Learning from Others

We can learn from others by imitating admirable behavior and avoiding despicable actions.  A Japanese saying puts it concisely: Correct your manners by watching those of others.  

There is a similar saying of Biblical and Mosaic origin, known as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31).  I find this saying puzzling; what I like being done to me may be displeasing or even repulsive to someone else.  This saying, in short, is decisively prescriptive.  

The Golden Rule, also so known, in Confucius’s Analects, while similar, is passive; it states prohibitively: What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.  Do and Don’t mark the distinction.  Interestingly, Rabbinic Judaism in the words of Rabbi Hillel, matches Confucius: Do not do to others what you would not have done to you (Tobit 4:16). 

All this had been debated at length through the centuries from Kant to George Bernard Shaw and beyond.  The Japanese saying, significantly, is peculiarly Japanese; it is directive but passively and reflectively.  

All this reflection came about as I remembered how Mother habitually said these words: Correct your manners by watching those of others.  In my rebellious youth, I may have ignored them, but so long as I remember I had them deeply incised in my heart and as I matured I accepted them seriously. Reflecting in old age, I could say proudly that through my life I followed them as best as I could, except, being a contrarian by nature, I often rejected what was considered proper among those I observed and chose my way away from it or against it. 

人の美点、弱点を観察して、他人から学ぶもの多くあります。この観念を簡潔に表現した日本の格言に「人のふり見て我が振り直せ」というのがあります。

これと似た様な表現が英語にもありますね。キリスト教、更に遡ってモーセの掟で、『自分にして欲しいことは、相手にもせよ」（マテオ  7章12節、ルカ 6章31節）。でも、奇妙なのは、自分に気に入ったことが相手には不快なだったり、嫌だったりすることもあるでしょう。つまり、この表現は決定的に行動を規定するものです。

この黄金律といわれるもの、孔子の「論語」にも出てきますけど、逆に禁制を表してます。「己の欲せざるところ、他に施すことなかれ」。つまり、「しろ」と「するな」の違いです。面白いことに、ラビ・ユダヤ教（ダビデの末裔を称したファリサイ派のラビ、ヒルレルの言葉）には、「自分が嫌なことは、ほかのだれにもしてはならない」とあります（『トビト記』4章15節）。

これは、この数世紀、カントからジョージ・バーナード・ショウ、その以降に至るまでいろいろ議論されてきたことですけど、日本の格言は、指示はするけど受動的及び思考的で、その点目立って日本的です。

こういう事を考え始めた動機は、「人のふり見て我がふり直せ」とは母が口癖の様にした言葉でしたのを思い出した事で、これは記憶にある限り胸に刻み込まれてます。反抗期の頃には無視したかもしれませんけど、成人するに従って熟考すようになり、老年になって、一生忘れずにできる限り実行してきたと自慢して言えると思っています。ただし、生まれつき天邪鬼の私のこと、一般に賞賛される物事、行為をしりぞけ、しばしば意識して、そのれから外れた道或いは反対の方向を選んだものでした。

08.26.19

In the arms, on the back だっこ、おんぶ

小さな子供が、母親の手を握って、楽しそうにスキップしながら付いていくのをみるとると、あたし自身の子供の頃を思い出し心が温まります。お手つなぎは、手のひらを合わせるものという考えが念頭にあって、手首を握られると嫌がって振り放したものでした。そして、疲れてきて「だっこ」や「おんぶ」してもらったりした時の暖かい安楽感は忘れがたいものです。叔父の「肩乗り」は少し不安でしたけど, 高さの見晴らしがよく、初めて乗馬した時にその記憶が脳裏に浮かびました。

When I see a little girl with her hand in her mother’s hand go skipping along joyfully, my heart warms up watching her as I remember my own childhood. I believed that holding Mother’s hand meant clasping the palms together; so, I disliked having my wrist grasped and would shake my hand off.  When I got tired of walking and skipping, I would be carried in Mother’s arms (dakko in Japanese) or on her back (onbu) comfortably, and that warm sense of security is unforgettable.  Riding on the shoulders of my uncle was a bit scary but the view from the high point was wonderful, and I recalled the sensation when I got on horseback for the first time. 

06.13.18

My Garden in Swarthmore

I sold my house in Swarthmore on 30 June 2009.  It’s over five years now, and I was trying to remember the garden that I tendered with love and care from 1980, when I bought and moved in the house.

Prominently in the center of the front yard I had a pink dogwood; I planted it in 1981, only four feet tall, to commemorate my son Giulio’s first ‘teen birthday. It blossomed beautifully every spring though it was 28 years old when I moved away. On the other side of the driveway, I had a purple wisteria, which I kept its tree form to a height such that I could prune it annually without a ladder; by carefully pruning the vines to the second bud, I was able to cultivate ample racemes that blossomed beautifully.  Nearer the corner of the house on the same side, I had a Rose of Sharon (hibiscus syriacus) which grew fast and put on many pale pink flowers, and a tall crape myrtle, which bears bright raspberry-colored blossoms in August when nothing else is flowering. Between this and the wisteria were two azaleas, kept small, and a hydrangea (macrophylla), which, fed aluminum, produced blue blossoms, and I had another -- oakleaf hydrangea (quercifolia) called Tokyo Blue -- near the Rose of Sharon along the pathway along the north side of the house that led to the backyard. I had ferns all over in this area, some forget-me-nots, and a large patch of astroemeria.  In the same area I had a Japanese Anemone, and next to the house an acuba, which came with the house, planted too close and needed massive pruning every year.  At the corner of the house, also already there, there was a small yew, also too close to the house.

On the south side of the front yard, my pride was the Japanese cutleaf maple, yellow, which I kept low but open near the ground.  Near it I had another azalea, and not far from it I planted a crape myrtle, matching the one on the other side. Farther toward the back yard, I had rose bushes and another hydrangea, which I kept pink in color without feeding aluminum.   Near the dining room window on the south side of the house, I had a.Japanese andromeda (Pieris japonica), which also came with the house; in early spring it carried massive racemes of white flower. All over the front yard, I cultivated perennials — crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and pansies — and, near the stoop to the front door, snowdrops and fragrant white lilies, and on the sunny side asters, zinnias, callas, and a variety of other flowering plants from year to year.

In the backyard, toward the southwest corner, there was an old apple tree — Golden Delicious — that also came with the house.  It dominated the garden; I pruned it severely every year and it bore fruits, which, sprayed early in the growth and covered with paper bags, ripened nicely.  They were delicious.  In the last few years, I stopped spraying and let the fruits drop before maturing fully.  There was a fig tree at the northwest corner; and I planted three Anjou pear trees in front of it, which screened my garden from the neighbor in the rear.  I harvested good fruits for many years; but I neglected them, too, in the last few years.  Next to the pears I planted raspberry bushes for five years or so but they were unruly and I was ready to pull them out by the time of the move.In front of the apple and the pears, across the width of the yard, I dug out a meandering channel to drain the rainwater that came from the garden of the neighbor on the north side and flooded the lawn.  It formed a nice stream after each rain.  I piled the soil from the channel in the area in front of the pears for a vegetable garden, turned over every spring and well fertilized, where I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, and eggplants, and occasionally green peas.  On the south side, behind the apple tree, there was a forsythia, which brightened the garden with its yellow blossom the first thing every spring.  Next to it there were a few stems of lilac, which I found skimpy but nurtured them to flower decently.  On the ground I had hosta all over the place and also aster seasonally.  I also loved astilbe and salvia. 

On the south side of the house, I planted three fig trees, divided from the old one.  Receiving a good sun, they produced wonderful fruits — Syrian figs; I covered them with burlap over the winter to protect them from frost.  Underneath them, I had blueberry bushes, which also gave me sweet berries in abundance.  Some years earlier on I had strawberries, too, but I didn’t keep them up.

On the trellis outside the kitchen window, I had a grapevine, which was leafy but bore no fruits.  In front of the brick terrace I planted another wisteria, which I also kept low; it was dumb, however, and hacking the stem — a recommended remedy — had no effect.  So, later, I got another wisteria, white, a stock said to be from Princeton University’s Nassau Hall, which faithfully bore rich racemes every year. Then, I had peonies, tree peonies and herbaceous peonies.  But the pride of my garden was the three tree peonies, rose, pink and white. that displayed gorgeous bloom every year, as large and splendid as in any horticultural garden.

There were more, I believe, but I fail to remember everything now.  It was all a lot of work but I enjoyed gardening immensely and miss the garden I nurtured more than anything else from the house I left behind.  In particular, I loved the perennials which, so faithfully every spring, came back without fail to regale my eyes.

After moving to New York, I missed the garden so much and went to look for, found, and irresistibly bought the beautiful American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers.  But before long I realized I had really no use for it and gave it away to a friend in a suburb.  My garden in Swarthmore lives more vividly than ever in my memory.

Better and Better - 常に向上

Reflecting on my life at 10, and subsequently decade by decade, I am awed that, despite the occasional dips due to inevitable casualties big and small, it has been to my great satisfaction a consistent upward progress to this day at 80, blessed with fewer and fewer miseries, or perhaps, a wiser outlook on life as I grew older.

過去を顧みて、10歳の時、そしてその後10年毎の人生を思い出すに付け、驚くべきは、免れない大小の災害による時折の降下にも拘らず、不幸な事が少なくなって行ったのか、或は年の功で人生の見解がひらけたのか、全体には常に上昇で80歳に至り満足したりという次第です。

Hunger - ひもじい経験

Hunger suffered in the years of food shortage after the war -- World War II -- was painful.  But it was a relief after the wartime experience of hunger under nearly daily blitz without any idea of when the days of destruction will come to an end, if ever.  Misery is relative.

世界大戦の戦後の食糧困難の頃のひもじさは惨めでしたけど，それでも戦時中の，殆ど毎日連続の空襲爆撃の何時終わる日が来るか全く予想の付かなかったか日々のひもじい経験と比べると思いがけなく楽でした。惨めさも比較的なものですね。

Gift for my 80th Birthday

Anticipating my 80th birthday, which comes on 30 January 2013, I decided to celebrate it with an extravagant gift as I had never dreamed of receiving.

I taught at Swarthmore College exactly 35 years.  I started in 1966 as Assistant Professor.  I already had three-year experience teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI; but I finished my doctoral dissertation only then which I had promised in the interview in January.  I was promoted to Associate Professor two years later and to Full Professor in 1975, appointed the chair the Art Department at the same time.  In 1993 I was awarded the William R. Keenan, Jr., Professorship.  I retired in June 2001.  My career as an art historian was my tenure at Swarthmore. 

It is an overstatement to say that Swarthmore made my career, as a friend warned me.  Still, I say that Swarthmore allowed me to shape and develop my career the way I wanted, and I am deeply indebted to the institution for this reason.  I was given a free rein to teach new subjects of my own invention, like “City,” “Cinema: Form and Signification,” “Philadelphia: City and Architecture” “Hollywood 1939,” “Everyday Things,” and “Streets,” aside from the standard subjects in Art History: “Michelangelo and his Times,” Rembrandt and his Times,” “Florence,” and “Roman Heritage.”  I was trusted to organize the Department according to my design; I made Studio Arts, formerly extracurricular, into a creditable program and brought it together with Art History into one Department of Art.  

A good college prides itself on its superior faculty, and I enjoyed wonderful colleagues in all departments.  But it is the students that endow a college with distinction, and I had the fortune of having had remarkable young people in my classes.  It is my belief that there is no better way to learn a subject than teaching it, and nothing inspires me more than inquisitive and imaginative minds that challenge me hard continually.  They made my day-to-day duties a tremendous pleasure.  Moreover, many of them remained fast friends for years and decades after graduation and remain so to this day and form the circle of my best friends, near and far.  I owe Swarthmore more than a successful career and far-reaching education through teaching; so much of my happy life was nursed and nurtured by the College and its students.  This is what prompted me to make endowment donations to Swarthmore College.

Such donations are normally made after one’s demise by the bereaved -- relatives and friends -- in memory of the beloved.  I chose to give on my own while alive, not without an ulterior motive; I wanted to have a measure of control over the use of the income from the endowments to promote those areas of intellectual endeavor which represent my interests that I had held while teaching and which also represent my belief that these are the areas the College has been neglecting and/or needs strengthening or expanding.  I wanted to oversee the use of the fund as best as I can because it is my hard-earned money that I had saved by exercising frugal living through my career.  

I started with a smaller endowment of $25,000 “to support a visiting lecture or lecture series in the Mathematics and Statics department colloquium with a preference for topics in geometry, topology, and history of mathematics,” the subjects motivated by my desire to fulfill my alternative ambition for a career in mathematics which never materialized.

The second proposal was another smaller endowment of $25,000 for Silent Cinema, an important cultural artifact of ever expanding importance in scholarship, preservation and public interest; its resources are global. I wanted to support public showing of silent films, eventually the annual Silent Cinema Festival that should make Swarthmore known for it nationwide, a sequel to my pioneering effort in creating Cinema Studies.  The proposal met some resistance, however, and I agreed to expand the scope as the endowment to support “curricular, scholarly and public events that explore history of cinema, especially silent cinema, such as the annual public screening of silent films from worldwide sources, in recognition of its historical, cultural and cross-cultural importance.”

Then, for the Endowment for the List Gallery I donated $100,000 to support “a variety of educational initiatives, “ including “a student fellowship in curatorial studies, the publication of exhibition catalogs for emerging artists, on-site sculpture and installation projects, and the hiring of technical and administrative assistants.”

Finally, I contributed a $125,000 fund for Humanities Research Fellowship to support “students in the humanities by providing grants to encourage and facilitate historical research, original scholarship, and professional development, with a preference for Italian Studies, Japanese Studies, and Performing Arts.”

The approval of the donations and their documentation have now been completed, and I am ecstatically happy to have accomplished the giving, by which I am leaving behind tracks of my teaching career for decades to come in the form of a modest effort to assure the Arts and Humanities, the essential core of Liberal Arts Education, into the distant future.  For this reason I consider my Endowment program the most extravagant gift to myself in celebration of my upcoming 80th birthday.

Back in May, it occurred to me that I crossed the Atlantic 60 years ago; and coincidentally I discovered my diaries from those years which made me reflect on the extraordinary course my life had taken me through.  This, in turn, prompted me to think of my  80th birthday and the idea of making a big occasion of it with this gift.

60 Years Ago, 4 - UC Berkeley

I found another diary last week, covering my first months at UC Berkeley, jotted down in a date book with a space for two dates on each page.  The entries were therefore brief and at times fragmentary; there were days with no entry.  Late in January, I made several trips to Berkeley, and made the move on 10 February.  Prof. Schneider drove me down. 

I was received as a guest for the transition period at the home of one Mr. Long at 1195 Euclid Ave., about whom I have regrettably no memory, except that his kindness is repeatedly noted.  I was treated as a family member.  After three weeks, the University’s Bureau of Occupation found me a place for room and board in exchange for housework, and moved in on 5 March, and it was the home of the distinguished political scientist Professor Robert Scalapino (Ashby St.).  My task was nominally house cleaning, kitchen work, table setting and serving; but my diary is peppered with entries simply saying “Tired, tired, tired,” or “I’m so tired.” At the end of the semester, I applied for another place for student-work home closer, this was the home of another professor of political science, Eric Bellquist, at 2251 Hearst Ave., closer to the School of Architecture on the north side of the campus.  It was said to be largest private home in Berkeley, and the room assigned me was 11.5’ x 13.5’.  The task was considerable lighter; they had a regular house cleaner, and my task was cleaning up after breakfast and dinner, some garden work,  and babysitting for the couple’s young son.  When I first cleaned the kitchen, I washed the top of the refrigerator and Mrs. Bellquist thought I was going overboard; I remember this though the diary does not make note of the incident. The couple was warm and generous, and I was able to concentrate more on my studies.  I felt pampered.

In June I spent days looking for a summer job in an architect’s office; but with no experience I was not successful.  I had occasional odd jobs, like mowing and washing windows.  At the end of the summer, out of dire necessity, I wrote home for help, and I was sent $200 converted through a stock company with a branch in the US., this was the first and the last time I imposed on the family.  The diary ended on 17 September.

The following two summers I got a job as a counsellor at camp near Fort Ross, where I learned to ride a horse and befriended J. B. Blunk, then a ceramicist, now a sculptor.  After that I got a job drafting in an office of architects and engineers, full time during the summer and 20 hours per week during school years.  With this income and the scholarship from the University, I felt secure.  The architecture program led to the Bachelor of Architecture in five years; but after three years I changed to the old four-year program that led to A.B. in architecture in order to proceed to the Master’s degree in art history.  I completed the thesis for M.A. in January 1961 after starting the doctorate program at Harvard University.  A year later, I got a fellowship to go to Rome, where I stayed till the summer of 1963 and started teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design as an assistant professor of Art History.

60 Years Ago. 3 - Santa Rosa

Santa Rosa, CA, is where Hitchcock’s suspense movie, Shadow of a Doubt, 1947, is set. I arrived in Santa Rosa, after dark, on 28 August, and spent the night at the house of the Napiers, my sponsoring family.  I was given a room of my own, entirely my own, something I did not have at home in the Japanese way of family living.  

The next morning I was immediately put to work. I was shown how to clean the kitchen stove and mop the floor with a mop, and I learned to use the vacuum cleaner.  These were all new, and the novelty of the task cancelled the hardship of the labor -- for a while.  Then, for two days, I joined the family on their camping trip to Clear Lake, some 30 miles north, which I found more a chore than a vacation.  Back home, I was taught how to start a mower and mow the lawn, how to clean the windows, and there were days of painting the walls inside and out as though the house waited years for my arrival.  Everything was new.  On 3 September, I washed a car for the first time in my life.  I was braced for challenges.

The next two months were heavily eventful; my diary had long entries -- so much that I had forgotten.  On 6 September, I received the very first letter from Mother, and reading it I broke down in tears; for the first time since leaving home I felt desolately alone.  There was no respite, however; two days later school started.  The work in and around the house continued regardless.  The schoolwork was easy; a few weeks into Spanish 1 I was elected president of the Spanish Club. 

Being fluent enough in English should have made adjusting to the new physical and social environment relatively easy, certainly easier than if I had been less prepared linguistically.  Yet, much was new in sight and sound and social intercourse -- the semiotic world; subtle and hard to pinpoint, it nonetheless demanded from me more effort than I had imagined.

Louis Napier was very kind; he had a shortwave radio in the garage and he set up an antenna so that I can catch some broadcasting from Japan even though the reception was not quite satisfactory.  One day he brought down from the attic an old zither (though I don’t remember what it looked like and the diary does not describe it) which produced sounds a little bit like ; and I was able to play Japanese melodies on it for my amusement. One evening he came to my room to chat and said that he descends, according to the genealogy he had checked, from the Scottish mathematician, John Napier, known for inventing the logarithm.  He had two daughters; the older of the two was already married off and lived elsewhere in the town.  The younger daughter, Renée in high school was cheerful and friendly.  But Mrs. Napier -- Rae -- was cold.  She avoided looking at me and rarely talked to me except when instructing me in the tasks she assigned.  I commented in my diary that I should be lenient because it may be simply that she is shy. The work duties, however, kept mounting; the whole house to keep cleaning, leaves to rake every day, basement windows to wash, endless painting jobs.  I convinced myself that I am fortunate to have made it to America and was given a roof over the head and food to eat; no doubt I was. 

On 28 September, I overheard Rae complaining to her husband in my earshot that I neglected washing the kitchen floor, that I left dirty patches on the wall, that I didn’t clean the bathroom for a whole week, that I use too much hot water when washing the dishes, and that the vegetable peeler is missing.  I advised myself to be patient but also wrote that I should perhaps look for another place to live after one year.  But before the middle of October, Rae’s volatility reached the peak.  On 16 October she got into a violent argument with Louis and I heard her speaking of me as a lazy useless sitting servant who should be dismissed. The following day, she even shouted at me that she had no use for me and that I could go.  Louis was in a difficult situation since he signed the affidavit of sponsorship; he was defensive but protective of me.  He explained to me that Rae is difficult and even admitted that she is rather unstable and alienated the relatives on his side.  On 19 October I fell sick from overwork. I finally mustered up a courage to seek help from the College.  I went to talk with the Dean of Women, Mrs. Margaret Trussell; she listened to my story sympathetically and arranged for me a small supplement to the scholarship and a dormitory room of my own in exchange for the bathroom chore.  In the meantime, Louis found me a part-time job at the printer shop of his relative, where I would be paid for cleaning the place everyday -- the mess in the shop and the latrine.  It felt good to be paid for my labor.  The dormitory room in one of the Quonset huts left from the war years was filthy and smelled awful; but I moved in immediately and the sense of relief outweighed the discomfort of the room. Louis brought me some kitchen utensils and groceries.  The crisis was over.

I don’t remember what I wrote home but certainly not the whole truth; I knew that if I did I would be told to pack up and come home, and that was the last thing I wanted.  The rest of the year in Santa Rosa was happy enough.  The teachers loved me, and I made friends, and I did well in classes, except the American History for which I had no preparation as did Americans from their grade school years.  Two professors stand out in my memory: Prof. Frank Schneider, originally from Czechoslovakia, who taught Algebra,, and Prof. Florence Rhodehamel, who taught philosophy and initiated me into the world of Plato and Aristotle and the Pre-Socratics and led me to read medieval philosophers -- Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas.  I kept correspondence with them long after leaving Santa Rosa. In December I started writing to architectural schools for scholarship opportunities with discouraging replies.  But the College increased my scholarship to $500.  In the Spring, I took up Piano and joined the percussion section in the orchestra and also the marching band. Life was good. 

With the end of the Spring semester, 1953, I worried how to survive the summer months. The family aided me with a $100 remittance which they somehow managed.  Bob Mauser, a fellow student on a GI Bill, and his wife Flo found a house to rent and asked me if I am willing to join them with a room-and-board for $40 a months and some chores, which would help them defray their $70 rent, and I accepted.  It was a luxury after a year of dormitory life.  In June, Florence Rhodehamel, who knew my plight, offered me a job of working on her garden; she also agreed to be my legal sponsor as Louis Napier’s affidavit was for one year and will run out at the end of the summer.  In August I sent out letters of to a dozen school of architecture about scholarships and admission requirements. Though my finances were tight, I was able to accompany a dear friend, Sidney Honigman, in his Volkswagen to San Francisco for a day trip in order to look at architecture and to attend the New York City Ballet which was performing at the War Memorial; this was 14 August, the same day I left Japan a year earlier.  The ballet was a bliss; Tanaquil LeClercq and Maria Tall chief danced , Nora Kaye in was so memorable as was .  I came home in total euphoria.

Something spectacular happened in the middle of the third semester at Santa Rosa.  On 7 October, Edward Kent, the Dean of Men, called me to his office and told me that he had talked with the Dean of the Architecture School of the University of California, Berkeley, and was able to get a pledge for a scholarship of $375 and a possibility of a room-and-board with a professor.  A month later, 17 November, Mr. Kent personally drove me to Berkeley and spent a day meeting the Dean of Architecture and firming up on my admission.  The road to my education in architecture was now paved. On 2 January 1954, I was invited to stay at the home of Mrs. Trussell until my departure for Berkeley.  My diary ended on the last day in Santa Rosa. The life thereafter, for all the hardships that had to be dealt with, was all contentment.  My American dream was set in motion.  I had it made. 

60 Years Ago, 2 - The Diary

One day a couple of months ago, on 19 June to be exact, I climbed up on a stool to reach the top shelf of a bookcase in the bedroom in search of a book I thought was there.  I didn’t find the book I was looking for; but I noticed a bundle of notebooks tied with a string.  I had no idea what they were except that they might be my early schoolwork. I was curious and brought the bundle down, dusted it, and untied it, and to my great astonishment, it was a set of diaries in five volumes, all in Japanese, the first of which started on 5 August 1951 with the last one ending with the entry for 10 January 1954. I had totally forgotten about them; they covered the years preceding my departure from Japan and the subsequent year and a half spent at Santa Rosa Junior College. I was between 18 and 21 in those years; I sat with them and immediately spent a couple of hours reading the months preceding the propitious date of my voyage to America.

This was totally fortuitous. Not long before this encounter with the past, I realized that, come August, I would have lived in America exactly sixty years, 60 out of 80 years of my life -- nearly 80 or 80 as of next January, 30 January to be exact.  The thought itself was staggering; reading what I wrote in my youth sixty years ago was truly awesome. 

When I reflected on my last days in Japan, I recalled the letters I wrote home every week, often more than once a week, mostly to my mother, in the first few years in America; I didn’t make copies of the letters I wrote but I wanted to read the replies I received; these I had carefully kept with me, the numerous letters from my mother as well as those from my father although they were fewer, but I couldn’t fine them anywhere.  I searched all over the apartment, not once but several times, to no avail. They may well have been lost in the move to New York from the house in Swarthmore. Then, I found the diaries.  I then realized, too, that the diaries were better account of the events of those days, more complete and more thorough.  The entry on the trans-Pacific journey was cursory; but it was enough to reformulate it as the Blog essay, 60 Years Ago - The Voyage. 

In the following weeks over the summer, I perused the diaries off and on.  The time-warp experience was nostalgic but also revelatory, and very strange as well.  The entries were thorough and meticulous; there were no missing dates so far as I could detect.  Time and again I was surprised to read about my thoughts and activities I had totally forgotten and yet on reading I have been discovering that with all the changes that happened to my life over these 60 years, I have not changed very much as a person -- to my delighted dismay.

I have been writing diaries on line since 1989 in English, somewhat sporadically that year, starting on 1 April, and then more consistently from 1990 but selectively recording the events and activities each day as a third-person account.  Previous to that, starting on 27 May 1978, I wrote a family weekly in typescript.  Starting in July 1995, from the time of the death of my love, Tokiko, my diary entries, addressing her, became more thorough first-person accounts, and I continue persistently to this day.  These are very detailed, covering routine activities as well as special events, and in this respect they are, without my realizing, exactly like my first diaries. 

In the years 1951-52, my senior year in high school, I was busy investigating a way to go abroad to study.  I had to do this entirely on my own since my parents did not know English and I did.  I had my plan set for America, though I could have gone to Paris, as my Francophile sister, seven years my elder, had secretly hoped I would, since I learned French before English (thanks to my sister’s instigation during the war).  Opportunities to go to America, even as a student, was still severely restricted, and I was quite pessimistic.  But by the spring of 1952 possibilities started to open up, and I was busy writing to colleges and universities and exploring the sponsorship by an American citizen as required of exchange students.  I had much errands to do, for myself as well as for the family, and I was constantly on a train between my family home in Ofuna and Yokohama, where my school was, and Tokyo.  I was an eager Catholic, doing volunteer work at school and church, and I had a chicken coop with a half dozen hens to get eggs for the table (as it was still a time of food shortage), and I raised chicks, too.  In spite of the busy schedule, to my great surprise, I was continuing practicing Japanese music -- naga-uta on the traditional instrument samisen, that I was initiated into by my mother a few years earlier (at my insistence, as I remember).  I also continued commuting to Kamakura for my lessons in Chanoyu (Tea Ceremony).  I often complained in the diaries how boring classes at school were.  Still, I had schoolwork full time, and it was not unusual that I stayed up well past midnight till 1:00 and sometime 2:00, like my daily schedule today. 

But more surprising, and even endearing, is my theater and concert hopping, just as in my current retirement years since 2001, even from spring to summer in 1952, when I was running all over the place to obtain documents and permits for traveling abroad, which was materializing by then.  It was predominantly the Kabuki that I attended, sometimes day and night, leaving the theater on occasion to pick up a paper, and returning to see the rest of the day’s performance.  Little wonder that I know the Kabuki repertory so well; I know quite intimately more than a half of the plays in the 11-volume Compete Works of Kabuki.  Moreover, I wrote down the titles and cast and a thumbnail critique of each performance I had seen, more thoroughly than I now do. 

I found one fascinating entry, dated 11 August, only three days before departure. I went to Tokyo and did a round of errands from the shipping company to a bank, and then to the Consulate, and a lunch with a family friend, and between these I stopped at a theater to see some Kabuki plays, and then in the evening, I stayed in another theater with my mother, and returned home at 11:00, where I found my father in fuming rage, shouting at me. He didn’t mind my interest in theater but I should know the limit or else I will end up a pauper.  Then, I added a comment; He was fuming not because of my theater-going but because he had to wait an hour and a half at the Consulate where he went in my place to pick up the visa, so I should remain cool and not get upset.  I realize now that with only three days left to go aboard, I was perhaps overdoing.

More than I do now, too, I wrote haiku poems, often in a group of three or four, interspersed in the diary text.  It irks me that they are hardly puerile -- in fact, not bad at all.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. 

60 Years Ago. 1 - The Voyage

Last Sunday, 19 August 2012, was Tuesday sixty years ago, and I crossed the International Date Line on my virgin voyage across the Pacific Ocean.  I was on my way to America, alone, and I was 19 years old.  I stood on the bow of the deck and I was thrilled, as the ship rocked and swayed violently, with no cargo on board, and as I anticipated the great adventure ahead; and I wrote a poem on the vast emptiness of the sea and its solitude that engulfed joys and sorrows alike. 

The ship was a freighter, Kimikawa Maru, 157 meters (515 ft.) in length, 6970 tons gross, built by Kawasaki Kisen or K-Line, earlier that year, on 29 February.  It set sail from Yokohama on 14 August; as the ship, anchored away from the land, started to drift away, with my family and friends on two launches in the distance, my heart started to pound but, in my excitement, I had no tears in my eyes. The vessel sailed on the great circle, skimming the Aleutian Islands, toward Portland, OR, its destination, where, up the Columbia River, it reached in ten days and anchored in the afternoon of 24 August.

I arrived with one trunk and a suitcase, a scholarship of $350 from Santa Rosa Junior College in California, an airline ticket from Portland to San Francisco, and $30 in cash, the maximum in U.S. currency allowed at the time out of Japan.  I carried, however, an extra $100, purchased secretly for security and sewn in a waistband worn next to the skin.  In addition, I had an affidavit of support for room and board, required of an exchange student, from the family of one Louis Napier, whom I befriended when he was on furlough in my neighborhood from his duty as an electrician on the aircraft carrier USS Bonhomme Richard and with whom I subsequently corresponded regularly for an year or two. 

For several years, in lieu of the Japanese Middle and High School, I attended the St. Joseph’s College in Yokohama, an international missionary school run by Marianist brothers, where classes were taught in English, and I was graduated on 22 June.  So, I was fluent enough in English on my arrival in America.  Still, the sight of Portland was new and exotic.  I was in care of a family acquaintance for four days, mostly rainy as I remember; I was struck by numerous cars and by women’s red coats, rarely seen in Japan, and, as I wrote in the first letter to my mother, it was as though I walked into a postcard; and hearing nothing but English spoken wherever I turned was disorienting.  I was taken to the dog race one evening, a real curiosity, and the movie Robin Hood another evening (which could only be the 1938 Errol Flynn vehicle directed by Michael Curtiz, The Adventures of Robin Hood). Then, I  was sent off on the Western Airlines flight to San Francisco on 28 August, where I was met by the Napiers.  

My mother missed me tremendously at home in Ofuna, as she had already “lost” my sister, seven years older, who was living on her own in Tokyo.  But citing the Japanese proverb, “If you love your child, send him or her on a journey,” the idea of which is that a child placed alone in an unfamiliar environment away from home will learn to overcome shyness, cultivate social grace, and develop independence, she convinced herself that she can persevere my absence for an year in the hope that she will see me back home a better person, less willful and restive, more tolerant and compassionate.  The proverb is, of course, blind to the reality that a child, at whatever age, behaves at home more as a child than elsewhere in the outside world.

One year abroad away from home -- that was my plan, nominally.  I had a larger project in my mind, however.  Santa Rosa Junior College was a choice by default, not by design; it happened to be in the town where the Napiers, my sponsoring family, was residing.  I was nevertheless eager to go as the only sure way to enter the United States.  As early as September 1951, I started writing to major American universities inquiring about scholarship opportunities, and the answer invariably explained that scholarship applications will be considered only from foreign students already in the country at least one year. A year abroad was in my plan the first necessary step to a full college education.  So, the first year stretching to two was no surprise to myself, disappointing as it was to my parents.  But the two stretched to four, then to seven as I entered the graduate school, and eventually I obtained a permanent residence in the U.S., made a career as a professor, and here I am sixty years later, totally incredulous, and willful as ever.

Rome's Epiphany

It’s Epiphany today. In Roman dialect it is Befana, and since children in Italy traditionally receive presents on this day, the day when the Magi brought gift to Christ Child, toy markets fill up the Piazza Navona -- the Roman slur of Platea Agonis as the elongated course was originally built for a foot race, called agones, the source of the word agony referring to the rigor of the contest. Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain marks its center with the obelisk mounted with the papal coat-of-arms and the dove of the Pamphili family, whose church with Borromini’s facade is called Sant’ Agnese in Agone. The piazza also gets filled with the drones of the zampogna, a variety of bag pipe, played by the farmers who come down from Abruzzo for the festivities -- agonizing to the merchants who are there all day and late into night.

Uproot/Downsize 2009

Late in May 2008 I made a decision to clear out of Swarthmore and move to New York. It was a momentous decision. But it came about quite unexpectedly and quickly. Three years later, I know without doubt that it was a wise decision.

Since my retirement from the college in June 2001, I have kept a pied-à-terre in the city, first subletting a studio apartment from a friend and then renting my own from January 2004. So, I had been maintaining a dual residence for seven years and I enjoyed weekly train commutes back and forth. As I stepped in the house back from New York, I always felt how nice it was to be back home. But I also felt the sense of coming home when I walked in the apartment returning from Swarthmore. I was content. I had the best of the two worlds: idyllic country living and the vibrant city life.

Still, I knew that at some point I’d have to make a decision, whether to move wholesale to the city or give up New York and return to the house in Swarthmore, or else retire into a retirement village. But it was a thought I packed away in the back of my mind in order to procrastinate the necessary decision. A friend visiting me from Boston posed me the question and urged me to think about it seriously now, not waiting until I was 80 as I proposed. She wisely warned me that if I waited until I started to be aware of the need to make the decision it would be too late because clearing the house and moving would then be too hard psychologically no less than physically. She went home and for three days I was hardly able to sleep.

Then, I decided, and my Project Uproot was launched. I looked for a one-bedroom apartment in the same neighborhood and found one in a few days that suited me in location, size, layout, and price. It was going to be available in a few weeks; and I moved in on 16 June. The idea was to insure that I stick to my commitment, to enable me to estimate how much (or little) of the stuff from the house I could pack in the apartment, and to allow myself a year to clean up the house of the stuff to be disposed of and also get myself comfortable in the new apartment.

I lived in Swarthmore since 1966 when I got the teaching position at the college. I bought the three-bedroom house in 1980 and in the summer of 1989 I had the garage remodeled into a study/library with a bay window. We -- my partner and I --worked hard on the garden and made it our own and, in our opinion at least, the most beautiful on the block with changing blossoms from season to season. It was the place where I had lived continuously the longest time in my life; and it was a happy home. I had a deep root in the house and the town. But like a taproot it was not hard to pull out. My partner passed away in 1995, and I retired from teaching in 2001. The idea of spending what remained of my life simply, unburdened by the house and the huge possessions in it, and the car, was definitely appealing; and, having grown up in Tokyo as a child, I was strongly drawn to a life in a metropolis. So, once the decision had been made I felt comfortable about the drastic move and making the NY apartment my real home. It was fortunate to have had a friend’s sublet for two and a half years to test the waters -- to see how comfortable living in the city was -- and try it out for seven years. I found the urban pace, cacophony, and chaos, not to speak of the cultural amenities the great city offered, truly exhilarating; I was a fish in the water. It did not take a month to accept the rightness of my Project Uproot.

Planning and implementing the move was, however, entirely another matter -- not so much the Move itself but the process of reducing the possessions accumulated in the three-bedroom house house to fit the one-bedroom urban apartment -- what I called my Project Downsize. It was daunting, well nigh traumatic, a nightmare.

The new apartment was already adequately furnished from the earlier studio apartment. So I was prepared to forgo most of the furniture in the house, nothing of special value. The kitchen needed no more than the most basic items I already had. I drew the plan of the apartment to scale and had quite an accurate idea as to what and how much I could bring in. The huge part of my possessions were books, works of art, and the wardrobe, in that order. I had 33 full-size bookcases and several smaller ones, holding over 8000 volumes of books and journals, scholarly and literary, plus videocassettes taking up three bookcases, some 1000 CDs, 15 linear feet of vinyl LPs, five full-size cabinets of papers, and color slides galore, and then cartons of diaries, family albums, personal memorabilia, All the walls in the house, upstairs and downstairs, were covered with pictures and hangings; and clothing and accessories packed tight the two walk-in closets and two regular-size closets. I had to reduce the library to a third at maximum, the wardrobe to a fifth, and the collection of art to even less, given the available wall space in the apartment and the storage space next to none.

I drew up the plan of the apartment to scale and knew that, aside from two chairs, one side table to serve as a desk, and the stereo system with two large Polk speakers, exactly 11 tall bookcases and four short ones, all matching, and one file cabinet would fit, and I knew, too, exactly where they would be positioned. I planned on filling some shelves with smaller books in two ranks, front and rear. But I soon learned that the real pang of downsizing is not the reduction per se but the formidable task of sorting out what to keep and what to forgo. The process was like chipping away a solid wall with a chisel and a hammer to break open a crawl passage. As for the books I sold or gave away the bulk of titles in art, art history, and architecture; I decided early on to keep one monograph on each of the major artists I like. I kept all the poetry books, the collection of James Joyce studies, books on Duchamp, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, all of the plays and theater studies, some writings in criticism and art theory, most of the film studies (only because I had no time to sort them but not the running issues of a dozen film journals that I was sad to abandon), fashion books, and a half of the large collection of books in Japanese. It was a hard decision to have had to choose between books I owned and intended to read but hadn’t and still wanted to, on the one hand, and, on the other, the books I had read and felt attached to and found hard to part with. In the end I was eclectic but erred and had regrets; I had to buy back some titles later from second-hand bookstores on line. I kept all the CDs, a third of the LP’s, and all the videocassettes (which preempted a good many books that I should have kept). The mover’s van delivered the goods on 16 April: 15 bookcases, 106 cartons of books, three clothing cartons, and three dish packs. I had no room by and large for tools, appliances, tableware, and linens. By then, I had already transported on my weekly train trip from Swarthmore to New York, carrying as much as I could manage in two shopping bags filled with fragile and valuable possessions -- ceramics, works of art, jewelry, and a few kitchen appliances I decided not to do without. Once a friend visiting me from New York was driving back and I rode with him having packed up the car with items too large to carry by hand. Then, my son Giulio helped me move in his van the stereo system, heavy ceramics, some chairs, a side table, and large paintings -- items I didn’t want to trust the mover with. Then, there were family heirlooms -- my father’s architectural sketches and drawings and old albums -- that I sent back to my sister in Japan.

Of what remained in the house, I sold many items on line, shredded or recycled papers, carried bundles of clothing to the Goodwill -- 26 evening dresses, over a hundred day dresses, 67 skirts from maxi to micro mini, no pants (I don’t wear pants), and shoes and sandals and coats and blouses, bag after bag of them. Selling items I didn’t need was a drudgery, slow and often unrewarding. Finding homes for donations was even more tedious. I had three cartons of books in Japanese that my father authored on traditional Japanese architecture. Most university libraries already had most of them; they finally settled in the library of Philadelphia Museum of Art. Many works of art were sold off for pittance in the hands of the estate sales people who came and emptied the house mercilessly as was the Volvo in the few days left before abandoning the house. The good fortune I had of getting a buyer of the house in April, only a little over a month after getting it listed, a good fortune in view of the slow market at the time, was also a huge burden as, having promised to vacate the house by the end of June, I had two month to do a huge amount of work left to do under tremendous pressure. One year I allowed for clearing the house; the pressure grew in slow increment and then steadily in acceleration.

In the process of downsizing, I learned that accumulating goods is so much easier than getting rid of them without resorting to dumping them. Attic and basement are the banes of the house; these are spaces that conveniently serve for storage but, for that reason, become a hoarding place where we pack things we don’t need thinking they might come of use some time in the future which never comes. A few days before leaving the house, I had 16 packages to mail to New York, of which two were lost in transit and I had no idea what they contained. 



But I made it; my Project Downsize was done, and the sale of the house was closed on 30 June. I was relieved and exhausted, and remembering the experience two years later, I am dizzy. I cannot believe that it got done. My friend was right; I’m not sure if I would have made it through the ordeal two years from now, when I’m 80.

08/01/11

瘤 (kobu) Lump

この間，ニューヨークで近所を歩いていて，瘤のあるおばあさんを見た。背中をくの字に曲げてうつむきにしょぼしょぼと向こうから歩いて来る所すれ違いにふとかいま見ると，左の頬にあんず位の瘤があった。そして突然、瘤取りじいさんの話を思い出した。その昔，頬に瘤のある無欲なおじいさんが，森深く道に迷って夜更けに鬼の宴会にとびこんでしまった。そこで，舞を舞った所大変気に入られ、翌晩また来るようにと保証に瘤をきれいに取ってしまった。同じように瘤のある隣の欲深いおじいさんがこの話を聞いて、翌晩鬼の所に行って舞を舞ったけど，気に入られず，鬼は怒ってきのうの瘤をあいている方の頬に付けてしまった。 勧善懲悪を教える この民話は、鎌倉時代13世紀の「宇治拾遺物語」から伝わったもので、日本の子供達にはなじみ深いお話です。子供の頃に聞いて良く憶えていますけど、渡米以前、たまに瘤のある老人を町で見かけたことも記憶にあります。瘤を見たのはそれ以来初めて、それもニューヨークで、60年ぶりの事とて、本当に驚きました。家に帰って調べた所に依ると、「粉瘤腫 (Atheroma)」は皮下に出来る良性腫瘍で、頬に出来るのは「耳下腺の多形成腺腫」といって放っておいて大きくなっても害はないそうです。でも半世紀前と比較して、瘤のある人は殆どいなくなったのでしょうか。イエメン、ソマリア、エジプトなどで、チャット或いはカート（和名あらびやちゃのき）の葉を刺激のために噛んで頬に貯めるそうですが、これは瘤ではありません。


courtesy - http://yemen.way-nifty.com/blog/2009/04/post-6f64.html


The other day in my neighborhood in New York I saw a woman with a large lump on the cheek. She was bent forward and trudged toward me, as we crossed, I took a quick glance and saw on her left cheek a lump the size of an apricot. Suddenly, I remembered the story of “Kobutori Jiisan (An Old Man Who Lost his lump).” Long time ago, a selfless old man with a lump on his cheek got lost deep in the woods and came upon an ogre’s banquet near dawn. To entertain the host, he danced a dance, and the ogre appreciated it and ordered him to come back the next night and took the lump off his cheek as a security. Hearing this story, an avaricious old neighbor, also with a lump, went into the woods, found the ogre’s banquet, and danced a dance but badly and the ogre, in anger, pressed the lump from the night before on the man’s free cheek. The folktale which teaches the lesson of reward and punishment originated in the 13th-century “Tales of Uji Shûi” from the Kamakura Period, and is familiar among Japanese children. I remember it well, too. I also remember having seen old men with a lump now and then before I came to the US. But I have never seen any since then, these 60 years, and seeing one, of all places in New York, was a great surprise. What I could find out is that atheroma is the benign swelling that develops under the skin, and the lump on the cheek is the tumor of the parotid gland, and it may enlarge but does no harm. Compared with a half century ago, we see today hardly any person with a lump on the cheek. In Yemen, Somalia, Egypt and other Arabian and East African areas, the evergreen leaves of Khat are chewed and collected in the cheek to extract their stimulant juice. This is not tumor.

07/26/11

Holding on by hand

A child walking holding on, hand in hand, to an adult -- mom, dad, or nanny -- is a lovely sight to see. In my neighborhood in New York I see many children walking or skipping with an adult who walks them to school and picks them up when the school is over. It then occurred to me that this is a sight much rarer in suburbia because children are chauffeured to and from school by car, and shopping is done without negotiating crowded sidewalks. The sight brings back the memory of my childhood. I had to stretch my arm high to reach up and clasp the adult’s hand, which was always so big, and I had to skip now and then to catch up with the adult’s gait. There was a wonderful feel of security, the assurance that I won’t get lost. Sometimes, in impatience, the adult will grip my wrist, and I hated that because it made me feel a captive; I insisted on being clasped by hand. I wish I found a medium-sized giant whom I can hold on by hand and recapture that sensation.

かいぐり

突然，こんなのを思い出した。
　　　　　　ちょーち、ちょーち、　
　　　　　　あわ、わ、わ、わ、
　　　　　　かいぐり、かいぐり、
　　　　　　とっとのめ、　　
　　　　　　おつむ、てん、てん
　　　　　　ひじ、ぽん、ぽん。

ぎごちなく体のあちこちを触れてみる，あの楽しい気分も思い出した。　

I just remembered this physical game we teach an infant to do herself/himself:

Chôchi chôchi - Clap, clap with both hands,
Ah-wa, wa, wa, wa - Place a hand over the open mouth repeatedly
Kaiguri, kaiguri - Reel the two hands over each other round and round
Totto no me - Touch left open palm with the right index finger
Otsumu ten ten - Lightly tap the head with two hands
Hiji pon pon - Tap the left elbow with the right hand.

Out of the blue I remembered this rhyme, and even the pleasure of touching different parts of the body when I could do the movements only awkwardly.

Mother's Rhyme

I was trying to remember the finger game Mother used to play on my face so as to ease my anger when as an irritable child I sulked. I checked the rhyme on line but found only a Kyoto version; Mother was Edokko (Tokyo born).

子供の頃, 怒りん棒のあたしの苛立ちをおさめようと母が指先で顔をなぞって遊んだ時の唄を思い出そうとしてオンラインで調べた所、京都の唄が見付かりましたけど、あたしのとは少し違います。。母は江戸っ子でした。

愛宕山に参って（あたま）　　　    あたごさんにまいって
下谷に寄って（ひたい）　　　　　たらたら道おりて
はなひとつつんで（はな）　　　　毛虫にさされて
ほうぼうで叱られて（ほお）　　　花屋へよって
いけのはたまわった（くち）　　　花一本ぬすんで
無念なことよ（むね）　　　　　　方々で目もろて
腹立つことよ（はら）　　　　　　口おしや　腹立ちや　無念や
おへその下で茶を沸かせ。　　　　音羽の滝の白糸さん

最後の所でおなかをくすぐって笑わせるんですけど。中途の一、二行どうしても思い出せないわ。

In Mother's version, she tickled the stomach to make me laugh at the end, but I think I'm missing a couple of lines in the middle.

東京の姉に手紙で聞いて，思い出せなかった数行教えてもらいました。下記の通りです。
I wrote my sister in Tokyo to ask, and I learned the few lines that I could not remember. Completed, it goes as follows:

愛宕山に参って　（あたま）　
下谷に寄って　　（ひたい）
花一本摘んで　　（はな）
池之端を廻って　（くち）
碁石を拾って　　（は）
方々で叱られた　（ほお）
無念なことよ　　（むね）
腹立つことよ　　（はら）
おへその下で茶を沸かせ。

ずいずいずっころばし

ずいずいずっころばし

ごまみそずい
ちゃつぼにおわれて

どっぴんしゃん。
ぬけたぁら、どんどこしょ。

たわらのねずみが

米食ってちゅう、

ちゅうちゅうちゅう
おっとさんがよんでも、

おっかさんがよんでも、

いきっこなぁーしよ。

いどのまわりで、

おちゃわんかいたのだぁーれ。

いろは歌（Iroha)

いろは歌の英訳を試みてみました。
I attempted a translation of the Iroha Poem, dating from Late Heian Period, 10th-11th century.

いろはにほへと ちりぬるを
わかよたれそ つねならむ
うゐのおくやま けふこえて
あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす

色は匂へど 散りぬるを
我が世誰ぞ 常ならん
有為の奥山 今日越えて
浅き夢見じ 酔ひもせず

Colorful and fragrant, flowers scatter.
Nothing in this world is forever.
I cross life’s rugged mountain today.
This is no dream. I am ever sober.