Noh, noh, definitely Noh.

Last weekend, me being the occasional culture vulture, we went to see a Noh play.

Noh is a kind of sylized Japanese art-form that is part play, part traditional music, which relates a story using about four or five actors, along with musicians and a chorus. It dates from the 14th century, which explains my first problem with Noh… had no idea what they were talking about. Not just me, even the Japanese around me were checking their translations. Thing is of course, the more you read the translation (at my reading speed anyway), the less you see of the action.

By far the strangest part was the music – it’s sort of an atonal collection of whoops from the chorus, to not-entirely challenging drumming from the musician, though there is a kind of badly tuned flute too. And the dancing – well all I can say is, well…. watch!

Actually this video is a bit more lively that what I watched. The one I watched was only semi-professional: kind of the Cotswold Players of the Noh world.

I love Japan, I’ve read more books about the culture and history than I can count. But Noh lost me. I was more confused leaving than I had been coming in! I don’t want to criticise, or seem like a philistine but I have to say… I don’t get it!

There he goes….

As predicted (not very exclusively, mind) by my good self last week, Shinzo Abe, hitherto Prime Minister of Japan has fallen on his sword. Metaphorically speaking, of course: not many people really go in for the ritual disembowelling these days outside of the odd samurai film. Makes Japan a lot less dramatic I can tell you – mind you, feel safer when you screw up at work. I’ve only had to cut three fingers off so far…

Anyway, back to the hapless Abe, who resigned before an upcoming vote on whether the Japanese ‘Self Defense Force’ could continue aiding NATO in Afghanistan. He was destined to lose, the opposition having pointed out that Afghanistan being a sovereign country in its own right, meant that the ‘SDF’ was semantically barred from engaging in military operations there . Thus, having discovered the glaring error in his oen logic, Abe resigned.

Well, the Afghanistan thing, his inability to appoint an honest agricultural minister in four attempts and heading a government that lost the records of 64 million contributions to the national pension scheme probably all played a part. The words “hapless” and “bungler” come to mind.

The battle of summer…

34 degrees was the average temperature for my part of Western Japan this year, with about 85-90% humidity. Heat is good, humidity less so – it makes the city something akin to a concrete swamp. Air conditioning gets turned up, the carbon footprint of the country increases a hundred fold. Not sensible levels of air-conditioning, but down to levels where, if it were winter, they would turn on the heating.

Japan prides itself on being close to nature, and having four distinct seasons. Each season has its own particular “kisetsu” foods, drinks and symbols. Such things as chestnuts , along and the turning of the leaves of autumn are celebrated much more than say in England. But one can’t help that with the advent of the air conditioner, that the Japanese are trying to ignore the very differences of nature that their ancestors celebrated. When everything is 25 degrees celsius, the passing of the year becomes less noticeable and more unimportant.

Not just food is considered a symbol of the seasons though. Animals are also. Cicadas for summer, frogs for the rainy season, bears for winter. These kisetsu symbols helped mark the passage of time when nature played a much more important part of Japanese life than it does today.

Of the more interesting kisetsu symbols is the cockroach. A kisetsu symbol for summer, subject of many a haiku poem, and as elsewhere a virulent pest. Hot weather and humidity are something like cockroach heaven, and they spring up in their millions in Japan in the summer. In the UK, cockroaches are only associated with the kind of uncleanliness that takes effort to achieve. In Japan they are everywhere. As long as my thumb, and wider, they seem to find ways of creeping into even the cleanest and newest apartments. Since cockroaches can digest plastic bags and the pages of books, there really is nothing they won’t eat, and with the humidity encouraging them breed at pace, you really are stuck in a war of attrition.

Japanese shops are well stocked with things to help rid yourself of the little vermin, a variety of sprays and repellents on sale. Sprays kill the things dead in seconds, but rely on you actually being able to corner the cockroach first – not an easy job. My personal favorite cockroach control device is the cockroach hotel – an open cardboard box with a cockroach attractant placed in the middle of a patch of super-strong adhesive. The cockroach enters the hotel, toward what it hopes is lunch and ends up literally stuck to the floor. Which of course is where you find it the next morning, looking at you, feelers bicycling in a most evil way while you try to find the courage to get near enough to lever the hotel into the trash.

Anyway, whichever method you use, you are most likely fighting a losing battle: Apparently for every cockroach you see there are 90 more hiding in nooks and crannies. Wikipedia even notes that cockroaches are so hard that they are even immune to the kind of radiation that emits from a nuclear blast, which begs the question: What the hell is going into the cockroach spray?

There be money in that rice…

You live in Japan for a while, and you can’t help but notice how many politicians are on the take. Barely a month goes by without news of someone getting illegal kickbacks or having falsified expenses or hidden debts. Honestly, a politician in Japan seems to have problems even crossing a road without being offered some large brown envelope full of money to do so. But even the Japanese are a little shocked by recent goings on in the ministry of agriculture – three ministers of agriculture have been removed since May owing to financial scandal.

The first to feel the heat was Toshikatsu Matsuoka, who was found to have appropriated 28 million yen for utility fees for his buildings – despite the fact that utilities are provided freely by the Japanese government. He decided to take his own life as a face-saving way out. His successor had barely been approved for the post before he was accused of also receiving expenses for things he hadn’t actually expended. In turn was replaced by a third minister, Takahiko Endo, who last week also quit, his agricultural cooperative having falsely exaggerated crop damage in order to receive government compensation.

It would be nice to think of this as a blip on the political radar but almost every department of government has had their own fair share of shame, beit expenses being fiddled or bid for public works being rigged in favour of the largest “Party contributor”. Corruption in Japan is rife, and almost accepted as part and parcel of politics, the newspapers only reporting the most blatant abuses, but it seems this latest triple whammy may be enough to force the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, into an early election that he is destined to lose. The opposition is pushing for the prime minister to surrender to the will of the people – doubtless hoping to get their own hands on the spoils of power.