The picture above is of Gozu, as imagined by the remarkable illustrator Futosh Kurokawa. Check out his Facebook page here.
***
We cycle to Haneda Shrine, just a couple of miles from the airport. It’s another fine day, so there are plenty of people out on the streets, shopping, jogging and taking the air.
Some heed is being taken of Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike’s headmistress-like admonitions – nearly everyone wears a mask, the stations are deserted – but not to the extent of staying cooped up in cramped apartments for weeks on end. That’s not going to happen.
Likewise, most people are observing some sort of social distancing, though to nothing like the paranoid lengths of the UK where, my son tells me, middle-aged people are whirling long sticks to keep potential infectors (ie. everyone else) at the officially designated two metre range.
We pass the most popular ramen shop in Meguro Ward and note a lack of compliance with the Koike edicts. A lengthy queue of ramenologists snakes along the pavement. From inside comes the comforting odour of broth and the sound of slurping. The local reputation, I hear, is that the ramen is to die for.
The shrine complex and temple at Haneda (literally, “field of feathers”) has an interesting history, being one of the few sites in East Japan of the Gozu cult. Worship of this taurine god was a form of goryo shinko, the practice of appeasing wrathful spirits that otherwise might create all kinds of havoc.
Gozu (literally, “Ox-head”) specializes in both creating plagues and curing them. One thing is for sure – you don’t want to piss him off. That is clearly demonstrated by this folk tale dating back to the 8th century.
Once upon a time, Heavenly King Gozu was travelling incognito through Izumo (today’s Shimane Prefecture) and stopped at the dwelling or a rich man called Kotan Shorai. When he asked to stay the night, Kotan refused.
Gozu then went to ask at the house of Somin Shorai, Kotan’s elder brother. Although very poor, Somin gave him a warm welcome and shared all the food he had.
In thanks, Gozu gave Somin’s daughter a belt of reeds that would protect her against disease, then continued his journey to the palace of the Dragon King, where he was due to marry the King’s daughter. Eventually, he and his queen produced eight children and assembled a retinue of eighty thousand junior deities.
All the while, he never forgot the treatment he had received at Izumo. Many years later, after Somin had passed away, Gozu decided it was time to settle accounts. He returned to the area with his crew and killed Kotan Shorai and all his family and friends.
As promised, the descendants of Somin Shorai were spared.
***
Silver birds silent
The field of feathers empty
Coronavirus
***
“It is no accident that goryo shinko arose at a time when large cities, especially Nara and subsequently Kyoto, were developing because epidemics spread like wildfire in the crowded, filthy conditions of the cities. With the spread of goryo-related beliefs and practices among the peasantry, the goryo rituals acquired a new political tone in that not only did they address the immediate problem of disease, but they also spoke to and, at least indirectly, critiqued the conditions (social, political, and economic) that contributed to the cause and spread of disease.”
From On Placating the Gods and Pacifying the Populace: The Case of the Gion “Goryō” Cult by Neil McMullin
***
“What is that record?” asked Tarrou. “I know it.”
Rambert replied that it was ‘St. James’s Infirmary Blues’
In the middle of the record, they heard two shots ring out in the distance.
‘A dog or an escape,’ said Tarrou.
A moment later the record ended and the sound of an ambulance became clearer, got louder, passed under the windows of the hotel room, decreased and finally died away.
‘That record is no joke,’ said Rambert. ‘And I’ve heard it at least ten times today.’
‘Do you like it that much?’
‘No, it’s the only one I have.’
And a moment later: “I tell you – it’s about starting again.”
From The Plague, by Albert Camus.
This is the second mention of St. James Infirmary Blues in the novel. The first, just a few pages earlier, occurs in a crowded restaurant. ‘Elegant young people’ are conversing at the table next to the three principle characters, but their words are drowned out by the music blaring from a record player perched near the ceiling.
The scene is easy to picture: the chatter of the bright young things being swallowed up by the opening bars of the New Orleans funeral march; the trivia of ordinary life blanked out by the shadow of death.
Camus doesn’t mention the name of the artist, but from Rambert’s comment “this song is no joke” (my translation – the French is cette chanson n’est pas drôle) it would be one of the versions with vocals, perhaps Louis Armstrong’s classic 1928 recording.
I went down to St. James Infirmary
Saw my baby there
She was stretched out on a long white table
So cold, so sweet, so fair
Let her go, let her go!
God bless her wherever she may be
She can look this wide world over
But she’ll never find a sweet man like me
When I die bury me in straight lace shoes
I want a box-back coat and a Stetson hat
Put a twenty dollar gold piece on my watch chain
So the boys will know that I died standin’ pat
Rambert claims not to like the record, yet is sufficiently obsessed to play it ten times a day. In fact, it is the only record he ever plays, as he owns no others. Why?
The answer is in the lyrics. The first stanza is a statement of loss, the second of acceptance and self-assertion, the third a declaration of bravado in the face of death.
Rambert is the most “existentialist” character in the novel. A journalist who finds himself trapped in the plague-ridden town by mischance, his only concern appears to be his own personal happiness. On the evening he plays the record for his friends, he is intending to make his escape. Instead, though, he abruptly changes his mind. Early the next morning, he commits himself to staying in the town and doing dangerous work for no reward.
Inspired by the the narrator of St. James Infirmary, Rambert too wants to die proudly, “standin’ pat.” He knows the song is “no joke”; that, like the best jazz, like the best art, it is “about starting again.”
***
The virus shock is exacerbating inequality. In the UK, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, around one-third of low-earners work in sectors that have been largely or entirely rendered inactive by the lockdown. For high-earners, the number is 5%.
To make matters worse from the point of view of political stability, one third of workers in shutdown sectors are under 25. The overwhelming majority of Covid 19 deaths are of old people – 70% are over 75. Many other countries will have the same problem.
***
The future cancelled
I travel around my room
Coronavirus
***
The Tokyo Olympics of 2020 may have been postponed, but a new spectator sport has appeared just in time – the Coronavirus Statistical Olympics. Which country is doing the best, which is improving the fastest, which former champion is sliding down the rankings? Naturally, most of the focus is on the performance of large countries. Nobody pays much attention to the track record of the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Greece, stellar though it is.
As with the real Olympics, there are concerns that some countries are cheating. Their fatalities don’t include nursing home residents or people with co-morbidities. What makes the contests so perfect for angry exchanges on social media is that there are no clear criteria for success and failure and cannot be until well after the crisis is over.
In the meantime, there are infinite possibilities for bashing governments you oppose and claiming that everything that has happened confirms the correctness of your own pre-existing political views.
***
Coronavirus playlist –
I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good – Duke Ellington
Chest Fever – The Band
Sick Again – Led Zeppelin
Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu – Huey “Piano” Smith
Soul Vaccination – Tower of Power
Don t Stand so Close to Me – The Police
I Don’t Wanna Be Kissed – Miles Davis
U Can’t Touch This – MC Hammer
Keep Your Distance – Richard Thompson
Soap Suds – Ornette Coleman
Mr. Clean – Freddie Hubbard
Behind the Mask – Michael Jackson / Yellow Magic Orchestra
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore – Duke Ellington
Alone Again Naturally – Gilbert O’ Sullivan
Isolation – John Lennon
In My Room – The Beach Boys
You Ain’t Going Nowhere – Bob Dylan
Ghost Town – The Specials
***
Coughing with no mask
Does she have hay-fever or
Coronavirus
***
Deep Knowledge, a Big Data research organization, has made a high-grade contribution to the Coronavirus Statistical Olympics by assembling a 24-factor scoring system that covers sixty countries.
Top Ten for safety: 1. Israel, 2. Germany, 3. South Korea, 4. Australia, 5. China, 6. New Zealand, 7. Taiwan, 8. Singapore, 9. Japan, 10. Hong Kong.
Highest risk: 1. Italy, 2. USA, 3. UK, 4. Spain, 5. France, 6. Sweden, 7. Iran, 8. Ecuador, 9. Philippines, 10. Romania.
Efficiency of treatment: 1. Germany, 2. China, 3. South Korea, 4. Austria, 5. Hong Kong, 6. Singapore, 7. Taiwan, 8. Israel, 9. Japan, 10. UAE.
Best economic support: 1. Germany, 2. USA, 3. Japan, 4. UK, 5. Austria, 6. France, 7. Singapore, 8. Hong Kong, 9. Switzerland, 10. Italy.
Excellent consistency shown by the Germans, with two gold medals and a silver. Still, it does seems a little strange that Belgium, with the highest number of fatalities per population in the world, is ten places higher than Greece in the safety ranking; also that Italy is able to afford such generous economic support, given its fiscal difficulties.
Ultimately, the only statistics you can trust are the ones you’ve doctored yourself.
***
The Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto, with its famous Gion Festival, is the main site of Gozu worship, Kyoto having being much troubled by epidemics in the early Heian Period (790-1185). Confusingly, Gozu is a deity from overseas, as infectious diseases were believed to have foreign origin, yet he is also associated with Susanoo, the rumbustious younger brother of Sun-goddess Amaterasu.
For the best part of a thousand years, the cult was syncretic, mixing Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism and folk belief. The Haneda site was set up in the thirteenth century specifically for the worship of the ox-headed god. In 1858, the Shogun, Iesada Tokugawa, visited the shrine to pray for his own smallpox to be cured, and a few years later there was a surge of visitors seeking immunity against rampant epidemics.
Wooden Sculpture on the Gozu hall, still at Jisho-in
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a strict demarcation of Shinto and Buddhism was enforced in order to raise Shinto to the status of national religion. The Haneda complex was remodelled, with the locus of Gozu worship being shifted from what is now the Buddhist Temple Jisho-in to what is now the adjacent Haneda Shrine.
Before leaving, I bought a fortune at the shrine shop. “You should be able to aim higher than your current goal,” it read. “Try to paint a clear picture of your dreams.”
Sage advice. We wanted to wash our hands in the fountain presided over by the ox-headed god, as is the age-old custom. Sadly, though, the water had been stopped to prevent it becoming a vector of contagion for the coronavirus.
***
Coronavirus
The world talks of nothing but
Coronavirus