‘The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty'
It was written between 1330 and 1332. This was not, says Donald Keene in the introduction to his translation, 'a propitious time for a work of reflection and comment.' Very far from it, as we'll see shortly.
There were many ways and degrees of 'leaving the world.' Men and women oppressed by commotion and turmoil around them and within them — oppression heightened by a sense of the sheer futility of it all, the perceived unreality of this transient dreamlike soap-bubble world in which we are born to no purpose and die for no reason — took Buddhist vows, shaved their heads, donned drab monkish or nunnish robes and withdrew to monasteries, nunneries or hermitages, there to 'lose themselves in prayer,' either enduring, more or less serenely, their live burial, as it must have seemed to their more worldly contemporaries, or awakening to real life, whose meaning and essence are not to be found in this life of birth and death from which only prayer can free us.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
10-08-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Students Intensively Studied Japanese Language to be Naval Language Officer in Pacific War; Second-Generation Japanese Americans Recruited by U.S. Army
During World War II, the U.S. Navy needed to quickly train officers to read, write and speak Japanese. The navy produced about 1,200 such officers, and Donald Keene was one of them. At the time, it was imperative for the U.S. military to understand the Japanese people and military, which was the enemy to the United States. 'When it came time to fight Japan, I heard that there were only about 50 Americans who could read and write Japanese,' Keene wrote in his autobiography in Japanese. Immersed in Japanese Keene enrolled in the Navy Japanese Language School, which opened at the University of California, Berkeley, in February 1942, about two months after Japan's Pearl Harbor attack. Most of the teachers were second-generation Japanese Americans who had been born in the United States and educated in Japan before returning to the United States. In June 1942, the school was relocated to the University of Colorado, Boulder, due to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to inland areas. The students lived a life immersed in Japanese. Classes were held six days a week, with two hours of reading, one hour of conversation and one hour of writing every day. It took about the same amount of time to prepare for the classes. They spoke Japanese during meals, watched Japanese movies and read children's stories written in Japanese. Although the school was established because of the war, it was a paradise for Keene. '[It felt] strangely detached from the war,' he wrote. 'I was able to devote myself entirely to learning Japanese.' Keene had no feelings of hostility toward the Japanese people. He was moved to tears by the tragic scenes in Japanese films and thrilled by samurai movies. Keene graduated at the top of the class in January 1943 and delivered the valedictorian speech in Japanese. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Hawaii as a language officer in the Intelligence Division. Same human beingsThe U.S. Navy harbored prejudice and distrust toward Japanese Americans and recruited qualified white Americans from universities across the country to serve as language officers. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army actively recruited second-generation Japanese Americans who could speak Japanese as language soldiers. According to Nisei Veterans Legacy, which chronicles the history of Japanese Americans who served in World War II, approximately 6,000 Japanese Americans served as language soldiers in the U.S. Army Intelligence Service. The U.S. Army and Navy language specialists gathered in Hawaii and worked together in the same room in Honolulu. Their tasks included translating Japanese military documents and diaries of Japanese soldiers captured on the front lines. Chikara Don Oka, a second-generation Japanese American Army language soldier who died in 2015, was one of those who knew Keene at the time. In his autobiography, written in English, he wrote: 'All were truly officer and gentleman. Mr. Donald Keene was one of them. He was very quiet and hard-working officer.' Keene led a group of second-generation Japanese American language soldiers in Okinawa in April 1945, with the mission of calling on Japanese soldiers to surrender. One of his subordinates, Jiro, had roots in Okinawa and suggested they have lunch at his relative's house, even though the Battle of Okinawa was in full swing. Keene went to the house and was warmly welcomed by the family. Keene, who had also interrogated prisoners of war in Hawaii, enjoyed talking with them about music and literature, and at their request, he held concerts at the camp, where they listened to Beethoven's 'Eroica' together. After the war, Keene reflected: 'I didn't think of the prisoners as enemies. I thought of them as the same human beings as me.' These interactions with second-generation Japanese Americans and prisoners of war deepened Keene's feelings for Japan. Contributions to postwar Japan Many former language specialists made important contributions to postwar Japanese society by utilizing their language skills, just like Keene. Otis Cary, who served as the commander of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Hawaii and died in 2006, became a professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto after the war. Edward Seidensticker, who died in 2007, translated the works of Japanese writers such as Yasunari Kawabata and contributed to Kawabata receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Mainichi
07-08-2025
- The Mainichi
US nuclear weapons sites remember 80th anniv. of Hiroshima A-bomb
OAK RIDGE, Tennessee (Kyodo) -- Events commemorating the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima were held in some U.S. cities on Wednesday, its 80th anniversary, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where uranium was enriched to make a deadly weapon that ushered in the nuclear age. The southern U.S. city was a secret site built to produce highly enriched uranium as part of the Manhattan Project, under which the United States sought to develop atomic bombs. While a number of Americans believe that the atomic bombing hastened the end of World War II and therefore reduced overall casualties, some people have come to be more ambivalent toward nuclear weapons. Outside the so-called Y-12 complex, which still stores nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear-powered vessels, over 20 people offered paper cranes in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, and remembered their sufferings and the range of destruction rendered by the ultimate weapon. Gyoshu Utsumi, a 73-year-old monk at a Buddhist temple in the state who hailed from northeastern Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, recited a sutra after the participants observed a moment of silence to mark the blast 80 years ago on Aug. 6. Utsumi was joined by Emily Strasser, a Tufts University professor whose grandfather worked on uranium enrichment as a chemist at Oak Ridge, among others. She admitted feeling bewildered at her grandfather's involvement and said targeting an atomic bomb at a civilian population is unacceptable. In San Francisco and nearby Livermore in California, home to one of the United States' nuclear weapons laboratories, people also gathered to rally for nuclear abolition. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located around 30 miles east of San Francisco, is one of only two sites in the United States currently designing nuclear weapons. A coalition of community groups who have gathered outside the laboratory nearly every year since 1981 to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki returned this anniversary with renewed urgency. Group members staged a die-in, a form of protest popularized by environmental and antiwar advocates in the 1970s, commemorating the people who perished in the atomic bombings or soon after due to radiation. After the outlines of their bodies were chalked into the pavement, participants rose to perform a Japanese Bon dance. Lifelong advocates for nuclear disarmament said they felt the current nuclear threat level is higher than it has ever been in their lives. That sentiment was shared by the crew of the Golden Rule, the peace boat that first sailed in 1958 with the mission to end the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and celebrated its arrival in San Francisco on Tuesday. Gerry Condon, 78, the president of the Golden Rule committee, said they are sailing today against the looming threat of nuclear war. "All the guardrails are off," Condon said.
Kyodo News
07-08-2025
- Kyodo News
U.S. nuclear weapons sites remember 80th anniv. of Hiroshima A-bomb
OAK RIDGE, Tennessee - Events commemorating the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima were held in some U.S. cities on Wednesday, its 80th anniversary, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where uranium was enriched to make a deadly weapon that ushered in the nuclear age. The southern U.S. city was a secret site built to produce highly enriched uranium as part of the Manhattan Project, under which the United States sought to develop atomic bombs. While a number of Americans believe that the atomic bombing hastened the end of World War II and therefore reduced overall casualties, some people have come to be more ambivalent toward nuclear weapons. Outside the so-called Y-12 complex, which still stores nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear-powered vessels, over 20 people offered paper cranes in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing, and remembered their sufferings and the range of destruction rendered by the ultimate weapon. Gyoshu Utsumi, a 73-year-old monk at a Buddhist temple in the state who hailed from northeastern Japan's Miyagi Prefecture, recited a sutra after the participants observed a moment of silence to mark the blast 80 years ago on Aug. 6. Utsumi was joined by Emily Strasser, a Tufts University professor whose grandfather worked on uranium enrichment as a chemist at Oak Ridge, among others. She admitted feeling bewildered at her grandfather's involvement and said targeting an atomic bomb at a civilian population is unacceptable. In San Francisco and nearby Livermore in California, home to one of the United States' nuclear weapons laboratories, people also gathered to rally for nuclear abolition. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, located around 30 miles east of San Francisco, is one of only two sites in the United States currently designing nuclear weapons. A coalition of community groups who have gathered outside the laboratory nearly every year since 1981 to remember the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki returned this anniversary with renewed urgency. Group members staged a die-in, a form of protest popularized by environmental and antiwar advocates in the 1970s, commemorating the people who perished in the atomic bombings or soon after due to radiation. After the outlines of their bodies were chalked into the pavement, participants rose to perform a Japanese Bon dance. Lifelong advocates for nuclear disarmament said they felt the current nuclear threat level is higher than it has ever been in their lives. That sentiment was shared by the crew of the Golden Rule, the peace boat that first sailed in 1958 with the mission to end the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and celebrated its arrival in San Francisco on Tuesday. Gerry Condon, 78, the president of the Golden Rule committee, said they are sailing today against the looming threat of nuclear war. "All the guardrails are off," Condon said.
