I'm traveling this week, so the Doctrine 101 posts are on hold for the time being. I'm in Miami to see my Notre Dame Fightin' Irish play Alabama (boo, hiss) for the national championship. However, the trip so far has led to some random musings, and you, dear reader, are lucky (or unlucky) enough to read them.
Roadtripping from our secret lair, we stopped in Pensacola and visited the US Navy's Aviation Museum. Pretty cool museum, especially if you like old warbirds. There were several really well-done displays covering WWII, but there was a lot of information about Korean War and Vietnam Navy aviation as well, which I found impressive.
One thing I didn't find impressive, however, was this. Can you spot the problem?
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No, the problem isn't that the flag promotes drinking alcohol (it's from a sake store in Itami, Osaka Prefecture, sent to boost morale. One would assume sake accompanied it). Let's take a closer look:
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The hachimaki reads "kamikaze," which anyone familiar with WWII Japanese aviation means "divine wind" and is a reference to the typhoon which allegedly destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet and saved Japan (Check out Thomas Conlan's book In Little Need of Divine Intervention for an argument that the typhoon merely finished the job). Unfortunately, the characters are backwards. Kami is 神 and Kaze is 風, so while it might be a bit difficult to discern on the second character, the first is obviously backwards.
Complicating things, however, is the fact that they are in contemporary order correctly. You see, post-war Japan went through many reforms (understatement of the century), not the least of which was streamlining the language. Current students of Japanese may not believe it, but it used to be much more complex, and reforms were instituted to make things simpler. Chew on THAT, first-year Japanese students. Anyways, one of these new conventions was that characters written in line would be read left to right, like English. Text written up and down is still read from top to bottom, moving right to left from one column to the next, but 90% of text written horizontally is read left to right these days. So today, kamikaze would be written 神風, read left to right.
Prewar, however, most horizontally written text went right to left. Therefore, the hachimaki above should read 風神. Likely the curator looked up the word, saw the order given in contemporary Japanese, and ignored the fact that the individual characters were backwards. I will be sending a nice, polite correction to the museum staff.
On another note, we also stopped at Disney World. I won't bore you with details of the visit to the Mouse, but we did go to Epcot Center for a few hours with the express purpose of shopping at the Mitsukoshi in the Japan pavilion. We took in some taiko drumming, shopped, and then went to dinner elsewhere, but did buy a few things in Japan, since we cannot get many Japanese things near our current home.
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It's easy, after living in Japan for 8 years, to view the Japan pavilion at Epcot with a bit of bemused contempt. The torii gate, meant to replicate the one at Miyajima, is obviously made of metal and plastic. The pagoda, modeled on the Horyu-ji, is kind of cheesy looking as well, in the same way that even the rocks at Disney are fabricated. Looking through the store, there were some things I was excited to see, but I could not believe the markup. A bottle of Hyakutake Shiro, the local rice shochu from Kumamoto where we lived for a while, normally goes for about $12 in Japan; it was $62! I almost fainted. I would have loved to get a bottle for the sheer natsukashii-ness, but not at 400% markup. Most of the stuff there was either outrageously expensive or cheesily touristy or both. I was glad to get what we did get, but a bit disappointed there wasn't more. After all, we had driven a long way, don't have access to anything Japanese near where we live, and after a decade in Japan and Hawaii, really miss a lot of things that it was normal for us to get all the time.
However, as I was walking around, it struck me that being dismissive or upset at the"fake" Epcot's imitation of Japan is not the right way to look at it, at least for me. You see, I grew up in Florida, and went at least once a year (usually more) to Epcot and the rest of Disney as a kid. As a youngster fascinated with Japan, Epcot's Japan pavilion was the closest thing I was going to get to it until I went to college and spent a year in Japan as an exchange student. It was heaven to me to be able to walk in there and buy toy swords, models of Himeji Castle, and plastic model samurai helmets. I remember being so excited to eat udon at the little Japanese fast food place.
It would be easy to look at Epcot now and list every little thing they get wrong and the cheesiness of the whole idea that you can encapsule a country's culture in a theme park pavilion. But much like how I don't like anime, but see that it brings in people to study Japanese culture, I see the utility of Epcot--after all, it fueled the fire in me.
Roadtripping from our secret lair, we stopped in Pensacola and visited the US Navy's Aviation Museum. Pretty cool museum, especially if you like old warbirds. There were several really well-done displays covering WWII, but there was a lot of information about Korean War and Vietnam Navy aviation as well, which I found impressive.
One thing I didn't find impressive, however, was this. Can you spot the problem?
No, the problem isn't that the flag promotes drinking alcohol (it's from a sake store in Itami, Osaka Prefecture, sent to boost morale. One would assume sake accompanied it). Let's take a closer look:
The hachimaki reads "kamikaze," which anyone familiar with WWII Japanese aviation means "divine wind" and is a reference to the typhoon which allegedly destroyed the Mongol invasion fleet and saved Japan (Check out Thomas Conlan's book In Little Need of Divine Intervention for an argument that the typhoon merely finished the job). Unfortunately, the characters are backwards. Kami is 神 and Kaze is 風, so while it might be a bit difficult to discern on the second character, the first is obviously backwards.
Complicating things, however, is the fact that they are in contemporary order correctly. You see, post-war Japan went through many reforms (understatement of the century), not the least of which was streamlining the language. Current students of Japanese may not believe it, but it used to be much more complex, and reforms were instituted to make things simpler. Chew on THAT, first-year Japanese students. Anyways, one of these new conventions was that characters written in line would be read left to right, like English. Text written up and down is still read from top to bottom, moving right to left from one column to the next, but 90% of text written horizontally is read left to right these days. So today, kamikaze would be written 神風, read left to right.
Prewar, however, most horizontally written text went right to left. Therefore, the hachimaki above should read 風神. Likely the curator looked up the word, saw the order given in contemporary Japanese, and ignored the fact that the individual characters were backwards. I will be sending a nice, polite correction to the museum staff.
On another note, we also stopped at Disney World. I won't bore you with details of the visit to the Mouse, but we did go to Epcot Center for a few hours with the express purpose of shopping at the Mitsukoshi in the Japan pavilion. We took in some taiko drumming, shopped, and then went to dinner elsewhere, but did buy a few things in Japan, since we cannot get many Japanese things near our current home.
It's easy, after living in Japan for 8 years, to view the Japan pavilion at Epcot with a bit of bemused contempt. The torii gate, meant to replicate the one at Miyajima, is obviously made of metal and plastic. The pagoda, modeled on the Horyu-ji, is kind of cheesy looking as well, in the same way that even the rocks at Disney are fabricated. Looking through the store, there were some things I was excited to see, but I could not believe the markup. A bottle of Hyakutake Shiro, the local rice shochu from Kumamoto where we lived for a while, normally goes for about $12 in Japan; it was $62! I almost fainted. I would have loved to get a bottle for the sheer natsukashii-ness, but not at 400% markup. Most of the stuff there was either outrageously expensive or cheesily touristy or both. I was glad to get what we did get, but a bit disappointed there wasn't more. After all, we had driven a long way, don't have access to anything Japanese near where we live, and after a decade in Japan and Hawaii, really miss a lot of things that it was normal for us to get all the time.
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| Really good. Not worth $62. |
However, as I was walking around, it struck me that being dismissive or upset at the"fake" Epcot's imitation of Japan is not the right way to look at it, at least for me. You see, I grew up in Florida, and went at least once a year (usually more) to Epcot and the rest of Disney as a kid. As a youngster fascinated with Japan, Epcot's Japan pavilion was the closest thing I was going to get to it until I went to college and spent a year in Japan as an exchange student. It was heaven to me to be able to walk in there and buy toy swords, models of Himeji Castle, and plastic model samurai helmets. I remember being so excited to eat udon at the little Japanese fast food place.
It would be easy to look at Epcot now and list every little thing they get wrong and the cheesiness of the whole idea that you can encapsule a country's culture in a theme park pavilion. But much like how I don't like anime, but see that it brings in people to study Japanese culture, I see the utility of Epcot--after all, it fueled the fire in me.