CONTINUUM OF TIME 時間連續體 (104)

READING （EAST/WEST） 閱讀 （東西)

Orientation and Significance 導向與意義

Posted December 15, 2021

________________________________________

JAPAN TODAYDecember 13, 2021
●

金 chosen as kanji character best representing 2021

Kyoto — The kanji character 金 (kin), meaning gold or money, has been chosen as the character best representing the events in Japan in 2021. The character symbolized Japan’s record haul of 27 gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics.

The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, a Kyoto-based organization that promotes kanji, has conducted the survey nationwide every year since 1995.

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

Hachiman in the Guise of a Buddhist Priest – Japan, 11th century. Polychrome wood. 48.9 x 41 x 32 cm (19 1/4 x 16 1/8 x 12 5/8 in.). Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
Curatorial Record:
The Shinto god Hachiman has enjoyed special prominence throughout Japanese history. He was originally a local military guardian protecting an agricultural and mining community in Usa. Since his legendary birthplace in Japan was near south China, a possible source of military threats, Japanese rulers came to rely upon him for protection against that danger. In this role, Hachiman became known as the Shinto god of war.
The Kimbell Museum’s figure of Hachiman reflects a complex theological transformation that occurred when the Japanese sought to reconcile Buddhism, a foreign religion, with native Shinto beliefs. Shinto gods could symbolically enter the Buddhist priesthood, thereby acquiring a dual identity. In this image, Hachiman is dressed as a Buddhist priest. Seated in a meditative position, wearing a monk’s robe, his head shaven, and carrying a jewel in his left hand, he resembles representations of the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha (in Japanese, Jizo), reflecting the fact that Shinto images shared the same stylistic features as Buddhist sculptures of the period. 
________________________________________

JAPAN TODAYDecember 14, 2021 

China marks 84th anniversary of Nanking Massacre 

BEIJING — China on Monday marked the 84th Anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, in which hundreds of thousands of civilians and disarmed soldiers were killed by Japanese troops in and around the former Chinese capital.

… 
China frequently criticizes Japan for not showing sufficient contrition for the brutality of its expansionist campaign that swept across Asia during the first half of the 20th century. The ruling party has often allowed anti-Japanese sentiment to build domestically to shore up its legacy as a defendant of China’s sovereignty and national dignity.
In 1937 and throughout World War ll, the Communists were based at Yan’an in northern China, far from the front lines, while most of the fighting and dying was done by Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist forces backed by the U.S. 
A 1946 international tribunal concluded at least 200,000 civilians were killed by Japanese troops in a weekslong frenzy of murder, rape, looting and arson after Nanking – China’s capital at the time – fell on December 13, 1937, after bitter street fighting in Shanghai. The city’s name is now spelled Nanjing under the pinyin romanization system.
Some right-wing Japanese politicians have downplayed the death toll or denied outright that the Nanking atrocity happened.
Increasingly, it is China that has raised alarms in Asia with its more assertive military and diplomatic posture, particularly over territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, along with its growing military harassment of Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy it claims as its own territory.

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________