I begin with Chinese Art on Thursday. Then an interlude on Fiction Writing and finally, my favorite, Japanese Art. I’m really very interested in the Chinese art, but I wish the instructor was a little more focused. She talked about the first Chinese emperor’s terra cotta army at Xian. I’ve been there. It’s a fascinating place. In between fiction writing and Japanese art I went to the library and found a book about the soldiers so I could fill in information the instructor did not have time to give us. The best part about these classes is that they raise questions I never thought to ask, or never fully formulated. When I saw those soldiers I knew they had been created by some kind of a manufacturing process, but I never thought it through. The instructor raised the questions and never quite answered them. But now I know.

Some day I’d like to go back to China. I was there for only 2 weeks. I’m sure I could spend 2 years and never see or understand it all.

I worked on that second paper until this afternoon when I had to go to class. I had a terrible time with it. Each time I had some idea of what to write I looked at the reading again and decided my thought was not quite right. The paper has strict guidelines. It’s supposed to be a critical abstract of the assigned reading. I am at a disadvantage because I have very little knowledge of Japanese history. I thought about not turning in anything. I had written one long paragraph (out of the required three) and I was very dissatisfied. So, putting my cursor in at the top of the page (thank goodness for computers), I wrote: "I can’t write this paper." I then proceeded to detail my problem. I finished the paragraph, decided the original could stand with it, added a sentence at the end and I turned it in. In our subsequent class discussion I realized that I hadn’t been far from the truth: the reading was disjointed and awkwardly translated.

We got the assignment for our major class paper today. I had intended to ignore this one. I thought it would be more work than I wanted to do. But the assignment is charming and I think it will really be fun. I’ll have more to say about it as I start to work.

and I should be writing the second paper for my Japanese Art class. This week we are looking at the tea ceremony as an art form, and it’s relationship to the politics of the 17th Century. I am still having trouble with the Japanese names and concepts. And I probably should have taken a class in Japanese history before I took this one. If I could only remember all of the Japanese words, it would be much easier.

The tea ceremony promoted a culture that was highly problematic for the ruling elite, as evidenced by the enforced suicide, in 1591, of one of the great tea masters. The tea ceremony emerged from a movement called gekokujo, those below overthrow those above. Obviously suppression of culture has gone on for a long time and under many different forms of government.