Category Archives: Opinion

Fermata’s opinions

San Luis Flattened (Part 2) – Who is hurt?

Conservation, Opinion, Politics, , , ,
Road killed black skimmer - San Luis Pass

Texas boys and girls joyride their way across our beaches, leaving flattened wildlife and rutted beaches and dunes in their wake. Texas anglers, too sluggish to actually walk to the shore to fish, steer their pick’em trucks to the water’s edge where they can offload their beer and bait. Drive-by birders clamp their scopes to side windows and chase the birds from the comfort of air conditioning. All ignore who gets hurt.

Here’s who.

Black skimmers nest, when able, on the beach at San Luis Pass. They carve out a small depression in the sand where they lay their eggs. They nest colonially, so they are hard to miss.

Black skimmer breeding colony

Of course the eggs are difficult to see in the nest itself. These birds nest in exposed areas, and therefore their eggs are patterned much like the sand and shell around them.

Black skimmer eggs, San Luis Pass

The young skimmers are most vulnerable as hatchlings (i.e., after hatching but before they can fly). Young skimmers are easy prey for raccoons, coyotes, feral cats, and ORVs. Skimmers will hide their young in the shade of any adjacent vegetation to keep them cool and safe.

Black skimmer chicks, San Luis Pass

Skimmers are rarely alone in the nesting colonies. They are often joined by gull-billed terns, an uncommon breeder along the upper Texas coast.

Gull-billed tern at nest, San Luis Pass

Shorebirds such as the snowy plover, Wilson’s plover, and willet will nest nearby. Snowy plover has only recent begun to recover from a population crash most likely due to increased beach traffic.

Snowy plover

A few of the birds that nest here are unique to the region. The Texas horned lark is but one of numerous subspecies, but with its generous yellow wash about the face and head it may be the most attractive. Horned larks, too, nest here at San Luis Pass flats.

Texas horned lark

Some, like the piping plover, are threatened. Other wildlife species, such as Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, are endangered. Yet all depend on San Luis Pass for some portion of their lives.

Piping Plover, Galveston

Many of the San Luis Pass species gather, at times, in immense aggregations. For example, after nesting many of the gulls and terns bring their young to San Luis Pass flats for the remainder of the season. In this way they only have to make short flights between their young and the waters where they feed. Some gather here after nesting far away. For example, the black tern is an inland tern that breeds throughout the Great Plains east through the Great Lakes. In late summer and early fall they stage at San Luis Pass flats, gaining weight and energy stores before making their migratory flight to the coast of northern South America. These staging flocks at San Luis Pass can be dazzling, with as many as 25,000 birds congregated on the sand flats and floating over the waters of San Luis Pass on a single day.

Black tern, San Luis Pass flats

These are but a few of the species that are being decimated by the failure of the local, state, and federal governments to protect them. The laws are in place; the enforcement is absent. Galveston would rather prosecute one local birder who took it on himself to control the feral cat population than to police the area for which Galveston has jurisdiction, authority, and responsibility. Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest American conservation president, said that “surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs…our people should see to it that they [America’s treasured landscapes] are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever with their majestic beauty unmarred.” San Luis Pass Flats is one of Galveston’s treasured landscapes, and complacency and ignorance are insuring its demise. San Luis Pass is marred. San Luis Pass is disintegrating.

There is nothing new in this saga. I first became involved in trying to protect this area in the 1980s, when the property had been sold to the Dugan family by the Resolution Trust Corporation. The original developer had defaulted during the S&L collapse (remember that fiasco?), and the Dugans had acquired the property at a bargain basement price. They immediately tried to limit vehicular traffic in the region, and the locals squealed. The city capitulated.

Later I became involved in San Luis Pass when the Dugans decided to sell to yet another development company,Centex. The new buyer wanted to restrict vehicular traffic on the beach, and I wanted to get the cars and trucks away from the birds and other wildlife. While some traffic has been eliminated near Point San Luis, the vehicles simply moved to the end of the island and the flats. Then Centex bailed (beginning to see a pattern?), and the property ended up being owned by Macfarlan Capital Partners and their management arm, Terramesa Resort Development.

Traffic damage, San Luis Pass

These conservation battles have been fought for decades here. In the 1970s we fought against the George Mitchell development of Eckert’s Bayou, now called Pirates Cove. We argued (without success) that the dynamic nature of this landscape, and its vulnerability to storm surge, made it unsuitable for large-scale housing development. Until Hurricane Ike the building boom on the west end continued, each developer and buyer hoping, against hope, that a storm would not occur on their watch. All balanced on the bubble, praying that they could make their fortunes before time to go (and leave their messes for us to clean up). On 13 September, 2008, the bubble burst.

In the late 1800s heron and egret rookeries in the southeast were decimated by plume hunters. Women of fashion demanded ornate hats decorated with the plumes plucked from birds slaughtered for that reason alone. Roosevelt created the federal wildlife reserve system (wildlife refuges) by an executive order and a simple “I so declare it.” By the end of his presidency Roosevelt had protected acreage equal to about half of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.

What is rarely mentioned in this otherwise rosy story is the opposition that Roosevelt, Pinchot, and others met every step of the way. The exploiters of nature will always fight against those who want nature preserved. Plumers fought restrictions against slaughtering herons and egrets. Market hunters chaffed at the initiation of the nation’s first game laws. Developers today oppose deeper set backs along Galveston’s beaches.

Gifford Pinchot, in The Fight For Conservation, popularized the notion of conservation. Pinchot argued that “conservation means the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time.” Galveston has failed to heed Roosevelt and Pinchot’s inspired words. Our heritage is being sacrificed to greed, ignorance, and insouciance. Either dramatic steps are taken at this moment to stem this rising tide of destruction, or, in the end, our children and grandchildren will inherit a wasteland.

San Luis Pass rainstorm

Many of the photos posted above (the skimmers and gull-billed tern, for example) were taken by Bob Behrstock of Naturewide Images Bob is a fantastic nature photographer, a wide-ranging naturalist, and one of my dearest and most loyal friends. Thanks for the photos, Bob (and the birds thank you as well).

Ted Eubanks
17 April 2010

San Luis Flattened

Opinion, Politics, ,

East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas
Galveston Island is halted at its southern tip (southwestern tip, to be exact) by San Luis Pass. The pass isolates the island from the peninsula of Follet’s Island (and High Island is a not an island either; it is a salt dome that is only an island during hurricanes). At the northeastern end of the island a similar set of circumstances occurs. There, Bolivar Roads (not a road, but a pass) separates the island from the Bolivar Peninsula. Galveston is the sand in this peninsular sandwich.

Extensive sand flats border these passes at each end of the island as well – East Beach to the north, San Luis Pass to the south. San Luis is by far the larger of the two, only because the North and South jetties have isolated East Beach from its sand source. That sand now collects at Bolivar Flats, making it the other major sand flat on the upper Texas coast.

Nothing appreciates a sand flat more than birds (and tiger beetles). Birds loaf, feed, mate, preen, nest, congregate, and rest on these flats. These Galveston sand flats are frequented by hundreds of thousands of birds each year. Some stay year round, some only for a day or so. Some winter, some breed, some fatten before they make their way along their migration routes. Some, like the black tern, coalesce in the tens of thousands. A few, like the lesser black-backed gull, only collect in ones and twos.

Black skimmer
Least terns and black skimmers nest on the open sand. Snowy and Wilson’s plovers prefer the deeper sand behind the beach. Willets and horned larks like the vegetation that borders the open sand, and eastern meadowlarks stay in the coastal grasslands, the climax vegetation of this ecotype. Seaside sparrows (and seaside dragonlets) stick to the smooth cordgrass. No trees here; the coastal sand flat is far too dynamic to be attractive to a plant that takes decades to mature.

Birds are not the only wildlife to find sand flats attractive. Ridley’s sea-turtles, a critically endangered species, have begun to return to our sand flats to bury their clutch. Bobcats, raccoons, and coyotes saunter through hoping to ambush unsuspecting pray. Sand flats are a cafeteria for predators so inclined.

Humans are also a predator here, motived by impulses others than consumption. Humans prey on sand flat wildlife through ignorance, through insouciance. They drive their SUVs over baby Wilson’s plovers, tiny cotton swabs perched on matchstick legs. They spin their wheels through black skimmer eggs, and squash least tern chicks between their treads. Hey, it’s just good-natured fun! Hell, it’s Texas! It’s my God-given (or at least Lone Star-given) right!

Actually, no. There is no “unalienable” right to kill. You can hunt. You can fish. Both are regulated, and there are laws that determine when, where, and how many you can “take.” But the public, ignorant as it is, has no right to slaughter the sand flats because it is too insensate to care. I grew up on these beaches. I have fished, hunted, photographed, birded, bugged, and surfed them for my entire lifetime. I know how idiotic Texans can be on a beach, but killing is not idiotic. It is illegal. It is evil.

My brethren, my fellow Texans, are once again on a rampage. They are spilling onto these sand flats, carving their SUVs through birds, beaches, and babies. They do not care who or what gets hurt. They have their misperceived, Palinesque “rights.”

If you care about these sand flats, if you care about these birds and other wildlife, if you care about a landscape that defines who we are as Galvestonians, then you should care enough to take the actions necessary to stop these fools. Here is what I would do (and am doing). Call, write, or visit the City of Galveston, Texas Parks and Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service and demand that they enforce the law (think West Virginia and coal mines). Write your newspapers and bring this to the public’s attention. Mention this issue at your local birding club meeting. But most importantly, get pissed. Get mad. Get involved.

Ted Eubanks
12 April 2010

Pennsylvania DCNR State Parks meeting in State College

Opinion, Presentations, ,

Pennsylvania DCNR Park Management

As I previously noted, I spoke yesterday (7 April) to the annual gathering of PA DCNR state park managers and staff in State College. This group photo is from that gathering, one that I copped while the official photographer staged the group. Take a good look at these folks. They manage the best state park system in the nation, according to the national gold medal award they received a few months ago from the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration in partnership with the National Recreation and Park Association. For their great work they received a budget cut from the PA legislature. Congratulations.

The recent economic blowup has shown precisely what is and what is not sustainable economic development. In my opinion, the first tenant of sustainable development should be to keep people gainfully employed, followed closely by protecting and enhancing people’s quality of life. Remember that curious phrase in the Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776): “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” Remember that the Declaration stated, unequivocally, that these rights were “unalienable?” In case that slipped by you in that 7th grade American history class, here is the phrase in its entirety:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Apparently this concept appeared earlier in the Virginia Declaration of Indepdendence (12 June 1776), which stated the following:

What all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Please notice the reference to the inherent right to acquire and possess property in the Virginia version. Franklin and Jefferson thought that they should tone that down somewhat for the U.S. declaration, since slaves where considered property at that time as well as land. In other words (big surprise), in Virginia they declared that men (and they meant men) had the inherent right to the “enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property….” Virginians declared their inherent right to own slaves, in other words (or, at least, in my words).

Let’s get back to my original reference, to that curious “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I understand “life.” I understand “liberty.” But doesn’t “pursuit of happiness” sound a bit queer? Perhaps, but doesn’t “quality of life” sound equally odd? Life and liberty are immutable, black and white. Happiness is soft, squishy, like “quality of life.” But don’t we all know when we are alive, when we are free, and when we are happy? Are the three unalienable rights all that different?

Parks and open spaces have always been part of this “happiness” component. But let’s first consider the other two. Originally the open lands of the U.S. provided natural resources, food, water, and inhabitable space for the growing American population. The overcrowded European landscape is one reason so many immigrants risked the voyage. As American’s began to sprawl, the need to conserve and protect lands for their natural resources, game and wildlife, and water became apparent. Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, among others. These public lands, to this day, provide critical protection for resources such as wildlife, timber, gas (such as Marcellus Shale), and water. They give us life.

I would argue that the public lands, as the most perfect expression of the American democracy, also give us liberty. Within a public park, we are all equal. We did not create private game parks such as in Europe, open only to the aristocracy. In the state of Pennsylvania, anyone can enter a state park and enjoy their public lands at no charge. There are free, as in liberty.

These people gathered in the photo above shoulder the responsibility of protecting these public lands for future generations. They also offer the broadest selection of recreational opportunities feasible given budget constraints and carrying capacities of individual parks. Yet they are rarely thanked for their dedication, for their commitment. Like so many public servants, they are seen by many as the complaint desk.

I, for one, thank them for their hard work and sacrifice. Pennsylvania is the birthplace of some of the earliest concepts of parks, public lands, and conservation. Pennsylvania, in my mind, is the cradle of conservation. This is the DCNR heritage, and I believe that the agency and its personnel take their charge seriously.

Thanks.

Ted Eubanks
8 April 2010

Japan – The End

Culture, Opinion, Travel, , ,

Shinkansen in Utsunomiya Station

Our trip is at its end.

We arrived in Austin last night. Today has been one of jet lag and travel recovery misery. Jet lag is part of the yin-yang of international travel. The enjoyment of spending time with your granddaughter is balanced by the pain you suffer once home.

Our last Shinkansen ride brought us back to Tokyo, this time to Ueno station. UT (the University of Tokyo) is located near there, in the Meguro District. Cassady’s apartment is nearby as well. We stayed in a roykan within walking distance of her, and on Saturday we visited the Komaba campus where she will be studying the next two years. UT has five major campuses, with Komaba housing Arts and Sciences.

Saturday evening we met Cassady’s friends, Lee Taniguchi and his wife, Kaoru, for a departure dinner. Lee grew up in Harlingen (Texas), and his family remains in the Valley. He attended the University of Texas, and we shared stories of Austin and his time here. Of course I wanted to know how the Taniguchi family came to live in South Texas, and how he eventually settled in Tokyo.

Let me digress (or veer off) for a moment. I am a Texan, and as one I grew up in the Jim Crow South. I remember the bill boards along the highway that said “Impeach Earl Warren” (who, for those younger, led the Supreme Court in the Brown vs Board of Education case that integrated schools). The Supreme Court issued its “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” ruling in 1954, but opponents were able to drag out implementation for my entire educational career (assuming that I accept that it is complete today).

Here is an example. In 1968, my senior year in high school, a high-school teacher in Sugarland (the town memorialized in Leadbelly’s Midnight Special), Henry Keith Sterzing, had been relieved of his duties by the John Foster Dulles High School board members. His crime? In response to a question from a student about the marriage of Dean Rusk’s daughter to a black man, the teacher stated that he saw nothing wrong with interracial marriage. They fired him.

In the Houston downtown library, purportedly a bastion of free thought and learning, you were greeted by a water fountain near the front door. The fountain had been placed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and dedicated to those who served the Gray. My mother taught at St. Vincent’s, where Dick Dowling, the Confederate hero of the Battle of Sabine Pass, is buried. One of Galveston’s mayors had operated one of the largest slave markets along the Gulf coast before the Civil War.

While attending the University of Houston, Lee Otis Johnson became one of the liberal causes. Lee Otis had given a marijuana cigarette to a Houston undercover cop, and had received a thirty-year prison sentence for his crime. When Governor Preston Smith visited the campus, students greeted him with chants of “Free Lee Otis, Free Lee Otis.” When asked afterward what he thought of the display, Smith said that he could not understand why students were chanting about refried beans (frijoles, frijoles).

The Texas travel industry tagline is “Texas – it’s a whole other country.” Does Texas believe itself to be a foreign country? No, but the remaining 49 states rightfully do.

Because of the civil rights movement, and liberal parents, I suppose that I had a more balanced perspective of the plight of African-Americans than most white Texans. But the La Raza movement would come later, and by the time I could focus on other minorities (as though Texas ever has) I matriculated.

Cassady and Virginia at Todai

This is a very circuitous way of saying that I knew nothing about the Japanese in Texas, or in America, for that matter. I knew that a few Japanese had settled near Houston as farmers, and my mother had taught children of one of those families, the Kobayashis. But otherwise I am certain that I did not meet anyone of Japanese ancestry until I graduated from high school. My school administrators felt no need to educate us about ethnic groups we would have little contact with. Interestingly, I do not remember any classes that discussed Viet Nam’s history or plight either, and we had (and have) plenty of contact with them.

Like the downplaying of Japanese militarism in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and my criticisms of that selective telling of history, I can equally criticize my own education and its gaps. At dinner Lee had mentioned that his great uncle had settled in Harlingen after the war. Lee said that he had been interned in Crystal City, and had recruited other Japanese families to join him in Texas. I decided to use Lee as an excuse to fill one of the many holes in my cheesecloth education. I knew of German prisoner-of-war camps in Texas, since one had been situated near my grandmother’s home in Mineral Wells. But I knew nothing of Japanese internment camps here.

What I have now learned is that there were three internment camps in Texas – Seagoville, Kenedy, and Crystal City. The camp in Crystal City had been built, at least initially, for those of Japanese ancestry. Crystal City was the location of the largest internment camp administered by the INS and Department of Justice. At its peak there were over 3000 people interned in Crystal City. There were Japanese-American citizens interned there, as well as those of Japanese ancestry brought there from throughout Latin America (such as over 700 from Peru).

How did this fundamental failure of civil rights and the protections of the constitution transpire in my home state? Until talking to Lee I had no idea that the government had established one of the internment camps here, not to mention three. Then I came on this quote from the Texas Handbook:

The official reasons for the deportations were to secure the Western Hemisphere from internal sabotage and to provide bartering pawns for exchange of American citizens captured by Japan. However, the Axis nationals were often deported arbitrarily as a result of racial prejudice and because they provided economic competition for the other Latin Americans, not because they were a security threat.

The Texas legislature in 1921 passed an alien land law that prohibited foreign-born Japanese from purchasing or leasing additional farmland. Racial prejudice? Economic competition? Now, I can relate to those forces. This is the Texas of my youth.

Lee’s great-uncle, Isamu Taniguchi, was one of the California Japanese interned in the Crystal City camp. Born circa 1902, he immigrated to Stockdale (CA) in 1915. There be began a business in bonsai plants and crops. He married his childhood sweetheart in Japan, the only time in his life that he returned.

During WW II, they were interned (along with 120,000 other Japanese-Americans). Isamu was interned at Crystal City. After the war, he remained in Texas, raising cotton, crops, and flowers in the Rio Grande Valley. He retired to Austin in 1967 to be near his son, Alan, Lee’s cousin. By the way, Alan is an architect that has served as Dean of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Director of Rice University’s School of Architecture.

According to the on-line accounts:

Out of gratitude for his sons’ education at the University of Texas at Austin, Taniguchi offered to create a Japanese garden for the City of Austin. The city parks department let Taniguchi have three acres of land in Zilker Botanical Garden. With no more than one assistant at a time, Taniguchi worked as a volunteer for 18 months to create the gardens. All plants and material were donated from local nurseries. The gardens feature a series of ponds that spell “Austin” when viewed from the air, a 12-foot waterfall, a teahouse, a Half Moon bridge, a lotus pond with a miniature island, and extensive Japanese landscaping.

This is the origin of the Taniguchi garden? He created the garden out of “gratitude for his sons’ educations at UT?” After being locked up and denied all civil liberties?

My grandchildren are perfect. They are the ideal blend the two cultures. They are seamlessly bilingual and bicultural. They are, in my mind, the personification of Jefferson’s ideal for our democracy.

But Jefferson never could bring himself to free his slaves. He chose to live in two conflicting worlds, one of idealistic democracy and the other of pragmatic (and, yes, evil) prejudice. I firmly believe in the former, but I have lived in the latter. I know prejudice. I know hated, envy, and mindless fury. I know that these forces lie quietly under America’s skin until allowed to surface. And, since the election of an African-American president, they have been stirred once again. In America, you just can’t keep a good hate down.

Now, at the end of this almost three week trip, I return to America to feel the brutal irrationality of this hatred. In contrast, before we returned to Tokyo we spent one night in Utsunomiya. Cassady’s grandparents live there, and we wanted to see them during the trip. They are wonderfully gracious hosts, and Mrs. Yokoyama had prepared a scrumptious meal (with vegetarian croquettes) for dinner. We sat around the kotatsu as a family, sharing funny stories. We laughed at jokes, and loved each other’s company.

This is my trip. When reduced to common people, to common interests, getting along is difficult enough. But at the national or global level, these interactions are dictated by the additional interests of business, power, imposition, and greed. I can only hope that my grandchildren’s generation, those who were raised without racist water fountains, will carry humanity forward. They have my confidence and my prayers.

Virginia, Cassady, Ted, Kaoru, and Lee at dinner in Tokyo

Ted
29 Mar 2010

Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka – Thank the Gods, The War is Over!

Culture, History, Nature, Opinion, Travel, , , , , , ,

View of Nara and the Ikoma mountains beyond the Yamato Plain

Although I have traveled extensively in Japan, I do not profess to have deep insight into the culture or the people. As a westerner (and a Texan, for God’s sake), Asia is blithely enigmatic.

There are certainly cultures in the world that strive to remain apart. The Japanese, for all of their western trappings, do not have to work hard to remain distinguishable. The radical differences in language are, in part, responsible. Although English is commonly seen in Japan, most of it is related to the perplexing English tag lines, slogans, and non sequiturs that Japanese marketing whizzes concoct. Otherwise, Japan is for the Japanese.

Of course we feel welcome. But with a Japanese family we are at a decided advantage. Otherwise Japan is a test for someone who does not speak the language or have entre to the culture.

For example, we are staying in a roykan near our granddaughter’s apartment in Ueno. We walked downstairs for breakfast this morning, and I spent several minutes at the front desk trying to explain that the one-size-fits-all slippers do not fit a size-14 foot from Texas. No matter, the rules are the rules, and they insisted that I shoe-horn a size 6 on before being fed. I ate my breakfast wearing slippers that barely fit my big toes.

The train system in Japan is a marvel, but it does take some time to master scheduling, ticketing, and such. This trip we purchased (as usual) JR rail passes for our time here in country. We also bought the green car pass for a premium, which allows you to reserve a seat in the first-class “green” cars. To our dismay, we learned (and I do not remember this from past trips) that only certain trains are available to rail pass holders. The Nozomi line, for example, is restricted (even though there were many occasions when the line would have worked best for us). We were told that since the JR rail pass represents a significant discount (of course, depending on how many times you use it during your stay), JR is justified in limiting where and when you can travel.

My impression is that while the Japanese love to travel the world, they would be just as happy if the world did not travel to Japan. The domestic travel market here is enormous, and, to be blunt, they do not need international leisure travelers to keep their hotels full. In this entire 2 ½ week trip, traveling from Okinawa to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Tokyo in peak travel season (cherry blossom time), we have not seen more than 50 foreign travelers.

The two places where we did see a few foreigners were Kyoto and Nara. Anyone with an interest in Japanese history and culture knows about these two adjacent cities, with their extensive museums, shrines, art, and cuisine. The two are among the most recognized Japanese cultural centers. Virginia and I had visited Kyoto first many years ago, yet this would be our first trip to Nara. Cassady, who is beginning her third year as an art history major at Tokyo University (Todai), took particular interest in these two cultural icons. Of course, it did not hurt that Kyoto is among the shopping meccas in Japan as well.

In contrast, I would rather be tortured than to shop. One of the reasons I love the internet is that it allows me to avoid entering stores. Thank you, UPS, just place my package by the front door.

While Virginia and Cassady spent their first day in Kyoto scouring the shops, I spent my first day lounging around our wonderful roykan, Mume. There is an exceedingly funny phrase that my granddaughter uses to describe my method of travel. In Japan a person like me is a “mypasu” guy, one who operates at their own pace. I now remind Cassady and Virginia several times a day that I am a “mypasu” fellow, and to please not ask me to join them shopping ever again. We can always meet for dinner.

Let me share a few more Japanese phrases that I learned from Cassady. The Japanese are exceedingly sharp students of and commenters on their fellow citizens. I suspect in part this comes from living in such close quarters. For example, the Takahashis have been the neighbors of Cassady’s grandparents for nearly 50 years in Utsunomiya. You get to know people fairly well in that time.

We spent our one evening in Utsunomiya with family around the kotatsu gathering a collection of phrases. For example, I learned that a man under his wife’s control is called “shiri ni shikareru,” a man who is a woman’s cushion (in the US, hen-pecked). A couple consisting of a large woman and a small man is called a “nomi no fufu,” a flea couple. A person who follows around someone who is popular (such as at school) is “kingyo no fun,” dung following the goldfish. Funny people, these Japanese.

At times the humor is at your own expense. During dinner one evening I noticed that I had forgotten to zip my fly (this is what happens when one turns 60). Cassady quipped “shakai no mado ga aiteru,” that my window to society is open. Chuckle, chuckle.


Sakura in Kyoto


When we first arrived in Kyoto the cherry blossoms were beginning to swell. Two days later, after a couple of toasty afternoons, the cherries burst into bloom. I spent our last morning in the Gion district near our roykan photographing the sakura, as well as the maiko in their traditional costumes.

What we had not counted on were the hordes of Japanese enjoying the warm spring break weather in Kyoto as well. Therefore I looked forward to a more unobtrusive respite in the roykan in Nara, although the accommodations at Mume could not have been nicer. There we would be staying outside of the city in a roykan, Mikasa, adjacent to the Nara Keon.

The weather gods favored our Nara visit. Our one day walking down the Wakakusa-yama trail to the Nara temples (officially the Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara) reminded me of Pennsylvania in the spring. The trail bisects some of the oldest and most monumental forest (the Kasugayama Primeval Forest) that I have seen in Japan, with immense spruce, oak, and pine. Blink your eyes and you would think that you were back on the Longfellow trail among the hemlock and white pine.

As we walked the trail I noticed the first slight signs of spring. Fiddleheads were beginning to emerge, and the wood violets were sprinkled about in first bloom. The uguisu (Japanese bush-warbler) were tuning up, and the magnolias tinted the landscape in white and rose.

Japan’s first permanent capital was established in the year 710 at Heijo, the city now known as Nara. As we reached the extensive temple and monument grounds above the city we decided to start by visiting Kasuga Taisha, the Kasuga grand shrine. This shrine houses a dazzling collection of lanterns: some gilded, some greened with a copper patina, hundreds carved from oiya stone. As Cassady and Virginia wandered down toward Todai-ji, I stayed behind to photograph a few of the lanterns and smaller shrines and temples above the Daibutsuden (the Buddha’s Temple).

As I wandered down from Wakakusa-yama, I came on another of the temples, the Nigatsu-do. Around the outside of this grand hall were wood cuts and paintings of eclectic variety and design. The porch of the hall offered a splendid view of the temples and monuments below, as well as the Ikoma mountains beyond the Yamato Plain. “Each spring there is a water-drawing ceremony at the Nigatsudo Hall has lasted for more than 1,200 years without a single break. The “Water-drawing Ceremony” is formally called the “Shunie.” It is a Buddhist memorial service intended to pray for world peace and a good harvest for all through the repenting of one’s sins.”

The crowds in the upper reaches of Nara were sparse, but by the time I arrived at Todai-ji people were snaking through the main gate like one of the serpents slain by the Bosatsu inside. There are a number of buildings within the Tadai-ji site, but the main attraction is the Daibutsuden. This is the largest wood building extant in the world. The structure holds the Daibutsu, the bronze Buddah that dates to 752. The Daibutsu is around 15 meters high, and the head and neck were cast in the mid-700s as a single piece! There are several bosatsu that accompany the Daibutsu, including two carved figures of impressive stature and complexity.

Religion is one of those confusing, enigmatic issues in Japan (like train schedules and dinner attire). My impression is that most Japanese practice religion-lite. The saying in Japan is that you are born a Shinto and then die a Buddhist (there are virtually no Shinto cemeteries). But I also believe that this casual approach to religion is also a reflection of Shinto traditions. In Shinto, once the official religion of Japan, there is no absolute right or wrong. Shintos believe that people are inherently good, and that evil in the world is due to mal spirits. Working along with humans are the kami, a variety of gods and forces (such as wind, waves, mountains). Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism demands that a follower formally practice, so there is a low-key aspect to religion here that I, to be honest, admire.


Osaka basho


Where one does enjoy the formality of Shinto ritual is in sumo. There are six Grand Sumo Tournaments (honbasho) each year, with the one in Osaka occurring in March. After Nara we continued on our journey to Osaka to attend one day of the basho. I confess; I am absolutely crazed about sumo. There is something about the tradition (the origins date back perhaps 2000 years), the formality of the match before and after, and the violent brevity of the match itself. While the preparations may take 10 to 15 minutes, the actual match itself may only last seconds. Each move has a name and tradition, each preparatory move has a name and tradition (such as hand clapping, leg lifting, and salt throwing), and each piece of clothing (brief as it may be) has a name and tradition.

Like baseball, sumo must be seen in person. Old men in the crowd yell in support of their favorite rikishi. The crowds swell at the entrance to the hall as the rikishi march in, with girls shrieking with glee as they would if seeing a rock star. The basho lasts most of the day, and many come to see the entire set of matches.

I drifted away from our seats and down near the dohyo to photograph the bouts. As I have studied the photographs I again recognize elegance, beauty, and athleticism in what appears to Americans to be near-naked fat guys in a brawl.

Yes, the rikishi are enormous, but there are shockingly agile as well. The first blow of each bout, the tachi-ai, shakes the walls with its force. Rikishi are pushed, shoved, bounced, and forced around the ring as though they were weightless, often resulting in one of the fighters being ejected from the ring itself. In the midst of this violence (and it is a violent sport) stands the referee, the goyji, in his fantastic Shinto wardrobe. The simple pointing of his glistening fan, the gunbai, confirms the winner.

We were joined by a friend, Asaka Shinagawa, who works for the Osaka tourism department. Asaka will be coming to Austin in April, and we were put in touch by a mutual friend, Rebecca Burgman. Neither Cassady nor Asaka had ever attended a basho in person, and yet both are big sumo fans. We arrived early and stayed until the last match (between the yokozuna, Hakuho, and a rikishi from Estonia, Baruto). FYI, Baruto lost only one match this basho, and will be promoted to ozeki, only one level below yokozuna. Please enjoy the photos, although I do know that fat men battling each other wearing thongs may take some getting used to.

Ted
27 Mar 2010