TsukuBlog
A Local Perspective on Life in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
A New Year`s Card Game- Hyakunin Isshu Karuta (百人一首かるた) is a Gateway to the Sublime World of Classical Japanese Poetry
28 December, 2020
By Avi Landau
The special dishes and decorations, the visits to shrines or temples, the family gatherings, the greetings, even the pre-holiday cleanings, make O-Shogatsu ( the Japanese New Year Celebration) fascinating for me. They reveal how the Japanese make a clean break with the past and then make a fresh, new start- with wishes for the health, prosperity and happiness of the family, the community and the nation, manifesting itself in the amassing of ENGI-MONO (縁起物)- objects, words, colors, etc., which are believed to have a POSITIVE impact on the world. In addition, there are also objects, words, colors etc., which are compiled to keep all forms of misfortune away.
A sojourn in ‘Ceilon’ and carefree life of Dutch colonial society View(s):
Book facts: Life Under the Palms: The Sublime World of the Anti-Colonialist Jacob Haafner- by Paul van der Velde Translated by Liesbeth Bennink Reviewed by Richard Simon
In 1926, a translation of Reize te voet door het eiland Ceilon (Travels on Foot through the Island of Ceylon) by Jacob Haafner was published in the Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union. The translators, L.A. Prins and J.R. Toussaint, included in their work several passages critical of British rule in India that had been left out of the original, 1821 English translation of Haafner’s book. The Twenties were a period of intense political ferment in colonial Ceylon, and the author’s fulminations against the British were very much the point of the project.