Harakiri (Seppuki 切腹)

#2 The 1960s and 70s in Japan are marked by student protests and riots. Many were radicals but I personally know a few who participated in some of the protests to varying degrees. The protests began in the late 1950s for the return of Okinawa to Japan, boiled over with the unpopular mutual security treaty between Japan and the US in 1960 and developed into riots against the Viet Nam war and for education reform at the University of Tokyo to end bureaucratic authoritarianism and meaningless lectures by disengaged professors. Underlying these protests was a deep-seated distrust of "the man", those who scheme to maintain appearances and their position of authority... but this is a conversation better left to the political scientists of whom I am not one.
　However, I can say that a number of the films of this era seem to reflect this distrust of higher authority. The second film I show is "Harakiri" (切腹 Seppuku) recipient of the Special Jury Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. The film is about two masterless but law-abiding samurai who struggle to make a living by making paper umbrellas and fans or teaching the Classics to neighborhood kids instead of wandering the country as mercenaries. They are juxtaposed against samurai who are members of major clans that live in the mansions of their Lord in the city of Edo, samurai who espouse the Way of the Warrior (Bushido), a life style created by and for the samurai elite to justify and glorify their status in society. The story begins with rumors of masterless samurai "requesting" an official place to commit ritual suicide on the grounds of the palatial residence of a major clan but ultimately receiving a position in the clan or at least some money to discourage them from making a mess--socio-politically rather than physically--of their house. Chijiwa is not of this dubious ilk but his infant son is sick and he cannot even afford a doctor so he tries his hand at this scheme to glean a few coins for his family but is surprised to find that he will be forced to fulfill his request. The suicide ritual is gruesomely cruel. Tsugumo, Chijiwa's father-in-law and also masterless, reacts: He decides to call out the hypocrisy of this particular house (and the ruling class in general), revealing that their "code" of Bushido is just a facade.

10 Films in 10 Posts

Okay, on facebook, an old blog friend, Jeri,  has tasked me to post one poster a day of a movie that influenced me for 10 days. I don't know if I can do it for 10 days, but I will try. Anyway, any film will influence me one way or another and it's hard to choose ten that have influenced me "the most." As I was pondering my choices, I got an email from Sierra Humes, a student in my class this summer who said she continues to think about some of the movies we saw more than a month after class ended. For this teacher, it is hard to think something more satisfying than the idea that students are still "influenced" by a course I taught. So I've decided to post Japanese films I screened this past summer. 
　#1: The first J-film I ever saw in a class as an undergraduate and the first I ever showed in a class I was teaching was "Seven Samurai". Yes, a bit dated and unoriginal, but it remains a classic. It is still one of the highest-rated action films on Rotten Tomato of all action films, not just J-films. And while it is fun to watch--Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo is certainly a treat--it is instructive as well. It depicts class separation of the Edo period: Young Katsushiro desperately wants to be with the peasant Shino, but she knows that she must remain with her kind. Kikuchiyo born a peasant, wants desperately to be a samurai, and in a way he does, but at what cost? (Watch the film.) It is also a film reflective of the time it was produced. Kurosawa often incorporated his own view of society, and the seven samurai--ronin, masterless samurai looking for purpose in the Edo period--may be a reflection of those soldiers wandering back home from WWII trying to find their way in a rebuilding Japan of the 1950s.

Traversing the Warrior Fantasy--Martial Culture and The Meiji Restoration

Date: Friday, March 23, 2018
Time: 2pm-4pm
Location: National Churchill Library and Center (Gelman Libaray 101a)
RSVP at: goo.gl/QK2wMp

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

Speaker: Michael Wert, Associate Professor of East Asian History, Marquette University

Abstract: The Meiji Restoration is typically analyzed in terms of international and domestic politics, intellectual trends, and changes in the commercial economy. This talk adds to that conventional narrative by exploring the role of warrior identity and the widening gap between warrior ideals and warrior realities in the nineteenth century. For samurai and elite commoners alike, martial culture in the form of swordsmanship became a vehicle for acting out the fantasy of the ideal warrior at a time when warrior authority was at its nadir. Rather than see culture as simply a site of resistance, it was the very act of over-identifying with warrior fantasy and ideology that undermined the Tokugawa regime.

Speaker Bio: Professor Michael Wert is an associate professor of East Asian history at Marquette University, with a focus on early modern and modern Japan.His first book Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan engages memory theory by asking how memory can help answer broader historical questions. Specifically, it traces the “memory landscapes” of the Meiji Restoration from 1868 to the present through the lens of those on the losing side. His second project continues to center around the Meiji Restoration, using theoretical tools to investigate the role of martial fantasy, culture, and violence in the early modern period. Professor Wert is a graduate of GW (B.A. East Asian Studies, 1997).

About Me

I'm a former assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at The George Washington University. I taught Modern and Classical Japanese Language, as well as Classical Japanese Literature.
My duties as an instructor focused on enhancing the reading abilities of advanced students. This included reading contemporary fiction that is relatively easy to comprehend: 村上春樹 Murakami Haruki, 星新一 Hoshi Shin'ichi, etc. I also encouraged students to learn bungo, or classical Japanese; besides reading the Classics such as 伊勢物語 Ise
monogatari or 方丈記 Hojoki in the original, bungo is a must for those who want to conduct research in Japanese history, political science or economics using pre-World War II sources.
My research interests continue to focus on the influence of texts and contexts on reading, particularly as they pertain to Heian court poetry.

Once upon a time at UCLA: Clockwise from back left, Hillary, Terry, Stephanie, Alan, Weiyon, Masaya, Roger Ebert, Kim, Yuka, Tsukasa, Yan, Yasuko, Ken and unidentified. (I can't remember her name. Can someone remind me?)

Brief Bio:

Born in Los Angeles, CA. Graduate of Loyola High School, East Los Angeles Community College (AA), UCLA (BA and MA), and Stanford University (PhD). First learned how to speak Japanese effectively at age 17 at Mikawaya, a Japanese confectionary in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Learned to read and write Japanese during college. Research interests include Late Heian poetics, renga linked poetry, and Japanese film and pop culture. See Curriculum Vitae for more detail.

Christmas Memory

I haven't seen my daughter in a while--has it really been more than 10 years? I wrote about her a few years ago in an earlier post and am not inclined to write about our situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there's a situation to write about anymore. But I do have memories and I thought I'd write about one that I recalled recently when talking to friends about Christmas.

Back in December of 1991, when I was in Japan for my dissertation research, my daughter, K, had serious doubts about Santa coming to visit our home. In the States, before we had gone to Japan, K spent her first three Christmases at my parents' house where there was a seven-foot Christmas tree set up in the living room near the fireplace. But in Japan, most houses--let alone condos--are small and do not have fireplaces. There is also little room for a ceiling high Douglas fir or Scotch pine, which they don't sell in Japan anyway. In our small, modest abode, we had a small artificial tree--the kind you'd see on a counter at a business office. This was the norm in most Japanese homes.

Well, you can imagine K's skepticism. She wanted a bicycle for Christmas and even wrote a letter to Santa asking for one, but was unsure about delivery of such a large present. It would be difficult enough for Santa to bring a bike down a real chimney. "How could he deliver a present to a house without a fireplace?" she'd ask.

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and admit, "Good question."

"He couldn't get through the mail slot in the door, right?" I had to agree. She even glanced at the vent over the stove. But then she looked back at me, and we shook are head in unison: "No way."

Of course, being the devious father that I was, I was simply setting up my daughter for the Christmas surprise.

I should note that K did not doubt the existence of Santa; she just couldn't figure out how Santa could get into our home. As for me, by sharing in K's skepticism, I had removed myself as a suspect in any phony Santa charade. If K did get the present she wanted, it could only have come from the real Santa, not the dad who seemed to doubt Santa could actually fit through a mail slot. So I bought a bicycle and kept it hidden in its box unassembled until...

Christmas eve: I told K to set out some milk and a cookie, "Just in case." K was still doubtful. "Do you really think he can come here?" she asked over and over. But she must have held out a sliver of hope because she set the treats with care on a table next to the mini-Christmas tree. By 9 PM, K was fast asleep, undoubtedly exhausted from all the hoping.

I assembled the shiny red bike, attached the training wheels and headlight, and placed it next to the table next to the mini-Christmas tree. I am no mechanical engineer so assembling it took me more effort than I want to admit, but I did an adequate job, accomplished after some trial and error over the course of a couple of hours. Exhausted bleary-eyed, I plopped down next to the table, reached over and took a small bite out of a cookie that had been sitting there unattended on the table for a few hours. I grimaced at its staleness and, still bleary-eyed, reached for the room-temperature glass of milk next to it. "Oh crap!" I muttered. A mouthful was enough to bring me to my senses. I'm lactose intolerant, you see, so I put down the cookie and milk, moved quickly to the kitchen sink, spit out what I could and rinsed my mouth with water. Without a thought of what I had left behind on the table, I trudged off to bed and fell asleep worrying that I'd get a stomach ache from the milk.
And sure enough I woke up with a sudden pain in my stomach. "Oh crap," I muttered again. But when I opened my eyes, I realized that the pain in my stomach was not from the milk. K was straddling my stomach, jumping up and down. With a fistful of my T-shirt in her hands, she shook me fiercely. "He came! He came!" she screamed. What are you talking about? I was so groggy, I don't remember if I said that or was just thinking it. But it didn't matter. K quickly jumped off and ran out of the bedroom still screaming. She returned in a flash.

"Dad! Dad! Come and see!" she commanded from the door.

"Who came?" I asked still trying to get my bearings.

"SANTA!" she screamed in that high-pitched voice that only a four-year-old girl can muster.
Ah, the bicycle, I smiled. When I entered the living room, she was sitting on the bike pretending to pedal it.

"Wow, did Santa really bring you this?"

"Yes!" she said beaming. "I know for sure he did."

"Oh? And how do you know that?"

"Look!" she said.

My eyes followed in the direction in which her finger was pointing and, sure enough, there was a half-filled glass of milk and a half-eaten cookie. K jumped off the bike and scooted over next to me. "Look at that," she said outlining with her fingertips a jagged semi-circle in the cookie. "You see that? Those are Santa's tooth marks."

My eyes widened as I slowly recalled the sequence of events that culminated in K's discovery. But I just smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. Who was I to question such irrefutable proof of Santa's visit?