Put your clothes on, David

The town fathers discuss the newcomer to town

One of the first things I ever heard about Japan was from the minister of my church back in the 1950s, when I was growing up.  It was during a Pilgrim Fellowship outing.  The pastor stayed in a cabin with all the boys and there were a couple women along to chaperone the girls in another cabin.

The pastor used the occasion to give us boys a sermon on the importance of modesty.  It’s perfectly all right, he said, to disrobe in front of other boys, illustrating the point by splashing his naughty parts with talcum power after we had all showered together – I had never seen anybody do that before.  We didn’t have genitals in our house growing up.

But one must be extremely careful to show respect for girls by never letting them see you with your shirt off unless you were swimming or something like that.  He then told us about his days as a chaplain in occupied Japan right after the war.  “We had to teach the Japanese modesty,” he said, almost as an aside.   “They used to take baths together, men and women, and when they travelled overnight on the train, they’d strip down in the aisles before climbing into bed.  No shame at all!”

I thought that was weird, and I knew instantly it was terribly wrong.  What primitive people.   It must have been difficult after the war, teaching them about democracy and decency and so much else.  Thank God I live in a country with such wonderful values.  The Marshall Plan.  Lessons in decency.  So much we have to offer the world.

The Japanese learned their lessons well.   Mixed bathing is no more, although I have heard there are some outposts where it still occurs when nobody outside the region is around.  And I remember sitting in an onsen in Northern Japan once where the men were bathing and the women had to pass through to get to the women’s section.  The convention was they had to shield their eyes.

In public restrooms women come in all the time to clean the urinals without worrying that there are dozens of men doing their business.   The fact that these are always older women, and never sweet young things, defines the limits.

I remember how surprised I was the first time I went into the history of homosexuality in Japan to learn how open it once was, given that when I first went to live there in 1970 homosexuality was even more taboo than it was here.  There was a time, though, not so long ago, when it was anything but taboo.  The ancient samurai had their boyfriends much as the ancient Greeks did.  Now that fact tends to get flushed out of the history books, homosexuality being a modern-day no-no.

How did it get to be a no-no?  The same missionaries teaching the people not to get into their jammies on the train in front of others, I suspect.  Today, Japan has a huge porno industry, male sexuality being what it is.  But for some bizarre reason, while you can see all sorts of quite explicit kinky stuff in the manga, the comic book, the salary man is reading on the subway next to you, if it’s not in manga form, but actual photos, the genitals must be pixelated.  You can see an erect penis.  But you are required to see it blurred.

Modesty, or lack of it, is a curious thing.  In some places women are expected to hide their ankles.  In others their hair.  In Japan, a woman in a kimono is covered with tons of wrapping, but her collar emphasizes her bare neck, all the more erotic for being the only flesh you see.

I haven’t thought about this in a while, but all these thoughts came rushing back this morning when I read that in the town of Okuizumo, near the Sea of Japan, folks have their you-know-whats in a knot because one of their local boys made good and decided to gift his home town with some art.  He decided on two of his favorite statues – the Venus di Milo and Michelangelo’s David.  Had a Chinese artist make copies and planted them in the public square. 

Problem is, David isn’t wearing any underpants, and some parents think it just isn’t appropriate for children to see what makes it Michelangelo’s David and not Michelangelo’s Mary Lou, although she would probably not get a free pass, either.

Don’t you love it how people use children as an excuse to run from their own sexual hang-ups?  Even today, Japanese families sleep with their small children and they take baths with them as well.  There may actually be a Japanese child of five somewhere who has never seen the body of a naked adult, but I wouldn’t bet on it.   This complaint has got to be coming from an adult – or a number of adults – who learned his or her lesson from the American occupation all too well.

Prudes have always been around.  In the west, the problem was solved by putting fig leaves over the naughty parts.

It would appear the good folk of Okuizumo have never heard of fig leaves.   I can hear the debate in the city council now.  “I suppose we could put fig leaves over the you know…that place.”

“But then the backside would still be showing.”

“Right.”

Underpants it is.

“Dovunque al mondo…” sings Captain Pinkerton, Madame Butterfly’s American lover.  “Everywhere in the world the American Yankee travels…sinks his anchor at random….”  And takes what he wants.  That was Puccini showing a disdain for American imperialism, spreading American ways for the dubious benefit of the rest of the world.

Wonder what Puccini would have said had he lived to see Pinkerton replaced by American missionaries. 

Same spreading of American values.

Only this time it’s all about underpants.

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Sausage Making

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet on the gay marriage vote in Britain, but Her Majesty’s Government has done itself proud to bring the issue to this stage.  Just hours ago, in the House of Commons, 400 members of parliament voted in favor of same-sex marriage, and only 175 MPs voted against.  That is a huge margin.

Opponents are making much of the fact that Prime Minister Cameron’s Conservative Party is badly split, and more conservatives are against change, surprise, surprise, than for it.   That is to say, more than half of the 303 conservatives either voted against it, abstained, or took that delightfully British option of voting for it and against it at the same time. 

Cameron’s neck is on the line.  He’s clearly hoping the support of the majority of Brits, who favor same-sex marriage 55 to 36, will matter more in the long run than those 176 of no, who me?, or yes-and-no votes.

We still have to wait and see what the Lords and Ladies of Britain’s Upper House will have to say.  One hopes now that the Dowager Countess Violet has accepted the marriage of Lady Sybill to the chauffeur, she might persuade her peers that worse things can happen to the institution than to allow others who love each other to do the same.

That debate should be even more interesting.  One blogger predicts they will be persuaded by the large victory in the House of Commons and not want to look like a bunch of “dotty hereditaries wanting to hang and flog the life out of the nation.”  One must not forget, however, how many fine bishops sit in the House of Lords.  They too, even though they are unelected, have a voice. 

What a marvelous age we live in.  I untangle the dogs’ legs, get up from my nap, and tune in to the news online to discover that not only do Britain and France seem to be making rapid progress toward full marriage equality, leaving us colonials in the dust once more, but you can actually watch more than four hours of the actual debate and avoid the laundry entirely for yet another day.  

If you’ve never heard them go at it in the British Parliament, have a look.  There is no better entertainment than this cacaphonous circus making history and alternating between shouts of disapproval and “giving way to the Right Honourable Member” who then gets up and explains why everything just said is balderdash. 

We are in medias res, as I said.  But as I sat there listening to all the MPs go at it, I marvelled at how many were women, at how many different regional accents there were, at how different the whole thing looked since I sat in on a parliamentary debate in 1961 and heard an MP address all of six other male members present, three of whom were asleep, and urge Britain to have their kids start school a little earlier.  Or later.  Can’t remember which, now.

There’s excitement in the air.  A sense that things are moving, that things are getting better.

Hope that’s the case.  In any case, though, have a peek at the debate.  Contrary to what you’ve heard, it can be really good for the democratic soul to see how the sausage is made.

The flag over Parliament picture is from the Huffington Post two hours ago.   They have a fine article on the topic.

Songs my mother taught me

The highlight of my day comes when my partner and I light the candles and sit down to dinner each night.  I try to keep the dogs away from the table.  He sneaks one of them up to sit behind him, as if I couldn’t see her behind his back on the chair, and we talk about his day making labels for food products and my day at the computer obsessing over the latest Republican outrage or example of democratic cowardice.

We talk from time to time of moving into the 21^st century and getting some proper music playing devices, but he and I both, frankly, are still happy with our CD collection.  There is always music at dinner.   He usually selects the music.  I put my foot down on Yoko Ono, but go along with Japanese female singers of the 1930s.  Opera usually works.  So do French chansons or Portuguese fado.

But last night he put on Yoshikazu Mera’s CD, Romance.  I didn’t pay any attention because we immediately started talking about the macaroni and cheese he put on the table piping hot from the oven.

We got into an argument.  Well, not really an argument, because I didn’t really have anything to say as he went on about how awful American food could be.  “Look at this thing you call ‘macaroni and cheese,’ for example,” he says. 

It was an exquisite moment of disconnect.  We were on different wave lengths.  He was in one of his Japanese cultural nationalist modes – Why is it the Japanese can take a dish like this and know instinctively to use high grade cheeses and high quality pasta and combine chicken and prawns and make a lovely meal when Americans think they can actually eat the mess they make with melted Kraft cheese on overcooked macaroni!?

The reason I didn’t engage was that I was in another world.  This lovely countertenor voice was singing one of the most haunting pieces of music ever written, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me.”

The first time I heard it I remember being stopped dead in my tracks by the melancholy.  Was there ever a better illustration of how music can say more than words can?

“It’s not macaroni and cheese, anyway,” Taku was saying.  “It’s “Chicken and Prawn Gratin with noodles.”

Whatever it was, it was a moment of delicious absurdity.  Cheesy noodles.  Cheesy lyrics.

Here’s the original Czech version by Czech poet Adolph Heyduk which Yoshikazu was singing:

Když mne stará matka zpívat, zpívat učívala,
podivno, že často, často slzívala.
A ted' také pláčem snědé líce mučím,
když cigánské děti hrát a zpívat učím!

Which translates:

When my old mother taught me to sing,
it’s strange that often, often she cried.
And now I also torment my swarthy face by weeping
when I teach gypsy children to play and to sing!

Heyduk also wrote a German version without the gypsies:

Als die alte Mutter mich noch lehrte singen,
tränen in den Wimpern gar so oft ihr hingen.
Jetzt, wo ich die Kleinen selber üb im Sange,
rieselt's in den Bart oft, rieselt's oft von der braunen Wange.

Which translates:

When my old mother still taught me to sing

tears often hung on her lashes

Now, when I make the children practice their songs

tears trickle down into my beard, often trickle down from my brown cheeks.

And here’s the English version you see most of the time:

Songs my mother taught me, In the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children, each melodious measure.
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory's treasure.

I can’t judge the Czech, although I love the image of “torturing my swarthy cheeks with tears.”  The German version sounds better to me in English translation, while the English version has some awfully inappropriate word choices apparently selected not for image but for rhymability: vanished-banished and measure-treasure.

So apologies to those of you who think this quatrain is good poetry.

I think all you need to hear is the title, and let the music take you from there.

See?

Not cheesy at all.

Yoshikazu Mera singing Songs My Mother Taught Me:

Fritz Kreisler playing Songs My Mother Taught Me:

And Itzhak Perlman, also on violin, with a Marilyn Monroe bonus, if you still want the cheese (and I don't mean Marilyn).

Or, even better, Yo Yo Ma on the cello,

Paul Robeson's beautiful deep baritone version.

Type in Songs my mother taught me on YouTube and you'll see this could go on almost forever.

It's noon, I've been at it since 8 a.m., and I'm only scratching the surface of this obsession.

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