Big Sound Temple

Extracts taken from the bestselling A Gaijjn's Guide to Japan, published by HarperCollins 2009. All rights reserved. 

Faces, Monster with 21

On the morning of May 10, 1984, a letter arrived at the offices of the Ezaki Glico food company. In it, the group or individual which signed itself off as the ‘Monster with 21 Faces’ claimed to have poisoned a range of confectionery manufactured by Glico, with potassium cyanide. There was no choice but to recall the products from supermarket shelves – something which cost Glico dearly.

This letter did not, however, mark the beginning of Glico’s troubles. Two months earlier, company president Katsuhisa Ezaki and his family had been kidnapped, and an unsuccessful attempt made to ransom them. Then, in April, a number of vehicles in the company car park had been set on fire.

Following the alleged poisoning of Ezaki Glico’s confectionery, the Monster also sent a letter to the police. Addressing them as ‘…Dear dumb police officers’, it mocked their attempts to find the perpetrator of the crimes.

Although the Monster stopped targeting Glico, it then turned its attention to another well-known food producer, called Morinaga. Two separate incidents quickly occurred in which Morinaga appeared to agree to pay a ransom, while secretly arranging with police to have the ‘drop-off’ point observed, in the hope of catching the perpetrator(s). Both times, however, the ransom payment was not made, while police got frustratingly close to catching someone whom they described as being a ‘fox-eyed man’. (A police superintendent, named Yamamoto, was so distressed at his self-perceived failure to catch this suspect, that he committed suicide by self-immolation.)

Gaijin

 

外国人

Shortened form of the word gaikokujin (the Chinese kanji characters for which are written above), which means ‘outside country person’. A person born outside Japan will still be considered by most Japanese to be gaijin even after they have lived in the country for most of their lives, thus coming to understand the language and culture perfectly.

Put it this way: you can have a seventy year old professor of ancient Japanese (or something of the sort), born in Oxford, England but living in Japan since the start of the 1950s. He has a Japanese wife, and they have two grown-up children. The professor is of course completely fluent in Japanese; his wife jokes that he speaks it better than she.

When he dies the professor will have a Buddhist funeral, and his ashes will be interred in the family haka. He doesn’t expect to ever go back to England again – it’s a long flight, and anyway his family, friends, work and life in general are all in Japan.

Then one day – now in the autumn of his successful life, and while walking serenely to the university where he continues to lecture on a part-time basis – two schoolboys giggle and shout ‘Herro!’ and ‘Zis iz a pen!’ at him. 

So go to Japan for anything longer than a holiday, and you will soon a) be driven mad, b) give up and go home, or c) resign yourself to the fact that you will be considered as an ‘outside country person’ for the remainder of your stay.

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Gambatte

 

Beneath the polite, patient and often slightly reserved exterior of the ‘typical’ Japanese person there lurks a beast. This beast is at all times ready and alert for a challenge, although any outward indication as such will rarely be given.

This beast is the reason why Japanese students can get by on four hours’ sleep when studying for exams – ‘Pass on four, fail on five’ as the saying goes – and why the typical Japanese sarariman thinks nothing of staying at the office till ten o’clock at night, only to then apologize for his rudeness should he leave before his colleagues.

This beast can trace its roots right back to the dawn of the samurai, and their code of bushidō. It has at its heart the samurai ‘do or die’ philosophy: to commit to something – anything – wholly, and to succeed in this field or else to die in the attempt.

All of the above and much, much more – entire books have been written about the ‘do or die’ factor – is contained within one single word: Gambatte.

‘Gambatte,’ says the midwife to the mother about to give birth.

‘Gambatte,’ says the mother to the child as it takes its first faltering steps.

‘Gambatte,’ says the father to the teenager, as he studies beyond the point of exhaustion for the all-important university entrance examinations.

‘Gambatte,’ says the employer to the young man, now working for a firm that is having to pull out all the stops – and work all the hours – in order to secure an important contract.

And so it goes on, through generations, until the word is effectively etched on the heart of every newborn Japanese child before he or she even utters their first cry.

‘Gambatte’: ‘do your best!’ – and, by implication, never, ever give up, no matter how seemingly insurmountable the odds.

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Hakusukinoe, Battle of 

Also known by its Korean title the ‘Battle of Baekgang’ (August 27 - 28, 663), Japan’s neighbour was at this time divided into three kingdoms, all of which made frequent attempts to seize control of the entire country. By far the largest kingdom was Goguryeo, whilst Silla and Baekje – located on Korea’s southern tip – were approximately the same size as each other.

Silla was allied with China’s Tang Dynasty, who’d already made several unsuccessful attempts to conquer Goguryeo. This time, it was decided that a ‘two-pronged’ assault was necessary, from both north and south. To most effectively do this, however, it would first be necessary to conquer Baekje. But Baekje had strong links with Yamamoto Japan, who sent a force of around 30,000 soldiers to assist it in its struggle against Silla and the forces of the Tang. A fierce, two-day battle ensued in the lower reaches of the Geum River, the result of which were heavy Japanese losses – some sources say approximately a third of their force, along with 400 ships – and a decisive Tang/Silla victory. Soon, Baekje and Silla were known simply as ‘Unified Silla’; and fearing that their own country now faced invasion, the shamed Japanese hurriedly began constructing defences along their shoreline.

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Hideki, Matsui 'Godzilla'

 

Born in June 1974, Hideki Matsui is routinely described in the sports’ press as being the ‘greatest power hitter than Japan has ever produced’. He began playing baseball at elementary school, and was soon so good at batting that friends forced him to play left-handed, hoping that this would give them an advantage. All it did, however, was to prove that Matsui was even better as a left-handed batter; today, he only throws right-handed.

A nine-year career with Yomiuri Giants in Japan saw Matsui achieve an approximate five million dollar salary. He was also given the nickname ‘Godzilla’, although this referred as much to his craggy, rather pockmarked face as it did to his powerful batting.

In a sport where tempers often fray, Matsui is renowned for his calm demeanour. This he attributes to his coach at high school, who once slapped Matsui’s face after he threw down his bat in a fit of pique. After that, Matsui never publicly lost control of his emotions again.

Hibakusha

I know two hibakusha myself – namely my wife’s grandmother (77 at the time of writing) and my judo instructor (79 or 80, depending on when you ask him).

My wife’s grandmother was working in an underground factory in Nagasaki when the Americans dropped ‘Fat Man’ at 11.02 am on August 9, 1945.

Nakamura-sensei (the judo instructor) was a soldier stationed in the city, and saw the explosion with his own eyes.

‘A big… bang,’ he described to me once in halting English. ‘A big… light.’

That my wife’s grandmother was underground, and Nakamura-sensei the necessary distance away from the explosion’s hypocenter (approximately seventy thousand people weren’t – and they’re the ones who died instantly), are facts that saved both their lives.

Still, that they were in the vicinity of the explosion on that fateful day has ever since caused them to be classified as hibakusha – literally ‘explosion affected people’. This entitles them to a certain amount of money each month from the government, and whatever medical treatment they require entirely free of charge (my wife’s grandmother, to give an example, contracted anaemia within a few weeks of the explosion – something that she declares was a relatively mild side-affect).

However, for years following the war, hibakusha and their children (who were also classified hibakusha) experienced prejudice and discrimination, sometimes treated as though they had a disease communicable by touch, and on occasion being refused employment in case they should suddenly sicken with radiation poisoning – even many years after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

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Hikikomori

An estimated one million people within Japan – mainly male and in their teens or twenties – suffer from hikikomori, declared leading Japanese psychiatrist Dr Tamaki Saito. Hikikomori – the name given to the act of withdrawing from society – is a distinctly ‘Japanese’ form of agoraphobia, where the sufferer (commonly following such incidents as bullying at school, the loss of one’s job, a relationship break up, or just the strain that living within Japanese society places on a person) refuses to leave not just his home but also a specific room. (This tends to be usually the sufferer’s own bedroom, although the kitchen also seems to be a popular place of refuge.)

Inari

In any part of Japan, you’re all but certain to come across an Inari shrine. You’ll recognize it instantly by the pair of stone fox statues that are stood guard either side of the entrance or main torii – the particularly ‘oriental’ looking couple of pillars (commonly painted red or orange at an Inari shrine) that are joined at the top by two cross pieces.

So: who exactly is Inari, and what’s with the stone foxes?

The first thing you need to know is that Inari is the kami (or ‘god’) of rice. Therefore, keeping Inari happy is pretty darned important to the Japanese, given that rice is an absolute staple of most meals. In times gone by, a successful rice harvest made the difference between survival and death by starvation. It had the same importance to the Japanese as a good potato crop had to the Irish.

But what about Inari him-, her- or (and I mean this with the utmost respect) itself? Can we put a face to the name? Well, in this case it just so happens that we can, although when it comes to many Shinto kami, you won’t always be so fortunate.    

In this instance, Inari is commonly depicted in one of two ways: either ‘he’ is an elderly man, usually wearing a beard and carrying a couple of bundles of rice, or else ‘she’ is – and here I quote my Buddhist head-priest brother-in-law – ‘a beautiful fox-faced young woman’.

Next question: what’s with the foxes? Well, foxes are good for the rice harvest, y’see – they eat other animals that would otherwise damage it, like field mice and birds. In fact a long, long time ago, a group of foxes went to see Inari to pledge themselves as his servants. I can only imagine that working for a kami was a hell of a lot more exciting than scratching around in dustbins at one in the morning, looking for something to eat.

‘Keep an eye on the rice crop,’ Inari told them, so that’s just what they’ve been doing ever since.  

As a footnote to this entry, every year the Inari shrine that’s close to where I live in Nagasaki has its own mini ‘festival’ in honour of the kami and his/her/its harvest protecting foxes. A mass of people crowd the stairs leading up to the shrine, to watch as two men dressed in white fox outfits scale two, ten meter high bamboo poles. Hence the reason this occasion is called takengea – literally, ‘bamboo skill’.

At the very top of these poles the men rock backwards and forwards, several monks supporting the bottom of the pole in case it should suddenly ‘pop’ out of its supporting bracket. (Clearly, the health and safety element to this occasion has not evolved greatly since it first came into being many centuries before.)  

The highlight for the audience comes when the fox-dressed acrobats throw out towels and sweets, that have until now been concealed within their white tunics. There then comes an even greater surprise (for those who are watching this for the first time, anyway) – a live chicken is produced and thrown down to the ground, to be caught by some lucky person and taken home to be plucked, cooked and eaten. 

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 Inoue, Daisuke

 

Born in Osaka in 1940, Inoue was a drummer playing in a bar-covers’ band when he hit upon the idea of providing pre-recorded backing tracks for aspiring singers. The first karaoke (‘empty orchestra’) machines were supplied to a number of bars in Kobe during 1971 – and then Inoue made a catastrophic mistake. For he neglected to patent his invention, meaning that he has seen little return on what had, by 1996, become a $10 billion-a-year business. (Today, his sole source of revenue from karaoke comes from the cockroach and rat repellent he formulated, which is used to protect the machines’ delicate inner wiring.)  

Inoue is, however, a cheery, easy-going individual who seems remarkably unperturbed about the mistake that cost him the chance of becoming a billionaire. He has previously declared that ‘…after I make something, I always become the worst at it’, and now counts his life ambition to establish a chain of ‘pet schools’, where Japanese people can learn how to take better care of their cats and dogs.  

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Kamikaze

A word commonly associated with the suicidal Japanese fighter pilots of World War 2, who deliberately smashed their planes into Allied shipping vessels. And indeed kamikaze (‘divine wind’) has become synonymous with any type of suicidal attack from the air, most notably the September 11 attacks.

But long before any of this, in fact in the dim and distant days of 1274, the feared Mongol chieftain Kublai Khan sent a force to invade Japan. The Mongols easily captured some outlying Japanese islands before landing at Hakata Bay, and despite the savage bravery of the Japanese samurai soon began to make significant progress inland.

And then something strange happened – that same evening the invading force returned to their waiting ships. It’s been suggested that they intended to renew their attack the following day; but that night a fierce storm blew up which scattered the fleet and left thousands of men drowned.

The Japanese gave heartfelt thanks to the kamikaze which would save their bacon once more seven years later. Again it was those pesky Mongols who were attempting to invade (Kublai Khan was noted for his persistency), and again they easily captured some outlying islands before landing at Hakata Bay.

This time, however, the Japanese samurai managed to hold off the invading force for almost two months, though their hearts quailed as rumours reached them that some one hundred thousand men being transported by over three thousand ships were on their way from China.

But just around this time – as the invading force based out at sea really was starting to enlarge, rumour or no rumour – another typhoon sprang up.

‘Bloody Japanese weather!’ snarled the surviving Mongolian, Chinese and Korean soldiers and sailors, as they set their battered boats on a course for home.            

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Kempeitai 

Formed in January 1881, Japan’s military police were, at first, intended mainly to enforce recent conscription legislation brought in by the Meiji Council of State. This had proved particularly unpopular amongst farmers and peasant families, who could ill afford for healthy young sons to be taken away from the land. But when Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, the Kempeitai soon became notorious for their brutal repression of anti-Japanese sentiment.

They garnered further infamy within their own country during the 1930s (when in a three-year period alone they arrested approximately 60,000 people for having ‘dangerous thoughts’), and in the Second World War committed numerous atrocities while supervising Prisoner of War Camps. Japan was a non-signatory of the Geneva War Convention, and considered enemy combatants who’d allowed themselves to be taken prisoner to be ‘non-humans’ with absolutely no rights. These prisoners were starved, experimented upon, tortured and worked to death in their thousands.

The Kempeitai was also responsible for running ‘comfort women’ camps, where women and girls from occupied territories such as Thailand and Malaysia were forced to have sex with as many as thirty Japanese soldiers per day.