The Melting World

Wanted to post this pic of my son at school, before the landscape put on its winter woolies. It amazes me how nature changes so intensely here…now we have entered into that place of whiteness and serenity for the next four months…

Painting by me, 2002.

I wish to devote this entry to a poet I consider my soulmate (of another time, plane and place), the free-style haiku poet, Taneda Santoka (1882-1940). The ‘o’ in his name is a long ‘o’, like how Minnesotans say ‘o.’

I first found out about him over 10 years ago when I was living in the student quarters of a Buddhist nunnery in Kyoto. His poems were why I extended my stay in Japan and the reason why I try to learn Japanese. I felt he had a lot to teach me about seeing the simple truth, beyond the suffering and pain in the world.

‘Santoka’ (his pen name) means Mountain + Head or Top+ Fire, so something like Head of Mountain Fire or Fiery Mountain Peak might work as a rough translation. I love his name.

Santoka had a hard life: he saw his mother pulled from the family well after she had committed suicide. He dropped out of Waseda University’s Literature Department (as many great Japanese writers did), started and failed a sake brewery with his father, married and failed at that, too, became an alcoholic…and after a suicide attempt at the train tracks, he was taken to a Zen temple, where he eventually was ordained as a Zen monk at age 44. Rather than stay in the comfort & safety of any particular school of the Buddhist religion, he traveled alone as a beggar-monk across Japan, composing haiku and travel notes along the way.

He walked over 28,000 miles in 14 years. His poems follow the jiyuuritsu(free)-style of haiku, not the strict and socially-acceptable 5-7-5 syllable patterns, but rather he used as few or as many syllables needed to express the ‘moment.’ The only rule was to express it within the space of one breath.

Samples of some of his haiku (as translated by John Stevens in his book, Mountain Tasting):

I sit in the withered beauty of the wild grasses.
kareyuku kusa no utsukushisa ni suwaru

Within life and death snow falls ceaselessly.
shouji no naka no yuki furishikiru

If it shines, it bleats; If it is cloudy, it bleats–The single goat
tereba naite kumoreba naite yagi ippiki

The moonlight pierces my empty stomach
tsuki no hikari no sukihara fukaku shimitoru nari

I cling to death; the pepper is bright red
shi wo hishito tougarashi makka na

More of his works translated into English and French can be found online here.

I am trying to find a path toward the essence of being alive that Santoka well understood. I believe I can make it, step by step.

Same artist as below.

As some of you know, I am a big fan of art brut and outsider art, which to me means any art that comes deep from the heart and had to be done for the maker, and such art doesn’t follow the rules of academic art schools. It is not about money, or approval, or status, or technique, but about personal vision.

Most people associate outsider art with the art created by people who are pushed to the margins of society: the poor, the abused, those with abilities unique from the rest of us, the unschooled, the imprisoned, the ostracized, the eccentric, etc., and it’s true that such folks often make fabulous art simply beacuse they don’t think in the same-old, same-old patterns.

Yet, I think outsider art is more than that. It is done by those rare few who have special visions to express that transcend the prison their society had hoped to shut them up in.

I am a big fan of such work because it shows us a wholly special, yet truthful way of seeing our world.

Anyway, there was a month-long art exhibit at the central public library that I stumbled upon one day. I went back the last day of the exhibit just to photograph my two favorites, both done by the same individual. Although there were other good paintings there, these two struck me as amazing. The artist is anonymous, only said to be a person who lives in a group home somewhere in the Asahikawa area.

As an aside: I just finished my last paper for my post-grad certificate in Education & Technology from UBC, Vancouver. I loved the course, Indigeneity and Technology. I loved the challenge of studying something I didn’t know much about (and I still have a lot to learn…). Now what to do, what to do. On my list: bake cookies and pies, read books with my son, go sledding, take a trip to Sapporo, paint and write, and read all those books my mom sent me. Oh, and sleep more.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Today Ota-sensei, an Ainu language teacher, came to my cross-cultural class to deliver his version of Hokkaido/Ainu history, Part II.

Although I think what he said had a lot of importance for the students, I was dismayed to see most of them doing other schoolwork, sending text messages on their cell phones, or whispering with their friends. They seemed bored, much like they do in any lecture setting, which is why I rarely lecture…I hate teaching to sleeping brains.

This lack of interest in Ainu history may be just a sign of an overall disinterest in history (It’s true I have been told often that Japanese students hate history because of the dry lecture-format and due to all the ‘facts’ they had to memorize when studying for the university entrance exams), but my heart was heavy and I could do little during his talk to wake them up, but I did touch some of the whisperers on the back and give them a resigned look…but that didn’t work well, as soon they were back to talking about the upcoming weekend, the dentist visit, or their part-time jobs.

But still, at least a small part of their hearing may have taken in some of the information, and that is better than nothing at all, I hope. Now, my dear readers, I have to turn to work on my paper, which has a structure up finally, but no plaster on its timbers yet. I am not motivated to write though because I am exhausted–my son has the penchant for resisting sleep lately, which makes me sleep-deprived. I don’t have the luxury that he has to sleep two hours at nursery school, the lucky boy!

Radio Archive of Ainu Language Lessons

Sapporo TV Radio hosts an Ainu language class with accompanying textbook (which you can order) every Sunday morning, from 7:05am to 7:20am, and repeated Saturday evenings from 11:15-11:30pm. They also have the lessons archived on Real Player audio files since it began in 1999.

A look at one lesson (November 20) showed the example of the grammar “Where are you heading/going?” I found the example answer they will teach quite strange:

Ex.: Where are you heading/going?
Answer: We are heading/going to a splendid (beautiful) village.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds not only awkward to me in English, but also in Japanese–I am not prone to say I am going to a splendid village, are you? See the below script:

１　エノン　エソイエネ？
　　enon　　e=soyene?
　　どこへ　あなたが外へ出る
　　（＝どこへあなたは出かけるの？）
Where are you going?

２　ピリカ　コタン　オレン　　　パイエアン。
　　pirika　kotan　or en　　　　paye=an.
　　立派な　村　　　のところへ　相手を含む私達は行く
　　（＝立派な村へ私達は行く。）
We are going to a splendid village.

I need to see if all of the lessons are as arcane as this. It sounds like we are learning to speak ‘fairy’, not Ainu. Could this language lesson actually be just another act of ‘othering’ conducted by the Wajin (mainstream Japanese)? It seems to be teaching the Ainu language as an archaic, lost romantic language. True, few native speakers remain, but does this lesson give their language justice? I don’t know the answer yet; this site was rather disappointing to see at first glance….

If you grew up in snow country, you probably recall how lovely it feels when you are bundled up from head to toe in a snowsuit and you lie back into deep snow. The muffled crunch of snow settling underneath your weight, the snow cradles against your frame. When you look up into a pure white sky, you fall into a moment of still peace unmatched anywhere else….

My son didn’t want to get up from his snowy bed. I could only convince him to get up for a second or two before he would plop back down on his back in bliss, opening his mouth to catch the spinning snowflakes.

One of the joys of having a child to play with is reliving the simple things we also did as children.

My son loves to eat snow. He doesn’t care if it’s from the road or from the field–and that’s a issue we struggle with–but still I remember how good it feels to munch on clumps of snow gathered up in soggy mittens. I remember how my frozen chin turned into a shiny crab apple.

In my cross-cultural seminar this past Friday, I had the privilege of having Chisato “Kitty” Dubreuil give my students a slideshow/talk comparing Ainu and Native American political histories.

She is the only active Ainu scholar who is an expert in Ainu art history, Japanese art history, and Native American & First Nations art history. She has served as a co-curator of the wonderful Smithsonian exhibit on the Ainu people, was editor of a book (scroll down) that complements the exhibit with much more detail, and she also recently published a book on the work of the contemporary Ainu artist/sculptor, Bikky Sunazawa.

Her talk served as an excellent introduction into a viewpoint my students never had an opportunity to learn in the Japanese school system.

After her talk, her husband, David, of Huron and Mohawk descent, and the Chikabumi Ainu leader, Kenichi Kawamura, and the tonkori musician, Oki Kanou, all added their opinions on what they see as the main concerns facing Ainu people today.

Issues mentioned covered topics such as legal actions to revise the Ministry of Education’s textbook, land and human rights, the challenge of mixing new art with the traditional, continued school, marriage, and employment discrimination, as well as the silencing of Ainu voices in mainstream culture.

Chisato showed the students the 2006 textbook. She read the two bits about the Ainu in the book. The Ainu appear as part of a footnote on one page and then again in a sentence about their involvement as trade partners with Japan. She told the students, “Suddenly the Ainu appear in the textbook, from nowhere.” And I could add that they just as instantly disappear in mainstream society, without any recognition of the very long, rich history & culture they still have.

I hope that this event will mark the beginning of my students’ search for a more inclusive truth about Japan as a multi-ethnic nation.

As the only leaves left are the persistent shiny reds of the sugar maple and the canary yellow ginkos, I post this pic of us in the midst of our steamy summer Tokyo holiday, in hopes that the recollection will seep some heat into my freezing feet.

Now a walk to the post office and a looking forward to crunching my way through the fallen leaves. Maybe that’s the better solution, no more gazing at the computer screen in an unheated room…

Had to share this picture of my Superman way back in 1976.

Watch yourself!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Sarah made this painting based on a story she read about a boy who rode a dragon. She won the All-School Chiba Prefecture Award for this work.

I just had to share this because she has such a great eye. Thanks, too, to Sarah’s mom, Frances, for making sure Sarah can be a free bird in her work.

Picasso, Klee, and Matisse applaud wildly from their dusty boxes.

Lately I have been listening to Ben Harper over and over again because it’s in our cd player in the car. I sing along with it during the recent long drives to and fro my son’s new school.

Ben Harper is a down-to-earth singer/songwriter–maybe like a young Bob Dylan–his voice is not perfect, but carries a truth to it, and he is also socially awake–in a way that not many well-known musicians are anymore–so many wrapped up Pepsi flags and MTV camouflage it seems.

My son especially enjoys “Gold to Me” and I like it, too, along with “Excuse Me, Mr.,” “By My Side” and “Give a Man a Home.”

Which brings my brain to a related topic (at least it’s related in my mind, although, as my husband often says to me, “Wait a minute. How did you jump from that train to this train?!”): I will post a pic of an abandoned house in the middle of the rice fields that I gaze at everyday with restoration fantasies.

Birds twitter and skitter to nests in its walls, bricks and plaster have slid into crumpled pyramids. If I had big money (oh, if!) I would give this house a devoted fix up. It would surely cost a lot as it looks so forlorn.

I already have an imagined action plan to plant a row of windbreaking trees around it, so the winter winds wouldn’t shiver its timbers and new recycled windows.

Yet, a couple of tipped over corn stalks and brown-eyed susans are springing up around it, so I know this home was once loved by someone. I hope this house’s spirit can remember that even when we feel abandoned and alone, someone somewhere still cares. As Elizabeth Bishop concludes in her poem, “Filling Station”:

Somebody loves us all.

For the first time in late September I saw a place where hot spring waters are harvested for the many hotels dotting the Mt. Fuji landscape. The scene looked like my Catholic childhood imagination of Hell: yellowy scarred stains next to smoldering thick pools of spoiled oatmeal, yellowish-white fumes twisting and groaning like ghosts, the entire mountain side was shaved and carved into a wasteland, and finally, the omnipresent sulfurous smell lingered on our skin and hair until we bathed at night. The smell was similar to Fourth of July gunpowder smokebombs..or of the smell of paper mills in the northernmost Minnesota town where I was born. If you mix in the busloads of tourists devouring black-shelled eggs, you’ll get the gist of this Hell.

Yet, despite the ugliness and desolation, sigh, I admit I love this shot of husband and son looking at Mt.Fuji, while the sulfurous smoke rises in the backdrop.

Yet, it can’t compare to the powerful work of my favorite contemporary photographer, Sebastiao Salgado. For example, his book WORKERS blew me away…though I actually had the chance to see these photos first at an exhibit in Meguro at the Tokyo Museum of Photography maybe 8 years back? He does a lot of work for the UN and has donated his photos to make posters for UNICEF, at CHANGING THE WORLD WITH CHILDREN Campaign, in support of the world’s children.

He wrote, “I hope that the person who visits my exhibitions, and the person who comes out, are not quite the same,” says Mr. Salgado. “I believe that the average person can help a lot, not by giving material goods but by participating, by being part of the discussion, by being truly concerned about what is going on in the world.”

An awakening happened inside me from viewing his work, and I believe it would happen to any warm-blooded human who enters the eyes of the people he photographs. I can never forget the phtoographs of the gold miners in Brazil. All that desolate misery and physical pain for someone else to pocket the profits and then another to wear a gold chain around his/her privileged neck! Makes you think about the insanity of this world.

But his photographs are not meant to fill you with despair, but to fill you instead with anger and courage to demand for the dignity of all people.

He also wrote, “More than ever, I feel that the human race is one. There are differences of colour, language, culture and opportunities, but people’s feelings and reactions are alike.”

Check out his NY Times online exhibit of the Landless workers movement in Brazil (which he actively supports), called TERRA.

We can find a way, people, to get things right, can’t we? On a good day, I hold hands out for hope to settle like a green dragonfly.

Here my son gives his best show of separation pangs, perhaps for my benefit? After one week at this new nursery school, he now only begins to cry when I say goodbye at the school door, but then he reportedly quits crying after a few minutes and begins to play with joy.

With two gifted teachers and ten children (11 now, including my son) ranging from ages 2-6, this school (re)creates the extended family so hard to find in today’s industrialized, dehumanized, westernized world. I am thankful he can grow up playing outside in nature along with his new mothers, brothers, and sisters. The headmaster is a strawberry farmer, and the students grow and feast on cherry tomatoes and other delicacies from the school garden.

Long live one-room schools!

He started going here from this week. Now each morning he is waiting by the door with his shoes in hand, eager to go to school! What a joy to take him to such a place each morning. We have been blessed by the misty autumn morning beauty of Hokkaido all week.

View from son’s new school

Near Wassamu

Near Wassamu

In celebration of autumn, my favorite season…or in celebration of what my friend Keiko said means AISHUU ni HITARERU–that deep beautiful aloneness that sinks inside you during the fall.

Above are recent pictures from a public park near the town of Wassamu, from walks at Arashiyama, and from the area surrounding my son’s nursery school.