Only a Blockhead

Early summer

Photo: Maciej Barnaś (Wikimedia Commons)

These have been days of showers and downpours, but on Sunday the sky was blue and the cicadas were in full voice under the hot sun. A brisk wind blew the green rice plants in waves. Cycling along the coast from Enoshima toward Kamakura (you may have seen this road: the runaway boys walked down it in Ozu's Early Summer), the sea was like an animated painting, white caps moving into shore.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As the day cooled, the seething metallic cicadas of noon gave way to the high, plaintive trilling cicadas of evening. A pale crescent moon appeared, and bats swooped in the half light, hunting on the wing.

Darkness brought a cacophony of frogs in the paddies, all but drowning out a gentler sound. An owl sat on a wire over the road, a small round ball silhouetted against the night sky, blacker against black, quietly hooting.

--Julian

Letters from Afghanistan

Further to the recent post and comments on Afghanistan--and the last one on war, too--, I found these letters written by a British soldier on the ground there.

Every field here is overflowing with poppies and we watch the farmers go about collecting the resin to make heroin and silly me, thought we were here to stop all that but maybe not."

--Julian 

This just in: War Not In Our DNA

Almost all of us believe that war is part of human nature, and therefore inevitable. But the evidence points away from that, and also shows us becoming less, not more, violent in modern times, according to an article in the latest New Scientist.

Briefly, war first became a useful option in the very last stages of the human nomad's two-million-year history. The advent of agriculture meant people had more invested in where they lived, and the first evidence of warfare appears 14,000 years ago: mass graves, rock paintings and defended settlements. Since then, levels of warfare have differed radically in different areas and periods, which would not happen if war was hard-wired into our nature. Instead, war seems to be a "response to environmental conditions such as swelling populations and dwindling food supplies."

Prayer for Peace Statue, Hiroshima (Wikimedia Commons)

Again counter-intuitively, we are currently getting less, not more warlike. Since World War II, there have been no wars between developed nations. Democracies (up from 20 to 100 in the last 50 years) almost never vote to wage war on each other. Modern conflicts are, in the words of political scientist John Mueller, the "remnants of war." So how can we keep moving toward the end of war, and not backslide back into it?

Reduce global warming, control population and find alternatives to fossil fuels. We are more prone to violence if we think we can prevail, so we should reduce "imbalances of power between nations." We should nurture democracy. And empower women, which leads to lower birthrates and brings more women--less violent than males by nature--to politics. It is comforting to think that everything we do in our lives toward the above goals also takes humankind one step further away from the horrors of war.

--Julian

There is No Reason for Us to Be in Afghanistan

Chris Hedges:

No one seems to be able to articulate why we are in Afghanistan. Is it to hunt down bin Laden and al-Qaida? Is it to consolidate progress? Have we declared war on the Taliban? Are we building democracy? Are we fighting terrorists there so we do not have to fight them here? Are we "liberating" the women of Afghanistan? The absurdity of the questions, used as thought-terminating cliches, exposes the absurdity of the war. The confusion of purpose mirrors the confusion on the ground. We don't know what we are doing.

Read the all of this very important article here.

--David

Train

Train

—NC Tate

Summertime

Breeze through the kitchen window
on a hot summer's day
returns me to the moment

Leaving the creepers
on the hedge brings a
garden full of butterflies

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Passing a graveyard
on a summer's afternoon;
The smell of incense

--Julian

"Getting all riled up with righteous indignation"

The other night I was talking to a friend about complainers. He was telling me about a relative who is always bemoaning her lot; he just wants to tell her, "OK, then do something about it." And I told him of a student I had, a married housewife, who always has a story to tell of being the victim of fate or her family. People like that don't realize what they're doing, I concluded. It's their twisted way of getting through life.
 
Imagine the rude awakening, therefore, when this morning I realized that--horrors!--I, too, am an outrage addict. Feeling angry at others, if I'm honest, feels good: my stomach gets jittery and warm, my head gets light and I quiver with indignation. Unlike the relative and student's bitter rants about their own lives, however, it's the world that riles me up. The news is conveniently served up in the form of "outrage porn" and reading it is a delicious form of masturbation. This addiction is especially wonderful because it's completely masked behind supposed cold rationality. It's obvious (to me) that I'm right to seethe at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, the Pope's anti-gay diatribes, and America's just about anything. I trawl the news for my fix of 'Aso writhing' and 'Bankers get theirs' stories. I lap them up because they show that I was right to hate those idiots. And being right is the greatest rush of all.

But isn't anger the proper response to injustice? Don't we have a duty to note the wrongs of the world and do what we can to set them right? Of course we do. Why, then, do I sit at home indignifying and then turn off the TV, shut down the computer and go on with my life? The most I'll do is vent to a friend who's as impotent as I am in the situation. It's pretty clear, therefore, that all my upset is a form of self-gratification. A twisted way of getting through life.

I'm grateful to Tim Kreider for pointing all this out in his latest New York Times "Happy Days" essay, Isn't it Outrageous? (The quotes above are taken from that essay.) It, and the comments below it, are exciting reading. And if it doesn't hit home, well, at least it'll get you all riled up.

--Julian
 

Summer

Yesterday, the end of the rainy season was declared for the Kanto region. It was a day of extreme heat, with clouds like impressionist brush strokes.

Clouds over Chigasaki (July 14, 2009)

Day by day, cicadas burrow out of the ground and climb into the trees, and the seething hiss that accompanies summer gets louder.

By day, cicadas
By night, frogs in the paddies
The sounds of summer

--Julian  

A Drifting Life

A Drifting Life

Yoshihiro Tatsumi

My review of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life begins:

When an American journalist, remarking on Yoshihiro Tatsumi's growing popularity in the United States, suggested that the manga master must be similarly well-known in his own country, Tatsumi laughed and explained that there are not, at present, any venues in Japan willing to publish his work. That being the case we must be particularly grateful to his Canadian publisher, Drawn & Quarterly.

Read the rest here.

—David

Matsuri

A traditional matsuri festival is rooted in the local community of farmers, fisherman and businesses. By and for local households, it involves all ages from primary school children to the retired. It is a harvest festival centered upon the Shinto shrine, and is at once indelibly ancient and entirely of the moment, a happy fusion of the sacred and profane.

Last Sunday, Koshigoe, a small fishing port opposite Enoshima Island in the Sagami Bay an hour south of Tokyo, held its summer festival. At 10AM, floats and mikoshi portable shrines were slowly paraded down the main street lined with stalls selling children's toys and stir-fried noodles. Participants wore matching summer yukata robes with bright designs. Town elders rode on the roofs of the floats or walked ahead of the shrine priest who was preceded by two youths wearing lion heads upon their own. On the floats, small children banged on drums and junior high school aged boys played flutes. Walking behind, an older boy banged a taiko drum to his own beat. This discordant, exciting sound carries through the town and says "festival!" The floats paused in front of houses where tables were set out and beer and sake, soft drinks and snacks were offered.

At the front of the parade, the oldest mikoshi being carried and bounced with vigorous shouts turned left down to the beach where it was set down on trestles. Out to sea, a half-dozen fishing boats with more drummers and festival flutes clustered around the beach, beating out music. Twenty or so brawny middle-aged men stripped down to shorts or loincloths. At 11AM, the shrine was picked up again by the men and, with shouts and percussion, slowly borne into the sea, further and further off the beach until the men were up to their necks in water. The shrine was then turned once and carried back to the beach.

Koshigoe mikoshi being carried into the sea

Down toward Enoshima Island, canned music from beach bar loudspeakers played to the bathing families, the surfers, and the couples down from Tokyo for the day. Modern life with its shallow roots, nuclear families, individualism and goods on demand shared the beach with an ancient ritual celebrating the bonds of community and the land and the sea that sustain it.

--Julian