終わり

出かける準備は出来ましたか？

辞世

「益荒男が手挟む太刀の鞘鳴りに幾年耐えて今日の初霜」

「散るを厭う世にも人にも先駆けて散るこそ花と吹く小夜嵐」

さようなら。

●　 ●　 ●

Ao render da guarda

   Erigido em Mitoshi [水戸市], Prefeitura de Ibaraki [茨城県], em 1874 [明治7年 — Ano 7 de Meiji] o Tobukan [東武館] — cujo nome, numa tradução pouco ortodoxa, significa qualquer coisa como "Pavilhão das Armas do Oriente" —, é um dos mais antigos dojo do Japão. Assinalando o início do Ano Novo, crianças e adultos reúnem-se pelas 5 da madrugada  para participar no kangeiko — a sessão de prática regular do 'clã' da casa. O rito prolonga-se por cinco dias, e esta tradição é mantida há mais de 130 anos...

    Sim.  Gosto de viver entre um povo assim. 

    Descomplexado e orgulhoso na vivência da sua própria identidade, única e inalienável.

⚔ ⚔ ⚔

Adiante!

E assim vos passámos a perna! uma vez mais!

Salvo seja...

Bêbedos que nem uns cachos!

2011 foi um ano bera.

Bem merecida, uma festa das valentes!

良いお年を！

Yoi  o'Toshi' wo!

FELIZ ANO NOVO!

♻ ♻ ♻

辰 | 龍 *

Antes que me esqueça...

a todos os leitores, amigos e visitantes,

FELIZ ANO DO DRAGÃO **

2012

      *辰  — lê-se  tatsu  ou shin

龍 — lê-se ryū ou ryō,

ambos  sinogramas para 'Dragão', 
sendo, o segundo, hoje de uso mais comum 
no Japão.

** afinidades clubísticas  áparte, 

incluindo côres aqui escolhidas.

(nada de mal-entendidos, please...)  

辰 辰 辰

Também temos direito...

Este é caseiro, na verdadeira acepção do termo.

Genuíno home made — receita dos recortes.

Que cá não se vende disto.

E palavra d'honra! ficou melhor que se fosse comprado aí...

...Ainda há Natais felizes...

☃☃☃

Então, e uma vez mais...

FELIZ NATAL

❅ ☃ ❄ ☃ ❆ ☃ ❄

天皇陛下

                Ten'Ō Heika*,
　　   　Pelo dia do seu 78º Aniversário, os nossos mais respeitosos parabéns.
                Muitos anos de vida!

君が代

*Sua Majestade, o Ten'Ō (天皇, o Imperador) Akihito

❀ ❀ ❀

Onde a realidade excede a ficção

"How could you tell how much of it was lies? It MIGHT be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for a Party member, were neutral and non-political, a matter of slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock, cadging a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette end. The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering--a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons--a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting(...)"*

"After the revolutionary period of the fifties and sixties, society regrouped itself, as always, into High, Middle, and Low. But the new High group, unlike all its forerunners, did not act upon instinct but knew what was needed to safeguard its position. It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called 'abolition of private property' which took place in the middle years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before: but with this difference, that the new owners were a group instead of a mass of individuals. Individually, no member of the Party owns anything, except petty personal belongings. Collectively, the Party owns everything (...)"

"But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction— indeed, in some sense was the destruction— of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."*

"But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.

 "(...) The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. (...) From the point of view of our present rulers, therefore, the only genuine dangers are the splitting-off of a new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people, and the growth of liberalism and scepticism in their own ranks. The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way."*

"(...)'And now let us get back to the question of "how" and "why". You understand well enough HOW the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me WHY we cling to power? What is our motive? Why should we want power?

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'"*

*Todos os excertos, seleccionados de "NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR", 

George Orwell (1948)

(destaques e sublinhados do autor deste blogue  )

★ ★ ★

Mais e Melhor

        Um povo nunca deve ser confundido com quem o governa, que em inúmeros casos equivale a dizer, com quem o esmaga, com quem o condena à fome, à degradação e à miséria, com quem diariamente lhe aponta a faca ao pescoço.

        O martirizado Povo da República Democrática Popular da Coreia, jamais deverá ser confundido com os algozes que o mantém teatralmente servil pela força do chicote, da tortura e da fome e pela constante ameaça do tiro na nuca, essa mesma gente que conseguiu a proeza de transformar um país inteiro num gigantesco gólgota. 

     Assim como não nos deixamos impressionar pelo mis-en-scène riefenstahlièsque magistralmente explorado no videoclip hoje aqui proposto, não caímos na tentação fácil de julgar quem está há décadas sujeito à mais ignóbil das opressões e das misérias, ao vê-los verter copiosas lágrimas de 'sentida mágoa' pela perda do seu 'Querido Líder': ainda ontem na NHK, canal de televisão público do Japão, refugiados norte-coreanos em solo nipónico explicavam e demonstravam perante as câmeras como as pessoas na RDPC em geral se treinam — literalmente — e de forma constante para conseguir simular de modo convincente a 'dôr sentida' de uma 'grave perda' como a desta semana, chegando ao ponto de se auto-agredirem para conseguir sentir mal-estar bastante para lacrimejar. Isto é autêntico! E que não restem dúvidas: quem não for capaz de o fazer arrisca-se a ser sumariamente brandido com o ferrete da dissidência — com as previsíveis consequências não apenas para o próprio 'transgressor', mas, e sobretudo, para todos quantos lhe sejam próximos...

          Ao Povo Norte-Coreano só desejamos a libertação, a prosperidade e o futuro digno a que tem direito, como todos os demais povos da Terra, um futuro sem fome, sem miséria, de paz, liberdade, saúde e bem-estar para os seus filhos. 

          Esperamos sinceramente que os eventos desta semana tragam ventos de mudança.

          Quem sofre não deve esperar mais. Quem sofre merece muito melhor.

✪  ✪  ✪

            

Faz de conta que é (mesmo) Natal

Hakata Eki [博多駅] — Estação Central de Hakata, Fukuoka,
19.XII.2011

     Dizem eles, Natal é sempre que os homens querem.

     E será certamente onde os homens quiserem, dizemos nós.

     Mas aqui, francamente... nunca é bem, bem aquilo que... enfim...

     Sempre bonito, em qualquer recurso.

     E assim até parece outro lugar...

     BOAS FESTAS a todos, são os votos do Último Nan Ban Jin, 

de Kyushu até vós.

雪のクリスマス

(para acabar de vez com a reputação deste blogue)

❄  ❅  ❆