David Chart's Blog

Author: David Chart

  • Japanese Prime Ministers

    I’m sorry it’s been so long since I updated this blog; we went to the UK in the summer, and that ate up a lot of time. I have a bunch of things to post, and I’ve started working on them, so I’ll keep this entry short, just to bring some life back to the…

  • Visit Tohoku! Sendai and Shiogama

    According to a recent article in the Guardian, the number of tourists coming to Japan has fallen sharply. This is, perhaps, because they imagine that Japan is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, glowing with radioactivity and, quite possibly, roamed by gangs of mutant bikers. And Godzilla. Obviously, this is not the case. There is no problem with…

  • ÅŒharaikotoba — Shinto Texts Course

    Yesterday we had the fourth of this year’s Shinto lectures at Kokugakuin. The lecturer was Professor Okada, and the theme was the ÅŒharaikotoba. The ÅŒharaikotoba is a purification prayer, and one of the most important norito (ritual prayer) in Shinto. Indeed, it is almost certainly the most important single norito, which is why it earned…

  • A Wedding and The Grand Shrines of Ise

    Last weekend we went on a little trip. One of Yuriko’s cousins was getting married in Gifu (near Nagoya), so we went to that, and then extended the trip a bit to go to Ise and visit the shrines. The wedding was on Sunday, so Yuriko and Mayuki went to Nagoya on Saturday to stay…

  • Archaeology and the Kogoshui — Shinto Texts Course

    Yesterday we had the third Shinto texts course, this time looking at the Kogoshui and the archaeological background. The Kogoshui may not be familiar even to people who know a bit about Shinto, so I’ll say a bit about it first, as the lecturer, Professor Sasao, did. The Kogoshui was written in 807 by Inbe…

  • Pensions

    Last Sunday was the first meeting of the Kawasaki Representative Assembly of Foreign Residents of this fiscal year. The first meeting should have been in April, but after the earthquake quite a few of the representatives were temporarily out of Japan, and the city authorities had a lot of other things to organise, so it…

  • Shinto Texts Course — The Kojiki and National Learning

    Yesterday we had the second lecture in the Shinto texts course, and it was also about the Kojiki, this time from the perspective of National Learning, and more specifically from the perspective of Norinaga Motoori. Norinaga Motoori was one of the four great scholars of National Learning, a scholarly movement in the Edo period that…

  • Hair Brush

    Mayuki’s hair brush was finally delivered a couple of weeks ago. This isn’t a brush for Mayuki’s hair. It’s a brush made from Mayuki’s hair. These brushes are a Japanese custom. Apparently, many years ago, the best writing brushes were made from the first hair cut from babies. This was because the hair was of…

  • Shinto Texts Course — The Kojiki and Archaeology

    The Open College course on Shinto at Kokugakuin University has started again today, and the theme for this year is Shinto texts. They are working through in roughly chronological order, and thus starting with the Kojiki, which was completed in 712 (so next year is the 1300th anniversary). The last lectures will cover important twentieth-century…

  • 2:46: Aftershocks

    I just found out about this book via the Guardian, and I’ve already bought my copy. As the page will tell you, it’s a collection of personal reactions to the March 11th quake from people across the world with some connection to Japan. Most of them were in Japan at the time, and a fair…