Heart of Darkness in the Leper Colony

"The man marked by an X was stabbed by an inmate."  Our great grandmother Bess Wilson scrawled this on the back of an old black and white photograph of Japanese gentlemen.

One can imagine the Photographer "OK, yes Mr. Sasaki and Suzuki, you sit on the ends and hold your katana.  And Mr. Suho, you sit next to that foreboding X, four from the left.  Very good.  And when I say cheese, everybody sit stoically with a grim expression."

Suho Masasue, born 1885, was an elite young Japanese physician who had come to Korea in 1921.  He graduated from Nagoya Medical college, and later received a PhD from Kyoto Imperial Medical College on the effects of morphine.  He had traveled the world inspecting medical conditions in 1926-27.  He then took a post as sanitary officer in Kyonggi province of the Japanese colony of Chosen. 

He then volunteered for an assignment as the director of the Leprosarium on Sorok Island in Jeollanamdo province in 1933.  The role was one of prestige.  The young Japanese generals viewed the American's Leper colonies in the Philippines with jealousy.  They too wanted to be seen as benevolent masters over a thankful but backward territory.  Humanitarian efforts on behalf of the lepers would be a way to prove their benevolence, both to the Korean population and in the eyes of the world.  In 1930, the Japanese government declared a policy of leprosy eradication in the colony.  They would do this by compulsory quarantine of leprosy patients and forced sterilization.  

Perhaps the jealousy did not only apply to the affection of the lepers, but also the affection of the Imperial House itself.  The Empress wrote a poem to American Medical Missionary Robert Manton Wilson, praising his compassionate work.  "Please comfort the lepers on my behalf, since I cannot be there myself." 

For whatever reason, the Japanese felt the need to establish themselves as benevolent overlords. Some Japanese were apparently successful in that role.  The second director, Dr. Hanai, successfully enacted a policy which was sensitive to the patient's culture and allowed them to live according to their own customs with reasonable amounts of work.  The death rates at the hospital dropped under his leadership, and the patients remembered him as a benevolent father figure. 

It's possible that Suho arrived in Korea with the best intentions and was corrupted over time by the nature of the colonial machine.  His record leaves the impression that he was selected from among the best and brightest of Japanese physicians.  In any case, he became enamored with the idea of himself as a benevolent saint of the leprosy patient community and possessed by the desire to expand the facilities at all cost.  He ran the leprosarium like a penal colony, dividing the patients into six camps and preventing group organization.

Pak Soon Joo was a Korean patient who acted as a go-between for the Japanese and the lepers.  He was blind and disabled, but he served as the representative for the Hospital Patients.  He was in charge of collecting fees from fellow patients among other things.  He extorted 80% of patients' holdings as donations for a giant statue of Dr. Suho in 1941.  The patients were required to bow to the statue daily.  For his efforts, he was awarded accolades from the Japanese Society for Leprosy Prevention which met in August 1941.  The next month he was stabbed to death by a fellow patient, Lee Kil-yong.  Lee Kil-yong had no use of his hands and was severely disabled himself.  He had to fasten the knife around the stump of his wrist using a bandage.  The murder was thus clumsy and slow, but effective as Lee Kil-yong managed to pierce the throat of his target while rolling with him on the ground.  

From 1937 and the start of the Pacific war, death rates steadily climbed at Sorok Island Leprosarium due to war-time deprivations.  They continue to climb after Japan declared war on the US.  After the murder of Pak Soon Joo, a patient named Lee Chun-sang began to form his own plot for revenge.  The son of a Korean Independence activist, Lee Chun-sang first acted by volunteering to play a role in a holiday theatre performance.  When asked what role he wished to play, he declared that he would play in the sword dance.  He was then seen regularly practicing kendo techniques on electrical poles with a wooden stick.  He would move about draped in a large cloak even as the temperature increased during the hot Jeolla summer.

On June 20, 1942, his chance presented itself.   In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz dies of a tropical disease on a steamboat to the coast under Marlowe's supervision.  It was an artistic liberty taken by Coppola that led Martin Sheen to cut Marlon Brando down like some giant water buffalo.  But so did Dr. Suho, that would-be-humanitarian who set himself up as a living God on his own island of 6000 leprosy patients, meet his end. 

As Dr. Suho walked past on a nearby road, Lee Chun-Sang took a sword from under his cloak and, with all his strength, ran it through the good doctor's abdomen. With what was left of his strength, he pulled the sword from the abdomen and stood for a moment before the horrified patients before collapsing.  The patients, fearful for their lives, fell upon Lee Chun-Sang beating and kicking him.  He was sentenced to death by a Japanese court.  At the court, he gave an account of the brutality of Dr. Suho.  The judge called on his fellow patient Choi Il-Bong to ask if he could confirm Lee's account.  Choi denied Lee's account of the brutalities.  Later he would be heard beating his breast and lamenting his damnation, "I killed Lee Chun-Sang." Oh the horror. 

Conrad ends his novel with an encounter with the young aristocratic woman whom Kurtz refers to as "My Intended."  She sees Kurtz as an angelic figure.  Dr. Suho, likewise, must have been an angel to some.  Myths of benevolence are not build purely on deception and cynical megalomania.  But there is a seed of such cynicism which often sprouts when a man takes it upon himself to be an angel.  How much that sprout of megalomania and cruelty is nurtured and allowed to grow determines the difference between man and tyrant.

 I took my information from wikipedia, a memoir from my Great Uncle Johnny, and most importantly an article by Jeong Keun-sik of Seoul National University entitled "일제 말기의 소록도갱생원과 이춘상 사건"  "Sorok Island rehabilitation hospital in the twilight of Japanese empire and the Lee Chun-Sang Incident"

Poetry and plenty

I met a friend who is majoring in Korean literature at Jeonnam University.  She expressed interest in helping me translate some poetry of a famous leper poet, Han Ha-Oon.  Here are the first drafts of translations of five poems.  They are translated with some liberty, and some of them are not complete.  But I think the spirit of the poems is more or less intact.  I would like to post the Korean alongside so that fluent speakers can offer critique on these translations.  It is my understanding, based on an encyclopedia of translated Korean poems, that these works have never been translated before.  Others by Han Ha Oon, such as "Reed Pipe" and "Bluebird" have been translated. 

It's difficult to provide here the Korean versions because I don't know the pronunciations of the Korean Hanja characters, but hopefully I will be able to figure it out.  The translation is by no means perfect, but it's a fascinating expression of a man who grew up during the Japanese occupation and became famous for his lyrical expressions of the suffering of outcastes and the transience of our physical existence. 

Upon reviewing the poems, they definitely paint an unique perspective on the experience of Hansen's disease patients of the time.  In these five poems, we can see the progression of experience from being cast out of society to die alone.  He is later committed to a leper colony-- Perhaps Sorok island?--  where he is perhaps subjected to electric shock therapy.  He also experiences a wedding to another leprosy patient.  As he remarks, the eyebrows have been drawn on to her face as make-up because Hansen's disease often causes the eyebrows to fall out in its early stages. 

What can we make of the claim in the second poem that "I am the child of lepers."  Is it to be taken literally?  Perhaps he was one of the children that Japanese officials, as well as missionary doctors, hoped to prevent by forced sterilization.  But we know that he was only infected with leprosy later.  Perhaps it is only a poetic flourish not to be taken literally. 

I was first made aware of Han Ha-Oon by the introduction in a bilingual version of Ko Eun's works entitled "The Sound of my Waves" in which Ko Eun recounts that he was first inspired to become a poet by Han Ha-Oon, the famous leper-poet.  Ko Eun definitely carries on certain themes of Han Ha-Oon's such as the transience of the body and a despair of being caste out from materialistic society. 

All translations are Copyright of Joji Kohjima 2010. 

At the foot of the Zelkova tree

In the past as today
The watermill turns the destiny of every man
to soil and rice wine
Year by year, by turns, destiny is set afloat into life
Absently I recount this old story to you. 
How under the zelkova I have come to live. 
It was there under the zelkova that my forebears who begat me lived
It was there under the zelkova that they learned the ancient wisdom
that the strong live, and the weak die*
Now, stricken by disease, I have been caste out
The healthy people banished me to live there, under the zelkova
Since that day, the lonely zelkova has wept sparingly in the bottom of my heart

* This adage is a chinese 4-character saying or 사자성어.  Here it is on naver:
適者生存  Literally: "the capable people may live"

I am not a Leper

My father is a leper
My mother is a leper
Myself, I am the child of lepers
But the truth is, I am not a leper
In the relation between heaven and earth
Between the flower and the butterfly
The love withn the sun and moon
becomes the stuff of life
Because the world laments this life
I, a man, am called a leper
Without even a birth registration,
I repeat the same old story
to an audience who cannot understand
No matter how I labor to become a whole person I cannot
I am an absurdity
But I am not a leper
I tell you truly I am a healthy person.  Not a leper. 

It all seems senseless

It would seem an impossible task for this world
A cry bursts forth
Softly dry the precious tears shed over
This love for which we can see no future
But rather beautifully forgetting,
As we weave this fleeting love song
As our hearts proceed
Let us swallow our tears
Cry out our song
To weave again this ephemeral tune of bittersweet blues
Towards the pain of our separation
Cast the flowers and cry out the song

悲愴 [비장] "Pathetique" (Tchaikovsky's symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 7)

In this isolated leprosy treatment center
There exist neither borders nor distinctions
Nor even bacteriology
Tchaikovsky's Pathetique on the radio waves
Moves me to tears
Now I am in the past, in my season of good health
It's as if the I of the present does not even exist here
Downstream of my long-anticipated destiny
I jettison my reality
In two, three pieces my reality shatters
Now everything is broken
It is as if only Tchaikovsky's Pathetique
stretches into infinity


Pity the Sick Marriage

Because we are soiled,
Though the cloudy blue horizon is broad,
There is no land for a leper to live
An abandoned man and an abandoned woman
If an old shoe finds its match
Might it be moved to weep and weep?
Have the gods ordained this auspicious event which pains to the bone?
Just for today the bride has drawn her eyebrows with a matchstick
And this artificial shroud is not lifted
5 colored confetti falls like snow
Beautifully is she preened

Dr. Kim and the Women

Oct. 28, 04:00

“Like a fish that is drawn from its watery abode and thrown upon land: even so does this mind flutter.  Hence should the realm of passions be shunned.”

-The Dhammapada

About a week in Kwangju so far.  I bought a bicycle and toured the city a bit yesterday, which was a rewarding exercise.  I made it out to the International Kimchi festival and sampled their Kimchi Bossam. 

             I’m feeling a bit accident prone lately.  The day I met Dr. Linton, he told me a story about the time my great grandfather’s house burned to the ground.  Apparently the Japanese emperor had given him a prize, and the prize was lost in the burning, so he was ordered by the Japanese generals to commit “hari kari” (actually pronounced hara kiri).  He abstained of course.  The day after hearing this story, Dr. Linton’s own mother’s house in North Carolina burned down. 

             The other day I went out to see Kwangju with my friend Mina, who is studying medicine at Chosun University.  The last thing I asked her about was her parents, and she said she hardly gets a chance to see her father because only her mother comes down from Seoul.  Then the next day she hears that her father has been hospitalized, that his cancer had metastasized, and she took off to Seoul.  It called to mind the fact that my uncle passed away just two weeks after I paid him a visit for the second time. 

             I take this as a reminder that I always seem to take things personally when people have other things going on in their lives.  A reminder that compared to my own trials, other people’s problems are usually much greater than my own, and more often than not have nothing to do with me.  I realize that I am not a cause of disaster, but rather I am an incidental co-arising phenomenon to the disasters that occur around me, from which I always seem to emerge unscathed. 

             It’s 4:00 in the morning.  My sleep and eating schedule has been mostly thrown off, perhaps due to lack of a proper study/work schedule.  Yesterday I turned 23.  I’d like to say “I don’t feel any older” but it wouldn’t be true.  On this day I feel quite a bit older.  Time carries us along like a river, drifting us ever closer to the source and the grande finale. 

            

Oct. 29, 18:00

I had an energizing couple of days in the interim of this blog entry.  I’ll post it as a reminder that the brain truly has a mind of its own (…?) and can right itself within a short time period. 

             I rode the bus to Yeosu and finally made the acquaintance of Dr. Kim In Kwon.  He’s tall and wiry with shiny eyes and wavy white hair.  He looks like the Korean version of Richard Gere in Dr. T and the women.  Dr. Kim is of course the director of Aeyangwon Hospital and the president of the Wilson Leprosy Center.  I’m not sure how these institutions operate exactly, but they are the fruit of Dr. RM Wilson senior’s work in Korea beginning a century prior. 

             Some time in the 1920s (oh yes, quite the historian I am) Dr. Wilson and his flock of lepers (about 1000 all told) made a mass exodus on foot from Kwangju to a Peninsula near Yeosu.  The peninsula was bought with grants to the Leprosarium.  I am not sure who posted the money that the peninsula itself was bought with (this information is written somewhere and I will update this later) but a large part of the work was simply getting enough funds to care for the plethora of patients who traversed the country on foot and crutch to receive treatment from the missionary doctors.  Major donors included churches in the United States as well as the Japanese Empress.  It’s about a 90 minute drive from Kwangju to the site on the highway, so we can imagine a herd of lepers, many of them blind and missing limbs, making the trek in communal fashion with whatever possessions they had over several days. 

             Today the hospital still stands on that peninsula.  It later morphed into a polio treatment center, and then a rehabilitation center and an orthopedic hospital.  The original hospital is now a museum housing various artifacts from the earlier days.  I will post pictures when I get the ability to send emails from my cell phone.

             Dr. Kim met me for lunch in between his 36 operations he performed that day.  I was impressed by how good-natured he is even in the midst of an enormous workload.  He told me that RM Wilson also worked very hard.  This contrasts somewhat to Dr. Linton’s depiction of RMW.  “He would leave work in the middle of the day to go hunting.  My kind of man, that RM Wilson.”  Dr. Linton also reported that RM Wilson was the emitter (this is not the word I am looking for...) of the quote “Those who played, stayed.”  If I had to interpret the quote, I might guess he was talking about those who stayed in Korea vs. those who left.  The ones who saw the task as an adventure and a game rather than a burden or a cross to bear were the ones who saw it through.  Inevitably it is evocative of the late baseball announcer Yogi Berra.  But it just might be the best piece of advice I could begin this sojourn with:  those who played, stayed.  It’s important not to take one’s mission too seriously. 

             I couldn't help but marvel at the protestant work ethic which made the hospital possible.  Of course, the patients themselves built their own houses and tended their own gardens.  And the labor that laid the bricks to the hospital and adjacent church was doubtlessly the sweat and tears of cheap Korean labor hired by the church.  The hospital, as far as I could gather, has no records pre-dating WWII.  I am still not sure whether to think of the peninsular settlement as something of a leprosarium-cum-ashram or an internment camp several steps up from the veritable penal colony for lepers that was established on Sorok-do, a small island in the province. 

Certainly the colonial government’s presence was strongly felt.  There was a famous megalomaniacal Japanese director of the hospital on Sorok-do (that is, elsewhere) who was assassinated by his patients during WWII.  Likewise I remember a picture that my grandfather showed me of a Japanese officer who was assassinated by a patient of my great grandfather’s. 

             My confidence in my ability or wherewithal to truly unearth these stories in a meaningful sense and weave together a meaningful portrait of the leprosarium is thin.  It would take a more savvy individual than I more time than I have to truly work towards that end.  In the mean time, speculation makes for fine stories. 

             To this day former patients live in the settlement around the hospital, though the majority have passed away or were resettled elsewhere many years ago.  Yeosu is famous for its beautiful coastline, and were it not for this settlement it should have become prime real estate for some hotels.  On this day, the village elderly were said to have been taken on an outing to the hills for tanp’ungnori, or “maple viewing,” a seasonal pastime of watching the changing colors of the leaves.  The village is accented with a plethora of ripe orange persimmons standing on bare winter branches. 

Joji was a man thought to be a woman

So, funny story...

I arrived at Kwangju Christian Hospital (Kwangju  Kidok Byeongweon) this morning after spending last night in Motel Windmill, a reasonably priced "love motel" on Kwangju's motel strip.  I failed to meet up with a couch that I had arranged to crash on, feeling pretty bad that I made my guests show up at the bus stop when I wouldn't be there, having missed my train in Seoul by five minutes. 

I was told by Dr. Kim to go to the third floor nursing department and mention who I was.  I was relayed between several people who had no idea who I was, and who were no doubt very frustrated with my minimal Korean.  Finally I was relayed to the first guy who walked by who could speak good English, Mr. Choi.  Mr. Choi took me around looking for people who would know who I was.  We gathered an entourage of about 4 managerial staff and finally got to a receptionist who had been expecting me (to be fair, I believe Dr. Kim had told them to expect me three days ago.  I didn't have their direct contact so I have been hustling to get my papers pushed through Seoul's bureaucracy in order to get down to Kwangju). 

The receptionist explained to everybody that they had been expecting a descendant of Dr. RM Wilson, Director of the hospital from 1910 to 1926, who would be writing about Dr. Wilson. 

Now, hindsight being 20/20, I can definitely look back and see some flags for the misunderstanding that ensued.  Though Dr. Kim (of Aeyangweon hospital) and I have been corresponding for over a year, our correspondences have been brief.  I believe I thoroughly explained who I was over a year ago when I originally applied to the Fulbright, and then later when I got the grant in April I told him that I would be coming to Korea in about 5 months.  So I don't fault him for forgetting that I was a great grandson of Dr. Rober Manton Wilson.  When he told me that the Kwangju Kidok Byeongweon had graciously reserved a room in the nurse's dormitory, I joked with many friends about getting a beautiful Korean woman as a roommate.  But it did not occur to me that they would have actually assigned me a room in the female nurse's dorm. 

After the 4 men in business suits and several secretaries puzzled over who I was, why I had a Japanese name, and where I was from, I was escorted into Dr. Park Byeongnan's office.  She has the air of a Korean matriarch, and her presence induces a natural deference, even despite her soft feminine features.  Her office with a large Desk and a circle of chairs in front of it.  She explained to me, "we had been expecting you to come here, but we thought you were a girl."  After some discussion, she decided that she could find accomodations for me in a male dormitory, but I would have to come back that afternoon. 

So now I'm getting ready to check out of the love motel a 3:00 and go back.  I will also try to negotiate Korean lessons at the local university, which seem intense (four hours per day) and are heard to be a very good deal at ~1000 USD for a quarter of instruction, something like 200 hours of class time.  In fact, that's a really good deal...

The good news is that I believe that they are only expecting me to be writing about my Great grandfather, not to be volunteering in the hospital.   I do want to volunteer, to get experience, but I think volunteering and taking intensive language classes from the get-go would be a little much for me.  So I may postpone volunteering until I go back to Seoul's Severance Hospital, or until I have more confidence in my Korean and more familiarity with my surroundings. 

I will try to talk with the teacher today about whether I can enroll in mid-session or if I have to wait for December when Winter Quarter starts. 

From now on I think I will sign all my correspondences in Korea "Mr. Joji  Kohjima" to avoid further confusion...

Seoul got soul

In Seoul, I spent today sleeping off a lot of beer and bureaucracy.  I planned to get things done here within a day or two, but that has stretched into three nights so far.  I hope to leave for Kwangju tomorrow. 

I landed in Seoul on Sunday morning.  It took all my strength to lug my 50 kg of luggage about 10 blocks to the Hostel after getting off the bus.  It’s just a first impression, but I like Seoul a lot.  I’ve only seen a couple neighborhoods in Mapo-gu, which has a lot of Universities and nightlife. 

If we can judge a place by its traffic laws, Seoul is definitely a wily beer-drinking drunk tank brawling cousin of Tokyo.  Korea still has the somewhat lawless characteristic of a country recently liberated from a military dictatorship.  Unlike Tokyo, the traffic laws here are generally the same as the laws of physics.  If you run into something, you lose.  Barring that, motorcycles are free to run through crowds of people in cross walks and sidewalks.  Pedestrians feel free to cross a busy 6 lane street if they can beat the traffic.  It’s not quite the easy lawlessness of Hanoi or Saigon, but it’s the same flavor. Gone are the paternalistic Japanese gentlemen waving batons and shouting about the dangers of crossing the street.  Though the subways do have thick glass barriers which keep people from jumping onto the tracks to kill themselves: something that might be a good investment in Japan. 

            Yesterday I met up with the Fulbright people in the morning to receive my instructions.  I was surprised at how much bureaucracy is involved in getting services as a foreigner.  Without a foreigner’s ID card, I can’t buy a cell phone, use local ATMs or open a bank account.  And until recently, you could not get a foreigner’s ID card as a Fulbright scholar (I suppose they are only for employees and university students). 

            In any case, the details of the bureaucracy are not interesting.  Tomorrow I will search for my foreigner’s ID card, which should take over a week to process. 

            At Yonsei, I was able to meet up with Eunjung, my long lost capoeira diva friend.  I also went to Severance Hospital at Yonsei to meet Dr. John Linton.  He is an American doctor raised as a Korean by a missionary family in a Korean village.  He seems to take a lot of pride in the idea of being more Korean than American.  As is prerequisite for a Korean of his age, he is a staunch South Korean nationalist.  As is expected of a man of his position, he is cantankerous and imposing.  I enjoyed meeting him a lot. 

            I went straight to his clinic, and he spotted me as he was escorting some Korean gentlemen out of the clinic.  After waiting for him to finish his business, he escorted me around his office with his arm around me and introduced me to all the nurses and staff.  He has the comportment of a southern gentlemen mixed with the confidence of an accomplished Asian patriarch.  I was reminded of the importance of the lessons that I learned through capoeira, interacting with and observing the mestres.  Much can be observed about human nature by observing the way people act within the roda and within a group. I'm learning how important it is to calculate my words and actions at all times.  If I can actually learn to do it well, that will help me out a lot. 

            Dr. Linton assigned one of his staff to help me out with finding housing and assigning me a volunteer position at the hospital.  I told them I can return to Seoul in two months to participate here, after I spend two months in Kwangju at Kwangju Christian Hospital.  I feel a little overwhelmed with the amount of opportunity I’m getting right off the bat.  The experience I get here could possibly fulfill the requirements of volunteer hours that I need for medical school, and get me much more comfortable moving within a hospital.  My MCAT and grades are all spoken for, so the next step is getting more experience and putting together the actual application. 

            I guess I will make a lot of mistakes here, as a foreigner in a country where I don’t speak the language or understand the customs.  But in the end, it is those mistakes that carry the lessons.  And the lessons are what I came here for. 

            I will sleep now.  2:30 AM in Seoul.  Lot of business to take care of tomorrow. 

生き物は死なないのもいない。There is nothing that lives which does not die

Yesterday I went to the hyouikuen (preschool) with my friend Taguchi to pick up his daughter, Umi-chan.  Umi means Ocean.  We played at the college campus during the evening, then had dinner at his house.  After dinner we got a phone call from my host, Suzuki-san, telling me to call my cousin.  Thus I heard that my Uncle, Hiroyoshi, had passed away.  

I called my parents at 6:45 Seattle time to give them the news.  Of course I never knew the Japanese side of my family.  Hiroyoshi took me to dinner once three years ago when I first came to Japan.  Then I met him the second and final time two weeks ago when I was visiting my aunt Miyo in Ashikaga city.  His wife gave me a nice long-sleeve polo shirt because it was raining and I only had t-shirts with me.  I only saw him for a moment, exchanged aisatsu, and gave him an omiyage of smoked salmon from Seattle.  

Taguchi-san had lent me a book, hi no tori (the Pheonix) by the great Manga-ka (comic book writer) Tezuka Osamu.  It contains various stories on the theme of reincarnation, and the language is largely simple with furigana (pronunciation guides) so I will use it to study Japanese.  

Upon hearing the news of my uncles death, Taguchi remarked “Of course, there is nothing that lives which does not die.”  To this his daughter replied “火の鳥が死なないよ” (The Pheonix does not die).  We laughed at this insight, and I said to Umi “should we become pheonix?”  

“Umichan,” Taguchi said, “何回も生まれて死んで面白いの？やってみたい？”  “Would it be fun to be continually reborn and die?”  

Umi replied “母さんがいれば楽しいよ”  “Only if mom is still there, would I be happy”  

Today's vocab: 

特攻する  とっこうする “suicide mission” from the word tokkoutai, special attack unit, which was a euphamism for kamikaze pilots.  Now, tokkou is used in situations (such as sports or business) when people attack with little chance of winning.  It is also used for suicide bombers.  

アウンの呼吸 （A-UN no kokyuu）  a relationship of perfect wordless communication.  literally, “Om breath”

I visited a friend of the family, Abe-san, in Gunma two weeks ago.  He and his son took me to some great treasures of Japan, such as Nikkou, where the Shogunate's Tombs and places of worship are centered.  Also Ikkaho hotsprings, a village dedicated to the art of enjoying outdoor hotsprings.  Abe-san is a hereditary priest in the Joudoushinshuu, Japan's largest Buddhist sect.  He has spent most of his life studying Buddhism and has met with the Dalai Lama and Buddhist leaders from Bhutan.  

 At the gates of the Nikko, he pointed to two guardian statues painted bright red and green.  These demons are called A and UN.  They are the first two sounds in the universe, together they make the mantra “Om” which is the origin of the Hindu Trinity of Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma.

In Japanese idiom, “A-UN breath” means a relationship of perfect synchronized harmony.  It is most perfectly represented by a husband and wife who communicate without speaking.  Japanese men traditionally desire a woman who is adept in wordless communication: who understands their mind by observing them rather than by talking.  As men we are guilty of often forgetting that it is also our job to tactfully observe as well as be observed.  

There was more I had to say... but there always is.  I'll leave off with some haiku inspired by this morning's run along the Tama River.

足音ため       ashioto tame

虫は飛び出す mushi ha tobidasu

平和な道       heiwana michi

From my footsteps,

the insects fly out

A peaceful path

鷲の下         Washi no shita

川は溢れる   kawa ha afureru

生活の流れ   seikatsu no nagare

Under the eagle

The river brims over

the tide of life

tsuki no usagi: the rabbit in the moon.

It's said in Japan that there is a rabbit drawn in the craters of the moon.  He can be seen pounding mochi with a large wooden mallet.  

It's an interesting fact that we always see the same side of the moon.  This mean that each rotation of the moon elapses over the same time as each circum-ambulation (oh yes, I know there's a better word out there but...) of the earth.  Why might this be, besides the moon having some ghastly pimple on its other face which she would never want us to see?  It has to do with the lopsidedness of the mass of the moon.  The more massive side faces the earth.  The earth's gravity acts as a string holding the one side of the moon, so it's similar to the effect that if you tie a string to a ball and whir it around you will only see one side of the ball.  I guess it's a good thing that the earth is not so lopsided, because otherwise we might be stuck w/ 365x24 hour nights.  Who knows what kind of debauchery would take place during the darkness

It's also an interesting fact that mochi, Japanese cooked and pounded sticky rice, and fufu, West African pounded casava root, are made in the exact same way and taste EXACTLY THE SAME!  I came to this startling revelation when in Ghana 4 years ago (jumpin' jackrabbit it's been a minute) and I had my first exposure to fufu.  The locals expect that it will be a difficult food for foreigners to eat.  The truth is it tastes exactly like soft mochi.  They make it by removing the woody core from the cassava tuber, then pounding the pulpy starch into a goo which can be dipped in stew.  If it were up to me I'd put some nori and soy sauce on it and call it a meal...  Cassava and mochi are made in teams of two on a large mortar and pestle.  One person squats over the mortar (pop quiz: which part is the mortar and which is the pestle?  I had to google it...) and kneads the goo so that it can be evenly pounded.  The other person thrusts violently at the gooey blob with a large wooden mallet or a long straight wooden pounder/pestle.  The person kneading the goo has to keep a rhythm so that their hand does not get squished by the pestle.  For some reason it's custom to remove the hand from the mortar right as the pestle is falling towards your hand with committal speed.  

My time in Japan is coming to a close.  It's Wednesday morning, and I leave on Friday morning.  I will have trouble putting Japanese out of my mind.  Every day I am reminded of how much I have to learn.  Specifically, my vocabulary is not nearly good enough to say everything I want to.  I will try to increase it by several words each day, and for what it's worth I'll put some on this blog.  

障害者  しょうがいしゃ a (physically) disabled person

作業  さぎょう  work, manual labor

賭ける   かける to risk, to gamble

裏切る  うらぎる to betray

嘆くnageku- to lament, grieve

分割統治 ぶんかつとうち- divide and conquer

妊娠している   にんしんしている  To be pregnant (ninshin=conception)

共時性   きょうじせい  dependent co-arising

The last term, dependent co-arising (also called just dependent arising), is a Buddhist term which is resembles “synchronicity” in Jungian jargon.  It has to do with the idea that, dialectically speaking, one thing does not always cause another.  Rather than A causing B, A can arise jointly with B in an inter-dependent non-linear relationship.  In Jungian thought, this has to do with the idea that ideas can be “randomly associated” as they arise in our brain.  For example, the smell of cinnamon might conjure up a memory of my mother.  Buddhism is informed by a psycho-microcosmic view of the world in which the individual mind represents a microcosm of the universe.  

My friend recommended to me a meditation pamphlet the other day.  I thought it was very well written.  Here it is for reference:  

http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-issue-at-hand/chapter14/

It mentions the Buddha's explanation of the two arrows of suffering.  The first arrow is an arising emotion.  The second arrow is our reaction to that emotion.  The point of meditation is to learn to calmly observe the first arrow so that we can react appropriately to it, without inflicting ourselves with the second arrow.  This analogy filled my thoughts for several days.  I was constantly looking for the first arrow.  What am I feeling?  How am I reacting to it?  

I was reminded of a scene in the film “Aje Aje Bara Aje” by Im Kwon Taek (Korea's greatest director IMHO, and a Kwangju native) in which the antagonist, a young nun, argues that the nuns should engage the common people to help them gain enlightenment instead of selfishly disciplining themselves for their own enlightenment.  The Abotess, a harsh old woman, tells her that she must kill the immature Buddha inside her which makes her think she is wise.  

The point of the scene is that self-righteousness is often a product of inexperience.  I think that, in this case, self-righteousness is often the second arrow which follows the arrow of anger or fear.  It reminded me of my encounter with Mestre Moraes, in which I told him that I think capoeiristas should be free to play their own game in the roda.  It was a strange conversation.  I felt that I was sitting in the audience watching the words come out of my mouth, as if I was compelled by some spirit to challenge Moraes in front of the group.  He responded by agreeing with me, and answering my question at length in front of a captive audience of Japanese Angoleiros.  I will not post the entire discussion tonight.  In retrospect, I would not have restrained myself from asking the question.  Though it's important to be able to restrain oneself if need be.  

On that note I will restrain myself from saying more and get some sleep.  It's 2:00 AM here.  I got the news tonight that my uncle passed away in Ashikaga.  I might be making a trip to see the family before I head to Korea on Friday.  There's a Japanese custom called tsuuya (痛夜) in which the berieved stay up for 24 hours to grieve, reflect, and spend time with family.  I'm not sure whether they will do that, or whether I'll be able to partake, but we'll see how it goes.  I didn't get a chance to know him in life so I hope I will get the chance to see him off.  

drifting away

I am writing from the corridor of the insulated womb of university life, having long looked forward to the day when I could turn my back on my sheltered student existence and proceed to make something of myself in the real world.  Now I feel my eyelids peeling open, and I feel the bite of real, unfiltered light piercing into my skull.  I begin to feel the ground beneath my feet.  My legs are weak and spindly.  And still I am sheltered from the elements by the good will of countless family, friends and teachers who have wished the best upon me, invested their time in me, generally to receive nothing back except shortfalls in the direction of unmet goals.  

I've been a lot of places for my short time in this world.  Indeed, I've been blessed to have travelled as much as I have.  Looking back, I feel that I've been pulled along, and kept alive, by some guiding force of coincidence and luck.  Very little has depended on my own will power or skill in clearing my path.  Rather I have walked through life as if it were a thick woods, with only a single star to guide me.  I've taken minimal precautions and exercised very little foresight.  I have survived mostly due to my privilege, but also partially, as Jimmy Cliff sang, due to my pride.  My pride has the tendency to carry me to dizzying heights before dropping me back to earth, invariably leaving me in a cavity which I can barely climb my way out of.  

I could go on like this forever, so let me clean up my language and start speaking in specifics.  When I came to Japan for the first time three years ago, I felt that I didn't want to leave.  I spent five weeks here, and it made an enormous impact on me.  I was surprised by the peace that was stirred within me.  Having never connected much with my father's land of origin, I had always associated Japan with anxiety-- the anxiety of failure; the anxiety of conformity; the anxiety of responsibility and finding employment and saving face.  

Instead what I found was a certain peace within myself.  When I walk down an American street, I am confronted by the savagery of the city.  The American city is an aggressive landscape.  It is not built for the pedestrian.  The pedestrian is prey to cars, to bright lights, to police, to roving bands of delinquents.  In Japan, there is no feeling of immediate danger when walking through an unknown part of town.  It is easy to get lost, but it is easy to get unlost.  My fight or flight response, as well as (resultantly) my libido, is on less of a hair-trigger response here.  There are cartoonish warnings everywhere, especially in the train stations, that makes me feel like I'm in an episode of the Jetsons.  There is no real danger.  There is, rather, a certain background pressure to conform which is relaxed towards foreigners: don't bother strangers, don't eat snacks on the train, don't break traffic laws, etc.  

On my second take, three years later, I am less struck by internal peace.  Maybe it is my anxiety due to my current stage of life.  I've built up certain expectations upon myself, constructed a very constricted definition of success in my mind, and yet the realization of success is not at all certain.  My dreams are vivid and haunting.  I am stalked by unnamed phantoms, I often wake up while being attacked by something.  I have the feeling that I am being hunted, and that I am being hunted for a very specific reason.  To apply a Jungian analysis to my dreams, I feel that I am probably being hunted by failure.  And when I wake up in the morning, I am less and less inclined to wake up on time.  I am kept in bed by the desire to avoid the failures that accompany waking up.  I am usually a morning person.  I like waking up before daylight and going for a long run to see the sun rise over the river.  But I've seen few sunrises here, this time, in the land of the rising sun.  And it's not due to jetlag.  

In one week I will be in Korea, an unknown place to me.  My head will be swimming in efforts to learn a foreign tongue.  Most of the people who receive the Fulbright have strong backgrounds in the languages of their country.  Myself, I received the fulbright on the premise that I would make a good-faith effort to study two year's worth of Korean by the time I entered the country.  I have, rather, spent the last nine months forgetting what I managed to cram into 4 months of intense study last year.  

More important than my language capabilities per se, I have certain doubts about my ability to succeed in an Asian culture.  I strongly desire, like many “Amerasians” (funny word, isn't it?  I'm just throwing it in for kicks) to be accepted in Asia as an Asian.  But I know that I may never achieve this fully.  When I explain to my Asian friends that I tend to see myself as more Asian than American, they initially look at me incredulously.  After the incredulity wears off, a certain pity remains, as if to say “Don't you get it?  You'd have it much better as an American in Asia.  You have nothing to gain by being accepted as a watered down Asian, and everything to gain by being accepted as a red-blooded American.”  

On the rare occasion that I am accepted as Asian, I seldom live up to it.  My self-defacement may never be sincere enough.  My desire to express my own opinion may always over-ride my ability to sincerely commit to group convention.  I may always have the desire to strike up a random conversation on the train, to pat people heartily on the back, to show off my mediocre skills, to do things that will give me away as a product of American culture.  

I am to go to Korea as the great-grandson of a famous American humanitarian/missionary.  I will be largely taken care of and assisted by people associated with Christian hospitals there.  My mission is to document the treatment of leprosy in the 20th century Korea.  But in fact my personal priorities are something along the lines of:

1.) Learn Korean language

2.) Learn how to think/behave in Korean society.

3.) get some hospital experience that will help me get started in a career in medicine.

4.) make sincere friends in Korea.  

5.) learn something about my family history.  

I will be allowed to stay in the nurse dormitory of Kwangju Christian Hospital for the first part of my trip.  I'm very nervous about fitting into my surroundings, and I am painfully aware that I will probably stick out like a sore thumb, as somebody who is not working at the hospital and is not fulfilling any basic functions.  I'm worried that, due to my tendency to spend long hours of the day on physical exercise and leisurely study, I may come off as a playboy American tourist.  Perhaps I am more worried that that is exactly what I am.  

In any event, a year is a long time to commit to a single endeavor.  As my 24th year, it should be well over 1% of my life force.  I suppose I expect that when it is over, I will look back with amazement at how fast it all seemed.  And I will wonder that there was ever a time when the lessons I learned there could not be taken for granted.  That is usually the way things go.