Almost done!

Hopefully the last trip to the recycling centre today. Running down the food, cut back sharply on caffeine. Leaving Saturday night, arriving 24 hrs later. Start Monday 08:30!
Not much time for posting, but I noticed the following in yesterday's FT.

"The two companies fined a record £13.5m for safety breaches in the fatal Hatfield rail crash have received £21m from the government to cover legal costs".

The figures were released under the relatively new Freedom of Information Act that we now have in the UK.

Haiku

a crane takes wing
to mend a flaw
in the sky

(tsuru tateri ten no kizu woba tsukurou to)

Einstein's Century, Akiko Arima's Haiku
Brook Books, Decatur, Illinois 2000

For the pocket: Casio EX-S600

In Tokyo I thought about buying a "proper" camera, something like a Canon EOS, but I knew I would never carry it, and would be seduced by the need to add lenses, and all the other bits and pieces. I should learn to walk first! A good salesman at Yodobashi in Shinjuku did the deal. The best selling compact cameras were an Olympus and this Casio, not a name I associate with cameras. The Olympus was marginally bigger, 7 Million pixels: the Casio was slimmer, 6 Million pixels, and importantly for me, takes standard memory expansion cards. Proprietary formats make no sense. The Casio slips in my pocket and I find I take it everywhere. A Flickr account, and I am set up for those first few weeks in Singapore, now very close!

A small station can have great charm, and many have brickwork worthy of a small monograph. Staring at a much drilled and battered forgotten wall in Stafford conjures a vision of a skilled bricklayer, Woodbine hanging from the lip, shaping a brick with a few taps of the trowel. Custom shapes, unusual colours, glazes, intricate patterns. Poulton-le-Fylde on the edge of Blackpool, is such a station with a fine clock, old semaphore signals actuated by rods and pulleys, and unusually long, disused platforms suggesting the long steam-hauled trains bringing the huge crowds to Blackpool for Wakes weeks and Glasgow weekends. It's a classic station with its brickwork and a fine display of tulips a few weeks back. Excellent work from someone.

It makes a difference.

To those who move

Everyone seems to be moving, MovingMountain and Crabby Old Lady (a misnomer if ever there was one), and no doubt others. At the end of this month I will go to Singapore, and I am ridding myself of some of the clutter that an ageing recluse accumulates! Yes, it offers an opportunity for a new start, but equally I feel that to go overboard, is also not fully responsible behaviour. I don't think this is attachment, just a recognition that some structure is necessary if I am to remain mentally healthy.

I have tried to dispose of things thoughtfully, donating where possible, but I have had to recognise that, functional or wearable as some things may be, no-one wants them, nor do I have the time to place them. That we are a "consuming" society has been driven home by my visits to the local recycling centre. A whole skip devoted to computers, monitors and peripherals, skips full of bicycles, wood, clothes, shoes. Not too long ago, most would have been landfill, so I suppose this is "progress", but you can't help but feel, much could be re-used. But, you just have to do what you have to do, and move on.


My tutor at University (the late "GF") was an alpinist and skilled photographer (the first Hasselblad I saw). He told how in the Himalaya, the expedition's opened tins, were sought by local people as containers for water or storage. I have never forgotten that lesson.

As always, I shall travel with hand-luggage only, and take it a day at a time.

I offer a stick of incense from Sanzen-ji to those moving, and those remaining.

Japanese theatre

Traditional Japanese Theatre is remarkable, and would become an addiction if I lived there. I am not knowledgeable, but a recent post from Moving Mountain soliciting information about a carved figure, sent me looking through what I had. My main text is "Traditional Japanese Theater: an Anthology of Plays" edited by Karen Brazell (Columbia University Press, 1998). The statue that Moving Mountain shows has wild hair, and if you look closely, long braids on either side of the (fearsome) face. The stance is solid, perhaps seated. At first I thought it was a Thunder God (an example is the first picture above). But the figurine did not have any headgear. The lower picture is of the Shite from the Noh play Yamamba (a demon play, attributed to Zeami). No headgear, and the Shite is seated (on a round lacquer box): the stance is very similar to the carved figure. As an aside, the gesture with the closed fan emphasises that grace descends "even to the center of the earth" (Brazell, p.221).
I don't think these necessarily provide the answer, and Johnny Newt's comment is likely correct, but I am grateful for the excuse to revisit something I love!

Vienna

I'm rediscovering Mahler after 30 years. I had everything on LP, but now must move a CD collection to iPod, or maybe to my Linux laptop in ogg format (arguably better). My choice is Claudio Abbado (Nos. 1, 3, 6, 9) Riccardo Chailly (No. 8), John Barbirolli (No. 5), Simon Rattle (Nos. 2, 10), Leonard Bernstein (No. 7) and Jascha Horenstein (No. 4).
There was something in the ritual of carefully cleaning the LP and lowering the delicately balanced stylus that set the scene for attentive listening, but my student flat could not cope with the enormous dynamic range of a Mahler symphony: constantly adjusting the volume did not make for attentive listening. Now headphones allow that concentration, but deafness and tinnitus are my new companions. No time to waste.
I was in Vienna last weekend to see a colleague, so had a coffee by the opera house. The apocalyptic horseman is on the roof of the Court Opera House. In the nearby bookshop, I bought the Blaukopf's book, "Mahler, his Life, Work & World", based on contemporary quotations from letters and newspaper reviews. I sat in the early morning sun, shut out the tour buses and drifted back 100 years to hear the horse-drawn trams on the Ringstrasse.

I am mindful that I have already had eight more years of life than Mahler was granted.

Financial services

I've never understood the financial sector and their increasingly byzantine trades. Somehow I stubbornly believe that society's wealth must ultimately rest on people making things. Of course a healthy financial system is necessary to facilitate this, but to this layman, the financial sector seems more and more to exist for itself. The FT comments (27 April 2006):

"By facilitating economic expansion, the financial system plays its part in raising living standards. For these functions the banks have always taken their cut. However this has increased dramatically in recent decades. US financial companies earned 10-15 per cent of total US corporate profits in the 1950s and 1960s, but now account for 30-40 percent of the total."
"This trend for finance to grow much faster than the "real" economy is also apparent in the UK and elsewhere. In return for absorbing a rising share of society's resources, especially highly qualified workers, what is being delivered in return?"

Good question.

To Kiyomizu-dera

The approach to Kiyomizu-dera: Ninnen-zaka and Sannen-zaka. Steep alleys, relaxed crowds, tourist shops. So far, no Starbucks.


A donation elicits a ring of the bell, or a bang of the staff on the ground, and an invocation. A Japanese friend suggested the monks may not always be genuine, if that's the word, but I've no reason to believe otherwise.



Maiko, I assume.

Reith Lectures 2006

Daniel Barenboim "In the Beginning was Sound". The first two lectures are available on-line, the rest to follow. Recommended. In the same vein, the book, "Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value" by Julian Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2002.
Barenboim recounts hearing Brahms' Violin Concerto in a hotel lift, and having to conduct the work that same evening.

Incidentally, noise pollution is rife in Japan, though the lifts are mercifully silent.

Cherry blossom

The crow too was enjoying the blossom on this venerable, pruned tree in Maruyama-kōen, and sharing her pleasure with the hundreds of humans below.



"Poetry meetings were often held outside under blossoming cherry trees. Their organizers were often Amidist hermits from Ippen's Ji sect – or sometimes monks of the Ritsu sect – who invoked the souls of the departed. The canopy of the weeping cherry tree, like the oiled parasol of the reciter of the Heike, defined a space of shadow, midway between this world and the next. After the invocations, the participants wrote renga poems. Each in turn composed a verse on a given theme, which was continued by the next in line until all present had made up a verse. The quality of the poem reflected the degree of the participants' closeness. Anyone could come to these renga sessions 'under the blossoms'. Attendees had to hide their identities under loose-fitting clothes and broad-brimmed rice-straw hats that covered their faces. In the complete anonymity that guaranteed equality to each, everyone participated in the collective creation of a poem in the shadow of a tree, a space made sacred for a time by the invocation of the dead and the implicit agreement of the participants. Thus because renga meetings eliminated both status and sex barriers, a highly placed court noble or lady could draw pleasure from these meetings side by side with the lowest hinin."

From – "The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society", Pierre François Souyri, trans. by Kathe Roth, Columbia University Press, 2001




Well, maybe not much renga this year, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was good to be part of it.

Offering merit — 2

Above the main temple complex at Sanzen-in were some new buildings. Nearby were a series of stands which appear to be memorials to those who have died, and whose relatives wish to remember them and offer merit.



Recently we lost a member of our family, and such a way of remembrance matched a need I feel. Maybe there are similar ways here? So many boddhisatvas.

Offering merit — 1

Hidden on the British Library website is the opportunity to sponsor the preservation and digitisation of a sutra, or sutra fragment, from the Dunhuang collection, a collection of Buddhist manuscripts dating from 100BC to 1200AD, miraculously preserved in a sealed cave at Dunhuang on the Silk Road before their discovery in the late 19th Century. One might see such sponsorship as the equivalent of the former practice of paying a monk to transcribe a sutra to incur merit for others, particulary one's family.

Television Licence

I don't have a television. The TV Licensing authority, a uniquely British entity, writes to me:

"Thank you for informing us recently that you do not require a TV Licence.
Our experience has shown that a small but significant minority of people who tell us that they do not need a TV Licence, are found to require one when visited. We therefore need to verify the position for all households who inform us that they do not have a television, as a standard procedure."

Next time, I'll save the price of the stamp.

Nenju (念珠)

I bought a set of prayer beads, nenju (念珠) in Kyoto, to mark the move to Singapore (now put back to 1st June). It was a traditional shop, sliding door to enter, raised tatami platform to work, Japanese only, intimidating to this gaijin. Founded in the Edo period, the shop's current owner was the 12th generation. I selected a 108 bead nenju, made from sandlewood. A momentary fright when 1 million Yen was mentioned, but that was an error! The Japanese counting system has a "unit" at 10,000 (ichiman), which is where the confusion arose! Phew!

Later I began to think about the netsu's construction. I gathered some information from a website, but advice from a user, lay or monastic, would be welcome. It could be that I have a formal Nichiren rosary, but that does not concern me. First, I believe the beads are used as shown, over the left hand, joined in prayer. The counting requires care, as there is no change in colour, just a slightly smaller bead. One of the "leader" 2 x 5 bead strings has an extra bead (seen on the inner loop above). I take this to be the start. Then counting from the large bead (as 0), there is a smaller bead at position 8 and at position 23. It is the same counting the other way, 8 and 23, ie symmetrical.

It would be good to take it to a temple before leaving.

Change

Kyoto changes: Pachinko and Starbucks.

I think on what the architect Kisho Kurokawa says:

"The West seeks to hand down the actual physical original, while Japan hands down the ideas, aesthetic sensibility, spirit, and technique behind the physical work, according superior importance to the invisible tradition and making every effort to keep it alive. This Japanese attitude helps explain why we have been so quick to destroy elements of our built heritage and replace them with new structures. Of course, we Japanese need to reconsider this tendency, but on the other hand, the importance our culture places on the invisible creates significant opportunities for the transmission of traditional culture to contemporary lifestyle and architecture.

Much of what is most distinctively Japanese belongs to the categories of thought, philosophy, religion, manners, and sensibility. This forms an invisible spiritual tradition: the aesthetic of using materials in their natural state; minute attention to detail; the Buddhist idea that all living things possess the Buddha nature; the philosophy of Consciousness-Only, which resolves opposites in symbiotic relationships; a view of architecture and human beings as parts of the natural world; a curiosity that encourages the adoption of foreign cultures and new technologies; a concept of space as multivalent and ambivalent; a style of communication that values emotion as well as reason; and a high regard for intermediary zones and ambiguity."

Kisho Kurokawa "Each One a Hero: The Philosophy of Symbiosis" Kodansha International. 1997. Also available on his website.

Ginkaku-ji (銀閣寺)

Kyoto is always memorable whatever the season: the new continues to displace the old — my old haunt Maruzen has closed and the inexorable spread of Starbucks and Pachinko continues apace. But there are still sufficient traditional narrow streets to imagine the past, and the temples remain. All changes. The timing of the trip was perfect for cherry blossom, and the city was full. Despite the crowds, the atmosphere was very relaxed.
Reverend Master Mugo wryly observed that on her SE-Asian trip she would arrive the day after a festival. I had better luck. The birthday of the Buddha is observed on April 8th and with thousands of others we poured tea over the Buddha's head in Ginkaku-ji (The Silver Temple) in Higashiyama and then slowly walked along the philosopher's way (tetsugaku-no-michi) down to Nanzen-ji, stopping at Hōnen-in (and the nearby burial ground), and the Nomura museum on the way.

If you are in Kyoto, give Starbucks a miss: Inoda is the place for coffee.

Sanzen-in (三千院)

Ōhara, in the mountains to the north of Kyoto, is home to a cluster of temples, the most famous of which may be Sanzen-in (三千院). Founded in 784 by the monk Saichō (最澄), it is of the Tendai sect, and must rank as one of the most beautiful temples in Japan. Arriving early, the peacefulness of its famous gardens was overwhelming. Rain clouds were drifting through the forested hilltops, and a passing heavy shower just enhanced the colours, especially of the moss. The tiny supplicant I photographed in the moss simply filled me with great calm. A truly numinous place.


The Ojo-gokuraku Hall houses a trinity of Amidha Buddha flanked by Kannon and Seishi statues. Photography is not allowed, so I offer a scanned postcard.

The monk in attendance was pointing out traces of original coloring in the roof timbers, but my Japanese was not up to following him. The roof looked decidedly blackened, a reminder perhaps of the ever present risk of fire, hopefully lessened these days.

I think Wittgenstein had it (in another context): "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" — whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

To Japan

April 8th is taken as the Buddha's birthday. I will be in Kyoto, and offer for the journey and for my friends a haiku from this two volume scholarly work, privately published by Toshiharu Oseko.

On Buddha's birthday
Praying with wrinkled hands
The sound of rosaries

Kambutsu ya
shiwade awasura
juzu no oto

"Time: what one reads off clocks".

A good example of book design is this slim volume, beautifully laid out in small format, and perfect for the pocket when travelling. And the content is as good as the cover promises!
In 1905 the young Albert Einstein, an unknown patent clerk in Basle, published five extraordinary papers in rapid succession in Annalen der Physik. The fourth paper, on the 'Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies' ('Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper') laid the foundation for Special Relativity.
The implications of science can never be completely foreseen. Special relativity predicts that a clock on a satellite such as used for global positioning will run ahead of the same clock on earth. Such is the accuracy of a modern atomic clock that these tiny differences can be precisely measured. If uncorrected, over six hours the difference would amount to five millionths of a second!
A tiny difference that translates to a positioning error of one kilometre, making all satellite navigation systems useless.

'Time: what one reads of clocks'. Subtle.

Special Relativity by Domenico Giulini, Oxford University Press, 2005

Too few science graduates?

From the Financial Times of March 15th and 16th 2006.

CBI warns of drop in science graduates.

John Cridland, deputy director-general of the CBI says,

"We're going to wake up one morning and find that it's overseas countries that have this very important cluster of science and engineering skills and we don't. The decline in science study isn't yet a crisis but it will haunt us unless we address it now".

But,

"Alan Johnson, the trade and industry secretary is due to highlight an increase of about 750,000 in the number of people of working age with science, technology and engineering degrees, compared with 1997".

So whom do we believe?

"But the CBI has strongly questioned the validity of government statistics, accusing ministers of 'propping up' the numbers by including psychology. While the government claims the number of biological science graduates has increased by 109 per cent in the decade to 2004-05, the increase is only 7 per cent if psychology degrees are excluded, the CBI analysis shows. The number graduating in chemistry fell by 18 per cent and physics by 7 per cent over the same period".

Then, the DTI said,

Graduate infusion for biomedical science.

"DTI quoted statistsics from the Higher Education Statistics Agency to show an overall increase in first degrees in science, engineering and technology from 87,435 in 1995 to 124,860 in 2004. But there were big differences between subjects. Biological sciences rose from 12,380 to 25,955 graduates and computer science from 8,275 to 20,205 over the nine years. Physical sciences fell from 13,440 to 11,995 and engineering and technology from 22,085 to 19,780".

"Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society, who hosted the meeting, was less impressed than his ministerial guest by the progress made so far".

The last word.

"Goldman Sachs in record form as earnings rise 64%", where average pay amongst its 23,600 staff is put at $900,000.

and

"40 per cent of A-level chemistry is taught by non-chemists".

No comment.