KJ #66

KJ #66 leads with the unexpected re-emergence of Buddhism in China, the re-invigoration of superbly-crafted devotional sculptures in Nepal, and an appreciation of Rumi’s poetry – now phenomenally popular no less than 800 years since his birth.

In contrast, “Otacool Nation” explores a new Japanese cultural phenomenon now influencing youth culture worldwide – and said to rival the export revenues of Japan’s vaunted auto industry.

Our IN TRANSLATION feature showcases two different approaches to translating the work of Nakahara Chuya, an iconoclastic pre-war poet whose reputation remains strong in Japan but who is virtually unknown in the West.

A short story by Stephanie Han, “Invisible,” looks at expat life in Hong Kong, from the viewpoint of a Korean woman.

In CONVERSATIONS, Andre Vltchek interviews Indonesia’s quintessential dissident novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

And in JUST DEEDS, we introduce a tireless woman campaigner working to improve children’s lives in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slums, volunteer tourism with the successful “Go M.A.D. (Make A Difference)” program, and multi-ethnic musicians in Kansai supporting a school in the rural highlands of Nepal.

See contents list below for more details of these and many more articles...

FULL CONTENTS:
04 The Dancing Dead: Travels through Buddhist China – Ben Brose
I found the monks eager to talk. During breaks, they clustered in groups debating points of practice or comparing notes about distant monasteries. Talking with me, they didn’t want to know anything about life in America, the latest political scandal, or the World Cup (common questions on buses and trains); they wanted to know what sutras I was (or wasn’t) reading, how many hours I meditated each day, and more to the point, how I intended to “solve the problem of life and death.”

10 Spirit from Fire: Buddhist Statues of the Kathmandu Valley – Harada Shokei
For 1200 years the Kathmandu Valley has resounded with the hammers of the Newar metal workers, who have long been noted for their stunning statues of Buddhist deities. Newar craftspeople have traveled as far as Tibet and Mongolia to make statues and to design shrines and temples; they also went to China to make Buddhist sculptures during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644).

16 Master Rumi: The Path to Poetry, Love and Enlightenment – Rasoul Sorkhabi
A fifteenth-century Persian poet, Jâmi, writes that one day in the late autumn of 1244, Rumi was sitting by a pool along with his disciples and books. Shams (unknown to Rumi) came along, greeted him and sat down. Interrupting Rumi’s lecture, he pointed to the books and asked, “What are these?” Rumi replied, “This is some knowledge you wouldn’t understand.” Shams then threw all the books into the water and said, “And this is some knowledge you wouldn’t understand.”

22 ENCOUNTERS
Filming the Foreigner – Wendy Nakanishi
This being Japan, the TV crew is determined to wrench the greatest emotional poignancy from their program, to dredge up any vulnerabilities possible. Y-san dreams up scenarios and my husband and I and occasionally our children adopt the unaccustomed role of actors. Y-san is able to make me weep twice, which I find almost unforgivable.

Showdown at Shinagawa: Bowling for Budget in Tokyo – Bill Zarchy
On this, my eighth trip to Japan, I was the director of photography for a small American film crew. Randy was the director, Larry the producer, and Jon the video engineer. We had flown in from Bangkok for a couple of weeks, to shoot a corporate project for a huge Japanese electronics manufacturer, and our Tokyo-based clients were difficult to work with.

27 RAMBLE
Idle Thoughts – Robert Brady
Idleness punctuates the new idler's life, gives it organic pace and pause, imparts perspective on what once was a blur, enables snapshots, moments of assessment and redirection, the creation of a mindmap of the life's path, thus the idler learns of life from the inside, where it's lived and where it happens, rather than from the outside, where it is chronicled by a timeline of arrivals and departures.

28 The Life and Art of Paul Horiuchi – Mike Dillon
Horiuchi’s works in collage, for all their seeming objectivity, suggest the Japanese quality of aware — a wistful longing for a home that can’t be named in this vanishing world. The feeling might be triggered by the flash of a sunset swallow, the thud of an orchard apple or ocean waves crashing beneath the silence of the full moon.

34 IN TRANSLATION
Nakahara Chuya and the Art of Translation
Christian Nagle & Ry Beville
By age thirty he would be dead, and in his lifetime publish just one volume of poems in fifty copies, yet today the young man from Yamaguchi with the haunting stare is widely seen as one of 20th century Japan’s greatest poets. Nakahara Chuya (1907-37) is not only a nationwide subject of classroom study, but a romantic fixture in the minds of countless readers.
See also here for additional translations

42 REALIZATIONS
Cutting Off a Finger – Jess Row
Pulp Fiction, whether we like it or not, is structured as a narrative of enlightenment or realization—through the experiences of Jules, the hit man played by Samuel L. Jackson. Jules comes from the long line of movie killers who dabble in philosophy on the side; he is in the habit of reciting a passage from Ezekiel to a condemned man before killing him.

48 The Dumbing Down of a Docomo Nation – Mark Schreiber
As I am about to cross the street, a young woman crosses my path in the dark, her facial features illuminated by the screen of her mobile phone, as she taps out a message on its keypad. She does not look up; her attention is completely focused on her telephone, on a dark street in suburban Tokyo, twelve minutes after midnight.

51 Otacool Nation – Joseph Britton
As a thriving subculture, otaku are driving the engines of Japan’s economy while challenging the ways we connect with others with their new modes of social interaction. The 1990s are often referred to as the ‘lost decade,’ but during this period the exports of Japanese pop culture tripled. JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization) records show that in 2001, the export market generated by the Japanese youth culture of fantasy entertainment produced 11 trillion yen in revenues.

56 Korean Wedding Halls – Shin Eun-Kyung

58 FICTION
Invisible – Stephanie Han
You were glad to come back to Asia. Sink into a crowd. Get lost. You are not a rugged individual. You like the anonymity. Together with your husband in the U.S. you were thought of as too yellow, too white, too privileged, too educated, too foreign, too poor, too rich, too loud, too quiet, too American, too Asian, too European

63 Eyes of a Temple Cow – Murzban F. Shroff
I must say, in this city, there is respect for a temple cow. People give you way, which is more than what they do for each other. They don’t shout, curse, or threaten to accelerate their vehicles when you saunter past, eyeing them warily. Somewhere down the road, I feel we — the temple cows — are better off than the human beings we serve. We are fed, fussed, worshipped, and not all of us end up as beef, thanks to some politician in Delhi who is rooting for us, and some political party who that has made us its symbol.

62 POETRY
Father – Lois P. Jones

68 CONVERSATION
Exile: Indonesian Writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer – Andre Vltchek and Rossie Indira
For Indonesia, Pramoedya's passing means much more than the death of one person. The nation has lost its finest thinker but also its moral voice, a poet who wrote exclusively in prose, a determined humanist and a man who fought his entire life for justice and truth and who lost at the end, but only because, as so often happens in human history, the corruption, brutality and insanity were temporarily able to overpower reason and decency.

72 JUST DEEDS
Hesitant Laughter in the Land of a Thousand Smiles – Helen Polychronakos
Even as a student in elementary school, Ungsongtham-Hata had to work as a vendor. As a teenager, she quit school altogether and took on two jobs, one at a firecracker factory and another at the ports, scraping rust from the boats. She went to high school at night and opened the One Baht School, where she and her sister taught Klong Toey children.

76 Volunteer Tourism – Lindsey Marsh
Tourism has become an increasingly viable means of generating revenue in even the remotest regions of the world. Alongside this growth has been a steady increase in international volunteer tourism, which seeks to measure wealth differently. Volunteers work in partnership with community leaders to explore and solve local problems in sustainable* ways, helping keep the fates of communities in the hands of the local residents.

78 Resamm Phiriry – Sherry Nakanishi
OUT OF THE APPROXIMATELY 23,700,000 people in Nepal, over 40% live in poverty. The average life span is 60 years. The adult literacy rate is about 30%, and is said to be only 15% among women. In the education system, the government provides teachers and textbooks; however, the community residents must pay for the construction of schools. Therefore it is nearly impossible for poorer communities to build their own schools.

79 Snow & Spirit – Konishi Yuji & Iida Yasuhiro

84 REVIEWS
Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom, and
Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (music CDs) – Lauren Deutsch
Welcome to Dongmakgol (DVD) – Jonas Hult
The Teahouse Fire, by Ellis Avery – Susan Pavlovska
Kyoto: A Cultural & Literary History, by John Dougill – Preston Houser
Zen Gardens, Wall Matthews (music CD) – Ted Taylor
Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, Emma Larkin – Roy Hamric
Rumi's Daughter, by Muriel Maufroy – Rasoul Sorkhabi
The Smell of Rust, Margaret Chula – Penny Harter
In the Time of Madness, by Richard Lloyd Parry – Justin Ellis
Starfish Hotel, by John Williams – Benjamin Freedland
Buffalo Boy and Geronimo, by James Janko – Ellis Avery
Power Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, by Chris Kohler – Ken Rodgers

91 BLOGOLOGY
Virtual China.org

98 BEYOND
Inoue Yasushi’s English Grammar Lesson – Charlie Canning

ONLINE SPECIAL FEATURE
Pico Iyer is Lost – Mark Mordue

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Master Rumi: The Path to Poetry, Love and Enlightenment – Rasoul Sorkhabi (with full footnotes/bibliography)

Further Translations of Poetry by Nakahara Chuya

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