I wrote the entirety of this devotional sonnet last night, in a local parking garage that has become a favorite meditative spot. The steaminess of the even was thought, by most, excessive.

Sonnet CXLIV

Moist nights, they are not visible, but do
Give solace to my lonely, plumpened lips.
Though clouds above obscure, the skies accrue
Effulgent graces, and when cover slips
Away, I see them, stones in watery
Muck trenches. For the Lord does not allow
The fundamental goods that break us free
To shelter with too great persistence. Now,
The midnight's allegory in my mind,
A rosary of knighthood in my hand,
I sit upon a wall and pray in kind,
And near believe cement will understand
And echo my devotion like a spouse,
In praise of Him Who made us both by choice.

The mysteries, or course, were the Glorious.

This handsome snapshot came fresh from my cell phone; it came out well considering the sun was in the background.

Well, as my own Crusader88 mentioned last Saturday, the elections in the Land of the Rising Sun are complete, with modestly satisfying results, as you may see here. The ever-reliable Liberal Democratic Party and its ally, the Buddhist New Komeito Party performed much better than the center-left Democratic Party of Japan and its block. Though these developments (which I, Atobe, assure you are more accident than fate--just a month before the new DPJ Prime Minister was wonderfully popular, but he sank fast) are surely happy, alas, the genuine conservative patriots in the Sunrise Party of Japan won but a single seat, but lost another. For some perspective, they mustered a fifth of the votes given the communists, but themselves received a similar advantage over the political wing of the Happy Science cult. Such is the fate of the Right.

I, Atobe, confess a better mood than electoral circumstances would permit, however. Leslie, see, frequently recommends weblogs and websites he presumes are worthy of my inspection. The recommendations, to my dismay, are just as frequently silly. After trying out .Christian Lolita., a LiveJournal page where Christian practitioners of the Japanese fashion he wishes the fair sex would wear find electronic fellowship (at right is a classic lolita, and below her a gothic lolita--in Holy Nihon we see them more often, and they're sort of like prettier punks, so it's not a big deal), and then Good Bye, Bad Bishops!, a goofy site which posts the retirement dates of supposedly bad bishops with a squeaky old Lawrence Welk tune playing in the background (we Japanese haven't enough bishops for a comparable site, and we don't have to worry about bad clerics as bad ecclesiastical architecture—imagine if St. Patrick's Cathedral looked like St. Mary's here in Tokyo!), I was ready to stop trying.
But this is different. He sent me to a magnificent Catholic-run anime blog named NeoShinka.

To use one of those foreign-language phrases my colleague so loathes, NeoShinka is a tour de force. Founded September 12, 2007, NeoShinka is dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, the feast for which is also September 12. The author, Charz by pseudonym, has a distinctive style of posting anime images and reproducing paragraphs from Wikipedia or a similar reference as commentary. In this classic post, he takes a few images from the exuberantly executed, albeit slightly perverted anime Maria†Holic, and quotes the free encyclopedia to note the influence of Japanese woodcuts on Art Nouveau. Another plus: NeoShinka clearly leans right. See Charz attribute an offensive anti-anime joke to an Obama-loving New Hampshire Democratic state representative here, and see the commbox here on why manga is overtaking propaganda-smothered Western graphic novels. And an off-topic pic of Obama as the Dear Leader here. Most impressive, however, are select icons from the sidebar. Since NeoShinka is hardly neoconservative (thanks be to God), I am not sure what this image, featuring the Bleach's violent Zaraki Kenpachi, says about America's "DIPLOMACY", but I like it. Better yet, get a load of this:














Look familiar?

Yessir, that there is the yoke and arrows, the symbol of the Falange, the Catholic Integralist party under which Generalassimo Franco beat back the Reds in Spain and maintained one of Europe's last Catholic states until his death in 1975. But why, you ask, is "MOE MOE KYUN" superimposed, and why hearts rather than arrowheads? Crusader didn't know until I told him its a reference to one of the greatest moments in all of anime. In the popular K-On! series, the characters are wondering what their band should do for the school festival, and one character proposes a maid cafe; when you Americans realize their splendor, they will colonize you like the tasteless McDonald's has colonized us. And no, "MOE MOE KYUN" doesn't mean much of anything. But at last, the Falange of that Christian Caudillo and the cuteness of affectionate maids (though more Crusader's cup of tea; I've been around maids all my life) are shown to belong to an Integral whole.



Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

I have made some slight progress in Fitzgerald's translation of Virgil's Aeneid, and have quickly come to admire the story's hero, Aeneas, shown below recounting the fall of Troy to Queen Dido. He is, I believe, a man for our times, so I shall bring forth his virtues here.

Shortly before I began the Aeneid, I had a telling exchange with a friend on the importance of fate within a discussion of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, which I found to be just another exposition of modern man's revulsion of destiny, inane obsession with choosing one's own future, and concomitant belief that all choices are equal, with no one more worthy or evil than any other. My friend reminded me that this conflict isn't exactly new in the human experience, and has always been a major theme in literature. True, but the state of the great debate has hardly remained constant. Whereas the active acceptance of a pre-determined fate is the very glue of traditional societies, both popular and elite opinion in the contemporary West find fate an oppressive concept, and believe all of its reflections in civil society are backward and even barbaric. I only need cite the example of arranged marriages. Formerly as common a practice in the West as it remains in some less developed corners of the globe (the picture is from a Bangladeshi arranged marriage), the practice is completely defunct and alien in our anti-society. While, of course, consent to the familial decision was always necessary for a valid marriage in Catholic Europe, the prevalence of arranged marriages reflected the understanding that a healthy society is made up of healthy families, and recognized that everyone, not just the spouses in question, have a stake in the viability and success of each and every marriage. When arranged marriages fell out of favor and only the romantic interests of the individuals were recognized as important in marriages, some of the seeds of the contemporary destruction of the family were sown.

Anyway, in light of this catastrophic shift, it makes perfect sense that Queen Dido, Aeneas's sometime lover, is better known theseadays than Aeneas himself. I at least had heard much more about the Carthaginian queen than the survivor of Troy before I picked up Virgil's epic. And Dido, typically, was always treated with unmixed sympathy. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Dido's Wikipedia article is quite a bit heftier than Aeneas's. Yet, in my reading, I find Aeneas not only a more admirable figure, a man of rare selflessness, but also much more interesting.

Aeneas has a destiny willed by the Jupiter and Venus: to refound the greatness of Troy in the plains of Latium. After a storm willed by Juno, he lands in Carthage and gets sidetracked and falls for Queen Dido. He even contemplates settling in Africa permanently and ruling Carthage jointly. After this state of things persists for a year, Jupiter sends Mercury to tell him he'd been

Oblivious of your own world, your own kingdom!

Lest his divinely ordained fate fails to move him, Mercury reminds Aeneas that his son's inheritance is also at stake:

... If future history's glories
Do not affect you, if you will not strive
For your own honor, think of Ascanius,
Think of the expectations of your heir,
Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land
Of Rome, are due.

Aeneas's decision to pursue his destiny or not has eternal consequences, which move him despite his powerful love. Given the epithet "duty-bound", he struggles to overcome his personal desires so that he might what must be done. Aeneas,

... though he sighed his heart out, shaken still
With love of her, yet took the course heaven gave him
And went back to the fleet.

He is not faultless. Rather than informing Dido of his decision to leave, he attempts to depart in secret, and when interrogated by her mendaciously tells her,

...Do not think
I meant to be deceitful and slip away.

which were his plans exactly. But, as there was no getting around it, he explained with strident beauty:

But now it is the rich Italian land
Apollo tells me I must make for: Italy,
Named by his oracles. There is my love,
There is my country.
...
...So please, no more
Of these appeals that set us both afire.
I sail for Italy not of my own free will.

What unheard-of resolution! This, my friends, is the definition of heroism. In the courses of our lives there are some things we must do, with no regard to personal consequences. Aeneas, like Abram, is called by God to establish a new nation. A calling of this sort transcends even the realm of right and wrong; to repeat a belief of the vampire Louis from Interview with the Vampire, all moral decisions are really aesthetic decisions. Whatever Aeneas might have felt was in his best interests, he understands that the gods, in their greater wisdom, desire a better future than he can possibly envision by himself, and so is undaunted by the continued pangs of his heart.

Dido is a much simpler character. Even though she does not doubt Mercury's message, she still tries to thwart the gods' plans. Her attitude is summed up in this passage:

Oh, I am swept away burning by furies!
Now the prophet Apollo, now his oracles,
Now the gods' interpreter, if you please,
Sent down by Jove himself, brings through the air
His formidable commands! What fit employment
For heaven's highest powers! What anxieties
To plague serene immortals!

The gods, she opines, are wasting their time, are concerned with a private affair of mortals which is none of their business. They are a bother. Ah, how modern. Completely bereft of self-control, Dido throws fit after fit trying to stop Aeneas, and commits suicide on his departure. Not upon impulse, but through an elaborate plan. Such was her disregard for the goods that remained to her (and her duties as Queen of Carthage) that she threw her life away after full consideration. Like many moderns, Dido displays resolution only in overreacting to not getting her way. It makes me, indeed, feel bad for the pop musician Dido Armstrong whom I like so much; Dido is her given name, not a stage name.

Let our virtue, rather, be that of Aeneas, who,

Buffeted by a gale of pleas
This way and that way, dinned all the day long,
Felt their moving power in his great heart,
And yet his will stood fast; tears fell in vain.

And may we pray with him:

Holy one, whatever god you are,
We go with you, we act on your command
Most happily! Be near, graciously help us,
Make the stars in heaven propitious ones!

*************

Atobe is far too busy to post now, because the Japanese House of Councillors (Upper House) election is tomorrow. Though my friend has frequently expressed his preference for the American practice of having Election Day on Tuesdays to holding profane votes on Sundays, he's devoting all his energies to campaigning for the Sunrise Party of Japan, his rightist party of choice. Given late-breaking polling, he assures me the prospects for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and its allies are happy rather than sad. One can only hope.

A Happy Independence Day, to our cherished readers. Though this picture was neat, but yeah, like I'd ever cook anything!

After the visit of a dear friend at the beginning of the week, my ever-sparse schedule was free to devote to a new round of summer reading. Since the hefty Infinite Jest had long demanded my complete attention, I chose to begin three books at once. A complementary and fine mix they turned out to be.

First up had to be Virgil's Aeneid as translated by Robert Fitzgerald, a summer reading for my upcoming course on St. Augustine's City of God. Fitzgerald's version of the 2,000-year-old epic is shockingly clear and readable, retaining the power attributed to the original; it will probably merit addition to my list of favorite books when I'm through.

Second, at long last, I took out the second volume of George Sansom's A History of Japan; it's been almost a full year since I finished the first part, but I was eager to get back into the action. Haven't gotten too far yet; presently Sansom is relating, with his characteristic mild color, the well-intentioned but utterly failed reforms of the Emperor Go-Daigo in 1333. After generations of subservience to the Shoguns, you see, he returned from an imposed exile and reestablished personal rule with the aid of the disgruntled warrior nobility and the Buddhist monasteries. No sooner were the Shoguns overthrown than the warriors came in droves to petition the Emperor for a share in the spoils. While the confiscated estates were aplenty, it was impossible to satisfy everyone in the best of circumstances. And the bureaucracy was inexperienced and inefficient to boot, so many loyal warriors went unrewarded for their services, while many tracts went to petty officials and "dancing girls" from the court. It was a real mess. The namesake proprietor of this blog tells me the Atobe clan filed a claim for their heroic exploits at the time, and has yet to receive a response.

For the keystone to this trifecta, I knew it just had to be... Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. My eye'd been on the works of Mrs. Rice since I heard Br. Andre Marie of Saint Benedict Center mention her when discussing a Chronicles magazine article disparaging her vampire literature. Brother proceeded to note her earnest conversion, while cautioning that her take on Catholicism struck him as "gnostic", though he hadn't actually been able to read her fiction. While Brother, the prior of a religious order, naturally didn't have time to spare for her fare, I couldn't but want to read her stuff myself to see who was right. At the same time, Mrs. Rice's Christian-themed novels came only after decades of vampire fiction and whatnot, which she has hardly denounced: and I for one have never been such a devotional reader that I'd skip what made her famous. I am, rather, a stickler for reading things in order (the first time I read the Bible I did it front to back--ignoring all the warnings not to--and liked it). Finally, while as a guy I have been spared from the Twilight series, as an anime fan I have come to enjoy vampire fiction--though the vampires in Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase and Rosario + Vampire are so much cuter than their Anne Rice equivalents!--so the latter's first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was a natural choice. I am still just starting, but I can already understand what Mrs. Rice meant when she reflected, I wrote many novels that without my being aware of it reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God. The seeds of her return to the Faith are evident from the first pages of Interview, though insofar as accepting all the teaching's of Christ's Church she still has some more converting to do.

*************

Speaking of Saint Benedict Center. That traditional Catholic apostolate, carrying on the staunch defense of the dogma No Salvation Outside the Church begun by Father Feeney (seen preaching to Bostonians, as was his wont), recently won a great victory in its crusade to convert America to the Roman Catholic religion. Godless municipal officials in their Richmond, New Hampshire locale, some of whom "expressed their view that the Church’s moral positions on matters such as abortion and homosexual behavior are 'abhorrent' ", tried to saddle them with zoning restrictions to hamper construction of a new chapel and school. Thanks to the Alliance Defense Fund, the Center won a $1.15 million settlement from the crooks, and got the restrictions removed! As a very occasional visitor who's entranced by the authentic Catholicism at Saint Benedict Center every time I visit, I can vouch that the benefit for all the additional students they'll eventually take shall be incalculable. While our Nation remains bogged down in two bloody, ideologically-driven wars to spread liberal democracy, is stuck with a host of socialistic government programs for which we cannot possibly pay, and educates most of its children in Deweyan relativism factories, a lasting triumph such as this is worthy of celebration.

*************

On that note, I must leave off, and shall enjoy fireworks in the PM with my family. As a patriotic sidenote, which will perhaps be no news to astute readers, section breaks in A Blog from Atobe are always 13 stars, in tribute to the 13 stars on our Nation's first starred flag.