Itō Jakuchū's paintings of the whale and elephant are on display at Miho Museum

Last December, I wrote about newly found screen paintings of whale and elephant by an Edo-period Japanese painter, Itō Jakuchū (伊藤若冲; 1716-1800). When I walked around Shin-monzen, the antiques district in Kyoto, last Sunday, I saw many posters of the Jakuchu's whale and elephant.


According to the posters, the screens together with many other paintings by Jakuchu are on display at Miho Museum in Shiga prefecture from Sep. 1 to Dec. 13. You can see bigger photos of the whale-elepahnt paintings from this page in Miho Museum's Website.

Paddling in the water

I often go to the riverside of Kamo River in weekends. Kids were paddling in the water last Sunday.

Barbershop posters about politics

Barbershop is often supposed to be a place to talk about politics in irresponsible manner. Japanese call such argument Tokoya-no-seidan (床屋の政談); tokoya means "barbershop", and seidan means "argument about politics". Thus, tokoya-no-seidan means "barbershop argument about politics".

I don't know whether it has anything to do with the fact that barbershops are supposed to be such places, but I came across a barbershop that has posters of the LDP-leader Aso and the DPJ-leader Hatoyama on the sliding door of the shop.


They are apparently related to the posters of LDP and DPJ shown below. These posters are often seen on the street in Japan nawadays.


They are, however, significantly different from each other in the slogans written on them. The DPJ poster that features Hatoyama has a slogan saying "Seiken Koutai (政権交代)", which means "change the government". The similar poster on the door of the barbershop has a slogan "haegiwa koutai (生際後退)", which means "receding hairline". In Japanese, both change (交代) and recede (後退) are pronounced as "koutai", thus the slogan on the barbershop poster is a pun of the DPJ slogan.

The LDP poster that features Aso has a slogan saying "Mazu wa keiki da (まずは景気だ)", which means "The primary issue is the situation of economy". The similar poster on the door of the barbershop has a slogan "Mazu wa ke-e kiru" (まずは毛きる)", which means "The primary issue is cutting the hair".

American soldier's dog tag unearthed in Miyazaki

According to today's Miyazaki Nichi-nichi Shimbun, an American soldier's dog tag together with 30 bullets of 20-mm machine gun and 4 incendiary bombs were unearthed from a construction site in the Hyuga city, Miyazaki prefecture, on July 3. They are likely to be remains of B29 crashed at the site 64 years ago. According to the report, the name carved on the surface of the stainless-steel dog tag reads "JULIAN W STEELE".

UPDATE
According to this page in Japanese, all of the crews including Mr. Steele stayed alive after the crash, sent to Tokyo, where they were detained in a camp. All of them could return to the US after the war.

UPDATE 2
You can see a picture of the crews here.

Runaway Girl by ROGUE

ROGUE was a Japanese rock group led by a vocalist/guitarist Okuno Atsushi in the late 1980s. It was one of my favorite rock groups in the late 1980s, partly because it was from my hometown, Maebashi.



After the breakup of the group in 1990, Okuno Atsushi had been working as a solo singer and an actor until last year.

Recently, I was shocked to learn that he had had cervical vertebrae damage when he had accidentally fallen off a building while he had been voluntarily helping his friend who is a scrapping worker. The accident took place last September, and, after that, his left arm and legs have been paralyzed; he can move only his right arm. I wish that he would recover from the injury, and some day he would be able to sing songs or write new songs.

Whale-related school bullies in New Zealand

According to New Zealand Herald, a Japanese-born boy was seriously injured as a result of school bullying. He had been racially abused by the students who turned around and picked up him and dropped him on his head.

A 14-year-old suffered a potentially fatal blood clot in his brain after he was attacked by school bullies in what appears to be a racially motivated attack.

The teen, Japanese-born Ryotaro Wright, needed emergency brain surgery in Waikato Hospital after the attack at Forest View High School in Tokoroa this week. Doctors say he was close to death.

Four students have been suspended and police are investigating.

Ryotaro's father Llewellyn said yesterday his son had been racially abused by four students over the past few weeks, including being called "whale muncher".

According to the school's web page, Ryutaro was awarded Premium Student Achievement Award last year. I hope that he will get well soon.

The world's oldest molded fruit being kept in Japan

Japan Probe has posts concerning heart-shaped melons and watermelons being sold in Japan. They seem to be made by putting young fruits into heart-shaped molds and growing them in the molds.

Those posts remided me of an article [Japanese] concerning an ancient molded fruit being kept in a Buddhist temple in Japan. According to the article, Hōryūji temple in Nara has an ancient gourd pot called Hasshin Hyōko (八臣瓢壷), or a gourd pot of eight retainers. It has, on its surface, relieves of a hermit and eight famous retainers who served for ancient Chinese emperors. Research on the gourd pot has shown that the relieves were not carved by edged tools but made by growing the gourd in a mold template.

A number of molded gourds were made in China during the period of Qing Dyanasty (16-19th century), since the fourth emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) was fond of using molded gourds for his daily life. Accordingly, quite a few molded gourds made after the 17th century are being preserved in museums in China and Taiwan. The Hasshin Hyōko is, however, apparently older than those gourds, because a list of the treasures of the temple, which was edited by a Buddhist monk Kenshin (顕真) in 1238, included the very gourd pot Hasshin Hyōko. Thus, it is certain that the temple already had it in 1238. According to the above mentioned article, iconography of the relieves suggests that it was made in around 9th century. Although exact age is unknown, it is most likely that it is the oldest extant molded fruit in the world.