Category Archive: Japanese Culture
Something about food and enjoying it brings people closer together. In mid-February, the KCP cooking club had a blast in their cooking session with Japanese college students from Hosei University.
Under the supervision of Tanaka-san and Utami-san, KCP rented a cooking room at Yotsuya Ward Center, where students created delicious gyoza (Chinese dumplings) and mapo tofu (a Szechuan dish made of marinated pork, mashed black beans, and bean curd.) Both these dishes originated in China but are now a part of daily Japanese cuisine.
Everyone had a fantastic time cooking and eating their succulent creations, while in the company of new friends.
Students make gyoza by wrapping a meat mixture with gyoza skin, which is made of flour. | KCP Flickr
Food looks delicious; everyone’s totally absorbed in their “work.” | KCP Flickr
Students take a little break from cooking to smile for the camera. | KCP Flickr
KCP students show off their culinary creation. | KCP Flickr
Past culinary adventures–
Japanese curry
A curry recipe
Learning lots of ways
Tags: cooking Japanese cuisine, Japanese cooking, Japanese culture, KCP cooking, KCP cooking class, KCP culture class, KCP culture learning, KCP students
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The Edo-Tokyo Museum is a must-see for those who want to learn more about the rich culture and history of Tokyo. Founded March 28, 1993, the museum is a repository of Tokyo’s heritage, from its origins as a small fishing village called Edo during the 15th century to its metamorphosis into today’s sprawling and vibrant metropolis.
The building structure of Edo-Tokyo Museum was patterned on an elevator-type warehouse, giving it a top-heavy and futuristic appearance. Interesting tidbit: it is about the same height as the Edo Castle Tower.
Edo-Tokyo Museum. | Wiiii
The Permanent Exhibition Area
The exhibition area is divided into three zones:
Edo Zone holds displays that depict Edo lifestyle, from culture to politics, and artifacts from the Edo Era. This zone contains a splendid life-sized replica of a Kabuki theatre.
Tokyo Zone touches on the era of change from Edo to Tokyo, Western influences that began to seep into Tokyo’s culture, the Great Kanto Earthquake, the World Wars, and other historical events. Other exhibits and video displays present Tokyo in modern times.
Second Special Exhibits Gallery contains special exhibits several times a year.
Some of our KCP students had the opportunity to visit the Edo-Tokyo Museum this February 4. The trip is one of the many excursions that students enjoy in the Culture and Civilization Class.
Admiring the exhibits at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. | KCP Flickr
Could you carry this water? | KCP Flickr
Tags: Edo-Tokyo Museum, Japanese culture, Japanese museum, Tokyo museum
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Recently, KCP staff and students attended a sumo extravaganza. It was not a regular tourney, but an event in honor of the renowned sumo wrestler Futenno, who has retired and will become an Oyakata, a master of Sumo house.
Over a dozen culture class students went with Michiko-san to see the sumo spectacle. Extra tickets were also sold to other students, including continuing U.S. program students. They gathered at a station near the KCP campus at 10:30 am and took the subway and JR to go to Ryogoku. Ryogoku Kokugikan Stadium is just 3 minutes from the station. Once there, they were greeted by sumo wrestlers (actually, they lined up in the entrance hall but could barely be seen since so many people tried to take pictures of and with them).
KCP students with a sumo wrestler. | KCP Flickr
The event included traditional ceremonies like cutting off the retired wrestler’s topknot. A small tournament was held between lower, middle, and higher ranked wrestlers. A regular tournament usually lasts 15 days: the champion is decided based on the number of winning games. In this commemorative event, people could see who won each match, but no champion was chosen.
In the cavernous sumo stadium. | KCP Flickr
The event, which started at 11:30 am and ended at around 4 pm, was broadcast live on the internet. Futenno was called “blogger sumo wrestler;” an internet broadcast of a sumo wrestler’s retirement event had happened before in the history of sumo.
Two sumo wrestlers begin the leg-stomping shiko ritual in the ring. | KCP Flickr
You can visit Futenno’s blog here, and read more about the event in a previous Window On Japan post.
Click here for more KCP photos about the spectacular sumo event!
Tags: Futenno, Futenno memorial event, Futenno sumo wrestler, KCP at sumo event, sumo, sumo wrestler, sumo wrestling, sumo wrestling ring
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What do you get when you combine the Japanese’ unique fashion sense with their expertise in light technology? A whole lot of brilliant flashing lights used in most intriguing ways!
LED Teeth
Everyone knows that a smile can brighten up one’s face. But the Japanese have taken this concept a giant step further with one of their latest fads, the LED teeth. These are LED inserts placed on the teeth (similar to a mouth guard) which light up whenever you smile. These can be controlled by wireless remote and can even be made to blink or change color, from icy blue to wicked red.
click image or this link– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcaQ5QWHJlM
Also called a “party in the mouth”, flashing LED teeth on a bunch of young ladies is quite a sight to behold!
Dekotora Trucks
Huge trucks are hard to miss as they travel on the road but Dekotora trucks (デコトラ) are impossible to ignore. “Dekotora” is short for “Decoration Truck” and when you see one of these, especially at night, its image will probably be seared in your brain. These trucks are pimped up with all kinds of colorful flashing lights, looking like casinos on wheels.
Dazzling Dekotora trucks | Viernest
click image or this link– http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mKsx59XbDN0
I can’t wait to see what fascinating fad the Japanese will come up with next!
Tags: Dekotora, Dekotora trucks, Japanese fads, LED teeth
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The New Year is undoubtedly the most anticipated and important holiday for the Japanese. It is a long celebration that runs December 31 to January 3. During this period, all sorts of ceremonies and customs are practiced.
Here’s a fascinating one: the hanging of Shimekazari on top of the house entrance to prevent bad spirits from entering and to invite the Toshigami (歳神), or Shinto deity, to descend and visit. This traditional New Year decoration is made of shimenawa, a sacred Shinto straw rope, and other materials such as bitter oranges, ferns, and white ritual paper strips called shide.
Shimekazari | matsuyuki
Symbolism of Shimenawa
Shimenawa, the sacred braided straw rope used in a shimekazari decoration, holds deep meaning for the Japanese. When hung above the entryway of a site, it marks the border to pure space where the gods can descend, such as the entrance to a shrine precinct or a ritual site. The term shimenawa is the combination of shime, or items used in ancient times to symbolize ownership, and nawa, or rope, which was the most common way to mark an object or space.
Shimekazari | h_okumura
Dontoyaki
Dontoyaki, or Dondo Yaki (どんと焼き), is a traditional fire ceremony held around the 15th of January when people gather at the local shrine to burn their New Year decorations, including the shimekazari, to symbolize the send-off of the toshigami.
Here’s a video of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrATGNpM-a0
For more shimekazari designs, see here.
Tags: Dondo Yaki, Dontoyaki, Japanese culture, Japanese New Year decoration, Japanese New Year ornament, Japanese New Year tradition, shimekazari, shimenawa
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The New Year is almost here, and people all over the world are excited to greet it in their own ways. In Japan, the New Year (正月 shōgatsu) is the most significant holiday in the year. Preparations begin days beforehand in honor of the occasion.
Japanese New Year is celebrated on January 1, but that has not always been the case. Before the 1900s, the date of the event followed the Chinese lunar calendar, similar to the Chinese, Vietnamese, and the Korean New Year. When Japan started using the Gregorian calendar in 1873, the New Year became the 1st of January.
Japan has many traditions to honor the coming of the new year.
Osechi—an assortment of selected dishes special to New Year celebrations. Dishes include kamaboko (fish cakes), kurikinton (mashed sweet potato with chestnut), konbu (boiled seaweed), kuromame (sweetened black soybeans), sushi, and sashimi.
Osechi | jetalone
Another traditional dish served for the New Year celebration is ozōni, a soup that has mochi rice cake and other local ingredients.
Ozōni | Arnold Gatilao
Kadomatsu—a bamboo-pine arrangement placed at the entrance of the home to symbolize good fortune and strength for the year ahead. This practice dates back 400 years.
Kadomatsu | kimubert
Otoshidama—a long-standing Japanese tradition during this holiday is to give money to children such as young nieces and nephews. Money is placed in small decorated envelopes called pochibukuro.
Pochibukuro for otoshidama | mind on fire
Hatsumōde—the first trip to a shrine or temple in the new year. These sacred places are crowded during New Year’s Eve and the next few days. Visitors dress up in kimonos if weather permits.
Meiji Jingu on New Year’s Eve | John V. McCollum
Temple bells—on New Year’s Eve, Japanese Buddhist temples ring their bells 108 times to signify the 108 human sins, as well as to get rid of the worldly sins made during the year just passed. The Japanese stay up until midnight to listen to the 108 chimes, then they generally eat a bowl of hot toshikoshi-soba, brown noodles in broth.
Nengajō—a Western-like custom of giving holiday greeting cards to relatives and friends. Japanese greeting cards are sent to post offices before the end of the year where they are kept until New Year’s Day. On this day, the post office delivers the cards all at the same time.
Nengajō | andyket
Tags: 108 bells Japanese New Year, hatsumode, Japanese New Year, Japanese New Year tradition, kadomatsu, nengajo, New Year in Japan, osechi, otoshidama, ozoni, pochibukuro, shogatsu
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This 1954 film by director Ishiro Honda is widely understood as an allegory for the devastation wrought on Japan by the atomic bomb. This is not Godzilla, the later remake starring Raymond Burr, but the original black-and-white version in Japanese. It is a stunning film, even with its hokey visual effects.
First, for a well-rounded foundation, here’s what rovi.com has to say—
As his visual metaphor, Honda uses a 400-foot-tall mutant dinosaur called Gojira, awakened from the depths of the sea as a rampaging nuclear nightmare, complete with glowing dorsal fins and fiery, radioactive breath. Crushing ships, villages, and buildings in his wake, Gojira marches toward Tokyo, bringing all of the country’s worst nightmares back until an evil more terrible bomb — capable of sucking all the oxygen from the sea — returns the monster to its watery grave. The original film is chilling, despite some rather unconvincing man-in-a-suit special effects, and brimming with explicitly stated anti-American sentiment.
Wikpedia also had a nice rundown of the movie.
I must say I didn’t notice any anti-American sentiment. I did notice the following:
- An early SOS message in the movie (dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, etc.) was much more realistic—up to speed? not overplayed?—than I’ve seen it in American movies.
- The monster itself isn’t shown for quite a while. We’re led up to that by the very convincingly horrified expressions on the faces of the people who see the monster. Before we even get a look at the creature we’re immersed in everyone’s fear.
- The monster’s fiery breath—okay, radioactive—was truly scary.
- There is both a “mad scientist” and an older “voice-of-reason” scientist in the story. The latter guy, strangely, doesn’t want to destroy the monster who is wreaking havoc everywhere. He wants to study it and learn from it.
- After so much horror and destruction, the ending is strangely, gently elegiac. There is an inexplicable sorrow.
- I walked away from the movie with a sense of the interplay among risk, desperation, desecration, and inevitability.
Unresolved—
What exactly was an example of anti-American sentiment?
At the end, the voice-of-reason scientist hopes for more Gojiras. Why is that a realistic hope?
Anyone who has thoughts on those questions, please share them!
Tags: Godzilla, Gojira, Ishiro Honda, Japanese cinema, Japanese film
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A decade ago, I had the opportunity to work in a Japanese Ramen restaurant. The cold weather as of late has brought back fond memories of learning secret family recipes of delicious ramen and curry that is perfect for getting warm. It also allows me to be thankful for the friends I made among the people I worked with and the Japanese work ethics I learned and still practice every day.
I diligently listened and learned everything my Japanese mentors taught me in the kitchen. Much care and attention to the quality of ingredients go into the food. The end product is always a delicious meal that is best had on a cold night surrounded by family and friends, or just a great show on TV.
Japanese curry | avlxyz
A restaurant specialty was Japanese curry. I used to make huge batches all on my own. I’ve always loved cooking, and there’s no greater pleasure than seeing people come back for more of what I’ve made. My Japanese boss and dear friend printed out copies of the recipes I prepared day in, day out. It’s been 10 years since I last prepared Japanese curry; recently I just happened on the yellowed pieces of paper with the recipes I used to know by heart. It’s funny how the taste and smells of what I used to cook in the kitchen can bring back so many memories.
S&B Golden Curry | inazakira
Here is a recipe for Japanese curry, just as I was taught. I hope it creates wonderful memories for you to cherish as well.
Ingredients
1 lb beef (chuck roll)
1 ½ tbsp S&B Golden Curry Mix
6 cups beef broth
3 tbsp roasted almonds (run through a processor)
2 onions (thinly sliced)
1 ½ carrots cut in cubes
24 cc sugar
5 cc pepper
96 cc sake
½ cup pineapple (run through a food processor)
¼ lb sliced shitake mushrooms
Directions
Pop all the ingredients into a pot and let it simmer until the beef is tender and the sauce is at your desired consistency. Enjoy!
Check out our previous post about KCP students making Japanese curry in cooking class!
Tags: curry, Japanese curry, Japanese curry recipe
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Japan has one of the oldest (starting in 1897), largest film industries in the world. Perhaps the Japanese took to cinema because of traditional frameworks such as the magic lantern (gentō) which works something like the old slide carousels. Gentō are so old that they were first lit by candles or oil lamps.
Edal Anthony Lefterov | Wikimedia
A hefty suspension of disbelief occurs in most cinema, coupled with strong moral and philosophical messages. Each film may also create its own visual “rules,” and all of this seems compatible with the stylized storyforms ranging from kabuki and noh/kyōgen plays to animé and manga. In my mind, cinema is the dominant form of storytelling today. The Japanese, with their deep grounding in Zen Buddhist, Shinto, and minimalist philosophies, seem to have a unique affinity for the medium of cinema.
This is a huge topic, and one I’ve been wanting to explore for some time. So I’ll do it in pieces, using both Wikipedia’s help and my own conjecture. First: some early background, with lots of ideas for films to see. I was able to find (and put a hold on) many of these films in my public library online; your nearby college library may also have some, with a mandate to serve the public as well. So this can be a recession-friendly exploration project, if you’re so inclined.
Early Japanese films (I’m talking before 1900) included horror/ghost films like Bake Jizo (Jizxo the Ghost), Shinin no sousei (Resurrection of a Corpse),
documentaries like Geisha No Todori (Geisha Dance), and Momijigari (two actors performing a scene from the kabuki play of the same name).
Shōzō Makino. |wikimedia
Shōzō Makino, the pioneering director of Japanese film, was a creator (with Matsunosuke Onoe, his favorite actor who became Japan’s first film star) of Jidaigeki (時代劇?, period drama). Masao Inoue is widely believed to be the first director to use techniques new to silent film like the closeup and the cutback.
Matsunosuke Onoe in Chushin-gura. | wikimedia
In the 1920s, directors such as such as Hiroshi Inagaki, Mansaku Itami and Sadao Yamanaka refined their visions at independent studios in Japan formed by Japanese movie stars. The proletarian arts movement of this time spawned the Proletarian Film League of Japan (Prokino for short), whose films documented demonstrations and workers’ lives and other tendency films, with left-wing and socially-conscious tendencies. The government arrested Prokino members and effectively crushed the movement, making political dissent dangerous and, perhaps, more alluring to filmmakers.
Unlike in the U.S., silent films endured well into the 1930s. Once talkies hit, some notable films from this time include Tsuma Yo Bara No Yoni (Wife, Be Like a Rose!, 1935); Yasujiro Ozu’s An Inn in Tokyo, a precursor to film neorealism; Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sisters of the Gion (Gion no shimai, 1936); Osaka Elegy, 1936; and The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, 1939. The government also began to be more involved, encouraging propaganda (like Sadao Yamanaka’s Humanity and Paper Balloons, 1937) and documentaries.
Humanity and Paper Balloons. Toho Company | Wikimedia
World War II was rough on Japan and national cinema suffered. The decade did debut the great director Akira Kurosawa, with Sugata Sanshiro, followed up by his Drunken Angel (酔いどれ天使, Yoidore tenshi) and Stray Dog (Nura Inu, 野良犬). Kurosawa was one of the most influential directors in the world. Yasujiro Ozu directed Late Spring (Banshun, 晩春) in the 1940s as well. After the war’s end, the floodgates of American animated films, previously banned by the government, showered the Japanese people. Could this, combined with the stylistic sophistication of Japanese theatre and film, have been a seed for animé?
Next up: a look at five Japanese films that are ranked among the best films ever produced.
[source: Wikipedia]
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Like a lot of people, I’ve watched quite a few Japanese films. But I don’t really have a sense of who the big players are (okay, I know Kurosawa, but . . .) or the path Japanese cinema has followed in its long and illustrious history.
So I’ll be doing some hunting around on Wikipedia. I also discovered my public library has way more films available to borrow than what they put out on the shelves! So I’ll be watching whichever films I can get my hands on and offering my reactions to them. Your comments, meta- or micro-, would be much appreciated! I take suggestions . . . .
Thanks.
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