Bummer

March 20, a national holiday in Japan to celebrate the spring equinox, and a glorious, spring-like day it was in Niigata. Among those I passed along the popular Shimano River embankment 'yasuragitei': a family of three, the daughter wearing a MAGA cap, she looks to be the same age as the 150 schoolgirls killed in Tehran. Sigh.

With Friends Like These

The leader of the free world during his audience with Japanese PM Takaichi when asked by a Japanese reporter why he hadn't forewarned allies of the Iran attack: One thing you don’t want to signal too much, you know, when we go in, we went in very hard and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” There was laughter in the room but the president had not finished. He asked mischievously: “Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Suddenly the laughter died away. Takaichi’s eyes widened and she shifted in her chair as Trump evoked the moment that drew the US into the second world war.- The Guardian Could this not also be a reference, however oblique and unintentional, to the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed 180,000 (conservative figure)? I'm not accusing that person of subtlety, mind you.

穴守稲荷、夜の景色

New Orleans French Market

Lafcadio Hearn, 1877: "Oranges fifty cents a hundred- twelve for a nickel" is a daily cry nowadays in the French Market, and they are good, large, ripe, sweet oranges, too... I remember when one could purchase veg and fruit (perhaps not local) at the French Market. Late 80s, early 90s, that was. Don't go there now: vendors hawking the same kitsch hawked throughout the Quarter at scores of identical stalls amd tourist traps. And the public restrooms are vile.

Street Nomenclature

Hearn: "Much of the early history of New Orleans might be traced alone in the names of the old streets..."

34 Years After

Anonymous donor gives 10 mil. yen to parents of Japanese student fatally shot in US - The Mainichi https://share.google/aDaw9Oz0rXDmdKARN There may be moral arcs somewhere that bend towards justice, but not in the US, not with guns: since Hattori Yoshihiro was killed in my hometown, Baton Rouge, LA, 34 years ago, guns have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands. As we're on moral arcs, none here, either: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/15/ai-defense-warfare-companies

Jackson Square (Updated)

The famous eques

trian statue of Andrew Jackson in the eponymous square at the heart of the French Quarter.

From the pedestal: "The Union must and shall be preserved." Stirring declaration from a man whose public statements and acts regarding the union might strike the reader of history as pro-South. His actions vis a vis indigenous peoples in the southeast are less conflicted or complex, for Andrew was the architect of the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of tribes such as the Seminole and Choctaw. A sad and despicable history it is. There stands the Cathedral in the background, as if in benediction. From Hearn's "New Orleans in Wet Weather": I wandered through the French Quarter into Jackson Square and proceeded to examine the great equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson, erect upon a rampant steed. Upon the eastern face of the stone I beheld characters deeply graven, and I discovered that the characters were even these: "The Union Must And Shall Be Preserved." Thrn I inquired what might be the history of these extraordinary inscriptions, and received this pithy, trisyllabic and all-satisfying reply: "Beast Butler" (much despised Union general who seized and occupied NO in 1862)

La Cuisine Creole

Lafcadio Hearn introduced New Orleans's rich culinary culture to the English-speaking world with the publication of "La Cuisine Creole" in 1885. I wanted my own copy of the cookbook and was fortunate to find one at Faulkner House Books (as related in a previous post), but a digital version is available here: lacuisinecreolec00hearrich.pdf https://share.google/9wg9gHyFBMNL7GiKt

Photos: catfish po-boy (or poor boy), beignets and cafe au lait

Pirate's Alley, The Faulkner House, Hearn, and Some Perfume

Just off Jackson Square (about which, a later post), between the Cathedral and the Presbytere, is Pirate's Alley. Amble along, admire the enclosed courtyard on the right and 19th century architecture on the left, but take care lest you miss:

Faulkner House, where the laureate wrote "Soldier's Pay", in 1925. The ground floor is a delightful bookseller's named, appropriately, Faulkner House Books. Now, if you desire a volume by a local writer- Anne Rice, for instance, or Anne Rampling, as you may know her- or a work about New Orleans, you are likely to discover on the well-stocked shelves of this shop the title you seek, new, used, out-of-print, or, for the collector, even a rare first edition. The proprietor directed me directly to his little collection of Hearnian titles (or is it Hearniania?)- the former may be considered the less objectionable- whereupon I immediately selected:

By the by, a better photo of the plaque and sign, taken on a different phone

It was whilst concluding the purchase that the proprietor engaged me in a most surprising tete a tete about the J-Pop group Perfume. Electro World https://share.google/wSzFwbB195acoKroc To whit: The owner's 30-something son has been a fan of Perfume since their debut some 20 years ago, and the two attended a concert in Fukuoka a years ago. The son, who has never studied Japanese formally, was nevertheless able to communicate in basic Japanese during the trip thanks to what he's learned from Perfume's lyrics and communicating online with other fans. Pretty cool. And, the dad, who's around 60, says he's come to like their music, too. Pretty cool. As for Hearn's "La Cuisine Creole", that is a course unto itself.