Category Archive

In honor of the current health-care reform debate in this country, Roy Berman at MutantfrogTravelogue recounts the history of birth control and erectile dysfunction medicine in Japan

I’ve been looking for a good book on rural life in Western societies in the modern era to use as a counterpoint to the Suye Mura books: this classic social history of rural France in the 19th and early 20th centuries looks like what I need.

One of the beautiful things about the internet is that if you ask for help, often you can get it. I posed the question about the mysterious circular gear on the medieval samurai to my blog audience, and got an answer very quickly: they are  spare bow string spools. The best picture I’ve been able to find of a “tsurumaki” online is this ebay auction, where you can clearly see the groove around the edge which holds the string.

In the discussion today the “Five Colors” of Buddhism came up, and I mentioned the Tibetan Mandalas. If you look at this sand-painting mandala done at PSU last year, you’ll see the five colors:

Note the border around the edge: White, Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, over and over (clockwise). You can see the same colors in this hand drum. As near as I can tell, the five colors predates most of the explanations offered for their meanings — which is to say, there are lots of different explanations, because everyone seems to be making up new rationalizations for an old practice.

Lady Nijo, in her Confessions, cites a visit to “Atsuta Shrine, in Owari.” Owari is now Aichi Prefecture and the city is called Nagoya. Atsuta Shrine still exists and is a major attraction, with their annual festival serving as a kind of city celebration.

In the Amaterasu eclipse story, the gods use a rope to draw her out of the cave. Ropes have a long tradition in Shinto as symbols of divinity and authority. Often you see ropes as part of Shinto shrines, as in this sacred tree:

You see a similar rope as part of the ceremonial garb worn by Sumo Yokozuna — the title is usually translated “Grand Champion” but literally means “horizontal rope”!

There are some truly extraordinary shrine ropes, though, created as part of massive community festivals:

On 3 lists:

• http://japanese-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/womens_status_in_japan, “Women’s Status in Medieval Japan: Female Marriage and Labour in Japan’s 14th-17th Centuries.”
• www.womeninworldhistory.com/sample-08.html – on women warriors

On 2 lists:

• www2.gol.com/users/friedman/writings/p1.html, “The Changing Roles of Women in Japanese Society,”
• http://www.koryu.com/library/wwj1.html – on women warriors.

On one list:

• http://asianhistory.about.com/od/imagegalleries/ss/samuraiwomen.htm – female Samurai.
• http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_generate/JAPAN.html – compilation of female writers from Japan
• http://homepages.which.net/~james.phillips/hist.htm female wrestlers in Japan
• http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art153.asp – brief but informative reality of what exactly a Geisha is, and how their were different “ranks” among them, and how this was, in many ways, far from the ideal life for a young Japanese girl.
• http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art24550.asp female samurai rule in ancient Japan.
• http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/BIB95/03womens_studies_kline.html – Resources in Japanese Women’s History.
• http://www.immortalgeisha.com
• http://www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyoku/kosode/50.htm – ancient hairstyles of Japanese Women,
• http://www.samurai-archives.com/women.html – specific women famous in Japanese history. It covers their roles in history and society.
• http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCJAPAN/WOMEN.HTM – Women and Women’s Communities in Ancient Japan
• www.iop.or.jp/0313/kurihara.pdf, “A History of Women in Japanese Buddhism: Niceren’s Perspectives on the Enlightenment of Women,” told of how Buddhism helped women, but also injured them by labeling women “impure.”

The answer to a question we had about drinking habits. According to the WHO, the US and Japan are roughly equal in per capita alcohol consumption.

NYTimes has a report on a government program to encourage underemployed urban young adults to get involved in farming

Turns out that I was wrong: I’d heard reports of Japanese soldiers in the 80s and 90s, but none of them have turned out to be authentic. The last confirmed surrenders were in 1974 and 1980.

This article on the decision to drop the bomb was just published in Japan Focus

A brief guide to Japanese arrowheads

A news item on troubles facing Sumo in Japan

In response to the question about Oda Nobunaga’s descendants, you can see the family history in some detail here and in great detail here. (I’m not vouching for the accuracy of these sites in detail, but they seem to be reasonably well-done.) According to my Japanese historical dictionary, Nobunaga was succeeded as Daimyo of Owari by his nephew and his younger brother, and the family did take a role on the field at Sekigahara. They remained minor daimyo in central Japan through the Tokugawa period.