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Two Happenstances
Nov. 28th, 2021 10:41 amThe first, from my current research.
In 1932, the then Prime Minister of Japan, Tsuyoshi Inukai, was assassinated by a group of young naval officers, an event seen as signalling the effective end of civilian rule and the ascendancy of the military. Inukai's son, Ken Inukai, needed someone to sort out his father's library, and a writer friend, Kan Kikuchi, recommended the young English Literature graduate Momoko Ishii, who had recently started working at his publishing firm. Ishii became a family friend, and was a firm favourite with the Inukai children, Michiko and Yasuhiko. Thus it was that, visiting on Christmas Eve 1933 and finding a copy of The House at Pooh Corner (a gift from another friend who had recently returned from studying at Oxford) under the tree, she began to translate it on the spot for the children's amusement. She was enchanted, and the event began an interest in children's literature that would last the rest of her long life (she lived to be 101, dying in 2008). During that time she not only wrote her own children's books, but translated many classics of twentieth-century British and American children's literature, and (as an editor) commissioned many more. Among the devotees of her work was a young Hayao Miyazaki.
Without the assassination of Tsuyoshi Inukai, none of it would have happened.
Meanwhile, in the northernmost part of Chiba Prefecture stands the city of Noda, about 30 miles from Tokyo. In the eighteenth century, the local soy sauce factory was particularly well placed to supply the city of Edo, having easy access via the Edo River. It prospered, and eventually became the world-famous Kikkoman soy sauce company, which is still the city's largest employer. With the paternalism typical of Japanese company culture, it used some of its profits to institute a number of scholarships for residents of the town. This year, one was won by a graduate with a keen interest in international politics, who decided to use the money to come to Bristol and study here. From January, she will be my new tenant, and it pleases me greatly to think that her rent will be paid (as it were) in soy sauce. With my new-found love of Japanese puns, I remarked that her shougakukin (scholarship) was really a shouyugakukin (soy sauce scholarship), only to learn that her father had made the same joke. I felt simultaneously humiliated and validated by this revelation.
Of course, none of this would have happened had Tokugawa Ieyasu not won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, leading to the establishment of Edo as Japan's de facto capital and creating the demand for soy sauce.
In 1932, the then Prime Minister of Japan, Tsuyoshi Inukai, was assassinated by a group of young naval officers, an event seen as signalling the effective end of civilian rule and the ascendancy of the military. Inukai's son, Ken Inukai, needed someone to sort out his father's library, and a writer friend, Kan Kikuchi, recommended the young English Literature graduate Momoko Ishii, who had recently started working at his publishing firm. Ishii became a family friend, and was a firm favourite with the Inukai children, Michiko and Yasuhiko. Thus it was that, visiting on Christmas Eve 1933 and finding a copy of The House at Pooh Corner (a gift from another friend who had recently returned from studying at Oxford) under the tree, she began to translate it on the spot for the children's amusement. She was enchanted, and the event began an interest in children's literature that would last the rest of her long life (she lived to be 101, dying in 2008). During that time she not only wrote her own children's books, but translated many classics of twentieth-century British and American children's literature, and (as an editor) commissioned many more. Among the devotees of her work was a young Hayao Miyazaki.
Without the assassination of Tsuyoshi Inukai, none of it would have happened.
Meanwhile, in the northernmost part of Chiba Prefecture stands the city of Noda, about 30 miles from Tokyo. In the eighteenth century, the local soy sauce factory was particularly well placed to supply the city of Edo, having easy access via the Edo River. It prospered, and eventually became the world-famous Kikkoman soy sauce company, which is still the city's largest employer. With the paternalism typical of Japanese company culture, it used some of its profits to institute a number of scholarships for residents of the town. This year, one was won by a graduate with a keen interest in international politics, who decided to use the money to come to Bristol and study here. From January, she will be my new tenant, and it pleases me greatly to think that her rent will be paid (as it were) in soy sauce. With my new-found love of Japanese puns, I remarked that her shougakukin (scholarship) was really a shouyugakukin (soy sauce scholarship), only to learn that her father had made the same joke. I felt simultaneously humiliated and validated by this revelation.
Of course, none of this would have happened had Tokugawa Ieyasu not won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, leading to the establishment of Edo as Japan's de facto capital and creating the demand for soy sauce.