War, Memory, and Anime: 'Barefoot Gen' and 'Grave of the Fireflies'

Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Isao Takahata

I wrote this essay in late 2019 for a unit in my History Honours degree at the University of Melbourne called “History, Memory, and Violence in Asia”. It was a brilliant subject, and I chose to produce a case study examining the firebombing of Kobe and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and how these events have been memorialised through the anime films of Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies. Both are two of my favourite films, and I consider them among the greatest war films ever made. They allow for a unique exploration of the horrors of war through the eyes of children, and move you on an elemental level with their pathos and emotion.

*

The children hunting

a cicada – not seeing

the Atom Bomb Dome

- Yasuhiko Shigemoto [1]

Introduction:

This case study examines the Allied atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the incendiary strategic bombing of Kobe as part of a broader campaign of aerial bombing against Japanese cities, civilians and military infrastructure between 1942-1945 in World War Two. The essay explores how anime as a medium of memory has afforded Japanese people a means with which to memorialise and historicise extreme wartime violence, to psychologically process the significant trauma of the bombings as both individuals and collective Japanese society, as well as to communicate particular messages about war and violence to subsequent generations in post-war Japan.

‘Anime’ is a popular and culturally significant form of animated media which originated in Japan, encompassing both hand-drawn and computer-generated animations.[2] From the early 20th century anime has both responded to and shaped mainstream film technologies and techniques. Its defining characteristics have been a combination of cinematography, fantasy, idealism, its unique stylization (i.e. emotive eyes and other expressive features), and a poetic appreciation of the Japanese understanding of the universal concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ), meaning pathos or a sensitivity to the ephemerality of life.[3]  Though anime covers a range of different themes as a form of cultural expression, there is a defining or perennial focus on the theme of apocalypse and the destruction of human/Japanese society.[4]

These themes are particularly relevant to the two films I've selected for this essay: Barefoot Gen (1983) directed by Mori Masaki and Keiji Nakazawa, and Grave of the Fireflies (1988), directed by Isao Takahata. Through the perspectives of their child and teenage protagonists, the films examine the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the firebombing of Kobe, and their subsequent struggles for survival in Japanese society. Each of the historical events covered is apocalyptic in nature due to the unprecedented scale of the destruction of the bombings, and because of their unnatural and horrific consequences for humankind.[5] In considering the films, I analyse three common themes explored in each film through the medium of anime. Namely, how Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies interrogate the horror and violence of the respective bombings, how the memories and experiences of children in war are depicted, and the critiques of Japanese society during and after the war with a focus on poverty, malnutrition and hunger. I will also include a brief overview of how these anime representations have been received by sections of the Japanese community in the decades following their release.

Historical Context: The Incendiary Bombing of Kobe and the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Strategic aerial bombing was part of an emerging mode of warfare developed in both European and Pacific theatres of conflict in World War II. It involved subjecting densely populated urban environments to sustained and intense aerial bombardments.[6] Such bombing resulted in mass civilian casualties, psychological terror, and severe destruction of residential, industrial and military buildings.[7] This type of warfare was practised by both Allied and Axis forces, and was variously labelled “terror bombing” by the Germans, “strategic bombing” by Americans, and “key area bombing” by the Japanese forces.[8]   

Air-raids against the Japanese mainland began on 18 April 1942 in response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.[9] Led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, North American B-25 Mitchel bombers targeted highly populated and strategically important Japanese cities such as Kobe, Tokyo and Nagoya.[10] These aerial bombardments grew in lethality and horror as the Pacific War reached its crescendo in 1945, with the United States initiating a trial of the use of incendiary bombs in Japan to accelerate the end of the war.[11] The most devastating bombardment of Kobe occurred on 5 June 1945, in which 474 B-29 bombers incinerated and levelled 10km2 of the city centre, with 51% of Kobe’s urban surrounds damaged.[12] This particular attack provided the inspiration for the narrative events in Grave of the Fireflies. Between 1942 and 1945, the Allied aerial bombardments in Japan obliterated 466 square kilometres of the 67 cities targeted, killing over 300,000 people with another 400,000 injured.[13]

The protracted Allied strategic bombing campaign against Japan reached its destructive crescendo with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945 respectively.[14] The atomic bombs instantly resulted in the deaths of over 66,000 and 30,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, with a study by Tadatoshi Akiba calculating that by 1950 over 200,000 in Hiroshima and over 140,000 in Nagasaki had died from the atomic bombs.[15] In the wake of the atomic bombings, the Imperial Japanese government and Emperor Hirohito acceded to the Potsdam Declaration.[16] This brought an end to almost fifteen years of conflict, beginning with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The Japanese dead totalled three million soldiers and civilians.[17]

In the face of comprehensive and extensive documentation on by both the Allied and Japanese forces, there are no fundamental historiographical disputes about the general nature of the events nor the scale of the devastation caused and number of lives lost. Instead, the major sites of historical contestation have been whether strategic bombing of cities and the use of atomic bombs against civilian targets was necessary to fulfil the Allied military objectives; whether the bomb really ended the war; and to what extent the “collateral damage” of innocent civilian deaths was morally justifiable in achieving those strategic objectives.[18] A corollary to this is the debate about whether there is any moral difference between the use of conventional bombing and atomic bombing if the destructive impacts are broadly equivalent.[19]

Understanding Past Horrors: Anime and Memory Debates:

Following the Japanese government’s accession to the Potsdam Declaration, Japanese society was occupied by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) on 2 September 1945 as part of its unconditional surrender.[20] The American occupation of Japan lasted from 1945 until 1952. During this time, all Japanese artistic and cultural expression was tightly controlled by US authorities and education departments.[21] In particular, cultural depictions of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were strictly censored.[22] Such concealment and repression was intended to discourage any public unrest against the occupation, as well as to stymie any international momentum for a war-crimes trial against the United States equivalent to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.[23] The end of the occupation saw the unburdening of Japanese civil society, and with this came a gradual flourishing of art and cinema which gave expression to experiences of the atomic and incendiary bombings.[24] After the occupation ended, animated films in the style of manga and anime came to occupy a significant and popular place in shaping responses to the Japanese wartime experience.[25] Much of their cultural popularity and influence derived from the fact that manga and anime were readily available for both children and young adults, and that the subject material was not mediated by Japanese educational authorities.[26] It is instructive to view both Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies in these contexts.

As the progenitor behind the globally-popular Barefoot Gen - first in its manga form and then in the 1983 animated film - Keiji Nakazawa occupies a seminal place in Japanese and global memory and artistic culture.[27] In many interviews, Nakazawa has reflected widely on Barefoot Gen and its impact on understandings of the war and the use of atomic weaponry. In particular, Nakazawa has criticized the United States for eschewing responsibility for the use of atomic weapons, the self-destructive policies of Japan’s wartime leaders, and also the state of post-war Japanese politics.

Nakazawa experienced the Hiroshima bombing himself as a six year old boy, thereby rendering Barefoot Gen a semi-autobiographical work.[28] In a 2003 interview with Alan Gleason, Nakazawa noted that “I definitely based it [Barefoot Gen] on my own experiences growing up”.[29] There is therefore a nuanced dynamic at work between the expression of individual memory and the subsequent development of collective Japanese and global memory about the atomic bombings. Nakazawa notes that “’Barefoot Gen’ [in both its manga and anime formats] has been translated into more than 20 languages”.[30] This globalization of the memory is a significant feature of anime which speaks to its popularity and accessibility as a medium.[31]

Despite the overtly political nature of his commentary on Japanese politics in relation to the war, Nakazawa has consistently distanced himself from the anti-war political left, in particular the Japanese Communist Party.

Gleason: you’ve also mentioned before that the Japanese left wanted to use Gen for their own political agenda, and that at one point the Japanese Communist Party pestered you to join them.

Nakazawa: Oh yeah, sure, but I just said no. They left me alone after that.[32]

While disavowing the political left, Nakazawa is more explicit in his condemnation of the “ultra-nationalist” right.[33] Some scholars such as James Orr and Christine Hong have suggested that Barefoot Gen the film – which emphasises the suffering of the Japanese people and does not include portrayals of Japanese war crimes like the manga version – could be seen as sympathetic to the conservative narrative of victimization advocated by some mainline Japanese politicians, such as “militarists” within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.[34] Nakazawa’s response below does much to dispel that assertion through its revelation of his attitudes to Japan’s wartime leadership, the dangerous revisionism of Japan’s post-war polity, and his strong criticism of the imperial system.

Nakazawa: Japan is just as bad. Here’s a country that experienced complete devastation in the last war, and yet ultra-nationalists are crawling out of the woodwork again, glorifying the war and trying to rewrite the history textbooks. And as usual they talk about restoring the emperor to his rightful position of absolute authority. [35]

Similar to how Nakazawa’s lived experience of the atom bomb in Hiroshima informed the creation of Barefoot Gen, director and animator Isao Takahata experienced the aerial firebombing in his hometown Okayama, which may have informed the realism of the visual production.[36] When faced with the question about how to convert such individual experience into a visual reproduction or memorialization, Takahata identified anime as the most effective medium to elicit emotional responses in the audience, as it more easily allowed creators to “convey visual expressions, express emotions, feelings that you’d never be able to reach with actors”.[37] This reflection supports the thesis that anime can depict images of the past with greater ease than film or photography, since it is beyond the norms and technical restrictions of realism.[38]

Grave of the Fireflies is conventionally viewed as an anti-war film. However, in an interview with Anime News Network, Takahata refuted this characterisation, suggesting that the film was more an expression of human tragedy rather than an overt or effective political statement which could prevent war.[39] While unwilling to situate Grave of the Fireflies within broader anti-war efforts, in the same interview Takahata was highly critical of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his determination to revise Article 9 of the Constitution, which proscribes Japan from engaging in armed conflict to settle international disputes.[40]  

Remembrance of Things Past: Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies:

Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies memorialise related historical events of atomic and strategic aerial bombing through the medium of anime. This section of the case study will examine three common themes between the films and examine their stylistic approaches at rendering meaning and memory for the audience, including depictions of aerial bombings and the subsequent horror, the memories, perspectives, and experiences of children during war, and reflections on Japanese society during and after the war.

Figure 1 (Grave, 08:21)[41]  Figure 2 (Grave,08:58)[42]

Figure 3 (Barefoot Gen, 31.28)[43]        Figure 4, (Barefoot Gen, 34:37[44]  

Depictions of aerial bombings and subsequent horror:

The depiction of the air raid in Kobe begins with the terror and chaos of a claustrophobic streetscape. From an unsettling first-person camera angle, the audience follows protagonists Seita (a young teenager) and his little sister Setsuko (four years old) through the winding streets of Kobe as incendiary bombs are rain down from above. The wailing sirens interweave with the cries of children, adding a terrifying element of historical realism to the scene. In Figure 2, the audience are presented with a panning landscape shot from a beach on Osaka bay demonstrating the full scale of destruction wrought by the air raid over Kobe. Tens of B-29 bombers slowly strafe the city which is now unrecognisable and entirely consumed by fire.

Barefoot Gen approaches the depiction of the bombing in a markedly different manner. Rather than the buzzing and frenetic chaos of the squadron of bombers descending on the city, there is an ominous absence of dialogue combined with sparse drumbeats and slowly ascending piano notes. The Enola Gay makes its way over Hiroshima unmet by air raid sirens, until the singular, cataclysmic atomic bomb is dropped and witnessed in all its destruction from a panoptical perspective (Figure 4). Scholars have emphasised the different style in which the pilots aboard the Enola Gay (Figure 3) are depicted compared with the other characters in Barefoot Gen.[45] This stylistic decision highlights the inhuman nature of the enemy and their atomic weapons.

Figure 5 (Grave, 19:22)[46]                      Figure 6 (Barefoot Gen, 35:44)[47]

The horrific effects of the firebombing of Kobe and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima are detailed in Figures 5 and 6 respectively. Barefoot Gen’s Figure 6 is reminiscent of Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi’s The Hiroshima Panels, completed between 1950-1982. The image is one of pure horror: an emaciated, zombie-like mother and her infant child stumble through the smoke of the obliterated city with their skin melting and dripping from their limbs, eyeballs hanging from their sockets, and shards of glass and shrapnel piercing their skin. This visual description is not one borne of fantasy. It recalls and supports many testimonials from survivors of the Hiroshima bombing.[48] Similarly, Figure 5 depicts Seita and Setsuko’s mother bandaged up and burnt beyond shortly before her death. The anonymity in her severely burnt state emphasises the dehumanizing nature of the violence perpetrated against citizens by the Allied forces.[49] Various close ups reveal the full extent of the mutilation, with her skin entirely seared away as she lies in an unhygienic makeshift hospital, beset by flies and maggots. This is an accurate representation of the effects of Allied incendiary bombing against Japanese cities and the incapacity of the Japanese healthcare system to cope with the unprecedented destruction and human collateral damage.[50]

Figure 7 (Gen, 44:31)[51]                                      Figure 8 (Grave, 11:27)[52]

 The memories, perspectives and experiences of children in wartime:

Both Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies explore the experience of wartime Japan through the perspective of children, capturing both their playful freedom and suffering as civil society broke down.[53] This is a recurring motif of anime films, and it allows directors to channel the innocence of children to contrast and interrogate the evil and incomprehensibility of the adult world. Figure 7 depicts Gen in the aftermath of the atomic bomb, having just prepared a shelter for his mother and the recently born Tomoko. Suddenly, black rain starts falling from the sky, prompting Gen to ask: “mother, have you ever seen rain that’s black like this?” A narrative voice appears outside of the diegetic world of the film, which importantly provides an educative aside to the audience which the anime characters themselves are not privy to:

the black rain began falling on the northwest section of the city, the impact of the bomb’s blast had sent dust, debris and radiation high into the atmosphere where it gathered in a gigantic, lethal cloud. Before returning to the earth as radioactive rain. The bomb that fell on the city detonated with a destructive force of 20,0000 tons of TNT and generated temperatures in excess of 4,000 degrees Celsius. Some 60% of the city had vanished but the damage did not end there. The people of Hiroshima did not know it yet, but the bomb’s aftereffects, such as the black rain, would bring them many years of suffering.[54]

A parallel scene with black rain occurs in Grave of the Fireflies in Figure 8, with both Seita and Setsuko greeting the rain with childlike curiosity and interest. Deprived of the atomic dimension, the inclusion of black rain after the incendiary bombing emphasises the unnaturalness of war and the totality of the destruction wrought on Kobe, rather than the otherworldly and unfathomable horror of Hiroshima.[55] The black rain that fell and the “many years of suffering” referred to by the narrative voice is indicative of the high rates of cancer and radiation-related illnesses experienced by the 650,000 survivors of the atomic bombs.[56]

Figure 9 (Barefoot Gen, 1:13:50)[57]                  Figure 10 (Grave, 1:19:05)[58]

Reflections on Japanese society during and after the war:

Children suffering from malnutrition and poverty was common in wartime.[59] In Figure 9, the triumphant Gen and Ryuta (the adopted orphan and new brother to Gen) have just returned from their playful adventure to earn money and buy food for their family. They discover that the newborn Tomoko has recently perished from malnutrition and are greeted by the shocking image of a withered and pockmarked infant swaddled in her grieving mother’s arms. Similarly, in Figure 10 Seita returns from procuring money and resources in a nearby city only to find Setsuko in a state of delirium – eating marbles and dirt in lieu of food - and on the brink of death. It’s difficult to imagine which images in cinema could exude more pathos than these. Having survived the devastation of incendiary aerial bombardment and an atomic bomb, these youthful innocents succumb to malnutrition and disease, an often unspoken and underrepresented horror of war which does not discriminate between soldier and civilian. Tomoko, Ryuta and Setsuko are representative of the estimated 123,000 children either orphaned or rendered homeless by 1948, many of whom endured poverty, malnourishment and loneliness in the months and years preceding their deaths.[60]

Contested/sensitive representations:

The anime version of Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies have not caused particularly heated or contested debates on the scale of the Japanese History Textbook Controversies of the 1980s and beyond. This is especially true of Grave of the Fireflies. However, as alluded to earlier in this essay, there have been certain instances in which the Barefoot Gen has irritated both the left and right sides of Japanese political/historiographical spectrum. 

One recent example of this is the Association of Atomic Bomb Victims for Peace and Security campaigning for the Hiroshima City Board of Education to remove Barefoot Gen – both as manga and anime film - from educational settings, due to the “opinion and ideology” of Keiji Nakazawa.[61] As mentioned earlier in this essay, Nakazawa is a strident pacifist and highly critical of both wartime Japan and the imperial system. The Hiroshima City Board of Education uses Barefoot Gen in manga and film to develop historical empathy in primary school students as part of its peace studies programs. The Association does not include any direct victims of the 1945 bombing, and is largely thought to be a neo-nationalist, revisionist movement which seeks to remove anti-nuclear literature and advocate for the nuclear armament of Japan as well as a conventional remilitarization of the Japanese armed forces.[62] Similarly, following Nakazawa’s death in December 2012, the board of education in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture limited access to Barefoot Gen because of its anti-war message and because of the graphic nature of the violence depicted as perpetrated by Japanese soldiers.[63]

The anime adaptation of Barefoot Gen has also generated a critical reaction from those on the political and historiographical left, which is overtly anti-war in its posture and remains critical and realistic about the Imperial Japanese wartime record. The film omits much of the criticism of the Japanese government that was central to the manga version of Barefoot Gen, its alien depiction of the pilots of the Enola Gay does not indicate that the enemy was provoked by Japanese militarism, and depicts the obliteration of Hiroshima and the defeat of Japan as tragedy rather than the consequence of the Imperial Japanese war machine’s trail of destruction since 1931.[64] Therefore the critical suggestion is that the film, as opposed to the print version of Barefoot Gen, comfortably fits within the conservative, nationalist narrative of victimization, and could be considered similar to other revisionist wartime anime films such as The Wind Rises.

Conclusion:

This case study has considered the historical events of the firebombing of Kobe and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and how these events have been memorialised through the anime films of Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies. It has explored how anime has mediated Japanese responses to the violence of wartime atrocities. Through its popularity as a genre, both Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies have allowed historical understandings of the Japanese experience of war to be communicated to subsequent generations. The common themes focused on how horror and violence were portrayed, how the experiences of children are represented and understood, and critiques of post-war Japanese society and its imposition of structural violence or suffering on its citizenry.

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Schaefer, Stefanie, ‘The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and its Exhibition’, in The Power of Memory in Modern Japan, ed. Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker, Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2008, pp. 155-170.

Silberner, Joanne. 1981. "Psychological A-Bomb Wounds". Science News. 120 (19): 296.

Swale, Alistair. 2017. "Memory and forgetting: examining the treatment of traumatic historical memory in Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises". Japan Forum. 29 (4): 518-536.

Szasz F.M., and Takechi I. 2007. "Atomic heroes and atomic monsters: American and Japanese cartoonists confront the onset of the nuclear age, 1945-80". Historian. 69 (4): 728-752.

Ichitani, Tomoko. "Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms: The Renarrativation of Hiroshima Memories." Journal of Narrative Theory 40, no. 3 (2010): 364-390.

Stahl, D.  Imag(in)ing the War in Japan [electronic resource] : Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film. Leiden : BRILL, 2010.

Stahl, David C. n.d. "Victimization And "Response-Ability": Remembering, Representing, And Working Through Trauma In Grave Of The Fireflies". 161-202.

Endnotes:

[1] David McNeill, “Hiroshima Haiku: Expressing horror in 17 syllables”. Irish Times. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/hiroshima-haiku-expressing-horror-in-17-syllables-1.2663898 (accessed 6 December 2019)

[2] Frank Fuller, “The deep influence of the A-bomb on anime and manga”. The Conversation.  http://theconversation.com/the-deep-influence-of-the-a-bomb-on-anime-and-manga-45275 (accessed 30 November 2019).

[3] Timothy J. Craig., 2015. Japan pop!: inside the world of Japanese popular culture. http://site.ebrary.com/id/11042487. p 138

[4] Susan J. Napier. Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. New York: St. Martin's Press. https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=D329E888-F2E4-4E0F-877E-5ECBEB46785A. p 249

[5] Jane L Chapman, Dan Ellin, and Adam Sherif. 2015. "Barefoot Gen and Hiroshima: Comic Strip Narratives of Trauma" pp 51

[6] Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young. 2010. Bombing Civilians: a Twentieth-Century History. New York: New Press. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=584787.

[pp, 138-9]

[7] Mark Selden. “American Fire Bombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan in History and Memory”. The Asia-Pacific Journal. https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html (accessed 10 December 2019).

[8] Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young. 2010. Bombing Civilians: a Twentieth-Century History. New York: New Press. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=584787. P 139

[9] Lawrence Lifschultz, and Kai Bird. 1998. Hiroshimaʼs shadow: [writings on the denial of history and the Smithsonian controversy]. Stony Creek (CT): Pamphleeter's Press. P 55

[10] Mark Selden. “American Fire Bombing and Atomic Bombing of Japan in History and Memory”. The Asia-Pacific Journal. https://apjjf.org/2016/23/Selden.html (accessed 10 December 2019).

[11] Lawrence Lifschultz, and Kai Bird. 1998. Hiroshimaʼs shadow: [writings on the denial of history and the Smithsonian controversy]. Stony Creek (CT): Pamphleeter's Press. P 51

[12] Daisuke Akimoto, 2014. Peace education through the animated film “Grave of the Fireflies” physical, psychological, and structural violence of war. http://jairo.nii.ac.jp/0026/00006560. P 36

Sahr Conway-Lanz, 2013. Collateral Damage Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II. Florence: Taylor and Francis, Bottom of Formp 1

[14] John W. Dower, 2000. Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. London: Penguin [p 415]

[15] Lindsley Cameron, and Masao Miyoshi. 2005. "HIROSHIMA, NAGASAKI, and the World Sixty Years Later". The Virginia Quarterly Review. 81 (4): 26-47., P 28-29

[16] Lawrence Lifschultz, and Kai Bird. 1998. Hiroshimaʼs shadow: [writings on the denial of history and the Smithsonian controversy]. Stony Creek (CT): Pamphleeter's Press. pp 41-45

[17] John W. Dower, 1995. "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory". Diplomatic History. 19 (2): 275 [pp 218-219]

[18] Maier, Charles S. 2005. "Targeting the City: Debates and Silences about the Aerial Bombing of World War lII". International Review of the Red Cross. 87 (859): 429-444; Lawrence Lifschultz, and Kai Bird. 1998. Hiroshimaʼs shadow: [writings on the denial of history and the Smithsonian controversy]. Stony Creek (CT): Pamphleeter's Press. P 49050

[19] Lawrence Lifschultz, and Kai Bird. 1998. Hiroshimaʼs shadow: [writings on the denial of history and the Smithsonian controversy]. Stony Creek (CT): Pamphleeter's Press. pp xviii-xix

[20] Joachim Alt, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Feature Length Animation Movies." In The 11th Convention of the International Association for Japan Studies. 2015. P 3-4

[21] Mikyoung Kim, 2019. Routledge handbook of memory and reconciliation in East Asia. P. 6; Kim, Mikyoung. 2008. "Pacifism or Peace Movement?: Hiroshima Memory Debates and Political Compromises". Journal of International and Area Studies. 15 (1): 61-78. Pp 64-66

[22] Mick Broderick. 2013. Hibakusha cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the nuclear image in Japanese film. https://nls.ldls.org.uk/welcome.html?ark:/81055/vdc_100025763699.0x000001. P 103; Mikyoung Kim. 2008. "Pacifism or Peace Movement?: Hiroshima Memory Debates and Political Compromises". Journal of International and Area Studies. 15 (1): 61-78. Pp 65-66

[23] John W. Dower. 1995. "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory". Diplomatic History. 19 (2): p 275-276

[24] Jerome F. Shapiro, 2013. Atomic Bomb Cinema. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1195834. P 53

[25] Alistair Swale 2017. "Memory and forgetting: examining the treatment of traumatic historical memory in Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises". Japan Forum. 29 (4): 518-536. p. 518

[26] Akiko Hashimoto. "Something Dreadful Happened in the Past': War Stories for Children in Japanese Popular Culture." The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus 13 (2015): 1

[27] Asai Motoofumi, translated by Richard H. Minear, “Barefoot Gen, The Atomic Bomb and I: The Hiroshima legacy”, 1 January 2008, https://apjjf.org/-Nakazawa-Keiji/2638/article.html

[28] Jane L Chapman, Dan Ellin, and Adam Sherif. 2015. "Barefoot Gen and Hiroshima: Comic Strip Narratives of Trauma". P 50

[29] Alan Gleason. “Keiji Nakazawa Interview”, The Comics Journal http://www.tcj.com/keiji-nakazawa-interview/ (accessed 30 November 2019)

[30] Rie Nii, “My Life: Interview with Keiji Nakazawa, Author of “Barefoot Gen,” Part 14, available at http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=24184

[31] Adam Lowenstein, 2015. Dreaming of cinema: spectatorship, surrealism, and the age of digital media. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. P 79

[32] Alan Gleason,. “Keiji Nakazawa Interview”, The Comics Journal http://www.tcj.com/keiji-nakazawa-interview/ (accessed 30 November 2019)

[33] Ibid

[34] Christine Hong. "Flashforward democracy: American exceptionalism and the atomic bomb in Barefoot Gen." Comparative Literature Studies 46, no. 1 (2009): 125-155. P 138

[35] Alan Gleason, “Keiji Nakazawa Interview”, The Comics Journal http://www.tcj.com/keiji-nakazawa-interview/ (accessed 30 November 2019)

[36] David C Stahl,. n.d. "Victimization And "Response-Ability": Remembering, Representing, And Working Through Trauma In Grave Of The Fireflies". 161-202. P 164

[37] Cedric Littardi. “An Interview with Isao Takahata”, AnimeLand. http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/t_corbeil.html (accessed 29 November 2019)

[38] T Ichitani 2010. "Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms: The Renarrativation of Hiroshima Memories".  P 368

[39] Eric Stimson, “Isao Takahata Offers His Thoughts on war, Constitution”, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2015-02-26/isao-takahata-offers-his-thoughts-on-war-constitution/.85346, 27 February 2015

[40] Eric Stimson, “Isao Takahata Offers His Thoughts on war, Constitution”, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2015-02-26/isao-takahata-offers-his-thoughts-on-war-constitution/.85346, 27 February 2015

[41] AnimeForLife. “Grave of the Fireflies Full Movie English Sub”. YouTube video, 1:26:34, 12 June 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldWhL5JQxg&t=514s , at 08:21

[42] Ibid at 08:58

[43] Chakra. “Watch Barefoot Gen Full Movie English Sub 1080p HD”. YouTube video, 1:26:10, 30 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqDQd1wkDj0 at 31:28

[44] Ibid at 34:37

[45] Joachim Alt, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Feature Length Animation Movies." In The 11th Convention of the International Association for Japan Studies. 2015, 5-6

[46] AnimeForLife. “Grave of the Fireflies Full Movie English Sub”. YouTube video, 1:26:34, 12 June 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldWhL5JQxg&t=514s at 19:22

[47] Chakra. “Watch Barefoot Gen Full Movie English Sub 1080p HD”. YouTube video, 1:26:10, 30 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqDQd1wkDj0 at 35:44

[48] Jane L. Chapman, Dan Ellin and Adam Sherif, 2015. "Barefoot Gen and Hiroshima: Comic Strip Narratives of Trauma"; John Hersey 1946. Hiroshima. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp 50-51

[49] Burchett, Wilfred. 1983. Shadows of Hiroshima. London: Verso. P 37

[50] Silberner, Joanne. 1981. "Psychological A-Bomb Wounds". Science News. 120 (19): 296, p 297, Tony Delamothe. 1989. "Hiroshima: The Unforgettable Fire". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 299 (6706): 1023-1025. P 1024

[51] Chakra. “Watch Barefoot Gen Full Movie English Sub 1080p HD”. YouTube video, 1:26:10, 30 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqDQd1wkDj0 at 44:31

[52] AnimeForLife. “Grave of the Fireflies Full Movie English Sub”. YouTube video, 1:26:34, 12 June 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldWhL5JQxg&t=514s at 11:27

[53] Jones O. 2012. "Black rain and fireflies: The otherness of childhood as a non-colonising adult ideology". Geography. 97 (3): 141-146. P 144-5

[54] Chakra. “Watch Barefoot Gen Full Movie English Sub 1080p HD”. YouTube video, 1:26:10, 30 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqDQd1wkDj0 at 00:44:32

[55] Jones O. 2012. "Black rain and fireflies: The otherness of childhood as a non-colonising adult ideology". Geography. 97 (3): 141-146. P 145

[56] Tony Delamothe,. 1989. "Hiroshima: The Unforgettable Fire". BMJ: British Medical Journal. 299 (6706): 1023-1025. P 1023

[57] Chakra. “Watch Barefoot Gen Full Movie English Sub 1080p HD”. YouTube video, 1:26:10, 30 September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqDQd1wkDj0 at 1:13:50

[58] AnimeForLife. “Grave of the Fireflies Full Movie English Sub”. YouTube video, 1:26:34, 12 June 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldWhL5JQxg&t=514s at 1:19:05

[59] Wendy Goldberg, 2009. "Transcending the Victim's History: Takahata Isao's "Grave of the Fireflies". Mechademia. 4: 39-52. P 40-42

[60] Jerome Shapiro., "Ninety Minutes over Tokyo: Aesthetics, Narrative, and Ideology in Three Japanese Films about the Air War". 375-394, p 383

[61] Matthew Penney, “Neo-nationalists Target Barefoot Gen.” The Asia-Pacific Journal. https://apjjf.org/-Matthew-Penney/4733/article.html (accessed 10 December 2019).

[62] Matthew Penney, “Neo-nationalists Target Barefoot Gen.” The Asia-Pacific Journal. https://apjjf.org/-Matthew-Penney/4733/article.html (accessed 10 December 2019).

[63] Jonathan DeHart, “Barefoot Gen: Manga, History and Japan’s Right-Wing Fringe”, The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2013/08/barefoot-gen-manga-history-and-japans-right-wing-fringe/ (accessed 2 December 2019).

[64] Joachim Alt, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Feature Length Animation Movies." In The 11th Convention of the International Association for Japan Studies. 2015. p 6

Terra Incognita: The Silk Road, trade networks, and the spaces in between

I completed the below paper in September 2019 for my Honours degree in History at the University of Melbourne. The assessment task was to design a thematic exhibition - with a range of artefacts and accompanying descriptions - centred on an aspect of the course ‘The Long History of Globalisation’. I chose the topic of ‘The Silk Road’, inspired by this fascinating journal article by Kodadad Rezakhani, which argued for a more expansive and inclusive understanding of global trade and interconnectivity.

***

What could a combination of the First Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, a photo of a Chinese Terracotta Warrior, a Persian carpet, an Islamic-Iberian silk fragment, and an indigenous-Australian bark painting possibly have to do with one another, let alone the history of globalization?

The answer to this question begins with and hinges on the Encyclopaedia, which rests open at the definition of ‘Silk Road’:

Silk Road, also called Silk Route: ancient trade route that linking China with the West, carried goods and ideas between the two great civilisations of China and Rome. Silk came westward, while wools, gold, and silver went east.

Coined in 1877 by German geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofe, the term ‘Silk Road’ has been the source of much debate in certain academic circles. This is because the very notion of the Silk Road imposes a re-imagined and idealised modern concept on the past, with little bearing on the complexities of the historical reality across millennia. In this way, we can see how language and definitions – even those in trusted sources such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica ­- can circumscribe or distort understandings about nuanced historical events and phenomena. The photo of the Terracotta Warrior – discovered at Xi’an, the Eastern point of the Silk Road - speaks to this romantic historical narrative about the silk trade between East and West.  

One of the main critiques of the Silk Road as a definition and a historical concept is that way it eclipses the full picture of the spatial realities of the global silk trade. For example, in the Encyclopaedia’s definition, Iranian civilization is elided over as a non-descript place between “China with the West” or “the two great civilisations of China and Rome”. This ignores the geopolitical, cultural and economic significance of Iranian civilization entirely. The inclusion of the Persian carpet highlights the importance of Iran and other Central Asian nations as manufacturers of silk products, while also emphasising the diversity of the silk supply chain beyond China, which came to Safavid Iran from countries such as Syria and Lebanon.

Indeed, the conventional notion that the silk trade was unidirectional from China to the West (or Rome) is overly simplistic. The silk ‘Textile Fragment’ adds to our understanding of the multiplicity of ways in which silk spread throughout Europe from the Iberian Peninsula, where it was produced by artisans in the Islamic-Iberian caliphates from roughly 800 CE until the fall of the Nasrid Dynasty in 1492 CE.

This theme of recognising these ‘invisible’ trade routes at the peripheries of grand historical narratives is also demonstrated through the indigenous-Australian bark painting Makasar Prau. This artwork testifies to the existence of a centuries-old maritime and land trade route between indigenous Australians, Southeast Asian Macassan traders, and the Chinese people, where cotton and other textiles were exchanged for norther Australian trepang (sea cucumber). It also resonates with the Encyclopaedia Britannica as an alternate, non-European means of communicating knowledge, memory and history within society and intertemporally.

Each object included in the display is strongly associated with a national identity, be it British, Chinese, Dhalwaŋu, Iranian or Islamic-Iberian. The phenomena which bind together each of these temporally and geographically disparate objects are the invisible forces of economic trade, its associated networks across land and sea, and its mechanisms of exchange. In this sense, the practice of the history of globalisation can help us to ‘connect the dots’ and develop more balanced, nuanced accounts of history and an appreciation for the complex forces which shape it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica
First Edition, 1771, Volume 3, (open at the definition of “Silk Road”)
National Library of Scotland
Smellie, William, 1740-1795
Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar; and sold by Colin Macfarquhar, 1771.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

The first edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was published in 1768 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Instructively, it takes its name from the Latin ‘encyclopaedia’, which means ‘general education’, and ‘Britannica’, meaning ‘British’. As the world’s oldest English-language general encyclopedia, it represented the most systematic and comprehensive effort of English-speaking peoples to compile human knowledge in one academic, reputable, peer-reviewed source. Upon publication of the First Edition on 10 December 1768, an advertisement in Edinburgh’s local press announced that the Encyclopaedia would provide “accurate definitions and explanations” on a range of subjects spanning the arts and sciences.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1768 was not a novel concept. Records of similar encyclopaedic works date back to Ancient Rome, with Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historiae comprising 37 chapters replete with factual details and extensive explanations of the world he inhabited, covering subjects as diverse as geography, medicine, the arts, and natural history. In the 18th century, the three volume First Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica was preceded and eclipsed in scope and depth by the 17-volume French Encyclopédie (1751) and the 64-volume German Great Complete Universal Lexicon (1732).

The re-emergence of the encyclopedia as an academic and cultural phenomenon in the 18th century is closely associated with the Age of Enlightenment, a global intellectual and philosophical movement with roots in Europe and the fertile intellectual grounds of the Renaissance, which in turn harked back to antiquity as a source of inspiration for the modern, industrialising world. Proponents of the Enlightenment valued reason, factual accuracy and the scientific method as the foundation of all knowledge, rather than superstition, tradition and religion.

Photo of Kneeling Soldier
Qin dynasty, 221-207 BCE
Earthenware
Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, Xi’an, China.

Kneeling Soldier, Terracotta Army

This is a photo of one of the thousands of terracotta warriors standing guard in the Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Haungdi, protecting him in the afterlife as their models did while living. Unearthed by farmers digging a well north of the Chinese city of Xi’an in 1974, the discovery of the Emperor Qin’s Terracotta Army transformed Xi’an into a major global tourist attraction and generated renewed interest in the histories of Xi’an, Chinese civilisation, and the Silk Road.

Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi was a ruler who conquered and unified the warring Chinese kingdoms, putting an end to the division of the Warring States period, and who initiated construction of the Great Wall of China as a means of protecting his new nation’s northern borders and trade routes. The establishment of the Qin Dynasty from 221-206 BCE helped to instil a unified ethnopolitical conception of the modern Chinese nation and the Han people which endures to this day. Xi’an (Chang’an) was the capital of the Qin dynasty, and has in modern times been identified as the Eastern point of the Silk Road, an ancient and contentiously termed transcontinental trade route connecting Europe and Asia. The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined in 1877 by German geographer Baron Ferdinand von Richthofe. Since as early as 1100 BCE, Xi’an functioned as a cosmopolitan political, diplomatic and economic nexus for various Chinese kingdoms and dynasties, with extensive engagement and trade with the countries and civilizations to its west, without using a term comparable to Silk Road.

Entombed and undiscovered for nearly two millennia, the Terracotta Army is an important symbol for the nature of historical work, where unexpected discoveries can reveal lost worlds and reorient operative historical paradigms. The global fascination with the Terracotta Army also speaks to the grandeur, mystery and power of physical objects in engaging the public and communicating aspects of history.

Makasar Prau
1966, bark painting by Birrikitji Gumana, Yirrkala,
96 x 46cm.
National Museum of Australia. Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre

Makasar Prau, National Museum of Australia. Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre

Makasar Prau is an indigenous-Australian bark painting, depicting monochromatic sailors with spears in hand aboard wooden sailboats. It was created by Birrikitji Gumana (1890-1982), a community elder of the Dhalwaŋu clan in Eastern Arnhem Land, a region in Australia’s far north pointing towards the Indonesian archipelago. Painted on the smooth interior of native stringybark with natural earth pigments and ochres, Makasar Prau recalls Birrikitji’s childhood memories of interacting with seafaring traders, who visited Australia’s northern shores in the wet season, generally from November to April.  

From roughly 1700 CE, traders from Makassar, Indonesia would voyage to Arnhem Land in order to procure trepang (an edible sea cucumber) from the northern Australian coastline. Trepang was highly sought-after in Southeast Asia and China, and these Macassan sailors would exchange metal, cloth and textiles with indigenous Australians for the prized delicacy, in order to sell it to the vast markets to Australia’s north, particularly China, where it was valued for its culinary and medicinal qualities. After the Federation of Australia in 1901, the Government banned Macassan traders from Australia’s territorial waters, reportedly as part of the White Australia Policy. The last Makasar prau visited the ancient shores of Arnhem Land in 1907, bringing an end to centuries of trade and cultural exchange.

This bark painting is significant for many reasons. It represents a cultural medium used to  transmit knowledge and memories across generations of inhabitants in Eastern Arnhem Land; it is indicative of long-standing and extensive trade routes connecting indigenous Australians, Southeast Asia and China both culturally and economically; and it hints at the existence of complex, undiscovered histories outside the understanding of dominant cultural and linguistic groups, and prevailing historical narratives and paradigms.

‘Textile Fragment’
Silk, late 14th-early 15th century (Nasrid Dynasty), Spain
The Met, New York, USA

‘Textile Fragment’, The Met, New York, USA

This textile fragment was woven from colourful silk in the late 14th - early 15th centuries in the south of the Iberian Peninsula. It is an artistic product of the Nasrid Dynasty, the longest ruling and last Moorish-Muslim dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula, whose Emirate of Granada covered much of modern-day Andalusia in the south of Spain. The script reads ‘Glory to our lord the Sultan’ in Arabic, indicating the complex religious and political histories of the Iberian Peninsula over the past two millennia.

Large swathes of the Iberian Peninsula were conquered by the Arab-Islamic Umayyad Empire in early 700CE, leading to nearly 8 centuries of Islamic political, economic, linguistic, and religious influence on the peninsula. Recent scholarship suggests that the Islamic caliphates in the south of Spain (al-Andalus) began to produce silk and silken products as early as the 8th century CE. Items such as the ‘Textile Fragment’ were refined and exported from al-Andalus to the Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula, either through direct trade for clothing or fashion, as diplomatic offerings, or through religious exchange. Such was the demand for Iberian-Islamic silk throughout continental Europe, that by the eleventh and twelfth centuries the caliphates came to dominate the western-Mediterranean markets for silk and silk products, surpassing the traditional monopoly producers in the Middle East and China.

The existence of such a flourishing silk trade from Western Europe implies that the story of the diffusion of silk in Europe was far more complex than romantic accounts of the Silk Road suggest. In a broader sense, the historical resonances of the ‘Textile Fragment’ encourage us to form a more nuanced and inclusive sense of ‘Western Civilization’.

‘Carpet’
Silk, 16th century, Safavid Empire, Iran
The Met, New York, USA

‘Carpet’, The Met, New York, USA

This decorative carpet comes from the UNESCO World Heritage Site and shrine of Shaikh Safi al-Din, poet and founder of the Safavid Dynasty, which ruled Iran from 1501-1736 CE. Located in Ardabil in modern-day Iran, the shrine is adjacent to the Caspian Sea, situated in the great Trans-Eurasian thoroughfare of Central Asia.

Resplendent in its red, blue, gold and green colours, and woven with Persian-Iranian wool and silk, the carpet typifies the aesthetic of sixteenth century Persian rugs. Beyond their material beauty, these Persian rugs often depicted narratival scenes from Persian poetry and Islamic scripture. The silk cloth used to weave these Persian rugs was imported from nations in all directions around Iran, including Syria, Lebanon and China.

Because of its geography, Iran has been a seat of a rich cultural and economic exchange between Europe and East Asia for millennia. However, the liminal and transcontinental nature of its geography has led to limiting Eurocentric definitions and conceptualisations of the vast expanse of Iran as simply “Eurasia” - a threshold between the “West” and “Asia” – which often elides the cultural, economic and political achievements of Persian/Iranian civilization.

Background Image:

Nova Archipelagi Orientalis Tabula (A New Map of The Eastern Archipelago)
By Blaeu, Willem Janszoon, 1571-1683
National Library of Australia
MAP RM 4701

Nova Archipelagi Orientalis (New Eastern Archipelago), by Willem Janszoon Blaeu
National Library of Australia, and Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, the University of Melbourne

The Blaeu Map ‘Nova Arichipelagi Orientalis Tabula’ (A New Map of the Eastern Archipelago) was constructed in 1663 CE by William Janszoon Blaeu, a famous Dutch cartographer. The image is intended to orient the viewer to key themes about the history of globalization throughout the display. Blaeu produced the map with the support of the Dutch East India Company, the commercial entity involved in Dutch trade, exploration and colonization across Asia. This alludes to the display’s consideration of complex, interconnected and unknown trade networks across land, sea and time. Being a European map about unchartered Asian and Antipodean territories, there are also subtexts about East-West historical and geographical perspectives at play.

The incomplete nature of the map recalls the Latin cartographical term terra incognita or unknown land, prompting the viewer to question ‘unknown to whom?’ Such a phrase has resonances with the term terra nullius, which was a legal principle in international law used by the British to justify the occupation of the Australian continent despite the existence of indigenous nations and societies, which is also a subject considered by the display. At a meta level, the Blaeu map speaks to the way in which all historical work is akin to cartography, with new spaces on blank chart waiting to be discovered and filled in.

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McCarthy, Tom, “Encyclopedia Britannica halts print publication after 244 years”, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/13/encyclopedia-britannica-halts-print-publication

Stewart, Donald E., Levy, Michael, Hardy Wise Kent, Christopher, “Encyclopaedia Britannica”, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-English-language-reference-work

“Rare Map Makes Final Journey Home”, https://ilab.org/articles/rare-map-makes-final-journey-home-blaeu-map-returns-national-library-australia

Rezakhani, Khodadad. 2011. "The Road That Never Was: The Silk Road and Trans-Eurasian Exchange". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 30 (3): 420-433.

Schilder, Günter. 1971. New cartographical contributions to the coastal exploration of Australia in the course of the 17th century. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified].

Schroeder, Milton R., and Mary M. Schroeder. 1974. "The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: "All Human Knowledge". American Bar Association Journal. 60 (6): 711-714.

Woods, Dr Martin, “The Blaeu Map Returns”, https://www.nla.gov.au/unbound/the-blaeu-map-returns

Images: 

First Object
Encyclopaedia Brittanica, First Edition, 1771, Volume 3, (open at the definition of “Silk Road”)
National Library of Scotland
Smellie, William, 1740-1795
Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar; and sold by Colin Macfarquhar, 1771. https://digital.nls.uk/encyclopaedia-britannica/archive/144133903#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-811%2C-145%2C4302%2C3857

Second Object
Photo of Kneeling Soldier
Qin dynasty, 221-207 BCE
Earthenware
Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, Xi’an, China, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/441/gallery/&index=13&maxrows=12

Third Object
Makasar Prau, 1966, bark painting by Birrikitji Gumana, Yirrkala, 96 x 46cm.
National Museum of Australia. Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0010/546895/nma.img-__davi0009-000-wm-vs1-1400h.jpg

Fourth Object
‘Textile Fragment’
Silk, late 14th-early 15th century, Spain
The Met, New York, USA
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/447048

Fifth Object
‘Carpet’
Silk, 16th century, Safavid Empire, Iran
The Met, New York, USA https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/445995?&exhibitionId=%7b67f03ab5-3930-472a-b12a-f5f20ab10ff1%7d&oid=445995&pkgids=417&pg=1&rpp=4&pos=1&ft=* 

Background Image
Archipelagus Orientalis (Eastern Archipelago)
By Blaeu, Willem Janszoon, 1571-1683
National Library of Australia
MAP RM 4701, https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-232510007/view

An 18 year old’s letter to an unborn child

I recently found the below essay on my laptop while clearing out old material. It was a “SAC” (School-Assessed Coursework) for a Philosophy unit in the Victorian Certificate of Education, written in Melbourne, Australia in 2010.

The task was to write a letter to your unborn child, drawing on philosophical concepts from the course. The course was concerned with the good life, and living well. It was taught by the wonderful Dr Felicity McCutcheon, one of the best teachers I’ve ever had, and more importantly one of the kindest and wisest souls I’ve ever met. The letter, at nearly 1800 words, grapples with the philosophy of Plato, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, applying it to the 21st century. There’s a lot in the letter I would change and temper with age and experience, especially the prose, but I’ve found the hopefulness and life-affirming tone of the letter to be really refreshing.

It’s remarkable to read something I wrote 14 years ago, especially at such a young age. It’s almost as if it were written by a stranger. At 32 years old now, I am indeed a completely different person. So much has happened since - I’ve lived all over the world, attended university, worked in meaningful and interesting jobs. I’ve fallen in love, made friends, and seen places that have made me feel truly alive. I hope 18 year old me would have been proud of who I have become, and am becoming. The road certainly hasn’t been easy, there has been a lot of pain and disappointment and failure along the way. I suppose this is the same for everyone. It has given me a lot of strength to re-read this letter (at a time when I really need it), and to think of the hopefulness and intellectual curiosity of my younger self, so filled with possibility, and to think of the quiet bravery of how I tried to make the most out my one little life at that age. The letter ultimately calls for a spirit of exploration, creativity, transcendence, seeking something more, and connectedness with others.

The idea of having a child still seems far away, though not as much as when I was 18. Many of my friends and peers are settling down with long term partners, making homes of their own, and welcoming children into the world. I hope all of this happens for me, and that I can be a loving and caring father and husband.

***

Written July, 2010

a)    Write a letter to your unborn child, advising them on the best way to live (with reference to 21st century).

To my unborn,

Perhaps it is fitting that I am writing this letter to you as you unknowingly prepare to be cast from the darkness of your metaphorical cave and into the light of the world. The nature of this letter is one advocating a life of discovery, of transcendence from the darkness to the light, and of leaving obscurity for the dual truth of your existence, if you are so willing. I do not pretend that this life will be an easy one; it will be challenging and uncomfortable. However, the authenticity and satisfaction derived from embracing your humanity and striving for some higher goal, even if it is never attained, will allow you to arrive at a truth of our existence that is greater in depth and dimension than would be able to be obtained if the ‘truth’ of your perceived circumstances was simply accepted and permitted by your indifference to shaping your life.

What merit is there in sourcing and embracing this alluded to eternal propulsion towards something more? I cannot for me say with any tangible validation what exactly this drive is, I can only infer that it exists, and it is innate in every human. It is the desire, drive, impulse, the urge to break out of comfortability in the pursuit of that more. It was the humans who left the Rift Valley all those thousands of years ago, it was man reaching out, however ineffectually, to the depths of space, and it is man searching for his soul mate. Here is an excerpt from Book VI of Virgil’s Aeneid:

“Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore”

“So they all stood, each praying to be ferried across first
Their hands stretched out in longing for the further shore”

It is my belief that it is this endeavour, combined with the perseverance and honesty to commit to these chosen enterprises in their full extent, which characterises the human condition. It is natural, and in this case it is right. What is natural here is to be valued over the artificial constructs of society and convention, which have stifled the Will to Power that naturally exists within us, or Schopenhauer’s misconstrued interpretations of the said will. 

Most importantly, with this drive accounted for, I cannot prescribe what your something more will be. Indeed there is no merit in the ‘end’ itself, the merit of authenticity rather lies in the process of discovery and transcendence, and an embrace of these primal drives within us.

It is a truth I cannot prescribe nor enforce, and would not if I could. Instead, your journey is one to be driven entirely by self discovery. First, you must recognise and embrace the paradoxes of our reality, which surpass the comprehension of all men. Perhaps it is the value of our life that lies in this incomprehensibility; the great unknown, defiant of logic and reason, compels us to want life.

Your life will be determined to an extent by circumstances of fate; your family, place of birth, intelligence, appearance etc. All of these collude to form a parameter to your existence. These will shape how you are perceived in the world, and how you perceive yourself. And yet, it is within these deterministic bounds that you must utilize Nietzsche’s Will to Power, your free will, in the hope of one day breaking free of the dictates of your circumstances that deign you to be something that may be wholly incongruent to who you are as a person. Transcending these seemingly undeniable boundaries is remarkably similar to the experience of birth, which you are soon to be subjected to. The process of unveiling the truth or the reality previously kept from us is an abrupt moment of dislocation from your previous consciousness. Such a disruption is irreverent to the rhythmically reliable comforts of complacency and routine that society and Nietzsche’s “Herd” require for social functionality purposes.

Arthur Schopenhauer recognised the will that I have spoken about (terming it Will to Life), but instead of concluding as I have, aided by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, that embracing the will was rational, he advocated that it was irrational, as the Will to Life in itself is a non-rational force, a blind, striving power whose operations are without purpose or design. Therefore any product resulting from an adoption of our Will to Life will be equally blind and meaningless. To Schopenhauer, life is a vacillation between two conditions: either pain, which is synonymous with drives and wants, or boredom. When we are not in pain, through our drives and wants, we are bored with the mundane triviality of our existence. We are propelled inevitably between the two poles, as each is considered uncomfortable and unhappy. Thus the universal condition of humanity is unhappiness. His ultimate conclusion is that one can have a tolerable life not by complete elimination of desire, since this would lead to boredom, but by becoming a detached observer of one's own will and being constantly aware that most of one's desires will remain unfulfilled.

This can be considered true of the “Herd” as Nietzsche would describe them in our cultural context. As a society, we have never been more dissatisfied with our lives. Is it a coincidence that this emotional and spiritual stagnancy has coincided with a period of history that has seen the greatest provision of material goods and services, that are supposed to make for our comfortability, than ever before in history? The things we surround ourselves with are designed to liberate us from toil, from Schopenhauer’s “want” or “pain”. They have done so successfully. At what cost, however? What we have seen is that they have anaesthetised us into a state of comfortability and boredom, further depriving us of the riches of the soul that the vagaries of struggle, toil, and experience are able to render within us.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer acknowledged that within the Will to Life was the powerfully significant force of the sex drive within us. Our conscious selves are merely a projection of these deep and underling forces within.

Indeed, it is conformity to the dictates of the will that results in more unhappiness, thus perpetuating our eternal condition.

The relative good life for Schopenhauer lies in suppressing and ignoring this blinding Will to Life. There is an underlying stoicism in his philosophy, where he simply accepts our state of existence for what it is. In Schopenhauer’s work ‘The Basis of Morality’, he tells us that ‘the difference of characters is innate and ineradicable.’ Thus, we are unable to change the nature we are born with. The determinism of the Will dictates our character, and thus by extension, governs the fortunes or misfortunes of our lives.

In today’s cultural context, we are too conditioned to accept this as fact, and thus we accept the inevitability of our own mediocre existence. We use the externalities that initially shape us as justifications for everything that is not according to our warped perception of what is ‘extraordinary’ in our lives. We have lost touch with that innate drive within us that screams out for the process of striving for something more. It shouts out to break the concocted societal mould that binds us within a shell of mediocrity, safety, and security; but it is silenced by the soothing call of material comforts.

In our celebration of superficiality, we have neglected that the path to an authentic existence, a path to fulfilling one’s humanity, lies within with our Will to Power. Instead, we idolise and objectify celebrities; we raise them above us as heroes, as definitions for Nietzsche’s higher man (Ubermensch), and thus create an impenetrable barrier between us and what is in any case a false perception of a flourishing human being.

The difference between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s philosophies lies in their conviction to their wants, drives, urges and impulses. While Schopenhauer’s stoic man accepts that life is imbued with unhappiness, and that his desires will go unfulfilled, and thus our wants are not worth suffering for. He consequently resorts to boredom, and maintains the status quo.  Nietzsche’s man, on the other hand, values life, rather than resents it, and as a consequence of understanding that pain and suffering are a process vital to the securing of authenticity and truth, perseveres with what is considered unpleasant. Nietzsche is positively life affirming in his advocation that we take creative command of our drives, forces and impulses. We must become commanders and sublimators of our Will to Power, rather than subjects to the nihilistic misanthropy of the Will to Life. 

Despite this advocation of individual authenticity, which has been established to lead to a level of loneliness against the complacent, stoical mob, or Nietzsche’s ‘Herd’, I would like to advocate a seemingly counter-intuitive factor of our existence that at once seems to compromise the first securing of authenticity. Indeed it is our sociality and conviviality that is the second overarching factor of our dual nature and existence. This, combined with the adoption of our innate drives, compels us to arrive at another paradox of our existence. We are condemned to loneliness if authentic, yet cast into another level of inauthenticity if we deny the social nature of humanity.

There is great magic and joy to be found in interaction with other people, what Nietzsche describes as “the Herd”. Your spiritual salvation should not come at the price of loneliness or mocking from others, like Zarathustra. Knowing oneself is an entirely internal thing. Here is a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “if”.

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch…

You’ll be a man, my son.”

The path ahead of you, should you choose to embark upon such a quest for authenticity and truth, is not an easy one. Again, to quote Kipling, it is a matter of filling the “unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run”. The process of this path of transcendence and discovery is of immense value in itself, namely for the depth of understanding it provides one of humanity, and also for the fact that it is congruent with who we naturally are as humans. Any end, which is not to be determined by anyone else other than yourself, is immaterial to the real gain you have attained, that of being a free spirit.

ANZAC Day, 2024

‘Their name liveth for evermore’, Villers-Bretonneux

It was a great privilege to attend the ANZAC Day dawn service last week at the Australian National Memorial in Villers-Bretonneux, northern France, with a delegation of Australian students and General Sir John Monash Foundation scholars from across the UK. 

In Australia, we grow up learning of the sacrifices, bravery, and lost innocence of Anzac soldiers in the First World War. The Anzac legend has become part of our founding national identity, in addition to the early 20th century Australian achievements such as federation, suffrage for women, and distinct Australian architectural styles, literature, and art.

It was extraordinary to see the memory and sacrifices of the Anzacs honoured 106 years later, with senior members of the French and Australian militaries and governments delivering moving addresses. The town of Villers-Bretonneux – liberated by the Australian forces in 1918 – is a living memorial to the sacrifices of Australia, with streets named after Australian cities (“Rue de Melbourne”), and the local school named “L’Ecole Victoria – the Victoria School” bearing a sign with the injunction “do not forget Australia”.

The visit took on a personal significance for me, having recently discovered the historical records detailing my great, great uncle’s service in the Great War. Lance Sergeant John Herbert Greco left his life and young family behind in Queensland to join the war effort. He fought and was injured in Gallipoli. He then returned to the Western Front, and saw combat in Bullecourt and Pozieres, names and battles etched into history. He was killed in action on 5 April, 2018 in the first battle of Villers-Bretonneux, aged 32, the exact age I am today.

His remains were never recovered and no grave marks his final resting place. He is one of the 10,719 Australian casualties who died in France with no known grave. His entry in the Australian war Museum simply reads that his resting place was “believed to be somewhere near Amiens”.

“Believed to be somewhere near Amiens”

It was therefore deeply moving to walk through the peaceful fields surrounding Villers-Bretonneux and Amiens - once battle-ravaged landscapes pockmarked by shells and scarred by trenches – and to imagine John Herbert Greco at rest somewhere beneath the canola flowers.

Amiens, looking like the Ukrainian flag

We were also fortunate to visit the John Monash Centre and its moving and immersive exhibits outlining the horrors of the conflict – mechanised and industrialised warfare, the “storm of steel” and chemicals, and the loss of innocence.

Thank you to the brilliant Leut Matthew Newman for coordinating and leading such a meaningful delegation. Long may the association between the John Monash Foundation and the John Monash Centre continue.

Lest we forget.

What oxford Means: A Poem

What Oxford means
by Paul Monk

Young friend abroad of closely mentored mind, 

What joy it was, in my declining state, 

To visit you at Oxford and to find 

The niche you’ve found in learning’s old estate. 

I’d come from Paris, in a long tradition, 

Fresh from conversations with a sage 

Of my own vintage and o’erripe condition, 

About the world and our advancing age. 

Arriving at the station, where you waited, 

Recalled to mind my early journeys there: 

An impecunious grad, exasperated 

By his lack of means, but set to dare 

The secret world to hold his probes at bay, 

To find and chatter with a gifted friend, 

An Arabist Rhodes scholar who, today, 

Is our ambassador, Allah forfend, 

To Israel, just as the Gaza war 

And all the machinations of Iran 

Have opened an apocalyptic door 

To total chaos in the world of man. 

And, later, as an exiled China hand, 

Who’d probed the secret world and left again, 

To speak with some he thought might understand 

His disillusion and his numbing pain. 

But all of that was long before your time, 

Last century, in fact, antiquity, 

Prior to my bootstrapped, epic climb 

To the private heights of poetry. 

When did we first meet? At Base Camp Three? 

Less than halfway to the mountain peak? 

Even so, you seemed to see in me 

Some Mallory, determined he would seek 

The summit of all things, in face of death, 

Scornful of the compromising kind 

Of hollow men, forever short of breath, 

Who hardly seek and, therefore, never find 

Those pinnacles of ice, those lofty views 

That our poetic souls most hunger for, 

Who, consequently, have no active use  

For prosody or for the secret door 

That all Romantics stubbornly conceive 

As waiting for them, given that they yearn 

For deep initiation and believe 

That entrée will be gifted, if they learn 

To read the Noldorin, above the gate, 

Carved in runes by Narvi, long ago; 

To comprehend it rightly and translate 

Its common Elven magic, as you know 

Into the simple phrase, ‘Say friend and enter’ 

As I pointed out, at Tolkien’s pub, 

Which stands, in our time, somewhere near the centre 

Of the Oxford of our meeting. There’s the rub. 

Uncannily, that winter afternoon, 

You mistranslated it, as Gandalf had 

Misreading it, beneath the Hollin Moon, 

As ‘Speak, friend’, not as ‘Say ‘friend’, lad. 

But you, of course, had said ‘friend’ from the start, 

Booked me into Christ Church, guided me 

To hidden treasures, beauties at the heart 

Of where we were: the Picture Gallery, 

The sheer abundance Blackwells still displays, 

The ancient streets and, lastly, the Great Hall, 

Where the shade of Harry Potter plays, 

Beneath the august portraits on the wall. 

Yet that was just the prelude to a day – 

December fifth – so full of incident, 

So rich, so varied, it will surely stay 

With each of us, as was our shared intent. 

We strolled The Meadow, up before the Sun, 

Took breakfast and recorded, before lunch 

A podcast covering the darkened run 

Of world affairs, the dismal bunch 

Of autocrats and kleptocrats and fools 

Who now afflict our much-loved Middle-earth, 

Of how an ordered liberty unspools, 

And what the public thing is truly worth. 

We strolled through cloisters, gazed at chapels, 

In Oxford’s fabled colleges, then went 

To Blackwells, once again, where I picked apples: 

Three delightful books, my pounds well spent – 

Judi Dench’s decades in Shakespeare, 

Cat Bohannon’s Eve, exploring how 

From ancient roots, a woman could appear 

As co-evolved with males as she does now, 

But chiefly Wilson’s flowing Iliad 

To stand beside my Fagles and my Green - 

The older, male translations, which I’ve had 

As treasured classics, having always been 

As testified to, in our interview, 

A hoplite spirit, as regards the past, 

A Socrates of sorts, both staunch and true, 

Sceptical, but ready to stand fast. 

Our long-planned lunch, at the Ashmolean, 

High above Arundel’s stunning set 

Of ancient marbles, glorifying man, 

Befitted two quite Rilkean souls, and yet 

We rounded out the day, this was your gift, 

With Mozart, with Vivaldi and with Bach, 

In concert, which, of course, could only lift 

One’s mind, one’s spirit, to the splendid arc 

Our kind has cast across the world of Being, 

Its most transcendent, most astonishing 

Leaps of feeling, shaping, loving, seeing 

What can be made of almost anything. 

What, beneath that arc, are we to say 

Of how we saw the storied Bodleian, 

Or the Oxford Union, which, in its day 

Has harboured all opinions known to man? 

Or what shall we profess about the hour 

We passed, where Lewis Carroll, long ago, 

Conceived the door and tree that would empower 

The tale of wondrous Alice we both know? 

Just this: that all these moments we have shared 

Could only have occurred against two things: 

The fact that you and I both truly cared 

What Oxford’s been, what being with it brings. 

We’re not Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte, 

The dissipated toffs of Evelyn Waugh. 

We’re auto-poets now, in our own right. 

That’s what our time at Oxford means, at core.

Melbourne Winter In Bloom

“The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for it and it would not be a wasted life.” – Katsumoto, The Last Samurai

***

During isolation and lockdowns, I’ve found myself noticing and appreciating nature more than I usually would. Deprived of the noise and bustle of normal life - traffic, busy social gatherings, and a never-ending to do list - I’m enjoying being in a place of quiet stillness. It’s helped me notice and appreciate the little things, like the way wattle leaves steadily drip with rain after a heavy winter’s downpour, or the different songs of the birds living beside my window and how they talk to each other as dawn breaks.

The philosopher Iris Murdoch said that contemplating nature helps to calm the soul and takes oneself out of one’s self, a concept she called “unselfing”:

Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care.

The last few weeks of August in Melbourne are some of my favourite for being in nature. At no other time of the year am I so acutely aware of the changing of seasons as when we rush towards spring. The icy and dark days grow longer and warmer, the mood of the city lifts as we leave winter behind for another year, and the first blush of spring erupts in the streetscapes as flowers come into bloom. In recent weeks, these little moments of colour and joy have been a welcome antidote against the bleakness of lockdown and the pandemic.

Melbourne’s magnolia appears in all its splendour around the first week of August, with their colourful constellations anticipating spring’s arrival. Resembling floating pink and white candles as they unfold precariously on delicate branches, I’ve always loved their waxy texture, and their creamy, full and fresh fragrance. The below photos are from taken from North Melbourne and Kensington in 2018 and 2020 (click to scroll through).

I spotted these white Ornamental Pear blossoms (Pyrus Calleryana) on my run through North Melbourne on a sunny bluebird Saturday in mid-August. I was stunned because the flowers had been nestled safely in their buds only the day before. Evidently the beaming sun and warm weather was enough to coax them out of their winter hibernation. I love the powdery wintry white of the blossoms, and how their stamens (yes, I did Google flower anatomy) are carefully marked with pink pollen.

These Forest Pansy (Cercis Canadensis) photos were taken in my family’s backyard in August 2018. It’s probably my favourite tree, because it changes so completely in each of the four seasons, giving one the impression (or illusion) of having four different trees. In the last few weeks of winter and in spring, the naked branches explode with outrageous, vibrant pink and purple blossoms. The foliage returns shortly after for the late spring and summer, when the tree is filled with deep maroon heart-shaped leaves. In autumn, the heart-leaves become firey, smouldering hues of yellow and orange, before falling off in the winter leaving a haunted and spindly skeleton of a tree. The overall effect is very romantic, and rich in symbolism.

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The below photo was taken in late August 2018 just outside the beautiful Mark the Evangelist church in North Melbourne. I was drawn to the way both the polychrome brickwork of the building and the peach blossoms caught the late afternoon light, creating an overall rose-gold palette. With the church in the background, I couldn’t help but think that the blossoms and their wrought branches resembled a crown of blossoms, which would have been more comfortable and visually appealing than their thorny historical counterpart. I think the slightly macabre crown of blossoms complements the Romanesque and Gothic aesthetic of the church building quite nicely.

Peach blossoms in late afternoon light
Congregation of Mark the Evangelist, North Melbourne
August 2018

And finally, the below snap of pink cherry blossoms was taken in August 2019 in a backstreet of Glen Iris, in Melbourne’ south east suburbs. I was taken by the softness of the petals, which looked and felt a bit like crepe paper. The soft, bright pink blossoms are so striking and vibrant against the ashen black branches as they emerge from their deep red buds.

Once the pandemic is over, I hope to travel to Japan to witness the Sakura festival, which celebrates the blooming of cherry blossom trees and welcomes spring. A Japanese concept which is closely linked with cherry blossoms is mono no aware (物の哀れ, もののあはれ), which means “the pathos of things” or “empathy towards things”. It’s that feeling - mostly nice but occasionally overwhelming - of being deeply aware of something beautiful and transient, which evokes a certain sadness about the impermanence of life. In these difficult and uncertain times, I’ve greeted the return of the late August flowers like dependable old friends, and have been filled with hope and joy by their innocent, reassuring presence.

***

“It is true, as they say, that the blossoms of spring are all the more precious because they bloom so briefly.” - Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

Cherry blossoms in Melbourne
August, 2019

Yo-Yo Ma, The Middle East, and David Bowie

Yo-Yo Ma, posted on Song Exploder Instagram, 21 December 2018

What I’m listening to:

• ‘Yo-Yo Ma - Prelude, Cello Suite No 1, in G Major' in the Song Exploder podcast: This is a very special podcast featuring Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most famous cellists and musicians in the world. The production and audio qualities are sublime. Yo-Yo Ma breaks down the Prelude from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No 1, in G Major. While the episode is ostensibly about the musical work, it’s also a thoughtful meditation on Ma’s life, music, and growth as a performer. Yo-Yo Ma has recorded the Cello Suites several times: in 1983 at age 27, in 1998 at age 42, and in 2018 at age 62. Ma recalls the first time he listened to the original 1936 recording by Pablo Casals, and what he felt at the time, and the personal remembrances about his father who introduced it to him. The listener is intimately stepped through the mechanics of playing the opening notes of the prelude, and it actually feels as if Ma is personally instructing you in a lesson. When reviewing his own recordings, it’s interesting to note the emotional, technical and musical development of Ma as a performer and a person.

“There’s no question that with life experience, as you experience loss and love and tragedy, you are slightly changed. As a musician, you make your living to being sensitised to these changes, and digest them and make sure that you are always giving your full self to whatever you’re doing, which means that any experience that you’ve had has to be revealed in the process of making music. That almost forces you to make yourself vulnerable to whatever there is to be vulnerable to, because that actually is your strength.”

• Thelma Plum’s cover of Powderfinger’s “These Days”: I first saw Thelma play at Falls Festival in Byron over the 2019/2020 new year period, which feels like several lifetimes ago now. I think she’s one of the most beautiful, powerful vocalists and lyricists in Australia, and this cover is so soothing in these Corona times.

This life, well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned

It's coming round again
The slowly creeping hand
Of time and its command

• ‘Cardigan Song’ by Kikagaku Moyo: an insightful YouTube comment describes this song as having “telluric vibes”. After Googling this, I learned that “a telluric current or Earth current, is an electric current which moves underground or through the sea”. Very apt: Kikagaku Moyo are a Japanese psychedelic folk band(!), with soft vocals, delicate harmonies, and exploratory instrumentals, all of which combines to create a cosmic soundscape.

• Gang of Youths cover The Middle East’s Blood on Triple J’s Like a Version: one of the most beautiful songs ever written, heard as if for the first time with David Le'aupepe’s powerful, honest vocals and the band’s sensitive arrangement. Everyone I speak to about this song has a story about why it’s so moving, and why it often brings them to tears. I remember being 17 and falling in love for the first time, listening to it while sleeping on a mattress we’d laid out on my balcony on a hot summer’s night. Extraordinary.

It was the only woman you ever loved
That got burnt by the sun too often when she was young
And the cancer spread and it ran into her body and her blood
And there's nothing you can do about it now

Dale Marsh's painting of Teddy Sheean hangs in the Australian War Memorial. (Australian War Memorial)

What I’m reading:

• ‘Behind China’s newly aggressive diplomacy: ‘wolf warriors’ ready to fight back’ by Rowan Callick in The Conversation: I spoke with Rowan about democracy and authoritarianism in China and the fate of Hong Kong in July last year on my podcast Bloom. This piece in The Conversation highlights the growing nationalism and revanchism of the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping and his “New Era”, and how it’s manifesting through “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy.

• ‘Noticing nature is the greatest gift you can get from lockdown’ by Lucy Jones in The Guardian: A reflective piece which homes in on our changing ways of being in society during the Coronavirus lockdowns. Many of us have found peace in the stillness. The single-tasking has helped us to be mindful of the everyday beauty and intricacy that surrounds us in the living world: from the lives of birds and other critters, to the colours and shapes of plant life. The sentiments remind me of the line from The Doors’ “Tell All the People”:

Can't you see the wonder at your feet
Your life's complete

• ‘Accounts of WWII hero Teddy Sheean’s act of ‘outstanding bravery’ inspire continuing fight for Victoria Cross’ by James Dunlevie and April McLennan in ABC News: an extraordinary account of the bravery of seaman Teddy Sheean, who died firing an anti-aircraft gun at enemy aircraft which were strafing his shipmates in the water. The evocative painting above gives you some idea of his exploits.

• ‘Caliban’s speech’ (Act 3 Scene 2) in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest:

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

Caliban’s speech has always reminded me of a stanza from Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s poem Life is a Dream (La Vida Es Sueño)

¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.”

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
fiction, passing shadow,
and the greatest good is small,
That all life is a dream,
and that dreams themselves are a dream.

And finally, something beautiful:

• David Bowie on artistic integrity:

“Never work for other people at what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself or how you coexist with the rest of society. 

I think it’s terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfil other people’s expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that.

And the other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

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Andrea Motis, Helen Garner, and Charlie Mackesy

It’s been a hectic week on many fronts, so I’m pleased to have been able to follow through with last week’s (impulsive) decision to produce a weekly blog. Hope you enjoy a quick summary of the podcasts, music and articles which have stayed with me this week.

What I’m listening to:

• ‘Stephen Fry: City of Myths’ in the new "We’ll Always Have Athens" podcast. I love anything Stephen Fry, but particularly his podcasts, which distill his best quality for the audience’s pleasure. Also appreciated this new podcast series for its fostering of post-Corona wanderlust.

• Andrea Motis & Joan Chamorro Quintet playing Box Barcelona Music Sessions. One of the brightest young talents and most brilliant musical groupings going around, the opening rendition of the late Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” is out of this world.

• Tyler, the Creator’s Tiny Desk Concert with NPR Music. I love these NPR Tiny Desk performances, which allow so much of the artist’s personality to be explored. There’s a lot of joy in this jam, and the backup (lead*) vocalists - Kaye Fox and Kiandra Richardson - are sublime. Worth watching for the Spanish step change alone. While you’re here, check out Tyler performing EARFQUAKE/NEW MAGIC WAND at the 2020 Grammy’s. Verily, The Creator.

• Snakehips (what the hell are snake hips?) and MØ’s cover of Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’ at BBC Live Lounge. Nothing better than discovering new voices through covers of your favourite tracks, and there’s something special about the earthy honesty of the lead singer’s voice and this arrangement, which infuses the words with a kind of meaning I don’t get from the original.
  

What I’m reading:

• ‘I wish my single life was enough for me’ in The Outline. Speaks to the loneliness many come to feel in their late twenties and early thirties, with all of the major ‘adulting’ planets in alignment, except for somebody to love and be loved by: “My life is basically the best it’s ever been in every way, but I have not loved someone who loved me back in a number of years now, and the longer this persists the more sorrowful it makes me.”

• ‘Helen Garner: ‘I may be an old woman, but I’m not done for yet’ in The Guardian. Beautifully rendered, honest piece on ageing, writing and life by one of Australia’s greatest (and funniest) contemporary writers. “What I really mean is: How will I stay alive, if I stop writing?”

• ‘Wolf warrior’ diplomats reveal China’s ambitions’ in Financial Times. A disturbing read on China’s hardening diplomatic posture, supported by its “lupine envoys” as The Australian later coined them in its 16 May editorial.

• ‘Rwandan Genocide Suspect Arrested After 23 years on the Run’ in The New York Times. A lucid piece about the historic arrest of a man substantially involved in crimes against humanity in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Demonstrates the indefatigable efforts of the International Criminal Tribunal in seeking justice.

• ‘We feed you’ in The Saturday Paper. Innovative digital storytelling, featuring portraits of low-paid migrant workers in Australia who have not been afforded the same protections as other workers in the wake of the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. Life and dimension is added to their stories through interactive audio files, gifs, cartoons, and beautiful portrait photographs. “Over the last two decades, low paying work has increasingly been done by workers with no right to stay in Australia. It is especially the case in the food system. Temporary migrant workers plant, pick, pack, slaughter, slice, cook and deliver food for everyone else.”

And finally, something beautiful:

• I’m a big fan of artist and Instagram sensation Charlie Mackesy. I’m going to write a standalone piece on his work and new book ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’. His sensitive and gentle work reminds me of a 21st century Aesop’s Fables, and it feels so timely with the COVID-19 pandemic. More to come, as they say.

• You can check out his website here and his Insta here. I’ve also included the first post I saw of his below, which was published just as everything started to dramatically change in Australia in response to the pandemic. There was - and still is - a lot of fear in the community about the future, but this beautiful image reminds us that adversity is easier to overcome with others than on our own.

Charlie Mackesy, 13 March 2020, at https://www.instagram.com/p/B9pMt4KHcrO/