Kamon

Imperial Seal of Japan, the mon of the Japanese Imperial family, a 16 petal chysanthemum with a second set of petals visible behind.

Mon are Japanese heraldic symbols. Kamon refer specifically to family symbols or crests. They serve much the same purpose as European heraldic devices. Sarah's tattoo and our recent use of the Mukai family crest for invitations led me to research Japanese crests. Much assistance was provided by John Dower's study, The Elements of Japanese Design: A Handbook of Family Crests, Heraldry & Symbolism (1971).

Mon have their roots in Japan through the transmission of the Chinese culture of the T'ang Dynasty (618-907) to the Japanese court. Chinese emblems of the Sun and Moon, Blue Dragon, White Tiger and Three-legged Crow were symbols of the early Japanese sovereigns.

The rise of the samurai class and feudal society produced an increase in the use of heraldic devices. The Gempei War (1180-85) involved two factions, the Minamoto, who fought under banners of white, and the Taira, under red. The battles of the Gempei War were scattered and formalistic, fought by small, swift bands of warriors. The use of mon was rare at this time. The scale of warfare expanded following the Gempei War, and with the increase in the number of combatants came a rise in the use of mon. Dower concludes that the "predominant simplicity of the earliest warrior crests reflects the military concern which motivated their adoption; most were plain geometric forms and simple representational figures."The Hojo clan's three-triangle fish scale emblem [above] and the Ashikaga clan's geometric pattern [below] are representative of this period.

Initially, heraldic emblems were used as a common symbol of identification by all followers of a specific clan. As Dower notes, by the mid-1300s "the use of crests was so well established throughout Japan that the authors of the Taiheiki [a Japanese historical epic] could describe the forces which made up an army just by listing the markings on their banners". Increasing their popularity were the elaboration of crest designs, the enhancing of previously simple crests, and the adoption of a number of crests for different occasions, for instance, retaining one crest for battle and another for the court. These trends parallel increased contact between the court, and its fashionable aesthetics, and the samurai class.

Minamoto clan gentian crest [above] and Taira clan butterfly crest [below].

Around the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth crests mon began to be associated with individual family units. The rise of kamon was accelerated by the adoption of a rule of primogeniture for the inheritance of an estate, which forced younger sons to form independent families of their own, often taking a new surname in the process. The Minamoto clan contained 4 subclans, 27 major branches and 569 different surnames by the end of the feudal period. Common clan emblems no longer served to delineate such numbers accurately. New variations on crests were created to represent newly independent families.




The crests of the three "great unifiers" of Japan, in descending order: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582); Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598); and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Oda's crest is a China flower, a Chinese design not based on any specific flower, enclosed by a court pattern dating back to T'ang China. Toyotomi's crest is a paulownia flower pattern. The most popular design of all Japanese mon, the paulownia is considered an emblem of the imperial throne, and was bestowed upon Toyotomi by the imperial court. According to Chinese legend, the phoenix, bird of immortality, alights only in the branches of the paulownia when it returns to earth. The design is now a symbol of the Office of the Prime Minister of Japan. Tokugawa's crest is the hollyhock, a plant associated with a presitigious Kyoto shrine.

Wood sorrel mon

During the Tokugawa shogunate, the use of mon spread from the samurai and warrior classes to the peasant and merchant classes, and to the artisans, Kabuki actors and courtesans of the floating world of the Edo period. Crests became a common element of all classes. Hank Mukai tells me the Mukai kamon was selected primarily for its form. The crest is composed of a trifoliate clover-like wood sorrel leaf with three stylised sword blades inserted between each of the leaves and three blades penetrating from the leaf stem. The crest is similar to the above wood sorrel mon. The wood sorrel (katabami) produces many seeds and reproduces vigorously; this characteristic was seen as a token of future proliferation and prosperity. The wood sorrel is also known as the mirror plant (kagamigusa). It was used for polishing bronze mirrors, as well as forming a medicinal salve. The wood sorrel mon enjoyed much popularity among the samurai class.

Acme Novelty Library

Acme Novelty Library, issue 17, pre production and final cover.

I came across the work of Chris Ware this year. He is a comic book artist and graphic novelist, from Oak Park, Chicago, with a love for the early 20th Century aesthetic movements of Art Nouveau and Art Deco. He has won numerous awards for his work. He is especially known for his Acme Novelty Library, a series of issues published since 1993, with the 19th issue released in 2008. The series features a number of Ware's characters, Big Tex, Rocket Sam, Quimby the Mouse, and the central characters of two graphic novels serialised in Acme Novelty Library, Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, and Rusty Brown.

New Yorker Thanksgiving cover, 2006.

I encountered Ware via The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book (2005), a collection of issues 7 and 15 with extra material. The book's graphic content wowed me, the intricate detail in the draftsmanship, the fine lettering and stylised art. The melancholy mood of Ware's creation also grabbed my attention. His work has been described as "the wry, surreal satire of the anachronistic unipolar depressive: desperately funny, profoundly sad and nightmarish all at once." The story line of Rusty Brown amplifies these attributes, magnifying the character's alienation and sense of depressed loneliness. There is a contemplative nature to his art: this isn't Batman, kids. It is at once reflective and stimulating.


What initially caught my attention was Ware's parodying of classic American comic book advertisments, selling the Charles Atlas body for the wimpy teenager getting sand kicked in his face. Ware takes the marketing ideals of Superpower USA and subverts them, casting light on the darker side of his nation, its fast food culture and hegemonic foreign policies. His ideas are laugh out loud funny, but not typical Adam Sandler gut reactions. You laugh with your brain and your aching heart. And you have to read the small print.


Ware has completed a new series featured in issues of Acme Novelty Library, The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine called "Building Stories". This series, according to the critics, pushes at the boundaries of the comics medium, re-imagining new ways to tell visual stories. In Building Stories a "mix of architecture, narrative comic panels, and informative diagram connects the residents of a 4-story building to their apartments, each other, their pasts, the flowers, and even a family of bees."
For those who enjoy art and reading, I recommend Chris Ware with one reservation. His characters are generally not happy people. Don't go looking for inspiration from them. Admire their resilience, and the fineness of their surroundings, and perhaps begin by dipping into The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book.

All images are, naturally, the copyright of Chris Ware.

From Sharks to Sequoias

A couple of weekends ago I ventured south to Courtenay for the World Community Film Festival. The 18th edition of the festival was produced by the World Community Development Education Society, quite the mouthful, and featured over thirty documentaries. The films were concerned with issues ranging from the global plight of the apex oceanic predator, the shark, the workings of Canada's tar sands and the machinations of Monsanto to Peruvian women coffee growers, Vancouver's homeless and the artificial sweetner aspartame.

The films were shown at five different venues and I managed to watch five documentaries, from ten through until seven in the evening.


The first film was Sharkwater, a 2007 documentary examining the shark, its media-maligned character and its decimation at the hands of long line fishermen. I found much of the underwater footage involving the filmmaker, Rob Stewart, interacting with sharks to be fresh and fascinating. Scenes of the filmmaker holding sharks around their midsections on the sea floor, or grasping their snouts and grappling with them were unreal. Interviews with shark biologists and behaviourists do much to displace the layers of myth surrounding the shark as a species. Statistics show the miniscule likelihood of a shark attack and the devastation wreaked upon the shark population by overfishing. One statistic claims 90% of sharks in the world's oceans have been killed.

Rob Stewart journeys with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and films confrontations with shark poachers off the coast of Guatemala and their encounters with the law in Costa Rica. Hidden camera footage is shot of illegal shark finning operations and Stewart outlines the massive Asian demand for shark fin soup. An interview with William Goh, an Asian shark fin entrepeneur, provides some hilarity as Goh defends his industry with nonsensical arguments. The shark is "a very fierce animal … they bite you and tear you, there is pain, and you die." Disregard that fins sell for between $400-$1000 per kilogram.

I took issue with facets of Sharkwater. The film feels uneven, transitioning from an underwater documentary to the stranger than fiction Sea Shepherd battles. Stewart seems an egoist with a love of his own image and an extended period of Stewart in hospital with flesh-eating disease did little to propel the documentary forward. These aspects pale beside the message the documentary bears, and I urge all to see it and cut all that shark fin soup out of your life. For further information check out this article in the UK's Telegraph.

I wavered between Tar Sands: Canada For Sale and One Water following Sharkwater. I decided to stay in my seat and watch One Water, released in 2008 by the University of Miami. One Water was concerned with global access to safe, potable water, water waste and water privatisation. The documentary was filmed in 15 countries and featured long tracts of visual storytelling interspersed with interviews with such luminaries as the Dalai Lama and Vandana Shiva, author of Water Wars. I enjoyed some of the visual storylines, particularly the thread which followed an Ecuadorian harvesting glacial ice from the volcano Chimborazo to sell in the markets of the nearby cities, but felt that many of the storylines dragged. The narration was weak and the visual quality of the film, featured so prominently, wasn't up to standard. The interviews were strong, but too few.

I ventured to another venue to see John Pilger's latest documentary, The War On Democracy, released in 2007. John Pilger is a two time winner of Britain's Journalist of the Year and has produced a number of books and documentaries examining un- or under-reported events, hidden histories, and aspects of the darker qualities of human civilisation. He is a strong critic of Western foreign policy, particularly what he regards as the imperialistic agenda of the United States. The War On Democracy examines the history of US intervention in Latin American politics, from the 1950s and the actions in the 'banana republics' of Central America, to the rise of the military dictatorships and the rule of the death squads in the 1970s and 80s, and the present day popular movements in Bolivia and Venezuela. The film features archival footage, interviews with former CIA agents and survivors of military regime pogroms, and an illuminating conversation with Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and yet another maligned character in the Western media.


The Real Dirt on Farmer John was the most lighthearted film of a heavy day's viewing. The 2005 documentary follows in the footsteps of Farmer John Peterson, and his journey from farmer's son, to farm owner and counter culture art commune 'organiser,' to the proprietor of a community-supported organic farm supplying fresh produce to 1,200 shareholder families. The archival footage from John's youth, shot by his mother in the 50s and 60s, provides a window into the seasonal flow of the family farm. Footage from the art commune days portrays the heady spirits of the late 60s and early 70s. John's life parallels the journey of American agriculture in the 20th century, the boom and bust of family farms and rise of industrial scale farming. John's development of Angelic Organics traces one route away from the mass production of multinational agriculture.

The misunderstandings between John, his hippy friends, and the conservative attitudes of his neighbours make for a few laughs, as does John's quirky nature and costume changes. The film finishes on a positive note, with the success of his farm and the connections developed between Angelic Organics and its community shareholders. Seeing all the shiny vegetables bursting from dark rich soil got me excited for spring and producing some of the same.

The final film of my day was The Forest For The Trees, a 2006 documentary tracing the activism of Judi Bari of Earth First! and her court case against the FBI. Judi Bari was active against the logging of the last stands of redwood forest in Northern California in the 1980s. She also organised efforts to improve the dialogue between environmentalists and timber workers. Her vehicle was pipe-bombed in 1990; Bari survived the explosion but was arrested three hours later while recovering in hospital. She was accused of carrying a bomb for use in an act of terrorism, despite the bomb's position beneath the driver's seat of her vehicle and its attached motion sensor. No charges were laid, but Bari filed suit against the FBI and Oakland police for false arrest, claiming they had attempted to discredit her work and that of Earth First! in defense of the redwoods.

The film details Bari's early work with Earth First! before shifting focus to the court case between Bari and the FBI. The documentary maker is the daughter of the lead attorney of the case, a civil-rights veteran, and she brings a unique perspective to the trial. Bari dies of breast cancer in 1997, but in 2002 her name is cleared when a jury orders the defendants to pay her estate over 4 million dollars, citing First Amendment violations. The film highlights the intentional blurring of the lines between dissent and terrorism in these days of perpetual war on terror.

Little Necks & Matsutake

We are into a new year. Two thousand and nine should prove to be a memorable year for Sarah and myself. We are getting psyched for our upcoming wedding and are excited to welcome friends and family from abroad to British Columbia.

Our last trip to Hornby Island, back in December, was a return to humankind's hunter-gatherer roots. We hooked up with friends and hit the shore at approximately midnight for low tide and the gathering of oysters and the digging of clams. We left a serpetine trail of excavations behind us as we probed for the clams, called little necks. Pictured are horse clams, dug the previous night at Miracle Beach, south of Campbell River.


The man looking sifty in the background is Mark Sloan, a fungi aficionado. We ventured out with him, his lovely wife Megan, and friends to Hornby's Mount Geoffrey, elevation 350 metres, to wander the forest hunting mushrooms, walk off our hangovers and view the view. We discovered patches of chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms with Mark's guidance and identifying eye. As we returned back down the mountain along a wider, well-used trail, a clump of white at the edge caught our attention. We bent closer and breathed in the pungent odour of Tricholoma magnivelare, commonly known as the pine mushroom. The Japanese call the mushroom Masutake; it is a delicacy for which the Japanese pay premium prices. Early season Japanese Matsutake can be worth US$2000 a kilogram. The mushrooms we found were a combination of qualities, with decay occuring in the older specimens. The largest is pictured, an umbrella of a mushroom.

We left Campbell River over the Christmas-New Year period and spent our time in Vancouver. We rented snow shoes from Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), a ubiquitously Canadian symbol, and journeyed north to Squamish and our friends Trish and Regan. We snow-shoed with them along a trail in Garibaldi Provincial Park - my first experience of snow shoes. Snow fell throughout the hike.


After the New Year celebrations we headed up to Cypress Provincial Park, situated on the North Shore of Greater Vancouver. We met friends and followed a trail to higher elevations, with views of Vancouver to the south, Vancouver Island to the west, Howe Sound to the northwest, and the Lions - a signature pair of peaks overlooking the city - to the north.

We ate lunch, a bento box of Shogatsu leftovers, watched closely by a pair of large, glossy black ravens, and pestered by a number of gray jays. The gray jay is colloquially known as meat bird, camp robber, venison-hawk, moose-bird and whiskeyjack (a corruption of an aboriginal name, Wisakedjak, for a mischievous trickster). The jays flitted amongst our group, living up to their reputation as they attempted to steal food from the hand or mouth. They were bold and incorrigible.


Vancouver from Cypress Provincial Park, looking southeast. The Lions Gate Bridge crosses from North Vancouver to Stanley Park and the downtown. Note the section of white snow in Stanley Park, a result of the extreme windstorms of last winter and the havoc they wrought amongst the park's trees.

Movember