Turning and turning in the widening gyre…

This being a blog about Irish fairy tales, my answer will be circular, starting with the last question, then answering the first and returning where I began.

For the Irish, time and space – as well as music, poetry, fairy tales and life itself – is interconnected and circular, open yet insular. Journeys and lives explore imaginative possibilities and inevitably return to their starting points. Irish today’s are shaped by their yesterdays, the future by the past, tomorrow by today. When the Irish emigrated, Bringing It All Back Home says that some lived in enclaves and weren’t interested in assimilating (63). This was a wide-open, new country, yet they defined their space by their cultural group.

Each of the fairy tales repeated this circular, enclosed pattern of time and space. In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the story begins with a funeral procession, unraveling to meet an assortment of unusual characters. It rewinds as each character, in turn, helps the son. Loose ends are neatly tied up when we learn that the short, green man who accompanies him on his journey is the corpse in the coffin at the beginning of the story.

Within these fairy tale journeys, fate plays a prominent role in drawing wanderers where they began, back home. Although time and space seems to stretch out endlessly, it’s an illusion, like Truman’s world in the movie “The Truman Show.” Sometimes fate helps; sometimes it hinders the wanderer in achieving his dreams.

Fate plays a particularly important role in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” Finn’s father is told he will be killed in battle, and he is. The king is told his daughter’s son will take his kingdom, and in spite of trying to kill Finn as an infant, Finn wins the king’s daughter and thus, by marriage, takes his kingdom. However, he chooses the “champions” over the daughter, beginning the Fenians, Irish warriors. Since one of the Irish revolutionary movements took this name, fate appeared even after the story ended to be trying to return the kingdom to Finn.

The Irish view time and space as sean nós singers use the trills and melodic doubling back and other ornamentation in interpreting the songs. Although they are free to wander as far as they’d like, ultimately, both the singers and the Irish are drawn back home.

Each fairy tale reveals a slightly different perspective of the Irish culture in this circular journey.

What I found most striking about all the fairy tales was the dichotomy: freedom and fate; inclusiveness and insularity; emigration and home ties. The old is new and the new old. The Irish seems conflicted, which I wonder might come from reconciling the hard times with love of country, the joy of music and dance with life’s cold realities.

In “The King of Ireland’s Son,” the giant gave the son – a “melodious, lying Irishman” – a number of old items that seemed of less value than similar ones he offered. Yet, each actually was far more useful than it appeared. Similarly, each of the travelers – the gunman, earman, foot runner, blowman and man who broke stones against his thigh – were very odd, to say the least. However, each proved to have great worth. That the king’s son accepted each without question, demonstrated to me the inclusiveness of the Irish, open to all.

For me, “Dreams of Gold,” told of the difference between striving to achieve one’s dreams and simply sitting back and dreaming. By taking control of your life, working hard to realize your dreams, all things are possible. For example, the man from Mayo went looking for and found the gold he’d dreamt about (although, of course, it turned out to be in his own backyard). However, if you just dream, and don’t act, as the cobbler did, nothing will happen. Or if you let something stand in your way, like Anthony Hynes did, there’s always something that will hold you back. As the fairy tale says, “There’s dreams and dreams.”

In addition to the role of fate in life, two things stood out for me in “The Birth of Finn MacCumhail.” First, hierarchy was unquestioned. The hag’s sons complained about Finn and Bran interfering with their ancestral rights. Secondly, strength – and life – was drawn from family and the core of one’s being. Finn’s grandmother saved his life, slew his enemies and even practiced tough love, using switches to help him run faster. Yet, he had to look within himself, or rather chew his finger down to the marrow (his Irish soul?) to “receive knowledge of all things.” It was only through self-knowledge, with a little help from his friend (Bran), that Finn knew how to overcome his enemies and meet his challenges.

“Usheen’s Return to Ireland” seemed to me to be a thinly veiled metaphor for emigrating to the West, where life is good, then returning to Ireland, which is under stress without opportunity. Yet, when Usheen returns, love for his native land follows. He can’t leave and dies broken.

Finally, “The Man Who Had No Story” is the ultimate Irish fairy tale. It shows how if you’re Irish, you’re born to be a musician, dancer, storyteller, even a priest or doctor. It includes a swipe at the British for being the source of Ireland’s misery and celebrates Irish sociability. With a little magic, every Irishman is a storyteller. The tale loops and circles back, a story within a story that ends where it began.

And so shall I. The Irish fairy tales told me much more about my ancestors than their view of space and time. They emphasized their imagination by telling tales in which the magical was an accepted part of life. They embodied the imagination, sense of adventure, possibility of dreams, warmth, and especially the hold of fate and tug of homeland on the Irish psyche.

Nothing better epitomizes that interwoven circle of past and present than the Celtic knot. In both, lines loop and cross, opening and closing space while creating beautiful, interconnected patterns that reflect the complexity of Ireland’s people.

Wasting away in Margaritaville

Kani Yamabushi and Kamabara, although both very traditional Kyogen plays, have totally different feelings to them. Kani has very broad humor, while I felt Kamabara had moments of pathos.

Kani Yamabushi is in the Okura school’s fifth group, the oni yamabushi kyogen, which revolves around a priest who supposedly has extraordinary power, but isn’t very good at using them. (Benito Ortolani, “The Japanese Theatre, 154)

The play has the jo, ha, kyu rhythm, starting slowly (jo) with the characters entering from the bridge, walking crab-like (which reminded me of Monty Python's Silly Walks) and singing and speaking slowly. The mountain priest’s song and monologue introduce the story to the audience. The walk, talk and action build to a faster pace (ha). The priest rapidly rubs his beads, and the crab pinches his servant, who punctuates each pinch with a yelp. The beads, crab "dance" and shouts create its own rhythm, a sort of percussive dance. The play ends quickly with the priest and servant chasing the crab (kyu).

The humor comes as the priest is revealed to be cowardly and self-important, a not quite so bumbling Barney Fife. Like Barney, he is ineffectual when a situation calls on him to use his “powers.” The audience laughs at the mountain priest (and Barney), who remains blissfully unaware of his own shortcomings.

Kamabara, on the other hand, reverses the jo, ha, kyu order, and by turning this upside down, it seemed to add a sense of sadness. The play is in the Okura school’s fourth group, nurko onna kyogen, in which the shite, or main character, is an onna, an aggressive woman married to a weak husband. (154) However, this classification was a little confusing to me, since the husband, not the wife, was the main character.

Kamabara begins quickly with the husband running over the bridge and falling onto the stage, complaining about his shrewish wife. The wife, waving a sickle, berates her lazy husband. She chases him across the stage in choreographed movements, while repeating, “I’ll beat you to death, you hateful wretch,” as he repeats, “Stop her! Stop her, please!” The repetition and stylized activity is typically Kyogen.

When Mr. Hemingway arrives on stage and slows the action, the drama slows as well. The husband’s repeated attempts at suicide are humorous, since the audience knows he has no intention of killing himself. His different techniques – and excuses why they don’t work – vary the action just enough to keep the audience interested.

However, for me, the husband’s comments between attempts – an acknowledgment that he’s gotten himself into a predicament, begging Mr. Hemingway – anybody – to come and persuade him to stop – had more pathos than humor. He kept telling himself that although his failed attempts were embarrassing, they were not his fault: He had tried everything. Mr. Hemingway failed him. His stomach was immovable. His arm was frozen. The fact that his wife had said sarcastically that his suicide attempt was gallant, indicated to me that she never thought he would carry it out. And after about the third repetition, “This is my final moment” became a plaintive cry, to my ears.

Finally, the play ends as Kani Yamabushi began, with the husband talking slowly and singing to tell the audience what will happen. To save face, he says he’ll give up his attempt “for today” and go work in the hills.

What made me begin to feel sorry for him was his comment that even if a man were made of straw, a woman had no right to talk to him the way his wife did. And it was comments, such as the one about doing things half-way not being of use to anyone, that are scattered throughout and indicated to me his realization at the end that he doesn’t have much more substance than a straw man.

The husband even was manipulated by Mr. Hemingway, who had promised the man's wife that he would make him go work in the hills. When Mr. Hemingway left, he knew that the husband never would commit suicide without an audience and would go to the hills as his only alternative.

Both plays use repetition, mimicry (monomane), stylized movement and voice, and slapstick. They also make use of the full stage in choreographing movement. Finally, both plays reflect Okura Toraaki’s theory that the heart of a Kyogen play is the “search for truth under the veil of the joke” and that insight reveals human limitations (153). In Kani Yamabushi, the audience clearly sees that limitation, whereas the mountain priest doesn’t. However, since he is an elevated figure, the audience can laugh at him. By contrast, the husband in Kamabara does recognize his failings. Like the singer in "Margaritaville," he realized deep down that maybe it was his own fault. And although the audience laughs, I think they also pause in sympathy, because he is an “everyman,” not as easy to ridicule. But then, maybe I'm reading too much into this.

The only one liner that struck me was in Kani Yamabushi. When the servant talks about an attractive woman, the priest says, “That’s no woman. That’s my aunt.” Today’s version is, “That was no lady. That was my wife.” Some jokes really are classics.

Absentee voters?

I've already talked in my first post about what makes me laugh, and if the presidential election isn't a source of humor, I don't know what is. By now, I suspect everyone has seen the "Saturday Night Live" skits of Sarah and Hilary, as well as the one skewering Joe, Sarah and Gwen. Well, maybe not everyone. I bet these Obama has fans half a world away might have missed it. These ladies from Obama, Japan, have really gotten into the U.S. presidential elections. Wonder if they'll vote absentee.

Scratch the Western skin and Japan bleeds tradition

Kimonos, sushi, an economic juggernaut, graceful arches, bonsai trees, stylized watercolors (particularly of koi), strict hierarchy, Toyota and Honda, Samsung and Sony, 80-hour work weeks, gardens where every item – rocks, plants, empty spaces, path direction - are carefully placed, are highly deliberate. That’s what I think of when I think of Japan and its culture.

What I don’t immediately think of is Emperor Hirohito, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march, comfort women, prisoner cruelty (by our standards), Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In short, the Japan that comes to my mind is not the same Japan that might come to the minds of people a generation removed. Nor do I think of anime or manga as people younger than I might.

However, it seems the characteristics that forged the 1930s and '40s Japanese war machine and unbridled expansionist ambition are the same ones that fueled the Tiger economy of the 1990s - blind obedience to authority, nationalistic pride and a strong work ethic. But, then, maybe I’ve been overly influenced by Shogun and Noble House.

When a corporate scandal occurs, the CEO doesn’t receive a slap on the wrist and a golden parachute to bail out the troubled company. He (I don’t remember there being a “she”) is deeply humiliated and resigns in disgrace. Some have committed suicide, if the breach is bad enough. My impression is that the Japanese do what needs to be done, regardless of the personal cost. The good of the community comes before that of the individual.

From my perspective – and this is by no means a scholarly one – Japan and its traditional culture, its overarching community-centric system, has been as different from Western culture as it possibly could be. Hall’s description of the space in Japanese houses where the center remains and the walls and décor move reminds me of a kaleidoscope, its stationary mirrors reflecting bits of colored glass that cascade into artistic tableaus before melting away. It’s like being in the eye of a hurricane, an oasis amidst the chaos, a Japanese garden in the center of a city.

Even now, with Tokyo out Wall Streeting Wall Street, behind that consumerism and drive for success, the heart of traditional Japan continues to beat. Parents are still treated with respect. Feng shui still dictates design. And Japanese gardens still gently discipline nature, expanding perspectives that free the soul. I want to explore those sensibilities, adopting the ones that instill peace.