August, 2011

All Posts / News — No Comments
26
Aug 11

A New Prime Minister

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was discussing how Japan’s Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio stepped down after only eight months to be replaced by Kan Naoto. Well, now, 15 months after Prime Minister Kan took power, he’s stepping down, too.  Take a look at what I wrote back then–it’s far more common for a political leader to step down in Japan than it is in the US. Japanese voters don’t even elect their Prime Minister directly. Instead, they elect their local representatives and those representative together elect the Prime Minister. Japanese culture, too, plays a large role.

“Taking one for the team” and taking personal blame so that the company (or in this case, the government) can move forward is much more likely to happen in Japan. Consider the fact that Hatoyama stepped down largely because he didn’t fulfill a campaign promise. (To close an American military base in Okinawa.) Well, in the time that Kan has been prime minister, Japan experienced one of the deadliest series of earthquakes and one of the most horrific tsunamis in all of Japanese history. While Kan can’t be blamed for an act of nature, there’s the failure of the nuclear power plants and leaking radiation to consider as well. These plants were built long before Kan’s time as prime minister, but there’s more to it. The disaster relief handling, the nuclear power plant disasters and the government’s response to the tragedies have been under the spotlight by upset citizens.

Much of the rest of the government pressured Kan into his resignation and offered to pass some of the bills he’s put forth in order to broker a deal with him to resign. Kan’s bills focus largely on finding clean, renewable sources of energy for the country so that Japan is less reliant on dangerous nuclear power.

Kan’s party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) remains in power and will have the majority needed to elect a new prime minister from their party next week. The new prime minister will become Japan’s sixth prime minister in only five years.

Do you like the idea of the nation’s leader resigning to take the blame for failure of government, even if he alone is not responsible? Why or why not? Would you like your nation’s leader to change every few months or every year or so?

All Posts / Culture / Customs — No Comments
19
Aug 11

Traditional Japanese Ghost Stories, Part 3

Summer is the season of Obon in Japan, so it’s high time for another look at a traditional Japanese ghost story. This time we’ll take a look at Botan Dourou and the two most common versions of the tale.  Also known as “The Peony Lantern,” Botan Dourou dates back to the 17th century in Japan, although it may have been derived from an older Chinese tale. There are two versions of the story with some major differences: the earlier Otogi Boko version and the Meiji-era theatrical version (also known as the Rakugo or Kabuki version). Both versions feature a gorgeous woman ghost named Otsuyu, who wanders past a man’s house each night carrying a peony paper lantern. She is also accompanied by a young woman ghost. (The woman is her maidservant.)

In the earlier version, an older man, a widower samurai named Ogiwara Shinnojo, is the man who spies Otsuyu each night. Struck by her beauty, he falls in love with her. He does not know at first that she is a ghost. Every time the sun sets, she visits with him, but she leaves before the sun rises with no explanation. When a snooping neighbor spies the woman visiting Ogiwara each night and thinks that there’s something odd about her, he peers into Ogiwara’s bedroom one evening and finds Ogiwara making love to a skeleton. The neighbor tells a Buddhist monk, who warns Ogiwara to stay away from the woman or he will die as well. The monk places spiritual protective barriers around Ogiwara’s home. When Otsuyu returns that evening, she cannot enter the home. She calls forlornly for Ogiwara to come out and join her. Despite the warnings, Ogiwara is too much in love with her to resist. He exits his safe home and follows Otsuyu back to her “home”: a grave. In the morning, Ogiwara is found dead in the open grave. He’s embracing a skeleton.

In the later version, Ogiwara is replaced with a young man named Saburo, a medical student rather than a samurai. Otsuyu’s story is fleshed out–and it turns out that she and Saburo were in love when she was alive. Otsuyu, daughter of a wealthy widower samurai, was sent in life to live in a small home with a single maidservant after the samurai remarried and his new wife did not like Otsuyu. When a doctor visits Otsuyu to check in on her, he takes along his student, Saburo. Saburo and Otsuyu are instantly smitten with one another. Otsuyu begs Saburo to visit her often–and tells him she will die if he goes too long without seeing her–and he promises he will visit her. However, social decorum of the time mandated that he not visit an unwed woman alone, so Saburo relied on tagging along with another of the doctor’s visits. However, the doctor refused to go back, knowing that Saburo had fallen for Otsuyu and disapproving of the match. (In some versions, Saburo falls ill for a long time and becomes bedridden for months. He cannot get a message to his love.)

Otsuyu dies of a broken heart and her maidservant dies in grief at the loss of her mistress. The pair become ghosts who stroll past Saburo’s home at night carrying a peony paper lantern. Saburo does not know his lover has died, so he’s overjoyed by her nightly visits. In this version, another servant of the house spies Saburo in bed with a skeleton. He tells a Buddhist monk, who gives Saburo the news that his love has died and shows him her grave as proof. Grief-stricken, Saburo retreats to his house and the Buddhist monk places protective barriers up to block out the spirits.

Otsuyu and her maidservant continue to visit Saburo at night but cannot enter the home. Hearing Otsuyu sadly call for him makes Saburo more heartbroken and over many nights, he loses his will to live. Other servants pity the sad, dying man and one night remove the protective barriers without Saburo’s knowledge. That night, Otsuyu once again enters the home and makes love to Saburo. He is found dead in the morning with her skeleton in his arms, but he is smiling and content.

Have you ever heard of Botan Darou? Have you seen a movie or stage version? Which version do you prefer, the earlier or the later version?

All Posts / Culture / Entertainment — No Comments
12
Aug 11

Radio Taisou: Daily Exercises

Every morning at 6:30, the NHK radio airwaves plays a special tune and encourages residents of Japan everywhere to join together for a special 5-10-minute workout. Communities gather at local parks, employees at offices arrive early to exercise before the work day begins, and kids who get to school early for sports team practice join together to workout. In the summer, schools, parents, and communities encourage young children to head to the local park and participate in the morning exercise. In many areas, a volunteer instructor will stamp a participation card for each morning a kid comes to the session in the summer; if the kids fill up their cards, they get participation prizes.

These morning exercises are called “radio taisou,” or “radio calisthenics.” There’s also an afternoon version that airs at 3:00. Some companies have their workers drop what they’re doing to stand and perform the exercises. There are two kinds of exercises: those for younger, more energetic people and those for everyone else. The basic exercises is mostly a series of stretching routines, a simple “warm up” to get the blood flowing and the mind more alert for the day. At most sites, a volunteer will lead the group in the workout. After many days of repeating the stretches, you may come to remember how to do them yourself.

Radio taisou began in Japan in the 1920s. The Japan Post newspaper and NHK Radio started the project, although they may have been inspired by MetLife’s American radio exercise programs that appeared around the same time. The radio taisou briefly stopped after World War II, when American occupiers thought the masses getting together for a daily workout was too militaristic in nature. However, the program was reworked in the 1950s and focused more on exercise and bonding with co-workers, classmates, and members of the community. They’ve aired consistently since.

See an example of the radio taisou in a park here.

Have you ever participated in radio taisou while in Japan? Do you like the idea of a short daily exercise you do together at work, school, or in the neighborhood? Why or why not?

All Posts / Language — No Comments
5
Aug 11

~N Desu: Implications

Oftentimes translation from Japanese into English isn’t direct. “~N desu,” or the casual form, “~n da,” is one such example. The phrase is added at the end of sentences to sort of imply a reason for the sentence based on the context of the conversation. Translations often include “That’s why…”, “As it happens…”, or “As a matter of fact…”, but more often than not, no translation at all is necessary.

Take a sentence with and without “~n desu” at the end and let’s compare the meanings: “My mother came this morning.”

Kono asa haha ga kimashita.

Kono asa haha ga kurun desu.

Note that the version of the sentence with “~n desu” requires that the verb return to its unconjugated or informal state. Both of these sentences can translate to “My mother came this morning.” However, the second one carries an implication that depends on the context of the conversation. For example, if someone asked the speaker, “Why are you late?”, the second version of the sentence implies that it was because the mother stopped by, perhaps for an unannounced visit, that the speaker is late.

Another implied translation of the “~n desu” ending is that the speaker is asking for assistance from the listener. For example, if you were to state, “I’m thirsty,” you’d have a couple of options (literally “My throat is dry”):

Nodo ga kawakimasu.

Nodo ga kawakun desu.

The first version is simply the polite conjugation of the declaration that you’re thirsty. The second implies that you would like the people listening to you to direct you to somewhere where you can get a drink or to join you for a drink.

You can ask a question with “~n desu ka” as well. (In casual form, the “~n da ka” is incorrect; it is simply “~no.”) If you want to imply that you would really like to hear the reasons behind something, simply add “~n desu ka” to the sentence. “Why did you quit school?” can be asked in a couple of ways:

Doushite gakkou yamemashita ka?

Doushite gakkou yametan desu ka?

Both versions literally mean the same thing, but the second implies that you really want to know the full details.

Practice turning basic sentences into “~n desu” sentences. Have you ever had a discussion in Japanese before in which someone used “~n desu“? Do you think you missed the implications at the time?