Scattered in-house classes online. It’s hard to keep concentrated in front of the virtual classroom for five hours straight. So far we’ve had one really good class. Wednesday was supervision day, so I got direct advice from my supervisor. It felt useful despite there’s nothing concrete to comment on yet.
I tried to learn more kanji every morning and repeat them through the flashcards app in the evening:
Via Reddit I found a long text on sex in pre-Meiji Japan. I only read until Wabi Sabi, but I like how the author emphasises sex as one of many appetites, similar to how Foucault describes the “dietetics” of ancient Greece in The History of Sexuality, volume 2 (if I remember correctly). I remember discussing these various “appetites” with K once, he tought me about shokuyoku (食欲) for food and seiyoku (性欲) for sex, and how they were seen in similar ways. (The “yoku” kanji being represented by a “valley” and a “lack thereof”, where “valley” is a euphemism for vagina – according to the Heisig mnemonic at least.) The author even calls Japan of that time a “matriarch” society:
Sex was experienced in and beyond one’s marriage. Marriage had been very fluid in that sense. Again, for many Japanese people, sexuality had been like quenching their thirst. There had not been any serious religious intolerance and taboos on sexuality in Japan. In our contemporary concept, the Japanese people were often in open relationships or polyamory. In this free environment, a child might be born with no certainty as to who a father was. But it did not matter, for a child was raised by a mother and her family, if not by someone in the community. It is how a matriarch society works.
He is also critical of monotheism, and rightly so:
Much like the Ancient Israel and much of the rest of the world before monotheism’s invasion, sexual unions were believed to have power to fertilize the lands.
Closed 200 tabs in my browser. The modern-day version of throwing away papers from your desk. Feels as good!
Japanese
- Try N2: Chapter 7.2 (pp. 111–21). Review: 20/25 (or 19/20 when excluding the listening, which obviously is my weakest point).
- Remembering the Kanji: Kanji 688–930.
- That Japanese Man Yuta: Can Japanese Kids Pass JLPT N3? (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test N3) – I got them all right!
Articles
- Vice: Quebec Author Charged with Child Porn Over ‘Hansel and Gretel’ Retelling
- Stanahashi: Free, Open, and Sacred Sexuality had Thrived in Japan Till 150 Years Ago
Anime
- 1988: Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. E23–24.
- 1992: Chameleon. OVA1.
- The Cat Returns (Morita Hiroyuki/Studio Ghibli, 2002, 75 min)
Film
- NOAH (Patrick Cederberg & Walter Woodman, 2013, 18 min)
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