For Japanese Speakers

家族と３ヶ月、そして寮にも半年ぐらいやってやったで！:2thumbsup:


ちなみに。。。関西の何処へんに居ったんっですか？ 何年ぐらい日本で生活していたの？

I stayed in　茨木市・枚方市・京都・大阪・神戸。　でも時間的には、締めて１年間ですら居なかったね。

 

Kansai Gaidai wa ore to onnaji ya nen. Hannen wa Moriguchi ni Homestay yatta, honde hannen wa Kansai Gaidai no gaijin house de itta.

Maaaa... nannen gurai ka? Goukei de 13 nen ka, 15nen gurai taizai yatta na

I was at Kansai Gaidai in 1980 I think. After Kansai Gaidai, I rented a small house with another chick who was also a student there, in Kadoma not too far from Moriguchi right on the Keihan Line---about 5 minutes walk from Oowada station. I lived there for maybe a year and a half. It was during this time that I married my first wife--she was a Japanese student at Kansai Gaidai.

We came back to the States--she got on an exchange program with Eastern New Mexico University. The next few years I finished up my schooling at the Denver Campus of the University of Colorado. During the summers I would go back to Japan. In about '85 I got my degree and moved back to Japan. Her parents had a good sized house in Kyobashi, not far from Osaka Castle. We had our own little separate room accross the garden. During that time I started working for Yamatane Securities, as the first foreigner to ever work as a broker at a Japanese Brokerage House (at least, the first one with a katakana name---there may have been Koreans, as even second, third or more generations of Koreans were not considered as citizens in Japan). I passed the Broker's license exam and everything.

After several years I became an analyst at Shearson Lehman---it had just become Shearon Lehman Hutton--and I moved to Tokyo. I lived in Minami Gyotoku--in a manison (for all those of you who have never been to Japan, a mansion is a condo). It was a 4LDK and one of the biggest I had ever seen. I had a view of Tokyo Bay, and could watch the fireworks of Tokyo Disneyland everynight a few miles away.

My first wife turned out to be a very controlling manipulative... She stayed in Osaka while I moved to Tokyo. I was trying to get out of that relationship as nicely as I could. But it was about that time that I met my 2nd wife---on the train. After a few years, and a horrible break up with my wife, through which she literally stole stock certificates, priceless art and antiques, and emptied out my bank accounts (with forged signatures) and so forth, I married my second wife, and tried to set up an investment company in Manila, Philippines---but that is another story.

From that point on we lived in both the Philippines and Japan. My wife had a nice house in Las Pinas, a suburb of Manila. She was an actress in Japan, doing mainly TV, but appeared in few movies. I did consculting jobs. We lived in various parts of Tokyo at that time. In Minato---on the other side of the highway from Roppongi---on the same street with all the Roppongi clubs that went to Akasaka and all the Akasaka clubs. It was the opposite side of Roppongi from Akasaka and the Hotel New Otani, and so forth. We were on the side with the embassies.

Then we lived outside of Shinjuku--in a gaijin house that was converted from an old geisha house. We were in the heart of what, a 100 years earlier, was a pleasure district. We lived for a short while in Meguro---in a little neighborhood tucked away, with few entrances (it was next to Meguro tunnel, and was blocked on numerous sides---so it was popular place for actors and actresses to live and not be bothered. There was another place somewhere in that area of Tokyo too---maybe near Shinjuku----I forget.

Anyway---I returned back to the States in about '94 or '95.

 

Here is some that you can take in an erotic sense, or a romantic one---though Valentine's Day has already passed. These are from November 2006:

Hadake aijin
robi akashi
hanei shi

Naked lover
reflecting
the red flame of the fire pit.

As you may recall from my earlier post---an irori is the fire pit that is in the center of old Japanese farm houses. A Ro is smaller and was just used for heating up water. The Ro is not necessarily a 'fire pit' but could be a hibachi-like pot for heating up water with charcoal and what not. It is still used today in tea ceremony. Robi is the flame and refers usually to the ro, but I think it can also imply the irori, but there is also the term ro akari which seems to be more appropriate for the larger irori. Ro is the same character in both terms. Akashi comes from aka---red---so it implies a glowing red.

Aijin no mune
Roakari ni
Arawareru

Lover's chest
appears
in the glow of the firepit

Arawareru means to appear or to come into view. In this case, the lover could be either sex, depending on who the first person is. But to more specific, I could say:

Aijin no chichi
roakari ni
arawareru

The lover's breasts
in the light of the firepit
come into view


Chi also means milk, so chichi is very clearly, not a male's breast. On the other hand, one might complain that this term for a 'boob' is a little too, how would I say---Motherly? But the biological goal of sex is motherhood. In any event, chichi could be used sexually as well.


Fuyugasumi kana
koya no mado
robi akashi

Ah. The winter mist!
the window of the small shack
glows red from the ro


Yuki no machi
yo no shizumari ni
tera no kane

The snowy village
in the quiet of the night
a temple bell.

That last one might be too descriptive for the taste of a Japanese haiku expert. But it floods my senses with memories and feelings---staying in small villages in the Japanese countryside. One example is from a time I went to the small island of Miyajima just outside of Hiroshima. That is famous for the torii gate that stands out in the sea in front of Miyakojima jinja (Miyakojima Shrine)---if I recall the name correctly. This was made famous from a cover of National Geographic years ago. It was around New Years, and small towns have a bad habit of closing up fast. A friend of mine and I were trying to find a restaurant, but the cold streets were empty, and the shops had closed their shuttters. As dusk fell we walked the empty streets, still snowy in places. We were hungry, but there was something very calming and special about those streets and the old wooden buildings and houses with their tiled roofs, in between pine trees and shrines. It was a small island and was therefore pretty much a mountain jutting out of the Bay. We knew everyone was inside these wooden dwellings, warm and relaxed---visiting with family (it was New Years after all). I was perfectly content to walk up and down that village in silence, and of course, sooner or later, there was the metallic, 'gonnnnnnnnnng' of the temple bell.

Eventually we did find a small convenience store. As night fell and it got dark we cooked some gyoza (dumplings) and a few other things in the kitchen of the hostel we stayed at. We were the only ones there as I recall. After eating, I just had to go back out into the cold and wander the streets some more. That was such a special place...

Yama fukashi
mori ni kakururu
fuyu no tsuki

deep in the mountain(s)
it tries to hide in the forest
the winter moon

 

A person's spirit in Japan is sometimes seen as a small ball of flame floating around. A ghost could appear in this way, or it could be a floating figure without feet, or a full figured apparition, just like anywhere else. There is always the famous ghost story that seems to be popular in many countries of a ricksha driver, or a taxi driver picking up a beautiful woman with a depressed demeanor, who then wants to be driven to an address near a graveyard. As they pass the graveyard she disappears.

But the little glowing flame floating around is one of the motifs, and it is based on something people actually see: the kitsunebi (fox flame) or onibi (monster flame) are two of the names of this phenomena. In haiku it is a winter seasonal word. I don't know if they are more common in the winter or that it is because winter is a natural association with death, in terms of seasons. I suppose we could relate this to glowing swamp gas perhaps? One theory of its origin, according to a Japanese book I have these glowing floating apparitions may be the result of decomposing horse bones or other animal bones, that were gnawed on by a fox. (I'm not sure why a fox has a causal effect, if any).

But they are spooky nonetheless. I am not sure if we have an english word for these---maybe someone could tell me.

yo no mori fukashi
kumo ni tsuki
kitsunebi ya

Deep in the night forest
the moon in the clouds
ah! spirit fire!


kitsunebi ya
machigai michi ni
furu bonchi

The spirit fire!
on a wrong road
an old graveyard


These are all from 2006. Here is another one

yoru no mori
mizu not oto
Mimitzuku naki ya

The night time forest
sound of water
a horned owl cries!


The Japanese have a custom similar to the voodoo doll. You had to be pretty upset with someone to do this---because it was dangerous. Perhaps a common reason this would happen would be a broken heart---it seems that women are more likely to resort to black magic than men---though, obviously men could get angry enough to do such things too.

This is called a noroi ningyou---noroi is a curse and ningyou is a doll. You generally needed something from the person, as I recall, it was usually hair, but perhaps fingernail clippings or something like that could be used. You dressed like a ghost---then at midnight, dressed as a ghost or the dead---with a triangle-shaped cloth worn over your forehead like a crown, you would make the doll out of straw and whatever you had off the body of your victim, putting all your evil intention of pain and harm into it. Then you would take off deep into a forest where no one would find it, and nail the doll onto a tree--typically one nail through the heart.

This is from this year:

yomori no tsuki ni
furu noroi
ningyou ya

The moonlit night forest
Ah!
an old curse-doll!

The moon by itself was a fall word.

 

Ah----I just thought of it---there is English words for kitsunebi----will-o'-the-wisp and St. Elmo's fire.

 

Denver had its first actual heavy snow of the season last night, all day, and into the early evening. I was up much of the night writing, and took frequent breaks to look out the window. Today I did the same---the Japanese call that yukimi---snow watching---which is the same concept (different season) as hanami (cherry blossum viewing). It was blizzard conditions to the east of us.

It was a good day to stay inside, which I did for the most part. I did come up with a few haiku---not that good but---the first one was from the early am, before sunrise when I went to bed:

futon hairi
ware eda no oto
ohyuki ya

Climbing in the futon
the sound of a branch breaking
the big snow storm!

Fortunately that did not happen---but it is certainly a problem during some big snows, and the last thing you want to hear when climbing into bed.

Waga yamaya
kotatsu ni cha
mado ni ohyuki

My mountain home
tea in the kotatsu
blizzard out the window

For anyone who has never been to Japan in the winter you are missing out on the joy that is the kotatsu. Japanese houses are generally built for the hot humid summers. They are not that warm in the winter. The newer condos may be a different story, but the houses are just not that warm. INstead of warming the whole house, families will just warm up the room or rooms they are using. When I lived in Japan, a lot of people still used kerosene stoves to warm these rooms which meant that every so often they would need to open up the shoji, and open up windows and doors to the outside to let fresh air in and prevent too much build up of toxic gases from the stove. You didn't want to do it--but you had to---and the nice warm room was quickly filled with fresh, but very cold, air.

The kotatsu is a table that has a heater under the table top connected to a frame that connects the legs. A heavy futon blanket fits over this frame with the table top on top of the blanket. (In the olden days, the table was simply put over a cut out space in the floor and a charcoal stove was placed in that). Sitting under the warm kotatsu is a great winter past time in Japan. Around New Years, families will sit around it, legs, feet, and often hands in the nice warmth under the blanket---playing games, watching tv, eating mikan (mandarin oranges), drinking coffee and green tea. It is a very cozy place for lovers to enjoy... It is a feeling of warmth all around.

yuki yande
koi koi to
karasu ga yonde

The snow stopped
Come! Come!
the crow calls

We had a smaller storm on the 9th. Early in the morning I looked out my window. The sun was already over the horizon bathing the earth with its morning light, the snow from overnight had ended. There was a flock of crows in the trees accross the street, calling out to each other. The sound of crows always reminds me of Japan.

matsu ni tsuki to
washi shika kikan
washi naki

No one heard it
but the pine and the moon and myself,
the eagle's call

Washi, eagle--is a winter word. Washi is also a lower class way of saying I (watakushi), It is common in country dialects. Then there is 'Wai'----so for all you students of Japanese who want to be rebels in the class room---stop using watakushi, or watashi---just replace it with washi, or wai. Washi was typical in the prewar Osaka dialect--atleast among the labor and peasant classes. Wai, as I understand was used more in the dialect that was spoken closer to the mountains on the Eastern side of Osaka. You can still hear it in the Kisaichi area (or atleast you could back in the 80's)---just hang out in some of the dirtier bars in Kisaichi late at night and listen to the drunks. I can't think of the name of the dialect off hand, but it was considered the crudest, worst dialect, composed of the worst bastardization of grammar, and creating the most profane and rude subculture of all of Japan.

If your teacher complains just say----Ee yanke! Wai wa na... Ee nihongo o narateiru sakai ya na... (ii desu yo! Watakushi wa neee... Ii nihongo o narateiru desu kara ne) (It's ok! For me... I'm learning some good Japanese). Be sure and really roll your r's, and make your voice low, and adding a texture of drunken speech helps a lot too. (If your teacher is from Tokyo, she'll probably treat you with kid's gloves after that. Though she may try to dig into your background to see if you have yakuza (mafia) connections, or perhaps bosouzoku (the motorcycle gangs). If you're female, unfortunately it would be funny and strange to say such things---just stick with atashi.

I composed this one a year ago--for a piece of artwork a friend of mine had created:

Ohyuki ya
mada tatsu ka
yama no oi matsu

The heavy snow storm!
Does it still stand?
the old pine on the mountain

This haiku is one of strength and perseverence. If you have ever been up above timberline, you are probably well aware of the old pine trees that grow out of the rocks and crags right around timberline. They survive through extreme conditions and are almost always twisted and bent by the severe winds that blow across the mountain peaks that high.

asa no koi ya
yuki no tama
esa ni machigae

The morning carp!
mistakes a snowflake
for fish food

When I was married to my Japanese wife, her father kept carp in the garden. The carp pond was between the main house and our room. You could always hear them gulping at the surface of the pond---anything that fell in there they immediately assumed to be food.

 

There is a local photographer whose photos from the mountains of Colorado were made into some very beautiful cards sold here. There is one of a snowy river winding through a mountain meadow, there are some pine trees near the shore, some of them fairly scraggly. Mountains rise up into the mist in the background. The sky is a typical misty overcast winter sky you often see in the mountains. It seems like a place I have been, in fact I'd almost place it somewhere in Coal Creek Canyon. I took the photo off the card, and framed it with a haiku written in Japanese below it. (I actually did this with a number of these cards--some are winter, some fall, some summer--but this was the first one I saw and immdediately knew I had the perfect haiku for it). This one hangs in my basement.

The haiku is one I composed back in about '97 or '98. We were staying in my parent's condo up in Breckenridge Colorado. It was October, but they had already gotten some good snow that year. The condo---is actually a two-story townhouse, and was a great place to escape the city for a while. There was a cozy fireplace, a hot tub on the porch--everything you needed. The forecast called for more snow that afternoon, and I decided to go out and walk around a bit. Heavy snowclouds hung over the small ski town obscuring the peaks. As I walked, I came across a good sized crow sitting atop a pine tree, looking around, and calling out. The haiku immediately came to me:

kangarasu demo
matsu ka
omoi yukigumo

Even the cold crow
awaits
heavy snow clouds

After writing the haiku with some fancy calligraphy below that photo (I cheated---I have studied Japanese calligraphy with a brush in Japan, but I am not good by any means, so I carefully drew it in pencil first and then went over it with a black felt pen) and framing it, I realized that it just happened to be near my Aunt's birthday. So I put the haiku in another card with the same photo, and then wrote about how I came accross it, and then a bit about the inevitability of nature---how both myself and the already cold crow knew the storm was coming, but there was nothing to stop it, all we could do was to gaman suru--grin and bear it. Very typical Japanese concept

I was so pleased with myself that I quickly ran down to the Post Office and popped it in the mail. Only on the way back home did I realize, that I had just sent this to my aunt who was very educated, had travelled around the world, enjoyed world cultures like myself, and had also spent some significant time in the Orient--she was about to have a birthday in her early 70's. Yes----if anyone, my beloved aunt, one of the few in the family who I could walk through an art museum with carrying on in deep conversations about the meaning of the art we were experiencing, she would pick up on some of the other meanings implied by the haiku. Meanings that I didn't think to explore before sending it to her----meanings such as the inevitability of death, and the fact that we know it is coming, but there is little we can do. A fall haiku could be one refering to one's elderly age---but winter-----that is really old! ...and it wasn't even a joyous winter haiku at that...

I quickly sent off another card, with a happy spring haiku---and an explanation that I realized too late some of the other implications of the haiku...

 

"But this is too blatant perhaps? Early in the morning, in light of himehajime, already implies January First. This is the most important and special day of the year in Japan. It is a time for family, relaxing, eating good food... But a bath is also very important--and for the poor who cannot afford their own bath, the bath house must stay open. So even on this special sacred day, this sacred act is performed by the vulgar. One must wonder, if that particular copulation is special for either participant. Perhaps through the day and weeks, she will provide the himehajime to many lonely men. But what about her own family? Her own ability to share this once a year moment with a lover, who makes her whole? And was that first customer that was her himehajime, even worthy of such an honor? Alas, she most likely had no choice in the matter-----reflecting that typical Japanese fatalism that defines the plot of so many Japanese stories..."


-Thanks for teaching. Didn't know that about the japanese people before. :daisy:

So even those thoughts, minding about the life of a prostitute and how she got forced into that situation, are outstanding.
We should probably put up a conversation about it. (I guess that the results will be changeable!) Greets and love.

 

Thank you Rebimond----yes there is so much tragedy and pathos involved in that subject, and yet on the other hand there is passion and the fulfillment of basic drives---it is no joke when we refer to it as the oldest profession in the world----even female Chimpanzees offer sexual favors in exchange for food when a male comes back with it.

It is very complex---on the one hand we as a culture fight it as criminal, on the other we demand it (though not as obviously as less than a hundred years ago, but if there was no demand for it, it wouldn't be a problem woulld it), and no where do we really take the feelings of the girls into consideration---they are simply criminal bad girls. But many of them endure a tragic life we can only imagine, and probably worse...

 

In the mountains Northeast of Kyoto there is a small mountain temple called Amida-ji (Amida Temple). It is a temple to the very popular and benevolent Amida Buddha. To get to it you hike up a narrow trail through bamboo groves and forests of thick foliage till you reach some old stone stairs, crumbling, and largely moss covered. When I visited one afternoon there were no priests or anyone around, and being a small mountain temple, I am fairly certain that for the most part it is probably empty. Inside the temple was a long banner, maybe two on both sides of the altar of the buddha---I forget. But what I do remember is that a small breeze would blow the banner which would ring a small bell hanging off the bottom of the banner. I just sat and listened to the bell. It was incredibly peaceful.

For some reason I was fascinated with the thought that, after I leave, that bell will continue to ring---even with no one around to hear, it will ring. Through hot and cold weather, sometimes witnessed by a visitor but the rest of the time, with no one to hear, yet it will always ring, with a slight breeze, or a heavy wind at an approaching storm...

I have written several haiku on that experience. The first one, written in December 1999, I titled, Kyoto no Amidaji (Koto's Amida Temple)----yes you can add titles to haiku too:

Kyoto no Amidaji

rin rin to
naru suzu ni
furi furi to yuki

Ting... ting... sounds the bell
and the snow
falling... falling...

rin rin to
suzu naru amidaji
yuki furi

Ting... ting...
sounds the bell of Amidaji
the snow fall


Yuki furi ya
Amidaji ni doko ka
suzu nari

The snow falls!
and somewhere in Amida-ji
a small bell sounds

Speaking of which, here is another Chinese poem---The Temple Bell-----by Yuan Mei (1716 - 1798):

Ancient Temple, monks all gone
the Buddha's image fallen

The single bell
hangs high in evening's glow

Sad, so full of music...
Ah, just one little tap!
But no one dares.

There is something very peaceful about these temples and their bells--especially for me---those ones that are remote and empty, or abandoned and falling apart. Left to the elements these bells still stand, and at some point, probably through the forces of nature, ring again...

While on the subject of Chinese poems---I should mention my favorite, which ties into the picture I use as a signature on this forum. A few have recognized it as a title for one of Alan Watt's books---he likes the poem too. It is titled Searching for the Hermit, by Chia Tao (779-843):

Beneath the pines I asked the boy.
The master's gone in search of herbs...
He's up in the mountains
Cloud hidden,
whereabouts unknown.

The Chinese I translate into herbs, is literally medicine---he went to gather medicine.

There was another spiritual moment that stuck with me from Kyoto (well there are numerous ones really)---from what is probably one of the most spiritual places I know---Fushimi Inari Taisha---the Great Fushimi Inari Shrine. This shrine covers the whole side of a whole mountain all the way up and over the peak. It is a fox shrine to the goddess of abundance and fertility. The fox is actually her emissary, and spirit animal if you will (look back at the previous posts in this thread I've done on the fox to learn more about this fascinating trickster). There are large shrines, small shrines, and graveyards, and little shops that sell odd trinkets and even books on how to make good-luck charms and curses--and all of these are connected by paths that are lined by torii gates posted one aganst the other. Google images has an abundance of photos, I'm sure.

As you walk up the trails you pass through forests where you hear animal sounds, and there are always crows around calling out. The whole place has a very special feel. I've been there mornings, afternoons, nights---it is really a special place. I have one favorite little corner of the shrine---it is towards the back and on a side trail that takes you down to a little gulley. A small waterfall falls into it, and the water runs off as a stream. In the side of the gulley a small altar has been carved out, and inside is a lone statue of a goddess---maybe Inari herself, or maybe just the Yamahime (Mountain Goddess), I don't know. The first time I found that I was with a good friend from New York. It was a late afternoon in the fall. There was a burning candle placed in front of it, and another candle on the ground. We were so amazed by the sacred feeling of this little spot that we lit the other candle, and silently watched as they both burned down and quietly went out. We had no idea how late it had gotten--night had already fallen, and it was quite dark. We both felt something special had happened, but couldn't quite say what---we mostly walked back in silence---but feeling very good about our lives, and the world, and life...

In January 2000 I wrote a haiku about it I titled, Gushen---Gushen is Chinese and means Spirit of the Valley. It is a female spirit and is mentioned in Lao Tzu's, Tao Te Ching (Chapter 6):

Gushen

Akiyoru
rousoku kiete
kawa oto kiezu


Gushen (The Valley Spirit)

A Fall night
the candle dies out
but the sound of the river doesn't

 

Here is Chapter 6 of the Tao Te Ching:

The spirit of the valley does not die,
and is called mysterious female.
The door of the mysterious female
is called the root of heaven and earth.
It lingers in wisps;
use it without haste.

I have a book of lectures on each chapter of the Tao Te Ching, by the Taoist, Man-Jan Cheng. Using the I-Ching, he says that this chapter is about meditation, and breath—ch’i. He reasons that a valley is filled with ch’i---and the ch’i moves in and out of the door—the root of heaven and earth, which is much like the nose and mouth, and to use without haste then is a meditative breathing technique.

I prefer a more literal meaning to this, which he does allude to. The feminine is always associated with the gate, the door, the hollow, the empty space. This of course, as the feminine, refers to the yoni. The gate or door is, to say it more blatantly, the vulva, the hollow empty space is the womb. The Tao Te Ching elsewhere points out that it is the empty space that makes such things powerful and useful. A mountain valley is filled with empty space---and yes, the mysterious chi fills that empty space.

Taoism is a very old belief system handed down from an old Ural-Altaic shamanistic spirituality. A very important aspect of these old beliefs, that every religion has inherited from it, is the portal—the doorway to the divine. It is through this doorway that the shaman passes on his spirit journey into the other world, the spirit world. It is the World Cave, the World Tree, the World Mountain—the celestial axis, or axis mundi. In modern religion it is the cross, the stupa, the Kalamakara, the torii gate---it has many forms. But it is always the portal that connects this world to the next.

In doing research for my first book, I realized that this axis mundi is always hollow---therefore physically, in practicality for us, it is two-fold: the womb and the grave. The blood sacrifice that accompanied the ancient hunts (going back to the paleolithic), and the ancient burial of family and friends (who were buried in the fetal position with lots of red) is only half the story then, the blood of the menses being the other half. Hence the Old Testament God, for example, could only be approached through the blood sacrifice…

The door of the mysterious female is called the root of heaven and earth—is clearly referring to the axis mundi---the archetype of the World Tree/World Cave/World Mountain. The valley—the vast empty space of nothingness situated between two mountain ridges—is another doorway to that other world.

The existentialist, Martin Heidegger, said that it is within the nothingness that we find being. On one level, he was speaking of the anxiety over ‘nothingness’ that makes up the existential crisis. We cannot say, in such a crisis, what it is that makes us feel ill at ease. We can get no hold on things, and, “Anxiety reveals the nothing.” But he also was speaking of a more profound level of nothingness.

Heidegger had his own connection to the old shamanistic beliefs. He came from a peasant farming family and was therefore familiar with some of the old Germanic folk (pagan) traditions. But as a philosopher, he lived in the Cartesian Post-Kantian world in which Nietzsche declared, ‘God is dead.” Science was the new truth and he could see no alternative. He lamented man’s predicament, and tried to find a path back to that place where maybe the “…Gods can return.” But in the end, the most concrete he could offer was that the finality of existence—the nothingness of death—gave meaning to being.

But a valley is more than nothingness—there is the contours of the valley walls, there can be cliffs and rock faces, trees, stones, all kinds of flora; and at the very bottom is almost always a river, stream, or at least a river bed; and of course there is lots of air—ch’i. Ch’i is more than just air, or breath—it is essence, spirit, the invisible ether that gives life as we draw it in and push it out. Likewise modern science tells us that there is no absolute emptiness—no nothingness—in our universe. Instead there is everywhere the zero-point field, a sea of electromagnetic waves, or light energy, vibrating at the base energy rate of the universe. It is because of this field that particles can seem to appear and disappear from nothingness.

Gushen—the spirit of the valley—the mysterious female—a profound emptiness filled with life—it lingers within wisps—and yet just beyond it is the other world.

 

The Japanese, without knowing the experience I wrote this haiku for would have a completely different immediate take on it---another fall night event that is traditional in parts of Japan. (I say immediate, because haiku should be mulled over—and can have different subjective experiences come out of it, different levels of understanding, different aesthetic images).

First of all they would not get the title---in Japanese it reads tanigami (Valley God), though it would have furigana—a little phonetic alphabet written next to the Kanji so they would see that it actually reads, gushen, and they would immediately know that it is Chinese.

But there is no Taoism in Japan. Taoism has heavy influence through Buddhism, but there are no Taoist temples, or monks or priests and the Tao Te Ching is not on everyone’s Too Read list. They don’t need it. They have their own spirituality handed down from an ancestral Ural-Altaic shamanism: Shintoism. In fact Shintoism means Way of the Gods, and the ~to is the same character as Tao. In its own way it has a lot of similarities to Taoism.

But the haiku itself speaks to another fall-night tradition, which would come to mind of most Japanese. It comes at the end of O-bon. O-bon happens in the fall, and is most obviously celebrated by festivals all over Japan. Traditionally the fields have been harvested and everyone was celebrating---so there is the thanksgiving aspect to O-bon. Communities come together in community dance to the traditional music of the taiko drums, cymbals and some of the wind instruments common to Shinto. There is a lot of drinking and eating, playing games... A festival is like a county fair in the US.

But O-bon is also a time when the spirits of the dead come back to visit the family. It is a good time, if just after the harvests, to see how well their families are doing. One friend of mine told me that after the death of his grandfather, for years his dad would sprinkle ash in the genkan (the entry way of the house where you take off and leave your shoes) the night before the O-bon season begins just as everyone was going to bed. More than once they woke up to see footprints leading into the house from the door.

In some parts of Japan, at the end of the O-bon season, they go to a river to send off their ancestors. The Japanese, you see, have their own concept of the River Styx, which is a very old axis mundi motif. From Africa, clear around the world to South America you have traditions of rivers carrying one to the land of the dead. In the case of the Japanese, they put a lit candle in a boat folded out of paper, and, saying goodbye to their beloved ancestors, set it adrift and watch it float down the river---their deceased loved ones returning to the land of the dead.

The verb kieru (as in rosouku kiete), can mean to go out, as in the candle goes out, or to disappear. So the haiku could refer to the candle going out, or simply disappearing down the river into the distance.

But the river goes on without stop—forever flowing. Your grandparents said goodbye to their ancestors. Today you will be saying goodbye to your ancestors. But one day, on a fall night, just like tonight, your ancestors will be saying goodbye to you, as you too float downstream…

Therefore one could read it as:

A fall night
The candle disappears
the sound of the river doesn't

 

yama michi no tsuki
usukiete
fuyugasumi

The moon over the mountain road
gradually fades away
winter mist

michi could be road, or path, or trail. usukiete, is again kieru to disappear. Usu comes from the adjective to be thin.


karasu no
koe ga sasou
kasumi no yama ya

The crows voice
beckons
misty mountain!


Hito nashi michi
sumikusai
fuyu yo no machi

The empty streets
smell of charcoal
winter night in the village

In the winter--especially in the mountain and countryside villages you can still smell the charcoal that is used to heat the stoves and fireplaces. This is not the smell of charcoal briquets that we use for barbequing. It is real charcoal, and has a good smell to it.

 

Here is another haiku, a little like the Chinese poem I shared a few posts back. This is from Oct 2008:

fuyu no yama
kaze ni fukareru
tera no kane

The wintery mountain
blown by the wind
temple bell.


And one from November 2006

yuki no machi
yo no shizumari ni
tera no kane


Snowy village
in the silence of the night
a temple bell


This one from November, 2002 relates to my favorite Chinese poem about being cloud hidden (also a few posts back):

kumo no naka
yama no iori ni
hatsu yuki ya

Within the clouds
in the mountain hermitage.
The first snow!


Here is one from December, 1999:

kuro yane ni
Omoi yuki gumo
hi no ban ya

Black roofs and
heavy snow clouds.
The fire lookouts!

In Japan in the winter, the men of the local community take turns going out into the cold night and walking as a small group watching for fires, and warning the people of the neighborhood to be careful with their stoves and candles and all. Fire is a big danger in Japan, especially in the winter. Probably at least once a week, if not more, you'll hear of a tragic death in a fire. There are a lot of wooden houses, and when a fire starts, they burn quickly. The fire lookouts (or whatever you want to call them), walk around the neighborhood alerting people with two sticks that are banged together making a large 'tok' sound. This is followed by a call to be careful---goyou---but it is called out in a fairly slow rythm in a chant-like, eery sounding voice by the whole group in unison: (tok!) "goyouuuuuuu..." (tok!) "goyouuuuuuu..." (tok!) "goyouuuuuuu..."

It especially sounds eery if you don't know what they are saying or why. In years past they would stay out till late into the night, and watched for burglars and other night problems. They are probably a cry back to ancient times when the little farming villages needed lookouts for wild animals and enemies come to steal grain. Today they don't stay out too late, and mainly do this in the winter.

Japanese roofs are all tiled in beautiful black tiles. You can imagine the contrast between those and heavy snow clouds in the winter.

 

It is 6:30 in the morning. Denver is supposed to get 9 - 15 inches of snow today. My yard is already covered in white, and beautiful big flakes are falling. The problem is this storm was not supposed to start for several hours yet according to the forecast last night.

shizuku oto
asa no kouhii
ohyuki ya

dripping sound
the morning coffee
Big snow storm!

On a cold winter morning, with heavy snow falling outside, is there anything warmer than a hot cup of freshly brewed coffee? ...oh, actually there is:

soto o mite
futon ni modoshi
ohyuki ya

A look outside
returning to the futon
Big snowstorm!

 

There are numerous words that cannot be translated directly into English. Undeniably my favorite word is yugen, or more correctly yuugen, though most people that write about it in english write, yugen.

The book, They Have a Word For It, defines it as, "An awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words." They quote Alan Watts by explaining it as, "To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon a shore and gaze after a boat that disappears beyond distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds."

I don't know if that is actually Alan Watts' orginal words---he may have been quoting someone else, as those are fairly typical descriptions of the feeling of yugen.

The Chinese characters for Yugen are Yuu (a mountain with the radical for thread on each side of the center line), meaning: 1.) to confine to a room, 2.) faint, dim, indistinct, hazy, weak (this is the same yuu used for yuurei (spirit, ghost, apparition) and yuukai (land of the dead); and gen (a thread with a lid radical over it--which is actually its own radical), meaning dark, mysterious. I think it is interesting that thread is used in both characters----hinting towards the threads of reality that weave the physical universe into being. Yugen is that feeling you get when you sense that sense of almost being able to touch that profound reality that underlies existence.

It is an extension of the feeling of aware---another Japanese word that is not directly translatable. The same book translates aware as, " the feelings engendered by ephemeral beauty. They provide the example of experiencing the beauty of a cherry blossom slowly falling to the ground---a very Japanese experience because the cherry blossoms only once a year, and it is a beaty they look forward to, but it only lasts a short time---as the blossoms fall to the ground---a final expression of their beauty, it comes with the knowledge that such beauty is gone for this year---it is therefore a bittersweet beauty as it refers to the temporal nature of life---the mortality we are all subject too. Life is only fleeting, but in those fleeting moments there is a beauty that exists simply because it is fleeting. (And that is what Heidegger meant when he claimed that we find the significance of being in its finality).

Yugen is, of course, much more profound than aware. As temporal as aware is, yugen implies that beyond this temporal existence there is something more.

One experience I found to be Yugen one time---was sitting and watching a gold fish---in a gold fish bowl---the gentle ways that it moves its fins, even when the fish does not move. It is a gentle, silent wave of moevment.

Here is a haiku by the Classic haiku poet, Issa:

Yuzen to shite
yama o miru
kawazu kana

Composedly he sits
contemplating the mountains--
the worthy frog!

That translation is by Lewis Mackenzie---who takes some liberty with it---but justifiably so.

 

It was around this time---two years ago---March 2011, that Japan experienced the most powerful earthquake ever recorded (at least in modern times). It moved the Japanese main Island, Honshu, Westward so many centimeters and was followed by a horrific tsunami. I have TVJapan as part of my satellite package, and so I got to see first hand a lot of the aftershocks and so forth---as best NHK could broadcast it--as I recall there was a time when even the broadcasts were knocked out---except for the emergency broadcast system.

My sister-in-law happened to be in Tokyo at the time. I mentioned to her before she left, a few days earlier, that there had been an unusual amount of earthquakes recently, "...and I wouldn't want to go to Japan right now." Tokyo is still waiting for that next Great Kanto Earthquake. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to come home was that I experienced a large earthquake--over 7---in the Philippines, and I decided that I didn't want to wait around for a large Tokyo earthquake that even back in the 1990's was well overdue. Who knows? Maybe this 2011 earthquake released a lot of the stress under the Tokyo plates----but no one really knows...

Anyway---it scared her so much she wanted to leave Japan as soon as possible. It was several weeks before she could get a flight out. She said that even the water in the hotel toilet splashed all over the floor it was so bad.

If you ever have a chance to watch the movie, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, I really recomend it. They talk about not only the pain and horror of the tsunami, but also the coming of spring, and how everyone was looking forward to viewing the cherry blossoms (hanami--literally flower viewing). But after this terrible disaster, the cherry blossoms took on a whole new meaning, of rebirth, renewal, and growth. But the Cherry blossom only lasts a short time, so it is also a deep symbol of the fleeting, temporal nature of life.

On March 16th, 2011, moved by the terrible events, I composed several haiku:

Haru no asa
tsunami ato
mada shitai ari

Spring morning
but after the tsunami
Still there are bodies.

Here is another one with a title:

Jishin

haru no sendai
gareki ni wa
kotae nashi


Earthquake

Spring in Sendai
but in the rubble
there comes no answer.


However, even as they searched for survivors---March in Northern Japan is still cold----it snowed hampering their efforts

gareki ga
shiroku naru ya
machi no haru yuki

Ah! The rubble
turned white!
spring snow in the village

See my earlier post on the significance of the color white.

 

Thank you Meagain!

Yes---I love those temple bells-----people who have never heard a buddhist temple bell echo through the mountains, or accross the fields----don't know what they are missing...