What has happened this week?

Is Winter Ending?

Well, no, winter isn’t ending. We’ve had a bit of better weather but also some bitter weather. We took a walk under cloudy skies, but heard a Red-Winged Blackbird singing. At our house we are having a very quiet time, also pondering the rapid and increasingly alarming political and international scene in our national government. Not much to share with Deb’s Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon on the weekend, but here it is!

Dreaming of summer and walks along the Huron River.

We cooked a bit, and had a few ready-made meals.

We shopped at the locally famous Zingerman’s Deli, and bought rye bread, salads, corned beef, and pastrami for sandwiches.

Now for my reading this week…. 

Sojourner Truth and Human Rights

The struggle to free the enslaved black people in the United States in the 19th century and the parallel and combined struggle throughout that century to endow men and women of all races with full rights of citizenship, property ownership, and voting, was a long and painful one. Sojourner Truth, who was born in slavery at the end of the 18th century, was a major figure in this struggle. She became a figure of legendary proportions, and in fact, her reputation depends on several anecdotes that were much embellished from the original events in which she participated.

Both the actual struggles, the political participation, and the myths of Sojourner Truth seem especially important now. As I have been reading about her life, I’m thinking about the horrifying way that the successes of that struggle are being reversed in our new political scene right now, this week, today.

Sojourner Truth’s Narrative tells how she was born in a Dutch community in New York, where slavery was less widespread than in the South, but where many Africans were held in bondage until New York ended legal slavery in 1827. Her narrative describes how she was enslaved until she was approximately thirty years old. She details her relationship with her owners, her family, and other people. She describes her religious development as a Pentecostal Christian, relationships with the preachers and leaders who influenced her, and her participation in various religious organizations and congregations. As she participated in many high-profile events of her time, she was conscious of her legend, and contributed in a positive way to being a leader and a proponent of human rights, freedom from slavery, and women’s suffrage.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was widely read throughout her life.

As the century progressed, antislavery activists conveniently forgot about Northern slave owners as they pursued the struggle to end slavery in the South. Thus Sojourner Truth’s origins were often forgotten, and she was sometimes thought to have been born on a Southern plantation rather than on a small-scale Northern farm where the language was Dutch, and where she would never have had the Southern accent that’s popularly associated with her. 

This association is especially strong with her most famous speech, delivered at a very early women’s suffrage meeting. You’ve probably heard the refrain of this speech known by the repetition of the words: “Ain’t I a woman.” These words were not reported at the time the speech was given, but were invented by a later proponent of women’s rights.  However, this legendary version of Sojourner Truth’s speech is so widely accepted that the author of the careful biography that I read feels it will never be corrected.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter.

What did Sojourner Truth stand for? Even her “Narrative” was the work of a white woman who took down her oral history because Sojourner Truth herself was unable to to read or write. In fact, Nell Irvin Painter’s biography summarizes it: “Everything we know of Sojourner Truth comes through other people, mostly educated White women.” (p. 207)

Painter’s book is fascinating, and very revealing about pre-Civil War attitudes and cultural stereotypes about the relationship of Black and White Americans, and the co-development of views on race and on slavery. Here is the passage that makes me tremble in fear that we are losing the progress that was made in that era and many subsequent eras when it comes to the rights of women, minorities. and non-white people:

 

“Women’s rights meant empowering women in a multitude of ways: securing women rights to their wages, their inheritance, and the custody of their children; admitting women to institutions of higher learning and the professions; and permitting women to vote, hold office, and serve on juries. This broad agenda dovetailed with the needs of Black people, who also lacked a wide range of civil rights.” (p. 261)

An article in the New York Times titled “Republican Men and Women Are Changing Their Minds About How Women Should Behave” summarized a number of recent studies:

“Surveys from 2024 show that support for traditional gender roles is increasing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is happening primarily among Republicans. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is happening among Republican women as well as among Republican men.”

Women being sent back from employment to stay home? Women being shut out of active high-level politics? In the most backward (but powerful) circles even questions of whether married women should be allowed to vote? 

That’s just one example: many news stories have been detailing extreme racism in the firing of high government officials and many overtly racist and anti-woman statements made by the incoming and less qualified replacements. What will become of us? 

We need another distraction…

Another Distraction

What would you think about a few cute bunny images? Again, I’ve looked at the work of the amazing artist Hokusai from 19th century Japan. Here are a few pictures by him and by one of his students to share with Eileen’s Saturday Critters.

Dreaming of Spring

At the Peony Garden in June a few years ago.

 Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Hokusai Cats

Hokusai, "Tiger in the Snow" (1849)

Last week I posted some images of birds by the Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849). Today I'll add some images of cats from his remarkable number of woodblock prints, notebooks full of sketches, and various paintings. Hokusai was enormously productive throughout his long life: his work includes over 30,000 paintings, sketches, woodblock prints, and images for picture books.

First, you have almost certainly seen Hokusai's most famous work, which is widely reproduced and often parodied or imitated.

Hokusai, "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" from 36 Views of Mount Fuji.

Hokusai’s Cats

Blog post by mae sander 2025, shared with Eileen’s Critters.

Images of Birds by Japanese Artist Hokusai

 

Some happy thoughts to distract from today’s travesty on the American dream.

From “Pictures after Nature” (Hokusai shashin gafu) 北斎写真画譜

Bird pictures from web searching 

Remembering an exhibit about Hokusai’s life and art.

Shared with Saturday Critters at Eileen’s blog and Sami’s Murals

Katsushika Hokusai’s Rice Images and the Japanese National Dish

Rice in Japanese History and Cuisine

I've been rereading the book Rice as Self by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, which mentioned the many images of rice cultivation by the famous artist Hokusai (1760-1849), whose works I included above. Not long ago, I reviewed this book in a blog post here. 

Ohnuki-Tierney, a scholar of Japanese history and sociology, presents the role of rice in Japan from the earliest times, including the ways that rice was part of culture and mythology and the ways it was essential to the divinity of the Emperor and to the development of nationalism before World War II. The author also documents the way that the Japanese diet has shifted away from rice in recent times, up until the early 1990s (when the book was published). I’ve checked a few more recent sources, and rice consumption in Japan has continued its decline in the ensuing 30 years. 

I especially enjoyed the description of gods and god-like characters that had a role in defining the importance of rice in Japanese life. For example, Amaterasu, the sun goddess, had a great-grandson called Amatsu Hiko Hiko Hohotemino Mikoto — that is “a male child of the Sun Goddess and Lord of rice stalks with numerous heads.”  As a god of rice culture, he predominated over his brother, a sea-god. Significantly, this rice-god became the ancestor of the first Emperor, whose descendants have been the Japanese Emperors ever since that time. (p. 52)

The Emperors of Japan were eclipsed by the actual political and military rulers, the Shoguns, for several centuries. During the Shoguns' rule, Japan was cut off from international contact. In 1868, the Emperor Meiji was restored to actual power, the beginning of vast changes, also initiated by the opening of the country to foreigners -- forced by the military presence of Admiral Matthew Perry whose ships had arrived in 1853. 

The whole new era demanded a whole new national myth, which included a definition of rice as the key to nationalistic food ways. Rice had always been an important and sacred food, but now it became an even more important aspect of the Emperor as a divine being who symbolized the nation. The process of creating this national myth is fascinating and very complicated, especially as the era was simultaneously a time of rapid westernization of Japan, including the adoption of technology, literature, clothing styles, and many other features of European and American culture -- including food. 

The central place of rice developed right alongside of the introduction of much more meat to the Japanese diet. So complicated! A symbolically national meal developed partly from an existing tradition of elaborate banquets where small elegant dishes, mainly vegetables, were served with rice as the final course. This Kaiseki meal is still served by very upscale restaurants in Japan, as a kind of ideal, not an everyday menu.

The militarization of Japan in the prelude to World War II, and the terrible destruction and reconstruction of the post-war era, was a time of much more modernization of Japan, but with a definition of the exceptional Japanese essence. During the postwar era, American wheat was shipped in to prevent mass hunger, and was mainly used for another traditional inexpensive and popular dish: ramen noodles. Nevertheless, rice remained as the national staple and ritual food, even as rice consumption dropped -- on average, people had eaten 5 bowls of rice per day, and now they eat one, or even have some days without rice. Bread consumption recently surpassed rice consumption, and the Japanese now eat a highly varied diet. But there is still a high value place on eating rice that has been grown in the rice paddies of the nation, just as it was valued in the early 19th century when Hokusai's iconic images were created.

Exploring a National Dish

The question of what is the real national food of Japan is the subject of one chapter in Anya Von Bremzen’s recent book National Dish (I wrote about the chapter on France last month in this post.)

She, as well as Ohnuki-Tierney, describe how first Chinese food and later Western food entered Japanese foodways — both quote the saying “Wakon yosai” which means “Japanese spirit, Western learning.” Von Bremsen writes of this motto:

“I recalled the famous Meiji period motto describing essentially the native genius for adapting and appropriating—Japanizing and indigenizing—borrowed ideas. Of course before Meiji, the saying was wakon kansai, or ‘Japanese spirit, Chinese learning.’” (National Dish, p. 102)

Which is more popular in Japan: noodle bowls or rice? Or have they been overtaken by pizza, hamburgers, or other Western dishes? What’s most popular in the Japanese convenience stores (like Seven-Eleven)? Many Japanese people rely on these stores for buying much of their food. 

Von Bremzen writes:

"Noodles as such arrived in Japan with Chinese Buddhist monks around the twelfth century. But it took another eight centuries for a dish recognizable as ramen (noodles + meaty savory broth + toppings) to emerge as a popular snack dispensed by yatai pushcarts and cheap Chinese restaurants." (p. 88)

She summarizes the question of which is more essential: ramen noodles or rice:

"Ramen and rice, rice and ramen. They made a curious dialectical binary: one a Chinese-origin hybrid that eventually relied on imported American wheat, the other a homegrown treasure imbued with a near-mystical aura as the 'edible symbol' of the Japanese self. Fast versus slow, appropriation versus tradition. And yet both were part of the national food canon: rice, a hallowed cornerstone of washoku (a timeless and supposedly ancient ideal of an ur-Japanese meal); ramen, the 'naturalized' modern star of kokuminshoku, inexpensive 'people’s cuisine,' one that fueled Japan’s post-WWII reconstruction and boom." (pp. 78-79). 

Her attempts to figure out what food is most important there took place during a rather amusing stay in Tokyo a few years ago. Like Ohnuki-Tierney, Von Bremzen concludes that despite the decline in rice consumption, Japanese people still have an actual reverence for rice: it’s the soul food of Japan no matter how much or how little they eat, and no matter how much more flavorful and deliciously aromatic other choices may be.

A Formal Japanese Meal

A small plate of food from a Kaiseki meal: one of many elaborate dishes.
Evelyn is in Japan, and had this meal a few days ago.

The rice served at the formal meal, with tea.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Anthropology: Rice as Self

Katsushika Hokusai: woodblock illustration of a poem by the Emperor Tenchi Tenno (628-681).
The poem describes a sudden storm that forced the Emperor to shelter in a common rice farmer's hut.(source) 

Was the Japanese Emperor a god? This turns out to be a fascinating question, because in Japanese belief, gods were quite different from gods in Western traditions. To understand the emperor's divinity, it's interesting to know that in former times in Japan, every grain of rice was also believed to be a god. The Emperor himself acted as a shaman: he played a role in various ceremonies and rituals to ensure successful rice harvests. While the Emperor is no longer seen as closely linked to the rice crop, rice remains a key to Japanese identity.

  

Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is a challenging technical/anthropological  account of the many meanings and uses of rice in Japan over more than 2000 years. Here are some of the fascinating aspects of Japanese historical culture that I learned from this book.

Rice as Self. Published 1994.

In some parts of Japan, rice was the major source of nutrition, and elsewhere in Japan other grains like millet were more nutritionally important, as well as other foods. However, rice had a major role in the way everyone thought about food, no matter what their actual diet included. Even in modern Japan, where many other foods -- for example, toast and eggs for breakfast and KFC or American burgers for lunch -- are a major part of people's diets, rice has a significance that elevates it from ordinary food. Moreover, rice that is grown in Japan is vastly preferred, and the Japanese rice paddies are envisioned as a key feature of the Japanese landscape.

In fact, the word for rice is the word in Japanese for food. A serious meal, like a formal dinner, that doesn't end with at least a small portion of rice (or more) doesn't seem complete to traditional Japanese people. The importance of rice was diminishing in the years after World War II; in the 30 years since the research for this book was completed, its importance may have diminished even more, but the material in the book shows how significant it has been.

For most of Japanese history, until the industrialization of the 20th century, a large majority of Japanese people worked as farmers, growing many types of foods. The rice they grew was identified as the source of all wealth, both symbolically through folk tales and religious beliefs, and literally. Farmers paid their taxes in set quantities of rice. At the end of this time, as money, like coins, was in the process of being invented, oblong gold coins called koban were created with a value equal to a standard measure of rice. There was a belief that rice was always a pure currency, while money was often impure. Some circulating Japanese coins still have images of rice on them, recalling the connection of rice and wealth.

A Japanese 5-yen coin, mid-20th century,
showing a sheaf of rice.

Rice was beautiful to look at, in the aesthetic sense of Japan. Appreciation of this beauty was expressed in poetry and in art such as the poem illustrated in the woodblock print at the top of this blog post. Eating pure, white rice is the ideal, and the sight of rice being cultivated, gathered, and threshed is also appreciated: "Ripe heads of rice grain are described as having a golden luster." (p. 75) 

"As for the beauty of cooked rice, the most important characteristics are the related qualities of luster, purity and whiteness." According to the author Tanizaki Junichirō: "When cooked rice is in a lacquer container placed in the dark, shining with black luster, it is more aesthetic to look at, and it is more appetizing. When you lift the lid... you see pure white rice with vapor rising. Each grain is a pearl." (p. 76-77)

Rice fields also became the emblem of the changing seasons in Japanese art and literature, such as the autumn scene in the woodblock above, and many other such works by Hiroshige, Hokusai, and others. The author's discussion of rice in art before the westernization of Japan in the Meiji era (beginning in 1868) is especially fascinating: 

"The recurrent motifs of rice and rice agriculture in these woodblock prints represent not rice and rice agriculture per se but something far more abstract. At the most obvious level, they signal seasons of the year. Flooded rice fields... are the most familiar sign of spring or early summer... .Rice harvesting scenes, including sheaves of rice stalks... represent fall and its joyful harvest but also the end of the growing season.

"What is striking ... is that these cycles of rice growth have become markers of the seasons for all Japanese. For urbanites, fishermen, and all other nonagrarian people, life became marked by rice and its growth.

"At an even more abstract level, travelers are often depicted agains these agricultural scenes, suggesting that the scenes of rice and rice agriculture are a backdrop for an unchanging Japan, in contrast to the transient and changing Japan epitomized by Edo (Tokyo)." (p. 90)

Although Japan was not predominantly agricultural, and definitely not predominantly populated by rice farmers, rice culture became very intertwined with Japanese identity, "just as rice has been important for practically all Japanese, whether or not it was a staple food." 

There's much more to ponder in Rice as Self. I read it a long time ago, and I'm glad I finally managed to get back to it and read it again. 

UPDATE: for a modern version of rice in art see this: Japan’s Rice Art Festivals of 2021

 ... and a silly comparison 

Anthropology interests me, so I really enjoyed Rice as Self despite the dense technical and sometimes jargon-filled style and too-frequent, awkwardly inserted references to the author's sources. Ohnuki-Tierney, a real anthropologist, isn't anything like the fictional Ruth Galloway, the forensic anthropologist at the center of the easy-reading detective stories by Elly Griffiths. I'm reading them fast:  I reviewed The Outcast Dead last week, and read another in the series a few days ago. I bet Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, unlike Ruth Galloway, is never threatened by strange old men with antique guns, and never chases down kidnappers or identifies murder victims the way that Ruth Galloway does. It's fun to do a lot of reading at very different levels.

Blog post © 2021 mae sander.

"Where the Wild Ladies Are"

The Fox-woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child. Yoshitoshi, 1889-1892. (Wikipedia)

Foxes become spirits, ghosts, or demons in Japanese folklore, in traditional prints, and Noh and Kabuki dramas. A modern story collection reworking many Japanese ghost tales is by Aoko Matsuda, titled Where the Wild Ladies Are (published in Japanese in 2016, translation into English 2020). I love reading these stories!

Somehow Matsuda manages to modernize these exotic tales, making delightful little vignettes where modern life meets folklore. I know only a little about Japanese folk tales, but my impression here is that the retellings borrow the emotions and the characterizations from traditional supernatural tales and dramas, applying the essence to twenty-first century Japanese individuals. 

Ghosts can play a role in twenty-first century problems; they become relevant to workplace issues, loneliness, depression, bereavement, family relationships, and other challenges. At the end of the story collection, Matsuda includes a brief summary of the tales that inspired each story, which is some help in seeing what she had in mind. However, it's much more fun to find reproductions online of prints and drawings of the various supernatural characters in the tales.

A range of emotional states, intensified by supernatural beings, seem to work out in modern life just the way that they work in folk tales. Other-worldly creatures, such as the fox in the above image, enable Matsuda to create a very interesting version of Japanese society, and especially to highlight the limitations that society puts on women in modern Japan. I was especially fascinated by one character named Mr. Tei, who appears in several stories. He explains "I don’t know why, but the living and the dead have always looked exactly the same to me." And of course he can see both living and dead people, and he plays a role in several ghostly situations. (p. 190).

Being fascinated by the use of food in literature, I especially enjoyed the love of food shown by the ghosts and supernatural creatures of Where the Wild Ladies Are. The following are just few quotes from the many times the spirits and the living experience a variety of foods. There's much, much more.

A story about two mysterious ladies who visit a man alone during the summer ghost festival called Obon:

"Just then, Shinzaburō’s eyes fell on three steaming cups of green tea placed on the coffee table. Did I go and make tea without realizing it? he thought. Surely these two didn’t sneak into the kitchen and make it themselves? What’s more, he noticed that the yōkan [red bean-paste jelly] he’d been saving for a special occasion was there too, cut into neat slices." (pp. 40-41).

About a water spirit called Hina-chan: 

"Rather than buying my lunch from the convenience store, which inevitably means getting by on soggy pasta or rice balls shaped into triangles by machines rather than hands, I’ve started taking my own lunch boxes in as often as I can. It feels to me as if the badly formed omelettes and grilled salmon fillets and florets of steamed broccoli I make at home to bring to the office all contain Hina-chan’s love. By eating my homemade food at work, I can be together with Hina-chan during the day too." (p. 69).

"At this moment, Hina-chan is lying on the sofa, her head resting on my knees and her eyes glued to the TV, munching away mindlessly at a bowl of avocado-flavored tortilla chips. I stroke her fine, silken hair, and think how deeply I adore her." (p. 82). 

Thoughts of an irrationally jealous and violent woman, maybe possessed:

"You take up a large daikon and whirl it around you like a baseball bat. When you bring it crashing down on the table, the daikon— which must have been softer than you thought— breaks into pieces, like a slow-motion video. Doubtless you will use some of these in tonight’s dinner— they’re the perfect size for simmering. As you squeeze out every last drop of ink from a raw squid, you even have time to think that you’ll combine the two, make ika-daikon. 

"Next, your eyes land on the cardboard box of apples that your parents sent over from their garden. You take them out and wrench them apart with your bare hands. Later you can make them into jam, or bake them in a pie, or mix them into macaroni salad— apples are surprisingly varied in their uses. You focus on channeling all your power into your fingers as they tear through the glossy skins." (pp. 90-91). 

A man employed by a very mysterious company that makes an incense with a power that somehow he can't grasp:

"At lunch the other day, he’d asked the women there about it, but they’d giggled and avoided answering the question. Shoveling down his katsu curry, Shigeru then asked the other question that had been on his mind. 'Don’t you think this company’s a bit weird sometimes?' ... 

"'Well, companies are weird, aren’t they,' one of the ladies said after a pause, as she gobbled up the broad strip of deep-fried tofu sitting on top of her kitsune udon. Her slanted eyes and narrow face had a vulpine quality to them, Shigeru noted. And come to think of it, weren’t the kitsune— the fox spirits capable of transforming themselves into humans— supposed to love deep-fried tofu above all other foods? Wasn’t that, in fact, where the dish had got its name? But he brushed off these thoughts as quickly as they had come to him." (pp. 116-117).

Japanese prints depicting a variety of ghosts, demons, possessed spirits, playful or harmful supernaturally endowed animals (especially foxes) and more are the main source of my familiarity with the creatures in Where the Wild Ladies Are, and I enjoyed looking up many images as I read. I believe that the same wellspring of folklore also inspired the ghostly characters in Miazaki's film "Spirited Away." A few more images:

Okiku, a ghost woman who lives in a well, appears in several stories.

Image by Hokusai (source).

From "Spirited Away" -- Chihro, the human girl, with two supernatural creatures.

Japanese hanging scroll of a toad.
Related story: "A Day Off" (p. 203)

Source: Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Portrait of Oiwa, 1836. (Wikimedia)

Blog post © 2020 mae sander. Images as credited.

Two Museums in Washington, D.C.

The Freer Gallery on the Smithsonian Mall is one of the most wonderful art museums I have ever visited. A retrospective exhibit of works by the very productive and inventive Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) was featured there yesterday. Hokusai was a master of printmaking, drawing, painting, and more: he also published a number of books of manga. Several of his very large paintings on screens are among the most impressive works in the exhibit, but works of all types are represented. 

The collector Charles Freer (1854-1919), principal donor to the museum, assembled one of the most comprehensive collections of works by this artist. This was a rare opportunity to see them.

In the Freer Gallery: giant posters -- with dragons -- announcing the exhibit.

Dragons were especially interesting to Hokusai, as were ocean waves, which are the subject of his most famous work of art, "Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa." Hokusai lived to the age of 90, and did some of his most remarkable works in the last two decades of his life, but he was convinced that he would achieve mastery only if he lived to be 110!

The Spy Museum: Evelyn's photo. (The rest of us are in the curve of the S.)

The exhibits at the Spy Museum are fantastic and range through a big variety
of subjects, including historical events (like the assassination of Trotsky by
a Russian agent), technology of spy materials, famous people in the history
of spying, videos of spies telling their stories, and much more.

The code breakers at Bletchley Park in England during
World War II were a hidden history for decades, but now
not so secret.

Julia Child's job in World War II was in intelligence.
I enjoyed the display of photos about her activities.

After the Spy Museum we proceeded to a wonderful restaurant for dinner, but that will be a separate post. All posts on this blog -- maefood dot blogspot dot com -- are copyright © 2019 by mae sander. If your are reading this elsewhere, you are reading a stolen version.