more booknotes
Sep. 23rd, 2007 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Random cultural snippets from two different diaries kept by women in Meiji-era Japan: Clara's Diary: An American Girl in Meiji Japan by Clara A.N. Whitney, edited by M. William Steele and Tamiko Ichimata, and Makiko's Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto by Nakano Makiko, translated/annotated by Kazuko Smith.
Clara was an American whose family came to Tokyo as missionaries in 1875, when she was 15; she eventually married a Japanese man and lived out the rest of her life there. A generation later, in 1910, Makiko was a 20-year-old bride who'd just married into a long-established family of pharmacists; although her husband's family store had been selling herbal medicines for at least 200 years, he himself (and other family members of his generation) had attended and graduated from local pharmacy schools that were based on Western medicine, and their store's inventory reflected both of these aspects.
From Clara's diary: she records the assassination of Okubo[*] Toshimichi on May 16th, 1878, noting the details as they really happened instead of the fictionalized version presented near the start of RK's Kyoto Arc. On June 8th, she and some other (unidentified) people visited the grave of a family friend in Aoyama Cemetery, where Okubo was also buried. A nearby gardener sold them some flowers to leave at their friend's grave, as well as a rosebush to plant there.
[*: technically, the first vowel of his family name should be marked as elongated; the book is printed with macrons there instead of the different method I've used below.]
Their friend's grave was marked by "a single shaft of unpainted wood" with the woman's name, age, sex, and date of death (Jan/Feb of that year) written on it; there were already two plain bamboo vases sitting there with an incense burner between them. Okubo's grave was slightly more elaborate:
On August 24th, Clara mentions an event which might be interesting to check against RK's chronology:
On May 2nd, 1879, she described the O-Inari festival at Nagasaka, as experienced at the house of some friends whom they'd gone to visit, and whom the festival came to visit, so to speak. (The first bracketed note below is mine; the ones in the following paragraph are as printed in the book.)
On Jan. 2nd, 1880, she notes of women's hairstyles, "[w]hen we first came to Tokyo, the marumage was in high disfavor, every lady wearing the mitsuwa, or the curious round of hair through which a single hairpin is inserted. [....] Just now long and slender golden hairpins are all the rage."
On April 1, 1884, she describes a wedding which she and her friend Addie attended "at Ueno [Park] in a picturesque teahouse by the lake"; it seems to've been a semi-Christianized version of whatever popular customs were prevalent before the invention of the Shinto ceremonies for the Crown Prince's wedding in 1900:
From Makiko's diary: according to the supplementary material in the introduction, even in 1910, middle-school boys alternated between a Western-based school uniform and kimono/hakama, and primary-school boys wore kimono without hakama [p. 26]. There's also a fair amount of info about the wedding customs that were prevalent in Kyoto at that time:
Makiko's entry for "October 13" (corrected by the editor to Friday, October 14) describes the run-up to the more traditional wedding, though for some reason she didn't get to attend the actual ceremony.
For the past few days, she'd been helping to collect the wedding gifts that'd been arriving, "filling the chests with the bride's trousseau" (and sewing some of the kimono that went into it) for delivery to the groom's house, and buying little wedding favors to give to the servants, deliverymen, and kids. On the afternoon of the wedding day, a hairdresser came to the house to work on Makiko and other members of the family, although this was a fairly routine event not limited to wedding prep. Near sunset, another woman came to specifically manage the bride's makeup and wardrobe; this was a junior geisha belonging to the same house as the geisha who was regularly contracted with Makiko's family business to entertain business clients at a teahouse or restaurant, or to assist with family events like this one. The hairdresser did the bride's hair last. In the meantime, other people were milling in and out of the house: the go-between, immediate family members, and more distant relatives, but they all headed off to the groom's house before ~8pm. Makiko and some of the store clerks and servants stayed behind. Her husband and mother-in-law didn't come back from ther wedding until five in the morning.
On November 2nd and 3rd [p. 198], she mentions the Shinnou festival in the Nijou district of Kyoto. The editor explains in a note that the festival was held in honor of "the deity of medicine, Yakusoshin, protector of pharmacists":
On December 23rd, the winter solstice, there was a smaller celebration of Yakusoshin within the household; the children gathered around an iron brazier holding small slats of wood, and stuck them into the burning coals while chanting "Ta-a-ke, ta-a-ke, o-hi-ta-a-ki, nou-nou. Mi-i-kan, manjuu, hooshi-i-ya, nou-nou" (translated in the footnotes as "Burn, burn, god of spring! We want tangerines and steamed buns!"). Naturally, "trays of tangerines, steamed buns, and candied popped rice were passed around. Later on, trays of the same food were sent to the store, and all the members of the staff enjoyed them."
This last one has me pondering the (admittedly very faint) possibility that Kenshin and Tomoe might've engaged in a similar ritual during their very last days together in Otsu, but I don't really think they would've known much about it. The only connection I can think of might've been via the general Yukishiro familiarity with distilled liquid perfume (Tomoe, Enishi, *and* Oibore all have their own stashes of it somehow, despite the historical rarity of such things at the time) and Oibore's practically-unknown wife. OTOH, it's not as if RK is completely historically accurate anyway, frex the preposterousness of Tomoe having adopted Kenshin's "family" name-- not only did she outrank him, but afaik it wasn't until much later that wives started to change their names after marriage.
Clara was an American whose family came to Tokyo as missionaries in 1875, when she was 15; she eventually married a Japanese man and lived out the rest of her life there. A generation later, in 1910, Makiko was a 20-year-old bride who'd just married into a long-established family of pharmacists; although her husband's family store had been selling herbal medicines for at least 200 years, he himself (and other family members of his generation) had attended and graduated from local pharmacy schools that were based on Western medicine, and their store's inventory reflected both of these aspects.
From Clara's diary: she records the assassination of Okubo[*] Toshimichi on May 16th, 1878, noting the details as they really happened instead of the fictionalized version presented near the start of RK's Kyoto Arc. On June 8th, she and some other (unidentified) people visited the grave of a family friend in Aoyama Cemetery, where Okubo was also buried. A nearby gardener sold them some flowers to leave at their friend's grave, as well as a rosebush to plant there.
[*: technically, the first vowel of his family name should be marked as elongated; the book is printed with macrons there instead of the different method I've used below.]
Their friend's grave was marked by "a single shaft of unpainted wood" with the woman's name, age, sex, and date of death (Jan/Feb of that year) written on it; there were already two plain bamboo vases sitting there with an incense burner between them. Okubo's grave was slightly more elaborate:
[...] raised in a little mound and covered with a wooden pavilion. All around were white banners with inscriptions, while the sides of the pavilion were hung with black and white muslin. Near Oukubo's tomb in a little enclosure is buried Nakamura Tarou, his murdered coachman, and behind him his horse, each with a head shaft of wood. [emphasis added]
On August 24th, Clara mentions an event which might be interesting to check against RK's chronology:
Last night was one of terror. About eleven o'clock a battalion of soldiers made an insurrection at their headquarters at Takebashi, near the Kaisai Gakkou. [....] The extent of the killed and wounded is not known yet, although three officers and two coolies are reported as having been slain by guns and swords. Report says that from two to three hundred were killed.The editors' summary of events:
Killing an officer, arming themselves and deserting their regiments, about 200 officers of the Imperial Guards tried to set fire to the palace and assassinate high government officials, but were suppressed before achieving their objectives. The insurrectionists' main grievance was the unequal distribution of honors for their role in help deal with the Satsuma Rebellion.
On May 2nd, 1879, she described the O-Inari festival at Nagasaka, as experienced at the house of some friends whom they'd gone to visit, and whom the festival came to visit, so to speak. (The first bracketed note below is mine; the ones in the following paragraph are as printed in the book.)
Six men in blue uniform with blue cloths on their heads came striding up to our party before the gate [of their friends' household], and giving a grand salaam, thanked us for calling the dancers. Then a rumbling was heard and a great chariot appeared upon which knelt four young girls in costume with their dancing teacher and her scholars,. This was followed by another conveyance of similar construction filled with musicians who piped and drummed and blew and sang the accompaniment of the dancers.
[....]At matsuri [festivals], which take place very often, the girls who dance before Inari are said to have a sure prospect of a happy life. These girls are selected, not from the upper, but from the lower classes. For instance, the jorou [female entertainer] we saw today is the daughter of the kanzashiya, or "seller of hairpins," and the fierce prince was only a poor soba (macaroni) seller's daughter. The daughters of nobles and samurai will not be seen even looking at the dancing. Perhaps from their curtained balconies, surrounded by maids, they might deign to look half-scornfully on the public exhibition that their less fortunate sisters make of themselves, but to mingle with such a crowd would be disreputable.
On Jan. 2nd, 1880, she notes of women's hairstyles, "[w]hen we first came to Tokyo, the marumage was in high disfavor, every lady wearing the mitsuwa, or the curious round of hair through which a single hairpin is inserted. [....] Just now long and slender golden hairpins are all the rage."
On April 1, 1884, she describes a wedding which she and her friend Addie attended "at Ueno [Park] in a picturesque teahouse by the lake"; it seems to've been a semi-Christianized version of whatever popular customs were prevalent before the invention of the Shinto ceremonies for the Crown Prince's wedding in 1900:
[A] long line of ladies facing the gentlemen on the other side of the room. We all sat on the floor in two lines facing each other. There were fewer on the ladies' side than on the gentlemen's. We were the only foreigners besides Mr. Harris [the missionary performing the service] and Dr. Cutter from Sapporo [a former teacher of the groom's]. [....]We waited over an hour during which some of the ladies whiled away the time by making paper flowers and birds.
Finally there was a slight stir and everyone stood up as a side door opened and [the groom] Mr. Uchimura appeared, leaning on the arm of the go-between's husband. Behind him came his family-- father, mother, a little sister, and a brother. Then the bride came led by a finely dressed lady, but the bride quite eclipsed her. [...] She wore lovely robes of white and red crepe, and over all a beautifully embroidered robe which might have belonged to some princess. Her hair was done up in marumage, or round coil style, and she wore a square headdress across her forehead, called ageboushi. Her family followed her, and the whole party seated themselves at the upper end of the room facing the company. Mr. Harris then offered prayer while all knelt. Then all stood again while Mr. Harris read the Methodist-Episcopal service in Japanese. [...]I fancy this beautiful Christian ceremony must have been very strange to the Japanese who witnessed it for the first time.
From Makiko's diary: according to the supplementary material in the introduction, even in 1910, middle-school boys alternated between a Western-based school uniform and kimono/hakama, and primary-school boys wore kimono without hakama [p. 26]. There's also a fair amount of info about the wedding customs that were prevalent in Kyoto at that time:
Weddings were held either in the home of the groom (or in that of the bride if, like Makiko's mother-in-law, her household was taking an adopted husband), without the services of a priest of any kind, or at a shrine, at which a Shinto priest officiated, followed by a banquet in a restaurant. There are two weddings in Makiko's diary, one of each kind. [...]Today [the shrine wedding] is considered to be the most "traditional" form, but in fact at that time, the most common ty[e of wedding ceremony among Kyoto's merchant households was that held in the home. Indeed, such purely domestic rituals were common in rural Japan until well after World War II.[...]
[T]he domestic ceremony Makiko wrote about was held in the evening, and the party following it went on all night, which is never the case today. I found it even stranger that the bride's trousseau was carried to the house of the groom after dark, presumably by lantern-light. [Makiko's son] Professor Nakano's explanation is that merchant households held the wedding ceremony at night because they were reluctant to lose a whole day's business. It seems that Makiko's and Chuuhachi's wedding was held at night, for she told her son how the bride and groom sat in front of a gold folding screen, with a large candle stand on either side, and took their wedding vows by the ritual exchange of cups of sake. [p.34]
Makiko's entry for "October 13" (corrected by the editor to Friday, October 14) describes the run-up to the more traditional wedding, though for some reason she didn't get to attend the actual ceremony.
For the past few days, she'd been helping to collect the wedding gifts that'd been arriving, "filling the chests with the bride's trousseau" (and sewing some of the kimono that went into it) for delivery to the groom's house, and buying little wedding favors to give to the servants, deliverymen, and kids. On the afternoon of the wedding day, a hairdresser came to the house to work on Makiko and other members of the family, although this was a fairly routine event not limited to wedding prep. Near sunset, another woman came to specifically manage the bride's makeup and wardrobe; this was a junior geisha belonging to the same house as the geisha who was regularly contracted with Makiko's family business to entertain business clients at a teahouse or restaurant, or to assist with family events like this one. The hairdresser did the bride's hair last. In the meantime, other people were milling in and out of the house: the go-between, immediate family members, and more distant relatives, but they all headed off to the groom's house before ~8pm. Makiko and some of the store clerks and servants stayed behind. Her husband and mother-in-law didn't come back from ther wedding until five in the morning.
On November 2nd and 3rd [p. 198], she mentions the Shinnou festival in the Nijou district of Kyoto. The editor explains in a note that the festival was held in honor of "the deity of medicine, Yakusoshin, protector of pharmacists":
[...At that time, the festival] was scheduled to coincide with the Meiji Emperor's birthday, November 3. Originally it was celebrated privately in every household of pharmacists. The stores competed in displays of famous historical figures or scenes, created with medicine bottles or cans and Chinese herbal medicines, by the store owners and their employees. Vendors, who were invited to set up stalls among these displays, sold cotton candy, sweets, and children's toys. It was a very popular event that drew big crowds.Makiko herself notes, "The themes of the decorations in our neighborhood this year are a sacred palanquin and a sacred sword."
On December 23rd, the winter solstice, there was a smaller celebration of Yakusoshin within the household; the children gathered around an iron brazier holding small slats of wood, and stuck them into the burning coals while chanting "Ta-a-ke, ta-a-ke, o-hi-ta-a-ki, nou-nou. Mi-i-kan, manjuu, hooshi-i-ya, nou-nou" (translated in the footnotes as "Burn, burn, god of spring! We want tangerines and steamed buns!"). Naturally, "trays of tangerines, steamed buns, and candied popped rice were passed around. Later on, trays of the same food were sent to the store, and all the members of the staff enjoyed them."
This last one has me pondering the (admittedly very faint) possibility that Kenshin and Tomoe might've engaged in a similar ritual during their very last days together in Otsu, but I don't really think they would've known much about it. The only connection I can think of might've been via the general Yukishiro familiarity with distilled liquid perfume (Tomoe, Enishi, *and* Oibore all have their own stashes of it somehow, despite the historical rarity of such things at the time) and Oibore's practically-unknown wife. OTOH, it's not as if RK is completely historically accurate anyway, frex the preposterousness of Tomoe having adopted Kenshin's "family" name-- not only did she outrank him, but afaik it wasn't until much later that wives started to change their names after marriage.
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no subject
on 2007-09-24 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-24 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-24 07:15 pm (UTC)"blockquote" can be used as a single one-word tag; afaik there isn't a shorter abbreviation :b
have you considered writing a book about RK-era Japan?
...er, how so? Mainly I'm just splatting down notes about a few relatively narrow subjects within the period, rather than actually synthesizing new conclusions from them; I don't think there's enough groundswell pressure from RK alone to pitch a formal project to replace the anachronisitc Shinto wedding in the second OVA with whatever the historically accurate equivalent would've been. There could be a wider angle from a larger group of kinda-historical manga, such as Samurai Deeper Kyo and Inuyasha, but then I'd actually have to learn more about those than I'd probably really want to.
no subject
on 2007-09-24 07:39 pm (UTC)Tried to resist, honest, but it just looked so good. Also, it turned into the seed of my ultimately aborted dissertation.
I just mean, wrt Meijish Japan, that over the course of time you've gone into a lot of unfamiliar areas that themselves constitute Neat Stuff (and scholarship, on your part). I could see weaving those into some sort of "snapshots of Meiji Japan" book (or coffee table book?), if you were interested in doing so. Wasn't thinking manga-related at all, actually.
no subject
on 2007-09-24 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-24 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-24 08:37 pm (UTC)Hee hee, in the mean time, Sano's probably eating out of a garbage can somewhere in the States. XD
KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 01:47 pm (UTC)Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 07:08 pm (UTC)Somewhere in Clara's diary, she reports meeting a very high-ranking nobleman in the direct family of a great daimyou or possibly even the main Tokugawa branch, and that although the noble was very nice to them, Clara could barely understand what he was saying (in the very formal keigo of the Imperial court, I suppose; she only describes it as containing a lot of words from Chinese) despite her already being reasonably fluent in the mid-level speech patterns around her (probably samurai-class; a lot of the Japanese people in their social circle had visited the US and in some cases had even attended college there). Similarly, the bio about Akihito and Michiko mentioned that when the Showa Emperor made his formal radio announcement of the surrender to the Allies, most citizens could barely comprehend the message-- aside from the general unthinkability of defeat and the very indirect wording of the statement ("we have come to an agreement with the Allies" or suchlike), he'd been raised from birth to speak in keigo.
OTOH, one thing that doesn't come across in RK about Tomoe is that an average girl from Edo would've been very obviously unrefined by Kyoto standards of speech and cuisine-- "judging from the way she cooks, she isn't from around here" is not a neutral comment in this context-- but dressed in a more fashion-conscious way. Conversely, if Kenshin's speech was fitting fairly well into refined Kyoto diction, she might've been initially fooled by that into thinking that he had a higher birth-rank than he really did, unless there were some specific undercurrents going on in their conversation at the inn about all the books in his room, and his lack of interest in them.
He does tell her later on that his father had been a farmer, but at a certain level of analysis, the whole thing boils down to not just the uncertainty about what form their "wedding" really would've taken, considering Kenshin's lack of a family registry, but also the sheer unlikelihood at the time of *any* wife adopting her husband's family name, unless she'd been brought into the husband's household from an early age and adopted as a foster-daughter.
And then there's Watsuki's consistent blooper about Kenshin's speech patterns-- afaik he never uses the correct forms of adjectives that ought to go with "gozaru"; the common morning greeting "ohayou!" is clipped down from the stock phrase "o-hayou gozaimasu", of which the equivalent in normal speech would be something like "hayai da"-- and at some point you just have to deal with RK being historical fiction rather than historical fact.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 08:28 pm (UTC)Any chance Katsura could have had a fake koseki made for Kenshin in case anyone decided to do a background check? I think Tomoe was definitely fooled. Kenshin carried himself and spoke pretty much as a samurai would.
In Tsuiokuhen, what dialect of Japanese were all the characters using? Probably just standard so a modern audience could understand, huh? No one speaks keigo anymore, right?
As for the wedding, couldn't Kenshin and Tomoe have just gone to a Shinto temple and done an ad hoc ceremony? It wouldn't even had to have been legally binding.
As for the family name, what confuses me is Watsuki refers to Tomoe as Himura Tomoe, but continues to call Kaoru Kamiya Kaoru even after she and Kenshin are married (on the name plates in the dojo). If Kaoru married Kenshin in 1879, she would have taken Kenshin's myo.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 09:18 pm (UTC)(Brief vision of Kaoru declaring that from now on, inspired by Hiko, every master of KKR after her would have to adopt the name of "Kamiya Kaoru". No wonder Yahiko (and everyone else) would've apparently ditched the dojo by the time of Seisouhen.)
Aha, I finally found the passage in Clara's diary again (July 15th, 1878): she and her mother went to visit "the Tokyo Chiji, or 'Governor,' Mr. Kusumoto" in his house, where he welcomed them in a Western-style parlor with sofas and chairs. Clara's father had been forced out of the local missionary school at the end of May, so her entire family had lost their sponsored housing and had been forced to move to a nagoya "longhouse", like the one Sano (and later Yahiko) lived in; the governor found this very distasteful and promised to do his best to intervene. Back to the keigo, though:
I don't have enough aural comprehension of Japanese to know much about the dialogue level in the first OVA, other than Kenshin not having yet adopted his later "sessha/de-gozaru" speech patterns. There's a fairly recent newspaper essay here (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070901td.html) that indicates that keigo is still used in particularly formal occasions, but Akihito (and presumably all subsequent members of the Imperial family) had a much less sequestered upbringing than had previously been the case so that (iirc) keigo is no longer his primary speech pattern in normal conversation, esp. since he married a commoner whom he met while playing tennis.
wrt Shinto weddings, iirc before the restoration, Shinto was a very decentralized folk religion that was mostly concerned with local kami, and marriage was primarily a civil affair; if there'd been any religious connection, it probably would've leaned more toward Buddhism-- the OVA does show Kenshin and Tomoe making a pilgrimage to view some carved Buddhist images (identified in Gilles Poitras' second Anime Encyclopedia, which has a ton of little details from the OVA)-- but I can't recall offhand whether there *were* any Buddhist wedding ceremonies during the Shogunate. OTOH, my brain is feeling all Swiss-cheesey today.
(Another note from Clara's diary-- no wonder the contemporary Japanese were so revolted by milk products; butter was imported all the way of Europe and (as the wombat-consort noted) would've had to've been shipped through at least two tropical zones. Cheese must've been even stinkier. Guess there must not've been many domestic dairy facilities before whatsisname, the paternal grandfather from one of the previously excerpted books, set up one for the orphanage he was in charge of.)
As a handwave/retcon for "Himura Tomoe", an alternate explanation from a straightforward blunder by Watsuki might be that Kenshin deliberately identified Tomoe in that anachronistic way because by the time he was telling the tale to Kaoru etc., the change in wives' family names had become routine, so he was tweaking the nominal details to emphasize the underlying fact that they'd been married.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 09:48 pm (UTC)Yes, thankfully. I actually can't stand the whole "sessha" "de gozaru" thing. It just drives me nuts. I suppose Kaoru could have kept Kamiya as a professional name, but I read somewhere online that women were required to take the husband's myo starting in the 1870s. Maybe Watsuki didn't know that fact.
If it were a civil affair, where would Kenshin and Tomoe have found someone to perform it since the Shogunate was still ruling and Kenshin was a warrior for the enemy? Do you think maybe they just did their own ad hoc ceremony and the marriage was more symbolic than legal?
The shrine Kenshin and Tomoe visited was the Mt. Hiei shrine and those monks that walked by them by Lake Biwa were the monks who lived at the shrine.
Shipping cheese to Japan before they had refrigeration would have been impossible. I'm surprised they actually tried.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 10:02 pm (UTC)There probably would've been an exception for men who adopted their wives' family names to ensure the continuation of the line, which is among the reasons I'm surprised at the way Kenji is presented later. You'd think that Kaoru would've been stubborn enough to make *someone* carry on her family name-- if not Kenshin and Kenji, then at least whoever succeeded to the dojo after her (Yahiko? Yuutarou?). But then there are so many things wrong about Seisouhen that it's pointless to start a list.
Canned food was being used in the American Civil War, though not always with the best results. Dunno whether people tried it with cheese. I suppose they could've also given it the pork-belly treatment and buried it in salt.
wrt the monks, iirc there's some sort of marathon traditional pilgrimage across the countryside that takes several weeks to complete on foot (these days, most people take the bus) and is indicated in some way by the specific hats that they're wearing. Danged if I can remember where I jotted down that particular note, though.
So far, I haven't been able to figure out any positive leads about how Kenshin and Tomoe would've gotten married, just negative "well, they wouldn't done this particular thing" bits and pieces. This may be why they skipped the whole issue in the OVA, though there were plenty of other things they changed as well.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-24 10:25 pm (UTC)Number one on the list of wrong things about Seisouhen: That it was made in the first place.
Ugh! Cheese is salty enough as it is. I can't imagine eating it in the manner you describe. People must not have known about salt's effects on the blood pressure back then.
What season does the pilgrimage take place in?
Kenshin and Tomoe's nuptials are confusing, aren't they? I almost can't blame the OVA people for having them just fake it. Well, Tsuiokuhen made a few changes, but not nearly as many as SSH.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-25 01:03 am (UTC)Lessee, the Religion section of Poitras' page of RK OVA annotations (http://www.koyagi.com/ACPages/rurounikenshin.html) identifies the pilgrims as kaihougyou, which The Anime Companion 2 elucidates as Tendai Buddhist monks who run around Mt. Hiei on one of three set routes which may take 100, 700, or 1000 days (the longer routes are broken up into 100-day chunks with rest periods in between). These used to be compulsory for all Tendai monks/nuns as part of their training. Wikipedia sez that since 1885, only 46 men have managed to complete the full 1000-day version, which can take seven *years* when all of the intervening periods of meditation etc. are factored in. There's even more info about kaihougyou here (http://www.lehigh.edu/~dmd1/holly.html) and about two-thirds of the way down the page at this site (http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/fudo.html), which also pins the Tendai sect's primary allegiance to Myou-Ou, which iirc is the same title that Anji chose for himself after "falling".
(My memory seems to've blurred this with various other pilgrimages I'd previously looked up for other purposes, so perhaps these guys are definitely monks after all, rather than just random civilian pilgrims-- I can't imagine anyone else having the time or voluntary inclination for this, but then I don't understand what drives people to run normal marathons either.)
The traditional outfit for these pilgrimages is white cotton clothing and a special hat, although they're only allowed to wear the hat if they have a lifetime total of at least 300 days; otherwise, they have to carry the hats in their hands (Poitras points out in the book that the guys in RK are all wearing their hats). There doesn't seem to be a set time of year for starting/stopping. Every night they hit the road around 1:30 am; the shorter runs can be over by midmorning, which must be a relief because while there are short prayer breaks as they reach certain shrines, they never sit down except "at a bench under a larger cedar (suugi), on which they sit facing the old imperial palace in Kyoto and offer a prayer for peace." (Based on this page (http://www.hieizan.or.jp/enryakuji/econt/access/harmony1.html), there really is just the one bench, not several benches that're all underneath cedars facing the palace.)
It's stuff like this that makes me despair of ever really understanding all of the cultural nuances of the RK OVA-- this one brief glimpse of guys with hats turns out to be a grueling ascetic ritual that's in honor of a god of war but dedicated to prayers for piece; presumably anyone who'd been brought up in Japan would instantly recognize that, as well as whatever nearly subliminal connotations are associated with the recurring flora (bellflowers, irises, white plum, lantern-flowers).
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-25 01:28 pm (UTC)I bet Shinya and Kenji would be at each others' throats from day one. Kenji would have to be a good four years older than Shinya, so I'm not sure how much of a rivalry there could be. But perhaps Shinya could train himself in Hiten by spying on Kenji when Kenji starts secretly training himself in defiance of his parents' prohibition.
Well, those monks were one more symbolism. They prayed to a god of war and vengeance for peace, thus illustrating the irony of Kenshin's life in the Bakumatsu.
Had to carry their hats? Wouldn't it have been easier to just not have one then? Never sat down? My back and legs ache just thinking about it.
Do you think Anji was probably a Tendai monk before he left the religion?
Hee hee, well as Firuze Khanume once said, you could get into the symbolism of both OVAs for hours and hours and still have more to discuss. So far the only symbols I've picked up are the tsubaki blossoms, the pomegranate blossoms and Jizo after Tomoe miscarried. I'm still trying to figure out the significance of those red dragon flies she mentioned...
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-26 08:30 pm (UTC)Is there some pomegranate-specific symbolism in Japan? I know it's a common symbol of fertility in the West, but I'm not sure if that carries over thataway; mostly I'd just considered that to be relatively generic symbolism of seeing the unripe fruits charred by the flame into a too-early appearance of ripening, and then being destroyed.
WRT the miscarriage, I'll have to steel myself to watch the OVA again-- I'm always emotionally wiped out afterward-- but iirc the last time I did, I tried to catch what Tomoe was saying in the original Japanese dialogue right there; instead of the (as you point out) very symbolically-suggestive English subtitle text of "We tried to hard to make them grow", I *think* she only said the single word, "Sekkaku...."
It's possible that the same intention is still behind it, considering how indirect and nuance-based Japanese semantics can be, but "sekkaku" is simply a word that indicates the unfortunate futility of a task despite the special effort that was put into it. Same sentiment, but no specific words of reference to small growing things that died too soon. The lil' drowned seedlings are still sitting there right in front of them as the obvious reference, though, so I'd still consider the miscarriage hypothesis to be viable, so to speak.
Before that theory came up, I'd generally thought of that scene as a symbolic hybrid of foreshadowing/flashback, considering Kenshin's reassurance that despite the rain, at least half of the plants should still survive. At that point in the narrative, her past connection to Kiyosato hasn't yet been confirmed, but of course the betrothed couple has ended up with one of them dead and the other one struggling to survive; by the end of the OVA, the situation has been reversed with Kenshin as the sorrowing survivor.
(Sudden thought-- rain drowning the crops = the "bloody rain" of carnage from Battousai?)
The best clue to Anji's original sect would probably be a close look at the Buddha statue that was in his temple, and checking for the closest postural matches (probably at Onmark) to the main statues at the most prominent major temples. I keep forgetting to check similar leads about the Buddha statue that's behind Tatsumi toward the end (and seems to morph into Kiyosato for Tomoe, shortly thereafter), because jeez, who can concentrate on the scenery at that point?
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-26 09:29 pm (UTC)I read the pomegranate (like just about every flower in Japan) symbolizes death. Fertility? Well, that sheds some light on Katsura's mention of spring and pomegranate blossoms.
Sekkaku: I get it. It's kind of an expression of frustration over a wasted effort. There may not have been much verbal reference, but judging from the way she was holding the seedling and crying, I'd say it's so.
And the drowned crops could definitely be symbolic of Tomoe and Kiyosato's happiness being drowned in Battousai's bloody rain. It seems like everything in that OVA is symbolic of something. I wish Hollywood could make movies like that.
Well, the Buddha behind Tatsumi had its right hand raised and looked very peaceful. That's about all I can say. Although in the manga, it seems to have both hands raised and its index fingers and thumbs bent toward each other.
Another question: The tree outside Kenshin and Tomoe's house is a persimmon tree, correct? How can it still have ripe fruit in December?
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-27 02:12 am (UTC)Here in the SF Bay Area, it's a common sight throughout late autumn and much of the winter for leafless persimmon trees to hang onto their reddish-orange fruit like holiday decorations. This is especially impressive because the original fruit orchards that used to dominate the region have long been displaced by suburban sprawl and Silicon Valley, so instead of the trees being pruned to a manageably pickable height in neat rows, most of them are feral yard trees 30-50 feet high, with a large overhead canopy of persimmon-laden branches. Most of them are left there uneaten unless the neighborhood squirrels like them; I am told that one should never, ever park one's car beneath a persimmon tree at certain times of year once the fruits finally start to drop. Occasionally a homeowner actually tries to pick all of the fruit that their ladder will reach, and then leaves them in a large, plaintive pile next to their driveway with a "Free Persimmons" sign.
But I digress. Obviously the winters here are milder than in Otsu, which makes me think that perhaps in their original setting, the persimmons freeze in place on the tree. I can't find any confirmation of this, but there are some mentions here and there that certain types of persimmon fruit don't really lose their astringent bitterness until they've experienced at least one good frost, which might explain why nobody eats the ones in their yards here unless they have lots of room in their freezers.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-27 02:41 pm (UTC)So the red dragonflies hatch in Satoyama and then fly off to the mountains only to return in the fall to mate.
Would Kenshin and Tomoe's hut have been in Satoyama? I'm surprised they didn't grow rice along with the other veggies.
Re: KenshinxTomoe
on 2007-09-27 07:17 pm (UTC)I'll def'ly have to find the original kanji for the term, though; assuming that the yama is simply "mountain", I wonder if the sato is the same one as in Kiyosato's name (in contrast to Kenshin's "red village", his means something like "bright town" iirc).
Rice is a very labor-intensive crop that can require the cooperative labor of an entire village to manage properly. The rice-paddy terraces need to be built and maintained, the rice seedlings need to be started in a small garden-type area elsewhere, and then the terraces have to be flooded/drained in a very precise sequence of events to transplant the seedlings into them, which is usually done by a long line of people stretching across the entire field. Samurai 7 had what looked like fairly traditional rice-planting methods scattered in among all the odd futuristic Kurosawa pastiche; it's been long enough since I've seen the original Seven Samurai to recall whether there's any rice-planting shown in there.