“At present, however, it is no longer possible to establish distinctions of genera in this ghostly zoology, where each species grows into every other. It is not even possible to disengage the ki or Soul of the Fox and the August-Spirit-of-Food from the confusion in which both have become hopelessly blended, under the name Inari by the vague conception of their peasant-worshippers. The old Shinto mythology is indeed quite explicit about the August-Spirit-of-Food, and quite silent upon the subject of foxes. But the peasantry in Izumo, like the peasantry of Catholic Europe, make mythology for themselves…

But these strange beliefs are swiftly passing away. Year by year more shrines of Inari crumble down, never to be rebuilt. Year by year the statuaries make fewer images of foxes. Year by year fewer victims of fox-possession are taken to the hospitals to be treated according to the best scientific methods by Japanese physicians who speak German. The cause is not to be found in the decadence of the old faiths: a superstition outlives a religion. Much less is it to be sought for in the efforts of proselytising missionaries from the West–most of whom profess an earnest belief in devils. It is purely educational. The omnipotent enemy of superstition is the public school, where the teaching of modern science is unclogged by sectarianism or prejudice; where the children of the poorest may learn the wisdom of the Occident; where there is not a boy or a girl of fourteen ignorant of the great names of Tyndall, of Darwin, of Huxley, of Herbert Spencer. The little hands that break the Fox-god’s nose in mischievous play can also write essays upon the evolution of plants and about the geology of Izumo. There is no place for ghostly foxes in the beautiful nature-world revealed by new studies to the new generation The omnipotent exorciser and reformer is the Kodomo [child].” (Lafcadio Hearn, 1894, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, pp. 321, 341)

Luckily, in the 110+ years since Hearn wrote the above, the foxes (kitsune) haven’t all been destroyed or forgotten at Inari shrines in Japan. I took the above photo just last year at Fushimi Inari Taisha. The fox statue isn’t easy to see unless you increase the image size by clicking on it. The fox is centered in the torii gate.

Posted on January 1st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: fushimi inari, japan pictures, kitsune, lafcadio hearn, shinto, torii. Comments Off on Inari foxes

My supply of previously-read Mangajin is getting out of control. So I’m prepared to make you a great deal if you purchase 20 different issues from me. The issues are Nos. 17, 18, 21, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 47, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 65, and 66. The 10 not previously pictured are shown above.

If you were to purchase these 20 issues from the publisher the cost would be $160+. If you live in the USA and purchase them all at once from me the cost is only $80, and I will pay the shipping–not you (free shipping). Outside of the US the price will be a bit more for the extra shipping. Single issues are also available for $5 each plus shipping.

Email me today if you are interested in taking these 20 issues off of my shelves.

Posted on December 31st, 2008 under Japan. Tags: mangajin. Comments Off on After Christmas Mangajin blowout sale

I’m back from my winter vacation, although it seems strange calling it a vacation when I went from a cold, snowy place to a colder, snowier place. Hopefully you enjoyed the Italian offerings of the past couple weeks. We’ll turn back to Japan now.

On my trip I finished both volumes of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. I’ll share a few quotes and thoughts on the book here in the next week or so. To go along with the following quote I present the above photo which I took at ginkakuji in Kyoto last year.

“Now, a Japanese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing in it resembling a flower bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. As a rule, a Japanese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend upon any fixed allowance of space. It may cover one acre or many acres. It may also be only ten feet square…  Therein are created minuscule hills with minuscule houses upon them, and microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges; and queer wee plants do duty for trees, and curiously formed pebbles stand for rocks, and there are tiny toro, perhaps a tiny torii as well, – in short, a charming and living model of a Japanese landscape.

Another fact of prime importance to remember is that, in order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand – or at least to learn to understand – the beauty of stones… Until you can feel, and keenly feel, that stones have character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning of a Japanese garden cannot be revealed to you. In the foreigner, however aesthetic he may be, this feeling needs to be cultivated by study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms. But although, being an Occidental, the true sense of the beauty of stones can be reached by you only through long familiarity with the Japanese use and choice of them, the characters of the lesson to be acquired exist everywhere about you, if your life be in the interior… At the approaches to temples, by the side of roads, before holy groves, and in all parks and pleasure-grounds, as well as in all cemeteries, you will notice large, irregular, flat slabs of natural rock, mostly from the river beds and water-worn, sculptured with ideographs, but unhewn. These have been set up as votive tablets, as commemorative monuments, as tombstones, and are much more costly than the ordinary cut-stone columns and haka chiseled with the figures of divinities in relief. Again, you will see before most of the shrines, nay, even in the grounds of nearly all large homesteads, great irregular blocks of granite or other hard rock, worn by the action of torrents, and converted into water-basins (chodzubachi) by cutting a circular hollow in the top. Such are but common examples of the utilization of stones even in the poorest villages; and if you have any natural artistic sentiment, you cannot fail to discover, sooner or later, how much more beautiful are these natural forms than any shapes from the hand of the stone-cutter. It is probable, too, that you will become so habituated at last to the sight of inscriptions cut upon rock surface, especially if you travel much through the country, that you will often find yourself involuntarily looking for texts or other chiselings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will begin, perhaps, to assume for you a certain individual or physiognomical aspect, – to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the Japanese. Indeed, Japan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as high volcanic lands are apt to be; and such shapes doubtless addressed themselves to the imagination of the race at a time long prior to the date of that archaic text which tells of demons in Izumo “who made rocks, and the roots of trees, and leaves, and the foam of the green waters to speak.” (Lafcadio Hearn, 1894, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, p. 345)

Posted on December 30th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: garden, japan pictures, kyoto, lafcadio hearn, shinto. Comments Off on Japanese Gardens

My fourth DS game for learning Japanese arrived in the mail yesterday. Kanken DS 2 + Joyo Kanji Jiten (漢検DS2+常用漢字辞典) is the name of it. The thing that excited me the most about this DS title was the dictionary (jiten or 辞典). After messing around with it for an hour I have to say that the thing I am most disappointed with is the dictionary. However, everything else is much better than expected. I think this may even end up being a more useful tool than my previous favorite, Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the features with some screenshots I took.

The above screen is a practice test at level 9. There are 10 levels in Kanken 2 corresponding to the 10 levels of the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test (Nihon Kanji Nōryoku Kentei Shiken, 日本漢字能力検定試験). Level 10 is the easiest level and level 1 is the most difficult.

The format looks fairly similar to the quizzes in Tadashii Kanji Kakitorikun Kanken Taisaku. However, Kanken 2 is far superior in my opinion. With the above on the top screen, the user writes らいしゅう, one hiragana character at a time, on the lower screen. After touching OK the next screen appears.

Now the user writes にちようび (日曜日) and so on. The quizzes are more interesting than those found in Tadashii Kanji… or Nazotte… as the content varies and is not the same format over and over again like those games. For instance, after filling in the hiragana for several kanji marked in red a different task is required as follows.

Now the user has to write the number of the stroke highlighted in red. What happens if you make a mistake?

In this case I wrote 10 instead of the correct answer of 9. One thing I really like about Kanken 2 is that instead of just taking me to the next task I am given the option of going to the dictionary for this character. If I click on the orange box I go to the dictionary.

The dictionary is usually three pages wide. Above I am showing you photographs of two of those three pages. As you can see the dictionary doesn’t offer much more than the Nazotte… dictionary. The dictionary has stroke order, on and kun readings, number of strokes, and radicals. That’s it. Nazotte… doesn’t have radicals, but it has all of the other items.

If a Kanken 3 ever comes out I hope Rocket Company (the software publisher) adds three things to the dictionary: example jukugo, a brief definition in Japanese, and two or three meanings in English. This would be very useful for both Japanese and gaijin users of the program.

Other than the addition of radicals, there are two other things about the dictionary that make it superior to those found in Tadashii Kanji… and Nazotte… The first I mentioned above in that you can leap to the dictionary whenever you miss something. The other is that you can look kanji up by sound. For instance, you can write kei (けい) and be taken to a screen with every kanji that has a kei reading. You can also click on any of the kei kanji to be taken to the dictionary screens for that particular kanji.

In summary, (although if there is interest I’ll post more screenshots and discussion of this title on this blog in the future) the games and quizzes in Kanken 2 appear to be much more enjoyable and varied than those in previously mentioned DS games teaching kanji that I’ve experienced. The character recognition is better than My Japanese Coach but not as good as Nazotte… However, Kanken 2 doesn’t give the false positives that Nazotte… sometimes does. Another complaint of Kanken 2 is the size of the characters on the screen. Nazotte… is much easier on the eyes. Still, my prediction is that I will be using Kanken 2 much more than Nazotte… in the future simply because it is more entertaining while accomplishing the same goal of kanji mastery.

Posted on December 16th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, kanken, reviews. Comments: 2

Are you beginning to get the idea as to how someone who isn’t even all that interested in the beauty of a cemetery might just find the one at 化野念仏寺 to be quite beautiful and peaceful? If you ever get bored of this vantage point (but how could you?) just turn around to behold a bamboo forest.

Posted on December 15th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: buddhist, cemetery, japan pictures, kyoto, sagano, 化野念仏寺. Comments Off on Another angle on Adashino-Nenbutsu-ji upper cemetery