A Samurai’s thousand-year-old act of compassion ---Retold in a woodblock print

Tadamori of the Taira Clan was at the top of his game. He just nailed one of the most plush and prestigious jobs in all of 11th-century Japan----a day-job as bodyguard for Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Go-Shirakawa was a nervous fellow, distrustful even of his own bodyguards. He required that all samurai guards leave his royal compound before sunset each day. 

One evening Go-Shirakawa required the services of a samurai guard. Tadamori happened to be on duty. The Emperor was going for an evening stroll with his entourage through unfamiliar forest-gardens. It was now almost dark and the Emperor was becoming rather frightened.

Suddenly out of the rain and fog appeared several pairs of threatening eyes. The Emperor jumped out of his royal skin and ordered Takamori to kill the terrifying demons immediately. 

Tadamori rushed at the apparition, his sword drawn, well trained to obey his Emperor’s every command.

About to strike, he saw that the ‘demon’ was actually a poor monk in a wild straw hat rushing about on his rounds, lighting the oil lamps in the stone lanterns of his temple’s forrest. 


The old man let out shrieks, and dropped his oil vessel, which broke with a great crash, adding to a really weird scene.

In the midst of his descending ‘katana’, Tadamori's well trained, obedient mind 'evolved'---ok, it revolted and began thinking on its own.  "Holy crap! I'm about to make a really messy decision...and over a 'me-shita-mono' "

Killing was not the problem. To kill the old man, or any human being that offended or threatened, was a samurai’s right.  Meeting 'lesser' ('me-shita-mono' 'below one's eyes') folk on the road, a samurai was judge, jury, and executioner. During a later age--the Tokugawa-era--there were better records kept of dead dogs than dead humans, especially if the dead were peasant farmers or the ‘subhuman’ ‘eta’ untouchables. Life was very tenuous for the people of the earth.

No, not killing but living was the problem. To spare the old monk’s 'worthless' life was to defy the Emperor’s command. Tadamori knew that such disobedience was a certain death sentence for himself--‘seppuku’.

Tadamori sheathed his sword. 


For him, it was probably one of those "what was I thinking?" moments. 


He now had two frightened men to contend with. 


He reassured the old monk that he had years left to live with many lanterns yet to light. 


 And so he turned to the other, his liege lord, explaining his disobedience and offered up his life in atonement.

We are aware of this act of compassion a thousand years later not just because one good man with immense courage and heart did what was right and true but because of a second act of compassion that day by another. Emperor Go-Shirakawa was himself a man who valued truth over power, forgiveness over ruinous revenge by an offended ego. 

The Emperor was moved by this samurai’s integrity. Not only did he forgive Tadamori his disobedience, but he made Tadamori his chief and full-time protector due to his intelligence and acts of kindness. Tadamori-no-Taira became the first samurai to be allowed to reside full time within the walls of the Emperor's quarters. 


Oh, a small footnote: Tadamori was also given the Emperor's consort as a wife and Tadamori eventually became the father of famed Kiyomori who then went on to make history.  Look him up, all you Japan-fans....


(Illustrated by an original woodblock print by Nobukazu Yosai, pupil of Chikanobu, struck off the original hand-carved cherrywood blocks; triptych, dated the 25th year of the Reign of Emperor Meiji, (l892).)

Marmalade Breakfast by a Buddhist Temple

4:30 AM--- I was riding my rather rusty mountain-bike through the deserted streets of Tokyo, headed for Arai-Yakushi Temple and its first-Sunday-of-the-month “Nomi-on-Ichi” ---flea market,  temple sale. 

A good sized furoshiki cloth was in my satchel in order to carry back anything I might buy.  Second only to an early look at all the interesting  junk and treasures that dealers and pickers might bring in from the countryside, I looked forward to my monthly “mooningu” breakfast with friends at a local coffee shop near the temple.  Awaiting me there was my private jar of Japanese-made Scotch-marmalade.

    Marmalade? In Japan? A private jar? Let me explain, using a very old Japanese custom. At tiny private bars, with only a few chairs or stools, member-customers each have their own bottle of Johnny Walker with their name on it up on a shelf behind the bar, a symbol of membership, purchased at an inflated price from the bar. Each drinks from his own bottle,  or serves a guest he brought along, or  a 'round to all “on the house”  if the owner was celebrating a promotion or his child just got into a prestigious kindergarten, thus on an auspicious path to Tokyo University and a good company job in the far future.

     But back to marmalade. Now I truly love a traditional Japanese breakfast, with raw egg and soy sauce over hot rice, eaten with salty nori. But my favorite Japanese breakfast is “mooningu”, Japan’s pronunciation of the English word ‘morning’, their term for “a perfect western breakfast”---strong coffee in a small cup, a hard-boiled egg still warm in the shell, and 2-inch thick hot buttered toast.  Mrs. Tanaka laughed when I asked permission to bring some marmalade for my toast next month.  The next month the jar went up on a shelf with my name on it.  She called it my Johnny Walker bottle, promising to guard it with her life.       

    

     440 AM---- I had a long ways to go, wanting to get there early.   I rode quickly by the corner where our neighborhood put out garbage and recyclables for collection but which now stood immaculately empty except for the plastic bottles of water to keep the feral cats from peeing on the cement wall;  Locked up my bike at Takadanobaba Station and jumped on the first Yamanote Line train of the morning; transferred  to the Seibu-Shinjuku Private Line; Now an hour later, walked the 5 minutes from the Araiyakushi-mae Station to the Buddhist temple grounds through narrow back streets lined with shops, the shop owners still sleeping in the small rooms above, their shuttered entrances just inches from the side of passing delivery trucks. In Tokyo space is money. The pickers were just unloading their wares onto their tarps on the swept dirt grounds under the cherry trees.

     

After greeting and chatting and laughing and dickering with the pickers,  I rushed---in Tokyo everyone rushes--to the coffee shop for my marmalade ‘mooningu’.  Tanaka-san-no-okusan had a long look on her face when she saw me enter. Bowing much deeper than usual, and in that most polite and apologetic manner for which the Japanese language is so  eminently suited,  she explained that some of her daily customers had developed an inexplicable and uncontrollable urge to eat ‘maamareedo’ on their toast.  “Moshiageraremasen,” she said,  showing me the empty marmalade jar.  

    4:30 AM--- a month later. With extra jars of ‘maamareedo’ in my pack for all, I once again headed for my favorite temple and temple sale and the Tanakas’ coffee shop.

Tom

Araiyakushi Temple is as serene and beautiful for meditation on a weekday as it is exciting on market day.
3 old film-photos mechanically spliced together, now framed here at home in Nova Scotia.

Shocking Canadian lessons from Japan’s Disaster

With this Letter to the Editor below, I begin my first blog. My travels began many years before, from Ohio to Old Scotland, my much-loved land of kippers and marmalade, for a year studying geology at red-robed 15th cen. St. Andrews Univ. on the North Sea.  My wanderings later took me to Taiwan/Hongkong for a unique 2 year-introduction to that part of the northeast Asian family. And eventually to Japan, the land of sushi, for 20 years of work in human rights.  And now full circle, thanks to loved ones, I am most happily and gratefully settled here in God's own Nova Scotia, Canada, New Scotland, enjoying this morning's breakfast with some of a Scottish neighbor's ‘Dark Whiskey Marmalade’. Though half a world and years away from my Northeast Asia, she too is close to my heart and life-style, as I tend my Japanese Antique and Woodblock Print Gallery and, on occasion, make sushi.  And so, if you stumble on this blog, I hope you can find some flavours you enjoy--salty or sweet, east or west, sushi or marmalade--among these rambling notes of this wandering monk. 

Shocking Canadian lessons from Japan’s Disaster    

       I have personally known the anxiety the Japanese live with daily,  the  fear of an impending  and inevitable earthquake under your feet, wondering what to do if  “The Big One” happens this very  moment....

     Now it has happened.  And since 7:00 AM March 11, when my dog woke me up suddenly here far away in Nova Scotia as if himself sensing the earthquake,  I have watched with awe at the capacity of the Japanese people to deal with such a crisis on their vulnerable islands, my home for 20 years.

    After leaving Japan, it took me a few years to overcome my acquired fear of Japan’s quakes and then to relax in the safety and beauty of living in Canada, in western Nova Scotia on the shores of St. Mary's Bay.    

       Those Japanese who survived the earthquake and tsunami  are now experiencing unique and even more disturbing types of after-shocks---man-made ones both immoral and political. These after-shocks are the on-going revelations of  lies and coverups by their government about the true dangers of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, specifically regarding the Fukushima disaster (e.g. failed tests just weeks before the quake--hidden, uncorrected) and its real impact on people’s health.

       The 126 million human beings who populate Japan today  have been culturally conditioned to believe and obey their government.  And Japan’s post-war political leaders have, by and large, taken full advantage of this. These politicians  follow a similar philosophy to that of the founder of the U.S. Neo-Con Movement, Leo Strauss of the Univ. of Chicago, who taught that the need for perpetual deception of a nation’s people by its leaders is crucial because citizens need to be led by powerful rulers to tell them what is good for them.

         Japan’s disaster has shocked my peaceful Nova Scotia life, awakening in me  new fears based on two facts that I had so far chosen to ignore:  First, I, along with 150,000 other citizens, live within 80 km. of the old, ailing Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, straight across the beautiful Bay of Fundy,  well within the death or disfigurement zone both of Chernobyl and--when the truth be finally told--of Fukushima.   

      Secondly, Prime Minister Harper,  just 12 hours before Linda Keen was scheduled to appear before a Commons committee in Ottawa, fired and banished Ms. Keen, the head of Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog, for refusing to start up a nuclear reactor she deemed unsafe. 

      Suddenly Japan doesn’t seem so distant and my Canada doesn’t seem so safe.  And I’m wondering---as the Japanese are wondering about their leaders---who the Harper government is actually servicing by such actions as firing my nuclear watchdog? Certainly not you and me who elected them in our democratic system, a democracy which itself suddenly doesn’t seem so secure.  

       Once again as in my Japan days, I feel the ground shifting under my feet. And I  don’t  like it one bit.

japanesewoodblockprints.ca

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