Matuse

Matuse, Japan. Image from NY Times.

Since there is no snow at all in Chengdu, this picture of Matuse, famous for castles, appears right for this moment, the Chinese new year. In my memory for the past Spring festivals at younger ages, the village is almost covered with white snow. Sometimes, it is bitter cold, but it makes the holiday full of festival atomosphere. The sound from stamping feet on the paritally frozen snow is so delicate. Esp. during the nights when I return to the bedroom, the sound breaks the blue/white silence and it seems like there is a spirit accompanying me. Snow also makes a good time to catch sparrow, fish or weasel...

Matuse is known for castles. The story in the NY Times is about Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irish writer who stayed in Japan in the time at the turn of 1900's. Hearn, who married a local Japanese woman, played a similar role of a foreign observer as Edgar Snow who interviewed Mao and many other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. In contrast to the revolutionary Yan'an, Matuse is a "fairland", a "crimeless Utopian society". Hearn wrote down local folk tales in English told to him by his wife. Then his English stories were translated back to Japanese. They were very popular for a time.. Interestingly, many stories recorded by Hearn are ghost stories. That does not make Matuse a fairland, instead a frighten place. It seems that is quite a part of Japanese culture.