Every year I post a New Year’s message in which I choose a word/theme for the coming year. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So look at the picture above. It “says” more than I could ever say about the importance of doing, and the irrelevance of talking about doing.
Let 2026 be a year of doing, and may you do it well…
During this holiday season I am grateful for many things: the chance to improve my Arabic writing (abjad), helping my Japanese students prepare for their various theses, recent improvements to my jazz drumming, and so on. But we must remember that such achievements were only made possible by our cultural ancestors, of which bebop jazz drummer Kenny Clarke is mine. I love his playing deeply, and his innovations (along with those of his peer, Max Roach) are a major part of the rhythmic foundation I built for myself. So if I do a single thing that is even slightly good on the drums, it is to Kenny Clarke’s credit, not my own!
So even if you don’t know who Kenny Clarke is, think of your own “Kenny Clarke,” a mentor, teacher, coach, family member or indeed anyone who has made it possible for you to flourish to the best of your abilities. Reach out and thank them… we all would be nowhere without their generosity and insights.
Merry Christmas! メリークリスマス！عيد ميلاد مجيد!
It is with great sadness that I learned today that legendary jazz drummer Jack deJohnette died at 83 years of age on October 26th. He had a HUGE influence on me, and I listened to his music incessantly.
It is hard to describe to non-fans of jazz how incredibly important he was to drummers that played both traditional jazz, and early jazz-fusion from the 1970s on. Jack went on to become the drummer for pianist Keith Jarrett’s most celebrated trio, and his work with that group is now iconic. As far as I am concerned his playing was and always will be the gold standard for technique, musicality, and what you might call rhythmic vitality.
I saw Jarrett’s trio in Osaka, Japan at the turn of the millenium, and as much as everyone was there to see Jarrett’s genius piano work, I was 100% there for Jack. It was such a great night, and Jack had all of us drummer types in the crowd absolutely overjoyed.
Oh Jack, I am going to miss you soooo much! Rest In Peace, you magnificent jazz giant…
As we discussed in Part One, the buying and selling that takes place in an area is called economics. In Part Two we discussed home economics, our personal approach to running the micro-economy that is our apartment or house, i.e. the various supplies and demands that we have. How much money will we spend or save? What will we produce (our jobs) in order to have money? What can we afford? And what is the best use of our money at any given time?
Now, in Part Three, we will look at one particular aspect of our own little micro-economy: the fascinating and enjoyable world of investing, taking a little bit of our money and turning it into a little bit more money. For as they say, if you take care of your pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves. Thinking small is the key; thinking small, and slowly building your confidence and financial self-esteem.
I say self-esteem, because many people’s attitudes toward is rooted in (unchallenged) notions of how complex, scary, or dangerous investing is, and how they “can’t do it.” Complex, scary, and dangerous investing does exist… but only for investors who 1). haven’t done their homework, and /or 2). haven’t developed patience, and self-restraint. Can it be that easy???? Can being patient and reading a couple of easy-to-understand books make you a successful investor of pennies then dollars? It absolutely can. Plus, you won’t feel scared anymore, feel better about yourself, and feel less helpless when the news is filled with doom and gloom. You will be able to trust yourself to do the best thing for yourself, as often as you can. So let’s start from the beginning.
Veronica is a gifted artist. Her painting are minimalistic, abstract, and filled with beautiful colours. She has now gotten to the point where she makes just enough money from selling them that she can do a little more than just save the money in the bank. She is smart, but hasn’t done any research on investing just yet, so she is a beginner in that world. Thus, she sits down on her couch with a cup of coffee, and begins thinking about what she knows. She has been using a chequing account, and putting some money aside in a savings account for years, but that’s it. All those words like “stocks,“bonds,” and “assets” seem like things you have to be a math person to understand deeply. So she opens up a book on basic economics and begins reading.
To her surprise she discovers that pretty much every bank on the planet, including hers, offers more than just chequing and savings accounts. They offer special accounts that are like a chequing or savings account (where you put in or take out money, and the bank gives you a little bit of extra money – “inerest” – for using their banking system). These special accounts (aka “certificates”) are an account where you put in money, don’t touch it for a year, and then when you get it back the bank gives you much more interest than if had just put it into a regular savings or chequing account. Veronica is amazed! “What? That seems like a great deal. I could certainly find a little bit of money that I wouldn’t miss for a year, and then get more interest back that usual? What the heck is that whole thing called?”
This special certificate is known in the United States as a “Certificate of Deposit,” while in Canada the same type of product is known as a G.I.C., a “Guaranteed Investment Certificate.” Since you are loaning it to the bank for their exclusive use for a certain amount of time, it is officially an “investment” in your bank, and they legally MUST give you back all your money + some interest, no matter what. It is not only actual investing, but is the safest investment one can possibly make, super-super-super safe! So our artist Veronica, who lives in the USA, can now start thinking about taking the money she made from her two latest paintings, which she sold for $500 each, and putting it into a $1000 one-year, two-year, or maybe even 5-year Certificate of Deposit.
Since she lives only a two-minute walk away from her bank she goes there, makes an appointment with one of their financial advisors, and soon “buys” a one-year, $1000 certificate of deposit. Veronica is now an actual investor, in every sense of the word.
What an exciting thing to do! Veronica is not only investing now, she didn’t feel scared, she didn’t need any math, there is literally no way she can lose (unless the planet explodes), and her future is literally brighter because no she has a tiny bit more financial security. What a great mood she is now in! So she goes back home and continues drinking coffee, snuggling with her cat, and reading about investing.
“That whole certificate of deposit thing didn’t seem so scary. I feel like there is more that I can do and learn…,” Veronica thinks. There is much more that she is (and you and I are) easily capable of learning and doing. But the key issue right now is Veronica’s state of mind: how her emotions and knowledge are working together for her benefit.
The secret to great investing, for both beginner’s and the legends of individual investing alike, is exactly the same: key ideas and emotions coming together. This is what we need. Not knowledge or money per se, but that magical mix of emotions and ideas that we call… wisdom. You don’t have to be “smart” to be wise. If you are wise then you can do a brilliant job investing one dollar, let alone one billion dollars. Nowadays you can buy bits and pieces of various companies for so little money, you can literally be poor and be a great investor, technically. Investing is not about being rich, it is about the decisions you make. That is why there are millions of people around us who don’t look or seem rich, like janitors and such, who are often very, very rich because they used their time and money wisely.
So even though Veronica is not a billionaire, she is now 1). actually investing, and 2). using an excellent, simple, and easy-to-understand method to engage in the same kind of wise investing that billionaires use. If you are wise then you can actually avoid dealing with a lot of complexity, as a wise choice is so much better than a complex choice.
Veronica is doing great. Now how can she do even better with her little pile of money, and time? I’ll show you in Part Four.
As we discussed in Part One, the buying and selling that takes place in an area is called economics. So what happens in, let’s say, in the economy of a small town? We’ll start with an imaginary restaurant called Dan’s Burgers.
Dan’s burgers sells nothing but hamburgers. They are good quality and come in a variety of flavours and sizes. There is a kid’s burger with one patty, cheese, a little bit of ketchup, and a couple of slices of pickle. The biggest burger on the menu has four patties, lettuce, onions, ketchup, cheese, tomato, and mayonnaise. The various burgers are the “output” (i.e. the menu) of the restaurant. So how does Dan’s burgers figure out the prices of these burgers? The owner has to consider all the “inputs” that are needed to produce and sell the output: the fryer for French fries, the electricity needed to light the restaurant and run the equipment, the digital cash registers, tables in the restaurant, the employees, the building housing the restaurant, the recipes needed to produce burgers unique to Dan’s Burgers, and so on. Thus, the prices of the burgers, fries, and soda need to both pay for the inputs and bring in some profit.
Dan’s Burgers’ owner, manager, and accountant need to figure out such prices by searching for good meat wholesalers, a reliable way of shipping the meat to the store, a way of storing the meat for future use, and so on. So even Dan’s Burgers — a small town restaurant — is in itself a micro-economy involving meat delivery, electricity, cleaning product suppliers, a local or industrial bakery, and other such related businesses. But this is actually only “50%” of an economy… because Dan’s Burgers needs customers, and to try and figure out what those customers want. If Dan’s burger restaurant is to actually succeed, they need to be popular enough to sustain their business for a long time; they need repeat customers. That is where YOU come into the picture as a customer or “consumer.”
Your role in the economy, at the most basic level, as a customer of Dan’s Burgers for example, is to buy things you like. This is based on your tastes and the amount of money you feel you can spend on things like burgers. People really like Dan’s “Osaka Burger,” which includes wasabi and soy sauce. So clearly the owner and manager want to captialize on that fact: their menu, advertising, and decision-making might revolve around the Osaka Burger like how McDonald’s has built much of their business around the fame and flavour of the Big Mac.
Your “relationship” with Dan’s Burger and/or its menu is an example of your overall relationship with your local economy. You are deciding on 1). how to spend your time, 2). how much money you will spend or save, and 3). what you will produce (your job) in order to have money, e.g. a janitor “produces” clean buildings, while a doctor “produces” healthy people.
So now that you understand that an economy is the flow of money and things in a specific area, and that businesses have inputs to produce various outputs, we can move on to the next important aspect of understanding economics: how your home, salary, and bank account(s) fit together as a little micro-economy that interacts with the greater economic system.
In American and Canadian high schools classes called “Home Economics” are offered, which each students how to do things like cook, sew, and other activities that will help students run an efficient, cost-effective home in the future. So let’s look at an example:
A young man named Steve is starting his first year at a local university studying jazz saxophone, and has just moved into his first apartment. He is excited but a little nervous, as he has never done much cooking, cleaning, or budgetting. All the lessons he could have learned in a Home-Ec class are going to have to be learned on his own. Thankfully, he can look up a ton of information on the Internet, so it has never been so easy for a young person to teach themselves such things. But Steve will also have organize his life, time, and knowledge, meaning he is going to have to actually get out there and do what he has learned (so he’d better have a plan).
This is where imagining himself to be a self-contained “economy” is a useful framework around which to organise his time, money, and which activities he will engage in. Using the basics we learned in Part One, Steve must now work out what his supplies are (what he has), what demands he has (his needs), and how he will organise his time in maintaining a good balance between his supplies and demands. Clothing, money, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, laundry soap, food, paying tuition, budgetting, and other such things will be the level of economic activity going on in his apartment.
Just like Dan’s Burgers, now Steve’s life has inputs and outputs, and if Steve considered his lifestyle is wise economic terms, he will be able to cultivate an excellent economic base for his life… and will then be able to do things like successfully save and invest money, even if it is a small amount.
(Note: at this point many people in the discussion of economics begin to get nervous, as investing can often seem like an excessively complex world where you have to be rich, super smart, or be extremely good at math just to begin. That is what I thought. I was, and always will be, terrible at math. I was super-intimidated by all the language around the stock market, and the graphs and such. It looked so science-y and scary. Not exactly my field of comfort, like art or music. But investing and the stock markert are so fascinating, and so much fun to think about! That is why the greatest investor of all time Warren Buffett is not interested in the billions or dollars he is worth. Rather, he loves the act of investing and thinking about the stock market so much that if he lost all his money he would happily start all over again with the same amount of passion for making economic choices).
So if you think the world of investing is not for you…well that is so not true that — when you read Part Three of this series — I think you will expereince three things:
See you soon!
I often get asked about what my hobbies are… and I always tell people that my main hobby is economics, i.e. investing. And almost always people respond by talking about how complex or confusing economic theory is, or how the stock market requires you to be a math genius. Both are so completely not true that it is practically a miracle when people hear how incredibly easy it is to understand economics and the stock market. How could such things be “easy,” or something that even a child could understand?
Well, in the next few blog posts I am going to explain general economics and the stock market, I am going to also reveal to you how you can be the right kind of person to successfully engage with finance and such. Notice that I have worded this in such a way that I start with a person’s personality and character first and foremost… for if you have the right attitude(s) towards a subject you will be successful, even if you are not the most educated. So let’s begin.
What are economics?
“Economics” is just about how money goes around. What does money do? It makes sure that products go around too. That’s it. You now know enough to be an economist. People need things like food. These are things that people “demand.” Thus, the people that make things like food “supply” the things people need. That is everything you need to know about how an economy works. How money works to get supplies, and fulfill demands, are economic practices. To put it in a little more sophisticated way, how are things made, distributed, and consumed? That is the basis of economics.
We have many levels in an economy. At the very foundation are the resources all around us: air, water, dirt, rocks, and trees. These things can be turned into what we call raw materials: wood gets turned into shapes (lumber) or paper, dirt is separated from metals like gold, and so on. These then get sent to buildings like factories to get turned into more useful things like desks, batteries, books, wheat into flour, and so on. Then, such things get sent to stores that sell them: bread, vegetables, cars, and so much more. Other things are made to organise all the things that happen in stores, like computer systems, forklifts, and software. Then there are people who work at universities, government, and banks to organise national systems, policies and education, which will (hopefully) improve how we think about and engage in economic behaviour. You now know how the basic economy of your country works.
“Business,” then, as such, is the buying and selling that goes on in a city, state, province, and/or country. And when you actually buy a little little part of a particular business, that is called investing.
It is important to meditate upon this easy to understand structure, as economic decisions that become too complex can often forget to see the obvious… that we live in a system that goes from the very ground we walk on, to complex computer systems, meaning that too much focus on complexity is not preferable to a basic understanding of the whole.
Buying and selling, things and people… this is the foundation of economics.
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusayama is world famous for her installations: large rooms filled to the brim with polka-dotted objects, and mirrors, etc. She is possibly the most famous abstract artist to come out of Japan, and deserves incredible credit for her artistic achievements… since she has been voluntarily institutionalized for mental illness since the late 1970s.
Still an active artist at 95 years old, her mental illness creates a very unique, phobia-based perspective on the world around her and, according to her, she fights pain, anxiety, and fear every day through the creation of art (the path that she feels makes living possible).
A couple of years ago I was able to visit a Yayoi Kusayama installation (Love Is Calling) at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and it was a transformative experience. A fully-mirrored room filled with polka-dot covered spires, this stunning Kusayama piece really made an incredible visual impact, and I still meditate upon the experience to this day.
Kusayama has made an incredible career out of a rather severe set of phobias and possible limitations to her Life. Yet she perseveres, and has become something amazing.
What can we learn from her story?
1). Yayoi Kusayama approaches her fears, not recedes from them.
2). Yayoi Kusayama embraces her situation and is open about it.
So how can we do the same, follow Yayoi Kusayama’s sterling example in Life?
A person can indeed stand up in Life (or even TO Life) and embrace who they are, and if Yayoi Kusayama can do it, so can we.
As you all know I am a huge fan of both science fiction, and creating quizzes based on interesting early to mid-twentieth century franchises. Thus, I bring to you yet another such quiz, this time based on the crime serial The Green Hornet, featuring Britt Reid — a wealthy young publisher by day who fights crime by night as a vigilante. He is known as The Green Hornet, after his green fedora, overcoat, gloves, and mask. He is accompanied by his assistant (and daytime valet) Kato.
After the success of the 1930s radio series, The Green Hornet franchise was turned into a set of movie serials between 1940 – 1942. It is these two sets of serials — The Green Hornet (1940), and The Green Hornet Strikes Again (1941) — that I will be basing my quiz on.
THE GREEN HORNET (1940)
1). What newspaper does Britt Reid publish? The Daily Sentinel.
2). What is the name of the Green Hornet’s car? “The Black Beauty.” What model is it? A 1937 Lincoln Zephyr with added techology such as bullet-proofing, a silent engine mode, and greatly increased speed due to a special fuel created by Kato.
3). What fact helps Reid infiltrate the criminal underworld? Both the pulic and the police think he is a wanted criminal.
4). In both series what is the main plot? In each individual serial The Green Hornet and Kato smash a criminal racket tied to a single, series-spanning crime syndicate (which itself is defeated in the final episode).
5). Why is the character named The “Green” Hornet? Because iridescent green hornets are considered most likely to sting. What is his theme music? “Flight of The Bumble-Bee”
6). Actor Keye Luke (Kato) made history by becoming what? The first ever Chinese-American contract player signed by the RKO, Universal Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer movie studios.
7). What is The Green Hornet’s weapon of choice? A gun that fires a non-lethal sleeping gas.
8). In the 1940 Green Hornet series premiere (“The Tunnel of Terror”) what nationality is Kato revealed to be? Korean.
9). In “The Thundering Terror” what special effects feature predates (by 37 years) one made legendary by Star Wars (A New Hope)? The scrolling prologue that disappears into the “distance.”
10). In “Flying Coffins” what is the racket the Green Hornet is trying to break up? An criminally-run aviation school insurance racket. How long does Kato’s special “karate chop” paralyze a person for? 30 minutes.
11). What feature visually sets the Black Beauty apart from other 1937 Lincoln Zephyrs? White lightning bolts over the fender skirts.
12). Where is the Green Hornet’s secret entrance to his garage located? Behind a chest of drawers.
13). In “The Time Bomb” as in all other episodes, what happens when the Black Beauty travels fast? It makes a hornet-like buzzing noise. What musical instrument was used to make the noise? A theremin.
14). How does the mobster try to kill Britt Reid at the junk yard? By dropping an old motorcycle on him.
15). In “Highways of Peril” what fictitious bus line is a reference to real-life Greyhound Bus lines? “Whippet” Bus Lines (whippets being smaller cousins of the real-life greyhound).
16). In “Bridge of Disaster” the trucking business is named the Acme Trucking Company. What does “acme” mean? The point at which something is at its most successful, or perfect.
17). In “Dead or Alive” what racket is being run on the laundromat? A protection racket.
18). What is the Black Beauty’s licence plate? 9W-90-68.
19). In “Disaster Rides the Rails” what is the episode’s cliffhanger? Green Hornet may have died in a train crash.
20). In “Panic At The Zoo” what animal breaks free at the docks? A tiger. What starts the fire at the carnival? An overturned popcorn stand.
21). In “Doom of The Underworld” what does the “package of evidence” turn out to be? A bomb. How does the Green Hornet defeat the syndicate? By getting all the henchman to turn on each other through a fake message from the boss.
THE GREEN HORNET STRIKES AGAIN (1941)
1). In the Green Hornet Strikes Again (1941) which actor has replaced Gordon Jones as The Green Hornet? Fellow American actor Warren Hull.
1.5). In the series premiere episode what movie was the source for footage of the ship burning? Sea Raiders (1941)
2). In the episode “The Plunge of Peril,” what exactly is the Plunge of Peril? The Green Hornet and a criminal plunge over a moveable bridge into a river.
3). In “The Avenging Heavens,” what real-world issue is the phrase “the current situation” referring to? World War 2 (and the manufacturing of ammunition).
4). In “A Night of Terror” what saves the Green Hornet from a gunman at the lodge? A bolt of lightning.
5). In “Shattering Doom” what crime does The Daily Sentinel suspect The Green Hornet of? Heading a sabotage attempt on a power plant.
6). In “The Fatal Flash” what is the Green Hornet investigating? A steel mill he discovers to contain a lab working on a secret anti-aircraft bomb.
7). In “Death in The Clouds” how does Kato describe scientists? As living entirely in a world of abstract thoughts. What editing mistake occurs in the episode? The landing bi-plane is footage of a totally different bi-plane a moment later on the ground. What second mistake occurs moments later? The shell loaded into the anti-aircraft gun is clearly too big to travel through the barrel.
8). In “Human Targets” and indeed all other episodes, what accent did actor Keye Luke model Kato’s accent on? The Japanese accent. Apart from being the Green Hornet’s crime-fighting partner, what key role does Kato play as Britt Reid/Green Hornet’s valet? He is responsible for Reid’s clothes and appearance.
9). In “The Tragic Crash” what riotous act do the gangsters commit against The Daily Sentinel? They overturn one of its delivery trucks.
10). In “Blazing Fury” how much were The Daily Sentinel staff’s oil shares initially worth? $50. How much are they estimated to be worth? $500 – 1000.
11). In “Crashing Barriers” what fact is revealed for the first time in either Green Hornet series? Kato stores the Green Hornet disguise in the chest of drawers hiding the secret passageway.
In this fourth posting about Japanese culture we will do a very brief overview of the amazing literature produced by Japanese writers over the years.
It is not going to be very comprehensive, as there are so many truly vital works that I could never get around to all of them (without starting a whole new series on Japanese literature alone). I am though going to pick a few prime examples, which are not meant to “summarize” Japanese literature in any way imaginable. I am just choosing works I think you may find interesting.
For example, as a creative artist and ethnomusicologist I am interested in improvisation and/or free-form creativity in China, South Korea, and Japan. So the Japanese literature I like comes from this particular interest. Though it is not improvisation per se, the literary works known as zuihitsu are fascinating to me. Literally “following the brush”, a zuihitsu is a kind of very artistic personal journal, filled with musings, essays, stories, and so on, publishable as a literary work. The first of these recognised in Japan was The Pillow Book, written by court lady Sei Shonagon between the 10th and 11th century. Pillow books were a diary form of zuihitsu made famous by Shonagon herself. Hers was also filled with a lot of creatively written court gossip, so it can be (and often is) classified as the world’s first novel. It is very useful as a subjective ethnography of court life in Japan’s Heian era, as well as highly entertaining, as Shonagon had a lively personality and enthusiastically participated in the goings-on of court life.
The most famous zuihitsu is though without a doubt the Tsurezuregusa (“Essays in Idleness”) by the medieval Zen monk Kenko, written during the 13th and 14th centuries. Kenko too was a lively character, though his zuihitsu is more literary in nature. Essays in Idleness is the most studied zuihitsu in the world, thanks to Kenko’s style and general Zen exegesis. As Zen Buddhism itself contains thousands of scriptures and commentaries, Kenko’s informal style provides interesting and approachable exegetical perspectives to more formal sermons and commentaries.
One such set of complex Buddhist sermon-essays is the Shobogenzo (“The Treasury of the True Eye of The Law”) by Soto Zen Buddhist founder Dogen. The writing can be both complex and brilliantly plain within the same sermon, and Dogen is as famous for his writing style as his theology.
For example, in the sermon entitled “The Issue At Hand” (aka the Genjokoan) Dogen states that “weeds only grow when we dislike them”, referring to the fact that an enlightened Buddha has no connection to thoughts, a fairly enlightened Buddhist “has” one thought, and the struggling student has a second thought then a third, fourth, and so on because they don’t want any of these thoughts at all and struggles against them. Enlightenment is also like the moon reflected in water: it does not get wet. It is huge but it can fit onto a dewdrop. It does not even break the water’s surface but rests lightly upon it. Followers of Dogen could in a sense “hear” such things through his spoken sermons, while literate monks could “hear them through their eyes” in the more complex textual exegesis that followed. So as much as the Shobogenzo can become semi-impenetrable at times, Dogen’s style does allow opportunities to get to the core of his theology.
Note: one can simply look into a meditation hall and instantly tell if they are witnessing a meditation session by Soto or Rinzai Zen Buddhists, as Soto meditators face “outwards” (Jap: “soto” – outside) towards the wall, and Rinzai meditators face inwards towards the center of the room.
A few hundred years after Dogen, the renowned masterless samurai Musashi Miyamoto would write The Book of Five Spheres (of Study), aka The Book of Five Rings, arguably the most famous international read martial arts manual outside of the Chinese martial classic The Art of War. The classic manual on (double) sword fighting, The Book of Five Rings concerns itself with two basic principles when considering warfare: a). keeping inwardly calm during violent chaos, and b). being cognizant of the possibility of violent chaos when things are calm and ordered. Miyamoto’s techniques and concepts were built on this foundation, thus he became the warrior par excellence in his time: combining superior technique with stoic unflappability during duels… which were always to the death. He lays down nine fundamental rules for study and training both before and after the student picks up his swords and during the actual training:
1). Think of what is right and true.
2). Practice and cultivate the science of sword technique; knowing one’s tools, their capabilities, proper moments of utilization, advantageous angles and heights for attack, and so on.
3). Become acquainted with the arts.
4). Know the crafts.
5). Understand the harm and benefit in everything.
6). Learn to see everything accurately.
7). Become aware of what is not obvious.
8). Be careful, especially in small matters.
9). Do not do anything useless.
These lead the student to understand Miyamoto’s overall goal, to “see the immediate in a broad context.” To master these principles was to literally remain alive, so it was beyond important to consider them carefully. (Note: Miyamoto’s status as a legendary sword fighter is such that he is considered by some to be a kind of divine figure among swordsmen, a Kensai [“sword-saint”]).
There is actually another martial manual lesser known outside of Japan, though it is a classic within the country: Yagyu Munenori’s The Book of Family Traditions on the Art of War. Munenori, a 17th-18th century samurai, became the martial arts instructor to the Tokugawa Shogunate, once killing seven men who ambushed one of the family members he was guarding. As word of Munenori’s skill spread, more and more members of the Tokugawa Family joined his “New Shadow” School of fighting, further cementing his reputation amongst the military elites. Even though he was eventually appointed head of the Secret Service, he came to realize (like Miyamoto) that he was only then starting to understand the deeper meaning of martial behaviour as he entered his 50s. Unlike Miyamoto though, Munenori’s work was admittedly Zen influenced, and his style was summarized by three principles: the use of violence to end violence (“Killing Sword”), foreseeing and forestalling problems (“Life-Giving Sword”), and making full use of the environment around you (“No Sword”). Munenori was interested in Zen theology but by his own admission not particularly educated in Zen or even a good Buddhist. Indeed, Buddhists had been trying to educate and expand the consciousness of samurai centuries before Munenori and Miyamoto, but had been kept busy trying to fix all the problems the samurai created, including taking care of the abandoned wives and children left behind by the endless fighting and ritual suicides.
Moving into the post-samurai, modern era we can find such aesthetic works as Junichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, a long 1933 essay discussing the Japanese sense of beauty that he felt was being lost with the advent of electric lighting. Lamps and candles (mixed with particular styles of architecture) helped create the lovely, “velvet” shadows that permeated past Japanese culture, creating the potent visual “silences” (ma) that made decidedly Japanese spaces beautiful. Electric light, to Tanizaki, was garish, and thus garish Western technology was practically invading Japan without resistance. For example, the elegant geishas of yore had to lean forward in an elegant way to pour tea, to actually see the tea cup, such was the low lighting. Their grace and beauty was literally part and parcel of the soft, shadowy room in which they entertained. To fill the room with electric light was to make the geisha graceless, to de-grace her with a simple flick of a switch. Tanizaki acknowledged that, overall, electric light was indeed progress, but mourned the loss of a society built on shadows. The delicate interplay of shadow and light must be the very essence of our daily lives, not a part of it, or else we might as well just give up on a beautiful life entirely.
Another famous book on the aesthetics of Japanese culture is Souestsu Yanagi’s The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight Into Beauty. In it Yanagi argues for the primacy and essential beauty of folk crafts as humble, Zen-influenced fine arts of their own… as worthy of praise as Japan’s great paintings, sculptures, and architectural works (temples, and so on). Yanagi argues that the unsigned, humble pots, weavings, and such of farmers and artisans manifest the same core truths found in Japanese philosophy, art, and religion, thus we must reassess our view of them as “lesser,” no matter what country and anonymous creators they come from. This movement was also influenced by the move by some in Japanese society to reclaim traditional arts and crafts from the seeming deleterious actions of modernization sweeping the country, as previously referred to by Tanizaki.
Some 21st century scholars though question whether Yanagi’s views on the universality and humility of folk crafts was influenced by — or had an influence on — the Japanese colonialism of the era, as Japan moved in culturally genocidal ways in occupied Korea: only Japanese language and writing was allowed, Koreans had to change their names to Japanese names, and so on, acts of cultural erasure. Plus, it is a fact that “Japanese” Satsuma ware was created by captured Korean potters after the 16th century Imjin Wars, so the idea that a colonial Japanese is writing about the “beauty” of Korean anonymity raises possible geo-political or even moral questions.
Up to now I have been writing about a variety of non-fiction works, so let’s take a look at Japan’s most controversial author, Yukio Mishima, and his novel The Temple of The Golden Pavilion (also known as Kinkakuji. Kinkakuji is about real-life events surrounding the gold-leaf covered Kinkaku Temple in Kyoto, which was burnt down by a schizophrenic monk in 1950. He thought it was so divinely beautiful no one in this world deserved to gaze upon it, so he destroyed it. The monk died of tuberculosis a few years later, leading Mishima to write a fictionalized novel about what the monk may have been thinking and doing while planning the attack. The novel became a worldwide best seller, though not without controversy within Japan itself. Mishima was a controversial figure in his time, as he admitted in one of his works to discovering that he was homosexual through a youthful masturbation session looking at the 16th century Giovanni Bazzi painting of the martyr St. Sebastian (semi-nude, being shot full of arrows). Bazzi himself was given the nickname Il Sodoma, “The Sodomite” after someone commented on his penchant for bearded youths. Bazzi found the name amusing and even wrote songs about it.
Mishima wrote other (brilliant) works, but soon became more interested in politics and weightlifting than writing. He even started his own private army of devotees, and in 1970 he and a few of his most loyal followers stormed a military building in Tokyo. He then gave a political speech on a balcony to a large group of curious soldiers gathered below, even encouraging them to overturn the Japanese Constitution. Getting a rather unenthusiastic response he went back inside, and promptly committed suicide through hara-kiri — “stomach cutting” — self-disembowelment using a small sword.
Note: the term hara-kiri is often mispronounced as “hairy-carry” in English. The proper Japanese and English pronunciation is: ha-rah-kee-ree, with no rising or falling accents. “R” in Japanese is pronounced like something between an R and an L, as Japanese has neither letter.
Anyways, this is a very basic look at a few of the classic literary works from Japan. It should give you a little taste of what is out there should you want to learn more about Japanese literature in all its glory.
So, to summarize these last four blog posts: Japanese culture begins with the most basic cultural phenomenon, Japanese language; how the idea of Japan and its culture is shared between individuals and/or promulgated in society. To speak Japanese is to already be in culture and, in a sense, “coloured” by its inherent traits. Part of that culture-speak is the mythology of the nation’s origin(s) and relationship with the spirit world, including the imported religion of Zen Buddhism, out of which the Japanese have fashioned internationally renowned forms of music, theater, and art (based on notions of impermanence, silence, space, and austerity). But this does not mean we see little variety in how their culture manifests. From jaunty hair-snipping demons to The Pillow Book to the nohkan flute, Japanese people have been revealing many anthropological insights about our shared humanity through their own unique national phenomena.
Japan is super fascinating and endlessly interesting. Hopefully this taste of mythology, language, music, art, martial arts, and literature has whetted your appetite a little for that grand feast that is Japanese culture.
If we are going to discuss Japanese religion — as we did in Part Two) — we must also take a look at Zen Buddhism and its huge impact on Japanese culture.
Buddhism, a religion beginning in India, began in a philosophical form, Theravadan Buddhism). It later branched into its Mahayana (religious) and Vajrayana (mystical) forms, with the Mahayana (the “Great Vehicle”) Buddhists pejoratively referring to the original Thervadan form as Hinayana, the “Lesser Vehicle.”
A particular Mahayana form focusing on meditation (dhyana) arrived in China where it evolved into “Ch’an” Buddhism, and thus spread to the Korean Peninsula becoming known as “Son” Buddhism. It finally came to Japan and became known to the world as Zen, the Japanese method of pronouncing the name of this new religion. Other forms of Buddhist thought had arrived and developed in Japan previously in the Nara Era, starting in the 6th century C.E., but Zen as we know it in Japan today was a later (13th century) import. But it was highly intellectual, and mostly suited to the tastes of the ruling or upper classes. It focused on what was immaterial and fleeting, which set the stage for the great themes and subjects of traditional Japanese music, art and poetry.
As the nation of Japan is limited in space and resources and prone to disastrous earthquakes and tsunamis (Jap: “harbour waves”), there is no word that they understand better than impermanence: the great ephemerality of things. Thus Zen and its focus on the impermanence and/or the spiritual non-reality of materials naturally fit Japanese consciousness through the arts. This feeling took many forms as Japan modernized and moved into both the 20th and 21st centuries, but it still lays directly under the surface of modernity to such a degree that I would confidently argue Zen impermanence and its various descriptions remains relevant.
For example, a key phrase to understanding Japanese philosophy and creativity is mono-no aware, the “impermanent feeling of things”: aspects of nature and art that increases sensitivity to ephemerality in an individual. One way this manifests in material culture is the patina of age on an object. An old calligraphy brush is prized for its tattered bristles, as it will mark the page in such a way as to contain hihaku: blank, parallel gaps in its brushstrokes created by its asymmetries, which are thus mentally “filled in” by one’s psychological anticipation of closure. It is only natural for things to decay and fall apart, so this brush is displaying mono-no-aware by both looking and “acting” naturally decrepit. So when you see Japanese calligraphy, the irregularities and asymmetries in the strokes are highly prized if they are felt to contain the right kind of mono-no-aware.
A huge part of mono-no-aware is how filled with “ma” something is, a sense of “absolute timing (or space)”, a blank section felt to be “pregnant” with creative potential. If you see a Japanese abstract painting with a single black calligraphy stroke down the middle, the blank parts are said to be filled with ma if it is considered a great painting. The blank parts have no paint or ink, but they seem to have a feeling that they are about to “burst forth”; they brim with an invisible creative feeling like they are about to contain something other than space. Ma is essentially space or silence that makes the visible or audible more profound. I like to use the example of a milkshake. Without the air mixed in, milkshake mix is a syrupy sludge; an overly-sweet ooze. But when you froth it all up with a mixer you get a delicious milkshake, the air is what makes it great. Air is something (oxygen), but we can’t see it. Ma is something but we can’t see or hear it, but it seems to “oxygenate” what it infuses. There is nothing more impermanent than “a nothing” that doesn’t exist yet still has power over you for the brief moments you come into contact with it.
In the flute (nohkan) music used in traditional Noh theater (which I studied), little measured moments of ma are called ura-biyoushi: the silences in the music that are considered alluded to by the notes themselves! The spaces measure the notes: an eighth note’s worth of sound between two eighth notes worth of silence; not the other way around. Pretty much all cultures on the planet considered silence to be a part of marking rhythm, yet in nohkan study, notes mark how much ma is potentially occurring. Noh “music” is a sound-rich medium, made only by two drums and a flute, yet it has amazing power to move. There aren’t really even fixed notes either. Nohkan music is notated by finger positions, not notes on a staff, so each pitch can be varied if one’s fingers are shifted off the holes by a millimeter or two. The sheet music itself is a series of letters indicating fingers, rather than notes on music paper; in a sense you read the music like a recipe. Plus, the nohkan itself is actually a ryuteki flute from gagaku music, altered in such a way that the notes aren’t pitched evenly (C, D, E, etc.). It could go from a mostly flat C to D half sharp to a slightly sharp E, and so on. So with that already in place, plus the variations in possible finger position, the nohkan isn’t a flute in the traditional sense; more of a flute shaped, sound-making tube!
Note: at one particular jazz quartet gig fo example I played a nohkan through a harmonizer pedal, creating a kind of weird, electric banshee howling effect. Many audience members came up to me afterwards and said they got chills down their spine, like there was a ghost in the room. You can kind of do that without the pedal, but it is fun to watch people squirm in delight thanks to the power of digitally enhanced Zen aesthetics!
The timing of rhythm on the drums too is a matter of instinct rather than a metronomic measurement; the drummers move from sound to sound, and pattern to pattern, when the psychological needs of the play demand it (the music includes specific shouts as well as part of the drumming). Noh music is thus a fascinating kind of “strictly-yet-freely ‘composed’ improvisation”, to put it into rather insufficient terms. And the artists of greatest renown have a rare flowering of artistic instinct (“hana”), a profound naturalness that can’t be studied. It is interesting that silence is not only a profound part of Zen-inspired music, but a way of describing the aesthetics of a beautiful painting as well. If a work contains profound visual silence (ma) then it is oto-nashi — “without sound” (soundless) — containing the aesthetic silence of Beauty itself.
Those who can exemplify genius levels of ma, feelings of mono-no-aware, and so on over the course of a career are given very rare and special recognition in Japan. They are awarded the title of Ningen Kokuhou – “Living National Treasure”. They come to embody an art form, and thus are in essence its living soul. The three categories of Ningen Kokuhou are Kakko Nintei: Individual Certification of High Mastery, Sougou Nintei: Collective Certification of two or more who attain mastery as a group, and Hoji Dantai Nintei: Preservation Certification for a large group or organization that have mastered a craft in which individuality is not primary. In theory it is possible for someone to gain this kind of recognition in modern art and so on, but it is usually awarded to someone keeping some kind of traditional art alive.
So to summarize the last three posts… Japanese culture begins with the most basic cultural phenomenon, Japanese language, how the idea of Japan and its culture is shared between individuals and/or promulgated in society. To speak Japanese is to already be in culture and coloured by its inherent traits. Part of that culture-speak is the mythology of the nation’s origin(s) and relationship with the spirit world, including the imported religion of Zen Buddhism, out of which the Japanese have fashioned internationally renowned forms of music, theater, and art based on the sense of impermanence, silence, space, and austere material decay.
Dr. Daniel Schnee 