Author Archives: Seira Tanaka

豊年祭り (Hōnen Matsuri) — Japanese Penis Festival

豊年祭り in Japanese literally translates to “harvest festival,” though it is more commonly and colloquially known as the “penis festival.” It is a fertility festival celebrated on March 15th in Japan, celebrating the blessings of a bountiful harvest and all manners of prosperity and fertility.

My informant is a student in Nagoya, Japan, and attended the festival this year with her friends. The celebration started in the morning, when Shinto priests playing musical instruments paraded down the streets amongst booths selling phallus-shaped food items and souvenirs.

“There were penis-shaped lollipops, corn dogs, chocolate-covered bananas, ice cream, rice cakes, head coverings, and this rubber penis thing that you could attach to your nose, and this hopping penis figurine thing, and other things I can’t remember, but it was ridiculous. Everyone’s so casual about this too, just like little kids licking penis lollipops like it’s no big deal. It’s funny, because usually Japanese people are so polite and proper and stuff, and then they go out and have something like this, you know? [Laughing] But it’s nice to focus on something that’s so taboo normally, like hey, even if we try to ignore it, it still exists, you know. Penises exist! Sex exists!”

Everywhere, there are huge plaster and plastic statues of penises–tourists and other observers can often be seen climbing on top of them and taking pictures of themselves. The highlight of the festival is a massive wooden phallus carried from a shrine called Kumano-sha Shrine to another shrine called Tagata Jinja. On the way there, passerby are encouraged to touch the phallus for good luck, while Shinto priests trailing behind the phallus impart blessings and prayers. At Tagata Jinja, the phallus is spun furiously, and then set down again for more prayers. After that is the mochi-nage, whereupon observers are showered with small white rice cakes, an act evocative of ejaculation.

This festival obviously originates from an earlier era when bountiful harvests were vital to the survival of a Japanese community. It has since become more about personal fertility, what with Japan’s slowly decreasing fertility rate, with people going to the festival oftentimes for good luck, perhaps with the hope that Japan’s population will begin to pick up again. Nowadays it is also somewhat of a tourist attraction, with curious foreigners and people like my friend, who want to see a show of something so taboo, a strange phenomenon in Japanese society, which is generally so restrictive.

親父ギャグ — Purposely Lame Japanese Jokes

親父 (oyaji) in Japanese is a somewhat derogatory word for middle-aged men (for instance, my informant said that the word 親父 reminds her of a half-drunken forty-ish man sprawled on the couch in a sweaty wife-beater, watching a baseball game). ギャグ (gagu) is derived from the English word gag, and literally just means joke. Translated literally then, 「親父ギャグ」 is “middle-aged man jokes,” which is not far from its contextualized definition.

親父ギャグ aren’t just meant for middle-aged men, however. In short, an 親父ギャグ is simply any extremely lame joke, usually some form of pun or wordplay. There is a stereotype (or a blaison populaire of sorts) in Japan that dictates that middle-aged men are the ones that most often tell these jokes, because they do not care whether other people find it funny, as long as they themselves think that the joke is funny. Indeed, my informant’s father is an 親父ギャグ man, and when he tells one of these jokes, he finds his joke funny, but also finds it funny that none of his audience thought it was funny– in fact, he almost takes pleasure in their raised eyebrows and the shaking of their heads as they say, tiredly but affectionately, “Oh, there he goes again.”

My informant grew up in the city of Naha in Okinawa, Japan, and had 親父ギャグ engrained in her life from a young age by her own father. 親父ギャグ are most times made purposely lame–it seems as if it is a way, almost, of lowering oneself on purpose, so that other people are encouraged to be more themselves as well, a sort of ice-breaker. Look, the performance of it says, there’s no judgment here! Oftentimes 親父ギャグ can liven up a gathering or conversation in that way; it is extremely difficult not to smile or laugh at someone who is laughing hysterically at their own lame joke. When telling an 親父ギャグ, the subliminal aim is not to make everyone laugh at the joke–the point is to have everyone laugh at you laughing at your own joke, making yourself seem more accessible to everyone around you. In that sense, it is often a great act of bravery to tell an 親父ギャグ (unless, of course, you think it’s actually funny, and are embarrassed when nobody laughs at the joke itself). Both parties need to accept that the joke is lame, and laugh about it.

Some examples of 親父ギャグ from my informant’s father, which may or may not retain their humor through the translation (not that there was much humor in them to begin with):

A: “How do you say sidewalk in Japanese?”
B: 歩道？ (pronounced hodou, sidewalk, in Japanese.)
C: なるほどう！ (pronounced naruhodou, means I SEE! in Japanese)

Get it? Or this:

こんにゃく、今夜食う
konnyaku, konnyakuu
I’ll eat konnyaku tonight.
(This is funny, or supposed to be funny, because the food is konnyaku, and “I’m gonna eat tonight” casually is “konya (tonight) kuu (eat)” so they sound almost exactly the same.)

These are the kind of jokes that would get glazed-over expressions, silence, and low “ohhhhhhh my goodness…….” kinds of reactions if told in America. The difference is, that these jokes’ significance rest in their very lameness.

In Japan, a society governed by relatively strict social hierarchies and characterized by an almost extreme amount of politeness, these lame jokes are a way to let off some steam, and temporarily cast off any forms of judgment. 親父ギャグ are relaxing, in a way, because they do not require much effort from either party–the performer is not really trying to be funny, and all the audience needs to do is roll their eyes a bit, and smile.

ANNOTATION: In Japan, there is a popular children’s book series called 「かいけつゾロリ」(Kaiketsu Zorori), published by Poplar Publishing. The original books were also made into a feature-length film, a comic, and an anime. In this series, the fox protagonist of the story (and a wanted criminal) keeps traveling around the world with the goal of becoming the “King of Pranks.” This fox protagonist, Zorori, is the owner of the ぶっくらこいた (Bukkura Koita), a book that tells 親父ギャグ (oyaji gyagu) so bad that they physically freeze all those who hear it. In the series, he often uses this books to freeze or confuse his pursuers and opponents in order to make a quick get-away. That 親父ギャグ are used in a children’s series to add humor, then, illustrates the way 親父ギャグ are often viewed in Japanese society–something to make fun of, a distraction of sorts, but something people enjoy and find humorous all the same.

<Hara, Yutaka. Kaiketsu Zorori No Doragon Taiji. Kaiketsu Zorori. Tokyo: Poplar Publishing, 1995.>

<原, ゆたか. かいけつゾロリのドラゴンたいじ. かいけつゾロリ. Tokyo: Poplar Publising, 1995.>

 

 

 

 

 

 

「蛍の光」– Japanese Oicotype of “Auld Lang Syne”

「蛍の光」

Above is a recording of the song「蛍の光」(hotaru no hikari) taken at the Shuri High School graduation ceremony in Naha-shi, Okinawa, Japan.

「蛍の光」(light of the firefly) is a Japanese folk song sung to the music of the Scottish “Auld Lang Syne.” However, the lyrics of 「蛍の光」are vastly different from “Auld Lang Syne,” and unlike the latter, which is often sung on New Year’s Eve, the Japanese oicotype is almost always used to conclude graduation ceremonies. It has become so integral to Japanese society and culture, in fact, that most Japanese people do not realize that it originated outside of the country, and those who hear it overseas mistakenly think they are hearing a Japanese song. My informant said she has even heard instrumental versions of 「蛍の光」broadcast at restaurants and supermarkets to indicate that it is almost closing time–a practice so engrained in their society that everyone automatically knows, when the music comes on, that it is time to leave.

My informant, whose best friend had been present at the Shuri High School graduation ceremony, said that she would never have thought of the melody as being derived from a Scottish folk song. She had heard and sung it at every single graduation from elementary school on, as had her parents, and her parents before that. Simply hearing this song, she said, was enough to bring back all the nostalgia of graduation, and her mother had said that, even a few months after my informant’s graduation, listening to the song brought tears to her eyes.

Technically speaking, though they learn that the song has four verses, the last two are almost never sung, if only because the latter half contains decidedly nationalistic characteristics–and nationalism has been discouraged in Japan since the American occupation after World War II.

The lyrics of the first two verses, then, are as follows:

蛍の光 窓の雪
書読む月日 重ねつつ
いつしか年も すぎの戸を
開けてぞ今朝は 別れゆく

とまるも行くも 限りとて
互みに思う 千万の
心のはしを ひとことに
幸くとばかり 歌うなり

And translated, they go something like this:

Light of fireflies, and snow by the window
Many suns and moons spent reading
Years have gone by without notice
Day has dawned; and in this morning, we part.

Stay or leave, it doesn’t matter
Hold my memories, in so many
corners of my heart; in one breath,
while we are happy, sing.

Very different from “Auld Lang Syne,” the lyrics are definitely geared towards the ceremonial rites of graduation, and initiation into a new kind of life. No one truly knows the composer of this song, though it is often said, according to my informant, that it had risen out of some college professor’s attempt to set Japanese words to the Scottish tune, and had spread from college graduations all the way down to elementary school moving-up ceremonies.

Strangely enough, however, this is apparently not the only variation or oicotype of “Auld Lang Syne” that exists across the world. When speaking to a Korean friend and mentioning this folklore find, he told me that Korean students sing a Korean oicotype of “Auld Lang Syne” at their graduation ceremonies–singing it for me a little bit so I could hear that the melody was exactly the same though the lyrics, of course, were different. My Taiwanese friend, furthermore, chimed in with, “us too!” and told us that they did the same at their graduation, singing another version of Auld Lang Syne, this time in Taiwanese. Upon doing some research, I found that there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of variations of this song all across the world, used as national anthems, farewell songs (Peru), funeral songs (China), and so on. A common thread that seems to tie most of these together, it seems, is the theme of ending something–ending a relationship, a life, or a part of life.

ANNOTATION: There is a song in Japan by a popular pop band called いきものがかり (Ikimonogakari) titled 「ホタルノヒカリ」(which reads and sounds exactly the same as 蛍の光, though it has been changed into another form of the Japanese alphabet, called katakana). Though the lyrics and the melody are completely different, the meaning inherent in the song is very much that of the original 蛍の光–it alludes to graduating, to leaving behind friends to venture into the summer and into the path towards your dreams. “Like the light of the firefly,” The lead singer sings, “the memories will forever glow in my heart, even if the fire of experience eventually fades away.” Japanese pop singers like to churn out these sorts of graduation songs, probably because they have such a wide and receptive audience. 蛍の光, which was birthed out of a Scottish folk song, has become an oft-used symbol in the Japanese pop music world to represent a nostalgia-tinged departure.

<いきものがかり. ”ホタルノヒカリ.” ホタルノヒカリ. ERJ, 2009. MP3.>
<Ikimonogakari. “Hotaru no Hikari” Hotaru no Hikari. ERJ, 2009. MP3.>


청개구리 (The Green Frog) — Korean Folk Tale

My informant told me about a story he had heard in Korea, told to him by a teacher when he was in elementary school:

“Once, there was a frog. A green frog, I guess, or–never mind, it doesn’t really matter. Just a frog. Uh, this frog was really disobedient and never listened to his mom. So if she told him to go one path, he’d go on the other one, and if she told him to shower he wouldn’t, and stuff like that. He just, like, does the opposite of whatever she says. A really mean frog kid. Anyway, so the mom is on her deathbed or something, and she thinks like, because he’s always done the opposite of whatever she says, she tells him to bury her in the ground so that he’ll take the opposite and bury her in the ocean, you know? She actually really wants to be thrown in the ocean, but she tells him the opposite. And so she dies, but uh, the frog kid feels guilty for all the crap’s he done in the past and chooses that moment of her death to decide to do exactly as she says. Which uh, sucks, obviously. So he buries her in the ground thinking he’s finally done the right thing when he’s making this huge mistake that’ll make her spirit or soul or whatever suffer forever. [Silence] And that’s supposed to be why when it rains, the frogs cry. Like, the rain reminds them of the ocean which reminds them of the mother that never got buried where she wanted to be. And they get sad, and they cry.”

My informant said that it was most likely a story disseminated to Korean children in order to instill obedience, to parents and elders at a young age. The tying of the story to the frogs’ crying is mainly a way to connect it to reality and make it seem more believable. That the wayward actions of one frog had caused such collective sadness in the entire frog community also seems to imply that a child’s disobedience to his or her parents is a massive enough act of disrespect that it can tear a hole in the fabric of society. Korean children, my informant said, are thus educated from a young age to respect not just their parents, but all of their elders, through this and other stories.

I found it interesting that this particular story, the one that this informant remembered, was one that had used sentiment and empathy to convey its message to its audience. My informant said that he had heard many stories too, of children being kidnapped by monsters in the night if they disobeyed their parents, but that “The Green Frog” was always the one that stuck with him. Instead of using intimidation and fright tactics, this folk tale trusts in a children’s love for their parents, and evokes its moral only indirectly, implying, you wouldn’t want to make your parents sad, would you? This was probably the reason why, my informant said, that this folk tale has always been one of the ones he has remembered over the years.

第二ボタン — The Second Button

第二ボタン (daini botann) refers to the second button from the top on a shirt or a jacket. In Japan, a graduating boy gives this second button on their school uniform to a girl he likes. This usually occurs at or immediately after a high school graduation ceremony, when the boy threads the button out of his shirt and gives it to a (usually younger) girl, for whom the gift of this button is considered a tremendous honor.

My informant spent most of her youth in the city of Naha in Okinawa, Japan, and went to a traditional Japanese high school in the seventies. In Japan there are three years of middle school, and three years of high school. She received a 第二ボタン from a boy two years her senior when she was a first-year in high school, which apparently circulated all kinds of rumors at her high school–a first-year receiving a 第二ボタン from a graduating boy was rare and an even greater honor. They knew each other through a club, but she was interested in another boy. Girls were expected to receive the 第二ボタン even if they weren’t interested in the boy, however, and so she accepted it, but nothing actually came of the button-giving.

The depth of this custom depends on the feelings of the performers. On one hand, it can be almost strictly ritualistic. A boy gives his 第二ボタン because he is expected to do so, to a girl he perhaps likes a little bit more than others, or a girl he considers a good friend. Oftentimes, when the boy does not have any particular preferences, girls who are interested in the boy press forward to ask him for the button. On the other hand, however, it can be an extremely romantic gesture. If the boy gives the 第二ボタン to a girl whom he regards with serious interest and the girl responds favorably, it often results in the forming of a relationship. It is all in the way that the performers use the custom. My informant received her second 第二ボタン from her current husband, whom she was already dating when they both graduated.

But most importantly, why the second button? Why not the first, or the third? When I asked my informant this, she said simply, 「一番心臓に近いから」which translates to, “because it’s the closest to the heart.” There are other reasons but this was the one, she said, that everyone seemed to know and regard as most significant. The 第二ボタン had been close to the boy’s heart for the three years of high school, and so receiving it was symbolic of receiving his heart. They had learned that the custom came from soldiers giving their 第二ボタン to the girls they loved before they left for the war. Graduation is obviously very different from leaving for war, but both have the same sense of anxiety about the future, about saying everything that needs to be said, because it might be the last time they see the girl they like, with no school environment to connect them anymore.

My informant was unsure as to whether this custom was performed in all of Japan, or only in the Okinawa prefecture, which is relatively isolated from the rest of Japan. She is also unsure as to whether it is still performed–but when I asked one of my friends who currently goes to high school in Okinawa, she said that it still occurs, albeit less ritualistically and more only if the boy really, really likes a girl. This, I think, is probably because of the advancement in technology and the ease with which they can contact each other even long after they graduate; there is less of a need for such dramatic shows of affection if classmates can keep in touch through Facebook and their mobile phones.