Biographical Spotlight: Kudo Heisuke

There remains a popular view in Japanese history that (a) Japan was hermetically sealed during the Edo period (1603-1868) and (b) that Commodore Perry's arrival in 1853 took Japan completely by surprise, as if there were no other foreigners appearing in Japanese waters outside the approved foreign settlements at Nagasaki.

Both of these views have, by now, been soundly disproved. There are a number of scholars whose work shows that (a) Japan in the Edo period was not isolated but was highly selective in foreign contacts, and (b) that Japanese politicians and scholars were aware of foreign news and developments. These scholars include Reinier Hesselink, Donald Keene, and Martha Chaiklin, to name a few.

Today I would like to write about one such figure, Kudō Heisuke. The "take-away" with Kudo is that he was the first to voice concerns about the Russian imperial expansion southward from Siberia, and that he was a part of a group of scholars in that era who were informed on foreign affairs and were voicing calls for military reform and national defense.

More below the jump.

Hachiman!

"Shrines of the City. Seventy-eight in total, of which eight bear the name Hachiman..."

The philosopher Tanabe Marebumi, writing in the late 18th century, began his record of Sendai's shrines with these words. All around Japan, there are shrines to Hachiman who is famous as the kami of war. At left is a photo of a scroll depicting Hachiman in the guise of a Buddhist monk.

During the Edo period, there were three shrines that were given particularly special treatment within Sendai. Two of them were to Hachiman, one was to the deified Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the last shogunal dynasty.

I'd like to talk a little bit about each of them below. During the Edo period, while the other 24 districts then part of Sendai were under the jurisdiction of the city magistrate (machi-bugyo), these three shrines and their surrounding neighborhoods were under the special supervision of the Date administration's Temples-and-shrines office. (Mihara, Kyodoshi Sendai Mimibukuro, p. 124) Of the three, I have visited Osaki Hachiman and Tosho-gu in the fall of 2005.

Consider this a "miscellany" post.

Two Years On

Two years have now passed since the 2011 tsunami and earthquake disaster in northeastern Japan. While there has been progress in the recovery, there is still a long way to go. People evacuated from the region are still scattered around Japan. Communities are a shadow of what they'd once been. Forests are devastated. Houses demolished. Priceless treasures and cultural landmarks, the topic on which I'd initially started this blog, washed away or burned. The wounds will take a long while yet to heal.

Though I was far away, this disaster affected me, as well. The places I'd known for years, the places I never imagined would become household names, were suddenly on the lips of everyone around me-- and in a negative way. In my shock and deep sadness, progress on my master's thesis was delayed, but not derailed. I finished on time, and am carrying on with my research, and my studies. I will continue doing what I can here, to bring little facets of Tohoku history and culture, and broader Japanese history and culture, to the English speaking world on the internet.

Stay tuned, folks. And keep donating and supporting however possible...this isn't over.

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.

New Tohoku-related Kickstarter project

Hello everyone, just wanted to make a post about "3.11: Surviving Japan." This is a documentary project, currently being funded on Kickstarter.

Here is the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/survivingjapan/311-surviving-japan

As posted on the Kickstarter page:

A critical look at how the authorities handled the nuclear crisis and Tsunami relief by an American who volunteered in the clean-up.
Surviving Japan is a documentary by volunteer and director Chris Noland. It is in short, a documentary of the devastating events in Japan and the after-math that followed.
The documentary shows the humanitarian and aid crisis that faced the people in the wake of both natural and nuclear disaster. It features true stories from those affected by the disaster, the government and even TEPCO. It highlights the struggle in dealing with: The Tsunami clean-up, Government response to the disaster, radiation plus the future of nuclear power after the accident.

Worth a look!

On Furnaces, Bread, and Cannons: Egawa Tarozaemon (1801-1855)

Good morning, everyone! Today I would like to talk to you for a little while about an early Japanese industrialist. This goes beyond my usual Tōhoku focus, but it still involves rural Japan, history, and lesser-known figures and facts.

It's often assumed that the Meiji period (1868-1912) is when Japan made the spectacular jump from feudal backwater to industrialized, modern nation. However, what seems to be a sudden change came about, in part, because of processes that were already at work before 1868. This is where our topic for today, Egawa Hidetatsu, comes in. (at left: A self-portrait by Egawa)

Three big points I'd like you to remember about Egawa.

1. His very old family roots and classical education.
2. Despite those roots, his interest in and advocacy for technological and institutional innovation.
3. His role as teacher to some of the major innovators of the 1860s.

More on Egawa after the jump.

Foot Soldiers and Pastry

(at left: the characters for "foot soldier" [ashigaru])

Hello everyone! It's been a long time, I hope you all are well. School has taken up a lot of my time for translation this semester, so my translation schedule and personal research has had to take a back seat. I'm still translating, but slowly.

Today I would like to talk a little bit about a snack called okoshi, and its relation to the southern part of Tohoku region. All too often when I think of history, I forget about the flavors involved. But food, then as now, was important!

In Kyodoshi Sendai Mimibukuro ("A Collection of Local History from Sendai"), folk historian Mihara Ryokichi devotes a chapter (pp. 95-98) to some of the foot soldiers who served the Date clan of Sendai. Specifically, the chapter discusses three groups of these foot soldiers (called ashigaru in Japanese) who were assigned as permanent security detachments along certain key roads or bridges. At any rate, the unit that lived at Imaichi, on the road between Sendai and Shiogama, was known for making a local pastry called tsuno-okoshi. This pastry was popular, says Mihara, among people coming back from visits to Shiogama Shrine. As the foot soldiers' official income from the Date clan for security duty would've been small, they did this to supplement their incomes. All three units had different side jobs-- for example, the one at Suwa, in the Nagamachi district of modern Sendai, made brooms.

I have been unable to figure out how tsuno-okoshi is different from regular okoshi. Given the word tsuno ("horn" or "corners"), I assume the okoshi in question would either be shaped like an animal's horn, or have corners. Given what okoshi usually looks like, I think it's safe to assume it's the latter.

So! In the spirit of hands-on research, here is a link to a Hawaiian-style recipe for okoshi. The ingredients should be readily available in the US. Enjoy, and remember those foot soldiers!

Sources:

*"Puffed Rice Cookie (Okoshi), from "Cooking Hawaiian Style" food blog, accessed 20 Dec. 2012 http://cookinghawaiianstyle.com/index.php/hawaiian-recipes/recipes/detail/608/puffed-rice-cookie-okoshi
*Mihara Ryokichi, Kyodoshi Sendai Mimibukuro (Sendai: Hobundo Shuppansha, 1983).