| Submitted by: Mark Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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They asked me which ones and I named KAGEMUSHA, SEPPUKU, and the Zatoichi films. The latter brought a smile. They said that they really liked Zatoichi also. However there would be no more since the actor got in trouble with the law. Zatoichi is a continuing character, a masseur and like most masseurs were in Japan, he is blind. However, he had hone his hearing skills to get around and was a master swordsman. Most of the stories have complex plots, and that is really what makes the story good. Samurai films have much the same appeal as Westerns about gunfighters, but they generally are done like very good Westerns. Samurai had much the same position in Japanese society they a gunfighter had in ours. In a society excessively rule-bound, they were law unto themselves. Some of the better known samurai films are remade in the West, usually as Westerns. SEVEN SAMURAI became THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS. YOJIMBO was remade as A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, some weak sorcery film with David Carradine, and most recently THE LAST MAN STANDING. Clint Eastwood really became a big star for playing a character very much based on Sanjuro, a Samurai character played in several films by Toshiro Mifune. I used to wonder if Clint Eastwood knew how much he owed to Mifune and to Akira Kurosawa whose films created Sanjuro. The answer apparently is merely yes. I think one of the cable stations ran a program of actors listing their favorite films. Eastwood recommended the Sanjuro films and freely admitted the debt.
The most popular Samurai characters have some impediment to overcome that makes them unlikely. Sanjuro is a obviously poor and a slob to boot, always scratching his beard. In the remake they dressed Eastwood in the cheapest clothing of the West, a Mexican poncho. They gave him a cheap cigar and a growth of beard. The appeal is that they are both men who just don't care. Zatoichi (whose name means Blind One) had an obvious impediment. Another popular samurai has a baby he must care for and wheels around a babycart. The reason the Japanese like their samurai heroes with impediments is that they can replay over and over a favorite scene. Samurai looks to be helpless peasant and bullies come along to pick on him. Samurai refuses to be drawn in. Bullies persist thinking that samurai resists from fear. Samurai still resists. Tension builds. Bullies start to attack samurai. Samurai whips his sword in an effortless arc. Everyone just freezes motionless. One bully falls, mortally wounded. Then another. Each bully has been killed for having underestimated the hero. East and West we all have the same fantasy of really being good and being underestimated by people around us until in a show of virtuosity we prove ourselves to be far better than we appear. If the above scene sounds silly look how often it is repeated in our own films.
Our guides said that they thought I looked a little like Zatoichi. They may have meant it as a compliment.
The inside of a Japanese castle is remarkably like any wood frame building. There are holes to allow shooting muskets and arrows at the enemy. But it is a lot like touring a large house. They are more impressive looking from the outside, not unlike the Shinkansen. There was a display of the Princess San's room where she plays a game with clam shells. The way it was described it sounded almost like a card game and used the fact that you cannot see what is painted inside a clamshell when it is face down. We also saw racks for guns. I asked about whether using guns was dishonorable. As it is often portrayed in films like SEPPUKU. What the guide said was that the film SEPPUKU was not realistic, but he did not specificly answer my question. There was considerable language barrier between us and a lot of what he said was hard to understand. We got up to the top of the castle and looked around. The top of a five story castle at the top of the only hill around does indeed have an impressive view. At the other end the base of the castle had stones taken from cemeteries. There was even a stone coffin he pointed out. This castle also had a seppuku room at the very top. It also had a room toward the bottom labeled Hara-kiri room, but he said that was just PR. It was for defense, but to get people to see it they gave it a sensational label. The grounds of the castle are vaguely set up in a spiral form and the way in has hairpin turns to make it harder for an army to storm the castle. To protect the castle from fire, a kind of tree was planted known for its high moisture content. Basically it was a fireproof tree.
Tokugawa tried to throw Christianity out of Japan. In 1603 it had been in the country only for 50 years and yet many of the important lords (daimyo) were Christian. I asked why it had success so quickly. It was a time of chaos and insecurity and people were looking for change. The Jesuits represented change and new ways in the minds of the people.
The tour that we were warned might go on for two hours went to almost three hours. Needless to say we really appreciated the effort. Our guide wanted to know about us. At various points he would ask what we did. I think he was expecting to hear that we taught. I told him I was a mathematician working with computers for the phone company and it clearly was not what he was expecting. They asked about the computers we were taking notes on and what company made them. They thought it might be for the military. I wonder if they were confusing Hewlett Packard with Packard Bell. At the end of the tour we exchanged business cards.
The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History is a museum tracing history of Japanese culture. The entrance id usually 200 yen but they had a special exhibit that made it 800 yen. The special exhibit was entirely in Japanese and seemed to be a rehash of what we had seen at the National museum. We saw a lot of what looked like the same mirrors, rusted swords, and pots. There was a nice diorama of fishing boats. The main museum also covered prehistory and history in various parts of Japan. Probably the most interesting was also of special local interest. It was a display of models of the samurai castles of Japan showing among other things the relative size as well as the comparative design. A floor above it there was a display on castles and how they were built. Again this suffers the problems of many museums, the collection on display seems small. It certainly was not worth 800 yen.
We had a long search for what to have for lunch. Eventually we found a place where I had pork cutlet and udon soup.
Originally we planned to go on to Kobe, but we spent so long in Himeji that there was not much point in going to Kobe. We went back to the train station and I suggested to Evelyn that we get ice cream. The ice cream looked good. Now I had pretty much promised myself I would not get American food in Japan. Evelyn got some chocolate flavor, but I decide to at least try to something I could not get at home. Ogura cream ice cream seemed to fill the bill: sweet bean paste ice cream. It was pretty good too. You see them selling cakes filled with ogura.
We took the train back. At the room I worked on my log. The room had a TV with a coinbox that had a note on it that there were bilingual movies Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 9 PM. No such luck. There was nothing bilingual and I ended up turning it off.
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10/19/96 Nara: Foundations of Buddhism
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We left the Takase at about 7:30. We passed the usual sign that said 'Put off your shoes.' I am not sure where they got the wording but it seems needlessly Biblical.
It strikes me Kyoto does not seem as clean as Tokyo, but then I have not seen that much of either. It could well be we were seeing a clean neighborhood of Tokyo and a less clean portion of Kyoto.
It is interesting who they pick to put into advertising. There is a Japanese actor with a craggy face smoking a cigaret from one actor. Another cigaret has as its poster boy Jean Reno, the actor who plays Leon the assassin in THE PROFESSIONAL, which is currently playing in Japan. These appear to be people who are much in the samurai mold. They are self-sufficient loners who seem to be very good at what they do. There is some other ad with Quentin Tarantino. I guess he does not have to make movies as long as he is a cult figure. He made two violent films and since he has not done a whole lot. He has made some short films, he has had small roles in films. But in Japan in general his image is sort of punky. He was a video store clerk and that is pretty much what he looks like. An odd person to make a hero.
For a different sort of breakfast we stopped in a bakery at the train station. We got a green muffin with sweet beans in it. I guess they are oguro. The flavor was supposed to be green tea. There was what turned out to be a bran muffin with raisins. And there was a wedge of something yellow. It was about an inch thick and was a right triangle who short edges were about two inches and three inches. It basically is white bread coated in a thin yellow, slightly sweet covering. At the center is custard.
We ate them on the train. There were a bunch of kids in student uniforms. Odd for a Saturday morning. It is odd to see the boys with earrings. One even has a ring at the corner of his mouth. It does not seem to be in keeping with the uniform. Also they have different kinds of shoes. The dress code does not seem to apply to footwear or jewelry.
Nara is one of the few places we have gone to that is not big and citified. It has the feel of a small town, though we are probably on the outskirts. In some ways it like Kamakura with Buddhist temples.
Well, we thought we were getting away from the Presidential race in the US by coming to Japan. We have fallen into the middle of their elections and keep running into politicians with loudspeakers on the street haranguing the crowds. Many have attractive young women in white gloves waving at the crowd. I thought our politics was screwed up and our politicians underestimated the public. Just how convincing a political argument do people find a woman in white gloves waving? Well, I guess it is a tradition.
On the main drag of Nara we stopped at a 100 Yen store. Everything in the store was 100 yen. I got two caps and a flashlight. The cap I have been wearing this trip is getting a bit threadbare.
The first stop is the Kofuku Temple. This was the main temple of local bigshots called the Fujiwara family. Fujiwara-no-Kamatari was born Natatomi-no-Kamatari but changed his name. He became politically powerful. In large part this was through intermarrying with people who were in government so that people ruing were close relatives. Finally the family ruled the government in the Heian period. That is 794 to 1185.
The pagoda I at the end of a park ruled over by semi-tame deer. The deer are not like those in Miya-jima. There they watch people and begged. Here they are more assertive. Vendor's sell 'Deer's Cooky' in 150 yen packages. The visitor may be tempted to try feeding a pack to the deer. This is a big mistake. The deer have the point of view that they have a right to the cookies and it is the humans standing in the way. I bought a pack and was immediately set upon by aggressive deer. My photovest was a similar color to the biscuits and it was chewed. Males with antlers butted me. None bit the hand that fed them, but then I was careful. We think of deer as quiet and timid, but separating biscuits from humans is what these animals do for a living, and there is no attempt to appear polite or standoffish. If you want to get the feel of what happens, see the play 'Suddenly Last Summer' by Tennessee Williams. It wasn't deer there, but otherwise it is essentially accurate. |
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