"if thy right hand offend thee" - Doraemon since 1969

Mt. Fuji from Tokyo 

Doraemon since 1969

Doraemon is one of the most popular manga (cartoon) titles created in Japan and accepted overseas.

Doraemon is a robot cat that came from the future to save a boy, one of whose future descendants is associated with Doraemon.  Doraemon helped the daily life of the boy named Nobita, meaning the knocked-down, with various fantastic and super-high tech goods, since Nobita is a weak boy always suppressed by a big and strong bully and a sly and rich boy, though he has a pretty girl friend.  This manga comic story was originally intended for primary school children.

Doraemon was first issued in 1969 when the Vietnam War was still going on and many anti-Vietnam War students were active in Japan, since there were many US military bases in Japan.  Japan was marking high growth in economy at the time, partly because of Vietnam War-invoked special procurement boom, with people's lives rapidly changing from a simply highly growing economy after WWII to a country starting to lead the world economy.  Japanese youths were also being influenced by hippyism that started in the US in the middle of 1960s, requesting more freedom and equality while denying traditional ethics.

The world of Japanese manga works was also undergoing a big change as baby boomers who had enjoyed juvenile cartoons in their childhood became young adults who wanted more realistic, satirical, and sometimes violent manga works.  Many of manga artists changed their styles to match feelings and demands of growing manga readers along with this social trend.  But, the author Fujio F. Fujiko never changed his touch.  F. Fujiko continued to create and issue juvenile cartoons for readers of every generation.

So, F. Fujiko's Doraemon survived those politically turbulent years, symbolized by the Vietnam War, and psychologically unstable years with social value standards drastically changing due to the coming of affluent society in Japan.  In fact, he proved that what is welcomed by children is the same if times are changing.

Fujio F. Fujiko (ne Hiroshi Fujimoto) came to Tokyo from Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan to become a manga artist with his friend Fujio Fujiko (A) (ne Motoo Abiko) in early 1950s when they were 20 years old or so.  They respected Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese King of Manga Art.  As their works had been praised by Tezuka, they decided to become professional manga artists.   Actually, the two young manga artists started to live in a humble room of a humble wooden apartment house Tezuka just moved from.  Their drawing touch even resembled Tezuka's.

Even the great manga-world leader Tezuka tried to change his style aimed at children to that more appealing to young adults in 1970s along with the change in the mood of the Japanese society.  But F. Fujiko firmly stuck to his old style targeting children.  However, his friend Fujiko (A) gradually changed his style to appeal to adult readers.  Till Doraemo, F. Fujiko and Fujiko (a) created and issued works together as co-creators, using the common name Fujio Fujiko.  But, Doraemon was a work produced only by F. Fujiko.

Fujio F. Fujiko died in 1996, though his best friend and old co-creator Fujiko (A) still lives.  Fujiko (A) wrote some books where he admired F. Fujiko who seldom went out for playing golf or drinking with famous actors, actresses, authors, and other celebrities while Fujiko (A) enjoyed such a colorful life in Tokyo as a successful manga artist.  F. Fujiko concentrated on his juvenile works for children while always trying to come up with new ideas.


One night in 1969, F. Fujiko was suffering as he had promised to present a new manga work to a magazine company as his old title had been finished.  But, F. Fujiko couldn't flash an idea into his mind.  Fujiko (A) who had come to Fujiko F.'s house to help him already returned to his office for his work.   Alone all through the night F. Fujiko tried to find a theme and a main character of his new manga work in vain.  He remembered when he and Fujiko (A) were working hard and living poor in the humble wooden apartment house when they were young.  He remembered there was a cat in the apartment house.  Finally, the morning came.  He felt desperate.  Shouting, "I'm finished", F. Fujiko ran down stairs in his house to stomp over a tumble doll of his little daughter.  At the moment, he got an idea of a robotic cat that helped a weak boy who was like his old self.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doraemon
      

Today, even Chinese children are enjoying animation films featuring Doraemon.  Once when F. Fujiko visited Vietnam, one boy asked him, "Do you have the 4-dimensional pocket Doraemon has?"  F. Fujiko answered, "There is one spare suit of clothes with the 4-dimensional pocket in addition to Draemon's.  But it is kept secretly.  So, I unfortunately have not."  Doraemom takes out various dream hi-tech goods from the four-dimensional pocket.




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Mat 5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

"not commit adultery" - 20 Years Ago in Gaza, etc.

Around Tokyo

20 Years Ago in Gaza, etc.

A some 50-year old Japanese author, not so popular, traveled Israel and the autonomous areas of the Palestinians 20 years ago.

He met a young worker in a hotel in Jerusalem.  One day they were in an elevator all alone together, so that the Japanese asked, "Where are you from?"  The immigrant valet, whose English was not so fluent, answered, "From Russia."  "Which is better, Russia or Israel?"  Then, scornfully the valet said, "Of course, Israel."

The Japanese author went to Gaza.  A taxi driver requested an extortionate taxi fare when they arrived at the entrance to Gaza.  The requested fare looked like 10 times higher than a normal fare.  So, the Japanese and the Israeli taxi driver started a quarrel.  Then, an Israeli soldier stationed there interfered, resulting in payment of half an initially requested fare.

From the entrance point, he took a bus.  Among local Palestinians, there were three different types of bus passengers.  In addition to the Japanese traveler, there were a German businesswoman who spoke Arabic and a rich and young Palestinian who dressed well and spoke with the German woman.

The rich and young Palestinian said to the German woman, "Hey, look at this Japanese writer.  He looked so cheap.  Such men should not come to Gaza."  The German woman didn't reply.  At a bus stop around which big and luxurious houses were built, the arrogant young Palestinian man got off.  In the middle of a market, the Japanese author left the bus to observe the street.  Gaza was full of poor houses and poor people, though there seemed to be such rich Palestinians as he had met in the bus.

In Bethlehem, he met an old man who said he had been a journalist and once worked for a newspaper of Jordan.  The Japanese traveler bought him a glass of beer in a restaurant of a hotel.  The poor old Arab said that when he was working in Paris as a correspondent, he taught Arabic to the wife of Arafat.  But when they parted, the old man said, "I cannot work as a journalist any more."  So, taking compassion on him, the Japanese gave him a wrist watch he was wearing as a present of friendship.

However, it was more impressive to read his experiences of seeing a young beautiful Arab woman buying a chicken whose head was cut off before her in a shop and holding and carrying out the miserable bird so coolly on the street, and an old woman squatting down on a street of Jerusalem while reading the Torah and sometimes holding and shaking a metal can to which some people threw coins as she was a beggar.

Anyway, the Japanese unpopular author didn't seem to meet God in Palestine though he left Japan after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo cult terror of attacking Tokyo subway trains with poisonous sarin gas.

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Today, I saw two cars in about 10 minutes that had the car license number "11-11."  It was very rare since other hundreds of cars had banal numbers such as "19-95."






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Mat 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

"suffered many things of many physicians" - Endless is This Road

Around Tokyo Bay

Endless is This Road

There was a very popular female singer who suddenly appeared after WWII as a low-teenager genius singer.

Hibari Misora (1937 – 1989) was a Japanese singer, actress and cultural icon.[1][2] She received a Medal of Honor for her contributions to music and for improving the welfare of the public, and was the first woman to receive the People's Honour Award which was conferred posthumously for giving the public hope and encouragement after World War II.[3][4]
Misora recorded 1,200 songs, and sold 68 million records.[5] After she died consumer demand for her recordings grew significantly and by 2001 she had sold more than 80 million records.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibari_Misora  

In one of her songs titled "Kawa-no Nagare-no Yoni" (like the flow of a river), there is an interesting phrase:

Ikiru koto wa, tabi-suru koto, 

Owari-no nai kono-michi.

It can be translated:
Living a life is making a journey,

Endless is this road.

When a Japanese professor who taught Japanese in a foreign country (Canada or Europe) took this song as a material for his lecture, many students asked what "Endless is this road" meant, since any way had its end.

The meaning of this sentence is that one would feel, if he had been living a hard life,  as if he had been walking on an endless road as he could not even see the future while concentrating on every current step (every day's toil and burdens). 

This road is not a physical or geographic road.  It is a passage of life.  Of course there is an end in life.  But if you concentrate on every moment, living can be felt in the phase of endlessness.  It is a metaphor.

When a European or an American hears "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road," he would surely imagine a concrete road that has a start and an end.  And he would think that he is walking on a road.  The road has the start and the end.

But when a Japanese hears "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road," he would surely imagine a state of walking on part of a road, and he would think that there is no end of this road for him, since he has to repeat a movement of his legs till his death.  There is no exit from a painful life.  He has to live and die.  But after his death, the road is still stretching ahead without anybody, probably, walking there.

The point at issue is the concentration on the moment.  From the point or the moment, outside elements look like belonging to the phase of eternity that is endless.

Of course, every life has the start and the end.  The life of Christ Jesus had the start and the end as depicted in the Bible.  But his will or the road he was walking on has been stretching endlessly.

In Buddhism, it is said that if you concentrate on holy exercise, trying to realize enlightenment at every moment during ascetic training, you might get truth and your soul might enter Nirvana, the supreme paradise where one's existence is completed.  Such a holy man enters Nirvana or eternity through a hole of time, namely a moment.

Put simply, the only way for us to enter the domain of eternity is to concentrate on a moment and enter the domain through the entrance called a moment (which can be the time of death).  But, it is not easy.  You have to try it at every moment endlessly.  And you might luckily jump into eternity through a hole of time or a moment.

However, this theory should not apply to a kamikaze-style (suicidal) attack in war.  Do not apply a holy theory for purity of human souls to a bloody human act of war.

Nonetheless, people suffering a tragic war somewhere in the world might feel their difficult and dangerous situations would continue forever or till their death.  They must be able to understand the phrase of the song: "Living a life is making a journey; Endless is this road."

All I can hope is that God or Allah would send angels to them at every moment endlessly.

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Mar 5:25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,
Mar 5:26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
Mar 5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
Mar 5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
Mar 5:29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.
Mar 5:30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?
Mar 5:31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
Mar 5:32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.
Mar 5:33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

"glorifying God" - What American Novels Tell

Tokyo

What American Novels Tell

I recently checked some short novels written by American authors after 2001.

They are not good.

Life in America doesn't seem meaningful for anybody that is looking for God.  Most of Americans seem to forget the duty of mankind to find and reinforce the relationship between the God and mankind.  They look like living aimlessly while enjoying their materially abundant and politically free lives and dreaming of big money.

However for American super-rich men to enjoy their lives, they need the mighty defense industry and a huge national defense budget.

What is worse, the situation around people in China looks worse than that in the US.

No matter how grave Muslims' living conditions are in war-torn Islamic regions, the US would not become the great savior for them, though the US military might destroy the so-called Islamic Nation militias.


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Today at some 60 km north of Tokyo an M5.6 earthquake occurred at 2:28 p.m., though no casualties around Tokyo.

There is an unignorable possibility that an M7-class earthquake could happen immediately underneath Tokyo when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is held in Tokyo in 2020.




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Luk 5:25 And immediately he rose up before them, and took up that whereon he lay, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.
Luk 5:26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.

"but is passed from death unto life" - The Basic Racial Issue in the Pacific War in WWII

Around Tokyo, Japan

The Basic Racial Issue in the Pacific War in WWII

There is a big issue that has never been discussed openly after WWII in terms of Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia during WWII.

 After the Japanese-Russo War (1904-1905), the US Government or American political elites changed their view on the Empire of Japan.  During the Japanese-Russo War, the US supported the Empire to stop Russian invasion of East Asia.  But when the war ended while the Empire of Japan had defeated the mighty Russian fleet and troops around Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula, the US came to prepare for a future war against the Empire over the hegemony around the West Pacific Ocean.

Japanese immigrants in California and other states of America gradually faced growing racial discrimination.  Anti-Japanese sentiment also grew stronger in the US without any rational reasons.  It is as if some racists in the US were working behind the scene to lead the two leading countries in the Pacific to a fatal war.

Today, we don't see almost any racial hatred toward Japanese in the US society.  But, Japanese immigrants to the US before WWII had to experience very difficult situations as minorities.  Especially in 1930s or after the Great Depression, this anti-Japanese mind-set dangerously expanded in the US society.

That is why both the countries reinforced their navies as if preparing imminent war on the Oacific.  Otherwise, both Imperial Japan and the US didn't need to build and maintain such large fleets:

The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty among the major nations that had won World War I, which by the terms of the treaty agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference, which was held in Washington, D.C., from November 1921 to February 1922, and signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers and submarines, were not limited by the treaty but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement.

Tonnage limitations
Country	Capital ships	Aircraft carriers
British Empire	525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes)	135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes)
United States	525,000 tons (533,000 tonnes)	135,000 tons (137,000 tonnes)
Empire of Japan	315,000 tons (320,000 tonnes)	81,000 tons (82,000 tonnes)
France	175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes)	60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes)
Italy	175,000 tons (178,000 tonnes)	60,000 tons (61,000 tonnes)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

The Pacific theater battles in WWII were destined in 1920s, since the Empire of Japan needed such strong naval power only against the US as well as the UK, since Russians had lost their naval presence in East Asia since their defeat against the Empire in 1905.

And, behind this building up of Japan's military power, there were racial issues against Japanese in the US as well as in the UK.

When the US Government froze Japanese assets in the US and imposed total embargo of crude oil, iron products, etc. for the reason that Imperial troops were fighting Chinese troops in mainland China as if intending to occupy whole China around 1941, the Imperial Government decided to occupy Southeast Asia where natural resources, including crude oil, were rich.  Some anti-American politicians in Tokyo dreamed of constructing a kind of Imperial Commonwealth in East Asia that could totally compete with the US and European powers.  The Imperial Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia during WWII was partly forced by racial discrimination in the US before WWII.


History textbooks used in schools in the world today should clearly state that the Empire of Japan finally attacked American naval bases in Pearl Harbor partly because of the racial issue against Japanese in the US.



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Joh 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Joh 5:25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.

"we found no man within" - How a Jewish Couple Survived in Poland in WWII

Public Park (ex-samurai castle remains) around Tokyo

How a Jewish Couple Survived in Poland in WWII

During WWII, a Polish Judaist was saved, with his wife, by a poor Polish citizen and his wife.

The young Polish Judaist got out of the ghetto in Warsaw occupied by German troops that were searching for Judaists to capture and send them to concentration camps.  It was not easy for Judaists to get out of the ghetto and mingle in a crowd in Warsaw without being noticed by German soldiers or unfriendly Polish citizens.  But, he and his wife had some reasonable money as he helped a group of anti-German Judaists in the ghetto seize big money from a safe in the office of a Jewish organization that was donating money periodically to a Polish authority in exchange of their safety.  Money would help them was the only hope.

So, on an occasion when a German troop ordered Judaists in the ghetto to come out of houses, form a line, and walk to cargo trucks waiting for them on the street of the ghetto, the young Polish Judaist, with his wife, boldly and quickly sneaked out of the queue and jumped in a building to run down to a basement.

Days later on the Warsaw street, their identities were soon exposed and they were surrounded by some Polish young ruffians who were looking for chances to extort money and any valuable things from Judaists disguising their status, since there were many such Polish youths at the time.  In a series of this kind of episodes, the couple was finally sent to a poor house in a forest in the suburb of Warsaw by a shrewd Warsaw man who took all the money left for the couple.  The Warsaw guy told the Jewish couple that the owner of the house was his old brother and he was a kind of German.

The resident of the house was a poor worker in a printing factory and his wife was from a Protestant family (that might be why the man was called a kind of German).  The husband and wife lived on selling cigarettes they made with tobacco leaves and sheets of paper, because the factory stopped its operation due to the war.  The Jewish couple helped make hundreds or thousands of cigarettes per day manually.

While secretly living together this way, the young Polish Judaist told many stories to the host husband and wife because he had been studying German literature in Berlin before the war though he had been rejected by German universities when he applied for enrollment.  The poor Polish husband and wife enjoyed the stories the future German literature critic told by arranging stories he had once read and studied.  Though money they could earn by selling hand-made cigarettes was not big and they were always hungry, they could rather friendly spend the difficult days under occupation of Warsaw by the German Army.

At the time, in villages of Poland there were many illiterates or those who could read but could not write.  There were many families in villages of Poland that had almost no books except the Bible or the like.  So, this young intellectual Polish Judaist became a respectable guest and a honest co-worker for manually producing cigarettes.  

In this way, the young Jewish couple could survive in a suburb of Warsaw till Soviet troops came to drive out German troops out of Warsaw, while the parents of the young Jewish man and his old brother as well as his wife's mother were killed by Nazis.    

One day after a battle between Soviet platoons and German artillery around the house, a Jewish Soviet soldier happened to check their hiding house, and the owner of the house called the young and poor Jewish man to see the soldier.  Then, the poor Jewish fugitive realized that he was a free man now, since the soldier said to him, "Are you Jewish?  I am Jewish.".

Their parting was so warm and heartfelt, though the Jewish couple were almost skin and bone.  The husband and wife asked the young Jewish couple to remember that there were some Polish people who saved Judaists by risking their lives, since they could have been killed by German soldiers if they had been found hiding Judaists.

Subsequently, the young Jewish couple went to a Polish military command center.  Polish officers in the command center assigned the young Judaist to a job of censorship as he could read German.  It became the start of a somewhat mysterious career of the Jewish young Pole in association with the Polish Government and the Polish Communist Party, though he later came to quit believing communism.

The Polish Judaist who survived WWII this way later became a notable critic of literature.


This is a story that has moved me recently so impressively.

Anyway, cigarettes don't always kill people but help some people survive even in Poland in WWII.




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Act 5:22 But when the officers came, and found them not in the prison, they returned and told,
Act 5:23 Saying, The prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing without before the doors: but when we had opened, we found no man within.
Act 5:24 Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.
Act 5:25 Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people.