My Kyoto Memory

I went to Kyoto with my friends last week. There are so many sights to see, but I wanted to watch most the temple of Manshu-in(曼殊院), located in the north east part of Kyoto. Its name comes from a Bodhisattva in Sanskrit, but it is not a Buddhistic temple in nature mainly because in the Edo Era many of the imperial Princes were required to live there as Buddhistic priests lest they should participate in the politics.

The prince who built this was Ryo-sho-Ho Sin-no (良尚法親王: 1622-1693), whose father, Tomohito Sin-no, was frequently invited to tea ceremonies hosted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the person in power during the second half of the Aduchi Momoyama Era, who tried to be a court noble to keep his dynasty secure. They came to have a close relation. Probably, that's why Tokugawa Ieyasu, the person in power during the Edo Era following Aduchi-Momoyama Era, should have disliked and tried to exclude the court nobles.

I got interested in Manshu-in because I saw some of the beautiful pictures of Manshu-in in some books, websites, and magazines. Then I read some of the articles about Manshu-in written by my favorite author, Siva Ryotaro, who stopped by Manshu-in to see the garden every time he visited Kyoto, and I was itching to see the garden of Mansu-in. Here are some features of the garden below, he mentioned.

• Traditionally, a garden can be looked upon as a picture or drawing in Japan. You can say the garden is the center of the temple. I mean they designed houses for the places to enjoy watching the gardens. In most cases, they describe seceneries seen in forests deep in mountains because they need them to see their survival game in the present world in perspective. As I should add, rich persons in Japan are expected to have such gardens with houses. The same is true of Manshu-in. There, the Imperial princes lived. They tried to enjoy that.
• Can you see the white sand in the picture on the left? It is the river running. This kind of drawing is called "Kare-San-sui." Can you see the corridor with handrails, running along the sand river? You're required to think the passage be part of a roofed pleasure boat with a tatami floor and shoji, on which Japanese enjoy watching good sights sometimes drinking. You have to walk the corridor, but in your imagination you are in the boat floating on the river to a place deep in the mountains, and you may find yourself in the Pure Land, if you immerse yourself in the drawing.

No Justice

Japan is going to be isolated because it is trying to get back the abductees from North Korea in the meeting of the six countries, the US, Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan. You know, North Korea was a communist country, so it tried to communize and absorb South Korea into One Korea. Then, it abducted more than 100 Japanese to use them as secret agents for North Korea. It was a terrible crime or terror. You should imagine you're suddenly kidnapped and sent to North Korea, and you are forced to live there and to be trained as a secret agent. They have never seen their parents for more than twenty five years. Don't you think it's bitter? But the other four countries, the US, Russia, China, and South Korea, have decided to ignore the evil crime. I'm very disappointed because the problem of on which side is justice is going to be handled by whether you have nuclear weapon or not. Rather, it seems to me, a Japanese, that they are going to isolate Japan as they did to Japan in the first half of the 20th century. Do you know what it means? Isolation is the first stage toward attributing complicated and unresolved matters to the country isolated.

A remark on a report by a Chinese

Today, I found and read a report written by a Chinese who were interested in Japanese Nobel Prize Winners in Literature, came to Japan to study some of them for three years and came to hate Japanese because he felt discriminated and underestimated there. Now he is back in China, leading some group protesting against Japan. In the report, he explained how he came to dislike Japanese. He attributed his hatred toward Japan not to the brainstorming imposed on the Chinese but to his encounter with Japanese scorn for Chinese during his stay in Japan. He even found the sign "No Chinese" in front of a bathhouse in Japan. According to him, more than 90 percent of those Chinese who come and stay in Japan should become anti-Japanese, even though he loved Japanese culture before coming to Japan.

The report, he says, is the first chapter of the six. The other chapters, not published yet, are designed to describe 1) Japanese are ignorant of China and Chinese, 2) The good relationship among the East Asian countries (China, Korea, and Japan) has been destroyed by Japanese ally with the Western countries, 3) Japan is preoccupied with the illusion it has been superior to China, 4) China is requiring Japan not to give China much money but to show something sincere, and 5) Japan should ally with China to create a peaceful relation among China, Korea, and Japan, and to change the power balance in the world.

I love to read all of them. I cannot wait. The five topic sentences are attractive enough to drive me make small comments on them.

Concerning 1 and 3, I cannot say he isn't right. Some of us have categorized China as a developing country, based on the western standard of "progress," and we've been forced to update our concept of China. Now many of us recognize they don't know about China as well as Korea. But I would say this is vice versa. They don't know well about us, either.

As to the sign of "No Chinese," I'm not sure exactly why, but many of us guess some conflicts got the owner to hang out the sign. I would say they should have been caused by some cultural differences in manner, especially in distinction between public and private spheres. Bathhouses are both public and private places in Japan. There, you're required to keep some rules in your minds. I mean some Chinese would violate some of the rules common to many of Japanese. The owner, I would conclude, should have tried to preclude the bad-manner reputation because s/he was afraid Japanese customers would not come to the bathhouse.

It would be hard for me to explain and define all of the deeds that may look tacky to most Japanese. You know, customs and etiquettes in many cases refuse logical explanation. Japan has been an isolated island country since its birth, so it has engendered some cultural manners that may look absurd or illogical to you. And let me tell the Chinese it would take much more time to be familiar with a culture alien to you. Some say your three year stay would make your host country look so bitter. I have studied in a graduate school in US, but I would not like the US unless I had got two kind American friends there. The impression of a host foreign country, I would say, depends to some degree upon your company there in the first stage of your conformity to the country.

Additionally, Chinese are notorious for two reasons. First, I hear that many of Chinese don't adjust themselves to foregin environments even if they have to settle there. More important, we're scared of the Chinese because we know they come to Japan to earn just money, even if they dislike and hate Japan, and then commit crimes. Of course, it may be just rumors. But if your countrymen are assaulted by some persons belonging to one single group, some of us should be so scared of the whole group as to make a rule to preclude them. Anyway, we need to talk for mutual understanding.

His assertions in 2 and 5 sound quite interesting and right, but this is a matter of ours, as was in the early stage of the 20th century. One of the Japanese intelligensia proposed then Japan should get out of the East Asia to survive in the World revolving on the Imperialism. We don't think the judgment was the most appropriate, but we don't criticize it as the most inappropriate. Let us think about it, anyway.

The statement in 4 concerns historical matters. We're wondering why some of the Chinese like to criticize Japan referring to what it did in the past in spite of their recognition that Japan was not quite cruel and evil. The late Chinese leaders, like Deng Xiaoping, Chiang Kaishek, and Mao Tse-tung, suggested that Japan should not be blamed in their writings. I cannot trust those Chinese who know they should not criticize Japan but have criticized it for their own purposes.