Why do I write? --- 2

Yoshida Kenko, "Essays in Idleness":
"Leisurely I face my inkstone all day long, and without any particular object jot down the odds and ends that pass through my mind, with a curious feeling that I am not sane."
"What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head."

Personal.....

I find the phrases like:  personal knowledge, personal branding, personal finance.....  Then can there be phrases like:  personal economy, personal religion, personal culture, personal education.....?

Why do I write?

Immanuel Kant:  "Man gewinnt dadurch schon sehr viel, wenn man eine Menge von Untersuchungen unter die Formel einer einzigen Aufgabe bringen kann. Denn dadurch erleichtert man sich nicht allein selbst sein eigenes Geschält, indem man es sich genau bestimmt, sondern auch jedem anderen, der es prüfen will, das Urteil, ob wir unserem Vorhaben ein Genüge getan haben oder nicht."

Confucianism and East Asian Economics

   Before Asian financial crisis in 1997 some had made arguement over the Confucianism and the fast-developing East Asian Economies, while others did not like to take the view point, mentioning the long-depressed East Asian ancesters under the Confucianism feudalism.  Basically, orthodox feudalism Confucians belonged to the Zhuzi school, while, for example, M. Ando, who enjoyed his big influence on large number of Japanese businessmen after World War II, seems having put his feet on the Yangming one.  Max Weber connected the European Capitalism not largely to the Christianity but specifically to the Protestanism.  Both sides should have, at least, studied East Asian culture more deeply.

China Will Not Break Up...?

   I found the article "The ostrich's view of the world --- One: China will not break up" (The Economist, December 17th, 1998) very timely and a kind of exciting.  I, however, would like to add two more points on their view.
   They say, "93% of the population are Han Chinese," or "China is ethnically quite homogenous."  But are Han Chinese themselves are so homogenous?  From the mathematical linguistics point of view, the difference between Mandarine and Kantonese (both Chinese "dialects") is much wider than that between French and Italian (both Romance languages).  The Chinese language has 7 such big "dialects", and the difference among them is so wide that you can find superimposed dialogue on TV programs in China when a person speaks a "dialect" other than Mandarine.  We should not be surprised even if Han Chinese themselves were to be divided into more than 7, to say nothing of the independence of their "friendly" ethnic minorities.
   They also mention "pan-Chinese nationalism."  China certainly has her long history and culture including her unique writing system which is used by some other East Asian ethnic groups including Japanese people.  A third of Chinese millenia, however, have seen her people ruled by divided dynasties.  Even during united empire periods, significantly many centuries had substantially divided sovereign kingdoms. You can safely say that, in China, splittism is as strong as imperialistic "pan-Chinese nationalism."  When will her next split millenium begin?

Reading: "When Cultures Collide"

Richard D. Lewis,   "When Cultures Collide", 1996, London, Nicholas Brealey Publishing
"We think our minds are free, but, like captured American pilots in Vietnam and North Korea, we have been thoroughly brainwashed.  Collective programming in our culture, begun in the cradle and reinforced in kindergarden, school and workplace, convinces us that we are normal, others eccentric."(p.23) 

Reading: "Culture and Communication"

Carol Rinnert,  'Culturally Influence Communication Patterns: Overview, Implications and Applications', "Culture and Communication", 1995/5, Kyoto
"As fascinating as cross-cultural differences may be, one of the most rewarding aspects of studying them is often the discovery that there are deeper similarities underlying the differences."(p.14)

Barbara Fujiwara,  'Giving Cultural Concept Depth and Vitality",  "Culture and Communication", 1995/5, Kyoto
"In addition to preparing students for future cross-curtural encounters, the approach aims to provide them with a framework in which they can reexamine provious cross-cultural experiences and gain new perspectives on them."(p.20) 

Reading: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"

Stephen R. Covey,  "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", 1990, New York
"If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy."(p.43)"The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we want to go.  But it is also gravity pull that keeps our world together,..."(p.47) 

Reading: "Selections from Prison Notebooks"

Antonio Gramsci, "Selections from Prison Notebooks", Lawrence and Wishart, 1971, London
"Every sosial group, ..., creates together itself, ..., one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function ...."(p.5)
"the entrepreneur himself ... must be an organaiser of the "confidence" ...."(p.5)
"the "organic" intellectuals which every new class creates alongside itself and elaborates in the course of its development, are for the most part "specialisations" of partial aspects of the primitive activity of the new social type which the new class has brought into prominence."(p.6) 

Reading: 'Culture, Mental Models, and National Prosperity'

Stace Lindsay,  'Culture, Mental Models, and National Prosperity', "Culture Matters", 2000, Basic Books, New York
   "culture shapes individuals' thoughts"(p.282)
   "cultural values ... shape the way individuals think"(p.282)
   "Individuals will often accept intellectual arguments, understand their need to change, and express commitment to changing, but then resort to what is familiar.  This tendency to revert to the familiar is not a cultural trait per se, but it is indicative of some of the deeper challenges faced by those who wish to promote a different, more prosperous vision of the future."(p.283)
   "Culture is a broader, macro-level variable.  Mental models are a micro-level variable.  Mental models apply to individuals and groups of individuals---and are identifiable and changeable.  Culture reflects the aggregation of individual mental models and in turn influences the types of mental models that individuals have.  The two are linked in a perpetually evolving system.  The real point of leverage in creating change may well be helping to change mental models at the individual level, beginning with the way individuals think about wealth creation."(p.284)
   "Cultural change may inevitably follow, but the task is not to change culture.  The task is to create the conditions that give birth to competetitive companies, for these will be the engines of growth that support human progress."(p.291)
   "In order to create meaningful change, it is necessary to identify the individuals who will benefit from change."(p.292)
   "segment a nation not by institutional affiliation or geographic location but by belief system."(p.292)
   "the true divisions in the country were not a function of where people lived or what their vocation was, but of their fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes about wealth creation."(p.293)
   "Political, economic, demographic, or geographic segmentations do not enable a sufficient understanding of how people are thinking about their reality.  On the other hand, mental-model segmentation can highlight differences in attitudes and beliefs that inhibit the wealth-creation process."(p.293) 
  

Visiting Uji, an Ancient Resort Area, on a Cold Spring Day

  We changed trains at Chujo-jima Station, and headed to Uji Station. Getting out of the station, we found an imitation ancient bridge across Uji River.  The bridge leads to an approach to Byodo-In Temple.   the stone-paved alley was filled with the fragrance of roasted tea leaves.  Uji is one of the two biggest tea brands in Japan.  The main pagoda of Byodo-In Temple, Ho-o-Do or Phoenix Hall, was unluckily under repairment, and we could not get in. We walked along a wistaria trellis and around a pond, and saw the hall from every direction.  At the front of the pagoda, my friend took out a 10 yen coin, and examined both the coin and the building.  Yes, we have a carving of the building on the coin.  As the exixtence of the front pond suggests, the temple had been a villa of one of the strongest clans in ancient Japan, Fujiwara clan.  Actually Uji area itself used to be a southern resort for aristocrats in the ancient capital, today's Kyoto.  The coldness of Kyoto was and still is very severe. Even today, the cold weather on the day, in one sense, persuaded us to visit Uji instead of Kyoto.  The annexed museum provided us a replica of the inside of Phoenix Hall.  Everything is richly-coloured, and looked rather Chinese than Japanese.  You can safely say that Japanese 'wabi' and 'sabi' is tatered Chinese gorgeousness.  In one of tea shops along the allay, we enjoyed Japanese poudered tea and tea dumplings to warm ourselves up.  It was rather windy and chilly that morning although the sky was farely clear.  Coming out to the bank of Uji River, we found an island in the river.  One side of the river is damed, and the water flow was so calm that the waves caused by the strong wind gave us an illusion that the water was running up there.  The other side of the river flowed very rapidly, which helped us understand the river used to be a southern stronghold of the ancient capital.  Genji Monogatari Museum gave us illuminative illusory images of nobles' romance, which impressed my friend a lot.  Me?  When I was a high school student, I tried to read Genji Monogatari, but was discouraged from going on, and stopped at the second book.  I found the story very unreasonable!
  The next and the last destination was Manpuku-Ji Temple, one of the biggest Zen temples in Japan.  Ingen opened the temple during Edo period, and the temple itself and the Zen school which the temple leads, Obaku-Shu School, is fairly new, and they keep a strong Chinese taste.  Some parts of the temple are richly-cloured, and monks read sacred books with the pronunciation much similar to today's Chinese language.  We got off the train at Obaku Station.  Across a street, we found a half-abandoned shopping street.  The street was coverd with an old arcade, and looked like a 'tunnel' as described by may friend.  There we found a tangle shop,a Japanese sweet shop, a flower shop, .... even a whale meat shop, which was closed either temporaly or permanently.  It is often the case that small shopping streets are giving in to large shopping malls.  Having gone through the 'tunnel', we soon found several Buddhism buildings.  Eventually we came upon the entrance of Manpuku-Ji Temple.  Its buildings and alleys are arranged so as to look like a dragon.  The center of the alleys are paved with angled square stones so that they look like parts of a scaly dragon.  Entering the templeseems to be being swallowed by the dragon, and we head toward its tail.  Some parts of the temple is more Chinese than Japanese.  Although the appearance of each building is rather Japanese, but if you look into inside, you can find it furnished with colourful fittings and offerings.  It is obvious that some followers of the temple or the school are Chinese.  When Ingen arrived at Japan, he stayed at Sufuku-ji Temple for a while.  The temple is located in Nagasaki, which had some Chinese residents even during the isolation period of Edo Era.  The question is why Tokugawa Shogunate needed to import new Zen ideas.

Foggy Mt. Rokko on a Cold Summer Day

   We visited Mt. Rokko, 6 helmet-like hills, which run east-west along the northen edge of Osaka Bay.  The cliffs fall into the sea and the sash-like city of Kobe lies between the hills and the sea.  This means Kobe can provide a good port to berth big ships, and actually the port was one of the first ones opened to foreign countries at the end of Edo Era.  Many foreigners resided around the harbor of Kobe, and developed Mt. Rokko as their summer resort.  It is very understandable that they needed to escape from the heat and humidity in the Kansai area, and so did we.   It started raining when we left Sakai, and was pouring as we got to Ashiya, a tranquil residential town just east of Kobe, which is one of the entrances into Mt. Rokko.  The rain reminded us of our family trip to Nagasaki, one of the oldest port towns which were opened to the world enen in the national seclusion, during the last spring vacation.  The hilly town of Ashiya resembles Nagasaki in a sense, too.  While Nagasaki is wellknown for its Kasutera, Japanese-style sponge cake, Ashiya is famous for its piles of confectionaries.  Western residents around the port of Kobe caused circles of ripples which crossed at the Ashiya area with the other ripples caused by the upper class of merchants in Osaka.  That is how the Western-style confectionists were born and have been raised along this area.  My daughters envy today's neighbourhood there for their abundance of sweets.   As I mentioned before, the ripples caused by the Western settlement along the bay area also crossed with the hedge of Mt. Rokko, which resulted in the resort area.  The place is very suitable to spend usual summer days, so it was very cold this summer, with a cold and chilly fog pressing around us.  The fog prevented us from being active in the hills during the day, and almost hindered us from finding our hotel in the evening.  Anyway, in the afternoon,  we decided to escape from the shivery fog, although our first intention had been to escape from the heat of the lower world, and we went down the mountain to visit Akashi Kaikyo Bridge via Ura-Rokko (the north-western slope).  Our choice of route turned out to be a mistake.  We headed south and had nearly arrived at Maiko, where the bridge is located, to find we had no choice but to drive eastward and go through the town of the southern slope as far as the sea shore.  There we turnd westward again and drove through the narrow and much tied-up passage of Suma.  These days the prefectures in Kansai talked about building a network of tourist resorts to help tourists make their way around.  Much is talked about; little is done.   Akashi Kaikyo Bridge was something to see.  Its Kobe-side anchorage has a promenade beneath the bridge for dozens of meters.  The promenade has several windows underfoot.  It was really exciting especially on such a rough day.  We found several Chinese-speaking tourists.  They seemed to consist of a couple of groups and/or families, and I could not tell which were from Mainland and which were from Taiwan.  The neighbouring area has an old building, Ijo-Kaku in Japanese or Yiqing-Ge in Chinese, which was built by a Chinese businessman nearly a hundred years ago, and is famous because it was visited by Sun Wen.  Sun Wen was a lucky guy, who lived long enough to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and short enough to be praised both by the Kuomin Party and by the Communist Party.  Either side could interpret him in their own favor.  The super modern Japanese architecture and the historical monument of East Asia, in collaboration, might have been the attraction for various Chinese-speaking people.
   Next morning, at our younger daughter's request, we rode a ropeway first.  We were just floating in the middle of white mist.  Occasional and sudden appearance of green branches reminded us that we were heading somewhere.  And we arrived somewhere, which should have provided us the splendid view of the city Kobe.  The place name is Tengu-iwa (a rock in the shape of a Japanese long-nosed goblin).  The genie, which should have been only dozens of meters away, probably hid himself from us with the thickness of the mist.  Her next request was to visit Alpine Flora Garden.  The milky mist gave us the effect that we were virtually climbing high mountains. 
 

Visiting Nagasaki on a Spring Day

   My family and I flew to Nagasaki from Itami.  We caught an airport limousine from Namba to Itami Airport, which only took us half an hour.  It was quite a short trip.  Although Kansai Airport is much more convenient for us, as we live in Sakai,south of Osaka, I can understand why some people are against closing Itami Airport.  Just as Kansai airport is convenient for us, Itami Airport is convenient for a lot of people who live or work in Osaka, closer to it.   From Nagasaki Airport, we sailed to Huis ten bosch, an amusement park.  Accessing Huis ten bosch by sea might sound romantic, but it was hard for my daughters after the flight.  The combination of being airsick and seasick brought on my elder daughter's headache.  I wonder if travelling by air and then land might have been better.  Or had it onle been brought on only the combination  of being airsick and landsick(?)? 
  The rain, which started when we left Huis ten bosch, fell harder when we got off the train at the Nagasaki station.  So we decided to visit China Town to have lunch first.  There we enjoyed Sara Udon and Chanpon, both Nagasaki-style Chinese noodles, at a Chinese restaurant near the entrance of the town.  After we finished eating, we went out to find the rain had stopped.   Next we visited Oranda Zaka (or Dutch Hill), a tiny short slope paved with stone slates, as we had planned before the start of the rain.  The buildings along the street didn't looked Westernized from the view point or standard of today.  The buildings with wooden walls and tiled roofs, reminded me of my dear old days.  When I was a small child, every modern building such as schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. was like that.  Those buildings were considered modern at that time in Japan means Western.  The schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. played their role in modernizing the Japanese society some decades ago.  A high economic growth after World War II and, especially, the bubble economy meant the Japanese society surpassed its own modernization.   Then we walked on to visit Oura Tenshu-do (an old Catholic church in Oura).  The slope to the church was crowded with noisy and eye-catching (although some of them surely trying to look fashionable) souvenir shops, which shows how we have surpassed ourselves.   In Oura Tenshu-do and in a small museum by the church, I was surprised how my daughters have grown-up because they were able to read explanations so intensely.  I found the story of a French clergyman, the one who  'found' Christians in Nagasaki area at the end of Edo era, and how they had survived 7 generations of oppressive measures including crucifixion moving.  The finding led to the last and dreadful suppression by the Tokugawa Shogunate.   After that, we took a trolley train from Oura Tenshu-do-shita to Hamaguchi-cho to see the Atomic Bomb Museum.  It was my second visit there.  I have visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima twice, too.  I just hope we will never have to experience an atomic bomb and have such a museum in Baghdad or elsewhere.   The stories about the religious oppression and the atomic bombing give the town a tragic characteristic, which makes the Nagasaki city very unique in Japan.   Besides its tragic characteristic, I should point out another uniqueness of the Nagasaki city, the taste of Chinese culture.  On our way from Oranda-zaka to Oura Tenshu-do, we had dropped in at a Confucious Temple, which had very Chinese buildings.  The existence of the temple and the China town, one of the three largest China towns in Japan, tells us Nagasaki has had a significant number of Chinese residents.  With historical elements of both the western culture and the Chinese culture , it makes the city exotic and attractive to tourists.  When looked at by sightseers, it seems like the tourist cities sometimes exaggerate themselves.   Some exaggeration of their characters may appeal; too much exaggeration can damage their images.  The much crowded street to Oura Tenshu-do tells us the importance of equilibrium. 
 

I wonder how cruel men can be?

As a male, the article on rape and the spread of AIDS is very shocking.

One Winter Day, to Look for SHOKI

Looking for Shoki, Who Has Walked Half His Way from a Ghost to a God

   Viking-like statues in Kyoto and Nara.  They are on the roofs.  That was the start of the story.  A friend of mine asked me to surf the net, make some phone calls, and even to take him to a roof tile factory in Fushimi, where I met Shoki for the first time in my life.  He left Japan. Yet, he still asked me to visit a certain area in Kyoto to take pictures of Shoki, where he and his family first found Shoki.  By the time, however, I myself had got interested in Shoki, too.  One winter day, I decided to go to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple with my wife.
   Through the window of the Keihan Rapid Train, we found snow started falling.  We got off the train at Gojo Station, and took Matsubara-dori to get to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, via Kiyomizu-zaka, as Matsubara-dori used to be Gojo-dori, one of the main streets in Kyoto during its medieval days.  The more we go up the hill, the more it snowed.  When we crossed Higashi-oji-dori, where we could find the Kiyomizu-zaka bus stop, one of the nearest bus stop to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, it was hard for us to look up and see the tops of the roofs.  As we climbed up Kiyomizu-zaka, our chance to find Shoki seemed scarce.  At the end of the slope, in front of the temple's gate, a ceramic statue with a wooden flame around it was gazing down upon us through the heavy snow.  It was Shoki.  A sales clerk at the Japanese sweet shop told us the shop was built some 30 years ago, and Shoki had been there since then.  That was the all story he could tell us, besides the uncertain information that we could find some other Shoki in the older town.
   We decided to visit the Kiyomizu-dera Temple first, as it snowed too hard to keep looking for Shoki in an unfamiliar town.  At the entrance, one of the middle aged receptionists of the temple informed us that we could find the statues along Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka, although the other receptionists looked uncertain or even had no idea of Shoki.
   After making a prayer at the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, we walked down Sannen-zaka and Ninen-zaka, which lead you to Shijo-dori via the Maruyama Park and the Yasaka-jinja Shrine.  As we enterd stone paved Sannen-zaka, we soon found several Shoki in our sights, and light-heartedly walked down stone steps.  After taking photos of a few Shoki, we got into a souvenir shop, and talked with a shop lady, who had married with the owner about 30 years ago.  "7 years ago, we had a big earthquake, and the house was much damaged.  So we repaired roofs and so on.  Under the scenic sites preservation ordinance, we could not change the appearance.  We kept 'bengara-goshi' (red painted wall and wooden window flames).  One of the carpenters brought us new Shoki."  My wife asked her if Shoki faced the Kiyomizu-dera Temple.  "Oh, it has nothing to do with the temple.  We, shop owners, put up Shoki to look daggers at the other shops, as we face each other across the narrow street."
   Finding many other Shoki, new ones and old ones, we kept walking down into Ninen-zaka.  One Shoki was standing on the roof together with Ebisu and Daikoku, who are gods of marchants.  Another was with some dolls.  There we even found porcelain Shoki on the roof of a porcelain shop.  At the end of Ninen-zaka, we turned and headed to Gojo-zaka, another possible street you may take to get to Kiyomizu-dera.  Walking down Gojo-zaka, we could find no Shoki.  After having 'yuba zen' lunch at Yuba-sen (a 'yuba' restaurant) near the Gojo-zaka bus stop, the other nearest bus stop, we walked up Chawan-zaka this time.  The slope had many pottery shops, as the street's name suggests, and looked quite new as a sightseeing spot; and even there we could find a few Shoki.  Although we are not sure if it has a consistent law or rule, the shops with Shoki along the street were all selling potteries, not other souvenirs or foods.
   New Western style buildings certainly have no Shoki.  Yet, we find new Shoki, along with old ones, even on a re-roofed Japanese style houses.  I wonder if Shoki tradition is ceasing or reviving.  A few months ago, I talked with a priest, helping my friend's inteview.  The priest had gathered numbers of old Shoki, which had been rejected during the bubble economy. "I have been trying to embrace them.  Otherwise, I'm afraid, Shoki would be a hobgoblin instead of making a god."  Will we someday see Shoki as our 8 million and first god?  He might change his role or grace, something like a gurdian of small shops, maybe.  I would rather find Shoki shrined in a temple or something, not in the least find him in a video game fighting as a ....       

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http://www.sakai.zaq.ne.jp/haruo_kakuta/writings.htm

Hello

I live and work in the southern suburb in Osaka, Japan. Does it sound remote? If it does, I will surely be interested in your ideas.
Today, every kind of products and services are coming to take forms of commodities. Not only materials, textiles, and machines are exchanged as commodities, but also information and even education. This trend is deepening and widening. Meanwhile the trading is expanding across borders too. Hence the transformation catches every aspect of our daily lives on every place in the world.
If we workers are to control the process, we should understand every realm of the political-economic system. What makes it possible? Workers live and work everywhere, and experience each respect of 'commoditized' economic life. But the individual experience doesn't always lead to the whole understanding of the global economic process. Each worker should understand his or her own economic events and share the understanding with the others. In understanding and exchanging our experience, it seems to me, writing essays has critical importance. Furthermore, in this ever being globalized society, such literacy in English is vital for workers all over the world. Workers of the world, write!