Saturday, October 28, 2006

The Israeli Mother and The Arab Brother

The Israeli Mother and The Arab Brother


They televised it in Japan.

A mother of one of two Israeli soldiers who were taken to hostage by Hezbollah was appealing to supporters in New York including the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

A brother of one of Arab prisoners kept by Israel was also meeting with senior officers of the International Red Cross in Geneva, requesting them to press the Israeli Government into exchange of prisoners.

Over these prisoners and hostages, Israel and Hezbollah fought a war this summer, sacrificing more than one thousand lives on both the sides.
+ + +

This is the situation in which everybody is a victim as is usual in the human world.

There seems to be no mad man being included who just wants to inflict others while he has no justification to do so at all.

Everybody is a victim to be saved by God. (Any objection?)

What they need is not love more to themselves but love more to others, since they know their opponent is also suffering enough.
+ + +

If the Palestine problem or the problem regarding legitimate existence of the state of Israel among Arab people is solved, then Arab people might be able to easily solve their own problems with a great help of the world including Japan.

I really hope that these problems will be solved soon; Yes, very soon, as the mother and the brother are wishing it.

Or are you the one who was just passing by a taxi the mother was in while being depressed after meeting with various diplomats in New York, or otherwise are you the one who was just not aware of how thirsty the brother was when he entered a meeting room of the International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva?

If so, you must hope it more than I do.



"BUT, I AM THE ONE BY BIRTH"

Friday, October 27, 2006

A Great Wall on the Tibetan Height

A Great Wall on the Tibetan Height


A Japanese researcher was once on a bus running on the Tibetan Height.

He was feeling really high, enjoying the splendor of the great grassy plain.

Meanwhile, other travelers, mainly Chinese, on the bus were throwing garbage out of windows to the wayside of the highway cutting through the Tibetan Height.

On the great grassy plain, a bus was running, tossing empty cans, plastic bottles, paper bags, and other miscellaneous garbage out to the wayside.

The Japanese traveler found that simmering lines were also running along the highway lanes as far as he could see.

Now he knew what they were. A Great Wall of Garbage was under construction on the Tibetan Height.
+ + +

Yes, I saw the video on the Internet.

A Tibetan was shot and fell on the snow field where several other were also escaping from gunshots fired by Chinese soldiers.
+ + +

The Tibetan Height seems to have a size equal to Western Europe or the area west of the Mississippi.

In the 21st century or the 22nd century, the height might be very useful and important for human beings which are said to face serious climate problems.

However, garbage highway and easy firing today on the height might be very ominous not only for China governing the territory now but also for mankind.
+ + +

If you throw garbage out of a window of a public bus in Japan, you are asserting that you are a very dangerous person sitting among decent people.

Nonetheless, I can understand it means nothing when you have to be careful not to be shot or bombed while riding on a bus on a street of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Yet, I hope that I will be comfortably riding on a bus in any places on the earth just like in Japan. With no garbage throwers, no shooters, and no suicide bombers, you also should be going.



"YOU STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND?"

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Samurai's Daughter

Samurai's Daughter


Until the 1870s, Japan had been a feudal society in which farmers accounted for 85 percent of the population and samurai for seven percent.

Tokyo meaning the east capital (then called Edo meaning an entrace to the sea) had a million population among which samurai accounted for 50 percent, since it was the capital of the Tokugawa samurai regime (called Bakuhu), and every samurai feudal lord all over Japan was obliged to have an official residence in Edo in addition to the one in a castle in their own feud or territory called Han.

Samurai can be easily known from farmers, merchants, and craftsmen, for they wear garments particular about formalities as well as a pair of swords, a large and a small one, or outwardly a long and a short one.
+ + +

Once a samurai took his son and his daughter, in ages of schoolchildren in the lower grades of today, to an exhibition of a tiger. Though tigers had never made their habitats in Japan, the animal was always popular among Japanese, since it actually lived in the Korean Peninsula and it was the strongest kind of animals in North East Asia.

The samurai found that his little daughter was not frightened by the tiger exhibited alive for that certain occasion.

So, he decided to give her a dirk or a dagger, or a very small knife that could be hidden even in the hilt of a large sword.

Usually, when a woman of a samurai clan was given a dirk, it was meant that she should use it not only in fight but also for committing a suicide to protect the honor of herself and her family.

But, the samurai did not tell anything about such a samurai code; he just simply said to her, "As you are a strong girl, you could keep it."

Later when she got old, and the samurai era had gone through a civil war and modernization of Japan had begun, she recalled the memory and just wondered what her father, who had also served his lord as a scholar, had thought of when he had given her the dirk.
+ + +

If you have a strong soldier, you could trust him with a mighty weapon. But, applying the paradigm to a girl at a playful age of today is unthinkable.

Anyway, the more you are given, the more you are requested of.

Yes, the stronger you are, the stronger companion you might need in case.
+ + +

The glorious Meiji Restoration, crowned with the victory of the Japanese-Russo War, has been left behind in history so far away from the Japanese of today.

Then, the materially simple but culturally deep and abundant Samurai Era has been left further away from today's Japanese.

Yet, in the age of globalization, some people might love to hear this kind of report on the samurai era.



"BUILDS ITSELF UP THROUGH LOVE"

Sunday, October 22, 2006

The 50,000 Honorable Dead and Injured on the Iwojima in July 1944

The 50,000 Honorable Dead and Injured on the Iwojima in July 1944


When they released that absurd movie "Pearl Harbor" in the summer of 2001 despite the February's tragedy of the Ehimemaru, a Japanese fisheries high-school's training ship that was sunk near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by a USS submarine with guests from Texas on board, no one remembered the passage of the book “Moby Dick” written by Herman Melville just before the Civil War:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States",

"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL",

"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN",
which should be read as:
"In 2000, Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States",

"In early 2001, WAILING VOYAGE BY THE EHIMEMARU ",

"In late 2001, BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN",
and no one could even catch a glimpse of a foretelling shadow of the tragedies at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Now, they are releasing two new movies on the Iwojima island in the Pacific Ocean, while battles in Iraq and Afghanistan have been intensified.
+ + +

In July 1944, serious battles were fought on the Iwojima between the U.S. Navy and Imperial Japan's Army, which resulted in 28,686 dead and injured on the U.S. side and 20,129 dead and injured on the Imperial Japan's side.
+ + +

The picture presenting several U.S. marines trying to hoist a flag of the Stars and Stripes tied to a slender water pipe on a hill in a battle field of the Iwojima (literally meaning an island of sulfur) was well known as a symbolic figure of U.S. patriotic spirit.

+ + +

I am highly concerned with the series of the Iwojima films now being released in the U.S. and Japan.

They might be telling something to us as a kind of oracles.

However, there are too many that are dying in Iraq and thus cannot enjoy the movies.
+ + +

The Pacific stage of WWII began after negotiations had failed between the Empire of Japan and the U.S.

Are they carrying negotiations in Iraq and Afghanistan? If not, they should start it and make it successful.

Just a success in negotiations could have parties avoid war at very low costs.

They may further avoid terror and war on terror.

For example, if you today pass by a Shiite Muslim or a Sunni Muslim on a street of New York City, you would not even mind it, though if you pass by an Imperial Japan's soldier from the Iwojima, a thing might be different.



"I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU"