Tag: English Rakugo

Why Fishers in Oiso Do Not Catch Octopuses?

On By Kanariya EishiIn Educational, Japanese Culture, Japanese History, Random, TriviaLeave a comment

As I promised in the previous post, here is a very fascinating folklore from my hometown, Oiso.

In Oiso, fishers traditionally do not catch octopuses, and this is a folklore that explains why:

During the reign of Emperor Ōjin (270- 310), there lived a fisherman called Takonojo (蛸之丞; たこのじょう). Tako, by the way, means an octopus.

One day, when he was fishing as usual, he saw something glittering, drifting in the waves.

Lo and behold, it was a small octopus, and it began approaching Takanojo’s fishing boat!

The octopus crawled up onto his boat and suddenly began transforming into a shining statue of a Thousand-Armed Kannon (千手観音), which is said to be a manifestation of the Buddha’s compassion.

This is not the actual statue, but here is an example of a Senju Kannon. This Kannon is from the 14th century (Nanbokucho period/ early Muromachi period) and owned by the Tokyo National Museum.

This statue was first enshrined at Koma Temple (高麗寺) but moved to Keikakuin Temple.

Because of this legend, real Oiso fishers do not catch octopuses.

What puzzles me, though, is that Buddhism reached Japan in 538AD, which was well after this miraculous incident happened in my hometown.

Anyhow, no octopus carpaccio for us Oiso-ites 😁

Photo Credits

Senju Kannon

Tokyo National Museum, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Home Sweet Home Oiso No.1

On By Kanariya EishiIn Japanese Culture, Japanese History, Life, Random, Trivia3 Comments

It’s 4:30AM.

Someone is making loud scraping noise right outside of our bedroom.

I peek through the curtains…

It’s a surfer, busily applying wax on his surfboard.

Then, I realise- I’m back home in Oiso!

My hometown, which is located 70km to the west of Tokyo, perhaps is one of the Top 10 destinations for the Japanese surfers.

The number of surfers per capita is abnormally high, and in summer the main beach literally gets filled with local and visiting surfers. It’s like the Shibuya Station crossing if you know what I mean.

Naturally, the town is full of the outdoor types, hippies, creatives and plain weirdos (like myself).

It’s a historical town, too, that once hosted 2 ex-Japanese Prime Ministers and 6 other PM’s who had their holiday homes there.

Some of you history-buffs may know that it was one of The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō during the Edo Period (1603-1867).

The Japanese literary giant, Toson Shimazaki, lived in Oiso, too, and Haruki Murakami still has one of his houses there (he’s rich).

I realised that I am describing it like a utopia, but it’s really a sleepy little town with a population of around 30,000 people. Most Japanese would just bypass right through unless they are surfers or history fans.

But to me this is my home, and I have a lot to talk about!

In the next few blog entries, I will be sharing about this town that only the locals know, including its local legends and folklores.

My back and shoulder are not doing great at the moment, so I’ll stop here for now.

See you next time!

Book Review: Fallen Words

On By Kanariya EishiIn Book ReviewLeave a comment

As I hold a copy of Fallen Words by Kristine Ohkubo, I can’t help but feel that a new era of rakugo history has arrived!

You may or may not realise the connotation of the publication of a book like this, but it is truly revolutionary and paradigm-shifting!

For the first time ever since the conception of rakugo about 400 years ago, a non-Japanese rakugo script writer in the English language has finally emerged.

There have been a few foreign-born performers who have translated, written, and performed rakugo in English and other languages, but as far as I know, she is the first professional writer who has published rakugo scripts in English.

This book is a compilation of 5 new and original rakugo scripts on a variety of themes.

All the scripts display her deep understanding of this art, and it was especially delightful to read the stories called A Child’s Coins that was inspired by Grimms’ Fairy Tales and Börte’s Kidnapping, which is based on the life of Börte, who was the first wife of Genghis Khan.

It is a must-read for all rakugo fans, and you can purchase your copy on the author’s website.

By the way, the tenugui (Japanese traditional towel) in the background of the photo above is from my hometown, Oiso. The design is based on a famous folklore about a divine octopus, which I will share sometime when I write more about my recent trip to Japan.

The puffer fish rock is a lucky charm from Oiso 😊

Surprisingly Elegant, Narita

On By Kanariya EishiIn Japanese Culture, Japanese HistoryLeave a comment

『奥様が座席から落ちないよう、奥様のシートベルトをしっかりとお締めください。』
“Okusamaga zasekikara ochinaiyou, okusamano seatbelt wo shikkarito oshimekudasai.”

…was the inflight announcement by a Kiwi cabin crew, who was excellent at Japanese.

His Japanese was literally perfect… except for one word.

In Japanese, “okusama” is a wife, and “okosama” is a child, so instead of saying, “Please fasten your child’s seatbelt so that they do not fall off their seats,” he encouraged us to fasten our wives’ seatbelts- which I did.

Completely unrelated reminiscence from the flight, but yes… Narita!

As you know, Narita International Airport is Japan’s main international airport, and it’s often referred as “Tokyo/ Narita Airport” because its original name was “New Tokyo International Airport”.

This is such a deceptive marketing.

The airport is NOT in Tokyo… AT ALL.

It is in Chiba Prefecture and takes about 80 minutes by an express train to get to Central Tokyo.

It takes at least 3hrs to travel to my hometown in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Before children, we used to travel straight to my hometown after the 11hr flight from New Zealand, but this is not realistic anymore.

So… we decided to stay at an accommodation nearby for the night to be refreshed before the train journey to my hometown the next day.

This place was only 1.5km from the airport, and the friendly hosts even came to pick us up at the airport!

They have 5-star reviews from over 279 reviewers as of today- no wonder their service was excellent!

But what surprised me the most was how quiet this entire suburb was.

Unlike my preconception, it was very rural and spacious. I couldn’t believe the airport was less than 2km away!

As I explored the community, I realised that this area was full of history. I just hadn’t realised this as I’d always bypassed right through this area to go overseas/ home before this.

The host told me a lot of stories about the Narita area, and now I’m planning to explore properly next time.

During the morning walk, we discovered a historical farmhouse nearby that had belonged to an American farmer in the Meiji period (1868- 1912) then to the Imperial family. The exterior of the house can be seen in the photo above.

You can probably see that both the Japanese and the western elements are mingling together in the design of the house. We describe this sort of cultural remix as “Wa-Yo-Set-Chu” (わようせっちゅう 和洋折衷).

Perhaps, I’m a good example of a Wa-Yo-Set-Chu person.

Come to think of it, my graduation theatre project at an American university was called “Wa-Yo-Set-Chu with the Mad Japanese Man”… seriously.

Konnyaku Debate and Frozen Shoulder

On By Kanariya EishiIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Konnyaku (蒟蒻, こんにゃく) is one of the ingredients for Japanese cooking. It’s made from “Konnyaku Potato” or konjac roots in English.

It’s quite chewy like really firm jelly and almost always used for savoury cooking, but it could also be used for fruit-flavoured confectionery like “konnyaku jelly”.

A few months ago, I started learning a rakugo story called “Konnyaku Debate”.

In this story, the owner of a konnyaku store, Rokubei, pretends to be a zen master to beat a travelling monk in a “zen debate”.

In the olden days in Japan, the travelling zen monks challenged the head priests of temples in zen debates, and if the head priests lost, they were kicked out of the temples- it was like a serious quiz battle.

So, how would a konnyaku maker try to win a debate?

By pretending that he could not hear nor speak.

Therefore, the debate was conducted in gestures instead…

I’ll save the punchline, but you know who the winner of the debate was.

As you can see, this story involves a lot of physical movements unlike most other stories in rakugo, sometimes forming a large circle with arms over the head.

Life is ironic.

When I just started learning this kind of unusual story, I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder…

It is literally impossible to do some of the movements at the moment, thanks to my unmovable (and painful) left shoulder!

Unfortunately, all of the painkillers I have tried have side-effects on me like knocking me out at noon for a nap and can’t stay awake past 9:00 PM.

So I couldn’t use any strong painkillers, which prevented me from writing this blog for a while.

Fortunately, my shoulder seems to be coping well today, so I thought of saying hi to you all.

If you can, don’t get old.

Photo Credit

toyohara

Online Rakugo Project Starting Next Week!

On By Kanariya EishiIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As some of you may know, I spent the last two months recovering from a major-ish disc injury.

I am not writing this to get your sympathy, but I am just telling you why my “Online Rakugo Project” did not happen for so long.

Having said that, I am glad to announce that I have finally filmed two of my rakugo stories, and I will start posting them from next week!

In this Creative New Zealand funded project, I will post 10 very different rakugo stories on my online platforms, mainly YouTube and possibly Vimeo and IGTV.

If you still haven’t, please follow my YouTube channel as it will be an incentive for me to keep posting videos after this project is over. Please share about it with your friends and family as well.

I was initially not too sure whether to post videos as it is a consensus among rakugo fans that rakugo would not work in the video format. It is much more suited for the audio media.

Also, it would inevitably expose my limited skills and make it open to criticisms from rakugo purists (please be easy on me!), but I decided to post them for the following reasons:

  • I have been requested by quite a few people over the last few years. If that’s what my supporters want, I will provide! I perform rakugo for those people, not for critics 😃
  • As the world faces the Covid crisis, I want to cheer up people through my project, even if it is for a slightly bemused chuckle. Throughout my childhood, my peers always told me I had a “bored-sounding voice” (つまらなそうな声) but had a funny face. I probably should make the most of my “gifted” face.
  • It will be a good record of how primitive my skills were, looking back 10 years from now.

Finally, I was torn whether to have a small live audience for recordings or not. It is now possible to have an audience in NZ, and it is so much easier to perform in front of one. But I decided to talk straight to the camera instead, in solidarity with people in countries that are still majorly affected by the virus.

The first story “Chotan” is a little unusual pick to kick off the project with, but I couldn’t resist as I like performing quirky stories. It is translated as “Long-Tempered vs. Short-Tempered”, and it is a story about two best friends, one being extremely laidback, the other being quick-tempered. Hope you will enjoy it!

I will post it sometime next week!