The Asia Collection

A Clash of Civilizations: The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh

2013-02-05T03:04:00.000-08:00

It was with some trepidation that I approached the task of “penning” this review, for Amitav Ghosh’s books are formidable both to reader and writer. He is demanding of our intelligence and understanding and makes no concessions to the “average” reader by providing lists of characters, glossaries of terms (although he does provide a “Chrestomathy,” on which I expand a little below), or translations of native dialogue and the Pidgin English so liberally sprinkled throughout the books in this series.

Amitav Ghosh is an international, prize winning, academically acclaimed author, who is equally comfortable writing about countries such as Burma (the historical fiction novel The Glass Palace) and Egypt, where he did field work in anthropology (In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale) as he is about his home country India.

It should be stated at the outset that the Ibis Trilogy is a work of historical fiction consisting at present of only two books, Sea of Poppies (2008) and River of Smoke (2011), and that for reasons I won’t go into I actually read them in reverse order (although Ghosh himself has stated that he intended them to be read independently). This being said, I’d advise readers to start from the first book, Sea of Poppies, in order to get to know the characters before they continue their lives in the second book.

Against the background of the flourishing opium trade between British India and China − the overarching theme − the series tells the tale of an assortment of people, mainly from Hindustan, but also from other parts of the world, in the years 1838-39. In the first book, we become acquainted with the various characters who will eventually board the schooner Ibis on its journey from Calcutta to Mauritius. We meet Deeti and other Bihari peasants who have been impoverished by greedy landlords and the East India Company that run the opium trade and are forced to indenture themselves as coolies destined to work on plantations in Mauritius. Sailing with them are two convicts, a former Muslim Bengali raja and zamindar (landowner in British colonial India), Neel, and a half Parsi Chinese boatman, Ah Fatt. Then there is Paulette, the orphaned daughter of a French botanist; Zachary Reid, a mulatto American, who rises to officer status on the Ibis, and the captain and crew of lascars, or sailors, among many others. The story reaches its apex when the ship hits a storm and a mutiny breaks out, resulting in the escape of several of the characters.

In River of Smoke, we learn that two more ships have also been affected by the storm: the Anahita, which is carrying a precious cargo of opium to China, accompanied by the Parsi trader Bahram Modi, and the Reduth, which is on a botanical expedition, with Fitcher Penrose, a Cornish botanist onboard. Much of the action in River of Smoke takes place in Canton, where a community of foreigners dwells for part of the year in Fanqui town, the area assigned to them in order to be able to monitor them and keep them separate from the natives. During this period (1838-39), tensions between the Chinese and the foreigners – the British, in particular − rise to a zenith over the opium trade and the book closes just before the outbreak of the First Opium War.

My first observation about the series pertains to the depth and meticulousness of Ghosh’s research. However, while depth and meticulousness are one thing, the ability to animate a historical period is another. Ghosh has succeeded so well in this that we feel that we are actually laboring in the poppy fields of the hinterland of Hindustan or in the opium processing factories there, being tossed around with the coolies in the bowels of the Ibis, and wandering among the narrow alleyways of colorful, noisy Canton. In the latter, we are appalled by the arrogance and racism of the British and admire the culture and craftiness of the Chinese. The arguments of the British to justify their continuation of the opium trade are brilliantly expressed and are no doubt true to the documentation which Ghosh so painstakingly studied.

In River of Smoke, we meet a new character, Robin, an artist who is sojourning in Canton. Robin has a childhood connection to Paulette who, after being found in Mauritius by the botanist Fitcher, travels with him to China aboard the Reduth, but is forced to remain in Hong Kong, because foreign women are forbidden from entering Canton. Robin’s letters to Paulette are a clever literary device, utilized to provide us, indirectly, with a minute description of events, scenes, and characters in the city.

Both books are a Tower of Babel. We may not always understand the dialogues spoken in many tongues and even the Pidgin English in full, but if we apply ourselves we can get the gist of them. The fact that Ghosh has taken the trouble to include them attests to his own brilliant scholarship.

At the end of Sea of Poppies as well as online we can find Neel’s Chrestomathy, a sort of anthology of words and phrases of various East Asian and Middle East origins that were absorbed, at least for a time, into English. It turns out that the fictionalized − or partly fictionalized − character of Neel, the former zamindar transported as a convict on the Ibis, was actually an ancestor of Ghosh, and the author was handed the mantle of collating Neel’s work.

Both books are challenging, informative and fascinating. However, in my humble opinion, River of Smoke is the masterpiece of the two, perhaps because of the various settings in the books, it is in Canton, where we experience so vividly the sights, sounds, colors and smells of this vibrant city, that we can sense the atmosphere of an impending clash of civilizations.

Reposted from my website The Writer's Drawer

Amitav Ghosh and the Chrestomathy

2012-11-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

River of Smoke, by Amitav Ghosh is a masterpiece of historical fiction, the second in the author’s Ibis triology, about the fortunes of a disparate group of people and their wanderings between the island of Mauritius and the flourishing port of Canton, in the 1830s.* Much of River of Smoke focuses on the struggle between the foreign traders, who are trying to smuggle opium into China via Canton, and the attempts of the Chinese authorities to stop them. One of the principal characters in the novel is Bahram, an Indian opium trader (seth) of Persian origin.

Ghosh’s work has much to recommend it, not least his extensive literary use of the letter in the voice of Robin, an Anglo-Indian sojourning in Canton. He also makes very interesting and widespread use of vernacular words and phrases originating in Hindi, Persian and Arabic, which were then, if not now, also understood and employed in the English language in the 17th to 19th centuries, during the heyday of the British Empire. In addition, the novel contains a great deal of Pidgin English that was spoken in Canton, then a major trading post in that period. In fact, the text includes entire dialogues in the vernacular and in Pidgin English. And there is no glossary in my edition of the book. Frustrating? Yes, in the beginning it was, but gradually I began to understand, at least partially, what was said and meant.

For instance, among the daftardars (office staff) who work in Bahram’s daftar are his munshi (his secretary/translator), his gumusta (accountant and general confidant), and his shroffs (money counters and changers), as well as his numerous khidmutars(servants). (Note, there are variations in spelling for most of these terms.)

All the foreigners in Canton (no women allowed!) live in Fanqui-town, the place of unfamiliar spirits (the “unfamiliar spirits” being the foreigners, of course). And with the Chinese linkisters (translators/liaison men), members of the Co-Hong (their trading partners), and locals, the foreigners speak Pidgin English. Hence, the frequency of terms such as chop-chop (hurry, quickly) and chow-chow (miscellaneous). A typical shopkeeper’s patter might go like this: “What thing wanchi buy?... “Can do, can do! Look-see here. Have got what-thing…”

It wasn’t until I had almost finished the book that I came across a glossary – and not just a regular glossary but a chrestomathy (technically, “a collection of literary selections, especially in a foreign language, as an aid to learning a language”), no less! The Chrestomathy, appearing at Ghosh’s website, was originally compiled by Neel, a character in both the first and second books of the Ibis triology, but also an ancestor of Ghosh, who passed down to him his love of words. Neel, according to Ghosh, “was of the view that words, no less than people, are endowed with lives and destinies of their own,” and his Chrestomathy “is not so much a key to language as an anthropological chart, crafted by a man who was obsessed by the destiny of words.” Like a number of Neel’s earlier descendants, Ghosh was given the task of not actually recreating the Chrestomathy but of “provid[ing] a summary of a continuing exchange of words between generations.”

It was in the Chrestomathy, then, that I found all those words and phrases that had challenged me while I was making my way through the book. Neel’s research and documentation in the late 19th century and Ghosh’s “summary” must have entailed painstaking work, indeed. And if you think all the above is a goolmaul, a gollmaul, atamasha – a puzzle, also, an uproar or a big fuss – try and work it out as I did with Ghosh’s masterpiece, or better still, read the book! And by all means use the Chrestomathy to ease your way through it.

*This is a modified version of a blog post published at my site The Writer's Drawer, under the title "Go to daftar, chop-chop."

Searching for a Leader: Admiration for Hitler in Indian Society

2012-11-01T00:59:00.003-07:00

“What’s wrong with naming your business after Adolf Hitler?” So asked Rajesh Shah, co-owner of HiTLER, a menswear store in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, whose opening in August 2012 caused a worldwide furor. After all, Shah explained, the shop is named after his partner’s grandfather, “a very strict man, very precise and very picky. So everyone called him ‘Hitler’ in jest.” To add to the effect, the dot over the “i” in the name is adorned with a rotated red swastika. A swastika in India represents good luck, says Shah. (It should be noted, however, that the ancient Indian swastika appears in a right-angled position – BB) Moreover, he continued, the name was good for business. Only a few Jewish people were complaining. “If he did something in Germany, is that our concern?”

Indian swastika

And the menswear store in Gujarat is not an isolated case. A pool parlor in Nagpur, Maharashtra, which opened in 2006, is called “Hitler’s Den.” While stating that he sympathizes neither with the man nor his ideology, the owner, Baljit Singh Osan, refuses to change the name, stating that it has “recall” value. AHI ADS, an internet company run by Prakash G, stands for Adolf Hitler Inc. Ads, which it was called originally. Despite the concession of using the initials instead of the full name, Prakash is unrepentant about using a variation of the swastika in its logo and even says he does not think Hitler was such a bad person.

One establishment that surrendered to pressure from India’s small Jewish community and international advocacy groups, after opening in 2006, was Hitler’s Cross pizza restaurant in Mumbai. It is now called Cross Cafe. The Zee TV company apologized in 2011 after being criticized by the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League for naming a series about a dictatorial woman Hitler Didi (Hitler Sister). However, the title was changed for screening only in the U.S., while in India it remained unaltered.

Such behavior, while provocative, is relatively isolated, and can be attributed, in part, to ignorance of Hitler’s racist policies. Still, how might we explain the escalation in sales of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and other such books and memorabilia from the Nazi era, purchased primarily by young people. According to Jaico, the largest publisher and distributor of Mein Kampf, while in 2008 a Mumbai bookstore might sell 40-50 copies annually in 2010 the figure had risen to several hundreds. Crossword, an India-wide book shop chain, sold more than 25,000 copies between 2000 and 2010. Purchasers of the book and Hitler t-shirts interviewed by the BBC and RT all expressed their admiration for Hitler’s leadership qualities and his discipline. “India needs his discipline,” said Prayag Thakkar, from Gujarat state. Indeed, the refrain of Hitler’s leadership, discipline, and patriotism appeared in most of the answers given by the young people interviewed, qualities they considered were needed to deal with the myriad problems their country faces, and pertaining to them, especially.

It is not surprising that some of the expressions regarding Hitler noted above are found in Gujarat, in western India. Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a leading figure in India’s second largest political party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata, has been accused of involvement in sectarian violence. Moreover, coincidentally, or not, the state’s textbooks extol Hitler for having endowed Germany’s government with respect and prestige (Aimee Ginsburg, “Getting a Bad Name,” Yedioth Ahronot, 24 Hours supplement, October 24, 2012; in Hebrew).

Some extremist Hindu nationalist organizations are sympathetic to Nazi ideas. Such identification dates from the days of British rule and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, when Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Patriotic Organization; RSS) - founded in 1925 and still existent today – supported and cooperated with Nazi Germany. Although primarily a means to expel the British and gain independence, the identification of these groups with Nazi Germany was strengthened by the notion that it was allegedly from Hindu culture − in particular, that of extremist upper caste Hindus, the Brahmans − that Hitler adopted the idea of racial purity and superiority, represented by the swastika (also associated with life and success).

Criticizing the opposition of Indian independence movement leader Jawaharlal Nehru to fascism, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, a prominent leader of the RSS said:

The very fact that Germany or Italy has so wonderfully recovered and grown so powerful as never before at the touch of [a] Nazi or Fascist magical wand is enough to prove that those political “isms” were the most congenial tonics their health demanded.

And a RSS spokesman declared:

Germany’s solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope.

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar

Before the extent of the extermination of the Jews was revealed, both Savarkar and another RSS leader, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, praised Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, finding in it a solution for the country’s Muslims. In his book We (1939), Golwalkar wrote:

Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.

Paradoxically, neither Savarkar nor Golwalkar were antisemitic and Golwalkar even expressed his support for Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel. Today, groups like the RSS continue to maintain this seemingly contradictory stand – expressing admiration for Hitler and his ideas and supporting the State of Israel − some even calling to “do a Gaza or a Lebanon” in Pakistan.

This duality stems, seemingly, from their supposed common cause with Israel against Islam and the Arab states, on the one hand, and pride in the fact that Hitler was supposedly inspired by the myth of the Aryan origins of India, on the other. In addition, they believe that World War II, which was instigated by Germany, weakened Britain, leading to the end of British rule in India (Ginsburg, “Getting a Bad Name”).

According to Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, from the Department of Social Science at Gautam Buddha University in Greater NOIDA, courses on European history in Indian schools and universities contain almost no references to the Holocaust. It was only after the Israeli government protested in 2002 that vague references to the killing of many Jews during World War II were added to standard textbooks. In fact, there is no word in Hindi for Holocaust and most Indians have only a vague notion of the meaning of Judaism and Jews, mostly gleaned from secondary sources, such as the media, and not always complimentary.

Aafredi says that apathy toward Holocaust studies could perhaps be explained by a look at India’s historical record and the reaction to the Holocaust. He quotes Tilak Raj Sareen, who argues in “Indian Responses to the Holocaust” (Jewish Exile in India, 1933-1945, ed. Anil Bhatti, et. al., 1999): “It was the Indian Muslim attitude towards Jews that largely determined India’s response to the Holocaust.”

The relative ignorance of young Indians about the Nazi regime and its deeds can be summed up in an experiment conducted by Aafreedi, repeated three times, each with a class of some 60 students from the sciences who took his history course. When he asked who had heard of Hitler, almost all raised their hands. When he asked, who regarded Hitler as a model, twelve did. When he asked who had heard of the Holocaust, nobody responded (Ginsburg, “Getting a Bad Name”).

It seems, therefore, that the fascination of young people with Hitler stems mainly from ignorance or minimal knowledge about the man and his ideas. This is due to lacunae in or indifference on the part of the education system, no doubt also influenced by politicians supporting Hindu nationalist organizations. As a result, Hitler is viewed by some young people as a model authority figure, whom they would like to replicate in India in order to solve India's myriad problems. In addition, because they know vaguely that any mention of him is frowned on in the West, some consider Hitler a "cool" and provocative brand name, which will draw people to their business.

Aravind Adiga's "Last Man in Tower": A Morality Tale?

2012-07-15T00:33:00.000-07:00

Aravind Adiga is known for his Booker Prize winning The White Tiger, which wittily but unashamedly weaves a rags-to-riches story whose message is that corruption and crime do pay in modern India. Adiga’s latest work, Last Man in Tower[*], has a similar theme, but its message is arguably more universal, and he leaves us wondering:

Say we are a group of decent, but not wealthy families, living in a crumbling, but pukka (respectable)[†] building, an oasis, in a less salubrious neighborhood of a city. We are small business people, social workers, clerks and retired teachers of various national and religious backgrounds. Periodically, we attend meetings called by the secretary of our cooperative, or “society,” to discuss issues related to the maintenance of the building. One day, a developer approaches with a proposal. He will give us several times the worth of our apartments, plus a couple of months rent to tide us over until we purchase a new home, if we agree to let him raze the building in order to construct a luxury apartment block. In accordance with the society’s regulations, all apartment holders have to agree. The majority of us consent instantly, but a few hold back for their own reasons. Eventually, everyone but one person accepts the offer, and this last man (or woman) is adamant in his refusal. To what lengths would we go in order to convince them to agree?

This is the situation in which the residents of the Vishram Society, located in a slum area of Mumbai, find themselves. Yogesh A. Murthy, a retired teacher known as Masterji, refuses to sign the agreement, mostly as a matter of principle, in protest against unchecked, greedy developers, but also for personal reasons (memories of his late wife). When neither the arguments of his fellow residents nor the more insidious attempts of the developer, the crafty Mr. Shah and his “left-hand man” Shanmugham, fail to move Masterji, the residents resort to increasingly drastic measures, until they commit the ultimate crime.

At the end of the book, everyone (except Masterji, of course,) emerges more or less happy. True, one of the main activists among the residents, Mr. Ajwani, has undergone an epiphany of sorts and, having pullout out of the final act and regretting his part in what has happened, vows to live a more virtuous life. The others are also a bit worried that Mr. Shah is delaying payment of the next installment and, moreover, he is not in the best of health. But most are happily ensconced in new apartments: Mrs. Puri is now able to afford a carer for her 18-year-old Down’s syndrome son, and Mrs. Rego, the “Communist” social worker, although unable to “trump” her sister in living style is at least able to live in the same neighborhood together with her two sons.

Adiga tells his story with his usual barbed humor:

The temple was crowded, as it was at any hour of the day, yet the Lord Ganesha was receptive to free-market logic, and an “express line,” for anyone who could pay fifty rupees a head, sped the three of them into the sanctum (p. 134).

Somewhere toward the last third of the book, however, the humor disappears. The atmosphere becomes darker as the plot nears its apogee.

So what sort of story is it? It is hard to categorize it. Should we take Last Man in Tower at face value, a story of ordinary people who go to extremes to get what they want, or is it an allegory, a morality tale? Is Adiga not talking about all of us? Might not we one day become the participants in a Vishram Society-like situation? Would we be desperate enough to go to such lengths? If so, one shudders to think that this is Adiga’s pessimistic view of human nature. But, maybe I’m being naïve?

One of the things I’ve always loved about Indian literature is the atmosphere the author manages to conjure up – the colors, the smells, and the sheet vastness, density and variety of the human mass that makes up India. And the characters! In the assorted figures that people Adiga’s book (all the residents of Vishram Society are listed according to apartment number and floor at the beginning), we see all our own human frailties – superficial neighborliness, selfishness, pettiness, greed, lust, desperation and fear, but also love and fierce concern for the welfare of our families.

While Last Man in Tower may not be an allegory or a morality tale, it certainly gives us food for thought.

[*] Last Man in Tower, by Aravind Adiga (New York, 2011).

[†] Adiga spells it “pucca.”

From my website The Writer's Drawer.

Japanese Netsuke: The Quintessence of Life in Miniature

2012-05-07T23:01:00.000-07:00

Netsuke are very small. Smaller than a matchbox, often as small as the joint of my little-finger, these Japanese ivory, bone and wooden carvings are hard explosions of exactitude. You roll them in your hands and find the carver has added a joke: the tail of a disappearing rat, a deliquescent plum fallen from a basket. Some of the netsuke are studies in running movement, so that your fingers move along a surface of uncoiling rope or spilt water. Others have small, congested movements that knot your touch: a girl in a wooden bath, a vortex of clam shells. Some do both, surprising you: an intricately ruffled dragon leans against a simple rock. You work your fingers round the smoothness and stoniness of the ivory to meet this sudden density of dragon. There is often a supplementary pleasure in finding where the signature of the carver is placed, on the sole of a sandal, the end of a branch, the thorax of a hornet.

(From Edmund de Waal, “God of Small Things” The Guardian, May 29, 2010)

Ivory dragon netsuke, Edo period

Many people first came across the term netsuke [根付] when they read Edmund de Waal’s intriguing and highly acclaimed biography The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), which relates the history of the author’s family through a collection he inherited of these exquisitely carved, tiny Japanese figurines.

Although only a special edition of his book includes pictures of many netsuke from his collection, those of us familiar with de Waal’s work have come to understand the minute scale of the netsuke (no more than 5 cm). We have also learned to appreciate not only the delicacy and precision of each line of these tiny pieces, but their expressiveness. People, animals, deities and mythological figures can look sardonic, concentrated, surprised, disappointed, angry, happy, to name but a few of the wide range of feelings conveyed.

De Waal provides us with many essential details about the collection: approximately when it dates from (mostly from the mid- to late eighteenth century), the materials from which the pieces are crafted (ivory, bone and wood), and the origins of netsuke in general (as toggles for attaching pouches and small boxes with a thin cord to kimono sashes). Above all, he describes almost palpably the experience of rolling one of these tiny objects in the hand or holding it in the pocket.

Since I was curious to discover more about the history and evolution of netsuke, the different styles, the craftsmen who made (and continue to make) them and the tools they use, I decided to research the subject further, and here are the results.

Netsuke attached to sash of man's hakama

As noted, netsuke (ne — root; tsuke — to fasten) were originally produced as toggles for attaching sagemono (pouches or laquered boxes) to the sash (obi) of a man’s kimono or hakama, neither of which has pockets. The pouches or boxes usually held a pipe, tobacco, money or medicine. Women kept a comb or other accessories in their kimono sleeve, which is wider than a man’s one.

Netsuke may have been developed as purely functional objects as early as the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. However, in keeping with Japanese aesthetic tradition, wealthier customers began demanding a higher standard of intricacy and distinction. Naturally, the sagemono, too, were beautifully decorated with carvings, lacquer work and inlays of precious metals, ivory, coral and other rare or expensive materials.

The heyday of netsuke carving took place during the Edo period, 1615-1868, when most men used netsuke, although their quality varied depended upon the person’s standing. Earlier netsuke motifs were derived from Chinese legend, history and customs. They were mostly unsigned until the latter part of the eighteenth century when craftsmen such as Masanao and Okatomo began to perfect the art. Tomatada, for example, was famous for his exquisitely carved tigers.

Dog-shaped netsuke (Kokei), Edo period

From this time on themes also became more Japan-centered, featuring figures, scenes and objects from everyday life, including craftsmen, musicians, acrobats, monks, animals and erotica, as well as mythological characters, deities and masks, and fruits, vegetables and nuts. The use of materials, too, expanded to include animal tusks and antlers, amber, porcelain and bamboo, among others. Artists chose their material according to its availability, as well as its workability, weight, and strength, and used various techniques: carving, relief, turning, engraving, filigree, casting, stamping, lacquer, ceramic and inlay. While 30-60 days were required to complete a netsuke, some carvers took years to fashion a single piece. Some families specialized in crafting a particular animal, such as a rat, repeatedly fashioning the same figure in an attempt to attain the quintessential image. Many of the artisans had influential patrons and some of them became masters of a “school” of followers. This was the case of Ozaki Kokusai (1835-94), a master of the Asakusa School, named after a district in the old capital Edo (now Tokyo). Followers of the Asakusa School worked mainly with stag antler, which was a relatively inexpensive material, and their designs were marked by their originality and humor. Mitsuhiro (1810-1875), another well-known figure, was renowned for his beautiful, realistic carvings including sea slugs and other creatures. Bashan is an example of a craftsman who concentrated mainly on a single theme: rotting pears with insects inside.

Ivory Buddha (Hokei), Meiji (post-1868) period

The year 1868 was a landmark in Japanese and Western history, when Japan was forced to open up to the West after some two centuries of isolation. While Western styles and influences began to penetrate Japan, a wave of japonisme – craze for Japanese culture and art − flooded Europe. Having a collection of japonaiseries became a status symbol among European high society. Charles Ephrussi, a cousin of de Waal's great grandfather and a member of Parisian beau monde, was the originator of the family netsuke collection. Tokoku, Sosui and Meigyokusai were representatives of this later era, as was Morita Soko (1879 -1942), from the So School, whose craftsmen worked mainly with wood.

Inevitably, the period from the later nineteenth century on was marked by a decline in craftsmanship, as the Western demand for Japanese art intensified and Japanese increasingly adopted Western-style clothes. De Waal quotes a French collector who noted that the Japanese were so eager to trade in their art that a passer-by would sell you the toggle from his obi if you admired it.

Sashi netsuke

De Waal’s collection belongs mainly to the rounded katabori, or figural, style, resembling people or animals – the most sought after netsuke by collectors. Then, there are the long, thin netsuke, called sashi, which were hooked behind the obi. Manju pieces, named after a bean paste confectionary, have a button-like shape, while ryusu are a hollow, filigree-type manju. Kagamibuta (“mirror lid”) consist of a metal lid with a bowl. Finally, the mennetsuke (mask) were often fashioned by the artists who made the masks for the traditional Noh or Kyogen plays that were popular in Japan at the time.

Katabori netsuke (baby), front and back showing holes

Netsuke can be identified by the two tiny holes through which the cord was threaded to attach the sagemono. While netsuke are now coveted mainly for their collector value, contemporary netsuke artists continue to follow the traditional constraints when carving them. In his article "Netsuke: Japan in Minature," D.K. Davis outlines these unwritten “rules”:

Since netsuke were a functional item, any creativity in design must be within the strict limits of its original use as a toggle to support the sagemono… The piece must be small enough to fit in the palm of the hand and be lightweight and easy to slide under the obi, yet bulky enough to support the weight of several sagemono. It must have the strength to resist rubbing, cracking, or heavy use, and be smooth enough not to snag or tear clothing or poke the wearer. Also, the holes for the cord must be designed so that the cord is hidden and the netsuke faces outward. The best test for a netsuke is to hold it in your hand and roll it around. It should feel smooth and have a nice "aji" or agreeable feeling that demonstrates the spirit of the piece through touch.

Tools for netsuke-making

Rather than go into the technicalities of netsuke tools, I decided that referring interested readers to websites on the subject would be more accurate and useful. The British artist Clive Hallam provides a tutorial on netsuke knife making replete with pictures. The Japanese sculptor Ryushi has posted photos of chisels and files, as well as a description of a class in netsuke carving, while Dutchman Ko Baas describes the tools he uses at the website of the International Netsuke Society. Information can also be found at “What Tools are Used for Carving Netsuke?”

The art of netsuke has continued to this day, with some 150 craftsmen working in Britain (Michael Birth, Jack Coutu, Clive Hallam), the Netherlands (Ko Baas), the U.S. (Janel Jacobson, Lynn Richardson, David Carlin), Australia (Leigh Sloggett), New Zealand (Doug Marsden), Russia (Alexandar Derkachenko), Ukraine (Sergey Osipov), and, of course, Japan (Masami, Ryushi, Akira, Unshu, Ataru, Kiho, Sosui [d. 2003]), among others. Japan’s Imperial Highness Prince Takamado, who died in 2002, was an avid patron of the art of netsuke. Most of the contemporary artists mentioned here have exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, and their netsuke is sought after by private collectors.

Mask netsuke

I will conclude with a word of caution and an apology. Good netsuke seldom turn up at a flea market or any old antique shop, so if you are interested in purchasing the genuine item, you would be well advised to consult with an expert dealer or collector. Of course, you can buy cheap souvenir ones in museum and gallery shops, but they tend to be flat and lifeless. Their rarity is also the reason I am unable to post more pictures of netsuke due to copyright issues, and I apologize for that. However, I have listed some museums, galleries and sites that display impressive collections of these wonderful, tiny figurines.

And, finally, an interesting idea from Netsuke and Japanese Art Online Research Center:

Netsuke’s popularity today is due to its art form rather than its function. Although it is possible that Netsuke may yet again become functionally popular as toggles for mobile phones or perhaps personal digital assistants, today the Netsuke remains the passion for art collectors around the world [my emphasis].

Museums and Galleries

Bolton Museum and Archive Service, Bolton, Lancashire, UK

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Robyn Buntin of Honolulu

Rutherston and Bandini, London

Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, Haifa, Israel

Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Inspiration: The Origin of Some of the Posts in This Blog

2012-04-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

I’m sure people wonder how I came to write the essays posted in The Asia Collection, since it’s a bit of a mishmash: the suicide of a Japanese writer, an introduction to Indian literature, a Japanese diplomat who saved Jews, an Indian tennis player, a North Korean mountain, to name a few.

And why Asia? Well, I specialized at university in Far East Asian studies, focusing on Japanese language and Asian history. As soon as I completed my degree, I traveled to Japan, where I spent a year, working some of the time at Expo70 − which explains one of my essays. While I was there, I experienced a dramatic event, which left a traumatic imprint on Japanese society: the suicide by harakiri of the famous Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, after trying to incite a group of servicemen to rise up against their country. Needless to say, this affair also left an indelible impression on me, hence my decision to write about it. The Foreigner behind the Mask in Japanese Traditional Theater was born after a chance meeting through my editing work with the Israeli theater director and professor of East Asian studies Zvika Serper.

India is also close to my heart since I love literature about this country, by both Indian and non-Indian writers. I thus thought I’d introduce some of their work to those unfamiliar with this rich and colorful literature. An article in an Israeli newspaper about a charismatic Indian general led me to further research and the essay Lieutenant General J.F.R. Jacob: An Indian Officer with a Difference.

And to those who wonder what an essay about North Korea is doing there. Well, North Korea is in the news a lot, and it’s a mysterious country. I therefore thought I’d focus on a topic that would have some human interest: the rare and emotional meetings between North and South Koreans. Singapore? A unique and fascinating example of a relatively harmonious multicultural society packed into a tiny area.

So there we have it: a random collection of essays originating from various experiences and associations throughout my life. I hope that you find these essays interesting and informative. Feedback is always welcome, and especially the correction of any factual or other errors.

Based on a post from the blog at my new site The Writer's Drawer.

Singapore: Model of a Pluralistic, Multicultural Society?

2012-03-26T10:26:00.004-07:00

The island city-state of Singapore is often held up as a paradigm of a successful multicultural society. Its population of about 5 million is made up of roughly 74% Chinese, 13% Malays, 9% Indians, and the rest Eurasians and others. Together they represent almost all religious faiths – Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Hindu, Sikh and Jewish. All this ethnic mix is crammed into an area of a little over 700 sq. km, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

The situation of a diversity of peoples living in extremely close proximity to one another is potentially explosive, but remarkably, Singapore is distinguished by a very high level of social and cultural harmony. How have they achieved that, and at what price, if any?

Before the arrival of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles as an agent of the British East India Company in 1819, Singapore was a sleepy island with a tiny Malay population. With the establishment of Raffles’ office, Singapore officially became part of the British colonial system, with its attendant paternalistic governance and racial segregation. For decades it was a flourishing port city, which attracted thousands of immigrants, especially from China and India. As Britain gradually divested itself of its colonies in the postwar period, Singapore briefly joined the federation of Malaysia, before declaring itself an independent republic in 1965.

Because of the colonial legacy of racial and religions division and tensions, the new democratically elected government under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sought determinedly to mesh the various racial groups into a peaceful, workable society, with a unifying identity. Without this, they knew that this tiny state, with few natural resources, would not survive. Indeed, it is largely Lee Kuan Yew who can be said to be responsible for Singapore as it is today. It was he who led Singapore out of the Malaysia federation, following the Prophet Muhammad birthday riots that erupted between Chinese and Malays in 1964. And it was he who led the state towards its goals of a guided multiculturalism and economic modernity and prosperity.

Lew Kuan Yew

And how did Lee and his government do this? Mainly through a high degree of state centralization and intervention; separation of state and religion; maintaining a secular neutralism vis-à-vis religion; recognition of the languages of the major communities, Malay, Chinese [Mandarin] and Tamil, as official tongues, with English as the first language; a system of meritocracy as opposed to one of nepotism and cronyism; and what the leading party's opponents term a de facto one-party regime, which has ensured continuity of government policy.

While, officially, Singapore is a constitutional parliamentary democracy, the multi-ethnic People's Action Party (PAP), founded by Lee, has won every election since the state became self-governing in 1959. Moreover, it has ruled with an overwhelming majority: the 2011 election was the first time in more than 30 years that the opposition parties won more than 0-4 seats (a total of 6 seats) and support for the PAP fell to a low of 60%.

Lee held public office for over 50 years, making him one of the longest serving ministers in history, and one of the most influential figures in South-East Asia. When he stepped down as prime minister in 1990, he continued to be a member of the Cabinet, first as Senior Minister, and then, from 2004 to 2011, as Senior Mentor. Thus, he has left an indelible imprint on Singapore's development from its birth until today.

Multiracism in action

One of the main tools that the government has used to forge racial and religious harmony is the education system. Instruction in the public schools is in English. Pupils also study their "mother tongues" but there is no crossover, i.e., they can't study the languages of other racial groups. Moreover, the use of dialects rather than the four official languages is discouraged. A sense of national pride and identity, as well as racial, religious and cultural consensus, is instilled through the social studies program. Another means to bring the various groups together is the Ethnic Integration Policy of the Housing and Development Board (HDB), which is a part of the Ministry of National Development. Under this policy, each of the major races has a representative quota of homes for them in a housing block. Once that limit has been reached, no further sale of HDB flats to that ethnic group is allowed. The government claims that this is to prevent racial enclaves from forming. It should be noted that because of the scarcity of land, 4 out 5 Singaporeans live in high-rise HDB accommodation.

According to the Oracle ThinkQuest Educational Foundation, Singaporeans rate citizenship higher than the demands of their religion because of the high degree of religious tolerance, both between government and religions, and between the religions themselves. Second, the main state language, English, does not conflict with the "languages of religion." Third is the lack of a clear ethno-linguistic-religious majority, which prevents the political dominance of a particular group.

This last point needs explaining since the statistics show that the Chinese make up a clear majority of the population. However, the Chinese are neither religiously nor linguisticallyhomogeneous. They may be Buddhists, Christians, Taoists or atheists. Islam is embraced by most Malays, as well as by some Indians and immigrants from the Middle East. According to the 2011 census, some 33% people in Singapore claimed Buddhism as their religion; 18% cited Christianity; 13.9% Islam, 10% Taoism; 5% Hinduism, and 0.7% other religions. Notably, 17% of the population stated they had no religion. Temples, churches, mosques and shrines exist side by side and sometimes one place represents different religions, as is the case of Loyang Tua Pek Kong Temple, which merges Taoism, Hinduism and Islam under the same roof. Moreover, the festivals of the different religions are celebrated jointly. Linguistically, not only is English the lingua franca of Singapore, but for 56% of families with children in primary school it is their principal means of communication. Thus, for a majority of the younger generation, whether of Chinese, Malay or Indian extraction, English is the first language.

Singapore’s phenomenal economic success and prosperity have served both to minimize tensions and to motivate the various groups to work together to maintain the state’s position as one of the Asian Tigers (the others are Hong Kong, Taiwan and

South Korea

). While not all the citizens of the country are rich, the standard of living is comparable to that in North America and Western Europe. A Boston Consulting Group study found in 2010 that 11.4% of Singaporean households were millionaires, the largest proportion in the world.

That is not to say there are no conflicts, but they tend to be settled peacefully. For instance, in 2002 four primary school children were suspended for wearing Muslim headscarves. The government argued that since the public school should be a neutral and common space for all racial groups, all the children should conform to the school’s dress code. The issue was subsequently resolved with the support of Singapore’s highest religious authority. In recent years Facebook has been used to disseminate some insulting posts about Muslims. For instance, in November 2011 Jason Neo, a member of the ruling PAP, was forced to quit and was under police investigation after using Facebook to describe Muslim children in a school bus as “terrorists in training.” In September 2005, three bloggers were convicted of sedition for posting racist remarks targeting minorities.

The law is very strict in regard to freedom of speech, justified by the PAP’s claim that this is essential in order to prevent ill-will and preserve racial and religious harmony. And although Singapore’s laws derive from the British legal system, the PAP has deemed that there should not be a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to a democracy, because of

Singapore

’s delicate internal and geo-strategic situation.

It has been claimed that in its attempts to safeguard the fragile balance of Singapore’s multi-racism and multiculturalism, the PAP has mainstreamed society and does not recognize alternative voices. Relating to the country’s Muslim population, James Gomez from the Centre of Islam and the ModernWorld, Monash University, and Zulfikar Mohd Shariff from La Trobe University (both in Australia), claim that “the PAP has centralized opinions by ensuring only officially sanctioned views and actions are legitimized. Thus, only the Islamic Council of Singapore (MUIS) is viewed as the legitimate authority in providing Islamic opinions. Additionally, only organizations affiliated with the PAP government are deemed “legitimate” in providing social (but not political) views and only PAP Malay MPs are the community’s real political leaders.” And this statement can be said to apply to all groups.

In other words, Singapore society cannot be said to be pluralistic, since there is virtually no “legitimate” opposition − either in Parliament or outside it − to the ruling PAP, which governs, if not with an iron hand then with a very heavy, guiding one. Nevertheless, many West European countries look upon Singapore with envy: a booming economy, a peaceful, hardworking educated and well-off citizenry, and a potpourri of thriving, colorful cultures which dwell side-by-side in relative harmony. Unlike the United States, Singapore is not a melting pot for creating a homogeneous citizenry but a genuine multicultural society. However, it is hard to say that it could be used as a model, due to its unique combination of size, geo-strategic position, history, ethno-religious-linguistic demography and politics. Therefore, it is doubtful whether

Singapore

’s “recipe” for multiculturalism could be applied to a larger, more unwieldy immigrant country.

Beyond the Call of Duty: The Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara

2012-03-05T04:09:00.002-08:00

History books, literature and movies influence our view of a particular person, country, event or period. In the 1930s and 1940s Japan was realizing its imperialist ambitions on the Asian continent and, as an Axis power together with Germany, fought the Allies in the Asia-Pacific arena in World War II. The Western perception of Japan during that period is therefore colored partly by portrayals in these media of its treatment of citizens in the countries it occupied, such as China, Manchuria (the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo) and Korea, and of Allied prisoners of war in Southeast Asia. However, sometimes the deeds of an individual citizen can serve to soften or modify an image.

Chiune, or Sempo (according to the Chinese reading of his name) Sugihara (1900-1986) was just such a person, a Japanese diplomat who defied not only the principles of his profession but of a traditionally ordered and obedient society in order to save thousands of people. Ironically, perhaps, Sugihara’s deeds took place not in the Asian arena but on the other side of the world, in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. There, as vice consul of Imperial Japan and over a period of less than one month during the summer of 1940, he violated his government’s instructions and issued over 2,000 transit visas to Jewish refugees, mostly from Poland, enabling an estimated 6,000 Jews to escape the Holocaust.

The individualist streak in Sugihara’s character, however, was evident much earlier. In his late teens he deliberately failed the exam to enter medical school, contrary to his father's wishes, so that he could pursue his love of languages and literature and eventually a diplomatic career. After he had passed the Foreign Ministry entrance exam in 1919, he was sent to Harbin, Manchuria, where he studied Russian and German and became an expert in Russian affairs. He spent some 15 years in the Japanese puppet state (which it had invaded in 1931), working some of the time for the Manchurian Foreign Ministry. He resigned in 1934-35 in protest over his country’s mistreatment of the local population – another indication of his courage and strength of character, as well as a willingness to defy his government and take a stand against it.

In August 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly divided Poland and Lithuania (among other countries) between them into “spheres of influence.” However, within a few weeks, each power had invaded its part of Poland and annexed it, and within a year the Soviet Union had taken over Lithuania and installed a puppet government there. When World War II broke out in September 1939, thousands of Jews fled the German part of Poland − and almost certain death or incarceration in a ghetto or a concentration camp − to Lithuania. The Soviet takeover of Lithuania in summer 1940 created a new set of Jewish victims with its purge of liberals, intellectuals and Russian Mensheviks. All sought to flee Europe for the New World, but because they could not go south or west through the Nazi-occupied areas, the only way out for the refugees was to traverse the USSR by trans-Siberian railway to the Far East and try to get to the Americas from there.

It was during this period that Sugihara was assigned to open a Japanese consulate in Kaunas, the temporary capital of “neutral” Lithuania. As noted, Japan was an ally of Germany, but in light of the Soviet-German pact, Japan was watching both countries uneasily. In Kaunas, Sugihara served alone, as vice-consul, and also as an intelligence agent, reporting on Soviet and German troop movements. With the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in summer 1940, the communist authorities ordered all consulates in Kaunas to be closed. Sugihara had sought a short extension and was among only a handful of foreign diplomats left in Kaunas. He immediately found himself inundated with pleas from desperate refugees begging for transit visas to Japan. Thousands of them besieged the consulate day and night. When Sugihara sought instructions from Japan, he was told that the applicants must hold a valid visa for a final destination and sufficient funds for the journey. Most had neither of these requirements. However, the acting Dutch consul, Jan Zwartendijk, who had also remained in the Lithuanian capital, agreed to help by stamping some refugee passports with a visa so that they could travel to the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Dutch Guiana (Suriname). But the Soviet authorities still demanded that all refugees obtain transit visas for Japan in order to ensure that they left the USSR. Moreover, they demanded bribes and overcharged them by five times the normal rate for crossing the Soviet Union.

Visa issued by Suhihara

After consulting with his wife Yukiko, Sugihara reached a difficult decision. By disregarding the instructions of his superiors he knew he faced possible dismissal and disgrace for his family. However, confronted by the sea of desperate refugees clamoring for visas day and night, his humanitarian instincts won out. “I may have to disobey my government,” he said, “but if I don’t, I would be disobeying God.” Working sometimes for more than 16 hours, day after day, between July 31 and August 28, 1940, in the period before the consulate closed, he manually filled out some 300 visas a day – more than he would normally do in a month. Yukiko actively assisted him in this task. Even as they boarded the train to leave Kaunas the Sugiharas were handing out visas, and finally even the stamp, so that the refugees could use it to forge these vital documents. Overall, Sugihara issued 2,140 visas, and since those holding a visa could bring their families with them, several thousand were able to go (although not all succeeded in departing before the Soviet Union stopped granting exit visas). Those who could (and many, as noted, had no funds or papers for a final destination), left for Moscow, took the trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok and from there crossed the straits to Kobe, Japan. Some of them spent the rest of the war in Shanghai, while others continued to destinations in the Western Hemisphere.

Jewish refugees in Shanghai, after their escape from Lithuania

It should be noted that although

Japan

was an ally of

Germany

, it rejected Nazi demands to implement an antisemitic policy, including extermination of the Jews of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In December 1938,

Japan

’s highest decision making body resolved not to expel the Jews living in

Japan

. Some Japanese leaders even considered using the alleged economic power and influence of the Jews to further the strategic interests of their country. However, the plan was hampered by

Japan

’s commitment to Nazi Germany. When the refugees began arriving in Kobe, they were encouraged to move to the Shanghai ghetto, where they were concentrated under the benign protection of

Japan

After the Sugiharas left Kaunas, the Japanese continued to require the use of Chiune’s skills and he moved on to hold posts in Berlin, Prague (Bohemia), and Bucharest (Romania), among others. After the Soviets marched through the Balkans in 1944, Sugihara and his family (he had three children at the time) were arrested in the latter capital and interned for three years with diplomats from other enemy countries. On his return to

Japan

in 1947, Sugihara was retired from the Foreign Ministry with a small pension. Some sources say he was dismissed because of his insubordination in Kaunas, but others claim that he was forced to leave as part of a large staff reduction in the ministry while the country was under American occupation. He held a variety of part-time jobs as an interpreter and translator, and finally found a position for 15 years in a Japanese export company that did business with Moscow.

Sugihara House

Since the Sugiharas never spoke about what they did, it was only in 1969 that their story began to emerge. An Israeli diplomat posted to Tokyo launched a search for the man who had saved his life by issuing his family with a visa. Eventually, more survivors came forward and testified to the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. In 1985 Sugihara was awarded Yad Vashem’s highest honor as the “Righteous among the Nations.” He was too ill to travel, however, and Yukiko and one of his sons flew to Jerusalem for the ceremony. Many other tributes followed posthumously, after he died in 1986. The Chiune Sugihara memorial park, "The Hill of Humanities," in the town of Yaotsu, his birthplace, was built by the people of the town in his honor. In 1999, the Lithuanian government inaugurated Sugihara House, in the old consulate building in Kaunas. The museum also honors other diplomats who helped save Jews, such as the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk. In addition, Sugihara is commemorated in the United States and in Poland. In April 2000, the United Nations held a ceremony honoring 65 diplomats from 22 countries who risked their careers by helping Jews escape from the Nazis. Among the names was Chiune Sugihara. A lesser known Asian official who was also instrumental in helping thousands of Jews flee Europe was Feng Shan Ho, Chinese consul general in Vienna, 1938-39.

Whether Sugihara’s dismissal in 1947 was a punishment or not, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs eventually recognized his deed and unveiled a memorial plaque in his name at its Diplomatic Record Office, in the year 2000, the centenary of his birth. It also posted a page about him on its website.

And now, the riddle, if there is one, about Sugihara's motives. Why would a Japanese person, and a career diplomat at that, educated and trained to serve his country unquestioningly, risk his livelihood and even the lives of himself and his family, by saving Jews. After all, what did he know about them and why would he care about them? In Kaunas he had become friendly with a Jewish family, the Ganors, who as Mensheviks had fled Russia in the 1920s after the Bolshevik Revolution. He had tried to save them by giving them visas but they were unable to leave because they were Soviet citizens.

Solly Ganor, with Yukiko Sugihara, at "The Hill of Humanities," Yaotsu, Japan, 1994

This friendship, however, does not explain Sugihara’s rescue of thousands of unknown Jews. The answer, therefore, lies not in his background, education, upbringing, or any other such factor, but in the nature of the man himself. From an early age he demonstrated a natural curiosity to learn about other religions, cultures, languages and peoples. Moreover, he converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity while he was in Harbin and for a short time was married to a Russian woman − acts demonstrating that he did not fit into the traditional Japanese mold but had a liberal, individualist streak. He continued to be a religious man, believing in a universal god of all peoples. Thus, his conduct in Kaunas would seem to have been in keeping with this worldview, which embraced compassion and humanitarianism: “"They were human beings and they needed help,” he said 45 years later.

"Cutting for Stone": A Tale of Indians in Ethiopia

2012-02-12T00:11:00.000-08:00

“… I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work…” (from The Hippocratic Oath, Text, Translation, and Interpretation, by Ludwig Edelstein, Baltimore, 1943)

The title of Abraham Verghese's novel Cutting for Stone[*] is a play on words. Since the main characters in the book are surgeons, or become surgeons, one of the references is to the phrase in the Hippocratic Oath above. But it also relates to the Stone family, the twins Marion and Shiva, and their absentee father Dr. Thomas Stone. A possible third meaning is more abstract, in the sense of an extremely difficult task, and in this context, a decades-long one: the search for the truth about the twins’ dead mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, an Indian nun and nurse, and about her relationship to Thomas Stone.

This colorful saga takes place in Ethiopia, home to the Indian expatriates Hema, an obstetrician, and Ghosh, a physician and eventually surgeon, who devotedly raise Marion and Shiva. Arriving in Ethiopia from India for personal reasons, Hema and Ghosh dedicate their lives to tending to the locals, from the poorest peasants to the family of the emperor, at “Missing” − a distortion of the name Mission − Hospital, in Addis Ababa.

It is Marion who, at the age of 50, tells the tale, in the name of all his family and friends, dead and alive. We learn of the complex relationship between Marion and Shiva, or ShivaMarion, who were joined at the head at birth and thus have an almost mystical bond between them. At the same time, they are also very different and their eventual conflict, over the love of Genet, the daughter of their nanny, leads to a tragic rift and eventually to Marion’s escape to America, where he locates his missing father, now a famous surgeon.

The early years of the twins are relatively happy ones within the Missing complex. However, their lives are overshadowed by the death of their mother at their birth and the disappearance of their father immediately afterward. An overarching theme in the book is the continuous search by Marion for signs that will solve the mystery of his birth parents.

Ethiopia was once the home of the author, Abraham Verghese, who lovingly entwines his story with the history and politics of this beautiful, but often troubled country. As an expatriate Indian, Verghese is intimately acquainted with the life of expatriates in Ethiopia, as well as in the U.S. He is also a physician, and one of the most striking features of the book is his minute descriptions of complicated surgical procedures, sometimes so vivid that a queasy reader might prefer to skip them. Some of the operations he describes are common in certain African and other Third World countries, such as obstetric fissure surgery, performed on young girls who give birth before their bodies are mature enough. Shiva becomes an expert in this form of surgery which he hones alongside his adoptive mother Hema.

Another characteristic highlighted by Verghese is the enduring adherence of expatriate Indians to their ethnic identity, no matter how long they live abroad. Hema, for example is a devout and superstitious Hindu, much attached to the culture of her homeland. She has a nama-karanum (naming ceremony) for the children, reads Indian literature to them at night and teaches Shiva and Genet Hindu dances. While Ghosh has no time for the rituals and beliefs of his wife, he, too, is deeply rooted in Indian culture.

Verghese also touches on the place of coloreds in Ethiopia, and especially in the US. He describes the deprived hospital conditions in which Marion and his fellow Indians and other coloreds work in New York compared to those of Thomas Stone and his white colleagues, and the patients he tends to from the poor, drug-ridden and violent, mostly black, surrounding neighborhood. It is from these patients that organs are extracted in order to be transplanted in the bodies of rich white patients at his father’s hospital.

The book ends in redemption and reconciliation, and in Marion’s return to Ethiopia and to Missing. With its variety of themes, colorful characters and vivid descriptions, this saga, spanning over half a century, is highly recommended for lovers of this genre, as well as of literature set in exotic places.

[*] Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (London: Vintage Books, 2010).

Japanese Motifs in Muriel Barbery's "Elegance of the Hedgehog"

2012-01-03T00:16:00.000-08:00

Among the first things I learnt about Muriel Barbery were that she lived in Kyoto, Japan, in the years 2008-9, and that she and her husband Stéfane Barbery have been captivated by Japanese culture for well over a decade. As she said in an April 2009 interview with Times Union freelance writer Elizabeth Floyd Mair:

Our fascination began mostly as an aesthetic one, and has remained so: we are fascinated by the ability to create pure beauty, at the same time refined and pure; the kind of thing you see in the slow, sweet sumptuousness of [Yasijiro] Ozu’s films, in the splendor of the Japanese gardens, in the discreet sophistication of ikebana …

This intrigue is woven both subtly and directly into her book The Elegance of the Hedgehog,* which she dedicates to Stéfane, and who, it turns out, also cooperated in writing it.

Both Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, the two main characters in the book, have a "Japanese side." Renée is the concierge in a luxury apartment block in Paris. Superficially, she is the typical concierge, a drab, dour widow who lives alone in the small lodge allotted to such French "institutions" in the building. Underneath, however, she is an autodidact, a lover of Tolstoy and of Japanese aesthetics, which she has absorbed from watching numerous Ozu films.

Paloma, a 12-year-old girl living with her upper middle class, socialist parents on the fifth floor, is also hiding a secret: her super-intelligence and her decision to kill herself when she reaches her 13th birthday. In the meantime, she searches for meaning to life by keeping two journals, one of "Profound Thoughts," with each "thought" prefaced by a verse in Japanese haiku (3 lines) or tanka (5 lines), and the other of "the Movement of the World," about "masterpieces of matter." For light entertainment, she reads Japanese manga comics (she is studying Japanese at school).

The thread that connects these two complex characters is Kakuro Ozu, who purchases an apartment in the building. (Interestingly, the apartment is sold to him after the death of Monsieur Arthens, the food critic, who appears in Barbery’s first novel, Gourmet Rhapsody.) Ozu suspects that Renée is not the uncultured person she pretends to be and shares his suspicions with Paloma. In her journal of "Profound Thoughts," Paloma writes:

I’ve had my own suspicions on the matter for a while now too… I’ve been watching her. .. Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she’s covered in quills… but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary ‒ and terribly elegant.

Renée is equally, but cautiously fascinated by Kakuro, and learns from him that he is distantly related to the filmmaker Yasijiro Ozu. When she discusses her feelings about life with the reader (her thoughts and Paloma’s journals are typeset in different fonts), you can see the extent to which she has been influenced by Ozu’s films. When drinking tea with her friend Manuela, the cleaner, for example, she ruminates:

Today, because our ritual has been transgressed, it suddenly acquires all its power; we are tasting the splendid gift of this unexpected morning as if it were some precious nectar; ordinary gestures have an extraordinary resonance, as we breathe in the fragrance of the tea, savour it, lower our cups, serve more and sip again: every gestures has the bright aura of rebirth.

Later, she discusses the Japanese use of space, which impressed her from the first Ozu film she saw, Flavour of Green Tea over Rice. She compares the closed or open door, which "disrupts continuity of movement, without offering anything in exchange other than freedom of movement," with Japanese sliding doors, "which avoid such pitfalls and enhance space."

Her first visit to Kakuro's apartment she compares to summer rain following a lifetime of daily toil:

… pure beauty striking the summer sky, awe-filled respect absconding with your heart, a feeling of significance at the very heart of the sublime, so fragile and swollen with the majesty of things, trapped, ravished, amazed by the bounty of the world.

In her struggles to find some meaning to life, at least intellectually, Paloma, too, is an observer and a philosopher. Her thoughts about cats, for example, she introduces with the haiku,

The cat here on earth

Modern Totem

And intermittently decorative

Following an incident at the dinner table in which she corrects one of her parents’ guests about the origins of the game go, which he attributes to Japan instead of China, she writes angrily ‒ referring to her own imminent death ‒ the tanka:

To build

You live

You die

These are

Consequences

A conversation with Kakuro about the works of Tolstoy, a love of which he shares with Renée, inspires her to write a haiku about the birch trees he describes in War and Peace:

Birch trees

Teach me that I am nothing

And that I am deserving of life.

This precocious child, who understands that others see her as a brat, also wonders whether she is not turning into a "contemplative aesthete, with "major Zen tendencies." Having witnessed the fall of a rosebud from a broken stem onto the kitchen counter, she observes:

In that split second, while seeing the stem and the bud drop onto the counter, I intuited the essence of Beauty… a calm mind, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping… It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment when you see both their beauty and their death.

I will not give too much away about this book, which deserves a second and possibly even a third reading to appreciate its multiple layers and views of life, not to mention its biting humor. And despite all the philosophizing, there is a story line. There is no doubt in my mind that Muriel Barbery, who is herself a professor of philosophy, wrote this book partly as a way to set down, in essay form, her own thoughts, which are strongly influenced by Japanese aesthetics, as well as to mock French "high" bourgeois intellectualism and academic pretensions. Renée and Paloma are the ideal vehicles for this task; Kakuro is the catalyst who discerns their "Japanese side," draws them out and leads them to understand that they are not alone in the world, but three kindred spirits. Whether the book ends on a tragic note because Barbery understands that Kakuro’s and Renée’s feelings for one another cannot go any further in a society where class boundaries continue to constrict, only she can say. But Paloma has the final word and in it there is hope and redemption.

Finally, a word should be said about the translation. Translation is an art in itself, and credit should be given to Alison Anderson for her excellent and nuanced work. A novelist herself, she deserves a place among lauded translators such as Maureen Freely, who interpreted the complex works of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk so brilliantly, and Nicholas de Lange, who has produced from the Hebrew wonderfully fluent English renditions of several of the classic works of Israeli author Amos Oz.

* Originally, L’élégance du hérisson (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2006). In English, Europa Editions, 2008.

Tomoe Gozen and Murakami Hideo: Japanese Sportswomen from Other Eras

2011-12-01T00:48:00.001-08:00

… Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized sword, and a mighty bow; and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors. (from The Tale of the Heike, trans. and with an introduction by Helen Craig McCullough, Stanford UP, 1988, 291)

Japanese women are not traditionally associated with sport. Indeed, although Japan has been known for several decades as a highly developed country, the western image of a Japanese woman tended to be of a slight, demure figure, dressed in a highly movement-restricting kimono. This perception, influenced by classic American movies such as Sayonara, TV series such as Shogun (based on the book by James Clavell), and books such as Memoirs of a Geisha, was not unfounded. For almost 600 years, Japanese society was guided strictly by the principles of Confucianism, Buddhism, and the samurai code of conduct (bushido), which were highly discriminatory toward women. Confucianism deemed that a woman was to obey all the male members of her family, while according to bushido, “a woman should look upon her husband as if he were heaven itself.” Even following the restoration of the monarchy in 1868 and the reforms introduced after Japan opened up to the West, the position of women changed little. It was only after World War II and the American occupation that social laws and a new constitution were instituted liberating women from their subordinate status.

Nevertheless, from ancient times, and particularly during the late pre-feudal, or Heian period (794−1185), women were trained in various martial arts to defend their homes or villages and even to actively participate in war. Indeed, a strong, flexible and agile female warrior was able to hold off several male warriors in those times.

The Legendary Tomoe Gozen

As the ancient Tale of the Heike (probably dating from the early 13th century) relates in the quotation above, Tomoe Gozen was an outstanding sportswoman, a skilled swordswoman, archer and rider, who fought alongside her lord, Minamoto no Yoshinaka in the Genpei War (1180−1185), a civil conflict between two samurai clans, the Minamoto and the Taira, over control of the shogunate. As the Taira were being driven back, Tomeo fought alongside Yoshinaka in the 1184 intra-clan Battle of Awazu between Yoshinaka and his cousin Minamoto no Yoshitsune, during which the former was killed (according to some sources, he committed suicide). Legend has it that rather than simply retreat, she rode directly into a group of the enemy, singled out the strongest, galloped alongside him, reached over, and sliced off his head. Yoshitsune’s older brother Minamoto no Yoritomo subsequently became shogun, the first military ruler to gain nationwide dominance in Japan.

Tomoe’s fate is unclear. According to one version, she died during battle; another says she rode away bearing an enemy head; a third relates that she married and became a nun after her husband’s death. Since the only historical source that describes Tomoe and her exploits is The Tale of the Heike, there has been no way to authenticate her existence. However, the grave of Yoshinaka's other female attendant Yamabuki Gozen does exist and most historians tend to accept the historicity of the incidents described in the Heike text. On the other hand, some Japanese believe Tomoe may have been the reincarnation of a river god.

The Fierce Murakami Hideo

Even after the ascendancy of the samurai to power in the late 12th century, samurai wives were expected to protect the castle while their husbands were away at war. Thus, they retained their combat skills, particularly in the use of the naginata, a pole-like weapon consisting of a wooden shaft with a curved blade on the end, considered highly suitable for women since it allowed her to keep opponents at bay. Village women, too, were adept at wielding the naginata in the event of an attack while their husbands were away.

Naginata

A few of the old martial arts, such as naginatajutsu, the martial art of wielding the nagata, have survived to the present day after developing into a competitive sports. A remarkable woman in this regard was Murakami Hideo who, during the latter years of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries, excelled in this skill despite the restrictions imposed on women in lifestyle and employment in those times.

The tiny Murakami participated in roving martial "carnivals" (gekken kogyo, literally, “show of attacking sword”), a phenomenon that developed from the late 1860s, after the restoration of the monarchy. The participants were often unemployed former samurai who would challenge members of the audience, using a sword, naginata, spear, chain-and-sickle, or any other weapon selected by the opponent. A duel between troop members, a woman with a wooden naginata and a man with a wooden or bamboo replica of a sword, was one of the most popular contests in this sport.

Born in about 1863 on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s main islands, Murakami began traveling the countryside after her naginatjutsu teacher died in order to study the various forms of her skill in the naginata training halls (dojo) of Japan’s main island Honshu. After reaching Tokyo, she joined the Toda-ha Buko martial arts school (ryu), where she was awarded the Menkyo kaiden, the highest license for a martial arts teacher, when she was only in her twenties. However, being illiterate, she was forced to earn her living with her naginata and sickle-and-chain at the carnivals, where, it is related, she never refused a challenge and never lost. Eventually she opened her own training hall, the Shusuikan (Hall of the Autumn Water). As illustrated above, photos exist to show her still teaching in the 1930s. However, she remained poor and died alone.

Conclusion

In Western history, Tomoe could perhaps be compared to Boudica, or Boadicea, the warrior queen of the Britons, who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in 60 or 61 AD. Finding an equivalent to Murakami, however, is more difficult, since Western women have been playing competitive sports for over 500 years. For example, English women played stoolball in the mid-fifteenth century, with a bat resembling an over-sized ping pong paddle; and croquet became popular in the United States in the 1870s, one of the first games there played by both sexes. Besides amateur team sports, for centuries many Western upper-class women were expert equestrians, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women also took up individual sports such as swimming and golf. Champion golfer Edith Cummings, for example, the first golfer and female athlete to appear on the cover of Time magazine in 1924, could perhaps be compared to Murakami, but with major differences, not least the fact that she came from a wealthy, establishment family while Murakami always had to struggle to make a living.

Western perceptions of Japanese women belie a sporting tradition that dates back to ancient times. The training that those women received in the martial arts, such as archery, swordswomanship, and naginatajutsu, taught them discipline, agility, and speed, abilities that are essential in competitive sports today.

The Foreigner behind the Mask in Japanese Traditional Theater

2011-11-21T22:11:00.001-08:00

When Zvika Serper* left Israel for Japan at the beginning of the 1980s, after completing his theater studies at Tel Aviv University, he had a clear objective: to train in the main forms of Japanese classical theater in order to be able to incorporate some of their elements into Western theater. One of the highlights of his years in Japan was playing the lead role in the three principal performing styles of Japanese traditional theater, Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki, something that no other person in Japan, Japanese or Westerner, has done to this day.

The austere Noh is the oldest form, dating from about the fourteenth century. The plays tend to be somber, dealing with themes such as human destiny, and often feature ghosts, gods, and demons. But they may also retell well-known works of Japanese literature, such as The Tale of Genji or The Tale of the Heike. Noh requires a highly stylized form of acting that involves singing, dancing, and chorus chanting, and has a set format: a principal actor (shite), supported by a companion actor and a secondary actor, with a 6-8 man chorus and a 3-4 musicians playing traditional instruments. The shite (and sometimes his companion) wears a mask (omote/men = face) and may don five or six layers of clothing in order to create a larger-than life character. The stage is simple, with almost no scenery, and props are few but highly significant to the drama.

Kyogen, traditionally associated with Noh, is performed on the same stage. Kyogen is shown between Noh productions, in which case it can be an independent piece offering comic relief, or in the short intervals during a Noh play, when it is usually connected to the main drama and explains the narrative in a simple way. In contrast to the lofty Noh, Kyogen plays tend to deal with the lives of simple people – a master and a servant, or a man and his wife − but they sometimes present characters such as gods and demons in satiric fashion. Together Noh and Kyogen form the dual art of Nogaku.

Unlike Noh, which was usually performed in Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines, Kabuki was a commercial theater form originally performed by women and associated with prostitution. As a result, women were banned from performing by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th century, and were replaced by an all-male cast, with men also playing the female roles (onnagata). Kabuki themes deal with historical events, moral conflicts and affairs of the heart. The performances are lavish and colorful, but like Noh, some Kabuki plays are also highly stylized, featuring dance, dialogue and choral singing. The shallow Kabuki stage has a catwalk through the audience (hanamichi), allowing dramatic entries and exits.

While pursuing research at the Noh Theater Research Institute of Hosei University, Tokyo, Serper began training in the art of traditional theater. Although his request to become proficient in all three drama forms was highly unusual, the instructors he was introduced to agreed to teach him. It should be pointed out that when students of Japanese traditional theater learn a particular style, whether Noh, Kyogen or Kabuki, they almost never perform in another one. Moreover, training for classical theater was typically a family affair, passed down from generation to generation; this tradition continues, to a certain extent, even today, although there are now also schools for teaching young actors outside this framework, such as the National Theater in Tokyo.

In contrast to Western theater, traditional Japanese acting is learnt by rote and imitation − “from outside in” rather than “from inside out.” The instructor sits in front of the pupil reciting the lines, which the latter has to repeat until he has perfected the words with the correct voice cadences and intonations. The instructor then demonstrates the stylized dance or acting movements for the pupil to follow. The result of the two systems of teaching is the same, however: integration between the inner and outer forms to create the complete character.

Serper took part in various performances of Kyogen, Noh and Kabuki during his time in Japan. However, among his proudest memories was playing the lead role in all three styles. After only a year and a half of training, Serper’s Kyogen instructor, Nomura Mansaku, honored him by giving him the title role in Kagyu (The Snail), while he himself assumed a secondary role, during a marathon of Kyogen plays in Tokyo. Serper was the yamabushi (hermit monk), discovered by a servant who had been sent by his master to bring him a snail to present to his grandfather as an elixir for long life. Ignorant of what a snail look likes, the servant asks the yamabushi if he is one. The yamabushi pretends that he is a snail, but insists that the servant dance with him before the latter can bring him to his master. The angry master eventually finds his servant dancing with the yambushi, and after convincing the servant that the yamabushi is a human being, the yamabushi laughs at them and runs away.

Serper (rt.) playing with Nomura Mansaku in Kyogen play Kagyu, Tokyo, 1982

In 1984, Serper played the title role in the Noh play Jinen Koki (Jinen the Preacher), accompanied by his teacher Asami Masakuni. The drama tells the story of a girl who sells herself into slavery in order to be able to buy a kimono for the preacher Jinen so that he will pray for her dead parents. It continues with Jinen’s desperate attempts to secure the release of the girl by returning the kimono, while her captors make their own demands, such as forcing Jinen to dance.

Serper (center) playing title role in Noh play Jinen Koki, Tokyo, 1984

Surprisingly, there is only ever one rehearsal for a Noh play and one performance. The same play may be performed only months later, also once. There is no director and the actors learn their parts with their instructors and then meet for the single rehearsal. The principal actor also serves as producer, organizing the performance and procuring items such as costumes, wigs and stage props. By contrast, in Kabuki several rehearsals are held toward the end of the month, followed by a month of performances (at the end of which are a few more rehearsals for the next month's program). Preparations for Kyogen are similar to those of Noh, but are obviously much easier as the plays are shorter, with less music and more acting. Dressing for a Noh performance is particularly cumbersome due to the many layers of costumes the lead actor may have to don, followed by the wig and finally the mask.

In 1994, with the support and participation of his teachers, Serper pioneered an experimental project in which he performed the same lead role in both the Kyogen and Kabuki plays Chatsubo (The Tea Jar) − about a country bumpkin caught between a wily thief (himself) and a scheming magistrate. In the Kyogen Chatsubo Serper played alongside his teacher Nomura Mansaku, and in the Kabuki Chatsubo alongside his teacher Nakamura Tomijuro V. Since Kabuki is derived partially from Kyogen, performing the two versions consecutively enabled the audience to discern the various subtle and not so subtle differences between them. This was such an unusual event (since, as noted, there is almost no crossover between styles) that it was given prominent coverage in Asahi Shimbun, one of the leading Japanese dailies.

Serper (center) playing with Nakamura Tomijuro V (left) in Kabuki play Chatsubo, Tokyo, 1994

While cultural events are well covered by the media, it is rare to see critical reviews of traditional performances in the Western sense of the term. Thus, there were no such reviews of Serper’s appearances. As far as audience reaction was concerned, it should be stressed that people came to the productions specifically to see him perform.

Since returning to Israel Serper has worked to incorporate various Japanese aesthetics and techniques into Western drama. Among his projects, he produced and directed classics such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1993) and Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1996), as well as S. Ansky’s Yiddish play The Dybbuk (2002). The latter, about a bride possessed by a “dybbuk,” believed to be the dislocated spirit of a dead person, is well suited to the concept of Noh drama, and this production, as well as Serper’s previous ones, was highly acclaimed. These plays, all produced in Hebrew, and videotaped and sub-titled in English, have been shown at academic and artistic venues around the world.

Serper's production of The Dybbuk

Currently, Zvika Serper is an associate professor in the departments of East Asian Studies and Theater Arts at Tel Aviv University, where he continues his practical work of bridging Eastern and Western theater/acting techniques, as well as his academic research on comparisons between and fusions of Japanese and Western theater. He travels abroad frequently giving lectures cum demonstrations and conducting master classes and workshops in acting and movement techniques at theaters and universities, such as the Graduate Acting Program of Tisch School of the Arts, New York University; the Department of Theater, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; the Department of Literature, Waseda University, Tokyo; and the National Academy of Cinema, Television and Theatre in Lodz, Poland.

* I would like to thank Prof. Zvika Serper for letting me interview him, for informing and correcting me, and for answering my questions so patiently. I am also grateful to him for allowing me to publish photos from his personal collection.

Lieutenant General J.F.R. Jacob: An Indian Officer with a Difference

2011-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

The 1971 war between India and Pakistan is sometimes compared with the 1967 six day Arab-Israeli war because of its brilliance and swiftness (13 days). The man who masterminded and led this war, and who ultimately accepted Pakistan’s surrender, was Lieutenant General Jack Frederick Ralph (or Jacob-Farj-Rafael) Jacob, a Jewish Indian from Calcutta (Kolkata).

Jacob is the scion of an old Baghdadi Jewish family that immigrated to India some 200 years ago. Despite the appellation, the term “Baghdadi Jews” refers not only to Jews from Iraq, but also from Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and

Yemen

. They came to Bombay, Calcutta and Rangoon in order to escape persecution in their native lands. Within the eclectic, all-embracing fabric of Indian society, the status of those outside the Hindu caste system − Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs − varies. Even the main Jewish communities − the ancient Bene Israel and the Cochinis, as well as the newer Baghdadis − have their own hierarchical relationship with each other and with the rest of Indian society. The Baghdadis, a traditional, tight-knit Jewish community that engages mostly in business, integrated well into Indian society and prospered.

Rather unusually, perhaps, the young Jacob, born in 1923, was sent to a British boarding school in Darjeeling, in the Himalayan foothills, some 500 km from his home in Calcutta. Despite the opposition of his father, in 1941 he enlisted in the British army in order to fight the Nazis, whom he had heard were committing atrocities against the Jews. However, for the majority of his time he found himself fighting the Japanese in Burma, Sumatra, and other parts of south Asia. Deciding that he liked the military life, he continued to serve, and after India gained independence in 1947, he joined the new national army, rising rapidly through the ranks until his retirement, 37 years later, with the rank of Lieutenant General.

The highlight of his career was undoubtedly the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war. After India was partitioned along religious lines in 1947, Muslim Pakistan consisted of two geographically and ethno-linguistically separate parts, West Pakistan and East Bengal (later East Pakistan), originally part of the historical region of Bengal. (The mainly Hindu state of West Bengal remained a part of India.) Although East Pakistan was the more populous, it was much poorer, and political and economic power lay firmly in the hands of West Pakistan. Unrest and calls for autonomy in the East mounted, reaching a climax in 1971 when Pakistani ruler Yahya Kahn cracked down on the rebels and millions of Bengalis belonging to the Hindu minority in East Pakistan fled to India. After Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government began assisting the rebels, Pakistan attacked

India

Two years previously Jacob had been appointed chief of staff of the Eastern Command and it was he who prepared the battle plans for the swift surrender of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan. The idea was to bypass Pakistani forces and conquer Dhaka, the heart of the eastern province. After 13 days, and despite reservations among senior officers of India’s Central Command, Jacob decided, during a temporary ceasefire, that the time was ripe to travel to Dhaka to demand the unconditional surrender of Pakistani General Amir Niazi. He gave Niazi exactly 30 minutes to deliver his answer. Three times Jacob asked him whether he accepted the ultimatum granting him and his forces safety if he surrendered publicly. When Niazi didn’t answer, Jacob declared that he interpreted his silence as agreement to the terms. Ninety-three thousand Pakistani soldiers subsequently surrendered in a public ceremony the following day. This was the first and perhaps the only public surrender in modern military history. Niazi, who was reprimanded severely by the commission set up to investigate the debacle, would later accuse Jacob of blackmail. Jacob’s Surrender at Dacca: Birth of a Nation (1997) is described by reviewer George K. Tanham in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, as “a colorful and frank firsthand account [of the war] from the Indian point of view.” The defeat of the Pakistani army in East Pakistan led to the formation of a new sovereign state, the People’s Republic of Bangladesh.

Following his retirement, Jacob joined the business world, but retained his ties to the government establishment. He demonstrated both the determination and efficiency he displayed in the military when he served from 1998 as governor of the state of Goa, where he is almost revered. “Once there was a governor here who… took far-reaching decisions to save our natural resources from the miners and the government that was enslaving them,” one Goan citizen told India-based journalist Aimee Ginsburg, “and by the way, he was a Jew.” Indeed, not only did Jacob move to protect Goa’s water resources and huge swathes of its jungles, but he cracked down harshly on corruption. His declaration of a state of emergency in the wake of a series of political crises enabled him to carry out numerous reforms and measures to conserve Goa’s natural resources. “For me,” he told Ginsburg, “saving those forests was a greater achievement than Pakistan’s surrender.” A few years later he was appointed governor of the large and prosperous state of Punjab and after that, administrator of Chandigarh (Aimee Ginsburg, “The General of the Eastern Command,” 24 Hour Supplement, Yedioth Aharonot, Oct. 2, 2011).

Nearing his 90th year, Jacob lives alone quietly in Delhi. He never married. Interestingly, he says in his book: “Although I was one of only a few Jews in the army, I never came across any antisemitism, only enthusiasm and acceptance.” This statement is perhaps testimony to India’s openness and pluralism. “The secret of India's tolerance is the Hindu belief which confers legitimacy on a wide diversity of cultural and religious groups even as it forbids movement from one group to another," concluded Raphael Meyer, an expert on the Jews of Cochin.

Expo 70, Osaka: A Futuristic Experience

2011-08-23T22:44:00.000-07:00

Osaka Expo was the first expo hosted in Asia and it was an incredible example of engineering and architectural finesse thanks to unforgettable temporary pavilions… It was 40 years ago but they look more futuristic than the… Shanghai pavilions [at Expo 2010]. I think they evoke… structural progress and… high-tech concepts... so stunning! Unfortunately most of the buildings were removed...

("Osaka Expo '70: Futuristic Pavilions," THEJUICESQUEEZER, June 28, 2010).

This text, posted at an international site dedicated to architecture, design and other related matters, well sums up the experience of Expo 70, the world fair held in Osaka, Japan, from mid-March till mid-September 1970. The exposition, whose theme was Progress and Harmony for Mankind, was Japan’s showcase to the world, proof of its superior technological skills. And the 76 nations (plus a British Crown Colony − Hong Kong), as well as three American states and one German city, that took part in it were also eager to match the host country, if not technologically then at least architecturally, and with the exhibits they displayed inside. The expo was therefore an amazing conglomeration of structures, many of them daring in their designs and concepts.

Kodak and Ricoh pavilion

The Australian pavilion, for example, in which I was privileged to work for the six months of the exposition, had a canopy roof, “shaped from Australian steel as a stylized lotus and suspended from a giant cantilever arm.”

Australian pavilion

According to contemporary architects Barnes and Jackson in a paper they wrote on the concept, it was an attempt “to appeal to purported Japanese interest in mastery over nature while showing what Australia could do with its natural resources.” It was also intended to correct Japanese perceptions of Australians as coarse, uncultured and under-industrialized.

In keeping with the historic 1967 moon landing and subsequent space explorations, the U.S. pavilion had a space age theme.

The interior was inflated like a balloon, and made of fabric and cables. Artifacts such as the Apollo 11 space capsule were displayed to demonstrate NASA’s achievements, and the centerpiece was a large piece of moon rock brought back by astronauts from Apollo 12 in 1969.

Moon rock in US pavilion

British pavilion, with Soviet pavilion in background

Hong Kong pavilion

French pavilion

Bulgarian pavilion

Swiss pavilion

Japan

’s architectural designs, including its own pavilion and those of its companies and organizations, were bold and futuristic.

Japanese pavilion

Takara pavilion

Toshiba-IHI pavilion

Gas pavilion

The central unifying structure of Expo 70 was the Festival Plaza, where musical performances and electronic presentations were held. From the enigmatic Tower of the Sun

Tower of the Sun

visitors could join pedestrian walkways, “people movers,” and the monorail that traveled out toward the north, south, east and west gates.

"People mover"

The experience of representing one’s country at an expo might be compared to that of an athlete at the Olympics, but for a much longer period and without the competition. Like the Olympics, each country has its own living quarters and distinctive uniforms. At Expo 70, the Australian women wore yellow and white mini dresses, with a grey coat in winter, and the men wore yellow shirts and green blazers; we all wore soft white “digger” hats.

Australian uniforms

As hosts and hostesses, our work involved greeting the thousands of visitors passing through daily and offering them information about Australia in general, as well as about tourism and trade opportunities. In between shifts, we enjoyed visiting the pavilions of other countries in order to meet their representatives and view their exhibits. Since the Iron Curtain still divided East and West, we were particularly curious to meet the Soviet delegates, despite warnings not to fraternize with them (no doubt, the warnings were mutual). So we would enter the vast, imposing structure − with its statues of model workers, 3-D panoramas and space capsule of first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin − rather timidly and engage in small talk and the exchange of badges from our respective countries.

Soviet pavilion

Another enjoyable pastime was eating. Some of the pavilions had restaurants, and it was particularly interesting to taste the cuisine of those countries and cultures. We liked to frequent the

New Zealand

restaurant because of the delicious lamb and ice cream they served, but Japanese food was ubiquitous and like the tens of thousands of Japanese visitors, we, too, often enjoyed a bento, a traditional Japanese lunch of rice, fish or meat and pickled vegetables packed in a lacquered box.

Bento

Overall, some 64 million people visited Expo 70 (Expo 2010, Shanghai, 73 million), which was, at the time, by far a record for international expositions.

Waiting patiently in line

The Expo site is now a Commemoration Park. Most of the pavilions were destroyed, but a few elements (such as the Japanese Garden) remain, and the mysterious Tower of the Sun still stands tall. In addition, a time capsule was buried there, to be opened 5,000 years later, in the year 6970.

Commemoration Park, with Tower of the Sun

Australian-Japanese Relations in the Shadow of the Whaling Issue

2011-08-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

In mid-February 2011,

Japan

was forced to cut short its annual whale hunt by over a month in the Antarctic region, south of

Australia

, following continuous harassment by protesters from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a US-based environmental group. Some 80 percent of the world’s whales migrate to this area during this season of the year. The activists threw paint, smoke bombs and bottles of rancid butter at the whaling ships, and sabotaged the operation of a harpoon vessel. Instead of harvesting some 850 whales, the fleet left with only 170. Four months later, at a meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), an 88-nation body established to oversee whaling activities,

Japan

urged

Australia

to better protect its ships against the raiders. Rejecting the demand, environment minister Tony Burke said that

Australia

could not provide more security for Japanese ships than for other vessels in the area. He then went on to touch on the heart of the controversy, contending that Japan’s claim of “scientific research” was no more than a cover for commercial whaling, which is banned under an IWC moratorium which took effect in 1986. The moratorium was adopted partly due to the fear that some whale species were being endangered, as well as doubts on the part of some countries and organizations about the humanity of whale hunting. This involves the firing of a harpoon near the whale’s head followed by the detonation of an explosive charge beneath its skin, which is meant to kill it; death, however, is not always immediate. The IWC suspension lacks any means of enforcement other than moral persuasion.

This tense exchange between the two nations highlights a sensitive issue in an otherwise strong relationship, and their differing perceptions of the problem. Japan is a leading trade partner of Australia, and the two countries cooperate on a range of issues (disarmament, counter-terrorism, humanitarian relief, among others), as well as within various regional frameworks, such as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) and ARF (ASEAN − Association of Southeast Asian Nations − Regional Forum).

The Japanese Position

Whaling is a traditional Japanese occupation, possibly dating as far back as the 12th century, and whales were hunted for their oil and meat. Following the U.S. occupation in 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, ordered the resumption of the whaling industry, which had ceased during the war, in order to feed the country’s starving citizens. After flourishing for a couple of decades the popularity of whale meat began to decline and subsequently to stockpile. Since the industry is no longer sustainable, it is heavily subsidized by the government.

In the Q&A section of its website, the Japan Whaling Association compares asking the Japanese to give up whaling to asking Australians to give up meat pies, or Americans hamburgers. Referring to the strong animal rights stand of Anglo-Saxon countries and organizations such as Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, it adds: “Attitudes toward animals are a part of national cultures. No nation should try and impose their attitudes on others.” In Japan, whales are just another marine source available for exploitation, and the association emphasizes the importance of whale meat as a food product not only in Japan, but in other whaling countries such as Norway, Iceland and Denmark, too. Moreover, it claims that all its whaling in the Southern Ocean (declared by the IWC an international whale sanctuary in 1994) and the Northwest Pacific is conducted first and foremost for scientific research, which is permitted by the IWC − and only secondly for its products − under the auspices of the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR), a semi-governmental organization set up in 1987 following the moratorium on commercial whaling; that it is carried out in a sustainable manner and that, moreover, it is necessary to cull whales, especially the supposedly more common Minke whale, in order to preserve fishing stocks.

Anti-whaling countries and groups, on the other hand, question whether Japan’s “research program” actually contributes to conserving and managing the world’s whale population. They contend that, in fact, it is a guise for commercial whaling and that it is not necessary to kill whales for research purposes; it is sufficient to obtain samples of tissue and feces. Moreover, they point out that whaling also features in the traditions of other developed countries but they no longer hunt whales, and that eating whale meat has never been a prevalent, nationwide practice in Japan. The cultural argument, they say, could be used as a basis for preserving traditional or coastal whaling (which includes porpoise and dolphin hunting, the latter exposed in the award-winning 2009 documentary The Cove), but not as grounds for Japanese government funding of factory ships engaged in Antarctic whaling. The industry’s minimal contribution to both the local and national economy is yet another contention brought to bear in the campaign against Japanese whaling.

The Australian Position

Australia

has a decades-long tradition of environmental activism, in which campaigners have sought, successfully, to include environmental issues on the public political agenda. Environmental awareness, which began with the intensified exploitation of Australia’s rich natural resource deposits in the 1960s, soon extended to other issues such as whaling. The anti-whaling campaign in Australia saw success in 1980 with the passing of the Whale Protection Act, which made it illegal to hunt whales in Australian waters or for Australians to kill whales. This was superseded and reinforced by the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, adopted in 1999.

Some 70 percent of Australians support a ban on whale, according to polls conducted for Greenpeace by the Nippon Research Centre, compared to over one-third of the Japanese population that supports commercial whaling and over one-third that is indifferent. Japanese conservation groups take a similar stand to their Australian counterparts but their political influence is weak. In Australia the principal political parties include an anti-whaling clause in their platforms.

One of the most outspoken senior officials in the anti-whaling campaign in recent years has been Kevin Rudd. Both as prime minister, and currently, as foreign minister, he has repeatedly vowed to end Japan’s so-called scientific whaling. His activist approach to whaling activities reached a peak in May 2010 when, after prolonged diplomatic efforts to end Japanese whaling, Rudd announced a government decision, on the eve of a visit by Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada, to submit a lawsuit against Japan to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It argues that Japan’s so-called scientific whaling program violates the country’s obligations under international law, partly because of “a lack of any demonstrated relevance for the conservation and management of whale stocks.” The suit will be determined only in 2013.

Some Australian officials, academics and diplomats warn against adopting an overly confrontational approach toward Japan over what might be considered a small bump in their relationship. After all, Japan is a great friend and partner of Australia and has been for the past 60 years. It would be a pity to jeopardize these ties over a relatively minor issue, they say. Some even argue that it has become an entirely political matter, with both Liberal and Labour parties fearing they will lose votes to the Greens if they lessen their pressure on Japan. A poll commissioned by the Japanese government in late 2009 showed an alarming turnabout in Australian attitudes toward Japan: 60 percent of Australians no longer saw Japan as a reliable friend as opposed to the same figure in 2006 that considered it a trustworthy ally. Japan fears that the whaling issue might contribute to a souring of relations between the two countries.

Conclusion

Some Australian and other observers sympathetic to the anti-whaling cause wonder why so much emphasis is being placed on Japanese “scientific” whaling when so many other mammal species are in even greater danger of extinction, including in

Australia

itself. Indeed, there is no clear scientific answer regarding the extent of the risk to the whaling population, partly due to the difficulty of tracking and monitoring these animals, as well as the lack of agreement among scientists at the IWC and elsewhere about how to go about it. Populations of whale species such as the North Atlantic Right Whale and the Blue Whale are generally considered to be endangered, while others such as the Humpback and the Fin whale are classified as vulnerable. Even the Minke whale, the species most commonly hunted by the Japanese, might be in danger since the exact numbers are unknown. Japan claims that only by catching whales can numbers, types and habits be analyzed scientifically; however, the amount of publications issued by the ICR is surprisingly few, casting doubt on the extent of the organization’s research effort.

Significantly and to its credit

Japan

has chosen to remain a member of the IWC and to work to push its case from within the body, rather than to leave and to act freely as it wishes. One of the ways it seeks to win support is by recruiting more pro-whaling countries into the IWC, in addition to those such as Norway and Iceland that are already members of the organization.

Four months after it cut short its hunt in the Southern Ocean, Japan sent another “research” mission to the northwest Pacific to catch some 260 whales. It argues that its task is to study their stomach contents, DNA, and other data in order to substantiate its own claim that there is a robust whale population in the world. The mission is due to end in late August 2011. Australia and other anti-whaling nations, as well as environmentalist groups, have strongly condemned Japan’s latest whaling operation. However painful the issue, though, Australia would do well to reconsider its approach to its good friend Japan and demonstrate some sensitivity, recognizing that some Japanese consider such attacks as a form of “Japan bashing” based on cultural imperialism and double standards.

Japan's "Comfort Women": A Continuing Source of Official Discomfort

2011-05-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

“Twelve soldiers raped me in quick succession, after which I was given half an hour rest. Then twelve more soldiers followed... I bled so much and was in such pain, I could not even stand up... I felt much pain, and my vagina was swollen... Every day, from two in the afternoon to ten in the evening, the soldiers lined up outside my room and the rooms of the six other women there. I did not even have time to wash after each assault. At the end of the day, I just closed my eyes and cried.”

(From the autobiography of former comfort woman Maria Rosa Henson, cited by Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women, p. 1.)

On January 11, 1992, a major Japanese national daily, Asahi Shimbun, published a front-page article, entitled “Japanese Army Abducted Comfort Women.” It contained the findings of historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi who, it claimed, had found incriminating evidence in the archives of Japan’s Defense Ministry of direct military involvement in the running of brothels in Japanese occupied areas of Asia, from the early 1930s to the end of World War II. Over the previous year this paper had run a lengthy series on “comfort women” (jugun ianfu), thus exposing a topic that was largely unknown to the wider public.

The brothels, or ianjo (comfort stations), housed women from Korea, China, Japan, the Philippines, and several other countries, many of whom were abducted or enticed with false offers of jobs to serve the soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army as sex slaves. The 1992 article caused a sensation, and after decades of attempts to suppress the stories of surviving comfort women, forced the Japanese government to acknowledge some of the facts that same day. Although the Japanese government has issued several apologies to the victims, it has never accepted legal responsibility for what is considered the biggest organized military rape in history (at least in terms of number of rapes, if not in women. This article seeks to offer some explanations as to why the subject of comfort women has never been resolved and continues to remain in the shadows of the history of both human rights and war crimes atrocities.

Scope and Modus Operandi

Since the Japanese military destroyed much documentation in August 1945 when it surrendered to the Allies, estimates of the number of comfort women vary widely, from 50,000 to 300,000. However, there is wide agreement that it was probably around 200,000. Only about one-quarter survived the war since many of the victims were executed toward its end or were left to die. Some 80−90 percent of the comfort women came from Korea, which Japan occupied from 1910 to 1945. According to the Swiss-based Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, comfort women generally received little or no medical treatment even if they were injured in the process of rape and torture or became pregnant or infected with venereal disease. After the war, many women never attempted to return home because they did not know how or were afraid to meet their families out of shame and humiliation.

Former comfort women protesting in Seoul, South Korea

In his book Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, Yuki Tanaka traces the historical process that led to collaboration between the various arms of the Japanese military and government ministries, and the prostitution industry in Japan and Japanese-controlled Korea. Originally, the first comfort women were professional Japanese prostitutes and destitute Japanese and Korean women. However, as Japan expanded its empire local women were forcibly recruited through deception (job offers to work as nurses, laundrywomen, and factory workers) and intimidation, as well as abduction.

Based on the evidence of military correspondence, it seems that the purpose of the ianjo, the first of which were set up in Shanghai in 1932, was first and foremost to prevent the rape of civilians and check venereal disease. They were also intended to raise the morale of the troops and curb military espionage. Japanese officials admitted that the first two goals were not met. Reflecting on the Japanese invasion of Wuhan in 1938, for example, General Okumura Yasuji admitted that random rape had occurred despite the existence of ianjo. Moreover, as noted, women with venereal disease went untreated while soldiers failed to report they were sick for fear of punishment.

After they were rounded up, the women, some as young as 12, were usually given a rough medical examination, following which they were raped by officers; they were then sent to the comfort stations, often thousands of miles from their homes, and sometimes in combat zones. They worked day and night, servicing ordinary soldiers, NCOs, and officers, seven days a week, with maybe Saturday afternoon off. Testifying before the US House of Representatives in 1990, Jan Ruff-O'Hearn, who as a young Dutch girl was taken from a prisoner-of-war camp in Java in February 1944 to serve as a sex slave in a Japanese military brothel, said that for four months she and nine other Dutch girls were systematically raped and beaten up to 30 times a day. They became pregnant and were forced to miscarry. Ruff-O’Hearn was unable to bear children after she married due to the physical damage she suffered as a comfort woman.

In 1983, Seiji Yoshida published a book, My War Crimes: The Impressment of Koreans, in which he confessed that he had forcibly procured women in Korea under direct orders from the military. It was not until 1991 Kim Hak Soon became the first Korean victim to speak publicly about the existence of comfort women. About 50 other South Korean women followed suit. After a Task Force on Filipino Comfort Women was set up in the Philippines, some 150 women came forward in 1993 when a radio station called on them to make contact. One woman, Felicidad de Los Reyes, related that she was just 14 when Japanese soldiers invited her to receive a reward for her singing at her school. Her “reward” was violent mass rape over a period of three days. Fortunately, she survived the rest of the war in hiding, but her sister was not so lucky and died in a comfort house.

Attempts at Redress

On August 4, 1993, the Japanese government issued a detailed statement admitting that the military was directly or indirectly involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of the women, many of whom were recruited against their will. It expressed its sincere apologies and remorse “to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable psychological wounds.” However, it stopped short of accepting legal responsibility and Japan continued to maintain that the ianjo were not a system, nor were they a war crime or a crime against humanity. Moreover, rape, Japan has always claimed, was not a crime prior to 1945. Widespread and systematic rape and sex slavery were recognized as war crimes and crimes against humanity under the international Geneva Convention only in 1949. Prior to this statement, prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa had made a public apology while on a visit to South Korea in January 1992. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart, “he said at a press conference, “and feel remorse for those people who suffered indescribable hardships.” Similar, non-state-committal apologies have been issued over the years, particularly in relation to South Korean comfort women.

In 1995, Japan set up the Asian Women’s Fund, run by independent trustees and intended to compensate women forced to work as comfort women. From the outset, the fund was controversial. While Japanese right-wingers opposed anything that smacked of an apology or compensation, activists in the former occupied territories decried the fund’s lack of official status and the fact that most of it was made up of charity not state money. Moreover, letters of apology signed by the prime minister were distributed to surviving women by the fund rather than by diplomats, raising criticism that the letter was personal rather than official. In South Korea and Taiwan about 50 percent of the women were persuaded by activists to refuse the Japanese funds and accept compensation instead from their own governments. No women in the People’s Republic of China received compensation because their government did not cooperate in setting up an authorization mechanism for the victims.

The controversy re-emerged in March 2007 when prime minister Shinzo Abe tried to revise the governmental apology from 1993, and denied that the women were coerced. However, under severe American diplomatic pressure, he was forced to backtrack and apologize for Japan’s violation of human rights in regard to comfort women.

A month later the Japanese Supreme Court effectively closed the door on further legal action on the subject when after a legal process of 11 years it rejected the demand for reparations made by six plaintiffs acting on behalf of two Chinese women forced to work as comfort women. The grounds given for the court’s verdict were the 1972 Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China which renounced Chinese claims for war reparations from Japan. A number of class actions, such as the lawsuit of Maria Rosa Henson together with other comfort women from South Korea and China, had been attempted in the past, but all had failed.

Responding to international pressure, in 2007 the US Congress passed Resolution 121, calling on Tokyo to “formally apologize and accept historical responsibility” for the comfort women issue. The motion, sponsored by Japanese-American Mike Honda was fiercely opposed in Tokyo, with the largest newspaper Yomiuri stating there was not “one shred of evidence to substantiate” the claim that the Japanese government systematically coerced and recruited the women. Similar resolutions were passed in the Netherlands, Canada, the European Union, and Britain.

The Search for Explanations

Military brothels were not unique to the Japanese. During the war some 34,000 East European women were estimated to have been apprehended and forced to serve Wehrmacht and SS soldiers as sex slaves in German military and camp brothels. Since the countries of the Soviet bloc (except for the Soviet Union itself) did not benefit from the reparations agreements in regard to forced labor (under which these women would likely fall) signed between West Germany and the Allies after the war, one can assume that they have received neither compensation nor an official apology for their particular suffering.

The Allied countries were also aware of their soldiers’ sexual needs. In fact, in an attempt to demonstrate that “everyone was doing it,” Tanaka likens the comfort women system to the situation among the Allies by pointing out that some local commanders from the United States, Britain, and Australia designated certain brothels in the Middle East, India, and Africa as “safe houses” for soldiers. The difference, however, is that although a minority were impoverished girls enticed by offers of money, the majority of women “serving” there were professional prostitutes.

Perhaps a more valid, though partial, explanation for the continued neglect of the comfort women issue was the inferior status attributed to Asian women on the part of Westerners. This was the legacy of decades of imperialism, one of whose pillars was the supremacy of the white race. As a result, Asian (and African) women were often just servants or sex objects for Westerners. This attitude may have prevailed during the postwar Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (aka International Military Tribunal for the Far East), which heard masses of evidence regarding the ill-treatment, rape and murder of Allied soldiers and civilians, but almost nothing about Asian comfort women. For their part, the Japanese attributed a lower status to non-Japanese Asian women. Although, as noted, Japanese prostitutes were initially sent to serve the imperial soldiers in Asia, they soon discontinued this practice, allegedly in order not to stain the reputation of Japanese women.

At the Dutch-run Batavia War Crimes Tribunal in 1948, charges of war crimes were brought by 35 Dutch women who had been victimized as comfort women in Indonesia against twelve Japanese army officers. One of the accused was condemned to death and the others were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from 2 to 15 years. This was the only trial in history that gave justice to some comfort women; significantly, all the women were Dutch citizens.

A third possible explanation is the silence of the women concerned. The revelations at the Batavia tribunal caused hardly a ripple at the time, when so many war horrors were coming to light. Rape continues to stigmatize a woman, even in many contemporary societies. The multiple rape and abuse that these women endured shamed them into keeping their terrible secret. An additional factor was that many of them lived lonely and impoverished lives, without the support of families, and some continued to live thousands of miles from their towns and villages. Almost five decades passed before Kim Hak Soon stepped forward in South Korea to tell her story in 1991.

Conclusion

Colonialist attitudes, racism, sexism and chauvinism all seem to have played a part in the continuing neglect of the comfort women issue. On Wednesday January 14, 2010, a group of surviving South Korean women, who originally made up the bulk of sex slaves, marked their 900th weekly protest vigil outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, a tradition they had begun in 1992. With an average age of 85, they continue to demand an apology from the Japanese Diet (parliament), representing the emperor and the people, and punishment of those who raped them. Their request for the erection of a memorial to their suffering in Japan has, however, been met. In August 2005, the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace was opened in Tokyo. Entering the foyer the visitor immediately encounters a portrait gallery of black and white photographs of elderly women, with their names listed below. These are the women who came forward to tell their stories of being sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army. The rooms of the museum contain hundreds of their testimonials.

Foyer of Women's Active Museum on War and Peace

The existence of the museum may go some way to assuaging the pain of the comfort women. However, the prospects of a Japanese apology that includes either the acceptance of legal responsibility for the crimes perpetuated against them or state reparation seem dim.

Unconditional Love: The Japanese Makuya, the Jews, and Israel

2011-05-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

The Makuya are a unique phenomena in Japan, not only because they belong to a tiny Christian minority (less than 1 percent of the population), but because of their unconditional love of the Jews and Israel. Japan has very few Jews and most Japanese have never met one. Their limited knowledge comprises a mixture of antisemitic notions imported by Christian missionaries (who were among the earliest Westerners to enter the country when it first opened up in 1868) about supposed disproportionate Jewish power and economic greed, and admiration for the Jews for their achievements, especially in the economic field.

The origins of the Makuya date back to May 1948, when a Japanese businessman and deeply religious Christian, Professor (Abraham) Ikuro Teshima (1910-73), had a divine experience while he was hiding from the American occupiers in the volcanic Aso Mountains. Teshima had escaped arrest after he had arranged a protest against American plans to take over the property of an elementary school he ran in order to expand an army base. While in hiding he claimed to have had a personal encounter with the spirit of God, which he interpreted as a call to get back to basics, to the dynamic faith of the original Gospel of early Hebraic Christianity, in contrast to the dogmatic, institutionalized, European-dominated churches. This was the way, he believed, to revive the devastated spirit of postwar Japan. He maintained that a deeper understanding of the Jewish faith, its people, and history was essential for fully comprehending the Bible.

Coincidentally or not, May 1948 was also the date of the establishment of the State of Israel. Because of the juncture of those two life-changing events – his epiphany and the establishment of the new state – he called for absolute commitment to the Jews and to Israel. When Teshima returned from hiding, he closed his business and devoted himself to teaching the Bible. He began with a handful of students, and went on to establish the Makuya.

Makuya visiting the Negev in southern Israel, 2009

The word Makuya is the Japanese translation of the Hebrew phrase Ohel Moed , the meeting place (literally, “tent”) between God and man, or God’s dwelling place (Shekhinah) (Ex. 29:42-43). In keeping with this concept, Teshima taught that you can find God anywhere, and that it is not necessary to pray in a church. The Makuya therefore worship and study the Bible in houses. There is no central Makuya religious authority, but a committee of district representatives meets every few months to discuss the movement. Baptism is spiritual - a coming of age ceremony when boys and girls reach the age of 13 and accept adult responsibilities. It takes place on Mount Aso, where Teshima had his encounter with the Lord.

It was only after Japan and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1961 that Teshima managed to visit Israel. He set up an emergency relief committee when he learnt that war was imminent in 1967, and traveled to Jerusalem to rejoice at the “restoration of the Eternal City” at its end. During the Arab oil blockade prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he organized a 3,000 strong march to the Japanese Diet (parliament) to protest the Japanese government’s policy change from neutrality to capitulation to the Arabs. It was the first pro-Israel demonstration ever held in Japan. Israel was “the birthplace of the Bible, and the homeland of our Redeemer,” he said. “We must not allow Israel to become an orphan of nations. Israel cannot, indeed must not, be forsaken in her time of need." Teshima’s campaign received wide publicity and caused a sensation in the Jewish world. However, he collapsed and died shortly afterwards.

A commentator on the Bible and prolific writer, Teshima had declared: "The Bible is the light to all peoples and the biblical faith perfects all religions. Even today the God of Israel is living and vividly intervenes in human society with his abundant goodness and mercy." Among the influences on his work were the Jewish thinkers Rabbi A. H. Kook, Martin Buber, and Abraham Heschel.

Although Teshima had no successor, the movement continued in his path, with about one hundred branches in Japan, Israel, United States, Canada, Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Paraguay, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia. However, due in part to the biblical admonition not to conduct censuses, its total membership is unknown, although some 300,000 copies of its magazine, The Light of Life, are reportedly distributed each month among its followers.

Rather than using the cross as their symbol, the Makuya display the seven-armed biblical candelabrum (menorah) on their badge or pendant, viewing it as a symbol of hope. One of their central spiritual observances is an annual pilgrimage to Israel. Hundreds of students have spent time in Israel working and studying Hebrew and the Bible at kibbutzim, particularly at Kibbutz Hephziba in the north, and many have continued academic studies there.

Israelis tend to look on the Makuya with bemusement when they see the traditionally dressed Japanese Makuya dancing and singing in Hebrew in the streets of Jerusalem during their annual pilgrimages. After all, when they feel that much of the world is against them, it is hard to believe that there is one small group that shows them only unconditional love.

Finding the Right Balance: Sania Mirza − Indian, Muslim, Sportswoman

2011-03-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

Women in Muslim-majority countries may experience severe restrictions on their way of life, depending on the regime under which they live: they may be confined to the home, be forced to cover themselves completely and be accompanied by a male relative if they go out, and may be excluded from certain professions and occupations such as driving. Muslim women dwelling in non-Muslim majority countries may also suffer due to the strict religious codes of their communities. In the uncertain realities of India, where the Muslim minority feels threatened and uneasy due to decades of frictions between the two main religious communities (Hindu and Muslim), a Muslim woman who wants to advance in life has to walk a tightrope in order to avoid offending either her religious community or her nation. Sania Mirza is one such woman: Indian, Muslim and a world-class tennis player, she has aroused controversy by allegedly insulting both. This essay describes her unwitting clashes with the keepers of her religious morals and her nation’s pride during her tennis career, and her attempts to find the right balance.

Sania Mirza: Indian, Muslim and Professional Tennis Player

Born in Mumbai in 1986, Mirza was raised by her religious family in the southern city of Hyderabad. Muslims in this city constitute 40 percent of its population of 7 million. She began learning tennis at age 6, trained by her father and other family members, and became professional in 2003. She is the highest-ranked tennis player ever from India, reaching a career peak of 27 in singles and 18 in doubles. Her good looks and her origins in a country not normally known for its female athletes made her the focus of international publicity and brought her to the attention of many outside the sports world in her home country. She became the darling of Indian sports fans and a youth icon for her fashionable clothes and jewelry.

After reaching the fourth round of the US Open in September 2005, losing to then number one Maria Sharapova, Mirza, a practicing Muslim, found herself at the center of her first controversy: a Muslim organization in Hyderabad issued a fatwa (Islamic religious edict) against her for her “un-Islamic” dress. Instead of short skirts and sleeveless shirts, why couldn’t she follow the example of Iranian women who wore head scarves and long tunics when they played in badminton tournaments, said cleric Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui. After militant Islamist groups such as Jamiat-ulema-e-Hind allegedly threatened to disrupt her tennis matches, security around her was tightened. Mirza declined to comment on the edict, but noticeably, her skirts got slightly longer and her shirts were no longer sleeveless.

As a prominent media personality, Mirza is asked to appear at events that are unconnected to tennis. Only two months after the fatwa affair, she spoke at a conference on safe sex. Her comments on the topic were misinterpreted by some Muslim groups, which accused her of being detached from Islam and a "corrupting influence on youth." Some religious fanatics even burned an effigy of the 19-year-old Mirza. She clarified her stance by saying that she was opposed to pre-marital sex.

Mirza was again in the limelight in 2006 after it was reported that she ceased her doubles partnership with Israeli Shahar Pe’er player out of fear of violent protests from India's Muslim clerics who oppose the existence of Israel. However, these reports were dismissed by Mirza as "baseless." She has partnered Pe’er on a number of occasions and together they won the women’s doubles championship in Stanford, California in July 2007.

In December 2007, Indian police began investigating a case of trespass against Mirza and an advertising agency for shooting a commercial at the seventeenth century Mecca Masjid (mosque) in Hyderabad without permission. Rumors that Muslim groups would hold protests about the commercial after Friday prayers caused police to beef up security. Mirza apologized and her mother also brought a letter of apology to the mosque.

Mirza’s next encounter with controversy was over a national not a religious issue. In January 2008, at the Hopman Cup, held annually in Perth, Australia, and which, unusually for tennis, is a national team event, Mirza was caught on camera relaxing, while watching a fellow countryman play, with her bare feet on a table next to an Indian flag. A lawyer from Madhya Pradesh filed a complaint against her for allegedly violating the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act. Mirza faced a possible three year prison sentence if prosecuted. At a press conference following the incident, Mirza declared that she would not be playing for her country if she did not love it. She spoke of the difficulties of keeping her mind on her game when such scandals broke out, and said she had even thought of quitting tennis. A month later she said she would stop appearing in tennis tournaments in India, upon advice by her manager.

Nevertheless, in November that year she was the chief guest at an international tournament held in Muzaffanagar and again got herself in trouble by allegedly not standing to attention when the national anthem was being played at the closing ceremony. Four complaints were filed against her for violating the Prevention of Insults Act. The hearings in the case were due to begin in April 2010, but were still pending.

The controversy that probably caused the greatest political uproar in India was the announcement of Mirza’s engagement to Pakistani cricketer Shoab Malik in early 2010. Due to the ongoing conflict between the two nations, Pakistan is viewed as India’s chief enemy, and sports events between the two countries are held in an almost war-like atmosphere. Thus, the idea of an Indian sportswoman marrying a Pakistan sportsman was not greeted favorably by Mirza’s fans. Rumors that Pakistan would ask Mirza to represent that country once she was married to Malik even brought Indian politicians into the fray. A spokesman for the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena Party told Mirza to marry an Indian if she wanted to play for India. Things got messier when a woman called Ayesha, also from Hyderabad, appeared, claiming she was already married to Malik and had a marriage license to prove it. Only two months before the announcement of the engagement, Mirza herself had broken off of a long-time engagement with a childhood friend, Sohrab Mirza, from Hyderabad,

The complication of Malik’s marriage to Ayesha was ironed out after Malik succeeded in divorcing her and reaching a settlement. Mirza and Malik married in April 2010, as scheduled. The traditional Muslim ceremony (nikah) and a reception were held in Hyderabad, and additional receptions were held in Pakistan. The couple were planning to base themselves in Dubai. Malik, himself a controversial sports figure in his home country, reportedly said: “I fully understand what it takes to be an international sports person and I will support Sania in her career as long as she wishes to play." At a press conference shortly after the wedding, Mirza affirmed that she would continue supporting her homeland in any future India-Pakistan encounter on the cricket field; nevertheless, she would want her husband to hit a century.

Conclusion

Mirza has indeed continued playing. Speaking from a tournament in Birmingham, UK, in June 2010, she said she would quit tennis within two years of her marriage to concentrate on her personal life. Despite a nagging wrist injury earlier in 2010, she won a silver medal in singles at the Commonwealth and a bronze in both singles and mixed doubles at the Asian games later that year.

As of early 2011, Mirza had still not climbed back into the top 100 in women’s rankings, a series of injuries, as well as the controversies, having grounded her on and off since 2008. Although she lost in the first round of the Australian Open in January, she seems happier, calmer and more secure. Moreover, she has stayed out of trouble since her marriage. Perhaps Mirza has finally found the right balance?

Indian Writers and Writers about India: An Introduction to a Rich and Colorful Literature

2011-02-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance (excerpt from the speech of Jawaharlal Nehru, first prime minister of India, 1947-64, on the eve of the country’s birth, August 14, 1947).

My eyes were first opened to the wealth of literature about India when I saw that “jewel” of British TV series The Jewel in the Crown (Granada, 1984), based on the epic four-volume novel The Raj Quartet (1966−75), by Paul M. Scott. Set mainly against the tumultuous backdrop of the final years of the British Raj, World War II, and the Indian independence movement, it explores a range of political, social, and moral issues of the time through the intricate webs of relations developed between British and Indians, between Hindus and Muslims, between young and old, and between members of Britain’s class system, and through a complex of plots and sub-plots involving a variety of strong, memorable characters.

Scott (1920−1978) was captivated by India when he served there as a British commissioned officer from 1942 during World War II. His work imbued me with a fascination for India, which in turn led me to native Indian authors such as Rohintin Mistry, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Sujit Saraf, Vikas Swarup, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Davidar, Manil Suri, and others. What is common to all these writers is a depth of feeling for a country whose history, diversity, cultural richness, and immense problems are reflected with great perception and sensitivity in their fiction. Like Scott, a number of western writers, too, such as Gregory David Roberts, were ensnared by their India experiences and created some excellent works set in India.

This essay offers a taste of some of the wide array of contemporary fiction about India available in the English language by Indian and other writers, its characteristics, and its dominant motifs. It will also touch on some works by Indian writers centering on places and subjects outside of India.

Characteristics and Motifs

Perhaps the most outstanding trait of much Indian writing is its combination of humor and pathos. The cruel post-independence realities of such a vast, largely poor, diverse, corrupt, and conflict-ridden country seem to lend themselves to the tragic-comic situations many of them describe. Take, for example, the humble chai walla (street tea seller) in The Peacock Throne, by Sujit Saraf (2007), who suddenly finds himself on the brink of political fame and fortune, an innocent pawn in the cynical manipulations of corrupt petty politicians and businessmen; or the memorable opening line of Manil Suri’s The Death of Vishnu (2001),

"Not wanting to arouse Vishnu in case he hadn't died yet, Mrs Asrani tiptoed down to the third step above the landing on which he lived, teakettle in hand."

This sentence sets the tone for the rest of the story, about an untouchable dying in his “home,” the steps of an apartment block in Bombay, while the dramas of the families living in the building swirl around him.

The corruption rampant in India is a dominant theme in many novels. In Vikas Swarup’s who-done-it Six Suspects (2008), the venal home minister of one of India’s states (“the Politician”) is one of the suspects in the murder of his own son who, unsurprisingly, was acquitted after murdering a bar girl. Swarup is also the author of Q&A (2005; known also by its film name Slumdog Millionaire), in which a penniless waiter who answers all the questions correctly in the equivalent of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” is thrown into prison, accused of cheating, because of who he is, and because the producers don’t have the million rupees he won to give him. In similar vein, Aravind Adiga demonstrates that crime does pay in modern India in his prize-winning novel The White Tiger (2008). Balram, the protagonist, is a poor, low-caste but bright boy (hence his nickname “The White Tiger”) from a village in “the Darkness,” of rural India, who emerges into “the Light” as a wealthy member of a top caste in India’s urbanized, high-tech society.

Family, tradition, and the inequities of the caste system are themes that run throughout the narrative in all the books outlined above, as well as in much other literature about India. The four disparate characters of different castes and backgrounds in Rohintin Mistry’s very fine A Fine Balance (1995) are thrown together and struggle to survive during the turbulent times from independence to the period of the Emergency Laws under Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. Mistry does not flinch from painting a grim picture of the fate of the poor and the downtrodden in India under Gandhi (such as forced sterilization). One of the most sensitive books on family and family relations in India is his Family Matters (2002), a painful look at a troubled Parsi family, whose problems are compounded when the 79-year-old patriarch is forced to move in with his daughter, son-in-law and children, after becoming bed-ridden.

Hindu mythology, too, plays an important role in Indian literature. Vishnu, the name of the dying untouchable in the abovementioned book by Suri, is, symbolically, also a god in Hindu mythology, the protector and preserver of the universe, while in the complex and wide-ranging Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1993), Vikram Chandra mixes Hindu myth, Indian history, a typewriting monkey, and life in contemporary America.

The sheer vastness and diversity of India also seem to demand a long and complex narrative peopled with memorable characters. How else to explain the length of many of these books? It seems as though the authors are willing us to try to understand the growing pains of this colorful, but troubled country.

The following is the opening line of Vikram Seth’s wonderful A Suitable Boy.

"You too will marry a boy I choose"

An Indian variant of Pride and Prejudice? Not quite. But like Jane Austen’s early nineteenth century novel, A Suitable Boy is an epic Indian take by Vikram Seth (1993) on matchmaking, finding-a-suitable-husband, pride, prejudice – and much more. Set in a fictitious town in early post-independence India, the story revolves around the search for love of 19-year-old Lata and her struggles with her opinionated mother who is intent on finding her a suitable match. In the background, but also discussed in great detail, are India’s own post-colonial political and social struggles: Hindus versus Muslims, land reform, and the empowerment of Muslim women. With its vastness (over 1,400 pages; it’s one of the longest books ever written in the English language) and Seth’s inclusion of such a range of subjects, this is one of my favorite books. Those who could read another thousand plus of Seth’s pages will be pleased to know that he is writing a sequel, A Suitable Girl, due out in 2013.

Another epic novel in similar vein, though somewhat more flawed, is David Davidar’s The House of Blue Mangoes (2002) which, unlike most of the others, takes place in the first half of the 20th century. His themes include the Indian’s strong attachment to place, family ties, caste wars – and, as the title suggests, mangoes.

Also a hefty tome, but in a more modern style than those of Seth, Mistry, and Davidar, is Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram (2003). Shantaram is the name given to Roberts, a convicted bank robber, in India, to where he fled after breaking out of a prison in Australia. It purportedly tells the real tale of his adventures there: living in a hut in a shanty town and setting up a health clinic for the poor, working for the mafia, being worked over in an Indian jail, and acting in Bollywood. Although a Westerner, while relating his story, he, like the aforementioned Indian writers, succeeds in conveying to the reader the colors, smells, and traditions, as well as the diversity and conflicts of India.

One cannot write a piece on Indian literature without mentioning the renowned Salman Rushdie. Rushdie has been compared to Gabriel Gárcia Márquez in his use of fantasy, myth, and magical realism. The book for which he owes his infamy (Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei issued a fatwa – Islamic religious verdict – condemning him to death) was The Satanic Verses (1988). The book is based partly on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, but only a discerning Westerner with knowledge of the Islamic religion would understand what roused the ire of so many devout Muslims.

As an introduction to Rushdie, the reader would be better advised to try one of his more “conventional” (relatively speaking where Rushdie is concerned) novels, such as The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995). The book could be interpreted allegorically. The protagonist “Moor” is misshapen and grows physically at twice the rate of a normal human being (does he represent India?); his origins are hybrid – South Indian Jewish, Spanish Muslim, and Portuguese Christian (perhaps representing the Indian sub-continent?). The book's poetic title refers to two paintings titled The Moor's Last Sigh, one painted by Aurora, his mother, the other by one of her former admirers and subsequent nemesis, Vasco Miranda.

If all the above sounds too outrageous, another Rushdie possibility is the acclaimed Midnight’s Children (1981), which tells the tale of Saleem Sinai, born “at the stroke of midnight” − representing, in Jawaharlal Nehru words, the time that independent India itself was born, between August 14 and 15, 1947. This novel, too, can also be seen as an allegory, combining actual historical events with magical realism. Saleem discovers that all children born at the time the state came into being are possessed with magical powers, and he uses his own such powers to convene a Midnight’s Children’s Conference. Like all great novels about India, the country’s immense problems as it declares independence are intertwined inextricably with the narrative: prominently among them, the resultant Partition, and acute political, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences.

Novels Set outside India

Some novels by Indian writers are set in other countries. Most of those that feature Indian characters highlight the cultural gap between Western and Indian values. Lima, the heroine in Anjali Banerjee’s comic novel Imaginary Men, for instance, is a professional matchmaker in San Francisco, but is forced to develop a strategy to avoid the traditional matchmaking efforts of her aunt from Kolkata, who is horrified that she is still unmarried.

The excellent short stories in Unaccustomed Earth (2008), by Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri, underline the cultural conflicts and differences between first-, second- and third-generation Indian immigrants, as the younger family members struggle to break away from their parents’ close traditional community lives and assimilate into Western society. Lahiri is also the author of the prize-winning short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) and the novel The Namesake (2003), both of which, in addition to cultural differences, address sensitive issues such as marital difficulties and miscarriage.

Another novel by Vikram Seth, who is also a librettist, focuses neither on India nor on Indians but on music. An Equal Music (1999), which was hailed by music critics for its musical accuracy, centers on the affair between Michael, a professional violist, and Julia, a pianist. Julia’s approaching deafness and the affair itself affect their respective careers.

The multitalented Seth also wrote a biography/memoir, Two Lives (2005): the astonishing story of the marriage of his Indian great-uncle to a German Holocaust refugee, who met in Berlin in the early 1930s when the former was a student. This complex work, covering almost a century, also includes many autobiographic details.

Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-Bengali writer living in the U.S. Although some of his books center on post-colonial India, his interest also extends to other countries in the East, such as Burma and Malaya, as well as to Egypt. His sweeping historical fiction The Glass Palace (2000) is set largely in Burma, beginning in late nineteenth century Mandalay, but it also visits India, to where the exiled Burmese king is exiled, as well as Malaya. For those tempted to step outside India to learn about another Eastern country, Ghosh offers plenty of historical and cultural information, as well as romance.

Afterword

I would like to conclude with a caution, encapsulated in a quote from Michael Wood, of the London Review of Books, which should be borne in mind when reading this survey, as well as English-language novels about India, in general:

“Some 5 per cent of the [Indian] population can read English… Readers and writers of English are thus a tiny minority… The privilege and the proportion [of this minority] exclude so much of what is there… that I'm not sure where this leaves non-Indian readers of Indian English fiction, except with a huge reminder of everything we don't know and perhaps can't know. We should remember, too, that much Indian fiction in English is written for readers abroad, or indeed written abroad.”

Authors and books mentioned in this essay

Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008)

Anjali Banerjee, Imaginary Men (2005)

Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1993)

David Davidar, The House of Blue Mangoes (2002)

Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace (2000)
Sea of Poppies (2008; 1st book in Ibis triology)
River of Smoke (2011; 2nd book in Ibis triology)

Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (1999)

The Namesake (2003)

Unaccustomed Earth (2008)

Rohintin Mistry, A Fine Balance (1995)

Family Matters (2002)

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram (2003)

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)

The Satanic Verses (1988)

The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)

Sujit Saraf, The Peacock Throne (2007)

Paul M. Scott, The Raj Quartet

1. The Jewel in the Crown (1966)

2. The Day of the Scorpion (1968)

3. The Towers of Silence (1971)

4. A Division of the Spoils (1975)

Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (1993)

An Equal Music (1999)

Two Lives (2005)

Manil Suri, The Death of Vishnu (2001)

Vikas Swarup, Q&A (2005)

Six Suspects (2008)

Others worth reading (some of older vintage)

E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (1975)

M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions (1978)

John Masters, Bhowani Junction (1954)

Ian McDonald, River of Gods (2004; unusual in that it is science fiction, set in India in 2047)

V.S. Naipul (1932- ), Trinidadian-British writer who has written various works about India

R.K. Narayan (1906-2001), various works

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1996)

Indu Sundaresan, The Splendor of Silence (2006)

Paul M. Scott, The Alien Sky (or: Six Days in Marapore, 1953)

Diamond Mountain, North Korea: "A Firm Heart in the Face of Truth"?

2011-02-27T00:40:00.000-08:00

Only few people in the world know that Korea is divided by a big concrete wall in the Parallel 38 that was built by the United States of America when the Korean War finished.This wall is hundreds of times bigger than the one that existed in Germany and is separating the Korean families, brothers, parents... the nation is divided because the U.S.A. is dominating the southern part and keeps an army of more than 40.000 soldiers to avoid the union of the Korean people [sic] (from the website of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

Introduction

Kŭmgangsan, or Mount Kŭmgang, is a 1,638 meter high mountain in southeast North Korea, less than 50 km from the international boundary. Commonly known as Diamond Mountain, one of the meanings of Kŭmgang is “a firm heart in the face of truth.” Considering what takes place at Kŭmgangsan, the significance of its name is particularly poignant. For Kŭmgangsan, or more specifically, Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region, is the meeting place of Korean families that were torn apart by the division of their land in 1953 into two irreconcilable ideological entities, North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea). Although military and other talks between the two sides have been held intermittently, especially since the 1990s, there have been numerous incursions and cross-border skirmishes over the years, mostly initiated by Pyongyang (capitol of North Korea) and tensions have escalated in recent years due to the North’s unmonitored nuclear and missile program.

Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region is a separately administered region established by North Korea in 2002 to handle South Korean tourist traffic to the mountain. South Koreans have been allowed to visit the area since 1998 and the resort was built by the South Korean government and private companies to serve this tourism; up until 2010, the site was managed jointly by both sides. Besides the family reunion center, the resort includes a hotel, golf course, fire station and duty-free shop. Originally, the tourists arrived by cruise ship but there is now a road leading there through the demilitarized zone.

Kŭmgangsan is the second highest mountain in North Korea. Known for its scenic beauty, the area around it is characterized by fantastically shaped cliffs and rocks, waterfalls, lagoons, mineral springs and Buddhist temples and hermitages.

In July 2008 South Korea suspended all trips to the resort after a tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier when she unwittingly wandered into a restricted military zone. When after some 18 months the tours had not been resumed, North Korea seized South Korean properties at the resort, and threatened to freeze others. It also stated that there would be no family reunions until the tours were renewed (although one reunion did take place in September 2009, two years after the previous one in October 2007). After protracted negotiations, and despite the sinking of a South Korean naval corvette with its crew of 46, in March, as well as a shooting incident in October 2010, North Korea agreed to allow two family reunions in October/early November 2010, but conditioned further monthly meetings on the receipt from the South of hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertilizer. North Korea uses the family reunions to gain economic benefits, and every time one is held such aid has been sent to Pyongyang.

Family Reunions

One of the consequences of the decades-long conflict between the two Koreas was the separation of families. Some one million Koreans were divided when the border was drawn and sealed in 1953. Hundreds of thousands had fled as refugees during the fighting and tens of thousands of others had gone south prior to the outbreak of war, desperate to find work in order to support their starving families in the north. Some South Korean soldiers and sailors were also abducted by North Korea over the years. Mail and phone communication between the citizens of the two Koreas is forbidden. Nevertheless, according to American-born Jason Kim (in a personal communication to me), his grandfather, who found himself stranded after leaving his starving brothers and sisters in the north before the war to find work in the south, continued to visit the post office every day of his life in the hope of receiving a sign of life.[3]

Some lucky families have managed to unite – albeit briefly – at the Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region. Such meetings are extremely rare − fewer than 20,000 people since 2000 (up to early 2011), when a temporary agreement was reached at a landmark summit – and tend to be jeopardized or canceled in the event of an escalation in tensions between the two sides. Over 80,000 South Koreans and an unknown number of North Koreans have applied to participate in family reunions; 40,000 have since died or given up hope. The selected few are chosen mainly by lottery (in the South, at least; the selection process in the North is unknown). A few (some 550 families) have been reunited by video. For the October/early November 2010 meetings arranged by the Red Cross, over 400 South Koreans were permitted to join slightly fewer than 100 relatives from the North in the first, while 130 South Koreans were selected to unite with 200 North Korean family members in the second, although these numbers can't be verified.

The strictly supervised, controlled and videoed meetings take place over 3-6 days, at allotted times over this period, mostly in the family reunion center restaurant where they sit at numbered tables, the men in suits and the women in the traditional Korean silk hanbok dress. Many weep on each others’ shoulders but others stare into space in shock, over six decades of separation too great a bridge for them to cross. The families are not permitted to spend the night together. Many participants are in their eighties or nineties and see this as a last opportunity to meet with their loved ones before they die. The South Koreans bring with them parcels of food, medicines and underwear, goods that are desperately needed in the North. However, some approach the meetings with trepidation as they’ve heard upsetting stories about unrelated people from the North posing as long-lost family members so that they can receive the care packages the Southerners bear.

Reunion, October 2010

The “Big Brother” monitoring increases the awkwardness of the already uncomfortable meetings. At the October 2010 reunion, how much of the hardships she suffered in the north would 71-year-old Woo Jong-hye have divulged to her 96 year-old mother Kim Lye-jong, who last saw her when she was 10 or 11 years old? And would Kim Lye-jong want to highlight the differences between their lives by describing the relative plenty in the south? What was going on in the head of Kim Dong-yul, who left his wife and two-year-old daughter in the north in 1949, intending to return and bring them south, as the 82-year pensioner prepared to embrace his daughter, now a pensioner herself, some sixty years later. According to South Korean widow Lee Sun-ok, 80, she was ready to die without regrets after she had met her two younger sisters and a brother from the North at the September 2009 reunion of some 200 families.

Conclusion

On November 23, 2010, in the most serious clash in decades, North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire after North Korean shells struck a South Korean island near the countries’ disputed maritime border. Two South Korean soldiers and two civilians were killed and several were injured. There was a real fear of war breaking out between the two sides. Nevertheless, two months later, South Korea announced that it had agreed to resume low-level military talks with the North. As of writing, February 2011, the talks, which were also intended to pave the way for further Red Cross mediated reunions, had broken down. There may be a “firm heart” behind the reunions, but somewhere “the truth” gets lost in the politics and ideology that continue to separate the two sides.

The Death of Yukio Mishima: Brave Harakiri or Defeatist Suicide?

2011-02-24T04:18:00.000-08:00

“Mishima took one of them [a sword] and demonstrated the procedure for harakiri… Then he said he would show me how a samurai used to help a friend commit harakiri. He told me to kneel down on the mat. I could feel that sharp edge of the sword almost touching the back of my neck. I was terrified” (quoted by a visitor to Mishima’s house, Philip Shabecoff, “Everyone in Japan Has Heard of Him”).

On November 25, 1970, novelist, playwright, actor, and believer in “the samurai way” Yukio Mishima stood on a balcony in front of some one thousand servicemen at the Tokyo command of the Eastern Headquarters of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Forces, and exhorted them to rise up against Japan’s postwar Constitution, which prohibits the country from having an army and forbids war. He then turned back to the room where he and four followers had barricaded themselves and proceeded to perform harakiri,[1] ritual Japanese suicide. This involved driving a razor-sharp Japanese sword into his stomach and then having his head sliced off by a waiting friend.[2] On the day of his death Mishima had delivered to his publishers the final pages of Tennin Gosui (The Sea of Fertility), the author’s account of the Japanese experience in the twentieth century.

Mishima haranguing the servicemen,

November 25, 1970

Yukio Mishima, born Kimitake Hiraoka (1925-70; Yukio Mishima was his penname) was the author of some 40 novels, as well as numerous plays (including in the traditional No and Kabuki styles), books of short stories, and essays. He also acted in and directed a few films. Many of his works were translated into English and he was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Internationally, he was probably the most well-known Japanese writer of the twentieth century and his grasp of English and German and suave Western exterior made him a sought-after, though elusive interviewee among Western journalists.

Mishima spoke increasingly of the empty, materialistic values of postwar Japanese society and of the need to promote the discipline and principles of medieval Japan. He believed that one way to bring back traditional ideals was to restore the divinity of the emperor; another way was to follow bushido (“the samurai way”). While he claimed he was not a militarist (“… most foreigners mix up militarism and the samurai spirit”[3]), in 1968 he nevertheless formed his own militia, the Tatenokai (Shield Society), made up of some one hundred university students who, under his tutelage, took part in training exercises, learned martial principles and physical discipline, and swore to protect the emperor. According to Mishima, the students were a disaffected minority on the campuses because they did not identify with the majority leftist ideals.

The dramatic end to the life of Yukio Mishima underlined the enigma of his character, which was a mass of contradictions: weak versus strong, masculine versus feminine, physical versus intellectual, eroticism versus estheticism, elegance versus brutality, beauty versus ugliness, purity versus pollution, East versus West, and finally, the notion of “brave harakiri” versus “defeatist suicide.”[4] Critic and director Harold Clurman, with whom he had become friends, highlights these antitheses:

Brought up by a grandfather[5] jealous of all outside influences on the boy (including that of his parents), which led to his being sickly, he later trained to build powerful muscles in his arms, chest and shoulders. An ardent patriot, frightened by the prospect of combat as a soldier [he managed to avoid serving in the military in World War II], he steeled himself to assume the demeanor of heroic bravery. An impassioned writer, he declared, "There was something inside me that cannot be satisfied with art alone." Homosexual, he married a very pretty woman who bore him two children and with whom he conducted himself as a model husband. Apolitical, he organized a para-military group - the Shield Society - which might easily, though mistakenly, be identified as fascist.[6]

This essay will attempt to illustrate Mishima’s dichotomous nature and the mystery of his death through a brief look at his life and some of his works.

From Sickly Weakling to Proud Body Builder

Even Mishima’s formative years were a contradiction. Born in Tokyo, he was taken as a small child to be brought up by his aristocratic grandmother, Natsu, who kept him by her side all the time and forbade him to go outside and play with other boys. When he returned as a weak, sickly boy to his parents at the age of 12, however, his father, who was attracted to things military, tried to harden his masculine side by, for instance, holding him up against a speeding train and ripping up the manuscripts of the budding young author because writing was “feminine.” This tussle between the “masculine” and “feminine” side of his character continued throughout his life.

The feminine, erotic side of Mishima is manifested in his very early work Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku, 1949), considered by many critics to be semi-autographical.[7] It is about a young man who has to hide his homosexuality behind a mask of “normality” in order to fit into society. Like Mishima as a child, Kochan was sickly and weak, but as he grew older sadism and even cannibalism come to play an important part in his sexual fantasies. Whether Mishima was a homosexual with sadistic fantasies (and several people have claimed to have had homosexual relations with him), Mishima had a conventional marriage, to Yoko (after briefly considering an alliance with Michiko, currently wife of Emperor Akihito), and had two children, a boy and a girl.

Homosexuality also figures in Forbidden Colors (Kinjiki, 1953), in which an aging misogynist writer bribes a beautiful homosexual, Yuichi, to marry a young girl who he had fancied in order avenge himself on womanhood. In contrast to the “ugly,” self-hating old heterosexual the young homosexual is portrayed in pure, superlative terms:

[His body] was like the Apollo moulded in bronze by an artist of the Peloponnesus school. It overflowed with gentle beauty and carried such a noble column of a neck… such a softly broad chest… such a rapidly tapering tightly filled trunk, such legs, stoutly filled out like a heroic sword…[8]

The feminine-masculine polarity is particularly marked in this description.

A year later, however, Mishima published another book in an entirely different vein – The Sound of Waves (Shiosai, 1954), a “clean,” traditional love story between a poor young fisherman, Shinji, and Hatsue, the daughter of a well-to-do ship owner on a remote Japanese island. As in many such stories, their love has to undergo many trials before Shinji proves to Hatsue’s father that he is worthy of her. For Western readers, the simplicity and universal appeal of this tale makes it probably the most palatable and enjoyable of Mishima’s books.

Alongside his writing and philosophizing, Mishima took up body building and kendo (literally, “the way of the sword”), the traditional Japanese art of swordsmanship, which uses a long bamboo-handed sword.[9] He was attracted to kendo, he said, because it brought you to the “border of life and death.”[10] He would spend long hours during the day honing his body and his swordsmanship, and write all night. In his 1968 autobiographical essay Sun and Steel, about his relationship to his physical self, Mishima decried the notion, stressed by intellectuals, of mind over body. Translator and critic Edward Seidensticker points out that “fundamental to all of Mishima's writing” is “a denial of intellect and glorification of the senses.”[11]

An Obsession with Beauty and Eternal Youth

Obsession is a motif running through several of Mishima’s works. In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji, 1956), for instance, an unattractive, stammering young acolyte is so consumed by the beauty of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion where he is a student that he decides to burn it down in order to free himself from his fixation. The novel – like several others of Mishima’s works – is based on a real incident: in 1950, a crazed, also stammering young monk was driven to destroy by fire the six-century-old Zen Temple of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. Neither he nor the novel's protagonist carries out his wish to be immolated together with the temple.

Mishima’s obsession with the cult of the body was also connected to his desire to remain young and beautiful. The writer in Forbidden Colors is described with obvious distaste – a decrepit “ugly old man” (p. 9). He hints in his various interviews that he does not want to die old and ugly. In 1970, Mishima explained admiringly that when samurai committed harakiri, they would make up their faces first in order to stay beautiful, even in death.[12]

Western versus Eastern

One of the most striking features about Mishima was his superficial Western-ness in contrast to his inner “Japanese-ness.” His house, for example, was

a dream (or nightmare) of late Victorian, bourgeois opulence. The walls of its high-ceilinged parlor drip with oil portraits of languishing 19th century beauties and sailing ships rolling in lushly romantic seascapes. A grilled balcony is stuck gratuitously into a lofty wall. A marble-topped table is inscribed with the Roman initials "YM." Baroque and rococo objets are scattered on tables and shelves.[13]

The meals he (or rather his wife) served were also Western-style. However, he was extremely proud of his display of samurai swords and kendo equipment, which were very much in use. And his talk in his later years was all of the emptiness of modern Western values and and of his yen for the masculine, samurai Japanese traditions.

His dress, too, betrayed this duality. He might cut a handsome and impeccable figure in a tailor-made suit for Westerners,. But he also loved to pose in costume – samurai costume, kendo costume, Shield Society uniform.

His emphasis on masculinity was also a reaction to postwar Japanese society with its adoption of Western values: because of Japan’s defeat in World War II and the American occupation, he maintained, Japan had been cowed into hiding its real self:

“Since World War II, the feminine tradition has been emphasized to the exclusion of the masculine. We wanted to cover our consciences. So we gave great publicity to the fact that we are peace-loving people who love flower-arranging and gardens and that sort of thing… The Government wanted to cover our masculine tradition from the eyes of foreigners as a kind of protection.”[14]

A few months before he killed himself, he explained:

“… the more I got back to Japanese tradition, the more I was able to achieve a positive character. It is my firm belief that our basic Japanese character was stunted by Westernization. We have learned mental disease and shame from the West. Thus my shift to positive characters is in effect a Japanizing [sic] process.”[15]

“Brave Harakiri” versus “Defeatist Suicide”

“I don’t want to revive harakiri itself… I wanted to inspire younger people, give them a sense of order and responsibility.”[16]

Mishima spoke increasingly of death and lamented the absence in modern times of “great causes” to die for. In his 1970 interview, he described the samurai notion of killing oneself as “brave harakiri,” in contrast to the Western view of suicide as “defeatist.”[17] However, while he was exhorting the young soldiers to rise up against the established order, Mishima was booed and jeered, with shouts of “Get down,” and “Go home.”[18] Many Westerners might therefore regard his bloody deed as “defeatist suicide.” Whether the coup attempt was merely a pretext for killing himself is unclear. There is no doubt that it was planned, since he had prepared jisei no ku (traditional death poems) well in advance and made provision for his wife and children. However, did he really believe the soldiers would rally to his call? What is clear, though, is that Mishima considered his act “brave harakiri,” a fitting end for a proud samurai. “Harakiri makes you win,” he pronounced.[19]

Selected Works Translated into English

Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku, 1949; trans. 1958)

Forbidden Colors (Kinjiki, 1953; trans. 1968-74)

The Sound of Waves (Shiosai, 1954; trans. 1956)

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji, 1956; trans. 1959)

After the Banquet (Utage no Ato, 1960; trans. 1963)

Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (Manatsu no Shi, 1966; trans. 1966)

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Manatsu no Shi, 1966; trans. 1966)

Sun and Steel (Taiyo to Tetsu, 1968; trans. 1970)

The Sea of Fertility (tetralogy)

1. Spring Snow (Haru no Yuki, 1968; trans. 1972)

2. Runaway Horses (Honba, 1969; trans. 1973)

3. The Temple of Dawn (Akatsuki no Tera, 1970, trans. 1973)

4. The Decay of the Angel (Tennin Gosui, 1970; trans. 1974)

Five Modern No Plays (trans. 1981)

References

Harold Clurman, “The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima,” December 29, 1974, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-bios.html

“Featured Author: Yukio Mishima – with news and reviews from the archives of the New York Times, n.d., http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima.html

Donald Keene, “Beauty Itself Became a Deadly Enemy,” May 31, 1959, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-temple.html

Petri Liukkonen, “Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) – Pseudonym for Hiraoka Kimitake,” 2008, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mishima.htm

Ben Ray Redman, “What He Had to Hide,” September 14, 1958, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-mask.html

“Edward Seidensticker, “Yuichi Was a Doll,” June 23, 1968, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-colors.html

“Seppuku,” n.d., http://www.squidoo.com/seppuku#module56141722

Philip Shabecoff, “Everyone in Japan Has Heard of Him,” August 2, 1970,

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/25/specials/mishima-mag.html?_r=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima

“Yukio Mishima Speaking in English,” 1970, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPAZQ6mhRcU&NR=1

“Mishima Speech (with English Subs),” 1970, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bi2YA_r-QQ&feature=related

[1] Also known as seppuku. Harakiri is the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters (kanji); seppuku is the Chinese reading, but in reverse. Both are Japanese expressions.

[2] The beheading was actually botched and was achieved only after three attempts.

[3] Shabecoff, “Everyone in Japan Has Heard of Him.”

[4] “Yukio Mishima Speaking in English.”

[5] Most biographies state that he was brought up by his paternal grandmother.

[6] Clurman, “The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima.”

[7] See, for instance, Redman, “What He Had to Hide”; Shabecoff, “Mishima: A Man Torn between Two Worlds.”

[8] Version translated by Alfred H. Marks (Great Britain: Penguin, 1971), p. 26.

[9] See kendo demonstration, in “Yukio Mishima Speaking in English.”

[10] Ibid.

[11] Seidensticker, “Yuichi Was a Doll.”

[12] “Yukio Mishima Speaking in English.”

[13] Shabecoff, “Everyone in Japan Has Heard of Him.” In this article, too, Mishima’s explains the dichotomy of his living in a Western-style house.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] “Yukio Mishima Speaking in English.”

[17] Ibid.

[18] “Mishima Speech (with English Subs).”

[19] “Yukio Mishima Speaking in English.”