How to Dance Past the Enemy, Aizu style!

The lion dance, like the Chinese dragon dance, is an aspect of Asian culture well known around the world. But lion dances also take place in Japan, and it's one of these lion dances, the higanjishi of Aizu, which is at the core of the story here.

The scene is Aizu-Wakamatsu, fall 1868. The imperial armies have surrounded the castle town on all sides and are bombarding it heavily. Defeat seems close at hand, and yet there are Aizu forces beyond the siege who are returning but can't figure out how to break through.

Enter Yamakawa Okura (1845-1898, pictured at left in later years). Yamakawa, the brother of the curry-eating physicist in my last post, was an Aizu clan elder-- so, say, a cabinet member if the lord is the head of state. His large, well-provisioned force was outside the castle town at Tennei Village, also trying to figure out how to get in. He couldn't really fight his way through without taking tremendous losses, and there was no way he was going to retreat. So Yamakawa got together some of the villagers and, shall we say, put on a show:



He assembled the villagers into the dance and music troupe they'd have in springtime anyway, which is when these dances are done, and had them march in front of his army. And then he just walked into Aizu-Wakamatsu. Through the siege, right past the stunned Imperial Army soldiers. They had to have been confused. Per my sources, there was no camouflage involved, there was no sneaking. Yamakawa just did what, under the circumstances, would be the most ridiculous and unexpected course of action. As the old Armenian song goes, "When there is no way out or solution/Madmen find the answer..."

For the record? The force under Yamakawa's command got all the way into the castle unscathed. Unscathed!
 
Works Cited

• Aizu Higan Shishi, from Aizuwakamatsu City's Youtube page (accessed 2 May 2013)
• Noguchi Shin'ichi. Bakumatsu no Aizuhan. Tokyo: Gendai shokan, 2005.
• Yamakawa Kenjiro. Aizu Boshin Senshi. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1933.

Yamakawa Kenjiro and Japanese Curry Rice

Curry rice is probably one of the most popular items of modern Japanese cuisine. But it is hardly indigenous to Japan, and it has a history barely a 150 years long. So how did this get started? Who was the first Japanese person to eat something that's become such a staple?

That person would be Yamakawa Kenjiro (1854-1931, at left): physicist, teacher, and (in my opinion) all-around awesome guy. Born in Aizu to a high-ranking samurai family, he survived the Boshin War, where he saw the action firsthand, including the grisly death of at least one member of his family. This affected him deeply, and for the rest of his life he was active in the "Aizu diaspora," and also as an advisor to the domain's ex-daimyo family. It also spurred him to gather interviews and documents, so while he's known as a physicist, he is also an historian who wrote several major works, including the lengthy Aizu Boshin Senshi [A History of Aizu in the Boshin War].

His claim to fame is physics. He was the first Japanese person to earn a Ph.D. in the field, and also one of the first to attend Yale University, at the Sheffield School. He went on to become president of Tokyo University and Kyoto University, as well as one of the founders of Kyushu University. Those of you who know your Nobel laureates-- Yukawa Hideki, first Japanese Nobel laureate, was one of his students. Yamakawa was later ennobled, and served in the Privy Council. He died in 1931.

At any rate, how's the curry fit in? He was the first Japanese person to eat it, or so the story goes, during his time at Yale. The Japanese style curry rice we know today is a variant of the Royal Navy's curry rice, but that was still a few years in the future during Yamakawa's Connecticut days. Little did he know he was the first to partake in what would become so established, by our time!

Here is a recipe for Japanese-style curry rice. Enjoy, and think of that young student in Yale. How many of us, I wonder, are unknowing trendsetters?

Works Cited

• Beef Curry on Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2 May 2013)
• Curry recipe on Food.com (accessed 2 May 2013)
• Nakamura  Akihiko. Byakkotai. Tokyo: Bungei shunju, 2001.
• Yamakawa Kenjiro. Aizu Boshin Senshi. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1933.

Spotlight on Cuisine: Yes, Ramen

So I'm guessing, dear reader, that you've heard of ramen before. Most often, outside of Japan, you'll see it prepackaged in styrofoam cups or little bricks, with the packet of suspicious-looking powder that's supposed to be soup stock. While this is convenient and cheap, those who have had the good fortune of eating more authentic (and fresher) forms of ramen know that it is a far cry from the good stuff.

But there are a lot of varieties of ramen, and northeastern Japan has a few of its own! At left is a photo of one, the famous Kitakata ramen. For more on Tohoku variants of this staple food, read on!

Suggestions? Let me know!

I think this is a good time to make a 'suggestions' post. What would you like to see here? What topics might be interesting to explore? Some things I plan to post on in coming weeks include:

• Toys/handcrafts (such as the okiagari-koboshi from Aizu, at left)
• Famous natural phenomena (e.g., the Ishibe cherry tree outside of Aizu, or the 400 year old Korean plums in Matsushima)
• More posts on women in Tohoku history (e.g. Shibue Io, Oyama Sutematsu, and Uryu Iwa)
• More folktales.

I eagerly await your comments!

Handcrafts: Akabeko, Aizu's red cows

A post on handcrafts this time. One of the folk handcrafts to come out of the Aizu region (Fukushima prefecture) is the akabeko, pictured at left. "Beko," in the local dialect, means "ox," and that's just what this is: a little red toy ox with a bobbing head. But what is the origin of this simple toy? What place does it have in its original region today?

For more on the red ox of Aizu, read on!

Preliminary Review: NHK series "Yae no Sakura"

(at left, a picture of Neesima (Yamamoto) Yae, who stands at right) Hello everyone! I wanted to take this opportunity to pop in and offer a brief, preliminary review of the series Yae no Sakura. This is this year's (2013's) history-themed series on the NHK network. The subject is Yamamoto Yae, a warrior woman of the 19th century who later became an educator and a co-founder of Doshisha University.

First, the makers of this series get huge props from me for situating Yae's story in a global context. She's known among some for her use of the American-made Spencer carbine, and the series opens not with fighting in Japan, but instead, Pickett's Charge, at the Battle of Gettysburg. The idea here is that the weapons used in the American Civil War were some of the weapons that were used in the Boshin War, just a few years later.

Another thing I have to applaud is that not everyone speaks the same way. Yae was born in the northeast, and both the child and adult actresses who play her at different ages seem to have been coached in what sounds, to my ears, like at least a reasonable approximation of the Aizu dialect. Characters from Kyushu sound like they're from Kyushu, characters from Edo sound like they're from Edo, and so on.

Further, the detail research, for the "stuff" in this series, is also solid! Here I mean details like crests, gear, and so on, are all solid, at least to my eyes. It's a lot to keep track of, but they're doing great so far.

My only complaint? Their Commodore Perry didn't have an American accent, and the American naval officers in the Perry scene seemed to be wearing Imperial Japanese Navy caps. Ultimately that's "small potatoes" compared to an overall well-executed series. I recommend it heartily.

For those of you who can read Japanese, here is the series' homepage.

NYT article

This article on the continuing disaster in Fukushima Prefecture is heartbreaking and worth a read. I encourage you to look around, at the NYT, at English-language papers from Japan, and other countries, to get a balanced look at this issue. This story, and this disaster, are far from over.