Man or Rabbit?

When I came back from my break today, the four women seemed to be conferring about something. They spoke quietly, as though discussing something private. They stopped when I put my books down on the table.

“What’s up?” I asked, idiomatically. Nervous silence. Meanwhile, I was thinking, Uh-oh, what did I do?

“A few days ago, “began the shiest one, “I saw…”

What? I thought. I’ve been sober for weeks! What did you see?!

“Yes…?” I said.

“Th-the Man in the Moon!” she blurted out. Then added, “I’m sorry.”

It eventually all made sense. A few weeks ago, to illustrate some point, I drew a picture on the white board, finishing with a moon overhead, with a face. Someone asked what it was – to me it was self-evident, but then I remembered that nobody in Japan knows about the Man in the Moon. It’s a totally Western thing, by no means universal. I explained, and they listened politely, as you do in Japan when a supposed authority is saying something really stupid but not very important. Then we continued the lesson. In the meantime, I forgot all about the little picture of the moon.

Well, as it turned out, one person had not. There was a full moon a few days ago, and as the shy girl was walking home that evening, she found herself waiting for a particularly long light at an intersection. She looked up at the moon, and remembering what I’d said, tried to see the man’s face. And, after about five minutes, she succeeded (the light had changed several times by then). To her, it was as amazing as finally seeing both images in one of those young-girl-old-woman illusion pictures. I was touched – partly because someone actually remembered one of my little asides (Trivial Pursuit is the only contact sport I’m good at), but mostly just to see that rarest of things, c.2007: someone with a genuine, innocent sense of wonder. We’re not all jaded yet, I thought. Good for you.

Mind you, I was pretty happy myself the first time I was able to see what the Japanese (and in a slight variant, the Chinese and Koreans) see when they look up at the moon. And that is…? A rabbit pounding mochi of course.  Of course.

“Is it just me, or is there an echo in here?”

Bar in the basement of the Lucias Building, Abeno (near Tennoji Station).

Osaka Architecture – a(nother) Letter

A(nother) Esteemed Correspondent wrote to say, among other things: “I’m sorry to hear that much of Tennoji is gone now […]”

I thought about that and clarified a bit.

“That was a lazy description on my part– most of what was destroyed was actually the area on the Kintetsu Department Store (Abenobashi) side, behind Kintetsu and the Apollo Building, but everybody calls the whole areaTennoji. Tennoji proper, around JR Tennoji station, is still around, seedy as ever, and once you’re off the main street (the Tanimachi-suji) there are little dark old shopping arcades selling stuff no one under 80 would eat. Happily, there is no shortage of 80-year-olds in this town. Abeno’s back alleys have pretty much all been torn down (as well as the charming little residential neighbourhood along the Abenosuji, where the chinchin densha runs). I used to work around there and I miss those old izakayas (one of which was found by walking straight behind the Apollo Building and turning”left at the drag queen”, who was always at the corner, drumming up business for her bar).

Hirano around JR station is pretty much unchanged, but you wouldn’t know much around the subway station anymore [Correspondent lived there in the early 90s]. The old neighbourhoods around the temple are still intact (because they’re off the main drag), and I sometimes stroll around there in the autumn (in fact, I’m overdue for a visit). I was pleasantly surprised, while walking from that Swedish film festival in Nakazaki-cho to Umeda, that there are still a few clumps of those old blackened-wood Osaka houses of yore. The ones in Umeda and Chayamachi are long-gone and yet another bankrupt shopping mall has replaced them. The maddening thing is that the old concrete monstrosities for which Osaka is justly famed are kept up forever while anything containing the faintest whiff of character is demolished. Go figure.”

Osaka Architecture – a Letter

An Esteemed Correspondent wrote to me yesterday asking about Osaka in the 30s (he’s writing a book and might visit the city to do research). Among other things, he wondered what was remaining architecturally from those days:

Esteemed Correspondent: […] I’m interested in what parts of the city survive from that period (I know the 1945 raids destroyed about 2/3) […]

I replied as best I could, and realized that I had written a blog entry.

Nagaijin: Well, [Esteemed Correspondent],

I’d be hard-pressed to find you anyone who could tell you about Japan in the 30s. You’ve already read about Mayor [Hajime] Seki [Osaka’s progressive mayor of the 1930s] so that pretty much exhausts my knowledge. By the way, on the day you wrote this, voters in Osaka were giving the present Mayor Seki –possibly a descendant of the original [his grandson, I now know]– the boot in the local elections. He was pretty incompetent, even by Osaka’s political standards. To understand how Osaka City government works, see Kurosawa’s brilliant film Ikiru (1952).

A few buildings survive from [the 30s]. Sadly, what the B-52s B-29s missed in the War, Seki’s successors soon made quick work of. A building I believe to be Old City Hall the old Bank of Japan building still stands, in full view of the boring 80s New City Hall, and a fine old exhibition hall has recently been restored in Nakanoshima. The beautiful facade of the Shochiku-za theatre in Dotombori was surprisingly preserved, after a long fight to have it torn down and something hideous put up, in the 90s. Perhaps there are other old office buildings which you’ll come across from the time – every now and then you’ll see the right-to-left pre-war script over the door of a building in Hommachi (the business/brokerage district), but not very often.

Tennoji [and the adjoining Abenobashi], a working-class district to the south, has been pretty much gentrified out of existence in the past 10 years. This is a great pity, as it was the most authentically Osakan neighbourhood still around (which is the main reason the social-climbing politicians – who were then in the process of making a futile bid for the 2008 Olympics – wanted to get rid of it). There is still a red-light district there, carefully hidden away, but fully functioning. I’ve read descriptions of it from the 40s and it’s virtually unchanged from then (I hasten to add that I’ve walked through it a few times but never partaken – there’s only so much that even I will do for the sake of historical authenticity).

You have given me a project, though – to find and photograph old buildings before “progress” catches up to them. The architectural news this year is that two landmarks of Osaka – the New Kabuki-za (the za tacked to the end of the word means “theatre”), which was opened c. 1983, and the Kirin Plaza, which is exactly 20 years old (and featured in the Ridley Scott movie Black Rain) – are to be demolished. So don’t pin your hopes on seeing too much really old stuff (as opposed to old-looking stuff). That said, Osaka is still a really interesting city (as I hope my blog illustrates).

To trace the course of the rivers of Osaka, you have to follow the expressways which were built over them in the 60s (and then the rivers were for the most part filled in or buried – rest assured that no one in Osaka City Hall has ever heard of Jane Jacobs).

I wonder if the Osaka Museum of History could help you out, or at least point you in the right direction. At any rate, it’s a place worth visiting if and when you do come here. Also, go to the Museum of Housing and Living, or Osaka City Hall.

But just chatting to regular Osakans might be your best bet. If and when you’re in town, let me know.

Cheers,
Colin

Failing to be Swedish

The tiny old woman in the very bright hat turned around and looked at me. It was Wednesday night and we had just finished watching a Swedish documentary in a little art house cinema in Nakazaki-cho, north-east of Umeda (it wasn’t an easy movie to follow, but it was a good challenge and I think I got a bit out of it).

“Tell me, are you a Swedish person?” she asked enthusiastically in Japanese.

“Um, no, I’m Canadian,” I answered. She looked disappointed.

“But how could you watch the movie?” She asked, assuming as a matter of course that no Canadian could ever understand Swedish, no foreigner can read Japanese, and you can’t ever follow a foreign movie by just watching the damn thing.

“Well, a lot of the words are similar to (niteiru, resemble) English and German, and if I can’t follow what they say, I try to read the Japanese subtitles. I think I could understand quite a bit.”

She looked at me as though it were the maddest thing that anyone had ever said to her. She turned, said, “Jyaa, domo,” (casual enough in the context to qualify as “later, Bud,”) and walked away.

I should have told her I was Swedish. I wonder if she could have told the difference?

“Old Man Smell”

It was a normal enough class of eight women, sometime in 2006. I think we were practicing something like adverbs of frequency (“How often do you walk your dog?” / “Rarely”). Students were in pairs, asking each other questions and a few follow-ups. I made the rounds, listening, correcting. One woman asked her partner, “How often do you eat dinner with your whole family?” Her partner replied, “Well, quite often with my mother or sister, but almost never with my father.” Overtime? Oh, no, he’s retired, she replied. “My sister and I just don’t care for his Old Man Smell. We can’t enjoy our dinner. Go away, Dad, we say – you’ve got Old Man Smell.”

I was quietly mortified. I had drunk some particularly strong coffee that morning and had forgotten to buy some breath mints before class. I thought her discussion partner would be embarrassed by the topic – not a bit of it. She joined in with a story about her grandfather, and used imagery like (after consulting a dictionary) “musty towels.”

In fact, when I brought the class together and asked them what were some interesting things their partners had told them, the story of Old Man Smell was the first one told. The class response? “Eww, Old Man Smell!”; “Terrible isn’t it?”; “I think my older brother’s getting it,” and so on. I became very paranoid at this stage, and soon moved on to everyone’s favourite – “How often does your partner go shopping?” This took us right through until lunchtime.

I think I knew what they meant. The salaryman of a certain age drinks harsh, bitter coffee, eats garlicky food washed down with booze when he goes out with a client or his workmates, and smokes like a crematorium chimney wherever he can manage it (nothing like a face full of cigarette smoke when you’ve just exited a refreshing hot spring). There’s always something inclement coming through his pores or past his unbrushed teeth. The nicotine-reeking business suit is too hot – sweat brings last night’s whiskey out through the pores. A lot of it, then, would be the fault of his lifestyle – forty years of that would make anyone fragrant.

That sort of loose talk sinks ships, though. It implies that the system which produces such sad specimens is somehow to blame. No, this society can’t be wrong. It must be something else. Enter Shiseido, the cosmetics company. Some years ago, they isolated the “substance” which they claim causes stronger body odour in people over 40. As I’m about to turn 45, I was understandably overjoyed to read this (Read about it here). So it can’t be prevented (faces saved!). The only solution is to buy Shiseido’s line of products specially designed for the socially-conscious stinky geezer.

So do they? Maybe in Tokyo (where these stories are invariably filed), but not in Osaka. Here, the old guys are still oblivious. Osaka’s still a man’s world – until, of course, he comes home and his daughters won’t eat with him anymore.

“Own chance HAPPY of doing”

Message in silvery sequins on the front of a the black t-shirt worn by the woman standing in front of me on the subway Thursday morning. She got on at Tennoji Station, although that probably doesn’t mean anything.

Auden – Arts and Crafts, 1971

“…The difference between a pure craft, like carpentry, and art is that when the carpenter starts work he knows exactly what the finished result will be: the artist does not know what he is going to make until he has made it. But, like the carpenter, all he can or should consciously think about is how to make it as well as possible, so that it may become a durable object, permanently ‘on hand’ in the world.”

– W. H. Auden, quoted from “Craftsman, artist, genius,” in The Observer, April 11, 1971.

The entire Guardian / Observer archives (from 1821 and 1791 respectively) are in the process of being “digitised” (sic). Registration required, but some free stuff (like the above) is available.

The Canadian Embassy in Japan – “You want *me* to do that?”

Click here.

Good. Now click here. Then here, and here and here. What do these pages have in common, besides being the websites of foreign embassies in Japan? Well, visual appeal for one (all right, the Italian site is pretty ugly), clarity (the Swedish one is even available in English!) and ease of navigation (I speak neither Italian nor Portuguese but I now know how to contact the embassies of both countries, thanks to their websites). I also learn that the countries have several additional consulates situated around Japan, which is only fitting, considering how important a trading partner it is, and how many of these countries’ citizens live and work here.

I mention this because, the Canadian Consulate in Osaka having recently been shut down, I have been forced to waste an evening trying to work my way around *this* completely uninformative mess. The Canadian Embassy’s website is easily the cheesiest of the lot. Quick – how do you contact them by phone or e-mail? Eventually, you’ll find a number, but many of the links send you straight to generic Government websites back in Ottawa (or a Japanese page, which is great for a newcomer from Moose Jaw, or wherever). A little link saying “Contact us” – is it beyond the computer skills of my compatriots? (2010/01/12 – Well, whaddaya know? They finally put one in. Welcome to the 21st century!) The whole thing is cold, unhelpful, unwelcoming. And it hasn’t been upgraded since 2005 (i.e., under the previous government). Really gets the message out, folks. (2010/01/12 – Although it’s finally been upgraded – see above! – it’s still not very user-friendly)

Since I was in the enforced cyber-vicinity of Ottawa, I went to the Government of Canada’s website and found what looked to be a small town online newspaper edited by Borat or some other former Soviet apparatchik. It reads suspiciously like a pre-election party newsletter, something you’d expect (more appropriately) at a political party’s official website. Very depressing.