Nakahara Chuya
If your coworker tries to hit you with a beer bottle
Poet | 29 April 1907 – 22 October 1937

The Heisei era, which began on January 8th, 1989, has now ended.

One doesn’t often stop to really think about it, but the fact is that we have literally just run past an era in time. The Lost Decades, the Aum Shinrikyo Incidents, the Great East Japan Earthquake… These phenomenon of the past thirty years shook people’s sense of values, and they changed the way in which we live our lives.

Meanwhile, in the world of sports, perhaps one of the more significant incidents during the final Heisei years was sumo grand champion Harumafuji’s alleged beer bottle assault and his subsequent retirement.

While there is no excuse for violence under any circumstances, really the main reason why this incident in particular attracted so much attention may have been because of how shocking the initial reports were.

Continue reading →

Otomo no Tabito
If your coworker calls you a monkey because you don’t drink
Poet | 665 – 31 August 731

If you could choose any great historical figure to drink with, who would it be?

That was the question running through my mind as I was drinking last night. Honestly, as long as I got to drink, it wouldn’t matter who it was with—it could be an eminent figure or some total freak and it wouldn’t matter to me one way or another. But then that doesn’t really get the conversation going, does it now?

So, if I was to make a list of a few names, one person who would definitely be on the list is Otomo no Tabito.

“Oh, come on. Who the hell is that? Now you’re just being esoteric for the sake of it.” I can hear the complaints of all you snotnosed Heisei era folks. “How do you even read the kanji of his name?” Nevertheless, it was actually reported that the current era of Reiwa originally got its name from a waka poem by Tabito, suddenly making him the man of the hour. One never knows when it’s going to be their time to shine.

Continue reading →