Rhodia Perfection

For a long time I have happily used for my journal writing a Japanese made ‘notebook’ called Life Noble Note Plain. I like the size of five and a half inches by eight and a quarter inches, as well as the thick unlined ivory pages. I also like the brown cover with its old-fashioned design. Several months earlier, at the time I was living in Japan, but making plans to leave there, I bought five of the Life notebooks to take away with me, certain I would be unable to find the same brand here in the US. But that stack of five has dwindled, and I’ve had my eye out lately for a replacement.

And then came Rhodia. I read a couple of reviews on pen & paper related blogs of the new Rhodia Webnotebook. It looked good and right off impressed me as a likely replacement for my longtime Life notebooks. I’ve had good experience with Brian Goulet at gouletpens.com, so I ordered from him the larger of the two Rhodia Webnotebooks, which just happens to be the exact size of the Japanese Life notebook I’ve always used.

My order arrived amazingly fast, and as is usual with Brian, included a handwritten note of thanks for my order, finished off with a wax seal. To my mind, the note is a special touch. But to the point, the Rhodia ‘Webbie’ as it has come to be called…

I chose the orange (tangerine) cover because I wanted to expand my range of colors, journal-wise. The Rhodia orange is beautiful, but it isn’t until you hold, touch and feel the Italian leatherette cover that the color comes into full bloom. The best way to describe it is to say it is something I want to hold onto. It feels good in my hands, and moving my fingers over the leatherette is almost a soothing sensation. It certainly makes me wonder what exactly this ‘Italian leatherette’ is. The Rhodia logo in the center complements the notebook’s softness.

Another thing I like is the rounded corners. No matter how you turn or hold the Webbie, there are no sharp edges. Everything about it is smooth and silky, and that includes the 90g ivory Clairefontaine pages inside the cover. The Clairefontaine name is enough to tell you that the paper is going to be of superior quality. The Webbie has 96 blank (or lined) sheets, or 192 pages. The paper is acid-free, pH neutral and PEFC-certified.

One add-on at the back is a great idea, one I’ve seen in Japanese notebooks. This is an inner pocket just inside the back cover, perfect for small notes or clippings, maybe business or personal cards, things you want in a journal that aren’t written on the pages.

The notebook also has an attached elastic band which offers protection from other things getting wedged in the pages while in your bag; a simple band that keeps the book closed when you want it closed.

So what about the paper inside, the Clairefontaine 90g? Hard to imagine that anyone could ask for better. For my first bit of writing I chose five different fountain pens and five different inks. Each one proved to be a beautiful marriage of ink and paper. Smooth, clean, no feathering or bleed through, satisfying in all its qualities—what I would call ideal or perfect for pen and ink.

PENS AND INKS USED

Lamy 2000 (M) • Sailor Blood Orange ink

Lamy Safari (M) • Waterman Florida Blue

Pelikan 200 (M) • Sailor Miruai

Pelikan Souverän 600 (M) • Iroshizuku Tsukushi

Pelikan Souverän 1000 (BB) • Montblanc Violet

It’s just a matter of time until I order my next Rhodia Webnotebook. I’m hooked.

My thanks and appreciation to Brian Goulet at gouletpens.com.

Burning in Moonlight

Hachirô Sasaki 1922-1945, was a graduate of the Imperial University of Tokyo, volunteered to be a tokkôtai (kamikaze) pilot in February 1945. He died the following April, a navy ensign. He was 22 years old. His diary was titled, A Testament of the Youth: Diary and Love, in the Absence of Life.

From his diary…

‘Finally I will join the Navy on December 1. In anticipation, I have trained my body by swimming, gymnastics, and target practice. I am confident about my strength. We must now be the shield to protect the eternal life of our nation by going to the front to prevent the enemy’s advance as much as possible…Even if I fall, society does not rely on one individual. I am not concerned and shall eagerly go to the front.

If one thinks of a young life who dies in a state of purity and beauty one even regrets that a human being is essentially a political animal. I know it comes from sentimentalism, but if one must die, one wishes to die beautifully.’

Quoting writer-poet Kenji Miyazawa, Sasaki writes a passage echoing his own thoughts…

‘I don’t know if I am supposed to win this war but I will fight as much as I can, leaving my fate in your hands…I pray that we will see the day as soon as possible when we welcome a world in which we do not have to kill enemies who we cannot hate. For this end, I would not mind my body being ripped innumerable times.’

Tadao Hayashi 1922-1945, attended the Third Higher School and then the Imperial University of Kyoto. He was drafted as a student soldier in December 1943. He died at the age of 23, shot down by an American fighter plane. His diary was titled, My Life Burning in Moonlight.

From the diary…

‘I feel I have to accept the fate of my generation to fight in the war and die. I call it “fate,” since we have to go to the battlefield to die without being able to express our opinions, criticize and argue pros and cons of issues, and behave with principles, that is, after being deprived of my own agency…To die in the war, to die at the demand of the nation—I have no intention whatsoever to praise it; it is a great tragedy.

I do not avoid sacrifice. I do not refuse the sacrifice of my self. However, I cannot tolerate the reduction of the self to nothingness in the process. I cannot approve it. Martyrdom or sacrifice must be done at the height of self-realization. Sacrifice at the end of self-annihilation, the dissolving of the self to nothingness, has no meaning whatsoever.

The hard part is not death, but to live. At the height of life, life is terminated, the curtain goes down. Maybe it is splendid. After the climax the messenger of death arrives without notice. This is a splendid scenario. But it is unbearably miserable if one dies after a life in which one cannot devote oneself to one’s task and one cannot express oneself.’

Norimitsu Takushima 1921-1945, was drafted into the Imperial Navy out of Keio University in September 1943. He died in April 1945, a lieutenant, age 24. After his death, his father titled his son’s diary, The Writing Left Behind: Cape Jasmine—for the Beloved People of My Homeland. The Japanese for cape jasmine translates as “flower without a mouth” or perhaps more aptly, “flower without a voice.”

From his diary…

‘The Japanese are very sentimental. It is quite convenient for the dictators. The idea that one is patriotic and thus would sacrifice oneself is a thought for the stupid masses. It is a type of narcissistic mania…I advocate free contacts and exchange among the peoples of the world. I hate the rise of nationalism…According to my view, the nation now takes absolute control over individuals. Turning around 180 degrees from the Romantic to the Realist, I am looking at the moon and smiling.

With the rise of nationalism, people start to emphasize their superiority. The Germans do so. There is no way to judge the superiority of one people. That is nothing but self-deception or self-indulgence…

To the other world where my mother lives all alone,

I shall bring the honor from the battlefield.’

Photo: Female students waving blooming cherry blossoms as tokkôtai planes take off, April 1945.

The diary entries and photos (yesterday and today) all come from the outstanding book by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2006.

Point of No Return

October 25, 1944, off the coast of Saman Island in the Philippine Sea, the American escort carrier, St. Lo had a flight deck full of just landed planes, with more being loaded out for flight. For a few minutes captain and crew were confident they had remained invisible to Japanese planes. Their optimism was premature. Five hundred yards out, coming in low as if for a landing, kamikaze pilot Yukio Seki released a bomb that smashed into the St. Lo’s flight deck a few seconds before his plane made a slow roll and plowed into the ship. Forty minutes later what remained of the St. Lo disappeared beneath the water, reverberating still with underwater explosions. That October morning was merely a prelude to the horror the US Navy would face from Japanese kamikaze pilots over the next ten months.

During the last year of the war in the Pacific, Japan struggled in a last ditch effort to halt the American advance, an ever tightening noose around the islands of Japan. The concept of a special suicide attack force was the brainchild of navy vice-admiral, Takijirô Ônishi. First presented to officer graduates of the military academies, not a single officer volunteered, all of them knowing well that such tactics would be meaningless, ending in death. The necessary manpower was therefore sought among student soldiers drafted from higher secondary schools and universities. The candidates were all well-educated young men, the intellectual elite of modern Japan, men more comfortable with poetry and philosophy than bombs and self-sacrifice. All were extremely well-read, with an idealism that included a determination to combat the egotism growing out of capitalism and modernity. Asking them to volunteer to crash a plane into enemy ships was calculated to appeal to their moral principles and their sense of comradeship.

Americans were puzzled over what kind of society, education and culture produced not only the tactics of kamikaze attacks, but produced fighting men to carry out these suicide missions. Some of the answers to this question have been found in the diaries of kamikaze pilots.

Life for the tokkôtai (special attack unit) in the final ten months of World War II was a time of living life at its most intense, and during these last weeks of life, the young pilots filled their diaries with anguished confessions of fear and profound ambivalence toward the war and their nation’s imperialism. None of these diaries reflect the caricatures that paint them as reckless people, fanatical patriots and untrustworthy suicide bombers, but rather provide great insight into the minds of young men under the extreme conditions of warfare. The diaries reveal young soldiers who could not resist volunteering because they could not bear to embrace their own lives while watching friends and comrades offering theirs. Quoting lines from a famous poem about falling cherry blossoms, 23 year-old navy ensign, Yasuo Ichijima believed that like other pilots who had fallen, so would he—the falling cherry blossoms symbolic of life’s transience.

Ichizô Hayashi 1922-1945, was a graduate of the Imperial University of Kyoto, drafted as a student soldier in November 1943, assigned to be a tokkôtai pilot in February 1945. He died in April of that year off the coast of Okinawa, with the rank of navy ensign. He was 23 years old. His diary was titled, A Sun and Shield: Diary and Letters to Mother, Writings Left by Hayashi Ichizô. The Sun and Shield part of this title was taken from Psalm 84:11, ‘For the Lord God is a sun and shield.’

From his diary…

‘It is easy to talk about death in the abstract, as the ancient philosophers discussed. But it is real death I fear, and I don’t know if I can overcome the fear.

Even for a short life there are many memories. For someone who had a good life, it is very difficult to part with it. But I reached a point of no return. I must plunge into an enemy vessel.

To be honest, I cannot say that the wish to die for the emperor is genuine, coming from my heart. However, it is decided for me that I die for the emperor.’

Photo: kamikaze pilot, Kazuyo Umezawa, April 1945

MORE FROM THE DIARIES TOMORROW…

Flea Market Hell

Despite the camera ready iPhone in my pocket, I took no photos. There was a feeling that nothing on film or memory card could sufficiently convey the cheap nightmare quality of my outing to Daytona’s huge weekend flea market.

It is spread over a vast area, probably five or six acres of merchandise that in my opinion would make an excellent bonfire. I suppose it really shouldn’t surprise me what people will buy. Ashtrays molded out of beer cans, keychains in the shape of names spelled out in pink and aqua plastic, baseball caps completely covered in sequins, cut rate make up and perfume, bundles and bundles of ugly socks, embarrassing sea shell “art” and other countless tables of rubbish. At each intersection are stalls selling funnel cake, corn dogs, curly-Q French fries and Coca Cola.

Off in one corner—a relatively small area compared to the acres of carnival goods—is a meager offering of fresh fruit and vegetables. But look at the prices and you’d think you had just crossed over to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Why would anyone buy a basket of bruised peaches for $24.00?

I located the information booth to ask about fountain pens and books, but I might have gotten more information about spacemen and life on Mars had I asked. The lady didn't know what a fountain pen is, but said I might try Edna’s Jewelry Art on aisle D2.

Did I mention the heat? Within ten minutes my shirt was sweat soaked and perspiration dripping from my face. There are huge fans all about, but they do little more than blow hot air and spread the smell of popcorn and cotton candy. Add to that the generously proportioned people filling plastic shopping bags with funnel cake and painted seashell ashtrays, pushing a baby carriage and trailed by four juniors. You would think that people shopping for a tattoo would opt for an air conditioned place, but I noticed four different open-air tattoo stands.

I could take no more after forty-five minutes and turned for the exit. It took me another thirty minutes to locate my parking area and walk to my sun baked car. On the way I passed a man playing show tunes on an amplified electric violin.

Try to imagine hell.

Outlaw Painter, Caravaggio

Much of his life remains a mystery, but it has been suggested that Michelangelo Merisi of Caravaggio—the painter we know as Caravaggio—had a troubled childhood and adolescence. By his early twenties he had already become and outright villain, arrested and imprisoned repeatedly. Cardinal del Monte a powerful man and patron of Caravaggio proved unequal to the painter’s repeated brushes with the law. At age 39, a persecuted outlaw, he was finally murdered on a beach south of Rome.

Caravaggio is the quintessence of what came to be called “Baroque.” Coming on the cusp of the 16th and 17th centuries, it was a time of fury, ecstasy and excess, and each of Caravaggio’s paintings created a scandal. He name was lost, forgotten for three hundred years. Not until the 1920s was his name revived, his work reevaluated, thanks to the research and enthusiasm of Italian art critic, Roberto Lohghi. The painter’s contemporaries could not know of the influence that the scandalous artist would have on later painters, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Géricault, Courbet and Manet. One American critic declared, “With the exception of Michelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence.” The influence that these critics speak of was a far-reaching refinement of the emotional/intellectual relation between artist and subject. But during his lifetime Caravaggio was considered provocative and unacceptable. His work was seen as a display of obese, vulgar models posed sacrilegiously as Christ or Apostle, severed heads, men and women in ignoble, drunken postures, and young rogues playing dice or cheating at cards.

This description is to some extent accurate, but the technical facility, or drawing, paired with the chiaroscuro, the light and dark of a Caravaggio canvas attests to his genius. He worked at great speed without first sketching out the main figures, so sure was his drafting. In his compositions, the painter created a theatrical realism, using player-models chosen from the street. Monteverdi had just invented the operatic form, which Caravaggio translated to canvas. Still, whatever he painted, precedence was always given to nature and truth.

Genius or debauched sensualist, perhaps both, Caravaggio’s paintings are now in their rightful place in museums around the world.

ABOUT THE EXAMPLES SHOWN HERE:

1. The Musicians, 1595-1596—The singer, second from the right is a self-portrait of the artist.

2. The Crucifixion of Saint peter, 1601

3. Victorious Cupid, 1602-1603

4. The Cardsharps, 1594-1595

Thoughts on Pen & Ink

I try to jot down in a notebook words or quotations that either impress me right off, or in some way provoke thought on one, two or more ideas. The following six quotations are in no way grand or inspirational, but if nothing else are at least interesting opinions about the art of writing, and the tools we use to do that.

“There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.” — Petrarch

“The Pen is the tongue of the mind” — Horace

“No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination” — James Joyce

“I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen because of the pen.” — Gustave Flaubert

“The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.” — Norbet Platt

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ballpoint pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.” — Graham Greene

And one last excerpt from Jeffrey Deaver, which is something I included in an earlier post this past March. Again, the novelist wrote in a 1999 book:

“Handwriting is a part of a human being. Like our sense of humor or imagination. It’s one of the only things about people that survives their death. Writing can last for hundreds of years. Thousands. It’s about as close to immortality as we can get. Whatever somebody wrote is a reflection of who they are. It doesn’t matter how the words are made or what they say, even if they’re mistaken or nonsensical. Just the fact that someone thought of the words and their hands committed them to paper is what counts. I’ve always thought of handwriting as a fingerprint of the heart and mind.”

Dream or Reality?

Tired of waiting for a rainy day and fearful of nighttime crowds, I caught a matinee of the Christopher Nolan - Leonardo DiCaprio movie, Inception. Wow! Let me say that again. Woooow!

Imagine a future where espionage agents are able to enter the dreams of a target and extract bits of information from the subconscious. Take it a step further and imagine not the extraction of information via dreams, but the planting of an idea that eventually tilts the target toward a desired action. This is Inception.

Writer-Director Christopher Nolan drops us into a world where a razor thin line separates dreams from reality, a world where dreams are created layer upon layer, then entered and manipulated by ultra-talented and dangerous spies. But the subconscious is a dangerous terrain where a flicker of thought can crash the dream, and where players can end up comatose in a near permanent limbo. There are mazes within mazes and puzzles double-knotted with complication, and at times you ask yourself if the action is dream or reality. A literal understanding of the full-blown scheme cooked up by Dom (DiCaprio) and his team is out of reach, but somehow Nolan has crafted the story so that we know the what and why of their plan.

Inception is beautiful, chaotic, classy, and image-wise a mind boggling ride. In virtual worlds Parisian streets roll up like carpets, cities collapse, gravity is tamed, and locomotives grind high speed through traffic clogged streets.

If Christopher Nolan’s Batman picture, The Dark Knight gave you a movie thrill, Inception will cover it in aces. See it on the big screen, because a lot will be lost when it filters down to DVD.