The opening of The Pillow Book records what Sei Shonagon likes about each season:

In Spring it is the dawn. As gradually the hills come to light, their outline is faintly dyed with red, and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.

In Summer, the nights. Not only when the moon shines down, but on dark nights, too, when the fireflies flit to and fro, and even when it rains, how beautiful it is!

In Autumn, the evenings – evenings when one is moved to see the brilliant sun sink close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; or more charming still, a file of wild geese, tiny in the distant sky. And when finally the sun has set, how moving to hear the sound of the wind and the cry of the insects!

In Winter, the early morning. Beautiful indeed when it has snowed during the night, but delightful, too, when the ground is white with frost; or even when it is simply very cold and the attendants hurry from room to room, stirring up the fires and bringing charcoal, how well it fits the season’s mood.

The Cranky Ladies Anthology fundraising campaign is running until April 1 on Pozible. The campaign has already been successfully funded, but is looking for stretch goals. I’m one of the potential contributors and pitched a story idea about Sei Shonagon. She wrote The Pillow Book, a journal about her life at court in the Heian period.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/cranky-ladies-resurrected-from-history-in-planned-anthology-20140322-35a9i.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-07/women-raise-funds-for-cranky-ladies-of-history-anthology/5305846

Shonagon served as a lady-in-waiting for the Empress Teishi. The Pillow Book was written around 1000 AD and is one of the classics of Japanese literature. The book is full of lists of things that Shonagon likes and dislikes. Some of the lists aren’t that interesting, but others are fascinating for what they reveal about life in a different era. The real joy in the book comes from Shonagon’s personality – she was an erudite, opinionated woman that didn’t suffer fools and was known for intimidating the men of court with her knowledge of poetry.

Annoying things

A man you’ve had to conceal in some unsatisfactory hiding place, who then begins to snore. Or, a man comes on a secret visit wearing a particularly tall lacquered cap, and of course as he scuttles in hastily he manages to knock it against something with a loud bump.

People who go about in a carriage with squeaky wheels are very irritating. It makes you wonder irately if they’re deaf. And if you find yourself riding in one you’ve borrowed from someone, you even begin to loathe its owner.

Things that make you feel cheerful

An ox carriage crammed with ladies on their way back from some viewing expedition, sleeves tumbling out in profusion, with a great crowd of carriage boys running with it, skilfully guiding the ox as the carriage hurtles along.

A particularly eloquent Yin-yang master whom you’ve called in goes down to the dry river-bed and proceeds to rid you of a curse.

Unsuitable things

Snow falling on the houses of the common people. Moonlight shining into such houses is also a great shame.

An ageing woman who is pregnant. It’s disgusting when she has a young husband, and even worse when she’s in a temper over his going off to another woman.

An old man who’s nodding off, or a heavily bearded old fellow popping nuts into his mouth.

A toothless crone screwing up her face as she eats sour plums.

A commoner wearing crimson skirted trousers. These days you seem to see them wherever you look.

Refined  and elegant things

A girl’s over-robe of white on white over pale violet-grey.

The eggs of the spot-billed duck.

Shaved ice with a sweet syrup, served in a shiny new metal bowl.

A crystal rosary.

Wisteria flowers.

Snow on plum blossoms.

An adorable little child eating strawberries.

Regrettable things

A like-minded company of women or men sets off together from the palace to visit a temple or some other place. The sleeves spill tastefully out from their carriage, scrupulously, even overscrupulously, arranged – so much so that someone of taste might find the effect if anything a bit repellant – and then, to everyone’s deep chagrin, you don’t meet with a single horse or carriage bearing anyone who could appreciate the effect. It’s quite extraordinary how, from sheer vexation, you find yourself longing for even some passing commoner to have the sensibility to appreciate the scene, and later spread the word.

Worthless things

Someone who’s both ugly and unpleasant.

Clothing starch that’s gone bad – I know an awful lot of people hate this, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t note it here.

And why should I avoid mentioning here the fire tongs that are burned in the post-funeral fire After all, these are things that exist in the world. I never intended this book to be seen by others, so I’ve written whatever came into my mind, without worrying about whether people would find it strange or unpleasant.

Shonagon also had plenty of opinions on how things should be.

A priest who gives a sermon should be handsome. After all, you’re most aware of the profundity of his teaching if you’re gazing at his face as he speaks. If your eyes drift elsewhere you tend to forget what you’ve just heard, so an unattractive face has the effect of making you feel quite sinful.

Cats should be completely black except for the belly, which should be very white.

To be properly impressive and delightful, a page boy should be small, and have very neat hair, with a slight glint to it, and a crisp hairline. He should have a pretty voice, and speak decorously and politely.

Young people and babies should be plump. Provincial Governors and suchlike people who have some authority should also be on the portly side.

Shonagon had definite views on how her lovers should behave.

It’s delightful to see someone who’s a great ladies’ man, and is pursuing numerous love affairs, arriving home at dawn from who knows what night-time tryst. Sleepy though you can see he feels, he nevertheless sits down and draws the inkstone up to write his next-morning letter to her. See how carefully he grinds the ink to a fine consistency, and how tenderly he bends to the task of writing, not merely dashing off whatever springs to mind but putting himself heart and soul into what he writes.

It’s very unseemly for a man who’s visiting a gentlewoman to eat while with her. Any lady who provides him with food is also despicable…Personally, even if a man is terribly drunk and ends up having to spend the night, I won’t feed him so much as a dish of warmed-over rice. It wouldn’t matter to me if he decided I was heartless and unfeeling, and never called again.

Shonagon had a dim view of commoners and those not quite as smart as her.

It’s terribly depressing to discover some quite worthless person blithely reciting a poem that you yourself had particularly liked and carefully copied down in a notebook.

Still, I thought, it’s no good being bashful and hesitant when it comes to poetic composition. Where does that ever get you?

I really can’t understand people who get angry when they hear gossip about others. How can you not discuss other people Apart from your own concerns, what can be more beguiling to talk about and criticize than other people But sadly, it seems it’s wrong to discuss others, not to mention the fact that the person who’s talked about can get to hear of it and be outraged. Of course if it’s someone you have a close bond with, you pause and consider the pain you might cause, and choose to keep your criticism to yourself – though if it weren’t someone close to you you’d no doubt go ahead and say it, and have a laugh at their expense.

Little is known about Shonagon’s life outside of what she recorded in The Pillow Book. The Empress Teishi lost influence in court and it’s not certain what happened to Shonagon after that. She may have become a Buddhist nun or may have married a provincial governor.

Everything that cries in the night is wonderful. With the exception, of course, of babies.

http://www.pozible.com/project/178572

Cranky Ladies of History Blog Tour

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld

I’ve been reading about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the allied occupation of Japan.

There is a big divide in knowledge between Western and Asian history.  Most Australians know relatively little about Japanese or Chinese history (other than what they might have gleaned from watching the occasional samurai movie).

When I lived in Japan, I met a few well-educated Japanese in their 20s and 30s that hadn’t even been aware Australia and Japan had fought against each other.  I did talk to one student whose grandfather had been in one of the submarines that had been involved in the attack on Sydney Harbor.

Japan is often criticised by its neighbours (particularly China and Korea) for what they omit from their history textbooks.

Of course most countries have a tendenancy to gloss over the less than pleasant incidents from their past.  The previous Australian prime minister objected to what he saw as the “black armband view of history.”

A couple of years ago a Japanese TV station asked viewers to vote on their favorite figures from history.  Although it was possible to nominate anyone from history, the list ended up being heavily weighted towards Japanese.

Here is the list of the top 10 favorite historical figures chosen.  I’m guessing that many will be unfamiliar to non-Japanese.  It’s also interesting to see which Westerners turned up on the list.

10 Hijikata Toshizo
09 Helen Keller
08 Mother Teresa
07 Noguchi Hideyo
06 Tokugawa Ieyasu
05 Matsushita Konosuke
04 Hideyoshi Toyotomi
03 Thomas Edison
02 Sakamoto Ryoma
01 Oda Nobunaga

The full list is at
http://www.japanprobe.com/2006/05/08/japanese-rank-their-favorite-100-historical-figures/

Increasingly the majority of people are reliant on the news media to shape their view of the world.
Even though we get more news from all over the world than ever before, the majority of news is negative and what is not reported is often more interesting.
Sometimes what is left out of news stories can make a big difference.

In Australia there was a recent incident where some of the commercial TV stations showed footage of a man of Middle Eastern background shouting and swearing at a news cameraman outside a court.  The man’s son had been charged with riot offences.

Australia is fortunate to have Media Watch, an excellent program that looks at the stories behind the news stories.  They showed the unedited footage of the incident that showed the man repeatedly politely pleading for the news cameras to leave him and his son alone.  They crossed the street to avoid the cameras and were followed.  Then the cameraman swears at the man and calls him a terrorist, provoking the outburst that was then shown on TV.

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/outrage-over-channel-nine-cameramans-terrorist-slur-20100413-s62i.html

Another recent example of the sharing of knowledge came from the Royal Commission currently being held into the Victorian bushfires (173 people were killed on February 7 last year in Victoria).

Christine Nixon, the then police commissioner, who was responsible for coordinating the emergency response (although in reality it is the chief fire officers that are responsible) left the emergency center just when the fires were at their worst and went out for dinner.

Counsel for the commission questioned her statements to the media:

“It’s just that when you did a media interview on 3AW last week, you told Mr Mitchell that you had dinner for an hour and ‘people knew where I was’. Who knew where you were#8221;

Ms Nixon: “I certainly knew where I was and I didn’t see any point in telling anybody. What I mean by that was – they knew that they could contact me.”

http://www.smh.com.au/national/police-commissioner-ate-while-victoria-burned-20100414-se5k.html

The majority of my friends live in different countries and Facebook is one way to keep in touch with them.  Of course a lot of the posts on Facebook are low in terms of information quality.  I really don’t need to know what people are eating for lunch or that they’re enjoying a coffee right now.

A friend recently quit Facebook giving the reason that when she met up with friends in Melbourne there wasn’t as much to talk about because everyone had already heard all of her news and seen the photos via Facebook.

In terms of information filters, I’ve deliberately isolated myself from sporting news.  Melbourne has one of the highest rates of attendance at sporting events in the world and is the home of AFL (Australian rules football).

When I visited my parents on the Gold Coast at Easter, they were talking about their football tipping results.  I hadn’t been aware the football season had already started.  My parents were surprised that I could live in Melbourne and be unaware the football season had started.  They wanted to know why my workmates weren’t talking about the sporting results.

My immediate workmates are Malaysian, Chinese and Iranian, none of whom spends a great deal of time talking about football results.  (At least not in my presence).

A few years ago I had an article published about unusual things from Melbourne’s history.  (For example, when Melbourne was settled in 1835, it was first called Bearbrass).  Even though I was born in Melbourne and have lived most of my life here (apart from a few years in Japan and a couple of years travelling), I recently learned something vitally important about Melbourne.

I overhead a conversation on the train and discovered that Melbourne is home to one of the world’s most prestigious circus training courses.

Not far from where I live is the campus of The National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) – Australia’s centre of excellence in contemporary circus.

If you’re tempted to run away to join the circus, you can sign up for a 3 year Bachelor of Circus Arts.

http://www.nica.com.au/

A Japanese clown that will be instantly recognisable to anyone from Osaka.

Head collecting is a tradition found throughout samurai history… When a battle was won, the taking, recording and presentation of these ghastly trophies was as systematic and as thorough as the battlefield situation allowed.  In an ideal situation of a clear-cut victory the heads would be viewed in a highly ritualized ceremony by the victorious daimyo, who was seated on a camp stool and surrounded by his closest retainers.  He would not wish to be presented with a bloody trophy, so the heads were carefully cleaned and dressed, the hair combed, and the resulting trophy made presentable by cosmetics.  They would then be mounted on a spiked wooden board with labels for identification.
This routine was a task traditionally done by women, and there exists a rare eyewitness account that was recorded by Oan, the daughter of a samurai.  She experienced the horror of sleeping beside a collection of severed heads in Ogaku castle at the time of the battle of Sekigahara in 1600.  The castle was under constant attack from the superior forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and her description of her work with the heads is a follows:

“My mother and I, as well, as the wives and daughters of the other retainers, were in the castle’s keep casting bullets.  Severed heads taken by our allies were also collected in this area of the castle.  We attached a tag to each head in order to identify them properly.  Then we repeatedly blackened their teeth.  Why did we do that#160; A long time ago, blackened teeth were admired as the sign of a distinguished man.  So, we were asked to apply a generous coat of black dye to any heads with white teeth.  Even these severed heads no longer held any terror for me.  I used to sleep enveloped by the bloody odour of those old heads.”

The invasion of Korea presented the logistical problem of shipping heads home to their commander-in-chief Toyotomi Hideyoshi.  Hideyoshi’s increased irrationality made him demand proof that his generals were carrying out his wishes, so a compromise was reached.  When Namwon, the first objective of the 1597 invasion, was captured, out of the 3726 heads counted that day only the head of the Korean general was kept intact.  The others were discarded after the noses had been removed, the beginnings of the process of nose collection in lieu of heads that was to become a horrible feature of the second invasion.  Toyotomi Hideyoshi began to receive a steady stream of shipments of noses pickled in salt and packed into wooden barrels, each one meticulously enumerated and recorded before leaving Korea.

It was also recommended that “samurai should grow moustaches so that their severed heads would not be mistaken for those of women.”

Advice for treating wounded samurai:

Cover the intestines with dried faeces, then close the wound with mulberry root sutures and spread cat-tail pollen over the area.  Activities to be avoided were anger, laughter, thought, sex, activity, work, sour foods and sake.