| Diacritics-∞ | This user is a strong supporter of diacritics. |
| Nengō | This user knows nengō are essential when writing about Japanese history. |
 | This user prefers to cite books of Japanese history written by Japanese. |
| lapsed | This user is a lapsed musician. |
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In early 2010 I at last understood I don't like anonymity. I want Wikipedia to be an integral part of my life as much as possible and for as long as possible. Hence what follows.
These pages and my articles (see list) are the work of Francesco "Frank" Baldessari, an Italian national who'd rather be a citizen of the world, who resides in Japan since 1982, and who now lives in good old Kamakura. Some Japanese have told me that, over the years, I have become another Urashima Tarō (my only love however says the maximum I can aspire to be is a Tarō Urashima), hence my user name. They have a point: every once in a while I find myself involuntarily riding my bicycle either on the right in Japan or on the left in Italy. It's just as well that I don't have a driver's license. In a deeper sense, though, my friends are wrong, because I have been like Urashima Tarō since the day in late 1954 when I was born. The stork landed in the wrong country, and I still haven't found the right one.
Over the years I have however learned other things, in particular the great truth in Bernard Berenson's line:
"A complete life may be one ending in so full identification with the non-self that there's no self to die."
The happier I am, the more time I spend looking at the world, rather than at my wounds and/or scars. I used to do the opposite.
I write almost exclusively about Japan, not because I think it's a particularly important subject, but because it is what I know.
About my articles, I try to write them as well as I can, given the fact I am not even a native speaker, but ultimately I care about their content, correctness and clarity far more than about banalities like using an academic tone and avoiding the use of abbreviations (if they are OK for New York Review of Books, they should be in Wikipedia too, methinks). As Albert Einstein once said, quoting his old pal Ludwig Boltzmann, "matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and the cobbler."
My favorite fields, to my great surprise, have turned out to be religion in Japan and Japanese religious architecture, two things I thought I had no interest whatsoever in. (I am far from religious. Like Steven Weinberg, "I am not indifferent to religion, I am hostile to it.") The subject of religion in Japan in particular has proved to be a treasure trove of surprises with immense cultural and political implications in every field I have looked even superficially into.
I have clear positions on the subject of religion in Japan, although I have tried VERY hard to keep them out of the 194 articles I have written to date.
- First and most importantly, I fully agree with Allan Grapard when he says that the two main religions in Japan, Buddhism and Shinto, are distinct but not separate. They have a symbiotic relationship, and studying them separately is therefore a mistake. You can't be interested in Japanese Buddhism and not in Shinto, and far less can you be interested in Shinto but not in Japanese Buddhism.
- Second, insofar as the term "Shinto" is concerned, I am more or less a follower of Kuroda Toshio's, John Breen's, Mark Teeuwen, Allan Grapard, Sueki Fumihiko and many other scholars in the sense that like them I believe Shinto as we know it today is a Meiji era construct and an offshoot of Buddhism. Kami worship is old, today's Shinto is not. And it's not simply a matter of terms, but also of substance. That's why, like many specialists both Japanese and foreign, I prefer to use the term "kami worship" instead for subjects before Yoshida Kanetomo, who first came up the idea of Shinto as a separate religion.
The reason is that, as far as I can tell, little in Japan makes sense, even in the history of art, if not in the light of these two concepts.
IMHO, by far the most important of my contributions are the following articles. Their content is the background against which I write almost all my contributions. They should be read, if possible, in order of appearance in the list.
The first two explain in some detail the relationship between kami worship and Buddhism in Japan. The third describes the collusion of Buddhism with the Tokugawa shogunate for power. The last two deal with the immense and long-lasting repercussions of that collusion.
As attested by my user boxes, I have a user page at Wikipedia Commons too under the same name. No art in my pics, at least not intentional. I do not consider myself a photographer, and my work there is just part of my work here.
There. If one of these days I unexpectedly leave this vale of tears like my Wikipedia role model Fg2 (Where is he? I miss him more than I thought I would), at least you will know who I was.
Design by user Phaedriel, but purloined from user Andradus.
Quotations I like[edit]
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries, but between authoritarians and libertarians.
George Orwell
Our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
One can fool life for a very long time, but it sooner or later will make you into what you were meant to be. Every old man is a confession, and if so many old ages are empty is because those men were empty to begin with, and were hiding it.
- André Malraux, Man's Fate
Without loving yourself you cannot love others either. Self-hatred is identical to petty egoism and ultimately produces the same horrible isolation, the same desperation.
- Hermann Hesse
Like most people, I believe there is something real out there, entirely independent of us and our models as the earth is independent of our maps. But this is because I can't help believing in an objective reality, not because I have good arguments for it.
- Steven Weinberg
I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That's how you make atheists.
- Dave Silverman, President of American Atheists
Of all of man's tools, the book is certainly the most extraordinary. The others are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope are extensions of his eyesight. The telephone is an extension of his voice; then there are the tiller and the sword, which are extensions of his arm. But the book is a something else: it is an extension of memory and imagination.
- Jorge Luis Borges
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Edito ergo sum.
- Anon.
Edito ergo zoom.
- Anon.
Every man I meet is in some way my superior.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes I think we are alone. Sometimes I think we are not. In either case the thought is staggering.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Or, as phrased by physicist Michio Kaku:
- Either we are alone or we are not. Either thought is scary.
The universality of the deep chemistry of living things is indeed a fantastic and beautiful thing. And all the time we human beings have been too proud even to recognize our kinship to animals.
- Richard P. Feynman
I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything ... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without a purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell.
- Richard P. Feynman
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.
Salvador Dalí
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- Pablo Picasso
Real travel is not seeing different landscapes with the same eyes, but rather seeing the same landscape with different eyes.
- Marcel Proust
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Peter DeVries
I used to be indecisive, but now I am not so sure.
19th Century wit Boscoe Pertwee
There are just two ways of learning things: one is serendipity, the other is failure.
- NASA engineer in a BBC documentary
I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
- M. C. Escher
I wanted peace of mind, and found it only in a corner with a book.
In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.
- Latin proverb
I am told that Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds.
- Mark Twain
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco
I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
- Painter John Constable
Writing a poem
In seventeen syllables
is very diffic.
Haiku by John Cooper Clarke
Sharks have killed just over 80 people in the last three decades. Human beings kill an estimated 100 million sharks a year. And then they say sharks are dangerous.
- Yours Truly
- God is an invention of Man, so its nature is a shallow mystery. The real mystery is the nature of Man.
Kobori Nanrei Sohaku
When your candle burns low, you've got to believe that the last light shows you something besides the progression of darkness.
- Tennessee Williams
Asked how he wanted to be remembered, Muhammad Ali replied:
"As someone who never looked down on those who looked up to him."
In my experience, Urashimataro's careful edits are very much concerned with maintaining the academic credibility of our project.
- Wikipedia user Tenmei
Articles started or completely rewritten[edit]
Egara Tenjin-sha
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