Taken October 13, 2013
Fatehpur Sikri is a historic site not far from Agra (home of the Taj Mahal.) It’s almost entirely red sandstone, and is impressive site and well-maintained– including ornate carvings inside many of the structures.
This will be my last post for a few days as I will be traveling to Hampi, another set of famous Indian ruins of once great states. I’ll be back after Diwali with photos and experience from that visit.
Taken October 14, 2013 in Old Delhi.
This is India’s largest mosque. It is capable of holding 25,000 worshipers–mostly in that open courtyard that can apparently be covered as needed.) It dates back to the rule of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan–who you may know of from his requisitioning of the Taj Mahal.
It’s located in Old Delhi and is usually matched with trips to the Red Fort and Chandni Chowk (a huge bazaar street), which are both nearby.
It’s mostly Red sandstone with white marble, as was common of Shah Jahan’s other monumental structures.
[I realize it’s a cheat that I’ve posted two “Daily Photos” in a couple of hours of one another, but it’s a new day in the States–and I’ve got a ton of photos from my recent trip.]
Taken September 24, 2013
While parks like Cubbon and Lal Bagh Gardens are more famous, Freedom Park may be the most pristine city block in all of Bangalore. The park sits on what was the grounds of the Bangalore Central Jail. Built in 1866 in the wake of the First Indian War of Independence, the Central Jail was constructed to hold rebels and revolutionaries opposing British rule. The first war didn’t succeed in achieving independence, that didn’t come until 1947. The first war did succeed in changing the ruling power from the British East India Company to the British Empire proper, a distinction without a difference in the eyes of Indians I suspect.
Taken September 12, 2013 in Bangalore.
Named for the Sixth Earl of Mayo… No, I am not making that up… No, I’m not aware of whether the Sixth Earl of Mayo has any relationship to the Fourth Earl of Sandwich–famous inventor of meat between bread. If only Sir Francis Bacon had been made an Earl…
Taken in July of 2008 in Beijing’s Military Museum
Taken in the Summer of 2012 on Jekyll Island, Georgia
The DuBignon family owned Jekyll Island during the 19th century. Jekyll Island was home to a millionaires’ club in the first half of the 20th century. (For my youthful readers, a millionaire back then was like a billionaire.)
This was posted in my martial arts blog, Jissen Budoka, as well.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Japan’s past recently. In my spare time, I’m working on rewrites for a novel in which 14th century Japan features prominently. Being my first foray into historical fiction, I’m finding the need to go back and do a lot of research about the time because the quick and dirty draft I wrote needs a lot of gussying up. I just finished reading Charles Dunn’s Everyday Life in Imperial Japan, which is about a later period but one which would have shared much in common when it comes to everyday life. Presently, I’m reading The Taiheiki–which is about the 14th century, but which blends fact and fiction.
Doing such research encourages one to consider what it meant to live during that time. We all build constructs of the world to adjust for our limitations in knowledge. Some of these constructs hold up better than others, but they’re all simplifications. When one reflects upon a time before one’s experience–and particularly regarding a place with which one has limited familiarity–there are two major forms of fallacious reasoning that can take hold:
1.) The Golden Age Fallacy: This is the thought that everything was better back in the day–back before humanity started slouching toward craptasticness.
2.) The Outhouse Fallacy: This is the idea that any society that couldn’t manage indoor plumbing couldn’t possibly be worthy of emulation.
Of course, these simplifications are both true and false in some regard, and–as absolute statements–are absolutely false. The truth is something more like what Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested in Self-Reliance. Emerson described society as a wave, receding on one side as quickly as it advanced on the other. In other words, changes maybe seen as progress, but they also bring about the destruction of valuable knowledge. In martial arts terms, the spear becomes obsolete and the art of spear-fighting dies.
The movie entitled The Last Samurai revolves around this premise. Of course, in Hollywood fashion the forces of modernity are made entirely villanous and our heroes, the samurai, are entirely virtuous. In a way the movie is perverse in that it suggests we root for the medieval approach over our own.
When considering feudal Japan, Golden Agers point to it as a time during which virtue was paramount, craftsmanship was exquisite, and much culture flourished. They are right; but don’t set your time machine just yet because Outhouse Agers are also correct when they say that it was a time during which most of the population had no rights, wars ravaged the country, and in which farmers were not allowed to partake of many of the products they produced–but rather had to feed and cloth their families with inferior substitutes.
One should be careful to neither romanticize nor vilify the samurai. We should keep what is of value of the old ways without being a slave to the worst ways of our predecessors’ nature. One shouldn’t abandon everything old on the assumption that by definition everything abandoned to the past is refuse.
Everyday Life In Imperial Japan by Charles J. Dunn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This interesting little book is invaluable for anyone researching what life was like for people in Japan before the Meiji Restoration. While it’s an essential volume for a writer of historical fiction, those interested in Japan more generally will find it readable and packed with interesting tidbits of information. For example, I would recommend it for those who study traditional Japanese martial arts (i.e. kobudō)to get a better insight into the art they study through knowing the society from which it sprang.
This type of work is relatively rare, but is a writer’s dream come true. It’s not a history book, but–as the title implies–tells one how people of various classes and occupations lived day in and day out. That is, its approach is more anthropological than historical.
The range of occupations in Japan’s pre-modern period were far fewer than in society as we know it, and so the book takes broad job classes as its primary unit of organization. It begins with the group that undoubtedly draws the most interest, the samurai. It proceeds to the occupation which is most numerous in any pre-modern society, the farmers. Beyond that, it covers the lives of skilled craftsmen, merchants, courtiers, priests, doctors, intellectuals, actors and outcasts. The concluding chapter looks specifically at life in the city, and–in particular–life in Edo. Edo is the city that would become known as Tokyō, and which became the capital of the Shogunate in 1603 and eventually the nation’s capital.
Japan’s relative isolation throughout its early history has made for many intriguing national peculiarities. It’s true that Japan’s literary, religious, and philosophical systems were greatly influenced by China, but–in all cases–these cultural elements were forged into a uniquely Japanese form. This uniqueness provides many “ah-ha” moments while reading.
One learns why warriors were required to wear extra long hakama (a very billowy form of pleated pants that look like a long skirt–though having individual pant legs.)One learns about how one got around on the early highway system in a time when infrastructure (e.g. bridges) were minimal, and who was allowed to use the roads–such as the famous Tōkaidō road. The book tells how police went about arresting armed samurai. The roles played by women in society are discussed. While this was obviously a patriarchal society, women weren’t locked entirely outside the domain of power.
This was a feudal society with the samurai owning the land and the farmers toiling in hopes of having a little left over to support their families. While farmers made silk, they were, by law, not allowed to wear it. Farmers sometimes resorted to selling daughters to brothels to make ends meet.
There were many types of craftsmen from saké brewers to carpenters to makers of lacquer-wares. Japan has a long history of appreciation for master craftsmanship as is most apparent in sword-making. The Japanese sword was the cutting weapon perfected. Its folded steel design offered a flexible spine with a hard edge that could be honed to razor sharpness.
Merchants were a class that was both looked down upon and increasingly powerful during this period. Samurai were often barely making a living then, but merchants were beginning to flourish. Japan’s first indigenous money wasn’t introduced until 1636. Prior to that Chinese coins were used, much in the same way that some present-day countries use US dollars for currency–thus avoiding inflation that would be inevitable if they had their own currency and governance. There is an extensive discussion of the early sea trade.
Some of the most interesting careers were those more peripheral. Doctors practiced something akin to Traditional Chinese Medicine. There were wandering street performers and holy men of a wide variety.
I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in Japan’s history, and would call it indispensable for a writer addressing pre-Meiji Restoration Japan.
Taken in October of 2012 at Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh.
The artworks high in the frame demonstrate how the otherwise nondescript implements of torture were used. These were a couple of the more disturbing exhibits at Tuol Sleng Museum. Tuol Sleng was a school that the Khmer Rouge pressed into use as a prison and center of torture.
Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
On the whole, people are ambivalent about feudal times. On the one hand, it was a horrible time to be alive for 99.5% of the population. Chances are that if you’d lived during that time you’d be toiling ceaselessly on the land with no hope of improving your lot in life. Everything was determined by heredity, with merit having little to do with anything. This added insult to injury because that person you’d have had to suck up to was as likely to be putz as not.
On the other hand, there is widespread nostalgia for those times because one can’t help but feel that they were the golden days of virtue. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, we think that society is ever advancing, but, in reality, we advance like a wave–losing as much on the backside as we gain on the front.
Inazo Nitobe’s book gives us an accounting of the chivalric virtue practiced by the samurai, the warrior class of feudal Japan. Bushidō means the way of the warrior. Nitobe lived after Japan’s feudal era, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nitobe was an educator, and the book has a feel of erudition. Interestingly, the author was a Quaker and received education in the West, and, therefore, is able to contrast the Japanese worldview with that of Westerners.
The book is built around discussion of the seven virtues of bushido: justice, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, and loyalty. Each of these virtues has a chapter devoted to it (Ch. 3 through 9.) But first the book introduces bushido as an ethical system, and then it explains the effect that Buddhism, Shintoism, and Confucianism played in the development of this system.
Later chapters outline the education and training of a samurai, the importance of stoicism, the institution of suicide (seppuku), the symbolism of the sword in Japanese society, the role of women, the role of bushido as an ethical system in the present-day (his present), and its proposed role in the future. It is interesting that the book begins by discussing those things that influenced the development of bushidō, and it ends with discussion of how bushidō influences the larger world.
Our views of virtue have changed, but at some level remain consistent. The seven virtues are all still considered virtuous, but we don’t regard them in the same way today. In some cases we are undoubtedly better off with today’s views, but that’s not always the case.
Consider the seventh precept, loyalty. We still value loyalty, but in today’s world the rule of loyalty has an ever-present Shakespearean addenda: “to thine own self be true.” In other words, we no longer believe in loyalty that is blind as was valued in the days of old.
Sincerity, by which Nitobe generally means honesty, is also seen in a different light today. As depicted in the Jim Carey movie, Liar Liar, there’s a widespread view that it’s better to fib and make someone feel better than it is to tell the truth and hurt that person’s feelings.
One of the most intriguing chapters is the one that deals with seppuku. This is a concept that has never been well-understood in the West, and it’s a major point of cultural disconnect. While the Japanese have tended to see suicide as a means to restore honor that was lost in failure, in the West we tend to see it as a more pathetic and cowardly affair. I’ve recently been reading Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice, and this is one of many points of diverging attitudes between “Tiger” Tanaka and James Bond.
Bushidō is definitely worth a read. It’s thought-provoking, and is one of those books to be read slowly and conscientiously.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 