Wampum

Saturdays, when mom is out of the house, I share jidai-geki(period/costume film) with Grace, courtesy of IFC, and the fact that I can run a DVD player with Winnie the Pooh in screening room A (my downstairs sort-of-office), and a VHS player with Spot or Little Bear in screening room B (my upstairs bedroom). When we watched Kurasawa's The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi Toride No San-Akunin) we talked about not just the two comic peasants, but of things hidden in plain sight -- gold in sticks, the princess as a mute, the servant as princess, and the general as peasant. Hidding in plain sight is how Abenakis survived from the 5th Abenaki War into the 1960s. But what sticks is the presence of a piety that is unchristian, the peasants' fire festival:

The life of a man / Burn it with fire / The life of an insect / Throw it into the fire / Ponder and you will see / The world is dark / and this floating world / is a dream.

Someday she will see Macbeth, but the archery sequence of Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-Jo) is where memory begins -- in flights of arrows.

Which brings me to Kanadehon Chushingura, the Treasury of the Loyal Retainers, written in 1748 about the events of 1701-1703. Until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, puppet and kabuki playwrights changed the time, location, and character names in order to avoid offending the Tokugawa shogun.

On a snowy evening in December 1703, forty-seven (or forty-six) samurai burst into the mansion of the powerful nobleman responsible for the wrongful death of their former master, the lord of Ako. After waiting two long years to satisfy their vengeance, the loyal samurai killed the nobleman and later surrendered themselves to the priests of a Buddhist temple. This vendetta served as the basis for the most famous work of the traditional Japanese theater, and film versions were made in 1941/1942 by Mizoguchi Kenji and again in 1962 by Inagaki Hiroshi. The story of the Ako Ronin became the most famous of all Japanese revenge tales.

In 1703, during the course of the Third Abenaki War (Queen Anne's War), Eastern Abenakis wiped out the Massachusetts-Bay settlements north of the Merrimack, for the third time, and in February 1704, Abenaki militia from the Kennebek River town of Norridgewok staged a forced march to the middle Connecticut River town of Deerfield, surprising the garrison and killing fifty and taking a hundred prisoners, halting Boston's enroachment on upper Connecticut Abenaki towns. The Deerfield Raid.

The Ako Ronin continue to live in the aesthetic consciousness in Japan. To Americans, colonial 1703 seems impossibly distant, closer to the Middle Ages than Faneuil Hall (1742), not the mid-point in the series of conflicts, most of which began in Europe -- The Second War of Puritan Conquest (1675), King William's War -- The War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), Queen Ann's War -- the War of Spanish Succession (1702-1713), Drummer's War (1722-1727), and King George's War -- The War of Austrian Succession (1744-48), the five Abenaki Wars against the Bostonaki (Massachusetts-Bay), and finally, the real first world war -- The Seven Years War (1754-1763), fought in Europe and India between France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and (after 1762) Spain on the one side and Prussia, Great Britain, and Hanover on the other, and in North America as the "French and Indians War".

In Japan, discussion of the issues presented by the Ako Ronin raid is lively. In the United States, discussion of the issues presented by the Norridgewok Militia raid, is not.

This came to mind when I tried to explain to a paid staffer in Clark's Little Rock office why I'd set up a principals meet between his employer and an upper Connecticut Abenaki Chief. For one of us, Deerfield is the accessible past, and Grace's grandmother Pat, a Chief, spoke of Norridgewok as "home". I know he didn't understand, but he was eager to steal the offered gift.

Grace and I will continue to watch film. The costume play can visualize the way of living of old Japanese before some influence from Europe as a kind of lost beauty of life and feeling. It can also attempt to express some social vision, even if just a moment away from Christians.

Written during a child's sleep disorder event, midnight to 5am. It is only -5 degrees outside, with the wind -24 degrees. Today the sea was smoking. Tomorrow it will be colder. There will be sea ice.