Japan Behind the Scenes

The news of the journalist Shiori Ito, a Japanese woman who broke the silence on rape in Japan has made the headlines all over the world. She has become a symbol of the  #metoo  movement in Japan, denouncing that Shinzo Abe's  government and the police discouraged her sexual assault  investigations. But is Japan really so bad for gender equality? Japanese men will say that their country puts "lady first" , they see being a housewife as a  privilege and, in a society where you work shift can last 11 hours per day, it is not so difficult to understand them/ Also, they blame the fact that women can have many reduced price for cinema or lunch menus (well actually Japanese women having a lot of free time are just a good business target) or have nicer and bigger toilets or special train cars against "chikan", the perverts. However, all  these policies are only strengthening gender division .  In fact...

Kimono starter pack: Kimono's Cultural Meaning Hello, it's been a while! Thank you for being here. Japanese life and its crazy 残業 (zangyou, overwork) almost killed me... Almost, hehe!  I will be doing a series of special posts about Kimono, "Kimono starter pack": I    Cultural Meaning II   Basic knowledge  (kimono is made of MANY parts and MANY kinds) III  Good kimono accounts or shops, online and in Tokyo What is a kimono? Kimono きもの 着物 literally means " thing to wear ": Ki き 着 means to "wear on the shoulders", while mono もの 物 means "thing, object".  Before the introduction of Western clothes, the word kimono was used to refer to any cloth in Japan, and only during the late nineteenth century , kimono became the term for the Japanese national dress. It has a long history and it is one of the best examples of how clothing can be used as a cultural identifier, conferring a strong sense of identity . Kimono ar...

Are you interested in Japanese cuisine ? Well, as Japanese people says, the starting point of Japanese cuisine is the miso soup (miso shiru味噌汁): the easiest to prepare but also the most important one. Miso (味噌) is fermented soya and the basic element of Japanese cuisine, mainly used for the miso soup, which Japanese people drink for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are endless types of miso soup. Today I will share the recepie that , according the tradition, even kitsune 狐, Japanese mythical foxes, love drinking. In fact, kitsune loves aburage, Japanese fried tofu. Ingredients   -miso                             2/3 spoons -konbu or katsuo dashi 1 tea bag -aburage  (fried tofu)    1/2 pack -konnyaku                     50gr -leek                         ...

These two masks  are called the Hannya masks (Hannya no men  般若の面) and they represent  the  transformation of a woman into a demon because of her jealousy and resentment towards the lover who betrayed her ( shitto ya u rami no komoru Onna 嫉妬や恨みの篭る女の顔 ) The y are used in the traditional Japanese theatre (noh theatre 能) and have become a symbol of Japanese pop culture, easily seen in anime, video games and tattoos. Name :  The name  hannya  (般若,  Sanskrit: प्रज्ञा, prajñā) is a Buddhist term  meaning "wisdom". According to the tradition, this name was given to this mask because it was the name of the monk Hannya-bō (般若坊) who is said to have perfected its creation:  the artist monk needed a great wisdom in order to create this mask. Another tradition says that the mask was called Hannya after that in the Tale of Genji,  Japanese most famous long novel, reading the Hannya's sutra defeated jealous and...

Japanese ghost stories (Kaidan 怪談) are not just a genre of old stories from Edo period: many Japanese modern " urban legends " (Toshi Densetsu 都市伝説) are horror stories with vengeful spirits (Onryō 怨霊) and angry ghosts (Yūrei 幽霊) that threat the living.  The spookiest Japanese urban legends are: The doll Okiku (Okiku Ningyou お菊人形) Japanese crafts has a long tradition of doll production and they are usually offered to girls and boys for important days. In 1918, in the northern land of Hokkaido, a young man, Eichi Suzuki, bought a doll wearing a red kimono and with an "okappa" hair style, with the hair cropped at around jawline and with a short fringe. He gave it to his three-year-old sister, Kikuko who immediately loved so much the doll that she played with it every day and even slept with it in at night. However, one year later, Kikuko suddenly died because of a cold. The whole family was devastated and decided to keep the doll at the lo...

OTSUYU AND  THE PEONY LANTERN We finally arrived to the third and last Japan's Great Ghost Story: Otsuyu, the Peony Lantern Otsuyu KaidanBotanDōrō お露　怪談牡丹燈籠.  It is a terrible romantic story that talks about a forbidden love : a love between a human and a dead. Long ago there was a samurai named Ogiwara Shinnojō. On the first night of Obon, Japanese buddhist festival for the death, Ogiwara saw a beautiful woman and her servant walking down the street, carrying a lantern with a peony motif. Ogiwara instantly fell in love with the beautiful woman. She said her name was Otsuyu, "dew". He invited her into his home and that night they made love. Otsuyu stayed with Ogiwara until  the lamplight consumed itself and then she left before the dawn. She didn't want to leave, but she said she had to. Otsuyu and her servant named back to see Ogiwara the following night, carrying the same peony lantern. Otsuyu and Ogiwara madly fell in love with each oth...

OKIKU: THE DISH MANOR AT BANCHO There are many versions of Okiku's story, the second Japan's Great Ghost Story. The protagonist is always Okiku お菊, a beautiful and poor girl, working as a dishwasher at Banchō in Edo (Tokyo's old name), who dies unjustly and comes back to haunt the living. This ghost story is referred as "The dish Mansion at Banchō" (Banchō Sarayashiki 番町皿屋敷) or, more simply, as "The dish mansion" (Sarayashiki 皿屋敷) Long ago, there was a beautiful woman named Okiku who worked as a dishwasher for a rich master with a manor in Tokyo. Okiku was so beautiful that she caught the eye of one of her master’s samurai, Aoyama. However, Aoyama was a selfish man  with no regret and with a big ego. He tried many times to seduce Okiku, but each time she rejected his advances.  Aoyama decided then to trick Okiku into becoming his lover. In the manor his master kept a set of ten very precious dishes. Aoyama took one of the them, hid it ...

There is no Japanese kid that does not know the " Japan's Three Great Ghost Stories " (Nihon san dai Kaidan 日本三大怪談). These tales were invented in Edo period (1603-1868), the golden age of ghost stories (Kaidan 怪談), and their protagonists are vengeful dead spirits of women (yūreijo 幽霊女). And anyway in Japan's Three Great Ghost Stories the protagonists are all women ghosts right? Why? "Japan's Three Great Ghost Stories" are: - Oiwa-san お岩さん: the Ghost Story of Yotsuya 四谷怪談 - Otsuyu お露: the Peony Lantern (Botan Dōrō 牡丹灯籠) - Okiku お菊: the Dish Mansionat Banchō (Banchō Srayashiki 番町皿屋敷) Today I will tell you the story of Oiwa  お岩さん , Japan's most famous ghost story. It is based on two historical figures of Edo period, the beautiful Oiwa, and her bad husband Tamiya Iemon, who lived in Yotsuya, a neighbourhood in the center of Tokyo. Oiwa died in 1636 and it is said that she still haunts Tokyo and those who tell her story. Today...

Japan is believed to be one of the most haunted places on Earth : Japanese people have been telling stories about vengeful "demons" (yōkai 妖怪) and "ghosts" (yūrei 幽霊) for centuries and, even now, in Tokyo, there are many haunted places (  shinrei supotto  心霊スポット). Edo period (1603-1868) was the Golden Age of Japanese ghost stories (Kaidan 怪談). Ghost stories were originally based on Buddhist moral tales and became a summer pastime; in fact, the traditional season for ghost stories is in August, when the spirits of the dead come back to the living world according to the Buddhist Obon festival (Obon お盆). A popular pastime in the Edo period was the game " A gathering of one hundred supernatural tales " (Hyaku monogatari Kaidan kai 百物語怪談会). Originally conceived as a test of courage for samurai, this game was considered to be so dangerous that most people would leave before the end of it . How to play according to the book "History o...

Otemachi is Tokyo's financial district, a forest of skyscrapers sitting on among world’s most valuable real estate.  However, in Otemachi we can  surprisingly  bump into a small plot with few maples, some flowers and a stele.  It is the site of the rebellious warlord Taira no Masakado 平将門  's grave, a man who died 1000 years ago but has his own bank account, opened by the most popular Japanese bank, Mitsubishi.  Tokyoites still believe that Masakado's malevolent spirit haunts Tokyo and salarymen are regular visitors to his shrine. In the 10th century, the warlord Taira no Masakado failed to fight against the emperor and in 940 he was executed: his severed head paraded through the streets of the capital, Kyoto. Tradition has it that Masakado's head - whose spirit was full of anger and hate - took flight and landed in Tokyo's Otemachi, at the time a small village of fishermen, who decided to bury his head and build a small shrine. I...