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moon in the water Blog Tools Rating: Rate This Blog
Creation Date: 04-26-2010 10:46 PM
niall
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the water does not try
to reflect the moon
and the moon has no desire
to be reflected
but when the clouds clear
there is the moon in the water
Blog Info
Status: Public
Entries: 155
Comments: 1,111
Views: 1,924,217

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In General darkness in march Entry Tools Rate This Entry
  #150 New 03-21-2013 11:57 AM
darkness in march
photo: Postwar Tokyo Map - showing destroyed areas by Justin Cozart

Long ago, before writing, you'd send someone a stone letter. A stone that suited the way you were feeling. From its weight and touch, they'd know how you felt. From a smooth stone they might get that you were happy, or from a rough one that you were worried about them.
Masahiro Motoki, Departures


The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
T S Eliot, The Four Quartets, Burnt Norton


I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading
Emily Dickinson, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain


After the feast of tear-stuffed time and thistles
In a room with a stuffed fox and a stale fern,
I stand, for this memorial's sake, alone
In the snivelling hours
Dylan Thomas, After The Funeral


Yet when this Victory's fame shall pass, as grand
And griefless as a rich man's funeral,
Thro' nations that look on with spell-bound eye,
While echoing plaudits ring from land to land,
Alas! will there be none among the good
And great and brave and free, to speak of all
The pale piled pestilence of flesh and blood
Sydney Thompson Dobell, A Musing On A Victory


ARTICLE XXIV
1. Aerial bombardment is legitimate only when directed at a military objective, that is to say, an object of which the destruction or injury would constitute a distinct military advantage to the belligerent.
2. Such bombardment is legitimate only when directed exclusively at the following objectives: military forces; military works; military establishments or depots; factories constituting important and well-known centres engaged in the manufacture of arms, ammunition, or distinctively military supplies; lines of communication or transportation used for military purposes.
3. The bombardment of cities, towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings not in the immediate neighborhood of the operations of land forces is prohibited. In cases where the objectives specified in paragraph 2 are so situated, that they cannot be bombarded without the indiscriminate bombardment of the civilian population, the aircraft must abstain from bombardment.
The Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare


In air campaigns against Japan in 1944 and 1945, General Curtis LeMay of the U.S. Army Air Corps also defied the established wartime policy of the United States. That policy called for precision daylight bombing of military targets. Instead, LeMay retrofitted his planes with napalm cannisters (jellied gasoline), and dropped them at night over the northern suburbs of Tokyo, which were then the most densely populated areas in the world. Of course there were no men of fighting age present; there were only women, children, and the elderly packed in their wooden homes.
Professor Anthony D'Amato, History's Two Worst War Criminals


LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. We were behaving as war criminals.
Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense, in Fog of War


Life is so short
Fall in love, dear maiden
While your lips are still red
And before you are cold
For there will be no tomorrow
Takashi Shimura, in Ikiru

March in Japan. The second anniversary of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the tsunami and the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima.

There is another dark anniversary. The blanket firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.

The deliberate targeting of thousands of civilians. Guernica. Coventry. Dresden. Tokyo.

We humans learn very, very slowly.

Grave of the Fireflies is a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. It's about two children trying to survive after the firebombing of Tokyo. It was made into a Studio Ghibli animated movie directed by Isao Takahata.

This week was the spring equinox higan holiday. It is a Buddhist holiday. Many people visit family graves. I was at a funeral. Funerals in Japan are normally held over two days. The first ceremony is in the evening and is a kind of wake. The next day the body is cremated. At the crematorium I saw one funeral party with a Buddhist priest. One funeral party with a Shinto priest. And one funeral party with a Christian priest.

There are some very good Japanese movies about death and funerals. Ikiru - Living - was directed by Akira Kurosawa. It starred Takashi Shimura who was in many of Kurosawa's movies. He played Kambei Shimada in Seven Samurai. Ososhiki - The Funeral - pokes fun at Japanese funeral customs. It was directed by Juzo Itami. Some years later he was attacked by gangsters with swords because he had directed a movie about yakuza. He later committed suicide. Or was forced to by gangsters. Okuribito - Departures - was directed by Yojiro Takita. It won an Oscar for best foreign language film. It is about an unemployed musician who gets a job preparing bodies for funerals.

At funerals you get to hear stories and memories from the past. Death always means that stories and memories are lost for ever. Martial arts can not really be passed on through books. So when budo teachers die their knowledge dies with them. Some of their students will have caught some of the knowledge. But not all of it.

I don't go to funerals of budo teachers often. I train instead. I'm pretty sure they would approve.

Niall


poems and background articles

T S Eliot, Burnt Norton from The Four Quartets,
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/tseliot/7066
The Four Quartets
http://ecuy.net/education/Eliot_FourQuartets.pdf

Dylan Thomas, After The Funeral
http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.j...ann-jones.html

Emily Dickinson, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/en...6/funeral.html

Sydney Thompson Dobell, A Musing On A Victory
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-musing-on-a-victory/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_air_raids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_...ernational_law

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2...-100000-tokyo/
http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The...of_Air_Warfare

Professor Anthony D'Amato, History's Two Worst War Criminals
http://lawofnations.blogspot.jp/2005...criminals.html

Naom Chomsky, On the Backgrounds of the Pacific War
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/196709--.htm#11

Dresden and Tokyo bombings
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T130310003627.htm

movies and novel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departures_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funeral_(1984_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_o...eflies_(novel)


photo: Postwar Tokyo Map - showing destroyed areas by Justin Cozart


my home page with a mirror of these blog posts plus other articles: mooninthewater.net/aikido


my columns on aikiweb



© niall matthews 2013
Views: 4529 | Comments: 2


RSS Feed 2 Responses to "darkness in march"
#2 04-02-2013 12:23 AM
niall Says:
Thank you very much Francis. I don't think the United States is more violent than any other country. But Americans do have a lot more guns. You are right - budo is a way through. Niall
#1 03-25-2013 12:42 AM
aikishihan Says:
Thank you once again, Niall, for redirecting our focus on what remains of highest importance. That is to say, our inner sense of honor for principle, respect for human potential, and compassion for human failings. The United States will forever be a nation forged by violence, and it is our cross to bear.These days, it seems like a continuous wake. Budo remains a way through.
 




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