Can you spot his pillow? And… I wonder who the creepy man under the vase stand is…
Today I learned that the Māori word for a pillow is urunga, which also means “act of entering”, according to Te Aka dictionary.
I don’t know about you, but I found this extremely fascinating!
As some of you may know, the prologue for a rakugo story is called a makura (まくら, 枕), which also means a pillow.
Delivering a good makura is an art form.
You are allowed to talk about literally anything in it.
Some use it to explain some words or old customs that are now hard to understand.
Others use it to warm up themselves and the audience.
You can talk about what happened to you on your way to the performance.
You can make a political statement or even tell some dirty jokes if you wish (though you may lose your fans).
Some performers are so good at makura that they sometimes only do their makura without performing rakugo stories.
This is just my personal interpretation, but I’ve always thought it is called a “pillow” because it acts as the portal to guide the audience members to the dreamlike world of rakugo.
Just like a pillow is the portal to the dream world.
Like the Māori word urunga, makura is the entrance to the world of rakugo.
I once was an ear cleaning addict until my specialist ear nurse rather strongly told me to stop using the traditional Japanese ear pick.
It is usually made of bamboo, and it often has a “fluff” made of bird feather on one end.
Traditional Japanese Ear Pick
If you are into Japanese film, manga, and anime, you might have seen that a couple cleaning each other’s ears (usually a man laying his head on a woman’s lap, getting his ears cleaned by the woman).
Somehow ear cleaning is considered an intimate act, even romantic, in Japanese culture.
By the way, my western wife doesn’t think it’s romantic and just tells me to stop using it, but this is another story.
Ear-cleaning being such an important part of Japanese life (slightly exaggerated), some people even made a full-time living from cleaning people’s ears during the Edo period (1603-1867).
In fact, the profession of Ear Wax Remover (耳垢取) is recorded in Kotto Shu (骨董集) by Samuru Iwai (岩瀬醒), which was published in 1814/ 1815.
Japanese life in Edo seems to have been much more laidback than how it is now.
What are some of the strange professions from your country? Please let me know in the comment section below. I am very keen to learn about them!!!
I recently heard of a Japanese movie called “Flea Remover Samurai” (のみとり侍), which was released in 2018.
It is based on a short novel by Shigeo Komatsu by the same title (the original title uses a kanji for the word flea: 蚤とり侍).
The premise of this story is that the main character, who once was an elite samurai, resorts to the side hustle of removing fleas from cats to supplement his income.
But here’s a twist.
His realbusiness is a male courtesan.
I’d love to watch the movie sometime, but did you know that the profession of flea remover (蚤取り屋) actually existed during the Edo period (1603-1867)?
As far as I know, they were not covert courtesans, though!
This strange occupation is sometimes introduced in rakugo, usually in a makura or a free talk before commencing rakugo.
According to what I have heard in rakugo, they wrapped up a flea-infested cat with wolf’s fur, which was warmer and more comfortable than the cat’s, so that the fleas abandoned the cat for the wolf’s fur.
It is said that they made enough money to make a full-time living.
What are some of the strange professions from your country? Please let me know in the comment section below. I am very keen to learn about them!!!
If you have ever visited Japan, you probably know that we are quite mellow people.
Those dead quiet trains make us look well-behaved and civilised.
Yet, when it comes to festivities, we go overboard andknow how to celebrate (not in the Latin American, Spanish, or Italian ways, but hey…).
Celebrations have kept Japanese civilisation going since time immemorial.
You may have heard of a festival called Onbashira Festival (御柱祭) where 16 fir trees (16-19 metre-long each) are pulled downhill by a group of people.
Every year, many people get injured and sometimes even die… but they still keep going regardless as festivals are crucial in Japanese life.
According to Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962), a renowned scholar and folklorist, all our activities can be divided into two categories: Ke (け; 褻) and Hare(はれ; 晴れ; 霽れ).
Ke refers to the ordinary.
Things or activities that you do every day like family life, work, school, etc.
Hare, on the other hand, refers to things and activities that are out of the ordinary such as festivals and rituals like wedding, coming of age, and Shichi-Go-San.
It is the balance between these two kinds of activities that have maintained Japanese life.
Even though many people assume that ke is from the word kegare (impurities), but this is not the case.
The concept of kegare was only added in the 1970’s to this hare-and-ke dichotomy.
Working hard on the ordinary (ke) and looking forward to the out-of-the-ordinary (hare) is how Japanese have coped with our rather stressful social life.
One of the most traumatic experiences in my life was when I was asked to MC at my sister’s wedding.
Sure, it was a happy occasion, but my mind was constantly on the edge as I was not allowed to utter a single word that was not auspicious.
At a Japanese wedding, you cannot use words such as “break”, “end”, “separate”, or any expression that implies that the newly-formed relationship would not last… even if it is used in a completely different context.
At the end of a wedding, we cannot say “This is the end of the ceremony.” but instead we say “we open the ceremony.” (お開きにいたします。)
We have to be careful with the use of numbers as well.
Numbers 4 and 9 are considered unlucky in Japanese culture.
4 (四; Shi) rhymes with “death (死; Shi)”, and 9 (九; Ku) rhymes with “hardship” (苦; Ku).
Even numbers (2, 4, 6…) are considered less lucky compared to odd numbers (1, 3, 5…) as they can be split in half.
If you pay attention to the number of letters used in kabuki/ bunraku titles, nearly all of them are in odd numbers with a very few exceptions (here is the list of kabuki titles in Japanese if you are interested).
For example, the kabuki/ bunraku play “Hirakana Seisuiki” is written “ひらかな盛衰記” even though it would normally be written “平仮名盛衰記” as the former has 7 letters and the latter has 8.
They really made sure that the number of letters used are in an odd number.
Now…
Me being me, I did accidentally use a few inappropriate expressions at my sister’s wedding, but she is still with her childhood sweetheart, so really…
[This article turned out really long, so if you are interested in what the picture above is all about, please scroll straight down to the bottom.]
I recently watched a beautiful movie called “Ainu Mosir”, which is on Netflix and I thoroughly recommend to learn how the Ainu people live in modern day Japan.
For those who are not familiar with this subject, the Ainu are one of the indigenous people of Japan who mainly lived/ live in the Tohoku region (the northern part of Honshu, the main island of Japan), Hokkaido, and Russian territories (Sakhalin, Kamchatka Peninsula, etc).
Wajin (和人: Ethnic Japanese) and the Ainu began having conflicts over land, natural resources, etc. a long time ago, and many Ainu were already under the Japanese rule during the Muromachi period (1336-1573).
We don’t know exactly how many Ainu people live in Japan now, but the government estimates there are around 25,000 in the entire Japan. The unofficial estimates reach over 200,000.
Most of them live in Hokkaido. According to the Ainu Association of Hokkaido, there were 16,786 Ainu people in Hokkaido in 2013.
As I grew up in the greater Tokyo area, I met only one person with an Ainu ancestry in my entire life.
He said he had an Ainu ancestry but identified himself as Japanese, not Ainu.
Many Ainu people have intermarried to ethnic Japanese, and from what I know many live as ethnic Japanese like him.
There have been discrimination towards the Ainu for centuries, so his choice was understandable to avoid unnecessary disadvantages.
I guess I am going quite sidetracked (I should be talking about the movie really…), but, dear readers, Japan has never been “mono-racial” as some of us insist.
Along with the Ainu, there are Ryukuans (Okinawans), and there had been Emishi, Kumaso, Hayato to name a few before the Wajin/ Yamato finally united Japan.
There have been intermarriages.
We have an expression “Akita Bijin” (Akita Beauty) to describe women from Akita prefecture. It’s generally said that women from Akita are beautiful (I don’t know about the men from there… 😅)
I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I wonder if this is due to the intermarriages between Yamato and Ainu/ Emishi.
Iomante
Now…
Getting back to the movie, it is the first time for me to watch an Ainu movie in my life.
I am really happy to see that the Ainu culture has been gaining a lot of attention from the mainstream Japanese media due to the successful manga/ anime series “Golden Kamuy” (though I am also aware that some people have pointed out that there are cultural appropriations in the series).
Ainu Mosir really shows what it is like to be Ainu today.
Their identity, every day life, cultural survival and struggle.
The story revolves around an Ainu ceremony called Iomante, which has NOT been performed since 1975 in the Akan Lake community.
In this traditional custom, a brown bear is raised with love and care, but given as a sacrifice at the end of the ceremony.
This concept would probably put off a lot of animal lovers (like myself), but we probably need to see beyond the surface of this ceremony.
It is a reminder of the sacredness of life and thanksgiving to the nature.
In fact, the Ainu have always protected the nature and would’ve never considered profiting from exploiting the nature, say, by mass dairy farming like we do in “developed” countries.
You can watch the movie and decide what it is about.
Now…
The reason why I posted the picture from the film at the beginning was because I was really surprised that the actor was wearing a jacket from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, a Māori-run university here in New Zealand.
I had known that the Ainu people visit New Zealand to learn from the successful cultural preservation/ language revitalization strategies of the Māori people, and I guess he acquired it through one of their exchange programmes.
I was really moved to see the connection between the Ainu and the Māori in such an unexpected place!
English Rakugo NZ 