Ten Thousand Things

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Eleventh Moon, The Melting World, and Personal Vision

Posted by Jean Miyake Downey on December 24, 2005


The dusty blues and greys of the sky, of the clouds, and of the buildings slowly dissolve into each other and in a few minutes all we see will become indistinguishable, except that trees turn blacker sooner than the rest of the world, at least now, right after sundown...

The sun has just come out of the clouds after a long, long hiatus. While snow has a brightness that is in some ways as blinding and as brilliant as the sun's, ultimately living things have a bigger need for the sun and its power. The appearance of the sunlight brings the end to a somber song and a smile forms more easily.

—Rebecca Dosch, The Melting World

It's the night of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, heralding a shift in seasonal rhythms back towards lengthening days. Known as Dong Zhi in Chinese culture around the world, this holiday began as a end-of-harvest celebration for farmers. In Asia, modernity has led to many people overlooking this traditional festival. However, a secret society has revived Dong Zhi in the northwest Pacific Rim city of Vancouver, where the winter solstice, celebrated universally in the ancient world, has taken on multicultural fusion dimensions. Music and handmade lanterns are lighting up the trees at Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Garden, one of the venues of the Winter Solstice Lantern Festival.

THE MELTING WORLD's creator, Rebecca Dosch, a poet and artist, who lives with her husband and young son in snow-covered central Hokkaido, reminds me of the winter solstice. Her blog emits a "yin," concentrated, quiet, dark and light spectrum of creative energy with visual art, photographs, poetry, lyrical writings, and music.

A photograph of her son as a "snow angel." A painting of Zen haiku poet Taneda Santoka. An elegy to Emmett Till. Green Tea as Heat. A photograph of a lost and found hat in snow. Essay on multi-ethnic sociologist John Lie. The funkiest techno god in the universe: Andre Brown. Outsider Art. Reflections on Ainu scholar Kitty and David Dubreuil's visit to Rebecca's class. American Visionary Art Museum. Ainu prayer stick for Happiness.

A long-time contributor to KJ, Rebecca calls herself a tabibito (traveling person). She was raised in Minnesota, studied creative writing in Alabama, married in Detroit, and lived in Kyoto. One of 46,000 Americans living in Japan, she now teaches Kokusai Rikai (International Understanding) and Chikyu Bunkaron (Discussion of Global Culture) in Asahikawa.

"I tend to focus on intracultural study – study of their own ideas of culture and the ways in which society has built these ideas and, at the same time, has erased or silenced those voices from minority cultures.

“My main focus in the classes is on Ainu culture, since the students I teach will become teachers in Hokkaido public schools. It is critical (to me) that they help undo this silencing. My hope is that they will reach out to the Ainu community and invite them to their classrooms (as I do here) so that kids can gain knowledge direct from Ainu people living in their towns.

“I am interested in pan-Indigenous movements also and try to draw parallels so that students see the Japanese government as not the only power guilty of oppression and harsh assimilation policies. Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and France have used similar strategies to silence those who did not fall into line.

“In the end, I hope my students can counter mediaspeak with wise eyes and ears and teach their students the same. I am no expert, but each year I find more ways to get the truth to be what it is: a big contradictory mud puddle, with so many possible voices...we need to search to hear the many possible voices from inside and outside the mainstream, keep searching to find a more profound respect for the possible ways to think and live.”

Rebecca's textured and deeply sensitive worldview helps me to move more deeply towards my own concept of multiculturalism – to a deeper level of recognition of the complexities of cultural and individual diversity – beyond discrete and astigmatic national and cultural stereotypes, grappling at what Rebecca calls "the cacaphony of messy reality."

"The Melting World" title reflects Rebecca's "desire to melt the boundaries, distances and differences we humans create for a false sense of safety... I don't want to live like that, to be 'comfortable' when so many are not, but I'd rather be able to travel freely anywhere, physically and emotionally, as a living being."

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