Golden Week (or “GW” as it’s often called… or ren-kyū meaning “continuous holidays”) is a fortuitous collision of many public holidays, resulting in almost a full week off. Midori no Hi (Greenery Day) was last Thursday, Kenpō Kinenbi (Constitution Memorial Day) was Monday, I’m not sure what Tuesday was, and Wednesday was Kodomo no Hi (Children’s Day). It’s called Children’s Day, but it’s really a day for boys. There is also a day for girls but it’s a separate holiday. On Kodomo no Hi there are exquisite sets of armour put out all over the place, mostly in homes but often in hotels or any public place with adequate opportunity and resources. Photos will come soon.
I worked through most of Golden Week but on the weekend I went to Fukui. It was a great chance to get away from Tokyo, one of the biggest cities in the world, and get to somewhere really remote. There are only 4 other prefectures with lower population than Fukui, and they’re all near Fukui. In Japanese, 田舎 (inaka) means countryside. In Fukui’s case, you might call it 「ド田舎」 (do-inaka), with “do” being an onomatopoeic prefix meaning you really aren’t in Kansas anymore. (And yes, the Japanese love onomatopoeia so much they even have onomatopoeic metaphors!)
Whenever I’ve been in the countryside in Japan, the thing which hits me most is family, and I learnt a lot about family in this trip. I met an owner of a steel mill, and he was in such good form he said that if he died tomorrow he wouldn’t care, because he has succeeded in everything he wanted to succeed in. Apparently he never had a son, so was worried about the fate of his company, but one of his daughters got married to a man who would take her name, and they recently had a son, so there are 2 more generations after the owner who can take up the reigns.
I was surprised when I heard about a man taking the woman’s name in a marriage, but eventually it started to make sense, after enough conversation. Apparently it used to happen a lot in Japan before, but not so much anymore. It is a way of keeping a business in the hands of a particular family, which is a very important thing in Japan.
As I’m sure you know, Japanese religion is based heavily on ancestor-worship, and people keep enormous respect for their ancestors. Many large homes (i.e., places that aren’t tiny Tokyo apartments) have a little alter with photos or little memorials of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. People will light incense and pray at these alters. In the case of older countryside homes, people will often pray twice a day, in 20-minute sessions, continuously singing Buddhist chants. To my Irish readers: it doesn’t make Mass seem so bad, does it?
With this in mind, it should be obvious how important legacy is to families with big businesses. In fact, the owner of the steel mill himself married into the business and took his wife’s name, becoming 社長 (sha-chō, business owner). In general, the oldest son would not marry into his wife’s family. Or if he did, at least he would have a brother who could carry on his family’s name. Of course there are lots of cases where the brother left to carry on the family’s name doesn’t have any sons, or he has sons who marry into a woman’s family, or he has sons who don’t have sons or children at all and the family name ends. With declining birthrate in Japan, a lot of names seem to be about to disappear.
The owner was so happy to have his grandson, for Children’s Day he bought an enormous set of armour, with a great big decorated folding screen behind it. He also bought big carp streamers (鯉のぼり, koinobori) for outside his house. The streamers hang from a pole that’s as tall as the house. Inside the house, the armour is set up beside the room with the alter. This room is big enough to fit in the entire extended family. It is used when there is some event that requires the family to assemble together in front of a monk. This is often a funeral or Japanese version of a “christening”. Otherwise this room’s huge space is rarely used. The rest of the house is decorated mainly with Japanese calligraphy. Furniture is sparse, and many rooms simply have tatami mats and calligraphy hung on the walls, maybe with a small table in the middle. If people want to sit in the room they can take out cushions. If people want to sleep in the room they can take out futons. There are lots of rooms like this, with no specific purpose in mind.
My favourite thing about the countryside houses isn’t the huge windows, the comfortable tatami floors, the kotatsus, the beautiful rooves, the elegantly beautiful decoration, or the incredible gardens. It has to be the toilets. They often have the high-tech washlets, with their robotic lids and “spray”, “bidet” and “dry” buttons, but they also have older style toilets too. The traditional Japanese toilet is basically a hole in the ground, just like the ones I’ve seen in France sometimes, but they also have urinals! Yes! Urinals in houses! This is something I’ve been thinking about for years but I never knew anyone actually did this! I was so excited to use a urinal while looking out a window into the beautifully designed garden. First of all, when you sit down on a normal toilet, you are a usually looking at a door or a sink. When you’re using a urinal, it’s often a wall, but because it’s so easy to aim many pubs often afford the patrons a chance to read a newspaper. Well how about replacing that newspaper with a view into a traditional Japanese garden? No better way to relieve ones self than that!
And on that note, my iPhone restore has completed so I can get back to coding. Photos coming soon!
