the many flavors of Kariyushi

Partly cloudy, 11C (10C)

So the Kariyushi I saw tonight is not Kariyushi58, but Kariyushi (I duno what's up with the PC site, but the mobile site displays properly...). "kariyushi" does not mean "hawaiian-print shirt" in Okinawan, it means, "omedetai" ; a hawaiian-print shirt is a "kariyushia". The word "kariyushi" is very common in Okinawa--for beaches, hotels, bands... Okinawan food is yummy, yo! (Even the umeboshi kurage (pickled sour plum paste and chopped jellyfish)!)

This Kariyushi has a sanshin, or Okinawan shamisen. And since the venue was TEENY, I got to chat with the band after {WoW, my Japanese sucks!}, especially the sanshin player, and he even let me play his sanshin (picture forthcoming--as soon as my coworker emails it to me, I'll add it to this post). It is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from any kind of shamisen I've played. But also similar enough. The batchi is like a raptor claw! No kidding!

Anyway, they're playing in Osaka on my birthday (Friday, the 14th) and since I should be able to leave the school early that day, I've decided to go. The sanshin player drew me a map, and the bassist said, "we'll see you again in Osaka, then!" (in Japanese, of course). The sanshin player said he won't forget me because I'm the only foreigner he's met who plays shamisen.

Anyway, it was hard to get a picture with all three of their faces visible and somewhat in focus, so you get these five :

( five photos for three-man band here )

That's all for now!

Generations

Partly sunny, 18C (20C)

So I think today will be the day I make that post about generations. Abstract : They're all fucked up.

Really, this has been able to become more fleshed out because of recent news here in Japan. For the last month or two they've been rallying pretty hard core down in Okinawa to shut down the American military base there, which has kept the war generation in America, the Greatest Generation, closer to the front of my mind. The rest of this discussion is going to be very America-centric, and I apologize but I'm just not sure how to best and most accurately and fairly portray the corresponding generations of other cultures and places against those of 'my own'.

So, I've often complained about the Baby Boomers, but it occurred to me a while ago, that while the Baby Boomers may be one of the biggest eyesores in the American generational landscape, we oughtn't punish the son for the father's sins. Besides, the BBs have enough sins of their own ; it's despicable, really, but where did they learn their wayward ways?

Their parents. That very same Greatest Generation.

War is an ugly thing. Nobility can happen there but we only recognize it as nobility because it is utterly surrounded by anything but--it's like taking a handful of chaff, throwing in five or six seeds and putting it all in a hurricane-force wind field then exclaiming about seeds when you lose an eye from one hitting you in the face. The only thing about WWII was that many people were killed before they could commit too many atrocities ; they certainly gave it their all while they were living, though. The dead don't posthumously get to be remembered with perfected personalities or as if their potential had been fulfilled. Sorry. Within families, this seems to have stuck pretty well, but as a society it really didn't--and doesn't.

Because of the horrors of WWII, and it really was a shocking thing for everyone--the world literally went completely mad and stayed there for a good three years--a policy grew of not asking questions and not criticizing. Lest we destabilize the innocent farm boys. Nevermind they were already destabilized. Our war dead and war survivors from that period were and are enthroned in a magical place of unquestionability. But that just isn't right ; just because they didn't have the resources and organization of the Reich doesn't mean they were necessarily better people ; in fact, if we really want to interpret this most logically it would make them worse people. (At about this point, please remember that like everyone, I have personal reference for this ; but unlike everyone, I actually realize it and recognize it.)

Before we come closer to the present, I want to follow this string back in order to gain a better appreciation. Basically, my thesis here is that the Greatest Generation wasn't actually so great and not only that, but most modern problems--which the Baby Boomers happily carried forth--are actually based in the collective experience and memory of that very same 'Greatest Generation'. To understand why they're not so great, I think it will be invaluable to realize why everyone thought they were so great. (And this is where the discussion becomes irredeemably American ; I would really like to be able to expand my point of view on this so if anyone could help me out, I'd really appreciate it!)

The Greatest Generation was credited with nothing less than saving the damned world. Except they didn't. Not really. But Americans are still saddled with the burden of having done it, anyway, so it doesn't seem to really matter what the truth is. Except that it really should start to matter in about 10-15 years. Lots and lots of people died pretty unpleasantly in a relatively short period of time. So far, this could describe any period in human history. Seriously. The differences : documentation. We have photos, movies, broadcast recordings, etc.

But whatever, the Greatest Generation went to war and most of them came back alive. Seriously, the death rate was less than one third of a percent of the US population ; compare this with about 4% for Europe, about 10% for the Reich, and about 13% for the USSR. Of the armed services, not one branch suffered more than a 4% death rate. Compare this to the armed services of every participating military (other than the UK, who had a similar situation to America's), whose death rates for servicemen were all well into double digits.

But we all know there are worse fates than death--the American armed forces were around 16million souls (less than half a million died) while the American population on the eve of war was a little over 130million. A 12% militarization does make for a lot of cowards, a lot of fodder, and a lot of opportunity for what few men of valor there generally are to die prematurely, but it does not confer greatness on a whole generation. So much less so the auspicious superlative of being "the Greatest". The greatest? For saving their asses when there was no other way? In my language, we call that "self-preservation".

But, perhaps, when compared to other generations even self-preservation is a step up...

So I've made a table that looks something like this (the holes are because I haven't intensively studied American history since high school--forgive me!--for convenience I've standardized everything to decades, but not all generations are created equally and certainly not so regularly at the start of a new decade(!), hopefully you'll notice that not everyone who fought in WWII was born between 1920 and 1929...-- also I've broken up generations in the last century more than earlier times because social change more quickly becomes more widespread since the advent of radio, telephones, television, and the Internet--each new technology compounding the rate of information spread since the last big upgrade and allowing more information to influence more people more quickly thereby defining new generations more frequently...), the point of which is to illustrate how no generation is particularly great :

( Read more... )

hmm... I probably should've used wikipedia to check some of my information or whatever, but I'm already bored with that chart so I'll leave any corrections to you.

Anyway, with this, my point should be quite clear : no generation is particularly great, and certainly not the Greatest Generation. They fought an awful war that everybody was fighting one way or another, then they went on to give rise to a generation of self-important, selfish little bastards who inflicted their own war of hurt on the rest of the world in their own way, who begat another generation of mal-adjusted fools who will unleash yet more horror and suffering.

It's good to remember things well, and to have a positive outlook, but it doesn't justify blinders and just because every other people in the world does it is no excuse to join in.

Etc.