Tip #1 to begin preparations for a journey where the signposts are unfamiliar, where the new worlds you see reveal elements in yourself that you never knew existed.
Sunday, November 20, 2005 Like footprints along a lifetime journey, the people we meet leave us with enduring, sometimes long lived stirring impressions that open doors to worlds we never imagined. Each person I met in Japan could be a chapter in this little book. That’s it! I’d like to write a book about each person I met.
These are the remarkable people I met once upon a time in Japan. In gratitude the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund which sponsored my first trip to Japan.
Miyuki Black Belt
Samurai In The Classroom
Two hundred American educators unbuckle their seatbelts. We’ve just heard the signal clearing us to pull our bags from the overhead bins. After 11 hours in the air we’ve finally landed at Narita International Airport for a 20 day introduction to the people, schools, and culture of Japan.
My first trip to Japan (in 2005) was under the auspices of The Japan Fulbright Foundation*. While the itinerary of our experience was built on the precision of the Japanese mind, it was also on that trip I had the honor and pleasure of a home stay with Miyuki Hadano and her family. What an extraordinary way to learn about Japan! My Home Stay with the Hadano family ignited my desire to return to Japan to view the land my grandparents walked in Niimi Okayama before they left for California in 1906. Each day added more fuel to that fire.
*(more about Japan Fulbright later).
In 2006 The Japanese Ministry of Education asked me to engineer an International Student Science Exchange asking me to select 5 top high school science students for a 10 day trip to Nara Japan where they would conduct biological studies with students from one of Japan’s Super Science High Schools. Together we took a train to the coast to study Marine Biology on the Sea of Japan. Before long we were looking at the last few days of our science expedition. Along the way my students became interested in taking home an iconic souvenir of their visit, a samurai sword. I feared their sword quest was for the wrong reason, imagining the boys in a mock samurai sword fight in the airport terminal. I agreed to their souvenir sword idea only if they conscientiously read Bushido: the codes, philosophies, practices, and principles of the samurai culture which conveniently I had downloaded onto my smart phone.
Coming to the door, Akiko glanced at my students grouped on the street as I explained their quest. A glimmer in her eye shown as she stepped out the door: “Let me take you to the Sword maker’s house.” In the 15 minute walk Akiko came to know my students but it was late and the sword-maker was not home. Walking us back, she learned that our last stop the next day was the Nara National Museum. She split off from the kids to ask to join us. She’d taken so much time out of her busy day for a group of strangers, what kindness. Akiko, unknown to me, would be a turning point opening unimagined doors each time I returned to Japan.
Though in the busy-ness of pre retirement life, those two experiences set a-stir in me the gravitational energy for my book, Samurai In The Classroom. It would take nearly a decade but its early elements: 1) Akiko Murakami, 2) the samurai in my family history, and the 3) kindness of the Japanese people would
Shortening the story...
Years later Akiko and her American fiancee visited and spent a few days as my guests on her first trip to the US. She came to mind later as I planned my 2015 Ancestral Trip* to Japan. I sent Akiko an email asking if she knew how I might start my Japan journey with a home stay. I dreamed that I could find a homestay headquarters in Nara and from their take shorter trips to Okayama and Hiroshima.
In 2015, Yoshio Murakami had arranged for our small group to visit with Gassan Sadatoshi in 2015. I felt honored and humbled to chat with him through the Akiko my friend and interpreter. Samurai In the Classroom was inspired at this meeting. “Swords are not for fighting.” --Gassan Sadatoshi told us during that wonderful visit. His words came as an epiphany that samurai swords were now objets d’art.
Over tea and pastries we talked into the afternoon. As we sat he presented a beautiful short sword he had recently finished. I told Gassan about Bushido in the Classroom, my thinking as a teacher in California public schools. Samurai tenets I believe are the fabric of my classroom teaching beyond science content: of honor, serenity, compassion, calmness, fairness, justice, sincerity, responsibility, frugality, politeness, modesty, loyalty, harmony, tranquility, courage, respect, honesty and duty. I wish my students to aspire to these attributes and I embed them in the teaching in my classes.
The concept of Bushido in the Classroom had precipitated in the 10 years following my Japan Fulbright trips in 2005/2006 and the idea sparked an interest in Sadatoshi. I shared my dream of writing Modern Bushido in the Classroom, as a curriculum project. For most people the words Bushido and Samurai conjure war and violence, but I’ve come to realize that these are mostly media images that sell movies. The percentage of time Samurai historically spent in battle was less than 5% of their time according to one estimate. The rest of the time a Samurai’s life was consumed with family, calligraphy, art, poetry and leading by example the tenets of honor, respect, courage, honesty, sincerity and compassion.
[][][][][][] edit The Gassan Tradition by Morihiro Ogawa.
Of all the books I’ve encountered about Japan, I treasure this one the most because it was a gift from the Master Swordsmith Gassan Sadatoshi.
Sadatoshi’s father Gassan Sadaichi holds the title Living National Treasure: Important Intangible Cultural Property.
Sadaichi-san was making swords when General Douglas McArthur, commander of the Allied Occupational Forces ruled that: “the Japanese sword, as lethal weapons, be prohibited not only in production but also in individual possession.” Thus began a very dark age in the art of making Japanese swords. The prohibition deprived them a means of living and was finally repealed in 1954 after 9 years but not before large numbers of craftsmen went out of business or were forced into crafting kitchen knives. By the time the Japanese economy turned upward in 1960 Japanese swords gained increasing interest as art objects.
In 2016, Patricia found the Samurai Museum in Shinjuku was only a 3 minute walk from our home base at the APA Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower. A college student signed us in and began a tour through the museum’s many rooms and displays. He asked: “What brings you to the Samurai Museum?” When I replied that I had just met my Kobayakawa cousins he suddenly braked, immediately excused himself saying he’d be back shortly. Instead, the owner of the museum rushed in, introduced himself saying he’d personally conduct the rest of the tour. At the next exhibit he began with some excitement by saying that the Kobayakawa’s were a very large Samurai clan in the history of Japan.
Much later as we exited I had an epiphany: “This is how to conduct a VIP museum tour.” But this one felt intimate and personal. So Jason, Leandra, Samantha and Cameron, when you go to the Shinjuku Samurai Museum, make a reservation, let them know in the Remarks section that you are a Kobayakawa descendent and that your father’s, grandfather’s, grandfather Jouemon Kobayakawa 小早川城右衛門, was samurai.
Click HERE for reservation. You’ll get a VIS Very Important Samurai VIP tour.
小早川承太郎 Jotaro Kobayakawa, my grandfather
小早川喜多郎 Kitaro Kobayakawa, my great grandfather
小早川城右衛門 Jouemon Kobayakawa, great great grandfather samurai
Records from Sakai Kodo, priest at ___ Temple near Niimi
Web Japan: A Gateway for Anything About Japan from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Interesting and very reliable information.
Kids Web Japan: A very cool site about Japan for kids.
Japan Video Topics: The charm of Japan on video.
NHK World is the international service of Japan’s public media group NHK providing the latest information on Japan and Asia through television, radio and online to a global audience.
Japanology+Plus Fresh insights into Japan. Well made video stories behind Japanese life and culture through the eyes of Peter Barakan, a 45-year resident and watcher of Japan. For example: Deer love to eat Wasabe, they just gobble it all up, the entire plant! My “To See” list: Tokyo Rooftops, Seaweed in Japan, Kamishibai Paper Theater,
Japan Talk by John Spacey (since 2002). John has travelled to all 47 prefectures in Japan.
I'm currently vetting:
GaijinPot The Essential Guide for those who want to live, work and travel in Japan.
餅 Mochi
Mochi: The Traditional Japanese Dessert
Meet Masuo Nakatani, perhaps the fastest mochi pounder in Japan.
But you don’t have to go all the way to Japan for Mochi. In LA’s Little Tokyo, Fugetsu-Do, since 1903, the oldest Mochi confectionary in the United States.
If you’re in Southern California, make a "Get ready for Japan" day of it. Take the Metro Light Rail to Little Tokyo/Arts District station. Visit Chado #1, a few minutes away is my favorite Tea Room in LA, the Japanese American National Museum #2 is next door, Suehiro Cafe #3, a favorite LA late night eatery for my daughter Leandra while she was going to UCLA, Fugetsu-Do #4, Mochi since 1903, and Marukai Market #5, where you can take home a Nabe Pot and shop the grocery store for all it's ingredients!
Apart from my Japan Fulbright experience in 2005 I had read little about Japan until many years later when Patricia Vining brought this book to me from her book club:
Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson
We decided to read this book to one another whence it came clear to each of us a growing calling to visit the places and come to know the people Mr. Ferguson wrote of in it’s passages.
Within 3 weeks of meeting her I left for Okayama on a quest to find my mother’s cousins and walk the land my grandparents Jotaro and Taka Ishihara Kobayakawa walked before coming to America.
Returning from Japan we continued our reading enchantment with the people populating Ferguson’s travel as he followed the Sakura Zensen. Here are a few of his words to better tell the story.
To quote from the author's encounter with Mr. Nak:
"Every day I die.
And every morning I am reborn.
Everyday is a lifetime."
The cherry blossoms sweep north each spring, a gentle wave, the Sakura Zensen.
“Every spring, a wave of flowers sweeps across Japan. It begins in Okinawa and rolls from island to island to mainland. It hits at Cape Sara and moves north, cresting as it goes, to the very tip of distant Hokkaido, where it scatters and falls into a northern sea.”
They call it Sakura Zensen – the “Cherry Blossom Front” and it’s advance is tracked with the seriousness usually reserved for armies on the march. Progress reports are given nightly on the news and elaborate maps are prepared to show the front lines, the back lines, and the percentage of blossoms in anyone area. “In Shimabara today they reported 37% full blossoms”
Nowhere on earth does spring arrive as dramatically as it does in Japan. When the cherry blossoms hit, they hit like a hurricane. Gnarled cherry trees, ignored for most of the year, burst into bloom like fountains turned suddenly on.
The coming of the Sakura marks the end of winter. It also marks the start of the school year and the closing of the business cycle. It is a hectic time, a time of final exams and productivity reports. Budgets have to be finalized, account settled, work finished. Karōshi, (death by overwork)
So enchanted with it people, Patricia and I are planning our fourth trip to Japan, this time to see how the fall season is celebrated among it's nature loving people.
In the U.S. there were the 18th century railroad robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker.
Then there was Yazaemon Haga, the vegetable wax baron of Uchiko. In Japan at the time, wax was gold. Uchiko was once a prosperous center of wax and paper production. Merchants built mansions from the flowing wealth of wax made from Haze (wax tree) berries. Yazaemon built a home for his daughter in 1894 that now contains fascinating exhibits of Edo-period wax making.
Japanese hollow paper wick candles draft air up the candle stick making for a clean burning flame without toxic black soot common to petroleum candles. The toxic soot from petroleum candles would damage the fine gold leaf of Japanese temples so haze berry wax candles are the mainstay in Japanese temples.
Click HERE for Wax Berry Tree details
Click HERE to see 18th Century Uchiko https://youtu.be/ftnrB9Mm4U0
At the Uchiko-za Kabuki Theater, you pass through trap doors and hidden entrances. It’s fame stems from an open Taiko-drum tower, boxed seating, broad ramp leading to the stage and the showpiece wooden, and remarkably engineered hand cranked revolving stage.
