Yi T'aejun, 'Dust and Other Stories' (2018), Part II

Yi T'aejun, Dust and Other Stories. Translated by Janet Poole. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

"Unconditioned." The passage of time, evocations worthy of Marcel Proust. "Perhaps it was because two or more of those decades had passed during which the mountains and rivers are said to change, but does that mean we can't even trust the mountains and rivers over time? . . . The whole area seemed to have been filled in and the mountain razed, to be replaced by a red muddy track going up the slope." (pp. 140-141)

"Before and After Liberation." ". . . no words were necessary for the feelers of their desperate hearts to clasp onto each other, and they had already grown quite intimate after only a couple of meetings." (p. 155)

"U.S. [A]rmy [J]eeps . . . wriggled like a swarm of whirligig beetles."  

"'The blue waters and green mountains remain the same, 
While the rain merely washes the moss on the rocks.'"  (p. 187)

"Tiger Grandma." Literacy drive. "'Why don't you leave us living corpses alone? What does it matter if we can read or not when we'll be on the way to the public cemetery tomorrow or the next day . . .'"  (p. 190)

"'There's a saying that even saints must follow the times.'" (p. 192)

Manguri, a basket with a slip pf paper to forget worries. (p. 194) Heap of stones. Rice and greens for crows and magpies, "a shaman's 'scolding.'" (p. 195)

"Just then, three or four hens come tottering out of the kitchen, chased by a cockerel." (p. 198)

"Dust." "The businessman's complaints were endless." (p. 239)

Japanese imperialism replaced by American imperialism. "All of a sudden the children selling American cigarettes and gum scattered into the alleys to hide, crouching like a flock of birds spooked by a hawk."  (p. 244)

"Conservative? But that's not who I really am! The conservatives are noxious pests who block the progress of their country and society in any age. Am I really conservative?" (p. 259)

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Yi T'aejun, 'Dust and Other Stories' (2018), Part I

Yi T'aejun, Dust and Other Stories. Translated by Janet Poole. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Fascinating glimpse into Korean life, bridging the period between Imperial Japanese dominance (1910-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). Publications by Yi T'aejun (1904-circa 1956) were banned in South Korea until 1988. 

Banned books are often the best ones to read, naturally.

From "The Broker's Office:" "Is this world only good to you if you have money?" (p. 58)

"When government officials buy, even country bumpkins notice something's up, don't they?" (p. 59)

From "A Tale of Rabbits:" "His library was not large, but Hyŏn could not help but feel awe whenever he leisurely perused his bookshelves. He could appreciate the saying, 'To see a thousand years at one glance.' Every day new books appear." (p. 88)

"The Hunt:" "At midnight they had a simple but tasty snack of pheasant and buckwheat with a cold radish soup that made their teeth tingle. and then they stayed up past two o'clock sharing stories of goblins that had appeared on midnight trips to eat noodles or go fishing, or on the way home from visiting girls in nearby villages." (p. 100)

"Evening Sun:" "A stone pagoda stood to the right-hand side as he came out of the station, which bore the contours of a Korean house. . . The cracked and crumbling pagoda was yellowed and bumpy, like the spine of some beast extracted from a layer of earth tens of thousands of years old rather than something made from stone. Surrounded by mountains and stretching out quietly, the streets seemed too fragmented for a town." (p. 109)

"'What kind of feeling could there be without fear?'" (p. 114) 

"'I try not to feel too alone. When you think about it, is there anyone who isn't alone?'" (p. 119)

"The scene evoked the same kind of eternal nihilism as the Five Burial Mounds. On closer inspection there were small hills, woods, twisting roads, winding streams, small villages in the folds of each mountain, rice paddies, and dry fields, and above them all floated the clouds, which cast shadows on the villages and the streams . . . but at a casual glance there was merely the green earth and the misty air, and nothing else." (p. 123)

"Although they stood up quickly, it was already dusk as they walked back down the path. Maehŏn accompanied her to the stations and sent his precious companion away in the dark on the evening train." (p. 125)

"Yi dynasty white porcelain . . . vessels from eternity that provide quiet comfort and refreshment and never exhaust." (p. 128)

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Werner Herzog: 'Into the Inferno' (Netflix, 2016)

Werner Herzog's Into the Inferno (2016), a Netflix documentary, takes us to various places around the globe with its primary focus ever in mind: volcanoes and people. Among Herzog's cerebral meditations and the reliable help of Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, there are startling shots of breathtaking ecology, lava flows, explosions, and people's responses over time to the mysteries of volcanic activity.

As one might expect from Herzog (for those who are familiar with his earlier work), there are some weird, offbeat meanderings into associated mysteries. It's all a bit ramshackle at times, but well-worth the effort. 

Where does the film go? Points of focus include Endu (Endu Pahakol) on the island of Ambrym in the Vanuatu Archipelago, featuring the bemused Chief Mael Moses; Mount Erebus, Antarctica, where Herzog met Oppenheimer; La Soufrire
de Guadeloupe (footage from the 1970s); Katia and Maurice Krafft, who filmed volcanic activity and were "instantly killed by a pyroclastic flow in Japan, together with 41 other people" in 1991; Mount Sinabung, Sumatra, Indonesia; Mount Merapi (Fire Mountain), Java, Indonesia; Mount Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland; Mount St. Helens (Lawetlat'la), Washington; the Danakil Depression, Afar Region, Ethiopia, "300 feet below sea level;" the Erta Ale, "one of the three [volcanoes] in the world where magma is directly exposed;" back to Iceland; on to North Korea and Mount Paektu and mass social formations featuring thin, underfed people; and back to Vanuatu, to the John Frum cargo cult village, and Mount Yasur on Tanna Island.

To the Ends of the Earth and Back Again with Werner Herzog (born 1942)!  A salute also to Peter Zeitlinger (born 1960), Czech cinematographer and filmmaker who shot most of the newer footage for and with Herzog.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese Military Prints, 1894-1905 (Part II)

The Great Victory of Our Forces at the Battle of the Yellow Sea (1894)

Bradley M. Bailey, Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese Military Prints, 1894-1905. Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017. And exhibition at the Ackland, October 6, 2017-January 7, 2018.

An original and fascinating exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints, highlighting with jingoistic relish the rise of the Japanese military. Artistically, aside from the purely historical context, the prints highlight fog, smoke, exploding shells, searchlights, bursts of red and exciting activity. 

Also in the Ackland, meet No'om of Palmyra (Tadmun), Syria. Her age is about 1,850 years. Can you dig?

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese Military Prints, 1894-1905 (Part I)

Bradley M. Bailey, Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese Military Prints, 1894-1905. Chapel Hill: Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017.

In the late 1800s, Japan industrialized rapidly and, through war, took on two major powers: China and Russia. One of its prizes was the Korean Peninsula. 

Given that these same powers are still connected in the latest Korean conflict, the rise of Japan as a major military power is highly relevant -- as was its total destruction as a military power by 1945. 

Japan wasn't the only nation playing jingoist games at the time of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. Besides Western European powers and their own imperial wars, the United States of America initiated the Spanish-American War, resulting in a number of intended and unintended consequences. 

Outside of Africa, Spain's old empire was virtually demolished -- leading eventually to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. 

Also as a result of the Spanish-American War, the US seized Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines and annexed Hawaii at the same time. The US became a world naval power, steaming toward conflict with Japan. The poor, innocent US that never does wrong and only fights to defend itself! 

As for a Korean nuclear war in the 21st century, the verdict is still out -- but the surprise should be not at all, given the history of the last 125 years. 

Yesterday, today and tomorrow: Cherchez la guerre / Look for the War.

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

'Tokyo: A Biography' (2016). From the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake to Fukushima

Stephen Mansfield, Tokyo: A Biography. Disasters, Destruction and Renewal: The Story of an Indomitable City (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2016).

Imperial Japan took control of all of Korea in 1910, exploiting its resources. After the 1923 earthquake and its resultant fires, Korean workers in Japan became targets of Japanese nationalists (Japan First types). "Koreans were convenient scapegoats, and were easily sought out in slums where they lived by members of the police force, the notorious Black Dragon Society, military sports clubs, or anyone with a personal grudge or score to settle . . . lacking rational judgement or orderly deportment, [they] dragged Koreans from their homes and workplaces and hacked them to death. Others were strung up on telegraph poles or boiled alive in drums. Those who failed impromptu linguistic tests in Japanese were sentenced in mock trials and beheaded."  (Tokyo, pages 107-108). Also targeted were socialists, feminists, and other social reformers. 

By the 1930s, with dissenting voices suppressed or crushed, Japan as a whole became increasingly militaristic and jingoistic; its leadership became increasingly reckless. 

When Japanese forces seized Nanjing/Nanking, China, in December, 1937, they began a wholesale slaughter of its inhabitants -- killing as many as 300,000 civilians. 

The writer Iris Shun-Ru Chang (1968-2004), committed suicide seven years after completing The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997) and other works. She had been severely depressed, and no wonder why.

When the Japanese and Anglo-American Empires violently collided into each other, the scope of the Asia-Pacific War widened and deepened. More and more people were consumed, by the millions. 

Yet there was still a flicker of dissent among some Japanese. "Not everyone was keen to make the sacrifice and go to the front line. Prohibitions on tattooing were introduced during the war as a response to an increasing number of young men seeking ways to avoid conscription. People wearing tattoos were considered noncomformists who might spread dissent among the military ranks." (Tokyo, pages 126-127).  

Naturally, many writers and artists were dubious of the war and Japanese militarization, too. Nagai Kafu wrote: "However cruel and arbitrary the methods of the government may be, they cannot restrain the imagination, While there is life, there will be freedom." (Quoted in Tokyo, page 127). 

But like the Japanese military, the American military, too, became increasingly vicious. By early 1945, "the Americans [were] now bent on causing mass casualties to civilian populations as they later would with Hiroshima and Nagasaki," exploding napalm to "extract a maximum death toll. . . the first of America's high-tech massacres" and "slaughter bombings." (Tokyo, page 130).

After Japan's surrender, the American Occupation began. In immediate response, the Relaxation and Amusement Association (RAA) was formed to "entertain" American military personnel with "comfort stations" and brothels, which were also given euphemisms such as "Tea Shop Sanitation" and "Café Associations." These were large-scale operations with some 70,000 organized "comfort women" and tens of thousands of freelancing or yakuza-(gangster)-run "panpan girls." For the many gay servicemen, there were dansho and a quick blooming of gay bars. (Tokyo, pages 140-141). Very little of this seems to have made its way into celebrations of "America's Greatest Generation" -- or family histories. For most, apparently, what happened in Tokyo stayed in Tokyo.

Galloping through the Cold War, Godzilla movies came out amid understandable atomic jitters (Hiroshima and Nagasaki being very close in the rear-view mirror); and Japan's economy took off, thanks in part to servicing American military efforts in Korea and Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s respectively, and while showcasing the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. By the 1980s, Japan's economy was swaggering, at least until the next bust. Though Americans back in the USA feared the pointed competition from Japanese companies, they were all the while buying more Japanese cars and electronics.  

In 1995, Tokyo was again traumatized, this time by the Doomsday Cult Aum Shinrikyo / "Supreme Truth," which used sarin nerve gas to attack the subway system. This was the same kind of gas recently used in Syria to attack Syrian villagers. In the Tokyo attack, 5,000 people were sickened and twelve died outright. (Tokyo, page 181).

Jumping to March 11, 2011, the catastrophic Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami caused an accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, a horrendous and toxic radiation event still ongoing in 2017. Fukushima is situated about 150 miles (200+ kilometers) from Tokyo. (Tokyo, page 183).

Arriving at today, May 5, 2017, Fukushima is still a dangerous and daunting problem, but Tokyo is also under threat from a possible North Korean missile attack. For Tokyo, the fun never stops! 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Kang Je-gyu's 'My Way' / 마이 웨이 (2011): Take Two

Shirai (Fan Bingbing), one of the characters in Kang Je-gyu's My Way / 마이 웨이 (2011) is a Chinese sniper. There were thousands of women snipers engaged in combat during the World War II period-- none of them American. Consider Lyudmila "Lady Death" Pavlychenko, a Ukrainian Soviet sniper who killed 309 Axis men. Women snipers fought during the American War in Vietnam, as is depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film, Full Metal Jacket (Ngoc Le plays a Viet Cong sniper).    

Another element of Kang Je-gyu's My Way / 마이 웨이 (2011): the runner. The two main characters compete in races before the outbreak of war -- just as in Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981). In both films, running is another way to spotlight race, class and socio-economic competition. It makes one think of the Olympics, the ancient Greeks, The Iliad and the "tribal core" sports of the 21st century. It also might make one think of the Robert Altman film MASH (1970), set during the Korean War of 1950-1953, and prison films like Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard (1974), as well as Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire (1981), which among other things deals with anti-Semitism. In My Way, there is not only the runner vs. runner aspect; at Normandy, we see Axis soldiers playing football (i.e. soccer) before the coming Allied invasion.

Kang Je-gyu's My Way / 마이 웨이 (2011) also deals with prisons, POW camps, gulags, concentration camps, forced labor and all of their most terrible conditions. Indeed, the German title for the film at its 2012 release in Germany was Prisoners of War -- in English. 

Since forever, it seems, POWs and prisoners in general have been treated very badly. Who would want to be trapped in an Iranian or North Korean prison? Or a Chinese, German, Russian, Turkish one? Or a French or British penal colony? During the American Civil War, both sides treated POWs in an abysmal manner, leaving them -- their fellow  Americans -- exposed to the elements, malnourished and decimated by infectious disease. Captured freedmen and free black men were either executed or sent back into, or into, slavery. Today, groups like the so-called Islamic State execute prisoners en masse. I doubt treatment of prisoners in ancient times was a pretty picture, either. 

Why are prisoners treated so cruelly? It's so easy -- too easy. Millions of prisoners -- civilians and soldiers, grownups and children -- perished while in prisons, camps and gulags during WW2. Millions more died in captivity after the war, never returned by the captor nations to their home countries -- or expatriated and then imprisoned-to-death in their home countries. My Way reminds us.

Today's Rune: Growth.   

Kang Je-gyu's 'My Way' / 마이 웨이 (2011): Take One

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Kang Je-gyu's My Way / 마이 웨이 (2011), delivers an epic story that begins in Japanese Occupied Korea in the late 1920s and ends, or almost ends, at Normandy in 1944. Drawing on the real story of Yang Kyoungjong and the great sweep of history, My Way works on several levels -- from the small and human to the mass and inhuman violence of global war. 

Like The Iliad, My Way lets us see multiple viewpoints. And as with that Homeric epic, there is an abundance of courage, stupidity, shrewdness, luck, fate, adventure, cruelty and death. 

Among a group of characters, three stand out: Korean Joon-Sik (Jang Dong-gun), Japanese Tatsuo (Joe Odagiri) and Chinese Shirai (Fan Bingbing); the latter, a female sniper, contributes to an unlikely romantic thread, as well. 

Among the crazier things one will encounter in My Way is a Japanese infantry frontal assault against Soviet tanks at Khalkhyn Gol (1939).  

Here, a Soviet frontal assault against German positions at Kharkov in Ukraine (1943). 

In My Way, no one is as fanatical as low level military officers -- Japanese, Russian and German -- in sending their men into doomed, bloody efforts. 

As members of Ostlegionen units, Asians were positioned at Normandy, part of the German defenses of the Atlantic Wall. There were all sorts of ethnicities in the Ostlegionen: mostly desperate POWs converted into cannon fodder. 

Spotlighting the existence of the Ostlegionen is fascinating, another way in which My Way raises consciousness about the complexities and nuances of war on a massive scale.   

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.