Category Archives: Japan

The Kii Peninsula, 1992

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In late October 1992, my friend Rich came to visit me in Japan, and one of the places we went was down to the southern shores of the Kii Peninsula, more-or-less south of Osaka, where we visited the cliffs of Osenkorogashi and Nachi falls. Unusually for Japan, the cliff was simply a cliff – no observation deck, no rail, just a drop off with a sign posted nearby. I could read, in red, the large hiragana for “DANGER” (ABUNAI) on the sign. The falls, on the other hand, were visible from a platform not far away. Impressive at 436 feet, and near an interesting Buddhist temple, Seiganto-ji.

I was looking all that up and got a lesson in how the Internet enables wandering minds like my own. How tall, I wondered, is that fall compared to some others I’ve seen? Though broad and impressive, Niagara Falls is only 167 feet high. Not sure anymore which of the Hawaiian falls I saw, and while all of them were very pretty, none seemed that high. The falls on the Athabasca River in Canada were powerful, but also not that high. What about Fall Creek Falls?

Fall Creek Falls is part of a Tennessee state park of the same name I visited about 30 years ago. It was a gorgeous place, with a picturesque fall – and at 256 feet, supposedly the highest “free-fall waterfall east of the Mississippi,” for what that’s worth. While reading the Wiki article, I noticed that part of Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1986) was filmed at that park, while the rest was done in Nashville. If that movie doesn’t ring any bells, you’re having a normal reaction. It’s an early Jim Varney movie, and I must be one of the few people who paid money to see it. I went because the brother of an old friend of mine was a cameraman on the movie.

So I looked my friend’s brother up on the imdb. I knew he went to California in late ’80s to ply his trade, and sure enough he’s done a lot since then, including as an electrician and best boy on various movies and TV shows, few I’d ever heard of except The King of Queens. Glad to know that he’s been able to make a living at it.

Back to Japan. I don’t remember the name of this place, but it was a rocky shore on the Kii Peninsula, somewhere near those other sights. Flat slabs of rock jutted out into the Pacific, which crashed noisily against the rocks.

It was clear and warmer than it should have been for October. The wind was strong. Rich and I decided that all of the four elements were in play: Earth in the form of the rock, Water in the form of the ocean, Air in the form of the quick wind, and Fire in the form of the warm sunshine.

The Samurai Collection

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The Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection takes up the second floor of the St. Ann Building in Dallas’ Uptown district, which is a walkable distance from downtown, even in the late-summer heat. The museum is another new attraction for the city, open only since March.

To reach it, you enter a first-floor restaurant, pass its reception desk, and then go up some stairs. It’s a small museum with a single focus: samurai armor, weapons, masks, and related items. The museum asserts that its “collection of samurai objects is one of the largest of its type in the world and is displayed in the only museum outside Japan whose focus is samurai armor.”

Go up to the cool, quiet reaches of the museum, and pretty soon you’re face-to-face with the likes of him:

It’s a somen (full-face mask), made of iron, leather, horsehair, lacquer and silk lacing, dating from mid-Edo – the 18th century. During earlier periods, when a samurai might actually have to do battle, somen weren’t that popular, since a mask like that can obscure your vision. In the more peaceful Edo era, that wasn’t such a concern, and the masks had a revival among samurai (at least those who could afford them).

Another cool item at the Samurai Collection is this helmet.

It’s an akodanari kabuto, a melon-shaped helmet of iron and lacquer and dating from the Muromachi period, or the late 15th to early 16th centuries, when it was entirely likely that a samurai would be fighting someone. The museum says that “the construction of this kabuto, with twelve plates covered in protruding rivet comprising the helmet bowl, is unique. There is no other known example.”

These are fine artifacts, but they aren’t as grand as some full armor that the Barbier-Mueller has. In this case, one for a man, another for a boy.

The larger suit, the museum notes, “was assembled during the Edo period and incorporates several older components. The helmet displays stylized horns known as kuwagata and a frontal ornament in the shape of a paulownia leaf, the crest of several important families…” As for the smaller suit, it’s late Edo. “Boys of samurai class families began training to become warriors at a very young age… at around age 12, samurai boys participated in a ceremony known as genpuku, wherein they received their first armor and sword.”

All in all, a high-quality collection, and not such a large display that you can’t leisurely take in most of it in one visit. It’s as if a single room of some vast, first-water museum – the British Museum, the Met, the Art Institute – had detached itself and landed in Dallas. So why Dallas? The museum’s name says it all: Dallas real estate mogul Gabriel Barbier-Mueller and his wife Ann, long-time collectors of this kind of art and artifact, wanted it to be there.

Here’s a 2006 D article about Barbier-Mueller, scion of the Swiss family of that name who decided to live in Dallas, in as much as anyone with four houses lives in a particular place. It begins with the amusing line: “Gabriel Barbier-Mueller owns a lot of stuff.” Well, so do I. It’s just that a lot of his stuff is more expensive.

Kinokawa, 1991

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August 18, 1991

Osaka radio, Bonchi Rice Snack, high winds pouring through my window; such is the stuff of today, the last day of O-bon. The highlight of the week was an excursion to Kinokawa, a river about an hour south by train, and then more time by car.

Last Saturday, one of my students, Aiko, spontaneously invited me to go after I ran into her at Keyston, where my friend Don and another guy were playing a gig. Aiko had been in turn invited by her friend Kumiko who – together with her sister and brother-in-law – rented a two-room “cabin” overlooking the Kinokawa. Kumiko is having an affair with Don at the moment. So I was expecting him to come along. Wrong again. Instead, Kumiko invited my friend Bill, who’s attracted to Kumiko in spite of the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that he married another woman earlier in the summer. Why? I don’t know. Maybe Kumiko just likes fanning Bill’s ardor.

[Unsurprisingly, Bill’s marriage – to a Japanese woman – didn’t last very long, and after their divorce, rumor was she dimed on him to immigration, to make sure he’d leave the country. I went to his “deportation party” just before he left, though strictly speaking, I think he left ahead legal action.]

None of those interpersonal complications really concerned me. I just enjoyed a fine two days out of town. The river wasn’t much more than a large creek. The territory, hilly and lush, reminded me of southern Idaho, minus the tall pines. The slopes down to the river were steep, meaning a climb up from the road to the cabin, and another one down to the riverbed, which was shallow, pebbly, and remarkably clean for a Japanese river.

Larger rocks lay here and there in the riverbed. For dinner the first day, we set up a grill on the riverbank and put a watermelon afloat in the cool water, tethered to one of the rocks. That detail sticks in my mind. Almost every cluster of people I saw along the river – and there were many groups – had a melon bobbing nearby.

Most of the people visiting the river had either pitched tents, or were sleeping in their cars, as we discovered when we went to a nearby bridge to shoot off fireworks at 2 a.m. (I can’t remember whose bright idea that was.) One guy emerged from his car and yelled at us a Japanese equivalent of “Shut the f— up!”, which we deserved. I was impressed at the terrific fireworks you can buy at convenience stores in Japan. Big gaudy tubes that spit sparks and fireballs and whiz and pop.

Thursday night we drove in three cars to the Hashimoto matsuri (festival). Getting there only proved that there’s no road in Japan too small for a traffic jam. At one point all four occupants of the car I was in fell asleep while waiting for the cars ahead to move. Good thing the driver had put it in Park. I woke first and noticed that cars behind us were going around us. Odd, because I think that in most places, we’d have gotten honked at.

The festival itself was a mass of people. The centerpiece of the festivities was a big dance circling a band who played continuously. The music wasn’t exactly rock, though there were elements of it, especially the drums. Yet it was bar after bar after bar of the same thing, and forming a circle around the band were the dancers, making steps and hand motions with their fans in a pattern I couldn’t quite follow. It was mesmerizing in a way that a light show is sometimes.

Hinamatsui 2004

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Sequester Day came and went on Friday without much fuss here in the heart of North America, though we may come to rue it eventually. Texas Independence Day was Saturday (177 years now). According to our school calendar, March 2 is also Read Across America Day. Someone might have noted that day at our township library, but I didn’t go there this weekend, and every day can be that as far as I’m concerned.

All the while, about a foot of snow covered the ground. It hasn’t been warm enough to melt most of it. That’s a little unusual for early March, which typically sees the beginning of mud season.

Today is Hinamatsui, or Girls’ Day. We’ve been hit-or-miss over the years in marking the day, which is a Japanese festival, more about which here. This year, Yuriko brought out those few dolls we have appropriate to the day. Back in 2004, we went to some kind of event for the occasion. I don’t remember what we did, exactly, or where it was, but I did take a picture. It isn’t that great as a picture, but I like the subject matter.