The Earliest Christmas Cards from Two Ladies

Last week I already received two Christmas cards. The senders of these were Eugenia and Jola.

Eugenia is a professor of physics at Moscow State University, and Jola is the late Stan's wife living in London. Eugenia's husband, Volodya, was also a professor of physics, and had been working jointly with her. However, he died some years ago (she wrote me then, "It is so difficult [for] me [to live] without Volodya"). So both Eugenia and Jola happen to be widows. (Don't think that I become friends with widows only!)

Eugenia wrote nothing new in her card. The card were decorated with bright powders, many of which were pealed off from the card on my opening the envelope and dropped on the desk and the floor. I do not like this type of card, so that I trashed hers instantly. Sorry Eugenia, but don't send me such a kind!

Jola's card usually comes first, but was the second this year. Her husband was the head of the radiation section at the London Hospital, and his research was closely related to mine.

Jola wrote in her card the followings: She retired from dentistry and now travels a lot. She was in Thailand the week before and may be in Japan in the future. Four years ago she got a degree at the London University in Egyptology. Her son and his wife retired last year at 48 and live in Spain. -- They live such interesting lives as are rare in our country. --

God bless the two ladies!

The Girl of Masculine Spirit

I made a search of the name H. I. at the Google Web site to learn her recent activity. She was a classmate of mine at an elementary school in Kanazawa, and now works at the University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A. I have not heard from her these years. There were a considerable number of hits for the search. Among them I found a review [1] of John Nathan's book [2]. Under the title of the review, the Editor writes this note:

Associate professor of Japanese H. I. was incorrectly referred to as "he." H. I. is a woman.

This note refers to the following passage of the review (italics by the present author):

H. I., UCSB associate professor of Japanese, has been a colleague of Nathan for 30 years, and he said the book offers a unique and much needed insight into the culture itself.

Which was this "he," a typos or the reviewer's actual impression of her? I believe that the latter is the case. H. I. was a girl of masculine spirit, as she always admitted herself. She had even a masculine look when I met her five years ago. Thus the Editor did not correct the reviewer's text, but wrote a note instead. Humorous treatment!

1. K. Richer, "Book Probes Japan's History, Culture" Daily Nexus Online (February 18, 2004). [Note added later: The page became unavailable.]
2. J. Nathan, "Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose" (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).

"Italian, Please"

Mr. K, a former colleague of mine, told me the following story.

One day K and some of his friends went to a restaurant and enjoyed a talk over supper. Then they wanted to have more talks, and moved to another shop where drinks and light meals were served.

All of them wished to have a cup of coffee. The kind of coffee many Japanese people like is "American." K's friends ordered American, but he wanted to have something different. He said jokingly to the waiter, "Italian, please." The waiter said, "OK," and went away.

K was rather surprised to know that they served Italian coffee there, and expected espresso or something like that to come.

After a while, the waiter came with a big dish of spaghetti for K. K was quite at a loss how to do with it after eating an enough amount of supper already.

This is a favorite story of mine to tell to my friends when I have coffee with them.

"This is Hyogo!"

The countryside of Shiota Spa, Hyogo (17 October 2003).

The countryside of Yunogo Spa, Okayama (18 October 2003).

Past February Indra Das, a friend of mine working at the University of Pennsylvania, came to Hyogo Ion Beam Medical Center in Harima Science Garden City, Hyogo, Japan. He looked at the accelerator installed there and did some experimental work with it.

In the evening before his return to USA, he and I met in Osaka and had a chat over supper. I took two sketchbooks with me to show him the small works I made during my trip to Italy and New Zealand.

The sketchbook I used in Italy included some works from domestic trips. When I opened the page of a sketch made in Shiota Spa (the upper picture), Indra instantly said to my surprise, "This is Hyogo!" Sure, Shiota Spa is located in Hyogo. The scenery sketched seems to be very similar to the one he used to see during his stay at the Medical Center.

Comics

The blogger Obachan writes a good series of essay on Japanese comics (manga) [1,2]. On its first piece I wrote the following comment:

As one of the Japanese I applaud your essays that introduce Japanese culture on the Internet. Possibly you'd rather want to hear comments from overseas readers. So I'll make my comment short. Actually I, born before the World War II, seldom read manga so that I have little to write about this topic. In my childhood, however, I enjoyed the manga Norakuro. (Note: Norakuro is the hero's name meaning "the black, stray dog.") It depicted the military life by the use of humanoid dogs. Those dogs were very humane, suggesting that the author Suiho Tagawa (1899—1989) did not like wars at the deep part of his mind in those days of militarism.

Obachan replied:

Thank you for your comment! Yes, I know Norakuro. I have read only a few episodes so I don't know this manga very well, but I, too, had the impression that the author did not like the war. I also read somewhere that Osamu Tezuka respected Suiho Tagawa very much as his predecessor.

Osamu Tezuka (1928—1989) is the famous author of comics about whom Obachan writes in the first piece of her essay. One of Tezuka's representative works is Tetsuwan Atomu (Atom with iron arms), the hero of which is the charming robot of the name Atomu. Tezuka contributed much to make manga one of unique cultures of Japan, as Obachan told us.

Another manga I liked to read in my boyhood was Fukujiro Yokoi's Putcher in Wonderland. It is SF manga, in which the boy Putcher and his robot friend Beri experience adventures of encountering Martians and the underground mankind, fight against those creatures, and finally establish peaceful relations with them. I had forgotten the story, but a website [3] reminded me of it.

That manga was published as a serial in the journal Shonen Kurabu (Boys' Club) after the World War II, from 1946 to 1948 [3]. It was my junior high school days, and our young teacher of science said to us, "I don't recommend you to read manga, but Pitcher Putcher is an exception." On hearing the teacher's wrong citation of the title, some boys including me laughed secretly, and were proud of being regular readers of that manga.

I have to write also about the manga author Machiko Hasegawa (1920—1992), who learned the making of manga from Suiho Tagawa and was awarded the Prize for Honorable National in 1992 (the first winner of this prize was the home-run hitter Sadaharu Oh). Hasegawa's representative work is Sazae-san (Ms. Sazae). It is a comic strip dealing with the three-generation family Isono, in which Sazae is an active woman of the second generation. The strip first appeared in The Evening Fukunichi in 1946, moved to The Asahi-shimbun in 1949, and continued for 25 years in the latter newspaper.

One day when I was a graduate student, I saw the following strip of Sazae-san, in which no person of Isono family appeared: A thief of a scaring look stealthily comes into a house. In an empty room he takes out one of books from a bookshelf. Then he read it with a pleased smile. The last scene shows a corner of the street, where a sign with the words "Reading Week" stands.

The words "Reading Week" in Japanese consist of four Chinese characters. Hasegawa used the very difficult, original style character for the first one and a simplified style for the last. I disliked such loose use of Chinese characters. So, I sent a letter to her, writing like this:

I enjoyed your comic strip about Reading Week very much. However, I advise you consistently to use Chinese characters designated for daily use by the Cabinet. Many children read your strips, so that you have to be careful about their educational effects.

I got no reply from Hasegawa. I believe however that she highly valued my advice, because I never saw her loose use of Chinese characters in Sazae-san after that. She must have been just before her forties at that time.

1. Japanese Manga (Comics) -1- (2004).
2. Japanese Manga (Comics) -2- (2004).
3. What is Putcher? (2000) (in Japanese).