A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture. Ben Stevens
since anyone new became a Buddha.
Failing to gain Enlightenment, humans are instead endlessly reincarnated, moving among the Six Realms that are Ten (basically heaven, which can’t be all bad), Ningen (which is the world as we know it, Jim), Chikusho (inhabited by animals), Shura (described by Taigi as being filled with an ‘everlasting anger’), Gaki (where you suffer from a general dissatisfaction and want of everything) and, finally, Jigoku (hell).
One of these days, then, someone will succeed in gaining Enlightenment and will thus break this vicious circle, thereby creating a new Buddha. In the meantime, Buddhists do their best to stay out of the ‘lower’ Realms by filling their lives with selfless acts of charity.
BUDŦ
The ‘umbrella’ term given to all types of Japanese martial arts. BudŦ itself is a compound of two Japanese words: bu meaning ‘war’, and dŦ meaning ‘way of’. BudŦ best describes the myriad fighting skills a samurai warrior would have needed to master in order to survive the battlefield. He (not many female samurai in feudal Japan, though check the Naginata entry for the inevitable exception) would have been highly skilled in not only archery and swordsmanship—from which come kendŦ and iaidŦ—but also in striking and grappling.
Hence the martial art jujutsu (there are various spellings of this word, but my Japanese laptop recognises only this one, so that’s the one I’ll use), which was born on the battlefields of ancient Japan. Jujutsu was then—and sometimes still is today, depending on where, and from whom, you learn it—a comprehensive fighting system, with the violent, ‘anything goes’ philosophy that you’d expect from a martial art that was learned very much ‘on the job’.
BURAKUMIN
In a country that remains as obsessed with a person’s ‘roots’ and family history as Japan, coming from burakumin stock can still cause someone some serious prejudice. The word itself means ‘people of the hamlet’—which is a nice way of saying that feudal-era burakumin were confined to an almost ghetto-like existence, forbidden to associate with non-burakumin to the extent that they were even required to have their own temples and shrines, so that they should live as isolated a life as possible.
In fact, burakumin were commonly known then as eta, or ‘full of filth’, and endured pretty much the same existence as the ‘untouchable’ class in India. They did the sort of jobs that were wholly necessary yet at the same time were considered unclean—think undertaking, tanning, and really anything that involved dead flesh and bodies—all the while being informed by Shinto priests that they were contaminating themselves with the impurities created by death. In fact, for sheer revulsion, their occupations were ranked equal to the crimes of bestiality and incest. Hence the reason why they were forbidden to associate with anyone of a ‘higher’ position than themselves in the feudal caste system—and they were right down there at the bottom.
Anything between 1—3 000 000 burakumin descendants live in Japan today, some (like the Ainu) doing their best to disguise their background, while others continue to live in the—mainly rural—areas where burakumin have traditionally had their ‘hamlets’.
BUSHIDŦ
Or ‘Way of the Warrior’ (literally ‘Warrior’s Way’, though that doesn’t sound half as good), encompasses the typical ‘manly’ characteristics, such as self-control, perseverance, courage, honesty, loyalty and so on.
Inazo Nitobe, in his famous book imaginatively entitled BushidŦ (it would probably have to be called Fighting Techniques of Japan’s Deadly Flying Samurai Ninja Warrior Monks of Death to succeed in today’s market) observed that the samurai’s code of practice wasn’t that different from the Western knight’s chivalric code, and most fighting forces dating from the beginning of time would probably claim to possess the above attributes.
BushidŦ expected the samurai to readily meet his own death at a moment’s notice—a death he was often required to mete out to himself through the act of seppuku, or the cutting open of his own belly with a short sword. This was thought to release the samurai’s spirit in the most dramatic way possible (I’d have to agree with that), and was the only way to escape defeat on the battlefield or to avoid some other source of great shame.
Naturally, seppuku was extremely painful. Hence the usual presence of another samurai, armed with a long sword with which to cut off his friend’s head and end his suffering the moment the act was completed.
BUSHUSURU
On January 8, 1992, at a state dinner given in his honour during a visit to Japan, President George Bush Snr. repaid the hospitality of his hosts by throwing up in the lap of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa. The unfortunate incident was quickly blamed on a feeling of ‘nausea’ that had plagued Bush all that day; but soon the verb Bushusuru—literally, ‘doing a Bush’—had been invented to describe those who vomited without warning.
BUSH WARBLER, JAPANESE
You’re much more likely to hear rather than see this little critter, though to be honest you won’t be missing all that much. The Japanese Bush Warbler, or uguisu, is usually small, brown (sometimes with a hint of dark yellow around its belly) and…er…that’s about it really.
The beauty of its mating call—which I won’t even attempt to transcribe here—commences from around the start of spring, and once led to it being dubbed ‘the Japanese Nightingale’. This name, however, completely ignored one important point: namely, that the uguisu never chirps away at night.
This bird also lends its name to that special type of ninja-defeating flooring, uguisubari. It’s also often mentioned in haiku, given its association with spring, sakura, and other things that tend to get the Japanese excited. And if that’s still not enough, an enzyme found in its droppings is used both as a skin-whitening agent and to remove stains from a kimono.
BYŦBU
Folding screens that originally came from China, byŦbu (‘wind wall’) could at first be found only in the Emperor’s court. ByŦbu acted as draught excluders (hence the name), room sub-dividers and in general livened the place up a bit with the colourful pictures of dragons, mountains, lakes, great trees and the like that were painted upon them.
Around the fifteenth century, however, byŦbu had become so commonplace that nearly everyone—rich and poor—owned at least a couple. Hence their fall from favour: byŦbu are nowadays commonly seen gathering dust inside temples and museums, dragged out every now and then for such occasions as weddings.
CHIKAMATSU, MONZAEMON
Renowned seventeenth century playwright, whose enduring fame has often led to him being referred to as the ‘Japanese Shakespeare’. The son of an unemployed doctor, he began his career writing haiku, before really making a name for himself by knocking out well over 100 plays. Few of these plays, however, are what you might call cheery. In fact, with titles such as The Love Suicides at Sonezaki and The Love Suicides at Ami-jima, the audience knew that they were going to be watching something a tad ‘deep’.
Later in his career, Chikamatsu transferred his formidable talents to bunraku, or the ‘puppet theatre’, where frequently just