Japan: Kingdom of Characters

Recently I had the pleasure of visiting the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia (UEA) for an exhibition organized by the Japanese Foundation entitled Japan : Kingdom of Characters. On an all-too-rare day of settled summer weather it was well worth the short cycle-ride from home to view.

The informative guidebook to the Kingdom of Characters exhibition explains that Japanese people have established strong ties with manga and anime characters; in effect, such characters have forged a powerful bond with the Japanese psyche, sometimes as a replacement for family and friends. In essence, many of the rich and imaginative characters of Japanese manga and anime have developed as compensation and comfort against the stresses and alienation of life in megapolis cities. And for these reasons it's not always easy for Westerners to appreciate manga and anime's enormous popularity in Japan. A sizeable percentage of Japanese society was profoundly psychologically dislocated as a result of the rapid  growth, industrialization and urbanization which Japanese population underwent in the twentieth century. In some ways manga and anime characters have also provided comfort for the solitary and lonely as well as the survivors of the many disasters Japan has experienced throughout its history. From the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the cataclysmic natural disasters of the Kobe earthquake of 1995 to the simultaneous disasters of earthquake, Tsunami, nuclear power-plant meltdown and subsequent radio-active fears of 2011, Japan has always been vulnerable, not only to ecological disasters but also to man-made catastrophes.

From the early 1950’s manga characters such as Tetuswan Atom (Astro Boy), Japanese anime has debated on humanity’s relationship to science, on the differences between robots and humans, the future of humanity in sci-fi worlds, often of a post-apocalyptic nature and the moral issues of living in a technologically sophisticated, yet alienating megapolis. Alongside an advanced technological and scientific perspective, the remnants of superstition and a fascination with the spirit world in the popular psyche often feature in Japanese anime. Typically, the ghost in the machine in Japanese anime speaks with the voice of a long-lost ancestral spirit.

There’s a considerable amount of mass-produced merchandise associated with Japanese anime; the Kingdom of Characters exhibition even re-creates a teenage girl’s bedroom crowded with the paraphernalia of her favourite anime characters, some of whom have achieved global popularity. The Tamagotchi ‘egg-watch’ digital electronic pet has now sold in excess of 76 million since 1996, while the characters of Pokemon and Hello Kitty (photo above) are instantly recognized and loved by many throughout the world.

Far removed from the cute and kitsch world of Hello Kitty with subject-matter unsuitable for any public exhibition, Toshio Maeda's notorious Urotsukidōji: Chōjin Densetsu, lit. Wandering Kid: The Legend of the Super God (1986-90) is a seminal anime work which features strong hentai elements of graphic sex.

Puzzlingly to western sensibilities Maeda's controversial Urotsukidōji mixes plots and genres seemingly unrelated to each other - horror, comedy, disaster, the supernatural and teen-age romance are all juxtaposed in random sequence. This effect is heightened further by the severe editing which Maedea’s flawed masterpiece has suffered at the hands of the British Board of Censors. Besides indulging in extreme eroticism and violence Urotsukidōji depicts an alternate world in which  the battle of good and evil is fought on a cosmic scale between mankind, beasts and demons. Urotsukidōji also includes an example of so-called tentacle erotica. The origins of tentacle erotica can be traced to an illustration by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's (1760-1849) The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife an influential example of Shunga (Japanese erotic art). The subject of tentacle eroticism has been explored by a number of artists, but perhaps none with such notoriety as Toshio Maedea’s interpretation. Maedea returned to tentacle eroticism in his equally infamous horror/sex comedy series La Blue Girl (1992-94).

Japanese anime has also been used a vehicle to discuss romance, sexuality and spirituality. In Takahashi Rumiki’s romantic-comedy Urusei Yatsura (1978-87) the bikini-clad Lum possesses the fatal combination of a bad temper in conjunction with magical powers as elements of her adolescent love-life. The relationship between sexuality and magic is never far from the surface in Rumiki’s dark fantasy Mermaid Forest (1991) which develops an ancient Japanese legend, that mermaid's flesh grants immortality if eaten. However, there's also the risk that eating it may also lead to death or transformation into a lost soul or damned creature.

Other notable landmarks in the history Japanese anime include Masamune Shirow’s  Ghost in the Shell (1995) in which a cyborg heroine with human consciousness questions her own identity - Perfect Blue (1997) a Hitchcock-like psycho-thriller and Hiroyuki Kitakabo’s Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) which sets the vampire myth on an American occupation air-base. Each of the aforementioned has in one way or another advanced the art of Japanese anima in either genre and story-telling and/or computer-generated graphic design.

Crown

Deeply associated with divinity and righteousness, power and authority, the head-dress known as the Crown retains potent symbolism.

St. Edward's Crown (above) contains much of the crown made in 1661 for the coronation of King Charles II. Only a minority of British monarchs have actually been crowned with St. Edward's Crown. These were Charles II in 1661, James II in 1685, William III in 1689, George V in 1911, George VI in 1937 and the present monarch Elizabeth II in 1953.

In modern times many nations have replaced their crowned ruler for a Republic. This occurred relatively early in England's history, following the execution of King Charles I in 1649 and the establishment of a Commonwealth from 1649 until 1660. However, with the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 and the ineffective rule of his son Richard, England opted for the less frequently trod path historically of Restoration with the coronation of King Charles II occurring in 1661. From the Restoration of Monarchy to the present day those resident in the United Kingdom are not defined as citizens possessing  a charter of Rights, but as subjects of the current crowned monarch.

The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols notes - Three factors supply the bases of the crown's symbolism. Being set on the crown of the head gives it an overriding significance. It not only shares the qualities of the head -the summit of the body - but also the qualities of whatsoever surmounts the head itself, a gift coming from on high. It sets the seal of transcendence upon the character of any accomplishment. Its circular shape is indicative of perfection and of its sharing in the heavenly nature of which the circle is a symbol. It marries, in the person crowned, what is above and what is below. As a reward of virtue, crowns are promises of eternal life on the pattern of that of the gods. Finally, the very material, be it vegetable or mineral, from which the crown is made defines by the fact that it is dedicated to this or that god or goddess, the nature of the heroic deed accomplished and that of the prize awarded by assimilation with Mars, Apollo or Dionysus. At the same time it reveals the supraterrestial powers entrapped and used to achieve the deed rewarded.

In the physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus the staunch Royalist discreetly draws his reader's attention to various types of Crown as worn by Augustus, Ptolomy, Alexander and Aaron. Crucially, each of these historical rulers, along with the titular King Cyrus are cited by Browne in his sketching of the Platonic types or eternal patterns in nature, in this case human nature, as being essentially a 'prototype' or archetype - that of the 'wise ruler' no less; Elsewhere, the Biblical figure of Solomon along with the Greek god Jupiter and the Egyptian Pharaoh are cited as examples of  the archetype of the wise ruler. 

Touching upon various kinds of Crown Thomas Browne observes-

The Triumphal Oval, and Civical Crowns of Laurel, Oake, and Myrtle, when fully made, were pleated after this order. And to omit the crossed Crowns of Christian Princes; what figure that was which Anastatius described upon the head of Leo the third; or who first brought in the Arched Crown; That of Charles the great, (which seems the first remarkably closed Crown,) was framed after this manner; with an intersection in the middle from the main crossing barres, and the interspaces, unto the frontal circle, continued by handsome network-plates, much after this order. Whereon we shall not insist, because from greater Antiquity, and practice of consecration, we meet with the radiated, and starry Crown, upon the head of Augustus, and many succeeding Emperors. Since the Armenians and Parthians had a peculiar royal Cap; and the Grecians from Alexander another kind of diadem. And even Diadems themselves were but fasciations, and handsome ligatures, about the heads of Princes; nor wholly omitted in the mitral Crown, which common picture seems to set too upright and forward upon the head of Aaron: Worn sometimes singly, or doubly by Princes, according to their Kingdomes; and no more to be expected from two Crowns at once, upon the head of Ptlomy. 

Royal coat-of-arms with 9 Lions and 4 Crowns

                        Roman silver disc of  Sol Invinctus circa 250 CE

Optica

 Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

Another illustration from a book once in the vast library of Sir Thomas Browne Opticorum libri sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles or 'Six Books of Optics, useful for philosophers and mathematicians alike' by François Aiguilon (1567-1617) a Belgian mathematician, physicist and architect . 

Aiguilon's book Optica (1613) was notable for containing the principles of stereographic and orthographic projections, as depicted above. He gave the stereographic projection its current name in his 1613 work.  One of the most important uses of stereoscopic projection was in  the representation of celestial charts which were increasingly necessary for  accurate navigation, exploration and trade-routes, especially for the empire-building of sea-faring nations such as the Dutch and British nations during the 17th century.

Aguilon commissioned the famous Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) to illustrate his book. Throughout Aigulion's treatise on optics, Rubens depicts three cherubs who act as guides and tutelary figures to reveal the nature of optical phenomena to the enquirer into Nature's properties. 

Just as the study of botany aided the physician in the field of medicine, enhancing his appreciation of the senses through scent and beauty as well as his understanding of nature's organic properties, so too the study of optics held both a scientific and a mystical dimension for the Natural philosopher. The study of optics with its emphasis upon Light and Dark, the visible and  invisible worlds and the deceptive nature of appearances has much in common with the spiritual symbolism of Gnosticism and Hermetic philosophy; symbolism involving Light and Darkness, one of the most richly-developed forms of spiritual imagery can be found in the sacred texts of all world religions, including Christianity. One of the most famous of all optical-spiritual imagery often cited as Gnostic in origin, occurs in the words of Saint Paul -

For now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror;  then we shall see face to face. - 1 Cor. 13 v. 12

The Master and Margarita

Earlier this year I read once again The Master and Margarita. Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece is considered by many to be a major 20th century novel and a seminal work of a genre loosely defined as magical realism. However, it's not always an easy novel to read in either its volume or thematic scope. Because of its many-facted nature, Bulgakov's masterpiece is both a metaphysical fantasy and a satire upon life in 1930's Soviet Russia, which alternates between comic and profound, mystical and satirical with seamless ease. It’s also a novel which inter-twines history with politics and religion, as well as a testament to the triumph of artistic self-expression in the face of State censorship and oppression.

Mikhail Bulgakov (May 15th 1891-1940) studied medicine and travelled extensively throughout Russia before settling in Moscow as a theatre director and writer. He worked on and developed, never quite completing his masterpiece right up until his death in 1940. Due to censorship and the controversial nature of his subject-matter, his novel was not published in its entirety until 1967. Its recorded that Bulgakov spoke personally to Joseph Stalin on the telephone requesting permission to travel, a request which was inevitably refused. Given the Zeitgeist of 1930's censorship in the Soviet Union it was also inevitable that Bulgakov's out-spoken attack on the bureaucracy of Stalinist Russia would not see light until decades later. As the Soviet composer Dimitri Shostakovitch also discovered when Joseph Stalin visited the theatre to hear his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District the Soviet dictator was the supreme State censor of the arts.

The Master and Margarita describes the visit of a mysterious character named Woland accompanied by a bizarre entourage who play tricks upon Moscow's citizens. The irony being the Devil and his entourage's conjuring of pranks in what was once the world capital of State-endorsed atheism. The novel's comedy is supplied by the antics of a walking, talking, fat, cigar-smoking cat who accompanies his master Woland and much of the satire is centred upon Woland's exposing the greed, lust, vanity and pride of Moscow's citizens. The novel's rapid action is set in a theatre, both on-stage and back-stage, a psychiatric hospital and the apartments of ordinary Moscow folk and interspersed in the narrative are episodes transporting the reader to Roman-occupied Jerusalem during the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. These are told from the perspective of Pontius Pilate and his tormented conscience. Not least among the novel's triple and inter-related story-lines is the love story of the Master and his redeemer, Margarita.

The Master and Margarita  is prefaced with an epigram from Goethe’s Faust-

                                         ‘…who are you, then?’

‘I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good’.

The myth of the scholar who barters his soul to the devil for knowledge has a peculiar place in the Western psyche, representing as it does, inverted questions of the individual’s relationship to God. Bulgakov's novel is in many ways a development and variation upon the Faustian legend which various playwrights have been attracted to, including the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe, author of The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604). Several historical persons in the esoteric tradition have been proposed as a prototype of Faust. In the British esoteric tradition the Elizabethan magus John Dee is often proposed. A more likely figure from the country of the legend’s origin would be the Renaissance figure of Paracelsus.

The medieval legend of the questing scholar who barters his soul to the Devil was developed by the German genius and polymath Goethe in Faust I and II. The figure of Faust in Goethe’s drama, his gambling his soul with the Devil at risk of losing it, was of particular interest to the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung. In fact, there’s sufficient material in Jung’s collected writings for a full-length essay on his interpretation of Goethe’s drama. Digressing slightly, I cannot resist quoting Jung's summarizing of the Faustian spirit and it's relevance to modern-day man -

It was from the spirit of alchemy that Goethe wrought the figure of the “superman” Faust, and this superman led Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to declare that God was dead and to proclaim the will to give birth to the superman, ‘to create a god for yourself out of your seven devils”. Here we find the true roots, the prepatory processes deep in the psyche, which unleashed the forces at work in the world today. Science and technology have indeed conquered the world, but whether the psyche has gained anything is another matter.  -CW 13: 163

As in Goethe's Faust Mikhail Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita asks questions on individual destiny, fate and redemption. Crucially, Bulgakov raises the relevance of the Faustian myth in his novel to modern times, holding up a mirror to the responses and moral choices available to the individual when faced with the temptation of evil when living under stifling State bureaucracy, censorship and economic hard times.

In his 1997 introduction Richard Peaver stated no-one has ever been able to explain why several minor characters in The Master and Margarita share the names of famous composers.  In  what may be a world first, I believe I can in fact explain why Bulgakov's minor characters are named after composers.

The Master and Margarita opens with a literary professor named Berlioz meeting the Devilish trickster Woland one evening shortly before being decapitated by a tram, slipping under its wheels from spilt sunflower oil, just as Woland predicts. The psychiatric hospital in which the Master is a voluntary resident and where several victims of Woland's diabolic tricks end up insane from their disbelief from encountering the Devil, is maintained by a suitably cold and clinical doctor named Stravinsky. The theatre where Woland first performs magical tricks upon an astounded Moscow audience is run by a much harassed director named Rimsky-Korsakov.

Quite simply, all three of these characters are named after composers who wrote music in which the Devil is prominent. The Romantic composer Hector Berlioz wrote a free-form oratorio entitled The Damnation of Faust. Igor Stravinsky in 1918 wrote a jazz-style chamber work The Soldier's Tale in which a soldier trades his fiddle to the devil for a book which predicts the future of the economy. The Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov famously re-arranged and orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky's tone-poem A Night on a Bare Mountain a musical portrait of a mid-summer Walpurgis Nacht and witches sabbath, as also occurs in a central chapter of The Master and Margarita.

The British author Salman Rushdie once stated that The Master and Margarita was an inspiration for his own novel of magical realism The Satanic Verses (1989). Twenty-three years since first reading Bulgakov's love-story fantasy I recognise echoes of my own life's love-history to certain characters of the novel; my first copy of it was a birthday present given in 1989 from someone special to my heart over decades. Every time I read Bulgakov's landmark novel of magical realism another meaning within its comic and tragic pages illuminates my understanding of my own progress in life. Bulgakov's masterpiece is capable of striking a deep chord on the themes of individual destiny and the relationship between creativity, love and mental illness.

The Master and Margarita has been served well in translation since its first publication in 1967. It's also been a rich source of inspiration to numerous artists, attracted to its strong characters and magical scenes. I've chosen only two images from a wide variety of art available on-line. There are also several Russian productions of The Master and Margarita on Youtube which are well worth checking out.

Editions

Harvill Press 1967 translated by Michael Glenny

Collins Havill 1988 reprinted (twice)
Picador 1997  translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine O’Connor

Penguin 1997 reprint 2000 trans.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Also recommended
Mikhail Bulgakov -  Heart of a Dog (1925) first published 1968
A novella/long short story equally comic and profound. 

Wiki-links -  The Master and Margarita     Mikhail Bulgakov

Julian of Norwich

Portrait of a Young woman wearing a Coif  (c. 1435)

                     by Roger van der Weyden

The ancient city of Norwich has the rare distinction of being the home to two Christian mystics, namely the physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) and the anchoress Julian of Norwich (circa 1342-1416).

Browne has been a perennial bloom of English literature. Diverse writers have responded to his creativity, including in modern times, Jorge Borges and W. G. Sebald. In contrast, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love  has from being little-known in the early 20th rapidly become recognised as a work of world spiritual literature, better known than either Browne's Religio Medici (1643) and certainly more than his advisory essay Christian Morals (circa 1670).

Julian of Norwich's fame as a writer of profound spiritual insight, and as the first woman to write a book in the English language, was however, not established until the 20th century. Her Revelations of Divine Love only fully entered public consciousness through a sympathetic edition published in 1901 by Grace Warrick and later when T.S. Eliot famously quoted her in his poem  'Little Gidding' of the Four Quartets in 1942.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

Julian of Norwich lived during the last years of the Black Death which devastated the population of Europe by one third. The later years of the 14th century were also an age of cattle disease, social unrest in the form of the Peasant's Revolt and several years of bad harvest; the harvest of 1369 being the worst in a 50 year era. Against this historical background, on May 8th 1373 aged 30, when seriously ill and preparing for her Last Rites, Julian experienced a series of  'showings' or visions of the Passion of Christ. Miraculously recovering from her near death experience, she spent many years contemplating the meaning of her Revelations which she believed were a spiritual message to be shared with all Christians.

Although describing herself as 'unlettered', the early Short Text and the later expanded Long Text of the Revelations of Divine Love are testimony to the long journey which Julian made in her life-time from visionary to profound and original theologian. Indeed, Julian's Revelations have been described as, 'the most remarkable theological achievement of the English late Middle Ages'. Throughout her Revelations of Divine Love Julian insists upon, and emphasizes her conformity to the doctrine of Holy Church.

Her mystical imagery includes the hazelnut as symbolic of God's love for humanity-

And he showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled that it continued to exist and did not suddenly disintegrate; it was so small. And again my mind supplied the answer, ‘It exists, both now and forever, because God loves it'.

It's also in Revelations of Divine Love that Julian, like Jesus in the gospels, uses the medium of parable involving a lord and a servant. Julian describes her vision of lord and servant as a parable of Man's relationship to God thus-  

The first kind of vision was this: the bodily likeness of two people, a lord and a servant, and with this God gave me spiritual understanding.... The lord looks at his servant lovingly and kindly, and he gently sends him to a certain place to do his will. The servant does not just walk, but leaps forward and runs in great haste, in loving anxiety to do his lord's will. And he falls immediately into a ditch and is badly hurt. And then he groans and moans and wails and writhes, but he cannot get up or help himself in any way. And in all this I saw that his greatest trouble was lack of help; for he could not turn his face to look at his loving lord, who was very close to him, and who is the source of all help; but like a man who was weak and foolish for the time being, he paid attention to his own senses, and his misery continued... 

Julian believed that the servant in 'good will and his great longing were the only cause of his fall', and throughout the Revelations there's an emphasis upon humanity's basically good, but flawed nature. Today, on at least three accounts, Julian is considered to be a theologian of significance. Her declaration-

'Just because I am a woman, must I therefore believe that I must not tell you about the goodness of God.'

- places her as a staunch supporter of the Christian feminist movement. Disassociated in gender from dubious and negative traits of patriarchy, Julian's highly original depiction of God as a caring and nurturing mother as well as father has resounding implications for Christian feminist theology. 

Secondly, according to Grace Jantzen, Julian's insights into spiritual growth and wholeness anticipate modern interest in psychotherapy and the attendant quest for spiritual insight which has dominated the 20th century. Thirdly, Julian's total lack of condemnation of humanity, far removed from standard medieval concepts of damnation and notions of God's wrath and judgement, distinguish her as a radical theological modern. There is no wrathful or angry God in Julian's merciful and compassionate theology,  she herself stating-

'For I saw no wrath except on man's side, and He forgives that in us, for wrath is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and to love'.

God's love for humanity is described by Julian as - 'our clothing, wrapping us for love, embracing and enclosing us for tender love'.

For Julian, sin occurs in human life not as stressed in medieval theology, because people are intrinsically evil, but because they are ignorant and lack self-knowledge. Through sin (a heavily-loaded word which many protest and recoil from upon hearing, without any real understanding of its meaning moral and spiritual wrong-doing) and the resultant consequences of sin in one's life, suffering humanity draws closer to an awareness of Christ's own suffering. In Julian's theology sin is necessary in life as ultimately it brings one to self-knowledge which in turn leads to acceptance of the role of Christ and God in one's life.

Julian of Norwich's vision of love and joy ruling God and Christ's relationship to humanity, her emphasis upon the feminine aspect of God and insistence upon orthodoxy are positive factors which will continue to attract new admirers to her spiritual classic Revelations of Divine Love throughout the world.

Julian's feast day is celebrated on May 8th in the Anglican and Lutheran Church and on May 13th in the Roman Catholic tradition.

Recommended books

Julian of Norwich  Grace Jantzen SPCK 1987 new edition 2000

Revelations of Divine Love trans. Elizabeth Spearing Penguin 1998

Consulted
The English Mystical Tradition  David Knowles Burns and Oates 1961
In search of Julian of Norwich Shelia Upjohn pub. Darton -Longman-Todd  1989

Web-Links   Wikipedia - Julian of Norwich
Web-site on Julian, her life and contemporaries Umilta

Essay on Julian and Sir Thomas Browne's literary and spiritual affinity at Umilta