The Amazing Legs of Niizuma Kanbe'e

Before the post, a bit of a foreword. As of this post, I am expanding the breadth of my topic-- while my tendency will be toward Tohoku, which is what I know and where I've lived, I am officially broadening this blog's coverage to include issues concerning rural Japanese history and culture, and aspects of the traditional arts, I will no longer limit myself to the northeast. I look forward to bringing you all more stories from more parts of Japan, soon. Anyway, on to the show!

We've all heard, I'm sure, about the marathon: 26 miles of run, run, run, in commemoration of the Greek messenger Phedippides. In this post I'd like to share the story of Niizuma Kanbe'e, a Sendai retainer who loved a good story, so much so that he ran nineteen ri (46 miles) in four hours from his post in Iwagasaki to meet with friends in Sendai for evening chats.

But how did he manage this incredible feat? How did he make it across that distance that fast, not drop dead after he'd arrived in Sendai, and then be able to turn around and go all the way back? Read on!

Biographical Spotlight: Ogata Koan

A step outside of Tohoku and on down to Osaka for this post. Our topic is Ogata Koan (1810-1863), a medical doctor of the late Edo period. This post is written with those of my readers in mind who practice traditional Chinese medicine, who would benefit from some observations on the life of a doctor in a "traditional" East Asian setting.

Ogata was a pioneering doctor in his time, adapting Western medical practices-- for example, in vaccination-- for use in Japan. But this was not all he did. His greatest and most enduring impact has been in the realm of education. He founded a school in Osaka, called Tekijuku, in 1838. The curriculum at Tekijuku covered far more than just medicine: foreign language (Dutch), military science, and engineering were also studied there. And Ogata's students came from all around Japan. Though he may not be remembered by name, his students are people who are household names in Japanese history: Fukuzawa Yukichi (founder of Keio University), Otori Keisuke (military officer and diplomat), Omura Masujiro (general, whose statue stands at Yasukuni Shrine), Takamatsu Ryoun (early Meiji era doctor), and many others.

(above: Tekijuku as it stands in Osaka today)

 Those of you who know manga, you're in for a bit of a surprise! You may have heard of Tezuka Osamu, the artist behind "Astroboy." His ancestor, Tezuka Ryoan, was also one of Ogata's students. Fukuzawa Yukichi's autobiography mentions him; there is an amusing anecdote of the two of them playing pranks on the people in houseboats on one of Osaka's rivers. Tezuka made a manga about his ancestor's life, titled Hidamari no Ki.

So, to sum up: what is there to be learned from Ogata's life? A doctor is more than a "body mechanic," a doctor is also an educator. Also, as one of my professors once said, "there's no such thing as wasted research." The breadth of Ogata's learning fed into his work as a physician and a teacher, and formed an important part of the education that empowered his students who went on to change Japan.

Works Cited and Further Reading

• Fukuzawa Yukichi. Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa. Translated by Eiichi Kiyooka. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
• McClain, James L, ed. Osaka: The Merchants' Capital of Early Modern Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
• Nakata Masahiro. Ogata Koan: Bakumatsu no I to Oshie. Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2009.
• Tekijuku picture at Wikimedia Commons (accessed 25 Mar. 2013)
• Tezuka Osamu. Hidamari no Ki. (multiple vols.) Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994.
• Yoneda Kaisuke. Koan no Kusuribako. Suita: Osaka Daigaku Shuppankai, 2001.

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!

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.