Plum Blossoms in Osaka Castle Plum Garden

This year I have been writing about various plum blossom viewing possibilities in Tokyo, but until yesterday I did not yet have a chance to see the plum blossoms of Osaka.

Yesterday in balmy weather I grasped my lunch-break chance to see the plum blossoms in the park of Osaka Castle. A special section has been set aside as "baien", plum park, and there are in fact lots of plum trees here - about 1,250.

Some trees were already past their prime, but others were just in full bloom. A faint sweet scent wafted through the air.

A pink riot on this tree which just was in full bloom!

Blossoms silhouetted against the blue sky.

People were picnicking under the trees. As real "Osakaens" these women of course carry bags with the "Hanshin Tigers" logo, the local baseball club that is the more popular, the more it loses in the national competition.

Seen through the haze of plum blossoms, even the concrete castle looks good!

Hideyoshi, Osaka Castle and the Toyokuni Shrine

Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka castle in 1585, five years before he completed the reunification of Japan. The donjon was five stories high on the outside and eight on the inside, making it a fitting symbol of the generalissimo's rule.

[Osaka Castle - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

After his death in 1598 Hideyoshi had himself deified and a shrine, Toyokuni Jinja, was established near his grave in Kyoto. His successors, the Tokugawa, were not happy about having Hideyoshi as a deity in their political heaven (Tokugawa Ieyasu in fact copied Hideyoshi's deification for himself in Nikko) and destroyed all vestiges of the cult. But in the Meiji-period, local governments in Kyoto and Osaka started honoring the achievements of Hideyoshi again and also built new Toyokuni shrines for him as an expression of State Shinto.

[Toyokuni Shrine, Osaka - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

One such shrine stands next to Osaka Castle. It is a concrete and rather tasteless affair, aiming at empty grandeur. The best thing to see here lies in a forgotten corner to the right of the shrine hall. It is a fenced in garden designed by great 20th c. garden architect Shigemori Mirei. Characteristic are the huge boulders and the use of tiles and patches of asphalt. Why is this garden not better advertised and open to the public?

[Garden by Shigemori Mirei in Toyokuni Shrine, Osaka - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Hideyoshi's statue also graces the grounds. He was a shrewd politician and brilliant general, and also seems to have been aware of the many social and economic problems of his age. In his later years, he developed a regrettable megalomania, leading him to invade Korea and even toy with plans to conquer China. Although originally he seems to have been a genial and affable man, he was negatively transformed by his lust for power - a not uncommon story.

[Hideyoshi statue in Toyokuni Shrine - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

After he died and the Tokugawa clan took over the reigns of government, his descendants were seen as a danger to the new authority and exterminated in two campaigns, directed against Osaka Castle where they were holed up. The castle withstood the first siege, but the second campaign, in the summer of 1615, led to its total destruction.

[Lion dog, Toyokuni Shrine, Osaka - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Subsequently, the victoriuous Tokugawa built their own castle here, but already in the 17th c. the donjon was hit by lightning and destroyed. It was never rebuilt.

The present concrete reincarnation, complete with elevator, was built by Osaka City in 1928 to celebrate the coronation of the Showa Emperor. As a castle it is worthless (I wonder why all the tourists flock here? Better to visit the real castle in Himeji!), as a historical museum exhibiting some items related to Hideyoshi it is worth a look.

[Osaka Business Park seen from Osaka Castle - Photo Ad Blankestijn]

Moyashimon, or An Eye for Bacteria

In my search for food-related manga, I came across a very interesting specimen: Moyashimon, by Ishikawa Masayuki, which calls itself "Tales of Agriculture," but rather is about a hero with the unique ability to see and talk with bacteria and other micro-organisms.

Now this is a nice proposition, because Japanese food culture is after all a culture of micro organisms: take koji, a mold called officially Aspergillus Oryzae. This is used in the manufacture of sake, soy sauce, miso and mirin and Japanese cuisine has been rightly called a "Koji Cuisine."

The protagonist of the story, Sawaki Tadayasu, is the son of a tane-koji-ya, a producer of such koji spores. Since his youth, he can see koji and other micro-organisms much larger than they appear under a microscope and even communicate with them, a weird faculty...

Sawaki has become freshman at an agricultural university in Tokyo. He attends the opening ceremony together with his childhood friend and fellow-freshman Yuki Kei, whose parents run a sake brewery (making them customers for koji spores of Sawaki's parents).

They become students of Itsuki Keizo, an aged professor with a mania for fermented foods who is an acquaintance of Sawaki's family and already knows about his amazing ability. At their first meeting, he shocks both freshmen by setting his teeth in Kiviak, a weird dish from Greenland made from the raw flesh of an auk which has been buried under a stone inside a sealskin (!) until reaching an advanced stage of decomposition. (Yuk!) Talking about fermented foods...

The most impressive member of the study group of the professor is postgraduate student Hasegawa Haruka, a young women who for personal reasons always wears sexy bondage-style clothing under her lab coat. She is rather violent and likes to swing her little whip around. In the beginning, she has some difficulty believing Sawaki's microbe-spotting faculties are real.

Other characters include Oikawa Hazuki, a woman with an obsession against bacteria (she always carries a spray) and two fellow students Misato and Kawahama, who try to make easy money out of Sawaki's abilities.

But the real protagonists are of course the micro-organisms, who appear with faces and in animated form. The most important is the above-mentioned Aspergillus Oryzea or koji mold; others are Baccillus Natto used to make the fermented beans so popular among foreigners, Lactobacillus Bulgaricus used to make yoghurt, Trichophyton Rubrum which causes Miss Hasegawa to suffer athlete's foot, the common green mold Penicillium Chrysogenum and the bad boy of the story, Lactobacillus Fructivorans or Hiochi-kin which causes sake to go bad.

The manga has been running in Kodansha's Evening magazine since August 2004. In 2007, eleven installments of an anime television series were aired by Fuji TV. I have enjoyed it very much, as well as the anime version (based closely on the manga) - it is a great lesson about all the micro-organisms that surround us daily here in Japan!

Dead Wet Girls - Review of David Kalat's J-Horror

Why do I watch horror movies? I do not even believe in the supernatural, let alone ghosts. Probably some childhood fear of the dark remains in our minds, providing a bridge to horror even for those who consider themselves enlightened. And the atmosphere of horror movies grabs you: the slow threat, the sure feeling that something is about to happen...

J-horror is a genre of Japanese film that originated somewhere in the mid-nineties of the last century, culminated in movies like Ringu and The Grudge, and still leads a ghostly existence. It is a type of horror film that eschews baroque effects, has little or no CGI, and seeks to shock with quiet understatement. This is in part because the directors had small budgets - most of the films were originally made for the direct-to-video market. As is often the case, compelling circumstances gave birth to a new genre.

Although J-horror uses certain elements common to Japanese horror in general (whether film, Kabuki, drama, etc.), such as female ghosts without feet but with grudges, it is a sub-genre and not representative of all Japanese horror. For example, much more elaborate horror films were made in the sixties, and in the 19th century, Kabuki grande-guignol was popular.

Most J-horror features a dead girl, often with her long black hair hanging down in front of her face. This not only makes her creepy, but also means that she is free of any moral compass and follows her own desires - loose hair is traditionally a sign of wantonness in women.

Water also plays a large role; many of the girls have been involuntarily exposed to the wet element (drowned in an old well, for example) and are therefore both wet and dead. Ask Freud if he thinks this means something special.

With J-Horror, the Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge and Beyond, David Kalat has written a history of J-Horror and done a very good job. He dedicates whole chapters to the big franchises like Ringu, The Grudge and Tomie, listing the numerous movies and their differences. He is a great help to navigate through the dark landscape of J-horror. And he does not limit himself to Japan, but also unravels the ramifications of J-Horror in Korea, Hong Kong and the United States.

In "J-Horror Has Two Daddies" he describes the history of the huge Ringu franchise and its founders, writer Koji Suzuki and director Nakata Hideo. The surprising thing is that neither of them is really interested in horror: Suzuki seems to be more interested in how to be the perfect dad for his kids, and Nakata has since moved on to samurai movies. But maybe because of that they created the first peak of J-horror and put the new genre firmly on the ghost map. I'll never forget how the ghost of Sadako crawls out of the old well, a little bit further every time we see her, long black hair in front of her face, and finally comes crawling out of the TV...

"The Haunted School is about scared kids, for scared kids - demonstrating the genre's strong roots in young heroes/heroines and youthful audiences - none other than the American slasher films. The nineties saw an avalanche of movies about haunted schools, among which Hanako, Phantom of the Toilet is my favorite, if only for the title.

"Junji Ito Will Not Die" delves into the macabre manga by Ito Junji (highly recommended for those with strong stomachs) and the movies based on it, most notably the Tomie franchise about a girl who is killed but refuses to die, her insatiable appetite for love bringing her back to life again and again. She seduces legions of young men with only one goal: to kill them and then to be killed herself...

While the Tomie movies are not as good as the original manga, another work based on Ito's nightmarish stories, Uzumaki (The Spiral), made by (despite the name, Japanese director) Higuchinsky, is a great art movie. Higuchinsky beautifully captures the madness of Ito's universe in its total obsession with killing spirals.

Another art director is introduced in "You are the Disease and Kiyoshi Kurokawa is the Cure": Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who goes far beyond the horror genre and often just plays with its conventions. The only pure J-horror movie he made is "Pulse", the rest does not fit into any genre - "Cure", for example, is more of a dark thriller in the vein of "Seven".

"A Ghost is Born" introduces the other big Ju-On franchise, The Grudge, and its director Shimizu Takashi. At first glance a normal haunted house story, the terrible grudge of these Japanese ghosts becomes a virus that threatens society. And that little boy with his white face and blank stare is really scary, even more than his ghostly mother crawling down the stairs.

In "The Unquiet Dead" Kalat provides a summary of the countless other J-horror movies from this decade. Some of the movies worth watching are Shikoku, Inugami, Trick, Parasite Eve, Suicide Club... even though none of them really fit the genre. It was all-around indie Miike Takashi who hit the mark with One Missed Call. The movie became famous for its "ringtone of death" and I can assure you that you will look at your cell phone in a different way after watching this movie.

"Whispering Corridors" takes us to Korea and K-horror, a considerable amount of atmospheric, supernatural shockers. Whispering Corridors is one of them, as is Memento Mori, both in the haunted school tradition, but for me the strongest by far is A Tale of Two Sisters by Kim Ji-Woon. It is an eerie psychological horror story with a convoluted plot that will leave you speechless.

Next we travel to Hong Kong for the Chinese take on nightmares and ghouls, in the sophisticated The Eye of the Pang Brothers (what if your eyes become unreliable and actually belong to someone else?) and the final chapter brings the American remakes, which - although they cannot touch the originals and I do not see the reason for such remakes, since everyone can watch the original films with subtitles - at least had the effect of bringing people to the original J-horror films - including David Kalat, as he tells in the beginning of the book.

Japanese Film

Also read my post on Japanese Horror Films.