By the way, I saw a lot of decorations for the Star Festival while driving today. So I’d like to write about this festival!
In my dictionary, there’s an example phrase,
“The event was introduced into Japan in the 8th century and became popular during the Edo Period.”In a collection of Myriad Leaves (万葉集 manyo-shu), some people made Tanka (短歌 thirty-one syllabled verse) for the festival. Some empty-headed Japanese may think it is unique to Japan, but actually, it is quite different from our traditional culture. This event has lasted for a very, very long time here, it is easy to for us to misunderstand the event because Japanese people love to see stars. But in fact, as the example sentence says, it “was introduced” into Japan. And Japan is a strange nation because people are not interested in stars at all.
The other day I read an article on Homer’s Odyssey on Scientific American. It was quite interesting. (If you want to read this article click here.)
According to this article, one reason why western people mythologized the universe is that they wanted to record the movements of stars and those events. How smart they were! By contrast, we don’t have many myths like them in Japan. For ancient Japanese, it was worth making Tanka of the moon, but not stars.
Also, I read a book the other day on my way to Tokyo. The author of the book kind of explained clearly on this topic.
Europeans had such a fertile imagination that they could make the notion of constellations under the sky. But Japanese didn’t look and gaze up at the sky. They preferred to look at the moon reflected in a pond or the moon shadow. This difference is so huge. Japanese put more importance on something they can absolutely see than something ideological. They realistically sought salvation in absence of absolutes (transience) rather than supposing a super terrestrial God exists. They thought it was better to give some “actual gift items” to express their gratitude. Japanese official diplomatic delegations sent to China during the Sui dynasty (遣隋使 Ken Zui Shi) and the Tang Dynasty (遣唐使 Ken Tou Shi) also returned to Japan with a lot of books, pottery, paintings, and so on, as the evidence of their hard work or accomplishment. Yes! Japanese is a really realistic nation!
I totally agree with the author. (sorry, it was so difficult for me to translate the book that I probably made a lot of mistakes, and it makes the idea hard to understand.) Japanese are existentialists to some extent. So, if you really want to express your feeling, just give someone a present without words! This is my visceral advice. haha!
And, I heard a real ridiculous piece of info on TV last night while having dinner. It (the TV commercial) said, “we’ll finish our TV program at 11:00 p.m. on Monday, because of the Star festival. If we do so, we can see stars more clearly.” (I don’t remember the exact phrase, but it was something like that.) I can’t help think the commercial is dodging responsibility by shifting the blame… Am I wrong?
Maybe I’ll write about this event again tomorrow… Because the actual festival is tomorrow.
-Mu
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