Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt*;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder*
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

(Joy, oh what a godly sparking, daughter of Elysium, drunk with fire we're embarking, blissful, in your holy room Your spell's magic mends each other's ties our customs strictly breach, all the people will be brothers where your gentle wing shall reach)

One miracle in postwar Japan has been that people say the year isn’t over without listening to a chorus singing the 4th movement of Symphony No. 9 (affectionately called “Dai-Ku” in Japanese) composed by Master Ludwig Van Beethoven. Major cities as well as the local cities, Hokkaido to Kagoshima embrace Philharmonic Orchestras’ performing this choral symphony at the close of each year, some even being performed on New Year's Eve. Let’s explore the background story, tracing some historical twists from both World War I (WWI) and World War II (WWII).

Why and how this tradition came to be, comparing, for instance, to Germany where very limited yearly performances are reported. For one thing, Japan was the first country in Asia where the chorus echoed triumphantly by Germans who performed the piece under unusual circumstances. It was the year 1918 (just one hundred years ago). German POWs from WWI were detained in Bando City camp, Tokushima in Shikoku (see 12/28/2010 post for details). I visited Bando Concentration Campsite, Tokushima in 2010. The memorial German House opened in 1972 with exhibits of utensils German POWs used to bake bread, make ham and sausages, etc. What was fascinating was a diorama and a robotic theater illustrating the Germans playing Beethoven’s “Dai-Ku” symphony, with instruments in their hands and a chorus group (men only). Dai-Ku performance was recorded in Tokyo under the Japanese conductors since 1920s. In 1927, the former NHK orchestra played under Joseph Koenig. Conductor Hidemaro Konoe directed Dai-Ku 10 times between 1928 and 1935. Joseph Rosenstock conducted the former NHK orchestra in 1938, the year celebrating 100 years after Beethoven’s death.

At the end of 1947, “Dai-Ku” was performed as a tribute to all young students killed during WWII. After 1940, Dai-Ku went to Kansai and spread further to major cities, including Kitakyushu, the town where I live. The biggest ever Dai-Ku performance was at Osaka Castle Hall which accommodated a 10,000 piece choir sponsored by Suntory Company. The 38th Dai-Ku was performed last December. Surprisingly, age of the performers varied from six to 97. Basically there was no audience. It was 1971 when “An Die Freude” was adopted to become the EEC National Anthem. It it great all EEC countries could unite under the same flag and the same anthem.

I was in Vienna in 2005 and Beethoven Garden at Karlsplats but not the Museum at Heiligenstadt, at the north end of Wien. I had a chance to visit Gustav Klimt’s Secession to see the famous “Beethoven Please” mural on two bent walls where Klimt visualized “Dai-Ku”. (Visit site to see a small portion)

Lastly, I’d like to introduce the Kitakyushu Citizen Chorus Group, called Freude Call. My friend Ace Ikeda (appearing in 4/9/2017 post, who visited Heiligenstadt) sent me the attached “40th Anniversary” brochure. Quoted below are voices of three long time members. Touichiro Izu, tenor, former (lst) President – “Congratulations on 40th anniversary year - my memory is still fresh like it was yesterday, starting with 300 members - Let’s look forward to the next one.” Rui Yoshida, alto - “I joined first when I was in 6th grade, together with my mother, then restarted about 5 years ago, with refreshed resolution - I like mostly high pitch melody of Double Fugue but have a hard part that is difficult to sing well and am still practicing.” Yasuko Hanada, soprano - “after 10 years of trying, my voice now comes out smoothly without much effort - wish to pass on the knowledge to future generations.”

Maizuru Repatriation Museum: Part 2

Pray day and night to the southern sky
where Japan is
Bracing up with chins high
- Osamu Seno, 1908-1995, author of the Birch Diary
 

Encountering Flowers

A free flyer I picked up at the Maizuru Repatriation Museum was written by Torajiro Wakasa, resident of Kyotango City, Kyoto. According to his brief history, he was born in 1926, finished Army Airborne Communication Academy in January 1945, was sent to Anshan Airport in April, and then sent to Siberia in the fall of 1945. He returned to Maizuru Port in the summer of 1948. He succeeded father's profession of Tango silk crepes in 1952, acquired master title license of flower arrangements of Mibu School in 1987 and opened his own flower arrangement school.

Torajiro and his 2000 mates were sent to Angren, Uzbekistan, 200km east of Tashkent. He wrote that Angren was in a mountain 2000 meters above sea level, on the west end of the Pamil Mountains, close to the Himalayan Peaks. His description of general winter was of despair and misery. Hunger always dogged them.

Russian Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) mentions Angren in his Gulag Archipelago as one of the Soviet towns that grew next to a gulag labor camp of coal mines. The dissolution of the Soviet Union seemed to have resulted in the demise of the coal mines.

What cheered up Torajiro’s spirit were wild tulip and poppy flowers blooming with the arrival of spring, turning mountains flaming crimson. He remembered his father arranging flowers when he was a little boy. He started to decorate his gulag quarters with flowers, with his resolution of acquiring skills and proficiency of flower arrangement if he ever went back home alive. His reflection - a few flowers casually placed and bound together like human couples, husband and wife, the minimum unit of our lives. Flowers arranged do help and support together each other like a family. Beauty of life and strength to live, this he learned from flower arrangement.

Encountering Brown Bread

A long overdue story appeared recently in the Nikkei Newspaper. A nonagenarian named Michio Kashiwara, was hailed as a brown bread master in Tokushima farming village. His brown bread making expertise was acquired during his Siberian prison life of four years. After having engaged in the harsh Baikal-Amur (BAM) Railroad construction works, he was assigned to a brown bread factory in a small town called Novy Urgal, 350 km northwest of Khabarovsk, Siberia. He improved the baking process, speeding up fermentation, quadrupling daily bread production. The plant manager personally thanked Kashiwara for his contribution on the “damoy” day he had long waited.

Back in Naruto, Tokushima started to sow wheat in vacant lands, baking brown bread upon harvesting, delivering to city schools for lunch. Brown bread is nutritious, as it uses unpolished flours, including embryo and cuticles. Naruto, known as a German internment town, is now as popular as the Russian brown bread town.

Note:
Photos related to Mr. Kashiwara are all from Mr. Yutaka Tabuchi, ex-Naruto City Congressman, who carried on returnee Kashiwara's brown bread making expertise and is promoting direct distribution from local producers to consumers. Mr. Tabuchi represents "Naruto Citizen Council to promote the Brown Bread." Check out their Web site.

Friendship through Block Prints

Friendship sometimes happens one day out of the blue. I think I met him on my round of customer calls as a newly assigned sales manager while I was temporarily in Tokyo in the late 1960s, but I can’t recall his face or where and when I met him exactly. Then, I changed jobs and restarted my career in the U.S. for a new employer. I think I left all the business cards of customers I received with the old employer, as per the way of good business ethics - “on leaving, one should see that all is in good order.”

When I received his New Year’s block print greeting card in the U.S., I was quite thrilled and excited. I loved it. Perhaps I was yearning for a taste of Japan I seldom encountered after settling in San Diego in Southern California. For quite a while, I did not exchange letters with even close friends from the previous workplace, but I reciprocated with this innocent stranger, although it was just an annual exchange of New Year's cards over the Pacific Ocean. For some decades, time drifted by so quickly, now that I look back.

The motif of his block prints were mostly in the rich local colors of Tokushima culture, except for a few exceptions. I lost quite a few prints during my relocation within the United States and return to Japan. The exceptions included cards with full print Chinese characters to celebrate the year of his 77th birthday, and a few animals - horse and tiger, from the 12 horary signs. In regards to his association with Tokushima, I thought he was sent back to the local branch of his employer, but perhaps in a few years he was recalled back to Tokyo.

I have a special attachment to Tokushima. Tokushima is where my mother-in-law was born. She belonged to the Taira Clan fugitive Samurai tribal village. Their surnames, like Baba (horse riding ground) and Iba (archery ground) sound intimidating (I had to deal with them after getting married). After facing defeat at the Battle of Yashima (now Takamatsu) in 1185 at the hands of the Genji Clans, the Babas and Ibas fled and lived hidden in the deep mountain valley close to the Iyadani Gorge, far, far away from any town.

Today, Iyadani is a famous hot spring resort and there's a rare suspension bridge made of vines (replaced with a new one every three years). It is a gateway to Mt. Tsurugi (Sword Mountain, elev. 1995 m), one of the highest mountains in Shikoku, along with Mt. Ishizuchi (Stone Hammer, elev. 1982 m) in Ehime Prefecture, both regarded as holy mountains and for asceticism. I climbed Mt. Ishizuchi when I was in junior high school. The Iya River flows into the mighty Yoshino River and into Tokushima City where my Tokushima friend (of block prints) worked.

Displayed here are a few of his block prints:

Tokushima Awa Dancers; Heads of Awa Puppet Dolls (one Naozane Kumagai, Genji Clan warrior, who slew a teenaged Taira Clan commander Atsumori Taira, a nephew of Kiyomori Taira in the battle, and entered into priesthood to mourn for the victim, and the other, Otsuru, a girl pilgrim looking for her parents); Mt. Bizan (shaped like an eyebrow from any angle, elev. 280 m) in the center of Tokushima City; Gokurakuji-Temple, second of the 88 Shikoku temples for the Henro pilgrimage; Mt. Tsurugi already mentioned as above, and last, but not least, a German Bridge. I have visited WW1 German POW Bando Camp and wrote a blog entry about it. I wish to add that German prisoners built this small memorial stone bridge inside the yard of a nearby shrine to show their appreciation to the Bando community as a token of gratitude for the warm reception before leaving. I heard a total of 3,000 stones, weighing 200 tons were used. For more information, you can visit the excellent Facebook Guide “Discover Tokushima.”

When I tried to contact him upon my visit at Tokushima Toastmasters, he had already left. Late last year I received an obituary notice from his wife. I sent my condolences and told her how I loved his block prints. She sent me his photograph and told me that the block printing was his hobby. He always carried his sketch book and engraved wood blocks based on his sketches.

The block print friend’s name was Dr. Toshio Shoman, Professor Emeritus, former faculty member of Engineering at Tokushima University. The pen name Dr. Shoman engraved in red on the block prints was 峯　“Hou” or Feng in Chinese. When I asked about it, Mrs. Shoman wrote back that his pen name was 雄峯 but used only one character for abbreviation. He was born in Toyama and his favorite home town memory was of the snow capped 雄山 Yusan (Xiongshan), elevation 3,000 meters.

A further note regarding Tokushima University - In February 2015, the media reported on Tokushima University receiving a donation from Dr. Shuji Nakamura, now a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, for half of the Nobel Prize money he received for his LED invention. Dr. Namamura was quoted as saying, "I owe my initial basic research to my alma mater university equipment and I hope my donation will serve for future Nobel worthy inventions." Tokushima University suddenly rose up in fame.

A Portuguese Hero starring in a Tokushima Puppet Show

I was planning to attend the Toastmasters Spring Conference and Speech Contest sponsored by Tokushima Toastmasters Club. From Kitakyushu, where I live, to Tokushima by rail is about 500 kilometers (310 miles), which includes the Great Seto Bridge that spans the Seto Inland Sea built in 1988. It is the world’s longest (13 km) two-tiered bridge serving both railroad and automobile traffic.

After you take the bullet train to Okayama, you have to change local trains twice making the trip wearisome. I settled for a slower ferry boat ride on the way there and multiple train rides back. Luckily, I found a ferry service from Kitakyushu to Tokyo with a stop at Tokushima. My idea was to get a good night’s sleep in the ferry to be ready for a full schedule the next day.

There were about 40-50 passengers, mostly with their automobiles on the ferry. We left Kitakyushu’s New Moji Port at 7 PM and arrived at Tokushima Port at 9:30 AM. Despite my best laid plans, I had some trouble sleeping because of the beat of the Diesel engine. I woke up early at 5:30 AM and was able to watch the ferry go around Muroto Cape, the southernmost tip of Shikoku as the sun came up.

Immediately after hotel check-in, I went up Mt. Bizan by ropeway. I’ve been there on a previous visit, but without a camera. The altitude of this eyebrow shaped mountain is 350 meters (ll40 ft) and is a symbol of the city, densely forested. Along the ropeway slope exit stands the white Moraes Museum. The museum building was built in 1972 in honor of Wenceslaus Jose Moraes de Sousa (1854-1929) recreating his tatami living room on the second floor. Moraes' house used to be at the foot of Mt. Bizan.

Moraes was a Portuguese naval officer turned Consul General in Kobe, and after retiring, he came to live in Tokushima during his autumn years, as a writer / reporter for Portuguese papers, including Comercio de Porto of Portugal, for over 15 years. They were all written in Portuguese, a language most Japanese cannot read. Tokushma people likened him to Lafcadio Hearn of Izumo.

It was a 15 minute trek down from the top to find Moraes Square with the guide map where the sky gazing bronze statue of Moraes with chin whiskers and his dog stood. The stone epitaph read “Saudade” (homesick). Here I was told that visitors from the Portuguese Sister City Leiria (near Lisbon) came and exchanged gifts and had a ceremony in front of the statue. I saw a photo of the planting of Jacaranda trees by the same group at the botanical garden of Tokushima.

Back at the foot of the Bizan, I found Moraes Street where Moraes house originally stood. There was another statue at one of the street corners. The area has many small temples and shrines, which Moraes most likely dropped in while strolling. At the authentic looking Zen Temple called Zuiganji, people were bottling water. The women hollered "Tastes good. Drink it!" I was thirsty after walking so scooped up a cup and drank.



Why did Moraes decided to settle down here and die? A Tokushima native Jakucho Setouchi (1922-), a Buddhist nun and writer, who won the Kan Kikuchi Award, a prestigious literary honor, published Moraes’ Love Pilgrimage a few years ago. Seemingly the book was written to be dramatized by the local ballad drama troupe using life-size puppets, called Bunraku or Ningyo-Joruri accompanied by Shamisen music. The first performance took place in Tokushima in 2007. Tokushima is famous for the traditional classic love and hate shows since the Edo period.

Moraes had sired two sons while stationed in Macao with a Chinese lover. In Japan, Moraes married two women, first with Yone (1900-1912) in Kobe and after her death, with Koharu (1913-1918), a niece of Yone, in Tokushima. Moraes visited Tokushima, hometown of Yone, to bury her there. The place must have had some appeal for him to settle down there, instead of his plan to live in Izumo with another girl friend. Koharu perhaps reminded him of Yone.

Koharu delivered a still born baby after marriage. She gave another birth of questionable fatherhood, when Moraes angrily let her return home to Yone’s sister. These incidents are dealt with in the “Moraes' Love Pilgrimage” by Setouchi through the eyes of the local temple priest, whom Moraes befriended from his frequent visits to Yone’s grave. Koharu also passed away soon afterward in spite of Moraes’ effort to save her at the hospital. Moraes’ book Yone and Koharu is reportedly a hit in Portugal.