Kiku's Prayer

Kiku's Prayer first appeared as a newspaper serial in the Asahi Shimbun between November 1980 and July 1981. An English translation was published in 2012, and the second novel, Sachiko, will be released in English in August of this year (2020). Both are set mainly in Nagasaki, the first in the years toward the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and early Meiji era (around 1868) and the latter during the years leading up to the atomic bombing of the city. Often called Japan's Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo was a Catholic too and, like Greene, had paradoxical views on religious matters, which he addressed in his writing. With a different perspective on some of the same themes he examined in his novel Silence (1966), Kiku's Prayer and Sachiko are also historical novels about the persecution of Japan's Christians.

Kiku's Prayer is a tragic love story as well, with gut-wrenching descriptions of torture and self-sacrifice that Endo seems to protract almost sadistically in places. Another interesting aspect of the novel is its portrayals of early foreign residents (Chinese, Dutch, French) in Nagasaki, including Fr. Bernard-Thadée Petitjean and Western diplomats who put pressure on the Tokugawa and Meiji governments to end its centuries-old persecution of Kirishitan Japanese. The narrative arc, from childhood to old age, is well designed, with some characters slipping in and out of lead roles over the span of the story. The persecutor Ito Seizaemon is an especially compelling, one-of-a-kind character, superbly despicable and pitiful. Overall, Kiku's Prayer is a good book, and I look forward to reading Sachiko.

Yojimbo

Yojimbo (用心棒, 1961) is an Akira Kurosawa classic starring Toshiro Mifune, this time as a rōnin who happens upon a forsaken backwater village in the turbulent time before the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, in the 1860s. The film starts off with our hero wandering aimlessly on dusty country roads and, like a coin toss, he chucks a stick into the air to let chance determine which direction he'll take when it drops.

Two rival gangs are at war for control of the village when the rōnin arrives. He befriends the saké brewer, who runs a little tavern next to the coffin maker. The coffin maker has been doing good business, what with all the gang killings (but points out later that while truces are bad for business so is full-on bloodshed, as no one bothers to pay for a coffin when chaos reigns).

The rōnin resolves to take advantage of the conflict, at first for money, we assume, but then out of a sense of honor, or at the very least to bring some peace and quiet back to the place. Kuwabatake Sanjuro (meaning: 30-year-old mulberry field) is what the rōnin names himself upon glancing at the field out the back door. He joins one gang and then switches sides, part of his scheme to get these thugs to destroy themselves. After all, he alone can't take out that many, and so he plays this game with them, although we're never really sure how in control of the game he actually is. Is he a master of deception? Or just a reckless rōnin whose wits are as aimless as his countryside meanderings?

Kurosawa put together a great cast; whenever the two gangs face off at the center of town, each actor/thug has his very own villainous mien, not to mention unique weapon, including a gargantuan wooden mallet lugged about by the giant actor and wrestler Namigoro Rashomon. Surely Martin Scorsese pulled some ideas out of those scenes for the opening battle in Gangs of New York. (Yojimbo was also remade as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) with Clint Eastwood and gangster movie Last Man Standing (1996) with Bruce Willis.) In Yojimbo even the geisha each have their own unsettling countenance and demeanor. Tatsuya Nakadai plays a creepy, gun-toting baddie (well enough). And we're treated to a performance by Isuzu Yamada (as a villain), who played Ayako Murai in Kenji Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy and was in dozens of other films during her long career.

Yojimbo's atmosphere is an entity unto itself, the product of Kurosawa's inventive imagination and meticulous eye for detail. Dirt's sucked up by the wind, and blasts the eyes. Smoke billows through cracks in the woodwork. Light is vanquished by layers of grey. The village is secluded and also feels enclosed somehow, as if the outside world could never find it for all the towering weeds and dull trees penning it in. And the desperation. When someone mentions silk merchants, we think how can that be so? Silk? In such a place this just can't be—only violence and greed and grit. A soft, gentle village, though, is what our hero hopes to ultimately leave behind.

I very much enjoyed Seven Samurai (1954), but Yojimbo is great too. Fewer stand-out scenes but all in all a solid, memorable action film and a cleverly unraveled, amusing story, with Kurosawa's magic cinematic touch. Definitely a must-see-again.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Published in 1970, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a compilation of talks by the Sōtō Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki, who taught Zen Buddhism in the United States, mainly in the 1960s, and founded its first Zen Buddhist monastery. Throughout these talks, he emphasizes the practice of zazen, the discipline of sitting meditation. The book is not so much a philosophical or intellectual discussion on the meaning and history of Zen but rather a guide on the precepts of practice. “Written teaching is a kind of food for your brain," he says. "Of course it is necessary to take some food for your brain, but it is more important to be yourself by practicing the right way of life.” To borrow Suzuki's metaphor, there's a cornucopia of food in this roughly 175-page book. About those just starting to practice zazen he tells us that "The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities."

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is divided into three parts: "Right Practice," "Right Mind," and "Right Understanding." Suzuki teaches that “in the proper way with the right attitude and understanding of practice, then that is Zen. The main point is to practice seriously, and the important attitude is to understand and have confidence in big mind.”

Reading the talks had a calming effect on me, maybe because they're given in a sort of zazen manner—unembellished, and also methodical, and like a stream, as they were spoken. The book also brims with insight and wisdom, and with drops of humor now and then as well. For anyone reading books in English to understand Zen, or who are practicing zazen, this one should be at the top of their pile.