04.11.23 Sengakuji
Today was thanksgiving day in Japan and a day off for me. Although the day is very close to the
American thanksgiving day this year, (and I think it is indeed possible for the
two days to coincide as the Japanese holiday is fixed on November 23) the
meaning of the day is of course quite different. The Japanese do not celebrate that the
Chinese that immigrated to the archipelago were helped and fed by the Ainu
people, for instance. Here a little
information from some web-sites on the day:
Labor Thanksgiving Day (Kinro Kansha no Hi in
Japanese) is actually a modern name for an ancient ritual called Niinamesai
(Harvest Festival). In the ritual, the Emperor makes the season's first
offering of freshly harvested rice to the gods and then partakes of the rice
himself. After the World War II, Labor
Thanksgiving Day was established to mark the fact that fundamental human rights
were guaranteed and rights of workers were greatly expanded in the postwar constitution.
Today, Labor Thanksgiving Day has become a national holiday while Niinamesai is
celebrated as a private function of the Imperial Family.
The school had smartly decided to have the parent-teacher
conferences today, which we could both attend.
We had dropped the children off at a playground near the school (in a
city of 10 million people this is not a problem. Although we were called by the girls that
Lukas had left the playground in anger.
R told them not to worry assuring them that he would come back, which
indeed he did (lest you think us horrible parents we did check in with them a
few minutes later to make sure)). The
school reports were invariably good, all three children are doing very well and
the things they need to work on are well-known to us: Saskia should learn to be
neater; Pascale should learn to add without using her fingers; and Lukas must
learn that a reprimand does not mean he must commit seppuku (http://scottish-jujitsu.com/seppeku.htm).
Unfortunately, we did not realize that today would be a
holiday when we put in our requests to have our conference appointments around
lunch hour (thinking there may be an off-chance I could get some time around
then), so my day off was cut in half with little time on either side of the
conferences to go and do something fun.
Fortunately, there is an important shrine near school that I had not
been to, so we went there in the afternoon.
It is the Shengakuji shrine, and it is the famous resting place of the
47 ronin. The story of the 47 ronin is
one of the most celebrated in Japanese history and it is indeed a great story
for its self-sacrifice, loyalty, and honor.
I recount here some highlights:
During the Edo period a
rich lord from the country called Asano was ordered by the shogun to take the
job of entertaining envoys from the imperial family. Because Asano is from the country, he is
assigned a teacher from the city by the name of Kira to help him in his
task. Kira turns out to be a nasty piece
of work and continually insults Asano.
One day in the imperial palace, when Kira insults Asano again the latter
draws his sword and swings at Kira, slashing him on the forehead.
Taking up arms against another in the palace is an
unthinkable crime, and the shogun orders Asano to kill himself and for his
property to be confiscated. He accepts
his fate, guts himself and dies. The
tale could (and may be should) have ended there, but it really is only the
beginning. When Asano’s samurai hear
what happened to their master they are outraged and consider fighting the
government forces that will soon arrive to confiscate their master’s
property. However, one of the
samurai—which are now ronin, as that is what warriors are called that don’t
have a master—Oishi (“tasty”) argues that they should not fight but give up the
property peacefully, but meanwhile they should plan to avenge their
master.
They must execute the plan slowly because Kira is suspicious
and has hired many guards to protect himself.
Oishi spends two years in brothels and yzakayas (bars) in Edo while most of the others take up other jobs to
support themselves and slowly but surely Kira’s suspicion fades. Then, on 14 December 1702 the 47 ronin
collect their arms from a hiding place and attack Kira’s home. They find Kira in an outhouse. Kira is brought in front of Oishi and he is
offered the option to commit suicide. While
attractive, I am sure, he does not take the offer, and so Oishi cuts off his
head using the same sword that Asano used to kill himself. The ronin then take the head of Kira to the
Sengakuji where their master is born. The
head is washed and offered to the spirit of Asano. Then they all turn themselves in. Although there is considerable sympathy for
the ronin in the population the shogun sentences them to commit suicide, which
they do honorably and they are all buried together at Sengakuji. For many Japanese Oishi and his band are considered
to be the very essence of the samurai—and therefore Japanese—spirit. Self-sacrifice is what it is all about, as
well as an utterly misplaced deference for hierarchy.
The Sengakuji shrine there is one of the most visited in Japan, and
because there are 47 graves, you can buy a set of 47 incense sticks at the
entrance, which everybody invariably does, and place one at each shrine. Because of the shrine’s popularity, the smoke
produced by the thousands of glowing incense sticks engulfs the entire
neighborhood. It is completely
overpowering and I should think a very sound reason to negotiate for lowering
the rent by tenants in the area.
Yesterday we also got a new translator at work. The first one we had, a feisty young woman
that would get defensive about her translations very quickly, did not work
out—my Japanese colleagues complained that she would simply not translate any
of the nuance that my boss or I so carefully put into our English. The second one was great, but we could not
keep her for some reason, so now we have a third. This new one is a little bit older (late
forties perhaps? Very difficult to guess
people’s ages I find) and has very bad teeth and the associated bad breath (a
distinct negative, in my opinion, for someone who must always sit close to you
and talk) and is most remarkable for her nervous deference. When I met her she told me several times that
she wanted to thank me for this opportunity to serve me and then she bowed a full
ninety degrees at the waste several times, while grabbing my hands. Later I had to take her along to visit a
manager for an impromptu visit, and held the door open for her, but she refused
to step through. She explained that she
was just my assistant and it would be very embarassing for her to go through
the door before me. Now I thought I had gotten
quite used to this whole bowing business (I feel that by now I could be quite
competent at it myself, except that for the Japanese all foreigners that bow
look odd regardless, so there really is no point), but there are limits to my
tolerance for this crap.
What was quite interesting was that I had lunch with one of
my colleagues yesterday and I asked him what he thought of the new
translator. He said that she seemed to
be quite competent and then asked me what I thought. I said that I was quite uncomfortable with
her overly polite manner. At this, he
was quite surprised, which in turn surprised me. He explained that in the team meeting, the
translator had translated whatever I said into the Japanese using informal
form, something he thought was quite inappropriate for a business setting. This had me quite concerned, because I had
plans to take her to a rather sensitive meeting with this manager after lunch
and certainly did not want to have some embarassing scene there because she
would not use the proper polite form.
However, he assured me that I did not have to worry because there was no
doubt that she would use the appropriate form in that situation. I then realized that, despite my demeanor and
informal manner, the translator sees me as some kind of executive and that,
therefore, when I am talking to the members of the team, the proper way to
translate my English is to use the form a mother uses to address her child or
an authoritative boss would use to talk to his subordinates.
Of course, this is the perpetual problem when working with a
translator in a language you don’t master: despite your best efforts to communicate
carefully and politely, you have no control over whether any of it comes across. Quite unsettling. These continuous challenges make me
understand better the attitude of many ex-pats here. They have completely given up caring about how
they come across. Soon after their
arrival, they consciously abandoned any effort to be culturally sensitive and
instead get a certain satisfaction out of being coarse and blunt; they worry
not one moment about upsetting the harmony so cherished by their Japanese
colleagues. Indeed, they consider (self-servingly,
of course) that this harmony is often the very reason for their organization’s
ineffectiveness. Their style is quite
unlike the way in which we have approached this project, but there are times
when I think their approach is quite appealing; very appealing indeed.
Gobble gobble, have a nice thanksgiving
12:09:01 AM 
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