sayoarashi-blog

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Lobby card for Onatsu Torimonocho: Torimasu (お夏捕物帳 通り魔), 1960, directed by Ryo Hagiwara (萩原遼) and starring Michiko Saga (瑳峨三智子).

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Children enjoy the kamishibai 紙芝居 (picture-story show) from 占領期日本のオールカラー写真集 (Occupation of Japan all-color photo book) - Japan - 1945-1952

Source readyfor.jp/projects/Japan

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...my view is that we must return again to certain sets of ideas which suit us, that are cardinal for us, that are metaphysically objective and subjective, that see the flux and warp and weft of life, and its complicatedness, but know there are absolute standards upon which things are based.

If we can’t overcome the weapons which are used against us, we will disappear. These are the facts. And therefore we have to do so in our own minds.

Every other group that’s ever existed in human history has not had the albatross around it, that it only remembers as a form of guilt and expiation, and as a Moloch before sacrifices must be made, their own moments of grief and of slaughter and of ferocity. They configured the world in another way.

When the Greeks sacked a city in internal warfare, everyone would be enslaved. But they did not remember, when their bards sang of their victories, that they had denied human rights of other Greek city states.

No people can survive if it incorporates as a mental substructure an anti-heroic myth about itself.

-Jonathan Bowden

http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/credo-a-nietzschean-testament/

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But unfortunately, America is a communist country and Americans are not persecuted for being too communist.  Au contraire - they are petted and lionized.  They appear daring while taking no risks.   It’s perfect.  It’s true that there were a couple of periods where as many as ten or twelve communists suffered mild professional consequences for cavorting too openly with the Soviet mass-murder cult.  Surely ten Americans a day are fired for racism.  Hitler has been dead for 70 years, and the Brown Scare rolls on - at a thousand times the maximum intensity of “McCarthyism” or the Palmer Raids.

Mencius Moldbug

(via

miss-andrea

)

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Let's say you were a person who didn't care at all about the Constitution, and you wanted to take America back to the past and establish a new order of hereditary nobility. What could be more deliciously reactionary than that? Real, live nobles, walking around on the street. So let's see what it would take to make it happen. First, we need to define noble status. Our rule is simple: if either of your parents was a noble, you're a noble. While this is unusually inclusive for a hereditary order, it is the 21st century, after all. We can step out a little. And nobility remains a biological quality - a noble baby adopted by common parents is noble, a common baby adopted by noble parents is common. Fine. What are the official duties and privileges of our new nobility? Obviously, we can't really call it a noble order unless it has duties and privileges. Well, privileges, anyway. Who needs duties? What's the point of being a noble, if you're going to have all these duties? Screw it, it's the 21st century. We've transcended duties. On to the privileges. The basic quality of a noble is that he or she is presumed to be better than commoners. Of course, both nobles and commoners are people. And people do vary. Individual circumstances must always be considered. However, the official presumption is that, in any conflict between a noble and a commoner, the noble is right and the commoner is wrong. Therefore, by default, the noble should win. This infallible logic is the root of our system of noble privilege. For example, if a noble attacks a commoner, we can presume that the latter has in some way provoked or offended the former. The noble may of course be guilty of an offense, but the law must be extremely careful about establishing this. If there is a pattern of noble attacks on commoners, there is almost certainly a problem with the commoners, whose behavior should be examined and who may need supplemental education. If a commoner attacks a noble, however, it is an extremely serious matter. And a pattern of commoner attacks on nobles is unthinkable - it is tantamount to the total breakdown of civilization. In fact, one way to measure the progress that modern society has made is that, in the lifetime of those now living, it was not at all unusual for mobs of commoners to attack and kill nobles! Needless to say, this doesn't happen anymore. This intentional disparity in the treatment of unofficial violence creates the familiar effect of asymmetric territorial dominance. A noble can stroll anywhere he wants, at any time of day or night, anywhere in the country. Commoners are advised not to let the sun set on them in noble neighborhoods, and if they go there during the day they should have a good reason for doing so. One of the main safeguards for our system of noble authority is a systematic effort to prevent the emergence of commoner organizations which might exercise military or political power. Commoners may of course have friends who are other commoners, but they may not network on this basis. Nobles may and of course do form exclusive social networks on the basis of nobility. Most interactions between commoners and nobles, of course, do not involve violence or politics. Still, by living in the same society, commoners and nobles will inevitably come into conflict. Our goal is to settle these conflicts, by default, in favor of the noble. For example, if a business must choose whether to hire one of two equally qualified applicants, and one is a noble while the other is a commoner, it should of course choose the noble. The same is true for educational admissions and any other contest of merit. Our presumption is that while nobles are intrinsically, inherently and immeasurably superior to commoners, any mundane process for evaluating individuals will fail to detect these ethereal qualities - for which the outcome must therefore be adjusted. Speaking of the workplace, it is especially important not to let professional circles of commoner resistance develop. Therefore, we impose heavy fines on corporations whose internal or external policies or practices do not reflect a solid pro-noble position. For example, a corporation which permits its commoner employees to express insolence or disrespect toward its noble employees, regardless of their relationship in the corporate hierarchy, is clearly liable. Any such commoner must be fired at once if the matter is brought to the management's attention. This is an especially valuable tool for promoting the nobility: it literally achieves that result. In practice it makes the noble in any meeting at the very least primus inter pares. Because it is imprudent for commoners to quarrel with him, he tends to get what he wants. Because he tends to get what he wants, he tends to advance in the corporate hierarchy. The result, which should be visible in any large business without dangerous commonerist tendencies, will be a predominance of nobles in top executive positions. And, of course, this should be especially the case in government... but enough. We've made the point. And what exactly is that point? Well, three points. One: this system is profoundly unhinged and bizarre, and completely inappropriate in anything like a sane, civilized society. Two: it is - save for the change in terminology - a fairly close description of the present legal status of non-Asian minorities (NAMs) in present-day America. (Which is by no means the only modern government to adopt such a system.) And three: applied to the cream of America's actual WASP-Ashkenazi aristocracy, genuine genetic elites with average IQs of 120, long histories of civic responsibility and productivity, and strong innate predilections for delayed gratification and hard work, I'm confident that this bizarre version of what we can call ignoble privilege would take no more than two generations to produce a culture of worthless, unredeemable scoundrels. Applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry and no great reputation for sturdy moral fiber, noblesse sans oblige is a recipe for the production of absolute human garbage. ... That this Orcish parody of aristocracy was created, in the lives of those now living, out of the certainly imperfect but generally functional pre-WWII American Negro subculture, through policies designed by "social scientists" who were in fact religious moralists in disguise, is one of the larger ironies of modern history. But perhaps I overanticipate. Strangely (or not), most Americans are not familiar with the actual history of the modern American Negro. It shows a precipitous cultural decline in the second half of the 20th century - just as our system of ignoble privilege was established. This might be a coincidence, but then again it might not. Before 1960, most Negroes had jobs, most Negro children were born to married parents, and most cities in America had thriving Negro business districts (such as Bronzeville in Chicago). All this is gone. But for a white-assimilated minority, often more mulatto than Negro, the community has simply been shattered. A time traveller from 1960 might be excused for thinking the country had spent the last fifty years in the savage grip of the Klan. Even the great Negro contribution to American music has sunk from the genius of jazz to the barbarism of rap.

Mencius Moldbug

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ca/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22.html

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“To believe that one should be happy just to be alive, despite leading a hideous existence, is to think like a slave; to think that it is pleasant to have an ordinary and comfortable life, is to have the emotions of an animal; men, however, become so blind that they cannot even see that they do not live or think like human beings. People squirm in agitation before a dark wall and dream about buying washing machines and television sets; they anxiously look to tomorrow, even though it will bring nothing.”

~ Yukio Mishima

Today, would have been Mishima’s 90th birthday.

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In an age that has thrown off all tradition, the only rebellion possible is orthodoxy.

Peter Kreeft (via twocrowns)

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Men have bled for their women, fought to protect their women, died for their women, and admonished each other for millenia to love their virtuous women like Christ loves the church, to treat their women as queens and as jewels, to present to them the heads of the men who displease them, and to fight to the death to defend their honor. And you think men hate women. Men have never hated women. Men will never hate women.

Karen Straughan (via four-thieves)

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Debunking Myths of the Samurai

I recently attended a lecture on portrayals of masculinity in the age of the samurai. Pretty cool, huh? But something I learnt there was just how little is known about the samurai in the West. After a wonderful lecture, one chap put his hand up and said, “This is all very interesting, but what were they being when they weren’t samurai? Did they have ordinary lives? Could they marry? They couldn’t fight all the time, could they?”

Answers: they were never not being samurai, yes they had ordinary lives, yes they could marry, and no they didn’t fight all the time.

The confusion seems to spring from the western notion that ‘samurai’ is a job description. Moreover, comparisons with European knights abound, and these too can be misleading, so let’s look at some of the main myths about samurai that are widely believed.

PEOPLE TRAINED TO BECOME SAMURAI

False. The samurai were a social class. With few exceptions, people were born and died as samurai.

One famous exception was Hideyoshi Toyotomi who rose from humble origins to become ruler of most of Japan. He, and a few others, were promoted from peasant families. But these cases are rare enough that they are exceptional, and such men were usually promoted because they were extremely gifted or otherwise favoured by their lords.

Another way for a non-samurai to become a samurai was for them to be adopted into a samurai family. In such cases they would give up their old name and old family. Adoption was common when a samurai had no male heir.

There was no test to become a samurai; there was no ceremony at which people took on the role. Indeed it is best seen, not as a role at all, but as a class into which people were born.

SAMURAI WERE CHIVALROUS

Samurai are most often compared to mediaeval knights because they followed strict codes of morality and behaviour. But these codes cannot and should not be confused with the chivalric codes of honour attributed to western knights.

Obedience and loyalty were key to the samurai, but mercy and honour, as it is understood in the west, were not. For example, it was perfectly acceptable to stab an enemy in the back, or kill them by whatever means necessary.

By comparison, it was unacceptable for a samurai to BE stabbed in the back as this demonstrated cowardice.

Chivalric values tend to be characterised by Christian values of mercy and protection of the weak. These concepts were not prominent amongst the samurai. Duty to superiors was paramount, and effectiveness in overcoming enemies, by any means necessary.

HONOUR WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT TRAIT OF THE SAMURAI

‘Honour’ is a loaded concept that, as we have seen above, carries with it notions of fair fights and chivalric behaviour.

However, to the samurai, honour meant one thing: loyalty to their lord.

The word 'samurai’ means 'servant’. 'Honour’, if such a concept existed, was something that evolved out of devotion to this service. The word, 'giri,’ frequently translated as 'honour’ is more accurately 'duty’ or 'obligation’, referring to the debt of obedience a samurai owed his lord.

SAMURAI WERE GREAT SWORDSMEN

Some were. Of this there is no doubt. The samurai emerged in a time when Japan was fragmented and ruled by warlords. At such a time, strength in battle was of oaramount importance.

They never lost their identity as warriors. However, from 1600 onwards, Japan entered a period of peacetime. While samurai still wore swords and were encouraged to learn the martial arts, skill on the battle field was, in practice, no longer a necessity.

Because of this, towards the end of the samurai period, many samurai shirked martial training and some never truly learned to use their swords. Remember, these were people who were born, not made. Some would have been born with a gift and talent for swordsmanship; others would have found they had talents elsewhere.

SAMURAI WERE RICH NOBLEMEN

The samurai began as a noble elite who gained glory in battle, but in peacetime this all changed.

The samurai retained their wartime values and they were, in law at least, a privileged elite. For example, legally, they were allowed to kill members of the peasant class without retribution (although in practice this was rare, since society still had to function they were not all evil bastards!) Samurai also received a stipend from their lords, for their service as warriors, and this extended into peacetime, so they were paid even if they had no official duties to carry out. In peacetime, most took over bureacratic duties and became administrative officials. They received educations, unlike the peasant classes.

HOWEVER, towards the end of the Edo period, samurai stipends were, for many, barely a third of what a peasant farmer earnt at the time. This means that, although the samurai were an elite in some ways, they were often trapped in poverty. Many starved and died in famines, and others were forced into menial work to supplement their incomes.

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Modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic view of life on which both systems are based is identical. As long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, then we are not even close to what is essential.

Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins (via tufflittleunit)

Spot on, 100%. Solzhenitsyn said something similar in his Harvard address.

(via theorthodoxknight)

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Yukio Mishima's death poem

Yukio Mishima’s suicide was as much an aesthetic act as political. He was fascinated with the idea of the heroic, glorious death for the sake something greater than oneself. He saw ritual suicide by seppuku as an act not only of bravery and morality, but of beauty. 

Before his suicide he composed two death poems (”jisei no ku” 辞世の句). To compose a poem before death is an ancient tradition in Japan, practised by medieval warriors and kamikaze pilots alike. 

This is my translation of his more well-known death poem.

In an age that hates death, to be the first to die Is to be the flower that falls first from the branch. “Falling is what makes it a flower” Whispers the evening wind.

It was written in the highly stylised and metaphorical waka form, which makes it difficult to translate both faithfully and poetically. To get a better picture of the poem, here are some alternate translations. This is by an unknown translator, found on a few other blogs on the internet:

A small night storm blows Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’ Preceding those who hesitate

This is my translation done as literally as possible. As you can see, it is very stilted.

“In a world which hates when flowers fall, to fall, going before the rest, is what makes it a flower,” blows the night storm

Finally, here is the original:

散るをいとふ世にも人にもさきがけて散るこそ花と吹く小夜嵐

chiru wo itou yo ni mo hito ni mo sakigakete chiru koso hana to fuku sayoarashi

With his suicide, Mishima intended to show a Japan which has become decadent, effete, and Westernized the beauty and bravery of a heroic death; to be the flower that falls first from the branch, even in a world that hates their falling.

Mishima standing on the balcony, trying to incite troops to revolt. His speech lasted only a few minutes; he committed suicide by seppuku immediately after.

A still from Mishima’s film “Patriotism”, which presaged his actual suicide 

A truck in Japan, probably belonging to an uyoku dantai, with a picture of Mishima and his death poem

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Tatenokai (楯の会）

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Deer by Itou Jakuchu (伊藤 若冲)

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