The Peach Orchard

I was actually a little surprised by exactly how directly this video related to Shinto. It is very much a Shinto story, and although I'd seen it before, without understanding the basic elements of Shinto it didn't make much sense.

Now, I know who the white-faced people are who told the boy they would no longer visit his house: kami, the kami, and them not visiting is very bad news. This, in Shinto tradition, is what happens when you upset the kami, who reside sacredly in the strongest forces of the natural world. By cutting down the peach trees, the little boy's family upset those kami, forcing them to leave the orchard, and the boy's home, forever.

I also understand now that in their dance, when they were recreating the orchard for the boy, that they clapped because clapping is thought, in the Shinto tradition, to be a way to communicate with the kami.

Before I saw the video, I never knew that Doll's Day, typically a holiday celebrating girls, was actually to welcome the kami that reside in the blossoming trees. Now the actual dolls that they set out on this day make more sense to me.

All in all I really liked this video, and I'm glad I picked this one to watch. I think after seeing this example, I'll be more prepared to see Shinto references in other Japanese media as well.

The Tao of Pooh

I was very excited to read The Tao of Pooh. From the lectures in class, I found myself interested in and excited about Taoism, and the style of the book seemed kind of silly and whimsical, which is generally my preference. However after the first few parts of the book, I found myself not liking it at all and being ready to hurry up and finish it. The narrative style didn't suit me, and I didn't like that he wrote in Pooh as his own character, in his own style which to me was distinctly different than the “real” Pooh. His examples were also lacking, to me: comparing a Sidewalk Cafe to a cheeseburger stand? He could have used a less cherry-picked example and still made his point. Try a bar, where people do go to socialize and stay longer than it takes to finish their drink/food. There are examples in China and France, too, I'm sure of a street food stand where one goes to eat quickly and then move on. Both the writing in of Pooh and that example, in particular, as well as how Hoff manipulated some of the text to make his point made me less receptive to his argument – and I was, originally, very interested and receptive to the point he was trying to make. I was also hoping to hear more about how he hoped to achieve the things he was advocating. He made his point, and instead of moving on, repeated the same point that I had already accepted. It seemed aimed at the hostile reader, which was off-putting and caused me not to enjoy this book as I had hoped.

I did agree with his idea of Americans as Bisy Backsons, wholeheartedly. I think everyone in this culture, especially disillusioned younger people, think this way. I went to nerd high school, and at some point most of us came to the realization that the all-nighters and excessive AP classes weren't getting us anywhere, and this overly busy self-important lifestyle just didn't work. Problem is, most of us didn't know how to fix it, and that's where I hoped this book would come in. However the book never provided a solution, other than the general advice of “don't do that” and “follow your instincts.” While that's enough information for some, I was hoping for more. I felt that Zen Wrapped in Karma gave detain on how to go about gaining the mindset to achieve the things that Warner described, and I was hoping for that in The Tao of Pooh as well. So I ended the book feeling in agreement with Hoff's points and his very general solution, but not his methods, and with nothing more than a vague sense for what he wanted me to do with this collection of agreements we had amassed.