thought about the capriciousness of his
ideology.
In addition to his observations
of the court and customs, much of Kenkou’s
work could be said to serve as a guide to gentlemanly behavior.
The collection is punctuated with essays that describe in varying
degrees of detail how a man was expected to act under certain
circumstances or in general, and many attempt to define in no
uncertain terms the kinds of ambitions that were meritorious.
He seems especially critical of those who pursued monetary gain:
What a foolish thing it is to be
governed by a desire for fame and profit and to fret away one’s
whole life without a moment of peace. Great wealth is no guarantee
of security. Wealth, in fact, tends to attract calamities and
disaster…It is an exceedingly stupid man who will torment himself
for the sake of worldly gain.
Equally denigrated are the uneducated
and boorish, whose antics provide Kenkou with ample examples of
what the “well-bred”
man should never do. He paints a picture of the ideal man as
being quiet, self-effacing, generally sober, and, most of all,
a person of refined tastes. Though less harsh in his treatment
of common people than was Sei Shonagon in her Pillow
Book, Kenkou does not afford them much in the way of leniency.
They seem as caricatures, propped up idiotically in front of
the reader to serve as an antithesis to Kenkou’s
idealized, elevated man:
The man of breeding never appears
to abandon himself completely to his pleasures; even his manner
of enjoyment is detached. It is the rustic boors who take all
their pleasures grossly. They squirm their way through the crowd
to get under the trees; they stare at the blossoms with eyes for
nothing else. they drink sake and compose linked verse; and finally
they heartlessly break off great branches and cart them away.
When they see a spring they dip their hands and feet to cool
them; if it is the snow, they jump down to leave their footprints.
No matter what the sight, they are never content merely with
looking at it.
I think these entries may ultimately
add to the popularity of the work because they serve as a kind
of handbook for proper behavior and etiquette, which it may be
argued are given a great deal of importance in Japanese society
relative to others. The Japanese reader is presented with very
clearly articulated ideas about what it is to be properly Japanese.
In some cases Kenkou eschews metaphor or example completely and
simple describes what is appropriate when, for example, calling
on someone at their home: “It
is most agreeable when a visitor comes without business, talks
pleasantly for a while, then leaves.”
In the same direct fashion he cautions the gentleman in numerous
essays not to indulge in ostentatious displays of knowledge or
ability:
A man should avoid displaying deep
familiarity with any subject. Can one imagine a well-bred man
talking with the air of a know-it-all, even about a matter with
which he is in fact familiar? The boor who pops up on the scene
from somewhere in the hinterland answers questions with an air
of utter authority in every field. As a result, though the man
may also possess qualities that compel our admiration, the manner
in which he displays his high opinion of himself is contemptible.
It is impressive when a man is always slow to speak, even on
subjects he knows thoroughly, and does not speak at all unless
questioned.
There are numerous entries of this
sort, and they stand out from the rest, I think, because they
are so utterly timeless. The passage above is just as true today
as it was in his time, and it is this quality that makes the work
endure. As such, even the contemporary reader can find in the
Tsurezuregusa much that can be applied to his or her life
today. In this area Kenkou’s
brilliance is clearly displayed, and his place in Japanese history
as a gifted philosopher justified.
More than simply an authority on
matters of etiquette and grace, though, Kenkou is also regarded
as having had much to do with the development of the Japanese
for nature and artistic style. The importance he attaches to
an awareness of the impermanent, the incomplete, and the irregular
have shaped the Japanese collective consciousness more than we
may ever know. The Tsurezuregusa shows us that for him
the suggested was superior to the conspicuous, and beginnings
and endings to the central experience. The natural world was
his favorite canvas for ruminations of this kind, and the examples
he uses are vividly drawn in images familiar to any Japanese.
It is interesting to note that it is here that Kenkou’s
Buddhist ideology is best represented. So much of beauty lay
in its ephemerality, he reminds us, and this perception has as
its roots the Buddhist concept of mujou, or impermanence.
Cherry blossoms are loved for their brevity, for example, and
for how they suggest the finite nature of our own existence and
that of all things. Surely this way of looking at the natural
world existed in Japan long before Kenkou put his brush to ink,
but his words offer a unique expression of its fundamental ideas.
It is therefore regrettable how few of the pieces in the Tsurezuregusa
are devoted to observations of the natural world, but from those
available we do find that he had cultivated the recluse’s
eye for nature even though he had not put any great distance between
himself and the urban hub of Heian-kyou.
Yoshida Kenkou became a monk and
set his feet upon The Way, but his path was one that never carried
him too far from the society and company of others he loved so
much. Somehow he was able to fuse the courtier and the recluse
into a single entity that found in that union a keener insight
into the world than either might have achieved alone. That he
was generous enough to record his thoughts we can be grateful,
and in the pages of his legacy we find a window into his heart,
his mind, and his world.
The Tsurezuregusa is a classic of Japanese literature. It is a collection of zuihitsu (lit. random jottings), a genre unique to Japan, and was written in the early part of the 14th century. This paper discusses it and the author, Yoshida Kenkou.
Ihara Saikaku (1641-93) was born
Hirayama Tougo in Osaka to a prosperous merchant family. Little
is known about his early life, but his wife died young and his
only daughter shortly thereafter. Rather than enter the priesthood
as might have been expected under the circumstances, he began
traveling extensively and writing. He was recognized initially
for his skill as a haikai poet,
and is credited with being one of the most prolific renga
(linked verse) poets of all time. Late in life, however, he turned
his attention instead to writing novels, and it is for the brilliant
literary works of this period that he is best known today.
The Japan of the late seventeenth-century had existed under the
stern yet unified rule of the Tokugawa shogunate for nearly a
century before the publication of the literary classic The
Life of an Amorous Man. The work was the first novel
by then forty-one year-old Saikaku, and in its pages he recounted
the life and exploits of the ridiculously amorous hero Yonosuke
(lit.- man of the world), a rake who devotes most of his life,
from early youth till death, to pursuing and enjoying the intimate
company of women and, some cases, young boys. The work was an
important one for two fundamental reasons: first, it was the first
literary work to emerge in Japan that treated sex and sensuality
with a candor hardly before seen in Japanese literature. So influential
was it, in fact, that it produced an entire genre of fiction that
would become characteristic of the period, Ukiyo-zoushi,
or “tales of the floating world.”
The term “floating world”
was used to describe the environs of the pleasure quarters and
theater districts that were becoming popular at that time. Moreover,
the typically short passages that make up the work provide the
modern reader with an unobstructed (but decidedly masculine) view
into the brothels and pleasure quarters of feudal Japan.
The pleasure quarters (yuukaku)
were government-sanctioned districts, mostly urban, where men
could purchase the favors of the demimondaine.
In some cases, like that of the expansive Yoshiwara
district in Edo, the licensed quarters were active on a rather
grand scale. The insulated world of Yoshiwara
and other districts like it provided the writers of the time with
a world of superficial dazzle and ritualized pleasure populated
with rogues and hypocrites of all descriptions. “There
were devious merchants, scheming courtesans, fallen or slumming
samurai, slimy sycophants, lecherous monks, horny nuns, vainglorious
actors, ludicrous fops and fey spendthrifts.”
[Bornoff, 174] Saikaku used these figures, often drawn as caricatures,
as inhabitants of his own literary “floating
world.”
In his richly drawn portraits of life behind
the scenes in the world of recreational sex, Saikaku never treats
the reader to excessively explicit detail. One does find, though,
that although prostitution was very much present in current sense
of the word, the male patrons were highly selective of the partners
they chose to spend time with, and that a fulfilling “evening
of pleasure” may have included
little more than food, drink, and pleasant conversation. This
is wholly apart from what we might think of as prostitution today,
where services purchased and anticipated are almost exclusively
within the realm of physical, sexual gratification. For the characters
in Saikaku’s world a woman’s
manner and grace were as important or more so than her physical
attributes, and this reveals her to having been more than simply
a sexual object.
In addition to exploits in the yuukaku,
Saikaku wrote on other areas of the sexual spectrum. One theme
that received particular attention was that of same-sex love,
or more specifically, love between men and boys. This type of
affection was referred to as nanshoku,
or “male love,”
and it contrasted with joshoku, “female
love.” In Saikaku’s
day homosexual love among men had none of the stigma attached
to it today in Japanese society or that of our own. In fact,
the contemporary view of the rugged, lethal samurai might find
itself sharply at odds with the reality of the commonplace nature
of male love and its pervasive acceptance in medieval and Tokugawa
Japan.
Saikaku writes about nanshoku
at great length in his book Nanshoku Oukagami
(The Great Mirror of Male Love). In it he depicts male love as
it existed around the samurai tradition, as well as in the other
arena in which it was most predominant, the kabuki
theater. The short stories that make up the work are evenly divided
between the two types.
Nanshoku existed exclusively
between men and boys, and the age of nineteen was the point at
which a male would assume the role associated with the former.
Prior to that time he was exclusively a member of the latter,
and known as a wakashu. The
men who practiced homosexual love were divided into two categories:
onna-girai and shoujin-zuki.
Onna-girai (”woman-haters”)
were those men that dallied exclusively with wakashu, and
by contemporary terminology might be called “gay.”
Shoujin-zuki were those who continued to have sexual relations
with women in addition to their liaisons with boys, and in many
cases even had wives and families. Nanshoku Oukagami was
made up entirely of the former, however, and some critics argue
that it is for this reason that a discernible misogynistic bias
exists in many of the stories. Paul Gordon Schalow says:
Because he adopted the onna-girai’s
extreme stance toward female love rather than the shoujin-zuki’s
inclusive position, Saikaku was obliged to write disparagingly
of women in the pages of Nanshoku Oukagami. But Saikaku’s
misogynistic tone, which many readers of this translation will
find offensive, is directed not so much at women as at the men
who loved them. [Schalow, 4]
The status and perception of women had seen a noticeable decline
Japan in the Middle Ages and into the feudal period. Tokugawa
society, with its strict class divisions and clearly defined societal
roles, was inhospitable to women to such a degree that the fruits
of their artistic and creative pursuits, having reached their
apogee in the Heian Era, were now being stifled in almost every
quarter. One glaring example of this practice was the barring
of women from performing on-stage by the bakufu
in 1629. Although initially allowed to perform in the blossoming
kabuki theater, the role of women
had slowly shifted from that of performer to prostitute. This,
it was feared, would turn performance halls into brothels, and
women were summarily excluded from further participation in hopes
of averting the progression. Curiously, however, those selected
to fill the now-vacant female roles on the kabuki
stage (i.e.- young, feminine boys) soon experienced the same evolution
of role, and in like fashion became ready bedmates for enthusiastic
spectators. It is noteworthy that this form of the theater, called
wakashu kabuki, was subsequently
banned as well.
If anything, Saikaku only echoed the kind of biased, subjugative
view of women already well-established in Japan in his time.
One particularly apropos example is his treatment of the main
characters in the two works The Life of
an Amorous Man and The Life of
an Amorous Woman. In the former case the protagonist,
the ever-infatuated Yonosuke, progresses through his entire lifetime
experiencing successes and failures but ultimately achieving great
prosperity after many years spent in the familiar embrace of the
pleasure quarters. The heroine in Amorous
Woman, however, enjoys a wonderfully auspicious existence
in her youth, but experiences a steady, inexorable decline which
finds her a gnarled and pathetic wretch at the end. The same
similarly unpleasant yet inevitable fate seems to await many of
the female characters in Saikaku’s other works
as well, and the dual underlying messages seem to be that promiscuity
and licentious behavior are the bailiwick of men alone, and that
women are of little worth once their looks and sexual appeal have
waned.
The rake, the Lothario who demonstrates masterful skill in seduction,
holds a certain appeal for Saikaku. His protagonists are overwhelmingly
attractive, clever men who, much like the famous
poet Ariwara no Narihira, entice the objects of their fancy,
be they young women or wakashu boys, with carefully chosen
words and cultured manner. The ploy for luring widows regularly
used by Yonosuke’s elderly confidant
in The Life of an Amorous Man sounds so appealing to the
young dandy that employs it himself at the first opportunity [41].
It is known that Saikaku was an active patron of the pleasure
quarters himself, and one must wonder if his characters were the
product of his own self-image. Whatever the case, the sensual
world held great interest for him, and he traversed its broad
expanses with a keen eye and vigorous pen.
It is important to note that Saikaku’s works,
though often quite erotic, were not oblivious to the realm of
the heart, and some of his pieces relate tales of ardent love
by common people, not unlike the works of his contemporary, Chikamatsu.
Saikaku wrote of lovers who experience great depth of emotion
and caring. These figures are often torn between the love they
feel for one another, and the duty that conspires to keep them
apart. An example of this type is the first story in Five
Women Who Loved Love where, much like Chikamatsu’s
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, the leading figures are
doomed to be separated against their will, deceived, shamed, and
decide eventually to die gloriously together. Although in Saikaku’s
work the ending finds the couple as somewhat apart from the “models
of true love” that die together,
the mettle of their devotion is nonetheless tested under dire
circumstances, and is found to ring true. I think it is these
works which must have led to his great popularity because they,
along with the stories of the bunraku and kabuki
stage, gave new voice to the lives and dreams of commoners and
townspeople.
Ihara Saikaku is described as “one of
the most uninhibited writers who ever published a tale”
by translator Kengi Hamada. His unabashed, straight-forward style
of writing may not seem to the modern reader to be especially
sensual or otherwise erotic, but for his time it was a new direction
in literature, and it launched an entire genre. In his characters
we can find a little of the author himself, his views of women,
and his love for the sensual world.
Works Cited
Saikaku, Ihara. The Life of an Amorous
Man. Trans. Kengi Hamada. Rutland, VT: Charles E.
Tuttle Company, Inc., 1979.
Saikaku, Ihara. Five Women Who Loved Love.
Trans. Wm, Theodore de Bary. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle
Company, Inc., 1956.
Saikaku, Ihara. The Great Mirror of Male
Love. Trans. Paul Gordon Schalow. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990.
Bornoff, Nicholas. Pink Samurai: Love,
Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan. New York,
NY: Pocket Books, 1991.
An essay about the life and works of 17th century Japanese author Ihara Saikaku.
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