Bushie, bye bye

Bye bye Bushie

At the National Defense Academy in Yokosuka, Japan, I got a new private student. He skillfully negotiated a 33% reduction from the rate for professionals, such as director of cadet affairs and a campus librarian. The cadet suggested for his first lesson we walk around the campus, and he would answer my questions. He wanted to improve his English.

I had seen other native English teachers take entire classes on campus excursions. The English-challenged youths would pass my classroom, happily exiting the ponderous new four-floor language arts building. The cadets would walk in clusters of five and six. A retired U.S. Air Force pilot reported excellent results speaking English with his class outside: They talked about the pointy-nosed U.S. jet fighter parked on the well-manicured lawn near the original 50 year-old buildings.

An American civilian, I was curious about a sculpture. I had the impression of a fish or dolphin in an upright posture but could not read the plaque because it was in Japanese.

The private student explained that the sculpture was a samurai helmet. The detail halfway up was a feather symbolizing peace. A person could stand underneath the vast helmet.

He asked very seriously, “Do you know ‘bushi?’” I decided not to joke about George W. Bush. The student told me he had prepared presentation about Bushido, which is the code of the samurai, for an international cadets conference. A bushi is a samurai.

The code of the samurai is also the first chapter of the freshmen English textbook produced at the Academy for its students. I asked each cadet in my 30-member classes to talk for a few minutes, answering two questions:

"When did you first hear of Bushido? Who told you?"

Some of the 18 year-olds had heard of Bushido when they were so young they didn't remember. Some learned the term from the Hollywood movie "The Last Samurai." Most students learned the word from a teacher of kendo, a kind of Japanese fencing associated with warriors.

Samurai do not exist anymore except on movie sets in Japan. Bushi, bye bye.

12 year cohort

We learned each other’s ages on Coming-of-Age Day, sightseeing on that January holiday when the 20-year-olds of Japan share the same birth animal in a once-in-a-lifetime festival. The dozen creatures of the Asian zodiac identify cohort: birth animal targets age—-give or take 12 years. He peered at me in unspoken tally.

Barbed wire kimono

Barbed wire design
Girdles purple kimono
Cowboy or tattoo?

Wearing Kimono

I have never wanted to wear a kimono, although I have been living in Japan 12 years.

A friend invited me on a recent day. At a discount rental kimono price we could sightsee autumn colors in the ancient city of Kyoto in style. I was game, but relieved when cold rain changed our attire to jeans and sweaters and umbrellas. Later that day, the rain lifted and we saw a kimono’d young woman with white face makeup walking slowly.

“That could have been us!” I said.

“No,” my companion middle-aged friend corrected with a smile, “we would have been dressed differently.”

On the other hand, the patterns of the fabric intrigue me to stare in awe at kimono wearers.

In summer, informal lightweight kimono beckon brightly as if a color had been added to the rainbow. An insect motif displayed in a department store was too small for my medium adult size, never mind that it was for boys.

A late summer model in a small shop showed a red kimono with spider web. The autumn kimono depicted scorpion. Consultation with Japanese friends revealed that insect kimono for women are modern but not avant-garde.

It is not that I couldn’t wear a kimono. But I have never pictured myself in one, and the image does not click. The silhouette is different than my Western culture. And yet the body underneath is not substantially different in curves.

I had been hiking and bathed in onsen with a Japanese family and was delighted to be invited to the kimono practice session when my friends’ elder daughter turned 20. More precisely, it was the year she would turn 20. In January, Japan has a coming of age day national holiday. To-be 20 year-olds youth dress up, hear speeches, come of age.

Mother, paternal grandmother, and the 19-year-old go upstairs. The futon where parents sleep has been put away in the closet. The box containing the mother’s coming-of-age kimono is opened. The sleeves are like the blouses we used to call Angel Wing. Only an unmarried woman’s kimono has long hanging sleeves.

The lithe young woman stands on a paper rug and is wrapped by her elders. “Like a pig,” she laments, pulling her stomach in. “It is the same phrase in Japanese.”

Magazines of the year’s kimono fashions strew the room. Rentals are popular and stores abound. The new angle to make the heirloom kimono stylish is the tying of the obi, the long wide belt. It is crossed and pleated and pinned to form sculpted designs in the back. Mother and grandmother follow the directions in the magazine. They compare the result with the picture in the magazine. Unsatisfied, they unwind the obi, and start again. Hours pass.

There is no rush. The father loudly plays a recording of an opera downstairs. The younger sister returns from a shopping trip. She enters the room, seeing her elder sister standing arms out, the mother mouthing pins. She participates by ornamenting her pinioned sister, trying on earrings and hair pins. The siblings communicate intensely in their youthful pair. Women of accordian’d ages play out roles.

The next morning, getting into a car is the most difficult manoevre for the celebrant. Young men and women approach the municipal hall.

“How will I get carry a pass for the train and bus?” the 19-year-old asks.

“You will return by taxi,” her father says.

She gets out of the car and is gone.

“Do you have this in America?”

“No, we don’t,” I reply, recalling car-hopping for other 16-year-olds at Bob’s Big Boy in Los Angeles.

Can America be transformed by Obama?

Obama – America will transform?
オバマで　アメリカは　変化　できるか。

The magazine headline hangs in the subway train in Osaka, Japan on 6 December 2008.


Several other stories in this issue are also about Obama and about America.

A Japanese friend remarks, “If I had written the headline, it would have not been so passive. Perhaps the headline writer did not agree with the idea.”

However, she adds, AMERICA cannot be the subject of a passive sentence in Japanese. Grammar restricts passive voice to sentient creatures. In this sentence, America is the subject and the verb is transform. Obama is not the subject of the sentence.

Venus in Japanese

After two days and nights of rain, Sunday is cold, clear, crisp.  An afternoon walk, and at dusk the new moon and Venus visible from a promenade along a river in Kyoto.  I know the closely paired Jupiter will appear within 30 minutes, find a bench, and sit facing West.

An elderly gentleman of about 70 offers a greeting.  I point and say HOSHI, Japanese for star.  It has the same pronunciation as the word for HOPE.

He says a phrase,  I evince interest, he pulls off my glove and spells the word onto my palm. He writes the Chinese character and explains more than I can understand--something about bright.

I walk the hour home repeating the phrase.  I think it has something to do with the bright night sky of Japan, liking stars, welcome to Kyoto.  But in fact it means only Evening Star, Venus.

I ask a friend if there is a matching phrase for Morning Star, Venus.  She guesses, but confesses that she has never heard a phrase.

Green triangles, red cylinders: Japanese soup

At the 7-11 in Japan in winter, you can get hot soup.  You use tongs and a ladle to chose from among some 12 cages in hot broth.  If a clerk helps with the slippery exchange, you can name the shape--if you know it or can read. The descriptions are written for triangular grey green herb gelatin; weiner; egg; tofu.  

Or you can point.