Is He a True Friend?

　Asada Jiro, one of the most popular novelists in Japan said last week, ”It’s humiliation to have foreign armed forces in an independent, sovereign country. It’s like asking a neighbor to guard my house.” The audiences laughed.

I think the matter is more serious. The neighbor has always been looking for fights, and caused a lot of fights in the town. Such a neighbor is staying in my house with a knife. I have to doubt the reason of his staying that he is protecting my family. My house is very near to his enemy’s house, so it’s convenient for him to be in my house to watch or attack it. When a fight begins between them, I will be the first to be involved . Even now I cannot refuse his demands; money, food, and everything His knife can attack me anytime. Is he a true friend?

 

My husband found a book titled ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’brien from somewhere in the storeroom we call ‘the library’. It contains short stories about young soldiers in the Vietnam War. They abandoned everything behind and went there. They saw deaths, wounds, darkness, They killed and they were killed. They were destroyed and decayed. How wretched to be soldiers! “ Don’t kill. Don’t be killed.” is a slogan of Mommy’s Organization against wars. I’d like to add, ” Don’t be a soldier”.      

What Shall We Do With KIMONO In The Chest?

Once one of my colleagues from America said he had thought most Japanese people might wear ‘kimono’, the traditional clothes of Japan even today. Women of my mother’s generation wore kimono as their daily dresses. But I have always wore western style clothes since I was a child. Today few people wear kimono except some special people and special occasions like wedding parties or Coming –of –Age-days. Most of the people don’t even know how to wear kimono. Do you feel it’s strange that we don’t know about our own traditional costumes? I myself think so too, but putting kimono on beautifully is really difficult. It takes long to wear kimono. Moreover when we are in kimono, we can’t move or walk easily. I put kimono on once or twice a year, but as soon as I come back home I take off everything and change into a shirt and pants and breath deep.

There has been a custom of wedding since time ago. When the daughter gets married, the bride’s parents prepare a big chest-ful of kimonos for her. So, women of my generation have many kimonos that were not used or will never be used. Sometimes their parents’ and grandparents’. Women often talk about them; what should I do with them? I’ll never wear them, but I can’t throw them away…   

 Some people remake kimonos to the western style clothes these days. I tried to remake my father’s kimono into my dress today. I’m really weak in this kind of work, but anyway I got a strange shaped new dress.   

    

It's been 8 years since FUKUSHIMA 3.11

  Munesuke Yamamoto is a photo journalist whose works are mainly of the memories of wars, the people in the destroyed countries in Middle East, and so on. Fukushima nuclear disaster is also his important theme. He lives in the neighboring town to ours, and is acting in the citizen group for peace. I am happy to have him as one of our friends Recently he published a new book, which was made of his photos taken in Fukushima and poems of a poet who lives in Fukushima.

The poet made his family flee to an unpolluted town after the accident and now he lives in Fukushima alone. He began writing poems after the disaster, and doing an activity to invite the children from Fukushima to a summer camp in Sado Island, so they can play outdoor.  His poems are written in the dialect of Fukushima, which sounds so warm and sincere. They are simple but move us with sorrow, anger, irritation, and sympathy of the people of Fukushima.

Yamamoto’s photos and the poems are making great pages together, and we can understand both much more. The title of the book is “Najo sube?”, that means “ What should we do?” or “What can I do with this?” in Fukushima dialect. From the word we can see the deep anguish and dismay of the people.

Do You Want to be a 'Ninja'?

  Some years ago I happened to chat with a young man from Middle America on a plane. He said he was going to Japan to learn “ninjutsu”. He said, “Only Japanese don’t know, but ninjutu is very popular martial art all over. There is a famous training place and a great master in Chiba. Many people are learning it there.” I was surprised to hear it.  Are you serious? A freak? I have known ninjutsu only in stories and manga. 

  The word ninjutsu means ‘ the arts to do espionage secretly. In the stories I read when I was a child ‘ninja’ ,the people who did such arts appeared suddenly from nowhere, disappeared with smoke, crossed the moat unfound, disguised at once, threw small knives in chain. Later I learned a little more reasonable facts; they were the people who served the lords as spies or messengers. They usually inherit their arts as families or tribes. I have read stories in which they run so fast in the dark mountains, or creep in the houses and overhear the conversation from under the floor or on the ceiling. They could have killed someone. 

  I know there are some ninja houses, but they are mostly for children, and they can enjoy some tricks and costumes there. But ninja school for adult people? What are they learning there?

By the way judo and karate are different from ninjutu. They are real martial arts, now admitted sports, but very effective, at the same time dangerous.  

 　

 

 

Japan is Now a Class Society

  My husband’s friends, who live in Tokyo, told us a terrible story when they visited us last week.

  Their granddaughter is twelve years old and had taken entrance exams of three private junior high schools. Japan has an educational system from six to fifteen years old for free, and those public schools have no entrance exams. But there have been people who want their children study at private schools or attached schools to universities wanting privileged environment and privileged lives. The competition is  more and more heating. .   

  To enter those schools, children study at cram schools after normal school from around 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. They have classes on Saturdays and Sundays, too. During the summer and winter vacations they take intensive course. Of course the parents need to pay a lot. The popular and good cram schools (it means they send as many children to the famous and good schools or universities) charge more money. Buses and trains also cost. Only rich parents can afford them.

   Think about the life of those children; they have no time to play and talk with friends or do what they like. Where and with who do they have their dinner?.  The UN Committee about children’s rights sent a report and recommendation on the circumstances of the children of Japan (I don’t know the exact names in English). It says ‘highly competitive educational system causes developmental disorder in children’.

   Only such children go to good universities and become leaders of Japan; high ranking bureaucrats, politicians, and big company’s people. They are paid a lot and so their children can walk the same road as their parents To prove it, the parents’ income of Tokyo University students is much higher than usual  Thus Japan is now a class society..