Tastes Differ Also in Japan
(Les goûts varient aussi au Japon)
SECTION 1: Japanese Unique Colors
The Microsoft Windows OS provides a function to set a color code in numbers as below shown though in Japanese.
However, there is a concept of Japanese unique colors. In the following Web page, they present 465 colors, traditionally used in Japan, with corresponding color values and unique Japanese color names.http://www.colordic.org/w/
SECTION 2: A Japanese Female Journalist out of the 9/11 Terror
On September 11, 2001, she was in office at 20F of the world financial center building next to the World Trade Center Towers.
When the second hijacked jet plane hit the second Tower, the building she was in was swayed at the magnitude of the intensity 6 of earthquake.
Everybody in the office of Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. in New York got panicked crying "Terror!"; She suffered the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for the following one year.
As she got shocked also watching American people starting to buy guns and shouting revenge loudly, she who had been living in the U.S. for 13 years since her university days decided to leave the U.S., without gaining U.S. citizenship.
Ms. Mika Tsutsumi, in this context, wrote a book titled "Amerika Jyakusya Kakumei (US Revolution by the Weak)."
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/htm/4875252307.html
The book was awarded a prize of Japan Congress of Journalists (JCJ).
http://www.jcj.gr.jp/e_index.html
SECTION3: Women's Grace and Dignity
One of my favorite Japanese blogs is "Number One Communications - Report on World No.1 and Japanese No.1."
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/nobytajp/m/200712
On December 5, it presented a list of best-selling books in Japan, which world researchers and analysts or students on Japan should not miss:
No.1 - "Jyosei no Hinkaku (women's grace and dignity)"
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/guest/cgi-bin/wshosea.cgi?KEYWORD=%8F%97%90%AB%82%CC%95%69%8A%69
No.2 - "Homeless Chu-gakusei (a junior-high-school pupil living homeless)
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/guest/cgi-bin/wshosea.cgi?KEYWORD=%83%7A%81%5B%83%80%83%8C%83%58%92%86%8A%77%90%B6
SECTION 4: Victims of Drug-Induced Disease
One of big news items in these days in Japan is of female victims who were given the contaminated coagulant fibrinogen to stop the bleeding on bearing, which later caused acute and sometimes fatal hepatitis, though it is decades ago that such harmful medication had been conducted due to negligence of the Government and pharmaceutical companies in Japan.
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200712070081.html
The concerned biological, such as fibrinogen, mostly consisted of blood imported from the U.S.
Every year, the U.S. Government issues a list of its request on administrative structure reform to the Japanese Government, which includes a request of purchase of US biological.
I think that is one reason why Japanese Government is reluctant to assume its responsibility to have authorized sales of such dangerous biological to hospitals for use on innocent pregnant women all over Japan, though, decades ago.
* * *
When I was young, I often saw old women putting on Japanese-style clothing with colors and patterns so plain, humble, restrained, or dry like dried-grass.
I thought that old women had a habit of not enjoying colors and patterns.
But, as I grew up to appreciate depth and variety of Japanese colors and patterns being applied based on higher appreciation of the hidden beauty of the nature, I found that those old women were secretly enjoying their ability in appreciating subtle delicacy of those humble colors and patters while living in memory of the old society with many restrictions on women in Japan.
Anyway, it is not so bad for Japanese women today to check traditional colors, be cool to the American culture and mentality, learn good manners modern and traditional, and fight against the Japanese officialdom who so obediently and submissively accepts various requests and demands the US Government every year places and poses, in a sense, too adamantly.
(One cold night I saw a homeless man lying on the hard-hearted pavement by a bench of a sidewalk, being surrounded by passers-by and examined by policemen.
Next day, I saw an angel sitting on the bench and reading a record of his life.
Whatever chapter your life is in now, I hope that it is being recorded nicely and finely in style regardless of its contents.
It is because the angel who will read your record on such an occasion in future may be somebody familiar with you now at this moment.)
"...and all who touched it were made well..."
(Und alle, die es taten, wurden gesund)