Tanka challenge 11/30/08

Another chill dawn
Brings mist off the channel
With the fishing boats.
The pale sun battles its grasp,
Allied with an ocean wind.

Thanks for playing, everyone!

Thwarted no longer.

Finally accessed the site on juzu that has been evading me - via cache. I got text - but no images.

"Jodo shu (Pure Land school) has four different kinds of . One, for example, known as a hyakumanben is a huge 'communal' juzu used by the whole congregation who, sitting in a circle, all hold the juzu which is rotated in a clockwise direction, with each person passing the beads from their right hand to their left.

A second juzu, known as the nikka (or: rokumanben guri nikka) - designed for counting 60,000 recitations of the nembutsu - is shown here. This juzu consists of two loops - one loop with forty beads and a parent bead (called an oyadama); and one loop with twenty-seven beads interspaced with small beads and one oyadama.
This second loop has a floating metal ring to which two tassles are attached - one with ten flat beads; and one with six small round beads.

The juzu is held in the left hand with the twenty-seven bead loop held between the index and middle fingers and the other loop between index finger and thumb.

This juzu is either carried hung on the left wrist or held in the left hand. When the hands are held in gassho (prayer position) this juzu is draped over the thumbs and allowed to hang between the wrists."

Why all the angst? Because this is not just a "pretty." It's a devotional object. Saionji no Hanae would have been a practitioner of Jodo Shu, a contemporary Buddhist sect which did not exclude women. It would be disrespectful in the extreme for me to simply whack together a random assortment of beads that the Japanese of the Kamakura period wouldn't have had access to. Just as it would be disrespectful for me to do the same with Jehanne's paternoster.

More homework is needed before I do this.

Go here and scroll down to hear the recitation of the Nembutsu. It's really beautiful.

Movies: "Street of Shame" and "11:14"

My copy of the Fallen Women boxed set arrived recently and I dipped into it this weekend. http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/571

It includes Sisters of the Gion and Osaka Elegy - reviewed here: http://tousando.proboards18.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=media&thread=2218&page=1 and http://tousando.proboards18.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=media&thread=2221&page=1

I screened Street of Shame yesterday, which deals with the women living in a Yoshiwara brothel after WWII while the government is wrestling with Western pressure to outlaw prostitution.  Once again, Mizoguchi's subject is women trapped in an inescapeable situation and how they deal with it. The film closes with the timid debut of a new teenager, dressed and made up to the nines, half cowering by the door as she tries to solicit her first customer.

Still to go, Women of the Night (1948) - because I don't think I can bear to watch two of these in a weekend. I'll be interested to see what the film quality on [i]Osaka[/i] and [i]Gion[/i] looks like, as the print we saw at the PFA screening two summers ago was pretty beat up.

All the films in this set are set in the "present day" (1936 to 1956, when they were made). Criterion has released two of Mizoguchi's historical films, [i]Ugetsu[/i] and [i]Sansho the Bailiff[/i] on DVD.
I have hopes that Criterion will do something with [i]The Life of Oharu[/i] and [i]The Tale of the Last Chrysanthemums[/i] in the not too distant future.

And last night, I stumbled upon another one of those pleasant IFC surprises, a clever, darkly funny movie called 11:14.

At 11:14 in a sleepy town, there's a car accident. The plot unravels like a ball of yarn the cat's been mangling as we discover how many events and people are connected to the event. Well worth a look.

Spike needs hakama

Remember how I succumbed to A&S burnout back in October? No? 

Well, I have acquired materials for drum building. And for some prototype paper lanterns for Rising Sun.

Last night I pulled out the indigo batik fabric I bought at the quilting place when I was there with kproche  and bovil  and started a pair of hakama. That's a quarter sitting on the fabric for scale purposes.
It's a little crude, being batik, and the pattern repeat is a bit on the small side for pre-1600, but it's not bad. After last year's Estrella mudfest, I'm thinking a set of boy clothes in washable fabric are a really good idea.

Being as I'm not built like the average Asian male, these are six panel, rather than four panel hakama.  This should give me more fabric to play with when I pleat it into the waist ties. I'm also skipping the crotch gusset - when I made my tattsukebakama, I got them to fit just fine without one. As long as the crotch is low enough, it doesn't need one.

I should have the legs assembled this evening. Then it's just pleating and attaching waist ties.