To Destroy a Nation, Part 1

by in China, Culture, History, Hmmm..., Politics, War | 16 Comments

This is part one in a short series of brief summaries about the collapse of the 19-century Chinese Qing Dynasty, and how and why China has emerged as the country we know today.

 

“What is not good for the beehive, cannot be good for the bees.”
– Marcus Aurelius

Drugs and Greed
The First Opium War

In 1757, China’s Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Emperor, wary of Western powers, declared that all such sea trade would be restricted to the single port of the city of Canton, or modern day Guangzhou. The distrusting Manchu led government further restricted all trade to areas outside of the ethnic Cantonese Han city’s walls, where it could be more easily monitored by government officials.

Regardless, by the start of the 1800s, British demand for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain had resulted in a massive trade-deficit. Since few Western goods were in such demand in China, the Chinese had to be compensated with large quantities of silver. And this cut into the profits of British merchants who would arrive with mostly empty ships.

To make up for this financial and trade imbalance, many British merchants turned to the smuggling of opium, conveniently produced in the relatively nearby Indian subcontinent. While opium had been illegal for non-medical use in China since the early 1700s, actual enforcement of its ban had proven difficult.

The British, East India Company had agreed that it would not transport opium into China. But in reality, it had merely transferred shipments to other merchants who acted as proxies for its smuggling. The trade eventually became so profitable as to reverse the flow of silver back into British hands.

Monetary and social damages to Chinese society caused by ever-increasing quantities opium flooding through the Canton port eventually proved untenable, compelling the later Daoguang Emperor and the Qing Dynasty Court to move forcefully against its smuggling. In 1839, Chinese officials arrested several Chinese smugglers in Canton while also demanding that British merchants surrender any opium in their possession. Around 1,400 tons of the drug were confiscated and destroyed, resulting in a massive financial loss for the British.

Tensions with the British escalated until late 1839, when two British warships destroyed 29 Chinese vessels enforcing a blockade of the Pearl River delta, beginning the First Opium War. While the Chinese had a numerical military advantage, the British possessed a far superior naval force. And in June of 1840, a large British naval contingent arrived at the Chinese coast.

The British warships sailed north toward Shanghai and up the Yangtze River, destroying Chinese vessels and capturing fortifications along the way, and eventually cutting off inland waterways to Beijing. And in August of 1842, the British captured the city of Nanjing, forcing the Qing government into negotiations that would result in the August of 1842, Treaty of Nanjing.

This treaty marked the first of the “unequal treaties”, or one-sided concessions forced by powerful Western countries upon various weaker nations in East Asia.  In this case, the treaty required a Chinese payment of substantial war reparations to the British, the opening of five new trading ports, and ceding Hong Kong to British control.

In 1843, China was additionally required to allow the free entry of foreign Christian missionaries, and to exempt British subjects from the jurisdiction of Chinese law. Eventually, other Western countries, such as France and the United States also forced China to grant their citizens similar privileges. These concessions to foreign powers began what would come to be known as China’s, “century of humiliation”.

Images:

British warships attacking a Chinese battery on the Pearl (Zhu) River, 1841,
From: Narrative of a Voyage Round the World: Performed in Her Majesty’s ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842, Including Details of the Naval Operations in China, from Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841, by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, R.N.

Signing of the Treaty of Nanjing.
Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

References and Further Reading:

Fairbank, J. K. (1940). Chinese diplomacy ANF The Treaty of Nanking, 1842.

Gentzler, J. M. (1977). Excerpts from The Treaty of Nanjing, August 1842. In Praeger Publishers, Changing China: Readings in the History of China From the Opium War to the Present (pp. 2–3) [Book]. Praeger Publishers. http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/china/nanjing.pdf

Libretexts. (2021, January 15). 7.7: The first Opium War. Humanities LibreTexts.
Book: A History of World Civilization II, Imperialism in Asia, The First Opium War
https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/Lumen_Learning/

MIT Visualizing Cultures: The First Opium War, Essay by Peter C. Perdue.
https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay04.html

Modernisation and China’s ‘century of humiliation.’ (2021, December 5). CEPR.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/modernisation-and-chinas-century-humiliation

What Keeps Me Up at Night

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Hmmm..., Japan, Mystery, Numbers, Philosophy, Science | 14 Comments

The sun goddess, Amaterasu, emerging from a cave to witness
the dancing of the goddess of dawn and of joy, Ame-no-Uzume.

“This universe has been described by many, but it just goes on, with its edge as unknown as the bottom of the bottomless sea… just as mysterious, just as awe-inspiring, and just as incomplete as the poetic pictures that came before.“
— Richard Feynman, from: The Meaning of it All (Collected Essays), 1999.
–

I think I was maybe seven years old when I asked my dad the question…
“Naze nani mo nai node wa naku, nanika ga aru no ka.” (なぜ何もないのではなく、何かがあるのか。) “Why not nothing instead of something existing?”

The question has always stuck in my head as a sort of philosophical conundrum. It suggests either a limit to reason, or as the physicist, Max Planck asserted, “…there are realities existing apart from our sense perceptions.”

Or maybe there are just turtles all the way down.

Every culture seems to have its something-from-nothing myth, and the Japanese are no exception. The Kojiki (古事記), “Records of Ancient Matters”, and the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀), “Japan Chronicles” both probably written in the early 8th-century, allude to a time when a sort of heavenly order emerged from within the movements of a primeval chaos.

After the spontaneous creation of “Takamagahara”, a heavenly plane transcending our own existence, three “Kotoamatsukami” (別天神), “distinct heavenly kami” merely came into existence. This mysterious triumvirate of gods were distant, hidden and abstract, concerned only with fundamental forms of order, creation and potential.

Then, as heavier particles settled, two more Kotoamatsukami emerged spontaneously, gods of energy and of the heavens. And finally, a next generation of gods appeared as the heaviest particles settled to create the Earth. It is only the last of these final gods that are associated with the creation of the Japanese archipelago and the innumerable gods that inhabit its lands and waters.

Of course, these are only myths, created by human minds as descriptions for the intangible rules that govern existence.  Watching as grains of sand sank to the bottoms of flowing streams and embers rose into the night sky, people wondered why the world spontaneously separated itself from chaos. In the centuries since, humanity has derived almost unimaginably more accurate descriptions.  Still, we don’t really know.
–

Modern physics posits that everything in the material universe we ordinarily observe and with which we interact is composed of just three things (four, if we include something so wispy as to be effectively invisible). These fundamental particles that make up all matter are called “up quarks”, “down quarks”, and “electrons“. The ethereal fourth is the ghostly “electron neutrino“, associated with the nuclear reactions that change matter between electrons and quarks.

But for reasons not so clearly understood, there are also two more, cut-and-paste versions of each of these particles.

The “Standard Model” of particle physics actually contains three complete sets of matter particles (“fermions“), or particles that you can think of as taking up space. All of these particles have a peculiar, statistically-defined characteristic that results in their inability to occupy the same place at the same time.  This is what keeps material objects in our universe from passing through each other.

Of this trio of particle sets, there is that first which account for virtually everything we see around ourselves. But then there are also two more “generations” of seemingly exact copies… except that each of the particles is heavier:
● The up quark is matched by the heavier “charm quark”, and the even heavier “top quark”.
● The down quark has the heavier “strange quark”, and the even heavier “bottom quark”.
● The vanishingly lightweight electron neutrino has the heavier “muon neutrino”, and heavier still “tau neutrino”.
● And the electron is matched by the heavier “muon”, and the even heavier “tau”.

These heavier versions of quarks and electrons really only show up in high-energy physics, such as in nuclear accelerators, or when cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere. And even then, they very rapidly “decay”, or break down into their more common forms. For example, the muon, which is the longest lasting of any of these heavier particles exists on average for only a little more than 2-millionths of a second before decaying into an electron and two neutrinos.

And then there are the neutrinos, nearly massless bits of matter moving at very nearly the speed of light.  They are so lightweight and nonreactive that one could pass through a light-year of lead with perhaps a 50-percent chance of hitting anything.  But trillions of them pass through each of us every second, many pouring from the nuclear reactions in our own sun.  And… they oscillate between their generations as they travel through space.  Who ordered that!?

Various observed quantities in particle physics seem to indicate that there are unlikely to be any more generations of these particles. Three is almost certainly it.  And threes seem suspiciously apparent in other areas of particle physics.

Each of the quarks come in one of three “colors” (referring to a sort of nuclear charge). Individual quark electric charges come in thirds, either -1/3 or +2/3 (or their reversed anti-particle charges). There are also three “electro-weak” charges (-, +, and 0). And there’s a peculiar additive relation to the masses of the various generations of each type of particle that results in thirds.

In 1981, the physicist, Yoshio Koide, noticed a relationship between the “rest masses” of the electron, and its higher-generation muon and tau particles. The ratio of the sum of their rest masses, divided by the square of the sum of their square-roots results in an answer of 2/3.

When applied to other, later discovered particles, Koide’s formula also implied some relationship to thirds. Using the masses of the three lightest quarks, the up, down, and strange quarks in the Koide formula results in a fraction that’s consistent within measurement error to “5/9” (5/3 × 3). Using the masses of the three heaviest quarks, the charm, bottom, and top quarks in the Koide formula results in “2/3”. And when applied to the three force-carrying particles with masses, the “W”, “Z”, and the “Higgs boson”, it results in an answer consistent with “1/3”.

So why does matter define fundamental forms of order, creation and potential in such a mysterious triumvirate of abstractions?

The short answer is that no one really knows.

But sometimes, the longer answers keep me up at night.

Accurate Photographs

by in Altitude, Culture, Environment, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Humanity, Identity, Luminous Aether, Philosophy, Photography | 11 Comments

“All photographs are accurate.
None of them is the truth.”
– Richard Avedon

I’d been wanting to go up one of the eastern Sierra high-country canyons to get some photos of the wildflowers this spring. But then, we had a fairly heavy snow on the 4th, and a hard freeze that night. Watching the wisteria blooms in my back yard wither and die over the next few days sort of killed-off that idea as well.

Then the Aurora Borealis became visible to the north in the hours before sunrise last Friday, and the photos on Facebook were beautiful.  In fact, some of them were a little too beautiful.  One in particular, with brilliant sheets of red reflecting off the waters of Lake Tahoe’s, Emerald Bay, was spectacular.  Familiar with the area, however, the photographer would have been facing in the wrong direction.

Regardless, we decided to head up into the high country to see if we could catch something on Saturday morning. But after freezing in the open all night, about all we managed to catch was a chill under a view of a Milky Way streaked with satellites and jetliners.

In some ways, nature photography is a lot like life.  You can do your best to try and see something spectacular.  But then the universe makes its own plans, and those rarely include human schedules.  So all too often, the beautiful moments happen when you’re looking the wrong way… or after falling asleep.

So when taking photos, the first trick is to be there at the right time.  But even then, you have to point the camera in the right direction…
the direction other people want to see.

Maybe that’s the attraction of a virtual existence?  The fields of wildflowers and glowing night sky wait to be seen as the vicarious experiences of others.  And the posted snippets can simply edit out the miserable part, the long hours of waiting and the work, the numb fingers and dead batteries… if not the A.I. exchanges and late night Photoshop sessions.

Regardless, I’ll still wax philosophical at a nice sunrise even if I have lived through about twenty-thousand of them.  Then I’ll pull out the camera, stick an eye up against the viewfinder, and take another crappy shot displaying a pathological inability to level the horizon.

Suddenly, it occurs to me that I’m looking the wrong way.
And I put down the camera for awhile.

Unintended Consequences

by in Boundary Behavior, Death, Environment, Hmmm..., Risk, War | 22 Comments

“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.“
– George Orwell

I was pretty sure that some sort of local wildlife had taken up residence in the back of the garage. There had been a couple of mornings where I thought I could hear something scurrying around in the “Ozarks” corner, near the water heater.

Unfortunately, getting a closer look was going to involve moving some parts for my sea-kayak racks, a tubing bender, jack-stands, a chainsaw, motor oil, a floor jack, and about 120-pounds of chains for my truck, much jammed into the space between the water-heater and the forced-air handler.

A cold, windy and drizzling Sunday morning, however, and I’d run out of excuses for ignoring my suspicions. So moving the truck out to the driveway, I closed up the garage to keep out the cold air, and began to sort through everything to see what could be moved to the back yard storage shed. And indeed, getting into the corner with the shop-vac revealed something that looked suspiciously as though it had been left by a rodent.

Finally getting everything moved away from the corner, I stopped momentarily to survey the mess, determine what was trash, and to devise a strategy for more efficiently storing that not consigned to the dumpster. And that was when I heard the familiar, “Scratch, scratch, scratch…”

I eventually determined that the sound was coming from behind a wooden box that keeps the natural gas water-heater’s burner up off the floor, where explosive fumes could accumulate. Where the drywall at the back of the garage stopped at the concrete foundation, it left a gap where a mouse had apparently gotten in behind the box.

After clearing out the area and vacuuming up the dirt and mess, I stopped to devise a strategy. Removing the water-heater wasn’t an option. “Scratch, scratch, scratch.” A little gray head peeked out from under the far edge of a cabinet to the left of the water-heater box. I could have sworn it stuck its tongue out at me.

The mouse ducked back into the space behind the cabinet as I moved to get a better look. So there were apparently two ways into the space where the mouse had decided to squat in my garage. One was at the bottom right of the water-heater box, and the other at the left base of the cabinet.

At this point, I considered heading over to the local hardware store to pick up a couple of mouse-traps. But I was worried that if I left, he’d simply move out to some other region of the garage and force me to clean up another mess.  And I wouldn’t be able to put everything back until I was sure I’d gotten him.

Puzzling, I sat down on the shop-vac to think for a moment. The vacuum-cleaner’s hose wound across the floor and over to the area between the water-heater box and the forced-air heater. And looking at it, it suddenly occurred to me that I was sitting on the ultimate mouse-trap!

I turned on the shop-vac and stuck the end of the hose up into the gap at the base of the water-heater box. The second the mouse went that way, he’d be sucked out like a passenger sitting next to a plug door on a 737. But how could I get the mouse to try to escape in that direction?

My brain was on a roll. I had just the thing! Next to the door out to the front of the house, I keep a small can of bear spray that I’ll carry while running. Taking the can, I flipped its safety over to one side. Then, I shoved the outlet up under the cabinet at the point where the little rodent had taunted me.   The mouse wouldn’t have a chance.

I pressed down on the trigger…

A thick cloud of concentrated 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide , or “capsaicin”, sprayed forcefully through the area behind the cabinet. A neurotoxic chemical irritant extracted from the active component of chili peppers, it produces an incredibly powerful burning sensation, especially in the eyes, nose and lungs, sufficiently irritating to deter even a charging bear.

Unfortunately, it also works really well on humans. And a vacuum cleaner does a great job of rapidly dispersing the stuff… especially in an enclosed space.

Cultural Knives

by in Culture, Humanity, Identity, Japan, Philosophy | 11 Comments

 

“Men have become the tools of their tools.  The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.“
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854).

 

I didn’t really learn how to cook when I was young.  Like a lot of things, it was an overlooked skill.  I wouldn’t start cooking in earnest until a couple of decades back, when I found myself in a more encouraging environment.  And over the years since, I’ve acquired a bit of a reputation for my food-preparation technique… especially with regard to the use of sharp tools.  As my husband will occasionally inquire, “Will we be eating before, or after the trip to the Urgent Care?“

My elder aunt in Japan encouraged me into her kitchen by telling me stories, all while preparing meals with pretty much a single knife.  It was her knife; I was always handed something else.  Traditional Japanese culture holds a sort of Shinto perspective toward tools in general, and sharp tools in particular.  As the “Iron Chef”, Masahuro Morimoto, once explained, “Japanese chefs believe our souls go into our knives once we start using them.“

My aunt’s cooking knife seemed old.  It had a traditional Japanese handle, wherein a tang in the blade was simply friction-fitted into a hole in a reinforced piece of carved wood.  And it looked like the end of the blade had been broken off at some point, and then merely ground flat.  But the person who had originally forged and ground the metal had felt enough pride in its construction to carefully hammer the kanji characters for his name into the steel.

I don’t know what happened to the knife after my aunt died.  The Japanese tend to throw things away.  Regardless, I would have liked to have had it.  I’m not particularly superstitious about souls lingering in the objects that we use.  But like my dad’s old 1939 Underwood typewriter, it would have been a nice reminder of the person who used it.

Older, high-quality Japanese cooking knives were traditionally sharpened from only the right side (“single bevel“).  The other side of the knife was ground thoroughly flat.  In (very) skilled hands, this kind of knife can cut extremely thin slices, which is why sushi chefs still prefer to use them.  But after WWII, Japanese knife-making generally adopted a European-style double-bevel, where the blade is sharpened from both sides.  That’s the kind of knife my aunt used… and it wasn’t broken.

Post WWII, high-quality Japanese knife manufacturing reflected an amalgamation of methods drawn from both European and Japanese technologies and traditions.  More easily sharpened and utilized, European-style, double-beveled blades began to be produced, but using techniques originally applied to the making of Japanese swords.

The paradox of a good knife blade is that a cutting edge made of a steel alloy that’s “hard” enough to keep a sharp edge will also make for something brittle and rust-prone.  But steels that are “tough”, flexible and rust-resistant tend to lose an edge easily.  However, traditional Japanese sword-makers had solved this problem by using a technique that required extraordinary skill and patience.

Japanese sword-makers would laboriously, and by hand, forge-weld layers of softer steel around a core of harder steel.  The hard, cutting steel would thus be exposed only along one edge when sharpened.  Meanwhile, the softer surrounding steels would keep the blade tough, flexible, and resistant to corrosion.

Post WWII Japanese knife-makers also kept the various forms of many traditional Asian knives intended for specific tasks, such as the “Nakiri” (菜切) “vegetable cutter”, and the multi-purpose “Santoku” (三德), or “three-virtues”.  But what my aunt used in her compact, Japanese kitchen had a special meaning.  The blade she wielded was a “Bunka Bōchō” (文化包丁 ), or a “Culture Knife”.

A “Kiritsuke Bōchō” (切付包丁), or “Cutting Knife”, is the traditional identifier of the Head Chef in better Japanese eating establishments.  It has a long, single-bevel blade, and a peculiar clipped point that allows for very precise work.  It’s considered an all-purpose knife.  However, utilizing one effectively requires considerable skill, its presence thus signifying a high level of expertise.

A “Bunka Bōchō” resembles a smaller, double-beveled version of the traditional Kiritsuke Bōchō.  Had I been a little more cultured, I would have understood that it announced my aunt as the Master of Her Kitchen.

In the decades since my aunt’s criticisms of my cabbage cutting technique, the world has changed in ways that I suspect neither she, nor my dad would have much appreciated.  Our tools are sharper, faster, more efficiently mass-produced.  But they require less skill; and we wield them with less care.  Mastery itself has become a commodity.

For better or for worse, our tools have become our masters.  They are efficient in ways that we can only imagine.  In an ever more crowded world, they keep food on our tables, provide warmth, and take us to our destinations.  Now they can even create our artworks and keep us company, becoming agents of culture as alternatives to human wisdom and expertise, cheap and convenient.

And we put our souls into them when we start using them.

My usual cooking knife, an extremely sharp Bunka Bōchō created and signed by Katsuyasu Kamo, an eighty-three year old blacksmith from Echizen in west-central Japan, and a founding member of the Takefu Village Cooperative of traditional blacksmiths.

 

Image Credit, Japanese sword-blade cross-sections:
By loulasedna – loulasedna, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3801344

The Craftsmen for Hamono no Sato, in Echizen, Japanese site:
https://www.hamononosato.com/craftsman/

A Society of Well-Trained Apes

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Existentialism, Hmmm..., Identity, Philosophy, Politics | 12 Comments


“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine, however, knows that it will not remake it. Its task is perhaps even greater. It is to prevent the world from destroying itself.“
— Albert Camus, (from French) excerpt from his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, (1957).

Imagine twenty apes placed into a large room… perhaps by some unscrupulous cognitive psychologists. Above the center of the room hangs a large bunch of bananas that are automatically lowered into separate bins at meal times, thus avoiding violent conflicts over food.  However, there is also a ladder from which the bananas can be reached at any time.

Almost immediately, an assertive ape number “A-6” starts to climb the ladder. But before he can reach the bananas, the entire room is hosed with a massive spray of ice-cold water from a collection of sprinklers.

After a few such attempts at the bananas by various adventurous apes, and subsequent communal drenchings, a majority get the message… if any ape attempts to climb the ladder, there will be unpleasantness for everyone. So any ape who approaches the ladder is set upon by the others.

And then, the water is turned off.

The next day, ape “A-1” is replaced with a new ape, “B-1”, who promptly approaches the ladder. Not wanting to get soaked, however, the other apes beat him until he retreats. It doesn’t take long for the new ape to understand that the ladder is off-limits, if not why.  Merely staring at the ladder for too long is enough to attract an unfriendly reminder.  Ape “B-1” moves on to other things.

Around this time, ape “A-2” is replaced with ape “B-2”. And the process repeats. As the new ape approaches the ladder, the rest set upon him, with ape “B-1” ironically attacking most viciously. Ape “B-2” learns quickly that the ladder is off-limits.  Then, ape “A-3” is replaced with “B-3”.

Around the sixth week, ape “A-20” is exchanged for “B-20”. There are no longer any apes who have ever been soaked. And yet, ape “B-20” is beaten senseless for merely looking at the ladder. Several months later, ape “D-12” even starts a practice of beating apes that make climbing motions. And eventually, ape “G-6” initiates the behavior of the group jumping up-and-down together while facing away from the ladder as a communal distraction from its temptation in the hours before feeding time.

–

Of course, this is a stupid analogy for human behaviors. We’re smarter than this… aren’t we? We’ll intervene in created systems when they don’t make sense. But then, I live adjacent to California.

During the 1980s, the social and cognitive psychologist, Albert Bandura, concluded that human behaviors are largely adopted from what we observe in the behaviors of others, either directly or through media. Actions that at least appear to be rewarded are more likely to be imitated, while those associated with a negative consequence are avoided. It’s not necessary that these behaviors make sense. Rather, it’s that they are cognitively associated with a benefit.

A lot of things in life don’t make sense. But we do them anyway. People shake hands (or bow, or rub noses…), get tattoos and cosmetic surgeries, read fiction, dance to music, value pieces of paper, vote in futility, and pray to our Gods. So is it enough to view our traditions, decisions and choices as pointless merely because we don’t see any immediate purpose?

In this regard, the English philosopher and Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton, proposed a thought experiment commonly known as “Chesterton’s Fence”:
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’ ”

Chesterton was observing that seemingly beneficial reform can also result in unintended negative consequence when it takes place with an incomplete perspective. When we weigh only the immediate implication of how something appears in that moment, or engage only in “first-order thinking”, the long-term result may be far worse than the short-term problem it solves. A gate may indeed be little more than some vestigial obstruction. Or it may be all that prevents a herd of sheep that arrives in the spring from grazing through the farms down the road.

We can perhaps be forgiven some amount of first-order thinking when it’s encouraged by those whom we assume to know more than ourselves. We can’t all be scientists, physicians, builders, or law-makers. And especially when attempting to communicate efficiently, we may have to choose between what we see as the common wisdom versus trust in expertise.  But that also suggests a benefit to some higher-order thinking with regard to others’ motives.

A characteristic of human “intelligence” is that we can construct an imagined reality in our heads. It’s not necessary that one is attacked by a tiger to understand the danger. We can simply hear enough stories about others who were eaten to jump-to-attention at the mere cry of, “Tiger!” But in an environment absent such manifest threats, the calls-to-attention tend to be more vague and indistinct. Still, we see stripes in the shadows… “forever chemicals”, “ghost guns”, “micro-plastics”, “carbon”, “sin”, “injustice”…

Few among us actually know all that much about the things we are called to reform; we have to trust in the simplified descriptions. We take our cues from those with whom we surround ourselves, and these become our arbiters of truth, guides to that which we perceive as bringing benefit to our lives.

But we need to be careful when the message is that previous generations were merely fools or that some edifice was built in ignorance, as we risk not understanding a purpose and causing unexpected problems. Humans tend to do things for reasons. People are unlikely go to the effort of building a gate without purpose, even if it’s not momentarily apparent.

Nor, will they go to the effort of tearing it down.

Reforms may indeed come with meaningful intent. They may even be founded in well-informed, second-order, or even third-order thinking. But reform can also be a convenient justification for the manipulation of human attention through the benefits perceived in first-order messaging.

“Gates must go!” may be as much to incite a crowd as to open a road. And blaming the sheep-herders and the farmers for the ensuing catastrophe will be an easy sell to an invested mob, ready to set upon anyone who dares suggest that a gate might have had a purpose after all.

Background:

ALBERT BANDURA | Psychologist | Social Psychology | Stanford University | California. (n.d.).
https://albertbandura.com/bandura-bio-pajares/t-bio-sketch.html

Wikipedia contributors. (2024, April 14). G. K. Chesterton. Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

 

Goddess in the Clouds

by in Culture, Fear, Japan, Luminous Aether, Mystery | 12 Comments

地獄に仏

(Jigoku ni hotoke.) “Buddha in Hell.”
– Japanese Proverb, meaning: A savior in a moment of darkness.

“The Great Wave,” by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), has become recognized throughout the world. Its title in Japanese, “神奈川沖浪裏” (Kanagawa oki nami ura), reads literally, “Kanagawa (region) open-sea waves amidst”, and is usually translated as, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa”. The woodblock print, or “ukiyo-e”, was first published in 1831, at a time when Hokusai was in his seventies and at the height of his career.

The print was the first of a series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, commissioned and promoted by the Yohachi shop in the Nihon Bashi area of Edo (present day Tokyo). However, the series was so successful that Hokusai produced an additional ten works which were added after the original thirty-six had been completed. The prints were intended to display new perspective techniques and Prussian blue ink, both introduced from Europe.

Nishimuraya Yohachi, founder of the publishing shop, was an important figure in the production, promotion and sales of ukiyo-e in early 19th-century Japan.  Due to his ability to employ many of the very the best Japanese artists of his time, he held great influence as an art promoter.  But this also meant that he had a strong influence with regard to what was produced.

Significantly, Nishimuraya was a member of an Edo-era religious cult known as “Fuji-kō”, with beliefs based in principles originally founded by a “Shugendo”, or mountain ascetic named Hasegawa Kakugyō (1541–1646). This Shinto faction venerated Mount Fuji as the domain of the goddess of earthly life, Konohanasakuya-hime“, literally “Cherry-Tree Blossom Bloom Princess“, embodied in sakura, or the ephemeral pink beauty of cherry blossoms.  Fuji-kō practitioners revered the goddess as a bringer of healing, rebirth and spiritual happiness, and encouraged finding peace by climbing the mountain.

Nishimuraya’s association with Fuji-kō reveals much with regard to his support of Hokusai’s series depicting Mount Fuji. Each of the artworks in the series uses the mountain to anchor various perspectives of nature, the seasons, and daily life firmly into some aspect of Japanese culture. So what of The Great Wave?

The Kanagawa region, in which the scene takes place, lies between Tokyo and Mount Fuji. During the Edo period, oshiokuri-bune (押送船), or a type of fast fishing-trade boat would have plied the open waters of the Sagami Bay along the region’s coastline.  Built for speed, these long, narrow boats could be sailed in a good wind. But the sails could also be dismantled,and a small crew of single oarsmen could keep them moving quickly through the water. These are the kinds of boats depicted in The Great Wave.

Water-spirit beliefs and traditions in Japan probably date back to paleolithic times. These were seen as powerful nature spirits, associated with both life and sickness, rain and snow, rivers and floods, and the sea. As Chinese culture began to influence Japan during the 1st to 5th centuries, these water-spirits became associated with dragons.

In Shinto tradition, Ōwatatsumi-kami is the god of the sea. Japanese mythology treats him as an ancient water deity and protector of the oceans. According to the Kojiki, he was the eighth of ten “kami” (gods of nature) created after the primal gods, Izanami and Izanagi had created the islands of Japan. In some traditions, he is synonymous with the sea deity, Ryūjin, literally “Dragon God”.

The boats in Hokusai’s work have ventured into the domain of a powerful dragon. A fearsome and merciless water-spirit, the wave is alive. It rises from the sea, claws bared in long tendrils of whitewater foam ready to pounce upon its prey. The anonymous sailors who man the oars have no hope. Or do they?

A distant Mount Fuji sits unflinching and immovable in the distance, a seeming passive monument. But something emerges quietly from the layers of haze and clouds. Rising from above the mountain into a cherry-blossom pink sky, something reaches out… a goddess in the clouds!

Water Flows

by in Hmmm... | 16 Comments

水に流す

“Mizu ni nagasu.”  (Water flows.)
— Japanese Proverb

 

It all started last week, when I pulled the trash can out from under the sink.  I noticed that it left a wet spot on the floor.

Leaning down to wipe up the water with a dish towel, I could see that there was a small puddle in the cabinet.  Something was clearly leaking.  And feeling around a little, I was able to determine that drips were collecting on the bottom of a loop of hose on the reverse osmosis filter for the drinking water.

Of all the things to spring a leak, this was probably the most fortuitous.  A few years back, I’d determined that it was cheaper to buy an entire new RO system than to pay for a replacement for a leaky storage tank and a couple of new filters.  Consequently, I had a lot of leftover parts in a box in the garage, including a whole new filter manifold with all of the hoses, and even a shiny new faucet.

Turning off the water to the RO system and pulling everything out from under the sink to make a little space in which to work, something seemed a bit odd.  The bottom of the cabinet under the disposal-side sink trap felt unnaturally… flexible.  And pushing down with my fingers, I was surprised to find that they went right through the wood! 

Extracting my hand revealed a mass of mushy, water-saturated particle board.  A few more handfuls of soggy sawdust, and I’d managed to extract the makings of an about eight-inch (20cm) diameter hole in the bottom of the cabinet.  It looked like the cabinet floor was going to need to be replaced with a new piece of water-sealed plywood before fixing the leak.

Pulling out the rest of the cabinet bottom to make space for installing the new plywood would be no problem.  The product of a personality disorder, perhaps, but I have a reciprocating saw — and I’m not afraid to use it for a little demolition.  Systematically dismembering cutting-up the remaining cabinet floor, I was able to tear out pieces, gradually exposing the kitchen sub-floor beneath.

For what was probably the first time since the 1970s, light began to fall on the old layer of crappy chip-board which constitutes the part of my house that supports my weight.  But groping around for grip behind one of the sliced up strips, I could feel another hole!  And one-by-one ripping out more pieces of wood, a new and enigmatic gap in the sub-floor began to expose itself.

When it finally came into view, I suddenly understood a mysterious phenomenon involving brief surges of warm water from my kitchen’s cold water faucet.  The gaping hole in the sub-floor was a forced-air heater vent pipe… exiting into the dead space beneath the cabinet where it could warm little more than a short section of copper pipe.

Okay… I’d simply cut a hole in the kick-board under the sink cabinet, and cover it with a new vent grill. Some more hacking with the reciprocating saw, and I had an opening through which warm air could thaw my toes while I stand in front of the sink.

The new cabinet floor ended up being a little more involved, requiring the creation of four carefully fitted pieces of plywood that could be maneuvered through the cabinet’s openings and around the plumbing.  And I needed to construct a support structure that would help to hold up the new floor while directing air toward the vent.

Carefully sliding in the last piece of plywood, I congratulated myself on the beautifully refurbished, Brady-Bunch era cabinet work.  A little glue and couple of finish nails, some sealer around the edges, and the new cabinet bottom would probably outlast the house.  And that was when I noticed the small wet spot near the disposal side drain trap, and the slowly accumulating drops of water where the dishwasher line taps into the hot water pipe.

 

Snow Blowers and Horse Mowers

by in Culture, Environment, Hmmm..., Photography, Snow | 20 Comments

“In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.“
– The Times [British], (1894).

Not especially motivated to sit in front of a computer during the sunny weather, this one is just some blah-blah to accompany a couple of local photos…
–

My relationship with the little mountain town where I live dates back to visits by family in the 1980s.  Some of the visits were strictly recreational.  But my mom also had some business-related connections in the area which provided a perspective that left a lasting impression.

Back then, the town was little more than a relatively isolated bedroom community of mostly 70s-era homes and seasonal getaways, with a few fairly modest tourist attractions.  By the mid 90s, I was able to purchase a tiny, 1-bedroom condo in an old complex of mostly tourist rentals.  At that time, the town’s year-round population was only about 2,000 people, swelling to about twice that number in the summers when seasonal residents would migrate up from wintering grounds in places like Arizona.

Thirty years later, and the town has been utterly built out.  The old plots of vacant BLM land were eventually traded for undeveloped parcels elsewhere, and builders slapped up rows of walled-off, upscale condo complexes to appeal to the more anti-social sentiments of urban refugees.  Meanwhile, most of the town’s original 70s-era homes, barns and A-frames were torn down and replaced with rarely occupied tax McMansions.

I hardly know any of my neighbors anymore.  I’ve only met the maintenance guys for the magnificent, Disney castle-chalet that’s shoehorned into the parcel that looks down on one side of my old carpenter-ant infested, eyesore of a house.  Rather to my relief, the Bay Area couple who bought the funky old place on the other side of me are only interested in keeping it as an investment while they use it as a hangout during ski trips and getaways.  But aside from two old barn-frames hidden down by a creek, we have the only original homes on the street.

“Flatlanders” is the pejorative used to describe the hordes of new California refugees who bring their suburban attitudes and expectations into the mountains.  Mostly, it’s just a nuisance.  But the speeding drivers and almost daily head-on collisions, and the migrant laborers living in snow-covered cars at the edge of the local grocery store parking lot attest to a creeping “citification”.

I don’t malign anyone for their desire or willingness to live, or to work here.  But this isn’t a community with either the resources or the infrastructure to accommodate impatience or urban convenience.  A car passing me through a blind curve on an icy road, pizza boxes pulled out of someone’s unsecured garbage can by a local bear, or someone redistributing their snow to a neighbor’s already cleared driveway… yeah.

When I finally give up and leave, I suppose the new owners will simply tear down the old “love-shack” and slap up another anonymous testament to conspicuous consumption.  But until then, I’ll keep piling my snow in the forest.
–

Bigger grocery and supply runs usually equate to a trek “down the hill”.  And during a recent journey to the most easily accessible, nearby bigger city, I decided to make a side trip before heading back.

The Washoe Valley is just to the north of Carson City.  Nested between the Carson Range of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains to the west, and the Virginia City Highlands to the east, Washoe Lake forms in its basin.  A playa lake, it only reaches to about 12-feet deep before spilling into a creek that heads toward the city of Reno and the Truckee River.

Occasionally, the lake will even dry out completely during longer intervals of drought.  However, the large puddle keeps the local valley aquifer supplied with fresh water, as well as keeping the bottom of the valley fairly green.  Aside from the various birds that thrive in the environment, the grassy bottom-land surrounding the lake consequently attracts herds of local wild horses.

Around the south end of the lake, the higher peak in the background is Slide Mountain.  These two younger horses had wandered off from the herd of about a dozen that were grazing off to the right.

No shoveling necessary… Just watch where you step.

One Tea

by in Culture, Death, Existentialism, Humanity, Japan, Loneliness, Love, Luminous Aether, Verse | 11 Comments

 

 

 

.蝶と共に吾も七野を巡る哉
Chō to tomoni ware mo nana no o meguru kana
A butterfly my companion,
through seven fields
we wander.
— Kobayashi Issa, (1795).

 

Among the four great Japanese “haiku masters”, Bashō, would come to be known as the most observant. But Issa is remembered as the most humane. Third among the revered poets of the tradition, alongside Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1784), and the later, Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), Kobayashi Issa (小林一茶), was born Kobayashi Nobuyuki, on June 15, 1763.

Issa, however, would likely have refused the title of a haiku master, or “haisei” (“俳聖”, literally, “haiku saint”), which had come to describe both Bashō and Buson. Unlike his predecessors, and despite a sincere devotion to “Jōdo Shinshū” (Pure Land) Buddhism, Issa never strove for Buddhist salvation through his meditations. Rather, he believed that a merciful Buddha would bring redemption to one’s spirit, despite our human imperfections, merely by living with peace and compassion.
.花桶に蝶も聞かよ一大事
hana oke ni chô mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji
on the flower pot
does the butterfly, too
hear Buddha’s promise?
– Issa (year unknown)

During his lifetime, Issa wrote various types of poetry in the “haiku”, “tanka”, and “haibun” forms, and also painted “haiga” (haiku paintings). As a well-known teacher of haiku in the Shinano region of Japan, Issa took on the “haigo”, or haiku penname that would become associated with his work. “Issa” (一茶),  meaning, “One Tea”. His poems tended to express his humanity, addressing both the joys and the sufferings he felt in his life.

Issa was a prolific poet. Upon his death, he left journals containing more than 22,000 haiku. They express a caring perspective toward others, even for animals.  He also voiced his joy in seeing the perspectives of children, their hopes for the future, and their places in his own life.  And he was known for an irreverent humor, sometimes poking fun at both authority figures, as well as the rigidly stratified Japanese society of his time.
.松茸にかぶれ給ひし和尚哉
matsutake ni kabure tamaishi oshô kana
a matsutake mushroom
on his head…
high priest
– Issa (year unknown)

Much of Issa’s perspective of life might be traced all the way back to the death of his mother when Issa was just two-years old (by Western standards). While well cared for by his grandmother over the subsequent five years, he was returned to his father’s household when his father remarried. Then, his half-brother was born two years later, leaving Issa feeling estranged within his own family.

After his grandmother died when Issa was thirteen, he fell into a lonely despair. Within a year, his father sent him away to the city of Edo to find his own way in life.  Eleven years later, at the age of twenty-five, Issa became a student of the Chikua’s Nirokuan (二六庵) school of haiku. When Chikua would die just three years later, Issa briefly took on the role of the school’s master, along with the name,
“一茶”, or “Issa”.

Inspired by the itinerant life of his famed predecessor, Bashō, he left the shelter of the school just a year later. Referring to his wanderings with the phrase “beggar’s world”, Issa was alluding to a life of poverty, supported only by the good will of those whom he would meet along the way.  And yet during this time, his words often conveyed the discovery of great wealth in the beauty that surrounded him.
.雉鳴て梅に乞食の世也けり
kiji naite   ume ni kojiki no yo   nari keri
pheasant singing—
it’s a plum blossom-filled
beggar’s world now!
– Issa (1791)

Decades later, at around the age of fifty, Issa would return to his childhood home in the town of Kashiwabara in the mountainous Shinano province.  But his stepmother and half-brother refused him access to the family home, and he found himself unwelcome in the town.  Eventually, however, he was able to legally establish the inheritance of a partial ownership to his father’s property.

After a partition wall was constructed to split the house with his step-family, Issa was finally able to return to his childhood home. And a 52-year old Issa moved in to his half of the old house, along with his 28-year old bride, Kiku. Their son, Sentarō, was then born in the spring of 1816.  Issa, however, recorded that Sentarō died just 27 days later. And then again in the spring of 1818, Kiku gave birth to a daughter, Sato. But the following year, Sato contracted smallpox and also died.
.花の世は石の仏も親子哉
hana no yo wa ishi no hotoke mo oyako kana
world of blossoms–
even the stone Buddhas
parents and children
– Issa (year unknown)

Issa wrote a deeply heartfelt account of Sato’s death. “Her mother holding tightly to her body, burst into tears. At that moment, though I tried to resign myself to the knowledge that water flows past not a second time, or that blossoms, once fallen, never return to the trees.… I couldn’t break the chain of love.”

In the autumn of 1820, Kiiku again gave birth to a boy, Ishitarō. But shortly after the New Year of 1821, a despairing Kiku would find that Ishitarō had suffocated while bundled on her back. Issa mourned terribly, lamenting that he would have no celebrating descendants to greet his own spirit when it visited the earth during the Bon festival.
.あきらめて子のない鹿は鳴ぬなり
akiramete ko no nai shika wa nakinu nari
resigned
to being childless
the silent deer
– Issa (1821)

Then, in the spring of 1822, Kiku gave birth to a third boy, Konzaburō. But in the spring of the following year, Kiku fell ill and died. And without his mother, Konzaburō died seven months later.  Issa wrote of the depths of his loneliness during that time, comparing it to the moon in the night sky, and how he wished for even the nagging of his absent wife.

This perhaps explains why Issa remarried about a year later, in 1824… briefly. The wedding to his new wife, who was named “Yuki”, was in the Fifth Month.  The divorce was in the Eighth.  The 38-year old daughter of a local samurai, her name meant, “Snow”, which seemed fitting.  She was a cold partner to the simple, old poet, and soon abandoned Issa to return to her parents’ home. Issa didn’t seem to mind.
.鬼虫も妻を乞ふやら夜の声
oni mushi mo tsuma wo kou yara yoru no koe
even the devil bug
calls for a wife…
night voices.
– Issa (1821)

Issa married again in 1826, at around the age of 63-years. His third wife was a 32-year old village woman named Yao. And soon, she became pregnant. But during the pregnancy, Issa’s divided house burned to the ground during a fire that swept through the town.   For shelter, the couple had to live in a cold, grain-storage barn on the property.

It was as if Issa’s life was to demonstrate the Buddhist principle that all things are temporary.  All that we yearn for, that we love, that we strive to create, everything to which we become attached eventually dissolves into oblivion. Yao would give birth to a daughter, Yata, the only one of Issa’s children to survive to adulthood.  But Issa would never meet her. 

This time, Issa would die from a stroke in January of 1828 while sheltering in the barn, five-months before her birth.

Issa’s writings spoke to both the beauty and the fragility of life, and to the elusiveness of joy. But there was never a bitterness in his voice, even in those moments where he might have placed blame onto others. Issa instead presented himself merely as a human, flawed and wanting, but grateful and aware, growing older while trusting in the “Namu Amida Butsu”.

.さすが花ちるにみれんはなかりけり
sasuga hana chiru ni miren wa nakari keri
when cherry blossoms
scatter…
no regrets
– Issa (unknown year)