Posts by johneinarsen
Healing Meditation with Shakuhachi
Shakuhachi is often referred to as the “sound of nature.” In Japan, its “original music”(honkyoku) is filled with echoes of forest and sky…
Read MoreAn American Issei
I am the first generation of my family to visit Japan, let alone live here. My wife, who is Japanese, is about the 900th generation of her family to live here…
Read MoreKobe Quake Notes
On a winter dawn the world shrugs
screams begin from below everywhere
and reality does not conform
to earthquake emergency plans
Country Lives
The Japanese ethnologist Miyamoto Tsuneichi (1907-1981) walked more than 100,000 miles, mainly during the 1940s and 50s, gathering reminiscences of rural life from village elders…
Read MoreMorimoto Kikuo: Resurrecting a Cultural Ecology
The Khmer Rouge willfully tried to strip the nation of its rich culture and heritage. The casualty Japanese expat Morimoto Kikuo is trying his hardest to save is Cambodia’s traditional art of silk weaving and dyeing…
Read MoreWalking the Great Ridge Omine on the Womb-Diamond Trail
The Yamabushi are back country Shaman-Buddhists with strong Shinto connections, who make walking and climbing in deep mountain ranges a large part of their practice…
Read MoreOf All the Wild Sakura: The Journals of Gary Snyder
My first stay in Japan was from May of ’56 to August ’57. I left to get a change of air, to reflect on my Zen practice, and to earn some dollars.
Read MoreHeart
The core of kokoro (the heart) is the search for wa (peace or harmony); this search manifests itself in all areas of life…
Read MoreCivilizations never Clash, Ignorance Does
A civilized person is the one who “knows oneself, and tries to learn from others”; the one who knows and respects the difference of cultures; the one who seeks the transversal values of humanity found in all these cultures.
Read MoreThe Emperor Visits MacDonald’s
The nation had just celebrated his 75th birthday the week before, and he had never been to McDonald’s! Billions sold to his loyal subjects…
Read MoreThe First Man-Made Natural Orange and Other Stories
There comes a moment in every commuting man’s life when he has to choose between continuing his career or suddenly stripping naked on the morning bus.
Read MoreKi: The Vital Force
While ki is regularly invoked as an explanatory principle in oriental medicine and martial arts, few practitioners or writers, either Eastern or Western, spend much time intelligibly explaining ki itself…
Read MoreNature and Culture in Japan
Japanese cultural tradition hides a vast storehouse of notions and practices that may be helpful in establishing a culturally-grounded eco-philosophy…
Read MoreKawamura Junko on Noh
“The actor is not moving, but the pose is full of pent-up energy. Think of a spinning top…”
Read MoreThe Kaiser’s Navy: The Final Voyage
An Osaka swordsmith has made six traditional Japanese swords using part of a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite that landed in Arizona…
Read MoreA Sense of Place: Urban Renewal in Kyoto
Of all cities in East Asia, Kyoto has the oldest and probably the strictest official preservation policy…
Read MoreThe Hollow Staff: Western Music and the Silk Road
The Silk Road would have been full of musicians…musicians from a dozen distinct traditions traveling in the same caravans, meeting around the same fires. What did they say to one another when they met…?
Read MoreGeisha Tradition
Hannari — Geisha Modern is a documentary film about the lives and arts of geisha in contemporary Kyoto filmed from the perspective of a Japanese woman.
Read MoreMetabolic Syndrome
These lucid essays discuss Japanese architecture in the aftermath of the Bubble.
Read MoreThe SoundSilence of Water
The tea-masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mostly lay adepts of Zen, were the ultimate artists in the use of water for its sound, form and haptic effects.
Read MoreKyoto Rain
Kyoto belongs to the rain. Not a place of brilliant sunlight, it is often sadly gray — an older woman who causes one to remark how beautiful she must once have been.
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