🐍 The New Year 正月 2025

Yes. It's true. On a cold January morning in 2022 I set up this blog - The View from the Towers......and started writing.....

The Towers .... by Esther Ruddock — *The Towers* .... by Esther Ruddock

I decided from the start to provide some Japanese commentary, not only to keep in contact with my distant friends, but to challenge my own language learning. It was learning Japanese that saved me from depression during Covid lockdowns. Of course these days AI will do all the translating for you. But I persist in struggling myself with this strange language. I have now written 150 blogs. I think I deserve a medal 🎖️ 😄!

Japanese : 🎎 私は最初から日本語の解説をしようと決めていました。日出ずる国にいる遠く離れた友人と連絡を取り合うためだけでなく、自分自身の語学学習に挑戦するためでもありました。もちろん、最近では AI が翻訳をすべてやってくれるでしょう。しかし、私はこの非常に奇妙な言語と格闘し続けています。私はこれまでに 150 のブログを書いています。

✍️150th blog

I open up my laptop and go online: Warning! We want to ensure that you always have access to all your files and documents. Make sure you back up your computer 💻.

How did we get here? To what extent have the big tech firms taken over our lives? The quasi-benevolent use of "We want to ensure....." is irritating. So you want to ensure do you? You have my best interests at heart don't you. How kind of you. You must be very good people. oh......and what about me? What if I couldn't give a damn if I didn't have access to all my files and documents..." .

画面上の不要なメッセージにいつもイライラしています 💻

Look at this photo. Imagine your bare feet sinking into that soft fine sand. Or being warmed on the smooth rock 😊 And all the while the slow mantra of the incoming tide. Approaching. Receding. The sheer artwork of the whole view. Nature effortlessly creating the sublime. What if I couldn't access this file? So what. I would have a memory etched into my consciousness. A beach in Wakayama, Japan November 2023. The photograph is now printed on paper. What a revolutionary idea. Paper.

この写真を見てください。暖かい岩の上に裸足で立っているところを想像してみてください👣........nice!

2023年11月、日本の和歌山の海岸。写真は紙に印刷されています。なんと革命的なアイデアでしょう。紙。

I have sung in many choirs in my time 🎵. Church choirs, concert choirs, chamber choirs - even barber shop quartets. But never, never have I come across this curious work by Josef Rheinberger........

This is German 19thc. romanticism in full swing. You can hear what you like out of the music...Wagner, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bach.......but the text itself is not overtly religious, written as it was by his wife, the poet Franziska von Hoffnaß.

私はこれまで多くの合唱団で歌ってきました。教会合唱団、コンサート合唱団、室内合唱団、さらには理髪店の四重奏団などです。しかし、ヨーゼフ・ラインベルガーのこの興味深い作品を一度も聞いたことがありませんでした。

It's called Der Stern von Bethlehem (The Star of Bethlehem) (op. 164) ✨ and is a Weihnachtskantate für Chor, Soli und Orchester. Composed in 1891. Poor Rheinberger never lived to hear it performed. And when I first looked at the music I groaned. Must I sing this stuff? But the more I studied the music the more fascinated I became with it. Luscious key changes that his students (like Richard Strauss) refined and distilled later...enharmonic shifts which leave you straining your eyes to read the notes through the forest of accidentals.....

フランクフルト国際合唱団🗺️によるクリスマスコンサート

The irony of it was that, due to 'flue🤒 I could not sing in the performance (by the International Choir Frankfurt). But I did sit up in the organ loft and enjoyed listening to it. Instead of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks (see link below), Conductor Rhodri Britton had arranged the piece for string quartet with bass and woodwind, accompanied by organist Frank Hoffmann. This balanced very well with the choir, comfortably filling the austere Dominikanerkirche in Frankfurt. Wonderful.

皮肉なことに、私は風邪のせいで公演で歌うことができなかった。

Heiligeistkirche, Dominikaner Kloster, FFM

Raising my eyes to the ceiling I was relieved that the main organ was not being used. It would have overwhelmed everything.

And in case you have never heard this music, here is an old recording from 1987 on Youtube.......

この音楽をまだ聞いたことがないという方のために、1987 年の古い録音を YouTube で紹介します。

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ7SLvryiHA&list=OLAK5uy_lrcL9PMz1O7qRJV5C-kvgjsJVDTkG2DzA

I think my love affair with Japan was signed and sealed with Ramen 🍜 . I remember my first spoonful....."how come I have had to wait all this time to taste this heavenly concoction?"

このあじは、とてもおどろきました........ said I to myself. So it was with a sense of homecoming and happy memories that I found myself in the Westend last week, draining a bowl of Ramen down to the last drop. A happy evening with friends.

私にとって、なつかしいです。

"......I found my solace in a steaming bowl of miso ramen with long chewy noodles swimming alongside crispy bok choy, piquant chili, garlic chives, and a small mound of sweet pulled pork. This magical bowl of noodle soup coddled my stomach, quieted my mind, while warming me from the inside out..." (unknown source from internet).

Ramen Jun opened in Frankfurt about 8 or 9 years ago and very quickly became popular....In Japan Ramen is a simple soup to be grabbed on the way home from work. In Germany it has morphed into a fully blown restaurant meal.....

ラーメン純は8、9年前にオープンし、あっという間に人気店になりました。

On one of those rare occasions when the day starts with a ray of sunshine I am immediately out in the woods to clear the fug from my brain. The light plays on the water between the trees.......

森の中を散歩して頭をすっきりさせるのが好きです

Feet in the water. But the oak doesn`t seem to mind...

......a thorny branch is still freezing.....

Greetings from the author.....grinning from behind a tree.....

What is this? A New Year pancake?....no, better leave it where it is....

どら焼き？……いいえ!!

So you thought Japanese art was basically that woodcut of the big wave by Hokusai, which appears on bags and posters throughout the world because there is no copyright on it?

Wrong ❌

日本の芸術は基本的に葛飾北斎の波の木版画だと思っていたのですか 🌊?

間違い ❌

Let's start with wood carving. Here's a guy you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night. He's the god of thunder, and his name is Raijin....He often appears with his mate Fujin, the god of wind, so he was pretty important for the success of the harvest. And, they both offer protection against natural disasters, like typhoons and fires 🔥. We are in Shinto territory here. Well we were, until the 8thc., when Buddhism also started incorporating these sculptures. It's all very confusing to us, but no problem to the asian mind....

木彫り

In 1871 the Japanese government ordered the classificatiion of key Shinto and Buddhist statues - hence this highly accurate 19thc. copy of a 13thc. sculpture from Kyoto. It's in this amazing museum in Köln - the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst. I have never made friends with Köln, but this museum is a jewel.

To get to Köln you take the Inter City Express up the Rhein Valley, which is a lot less sweat than hiking it....

ケルンの東アジア美術館に行く 🚆.......

Lorch, from the train....Morning mist

朝の霧

What about Japanese Calligraphy. Now you've heard me go on about this before - the brushes, the ink etc. etc. But I was practising Kanji characters, not painting. Some artists used their brushes to paint, and not write. As on this folding screen painting from the 17thc.

So refined.........洗練(せんれい)された......... The tiger creeps through the misty bamboo (looking rather mischievous if you ask me). Whilst on the other side of the screen a dragon clings to a branch, leering)

とら

........I just love the dragon's claws....

りゅう

Artists tended to paint on silk, which meant that you could roll up the picture and hang it in different places. No need for those heavy European frames - so highly overvalued as to detract from the artwork itself.

Here is a detail of the Gion Festival in Kyoto. See that man buying a bowl of soup? It could be Ramen!

京都の祇園祭

...and the indolent citizen reclining at home? I think he needs a rest with a little tipple of sake....

Throughout the ages, intrepid individuals have taken perilous voyages to the furthest corners of the world to explore, collect and add to museums in their homelands. I think of the 17thc. John Tradescant, whose mission was to collect seeds, bulbs and plants and bring them back to his museum in Lambeth, London.

In the 19thc. the German couple Frieda and Adolf Fischer explored Taiwan (then called Formosa) and reported extensively (glass plate camera , sketches and notes📝) on the indigenous people who lived there.

Their next stop was Japan 🎏 where they were astounded by the richness of the culture.The collection in Köln is largely made up of what they brought back to Europe. This white Egret was actually painted in their presence.....rather like Usui-san does at the Main Matsuri today but without the accompaniment of a rock shamisen..https://www.main-matsuri.com/en/programme/artists/kazuya-usui

In this case it was 23rd March 1899, and Masao (alias Keikoku Gejo), the painter, was duly paid for his creation there and then.

ダイサギ 1899

And also, anyone who has been to the Main Matsuri Festival in Frankfurt will have seen Senyumeji Nishikawa and her team performing Nihon-buyo - that stately traditional Japanese dance form.https://www.main-matsuri.com/en/programme/artists/senyumeji-nishikawa

Mr Fischer found these fine porcelain dancers and brought them back to Europe.

日本舞踊

Indeed, Japanese porcelain production flourished in Kyushu in the 19thc. Partially because civil wars had distrupted production in China. Partially because of Korean know-how, and partially due to the help of the Dutch East India company who wanted to sell this stuff in America and Europe.

Visiting any of the art museums or churches in the cities of Europe you will inevitably find yourself confronted by Medieval or Rennaissance art. You will see Madonnas, crucifixes, saints and all the rest. So, rather like an asian might ask "why is that man hanging up there?" I have asked myself "why is that man lying down there?". Not only in Kyoto but also in Köln. It's the depiction of the Death of Buddha.

At this point shall I just cop out and give you a Wiki link? It all started in Nepal........https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buddha

When I was staying at Shonen-ji temple in Kyushu, my hosts drew my attention to this mural painted on the side of the temple wall. They had comissioned an artist from Tokyo to do the work, but in my ignorance, I was not actually sure of what I was looking at.

ヨーロッパの都市の美術館や教会を訪れると、中世やルネッサンス美術に必ず出会うことになります。聖母マリア、十字架、聖人などを見ることができます。アジア人が「なぜあの男はそこにぶら下がっているのか？」と尋ねるのと同じように、私は「なぜあの男はそこに横たわっているのか？」と自問しました。

(He had a bit of paint left over so he also painted the toilet...........😂......)

住職のJunsho Yoshimuraさんがトイレを見せてくれました。こちらも塗装されていました。。.....😂....)

Tradition has it that when Siddhartha Gautama, the teacher and ascetic who later became known as Buddha, died, he achieved "Parinirvana", or "final release from conditioned existence". He had taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and severe asceticism, and artistic depictions of his death have been venerated ever since.

In the Köln museum I stood in front of this for a long time. It was painted in 1392, using ink, colours and gold. I find it extraordinary that this has survived so long, and that Herr Fischer was able to bring it back to Europe.

仏陀の死を描いた絵画 1392