TRAVEL TUESDAY 469 - KYOTO, JAPAN

“Japan is the only country I have visited that I want to go to again. I just feel the Japanese have such good taste and dedication to craftsmanship in everything they do. They also merge the traditional and modern aspects of their culture so well.” - Ronny Chieng

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us.

Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only. Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

The Yasaka Shrine (八坂神社, Yasaka-jinja), once called Gion Shrine (祇園神社, Gion-jinja), is a Shinto shrine in the Gion District of Kyoto, Japan. Situated at the east end of Shijō-dōri (Fourth Avenue), the shrine includes several buildings, including gates, a main hall and a stage. The Yasaka shrine is dedicated to Susanoo in the tradition of the Gion faith as its chief kami, with his consort Kushinadahime on the east, and eight offspring deities (yahashira no mikogami) on the west.

Initial construction on the Shrine began in 656. The Shrine became the object of Imperial patronage during the early Heian period. From 1871 through 1946, Yasaka Shrine was officially designated one of the Kanpei-taisha (官幣大社), meaning that it stood in the first rank of government supported shrines.

Today, in addition to hosting the Gion Matsuri (a purification and pacification of disease-causing entities festival), Yasaka Shrine welcomes thousands of people every New Year, for traditional Japanese New Year rituals and celebrations. In April, the crowds pass through the temple on their way to Maruyama Park, a popular hanami (cherry blossom viewing) site. Lanterns decorate the stage with the names of festival sponsors.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 460 - YOKOHAMA, JAPAN

“It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience.” Alain Ducasse

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us.

Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only. Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately.

Yokohama (Japanese: 横浜) is the second-largest city in Japan by population and by area, and the country's most populous municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a population of 3.7 million in 2023. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. Yokohama is also the major economic, cultural, and commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area along the Keihin Industrial Zone.

Yokohama was one of the cities to open for trade with the West following the 1859 end of the policy of seclusion and has since been known as a cosmopolitan port city, after Kobe opened in 1853. Yokohama is the home of many Japan's firsts in the Meiji period, including the first foreign trading port and Chinatown (1859), European-style sport venues (1860s), English-language newspaper (1861), confectionery and beer manufacturing (1865), daily newspaper (1870), gas-powered street lamps (1870s), railway station (1872), and power plant (1882).

Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century and is today one of its major ports along with Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Tokyo and Chiba. Yokohama is the largest port city and high tech industrial hub in the Greater Tokyo Area and the Kantō region. The city proper is headquarters to companies such as Isuzu, Nissan, JVC, Kenwood, Keikyu, Koei Tecmo, Sotetsu, Salesforce Japan and Bank of Yokohama. Famous landmarks in Yokohama include Minato Mirai 21, Nippon Maru Memorial Park, Yokohama Chinatown, Motomachi Shopping Street, Yokohama Marine Tower, Yamashita Park, and Ōsanbashi Pier.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 220 - JAPAN

“Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested.” – Donald Richie

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

There is only one simple rule: Link your own creative work about some aspect of travel and share it with the rest of us. Please use this meme for your creative endeavours only.

Do not use this meme to advertise your products or services as any links or comments by advertisers will be removed immediately. 

Japan (Japanese: 日本 Nippon [ɲippoɴ] or Nihon [ɲihoɴ]; formally 日本国 Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, meaning "State of Japan") is a sovereign island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and China in the southwest. The kanji, or Sino-Japanese characters, that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", and it is often called the "Land of the Rising Sun".

Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and often are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one. The population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98.5% of Japan's total population. About 9.1 million people live in Tokyo, the capital of Japan. 

Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Palaeolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, particularly from Western Europe, has characterised Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, which was ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Ch_sh_ and Satsuma-and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. 

The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation by the SCAP, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.

Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8 and the G20-and is considered a great power. The country has the world's third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the world's fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most highly educated countries in the world, with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree.

Although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defence and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a very high standard of living and Human Development Index. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern-day technology..

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

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FOOD FRIDAY - THICK PANCAKES

“There is luck in the last helping.” – Japanese Proverb

The other day I tried some thick, light and fluffy pancakes, which were delicious. These are said to be Japanese in origin, but an acquaintance of ours calls them “Scottish Griddle Cakes”. They are full of calories, but who is going to have them every day? They are a nice indulgence once every blue moon… 

Thick Fluffy Pancakes

Ingredients

2 large eggs

200 mL full cream milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

220 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

30 g caster sugar 

Method

Place eggs, milk and vanilla in a large bowl. Beat with a whisk until light and fluffy. Add in remaining ingredients. Whisk until batter is smooth.

Let batter rest for about 15 minutes, by which time it should have thickened considerably. Preheat your pan (if electric, heat to 150˚C) – don’t overheat as the pancakes will burn on the outside and not cook on the inside.

Use moulds 10 cm diameter and 3 cm tall and grease them well with cooking oil spray. Lightly grease the surface of your pan also. Place moulds onto pan.

Fill moulds halfway with batter, as they will rise to twice as high when finished. Let batter cook until bubbles form and break on the surface and the edges look cooked. Slowly place a large spatula underneath the pancake, until all of the pancake is on the spatula. Quickly flip the mould and pancake pushing the mould back down on the pan. You want to prevent the uncooked batter from spilling away from the mould.

Cook for a few more minutes until pancake is done when the pancake should easily pop out of the mould when you lift it.

Repeat with remaining batter and serve pancakes with toppings of your choice.

This post is part of the Food Friday meme.

HIROSHIMA DAY 2015

“Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.” - Daisaku Ikeda

In August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. As the war entered its sixth and final year, the Allies had begun to prepare for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was preceded by an immensely destructive firebombing campaign that obliterated many Japanese cities.

The war in Europe had concluded when Nazi Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945, but with the Japanese refusal to accept the Allies’ demands for unconditional surrender, the Pacific War dragged on. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945; this was buttressed with the threat of “prompt and utter destruction”.

By August 1945, the Allied “Manhattan Project” had successfully detonated an atomic device in the New Mexico desert and subsequently produced atomic weapons based on two alternate designs. The 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces was equipped with the specialised Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. A uranium gun-type atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki on August 9.

Little Boy exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison. On August 15, just days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies. On September 2, it signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II. The role of the bombings in Japan’s surrender and their ethical justification are still debated.

In Japan, the survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha (“explosion-affected people”). The shock and great suffering in the wake of the bombings caused Japan to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world ever since, putting in place one of the world’s most committed and extensive non-nuclear policies. More than 400,000 hibakusha (258,310 in Hiroshima and 145,984 in Nagasaki) are recorded in Japan.

This is a day to:

• Remember those who died and were wounded by the bombing of Hiroshima

• Remember all people of every nation who died and were wounded during World War II

• Assert the right of everyone on earth to live a life free from the fear of war

• Work for a world free from nuclear weapons

• Work to adopt peaceful use of nuclear power.

FOOD FRIDAY - SUSHI

“With sushi, it is all about balance. Sometimes they cut the fish too thick, sometimes too thin. Often the rice is overcooked or undercooked. Not enough rice vinegar or too much.” - Nobu Matsuhisa

Have you ever tried making sushi at home or is it something you always buy from a specialty take away shop? In Melbourne we have so many of these (very good!) establishments that make excellent Japanese take away food that it seems silly to try and make such delicacies at home. However, it is always a challenge to try one’s hand at cooking something new and if one is really into Japanese food, why not try to make sushi, or sashimi, or tempura, or teriyaki?

Sushi

Ingredients

2 cups short grain rice

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup rice vinegar

Fillings of your choice (e.g. grated carrot, avocado, pickled daikon, mushrooms, tofu, sesame seeds, strips of omelette, boiled prawns, caviar, smoked salmon, grilled chicken)

Pickled ginger

Wasabi (horse radish powder/ paste)

Nori sheets

Mirin rice wine

Shoyu

Method

While the rice is cooking, mix the sugar and vinegar together. Strain the rice and pour the vinegar solution over it.  Stir and fan the rice until all of the grains are glossy then put it aside to cool.

Chop up the vegetables including the ginger.  If you are using wasabi powder, mix in a little water to make it into a paste.

Place the nori shiny side up on the sushi rolling mat.  Rub a little mirin on your hands to lubricate them and cover two thirds of the nori sheet with an even layer of rice about 7.5mm thick, leaving the top third bare.  Place the other fillings in a strip across the middle of the rice.

Rub a little more mirin on the top edge of the nori to make it ready to stick, and then with the help of the mat roll up the sushi by folding the nori sheet in half, rolling it back over itself and then rolling it up like a scroll. You'll end up with a long cylinder, which you can slice to make bite-size pieces.

Refrigerate, cut up and serve with little bowls of wasabi and shoyu

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MOVIE MONDAY - ALL ABOUT GODZILLA

“The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.” - Richard Wright

Today, I’m reviewing a movie I didn’t finish seeing. The reason being, I’d had enough of it midway through and felt I had something better to do with my time. It was the Gareth Edwards’ 2014 “Godzilla” starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, and Bryan Cranston. The disastrous script was the work of Max Borenstein (screenplay) and Dave Callaham (story).

When I was young I remember seeing the original Japanese Godzilla movies (e.g. “Godzilla, King of the Monsters!” of 1956) and being extremely impressed with it, as bad as it was… It had plot, action, suspense, a great villain and gave warning about mankind’s destruction of the planet. As well as that it was a fantastic movie in terms of death, devastation and destruction, all appealing to my youthful self of 13 years…

There have been a huge number of sequels and remakes of Godzilla, many (if not most of them) mediocre to very bad. Roland Emmerich’s 1998 “Godzilla” starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, and Maria Pitillo was tolerable, especially when one compares it to the Edwards’ 2014 version.

The latest Godzilla offering is quite terrible. The plot has holes big enough for Godzilla to crawl through, the acting is wooden, the action leaving a lot to be desired for, and generally a movie that one digest. Considering this was a film that cost $160 million, one could imagine that better care would have been taken with fundamentals – the script, for example?

MOVIE MONDAY - THE SEA IS WATCHING

“True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.” 
- François de La Rochefoucauld

“And how will I know if it is really true love?” I asked, when my grandfather told me about getting married to someone I loved, but only if it was true love…

I recall that conversation, I in my green years, hardly knowing anything about men, women, relationships, commitment, marriage, and my grandfather – mature, worldly and wise. And yet, that conversation stuck in my mind, and even more so his answer…

We watched the 2002 movie “The Sea is Watching” this weekend. It is a film with a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) from a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto (1903-1967). It was the screenplay Kurosawa was working on when he died and was subsequently directed by one of his disciples, Kei Kumai. The film is not an epic on the scale of Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai” or “Ran”, nor is it grand or even momentous in its theme. It is a nostalgic look at life in the past and deals with complex topic that my grandfather and I were discussing so long ago when I was a child:

“And how will I know if it is really true love…”

The story is set in Edo of the 19th century, in a red light district next to the sea. Oshin is a young prostitute who lives in a brothel and works with several other girls under the watchful eye of a kindly madam. One evening, a disgraced samurai, Fusanosuke, comes into the brothel seeking refuge, as he has wounded another samurai in a scuffle. Oshin hides him from the authorities and falls in love with him, against the advice of her friends, especially that of Kikuno, an older prostitute.

From there the plot twists through the relationships of several of the customers with some of the girls and we look at several aspects of love as it develops in the hearts of some of the main characters. Caste and social conventions are shown in a historical context and unlike many of other Kurosawa films where the emphasis is on men, here it is the women who are shown to be strong, honourable and maintainers of society’s fabric.

This movie should be contrasted with “Memoirs of a Geisha” (my review of it). The girls depicted here are not geishas, but rather prostitutes and the difference is a very big one. The emphasis is on another level and the look of the two movies quite distinctly different. The author, screenwriter and the director of “The Sea is Watching” have captured the essence of the atmosphere of the red light district at that time and I was constantly being reminded of Japanese woodcuts by Hiroshige and Utamaro. The cinematography, settings and costumes are superb, the direction wonderful and the sense of historical accuracy excellent. The psychology of the characters is explored in a subtle way and the final scene elevates the movie to the realm of the heroic.

So in case you’re wondering what my grandfather’s answer was to my question:
“And how will I know if it is really true love?”, here it is:
“You will know because of what she does when you tell her you love her…”

MOVIE MONDAY - HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

"A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts." - Charles Wesley Burns

A review of a classic 1959 film by Alain Resnais, “Hiroshima,Mon Amour” today. This is a film I have watched three times and enjoyed it immensely every time, was moved by it anew each time, was shocked and was forced to reassess my own soul each time, together with the film’s actors.

The year is 1959 and a young French actress has just spent a torrid night with a married Japanese architect. They are in Hiroshima, where she has been shooting an anti-war film. They find themselves embroiled in a white-hot passion and they are moved to disclosing their inner secrets to each other. She discloses to him her first love for a German soldier during the second world war in the French town of Nevers. The film is a love story, but it is not. It is an anti-war film, but it is not. It is a study of two people marked by tragedy, by loss, by disaster, but it is a hopeful document of renewal and rebirth.

The film relies on dialogue and images to reveal the souls of the two leads and the way in which their encounter changes them. The dialogue between the two lovers is also a conversation of their two pasts with each other. Each phrase exchanged between them is in juxtaposition with the mirrored images of their previous experiences. There is a rich interweaving of layers of images, symbols and metaphors. The growth of these two people is really revealing past destruction, the present peace they find themselves in is really an exposure of the recent war they have experienced, the love they are living through presently is really a sacrifice to the death they cheated in their past.

The script of the movie by Marguerite Duras is expressive, sensitive and revealing. There is poetry and great literary merit in it. Resnais has turned it into a magnificent film through his amazing direction and striking close-ups, the few locations used and his superb layering of images and scenes. The brilliance of the mise en scène is complemented by great acting, the masterly editing and the interweaving of past and present to create a powerful film.

The love story does not trivialise the tragedy of Hiroshima, but rather it makes it even more poignant and ultimately even more accessible on a personal level. The bombing of Hiroshima horrifies us and disgusts us, its significance on a world level makes us gasp with revulsion – on the other hand the personal tragedy of the two lovers makes us weep as our hearts are moved by their plight and as our hearts beat in sympathy with their own personal losses.

If you haven’t seen this film, go and get it and see it. It is a masterpiece of cinematic art, a film against war and a love story between two survivors. In the immense tragedies it documents, it is also a hopeful statement on life and love.

REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” - Albert Einstein

August 6th is Hiroshima Day, the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb named ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima by ‘Enola Gay’, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8:15 in the morning of Monday, August 6, 1945. After being released, the bomb took about a minute to reach the point of explosion, an altitude of 61 metres above the building that is today called the ‘A-Bomb Dome.’ The explosion is described by the crew of Enola Gay:

“A bright light filled the plane,” said Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. “We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming.” For a moment, no one spoke. Then everyone was talking. “Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!” exclaimed the co-pilot, Robert Lewis, pounding on Tibbets’s shoulder. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission; it tasted like lead. Then he turned away to write in his journal. “My God,” he asked himself, “what have we done?” 

‘Little Boy’ created an enormous amount of energy in terms of air pressure and heat. In addition, it generated a significant amount of radiation (gamma rays and neutrons) that subsequently caused devastating human injuries. The people who saw ‘Little Boy’ describe it thus: “We saw another sun in the sky when it exploded.” The heat and the light from the explosion of ‘Little Boy’ were far greater than any bomb they had ever seen before. When the heat wave reached ground level it vapourised everything before it, including people, for several hundred metres around the hypocentre.

The strong wind generated by the bomb destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 2.5 km radius. When the wind reached the mountains, it was reflected and on the way back again hit the people in the city centre. The radiation generated by the bomb, not only killed people within days of acute radiation poisoning, but also caused long-term problems to those affected. Many people became sterile, others had genetic problems, which caused the birth of malformed babies or babies that were stillborn.

It is believed that more than 140,000 people died by the end of the year in the Hiroshima region. They were citizens including students, soldiers and many Koreans who worked in factories within the city. The total number of people who have died as a result of the bomb is estimated to be 200,000.

Just three days after the bomb was dropped to Hiroshima, the second atomic bomb called ‘Fat Man’ was dropped on Nagasaki. Though the amount of energy generated by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was significantly greater than that of ‘Little Boy’, the damage to the city was less than that in Hiroshima due to the geographic situation of the city. It is estimated that approximately 70,000 people in Nagasaki died by the end of the year because of the bombing.

The watch in the illustration above belonged to Kengo Futagawa (59-years-old at the time) who was crossing the Kannon Bridge (1.6 km from the hypocenter) by bicycle on his way to do fire prevention work. He jumped into the river, terribly burned. He returned home, but died on August 22, 1945.

Every year, in Hiroshima, Japan, people float lanterns with prayers, thoughts, and messages of peace down the rivers in commemoration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This is my message of hope and peace, sent electronically to Hiroshima and to every other part of the world where human beings that still possess a shred of humanity exist. May the spark of this lantern light a fire in your heart worldwide so that the conflagration may condemn war and the atrocities committed in its name.

MOVIE MONDAY - DEPARTURES

“While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” - Leonardo da Vinci

We watched a very good Japanese film at the weekend. Although it seemed interesting even just by reading the synopsis and looking at the cover of the DVD, we were a bit diffident to watch it as it dealt with a rather lugubrious theme. It came highly recommended though, having won the 2009 Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, as well as another 33 awards. When we watched it we discovered it was a curiously uplifting and even cheerful film despite the serious themes it dealt with.

It was the 2008 Yôjirô Takita film “Departures” with a screenplay by Kundô Koyama and starring Masahiro Motoki, Ryôko Hirosue, Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Tsutomu Yamazaki. At 130 minutes, this was a long film, but once one starts watching it, one does not notice time passing, which is always a good sign. The film ticked all the right boxes for us, with plot, character development, acting, cinematography, direction, music and thematic breadth all being excellently done.

The movie concerns itself with Daigo Kobayashi, who is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved, and who now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over, while living in his old family home. He answers a classified advertisement entitled “Departures” thinking it is a job in a travel agency, only to discover that the job is actually for a “Nokanshi” (an encoffineer, a funeral professional who prepares corpses for burial and entry into the next life). While his wife, friends and acquaintances despise the job, Daigo takes pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of “Nokanshi”, acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder, joy and meaning of life and living.

The film is complex and has several subplots, not the least of which is the relationship of parents and children, especially those parents who have left or have had to leave their children at a young age. The relationship of married couples is another theme and of course the obvious one of how we view death and what our feelings are towards the dead – dead bodies as well as well as people whom we love and have died. However, the most important theme of the movie is life – life and how we should live it. If we live life the ‘right’ way, then we have no issues with death and we are prepared suitably for its arrival.

This film is a tribute to ritual and the universal human need for it. No more perhaps needed by our psyche than at the time of death. In the film, the encoffination process is shown repeatedly, although it is the reaction of the relatives that show us the vastly different way in which people view death and the dead. Sometimes the mourners make it raucous, melancholy, embarrassing, joyful or even comic. However, the film demonstrates the quintessential Japanese culture that knows the value of theatre.

The movie helps the viewer grow through an examination of his/her own views towards death and how he/she woudl cope in situations such as those depicted. It is successful as a movie because it deals with fundamental human emotions that are universal and do not depend on specific ethnic or cultural experiences. An excellent movie, we recommend it most highly and it is an uplifting and in the end joyful film, that provides an insightful and wise view of death, and life!

MOVIE MONDAY - MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.” - Arthur Golden

Rob Marshall’s 2005 film “Memoirs of a Geisha” was rather controversial when it was first released. It is the screen adaptation of Arthur Golden’s beautiful novel, and like other literary works that has been translated onto the silver screen, it has its shortcomings. However, the plethora of criticism does not all relate to the screen adaptation per se.

The film was a very controversial one on several other grounds: First, many Asian viewers have been offended by the casting – three Chinese actors playing Japanese has sparked quite a debate about liberties taken with the film. Some Japanese reviewers have commented on how superficially the film deals with a very complex social and cultural tradition, that of the geisha. The issue of language, accent and unconvincing “japaneseness” of the cast keeps cropping up in discussions. The American director, it was said, has opted for a caricature vision of the Orient… Having read the novel and enjoyed it, being aware of the controversy surrounding the film, I was rather diffident in watching it. However, I was won over once I viewed it and must say that I enjoyed the experience thoroughly, despite its flaws.

Firstly, the film has some stunning cinematography and the colour/light elements within each shot are handled with mastery. Then, the music score by John Williams is luscious and complements the atmosphere of the film exceptionally well, without being obtrusive. I had no problem with the casting as remarkably powerful performances are given by not only the leads, but also the supporting cast. The recreation of WWII circum-bellum Japan is executed well and the sets and costumes look authentic. However, I must admit that I am watching it through Western eyes…

The plot of the movie revolves around a geisha. It is 1929 and an impoverished nine-year-old girl, called Chiyo, from a fishing village is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto’s Gion district and subjected to cruel treatment by the head geisha Hatsumomo. Her stunning beauty attracts the vindictive jealousy of Hatsumomo, until she is rescued by and taken under the wing of Hatsumomo’s bitter rival, Mameha. Under Mameha’s mentorship, Chiyo becomes the geisha named Sayuri, trained in all the artistic and social skills a geisha must master in order to become successful. Sayuri becomes a renowned geisha and enters a society of wealth, privilege, and political intrigue. As World War II looms ahead, Japan and the geisha’s world are inescapably changed.

Whatever one may think, the movie is not about sex and bloody violence. It is a psychological study of women and their problems that many men may find hard to relate to or in the other extreme it may be a revelation to many men. The film is about deceit, treachery and rivalries as much as it is about a little girl who gets sold into bondage by her poor family. It is also about a lifelong search for love in a society in which people are restrained and will not be open about their feelings for each other.

My criticisms related to the rather ad hoc way in which language is used in the film. Japanese is used in the first few minutes and switching on the subtitles on the DVD one sees the rather cryptic message: “Man talks in Japanese” – as if we did not know! When English is subsequently used, the occasional introduction of Japanese dialogue or isolated words puts the action in context, presumably, but one is rather bewildered. I would have preferred either completely Japanese dialogue with subtitles or completely English dialogue. At least English subtitles when the dialogue turned to Japanese would have been good.

The film has been dubbed “a women’s movie”. I beg to differ, as it held my interest throughout, even though at the core of the plot is a love story. There are interesting power struggles depicted and the atmosphere of the life of a geisha has been captured well. I would recommend that this film be seen, despite its shortcomings.