Tag: Japan

March 14, 1880: Away with Rum, By Gum

Posted on by Richard Daybell

“The Salvation Army will attract the Kingdom of the Devil in Harry Hill’s Variety Theater on Sunday, March 14, 1880 at 6:30 pm sharp”  Thus read the announcement of the first public meeting of the Army in the United States.  It was a meeting of the strangest of bedfellows — the Army and the infamous Harry Hill who ran New York’s most well-know concert saloon, a place they said was “nothing more than one of the many gates to hell.”

A small platoon of the Salvation Army under the command of George Scott Railton had arrived in New York City just two days earlier.  The enterprising Harry Hill, having read about their arrival from England, contacted Railton with an offer to pay the group to take the stage on Sunday evening.  Although Railton was warned that respectable people would refuse to attend a meeting in such a vile place, Railton was intrigued by the idea that such a notorious sinner would welcome him before any of the local churches did.

On Sunday evening, Railton and seven Salvation Army lasses took the stage.  Railton knelt and the seven lasses formed a semicircle around him assuming “various and curious positions.”    They sang hymns and invited the audience to repent and be saved.  The audience applauded politely, but other than one habitual drunkard, Ashbarrel Jimmie, no one accepted the invitation to repent.

Undeterred, the Salvation Army soldiered on and, red kettle by red kettle, became a fixture in the United States.

Saving Nanki-Poo

Gilbert and Sullivan’s most famous work The Mikado premiered in London in 1885. It almost didn’t happen. A year earlier, Arthur Sullivan, whining about his precarious health and a desire to devote himself to more serious music, told W.S. Gilbert that he couldn’t bring himself to do another piece of the kind the two had previously written. Gilbert was surprised to hear of Sullivan’s qualms, having started work on a new opera in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Gilbert wrote Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied that he was through with such operas. Gilbert, after much whining of his own, persuaded Sullivan by promising a plot in which no supernatural element occurs “. . . a consistent plot, free from anachronisms, constructed in perfect good faith and to the best of my ability.”

The Mikado was born. With a setting in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, Gilbert was able to poke fun at British politics and institutions by disguising them as Japanese and, with Sullivan’s music, create one of the greatest comic operas, featuring such characters as Nanki-Poo, the wandering minstrel; Yum-Yum, Nanki-Poo’s love; Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner; and Pooh-Bah, the Lord High Everything Else.  This is the origin of the word poo-bah — a pretty important person, a high muckety-muck, nabob, honcho, Donald Trump.

 

 

 

March 14, 1885: Nanki-Poo and the Nattering Nabob

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Gilbert and Sullivan’s most famous work The Mikado premiered in London in 1885. It almost didn’t happen. A year earlier, Arthur Sullivan, whining about his precarious health and a Mikadodesire to devote himself to more serious music, told W.S. Gilbert that he couldn’t bring himself to do another piece of the kind the two had previously written. Gilbert was surprised to hear of Sullivan’s qualms, having started work on a new opera in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Gilbert wrote Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied that he was through with such operas. Gilbert, after much whining of his own, persuaded Sullivan by promising a plot in which no supernatural element occurs “. . . a consistent plot, free from anachronisms, constructed in perfect good faith and to the best of my ability.”

The Mikado was born. With a setting in Japan, an exotic locale far away from Britain, Gilbert was able to poke fun at British politics and institutions by disguising them as Japanese and, with Sullivan’s music, create one of the greatest comic operas, featuring such characters as Nanki-Poo, the wandering minstrel; Yum-Yum, Nanki-Poo’s love; Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner; and Pooh-Bah, the Lord High Everything Else.  This is the origin of the word poo-bah — a pretty important person, a high muckety-muck, nabob, honcho, Donald Trump.

 

 

 

March 9, 1974: Lay Down Your Arms

Posted on by Richard Daybell

soldierLt. Hiroo Onoda, a soldier in the Japanese army, was sent to the remote Philippine island of Lubang in 1944 to conduct guerrilla warfare. Onoda was supposed to blow up the pier at the harbor and destroy the Lubang airfield. Unfortunately, his commanders, who were worried about other matters, decided not to help Onoda on his mission and soon the island was overrun by the Allies.  Time passed, the war ended, but nobody officially told Onoda; so for 29 years, Onoda remained a dedicated soldier, living in the jungle, eating coconuts and bananas and deftly evading searching parties. Hiding out in the dense jungles, Onoda ignored the leaflets, newspapers, photographs and letters from relatives dropped by planes during the years; he was convinced they were all part of an Allied plot.

In 1974, a college dropout named Norio Suzuki traveled to the Philippines, telling his friends he was out to find a panda, the Abominable Snowman and Lt. Onoda. Where others had failed, Suzuki succeeded. He found Lt. Onoda and tried to convince him that the war was over. However, Onoda refused to leave the island until his commander ordered him to do so. Suzuki traveled back to Japan and found Onoda’s former commander, who had become a bookseller. On March 9, 1974, Suzuki and the commander/bookseller met Onoda and delivered orders that all combat activity was to be ceased, and Onoda laid down his arms.

Tiny Tomato Killer Strikes Again

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness, or so says some annoying pundit.  Likewise, I suppose, it is better to do something positive than curse the mounds of snow encircling us.  I’ve always been of the curse the darkness ilk, but occasionally I do try and rise above the winter of my discontent and light a candle in the snow.  One of the better remedies for my malaise is the old seed catalog – tiptoeing through the tulips, tomatoes and zinnias almost brings warmth to my icy heart.

If you ever order anything from a seed catalog, you will never have to worry about being without one again.  They will arrive every January just as reliably as the foot of snow they said would be an inch.  There’s Seed City, Happy Seeds, Seeds R Us and many more.  Funny thing is they all come from the same little town in the Midwest where a single little old lady – Granny Burpee – takes seeds out of great big jars and puts them in little envelopes with all those different names.

Nevertheless full seed ahead.  Seven tomato varieties, a couple of cucumbers, greens, beans, okra.  Snapdragons, sweet peas, exotic species I’ve never heard of.  “And there’s no such thing as too many sunflowers,” I’m reminded.

There is such a thing as too many seeds, however.  Granny Burpee doesn’t hold back – a hundred seeds here, two hundred there, a thousand.  I’d like to order six tomato seeds, please.  I really only need two cucumber seeds.  The theory seems to be that you must overplant, just in case some of them don’t sprout.

But they all sprout.

I wanted a couple of tomatoes.  I planted a plastic seed-starting tray, two or three seeds in each of its six cubicles.  Twenty tomato plants emerge.  Just thin out the extra plants, the catalogs advise, leaving one healthy tomato plant in each cubicle.  That’s theory again.  From over my shoulder, as I carefully pull out the runts of the seedlings:  “You’re not going to murder those little plants, are you?”

Come June, I have twenty tomato plants, a dozen cucumbers, a dozen nasturtium, I don’t know how many dozen sunflowers, a sea of seedlings that I forgot to label, and six zucchini.   With six zucchini plants, I’ll be able to place a giant zucchini on the back seat of every unlocked car in Vermont.

Maybe I’ll curse the darkness for a while.