Cold Enough for Benkei

We are now into winter, by the traditional Japanese reckoning of the seasons. It may not feel like it yet, but the almanac says we are on the downward path towards it. That brings to mind winter haiku, and here is one of my favorite winter haiku.

弁慶に五条の月の寒さかな
benkei ni gojō no tsuki no samusa kana[1]

even for Benkei
on Gojō Bridge under the moon
it is cold
—Sōseki[2]

Hiroshige - On Gojō Bridge, Yoshitsune Defeats Benkei
Hiroshige – On Gojō Bridge, Yoshitsune Defeats Benkei

This haiku won’t make much sense to you without knowing who Benkei was. He is one of the most famous figures in Japanese history, a symbol of loyalty and companionship.

Benkei was a giant man, said to be 2 meters (6’6"). He enters history with his personal quest to prove his martial arts prowess by defeating 1000 samurai and collecting their swords. It is said he had already collected 999 and was just one away from his goal when he met a small youth with a gilded sword who was playing a flute while crossing Gojō Bridge in Kyoto. The youth was Minamoto no Yoshitsune, whom you may have heard me mention before on this blog in regards to his involvement with the Genpei War. The men dueled, and the more agile smaller man amazed Benkei by defeating him.[3] The story is very similar to the Western tale of Robin Hood defeating Little John.

Benkei swore an oath of allegiance and from that day forward followed Yoshitsune as his companion and friend, staying with him until both of their deaths at the hands of the traitorous Yasuhira and Yoshitsune’s brother, the shogun Yoshitomo.[4] The adventures of Benkei and Yoshitsune are among the most famous and popular in Japan.

This haiku then is taking us into this story, as Benkei awaits Yoshitsune on Gojō bridge. Sōseki is telling us that even for that tough giant who had already defeated 999 warriors, this night would be cold.

Hell of an image, eh? Tonight is so cold that even Benkei would feel it! Sōseki would go on to become Japan’s most famous novelist, comparable to Charles Dickens: he knew a thing or two about setting up good images and stories.


  1. See: Pronunciation of Japanese  ↩

  2. See: a note on translations  ↩

  3. If you look up the full story on the net or elsewhere, you are likely to see the name Ushiwakamaru as Benkei’s opponent. That was the name Yoshitsune was using at the time. I use his more well-known name in this post for the sake of simplicity.  ↩

  4. I briefly mentioned this story in this post. Maybe I’ll revisit and write more about it sometime.  ↩

Japanese Job-Quitting Service Contacted by Other Job-Quitting Service

In the most ridiculous item of the day…

Among Japan’s job-quitting proxy companies is Momuri, whose name is a sympathetic play on words with the phrase Mo muri (“I can’t take this anymore”). The company recently had the script flipped on it, though, when Momuri was contacted by a different job-quitting proxy, who informed Momuri that they’d been hired by one of Momuri’s own employees who’d decided to quit.

Japan watchers probably know all about the rise of job-quitting services in the country. Quitting a job is stressful and difficult in Japan. Whatever your feelings on that are, it is a thing, and these companies provide a much needed service to ease this stress and help people quit.

Where this becomes just silly is watching an employee of one of these job-quitting services use another job-quitting service to help him quit his job. I guess it just goes to show how pervasive the bad work environment is in Japan.

LINK: Japanese Job-Quitting Service Contacted by Other Job-Quitting Service Because Employee Wants to Quit

Crickets and Change in Haiku

Do animals and insects have an insight into the world that we don’t? Maybe it pays to listen to them more often. I was doing so the other night, and this haiku was the result.

the crickets
tell me
change is coming

蟋蟀の音に感じる移ろいを
kōrogi no oto ni kanjiru utsuroi o[1]

Kobayashi Kiyochika - Night Scene at Sumida River
Kobayashi Kiyochika – Night Scene at Sumida River

This was right after the US election, I should say. By the time I was preparing for bed, the final results still weren’t in, but the writing was on the wall and we could guess who had won. I am not a Trump fan,[2] so I wasn’t very happy. As I often do at night in autumn, I found myself with the balcony window open and listening to the night insects.

I’ve written at length about how listening to the night insects is a very traditional activity in Japan in autumn. It dates quite far back. Here is a recent post mentioning it. It seems like a traditional quaint activity, and it is. Simple, yet pleasant. It’s a good way to relax in the evening before bed—or to get ideas for haiku!

The other day I mentioned the idea of divining the future from the wind. What if the insects themselves could give us hints of the same?

Mastodon and Bluesky and Me

As many of you may know, alternative Twitter-clones exploded in popularity after Elon took over Twitter and showed that he wasn’t interested in allowing free speech, as he had been claiming, but only his version of free speech, which he made apparent by banning pretty much anyone who criticized him or tweeted something he didn’t like.

Initially the most popular of the Twitter-clones was Mastodon. Mastodon is much more decentralized than Twitter ever was, allowing anyone to run their own server that then plugs into the “fediverse”, connecting with the rest of Mastodon.

But another part of Elon’s takeover of Twitter was unbanning all the hard rightwing personalities. This, along with Elon’s subsequent banning of more liberal voices, led to a large percentage of the initial flight to Mastodon being made up of liberals. Now due to the decentralized nature of Mastodon, there are a lot of servers of other political ideologies, some very very radical right, some off in crazy land. Even Facebook has plugged into the fediverse with their Threads app (note: this intregration isn’t finished yet). But the general feel of the place if you are just browing around is more to the left than Twitter.

The general leftwing feeling of Mastodon may have influenced some of the other Twitter-clones. The next biggest one to come out of the Twitter mess was Bluesky. Bluesky is more centralized like Twitter is, but at least so far they are less controlling, as Twitter was at the beginning of the service all those years ago.

There are many many more at this point, including an interesting looking one called Nostr, supported by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, but I think it’s safe to say that Mastodon and Bluesky are the two biggest of the Twitter-clones.


I joined Mastodon not long after Elon took over. Many reasons. I didn’t like the increased ads, I didn’t like the subscription service, I didn’t like that he banned all 3rd party clients, I didn’t like that his banning policy changed from being strictly defined to being basically whatever he didn’t like. I can’t prove it, but also it seemed like all my filters to mute political words (like “Trump” or “Biden”) suddenly stopped working. I had already been increasingly turned off by Twitter because it seemed like people no longer talked there, but rather just used it to announce things and self-promote, so Elon’s takeover was just the final straw.

If you are curious, I’m on a popular Japan server for expats and English speaking immigrants called @famichiki.jp, under the name @dbooster@famichiki.jp . I post mainly about Japan and haiku there, mostly avoiding US politics and US news. Come chat with me if you are on Mastodon.

Until now while I had been curious about Bluesky, I didn’t want to create yet another account. Now it looks like I won’t have to!

There is a cool new service called Bridgy Fed that connects the fediverse (Mastodon) to Bluesky. It does this by basically mirroring messages from one service to the other. While that may not be as smooth as how any Mastodon server can plug into the fediverse, it is pretty neat all things considered.

Using this service, I am now on Bluesky too! If you are there, add me: @dbooster.famichiki.jp.ap.brid.gy

Anyway, that is all. If you use either of these services and want to be on the other, give this Bridgy Fed service a try. And if you are on either and want to say hi to me, plug in one of those two usernames above.

There is more in the archives