Jiang Feng, chief writer of "Japanese Overseas Chinese Daily".
Perhaps because I knew that I had studied abroad at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, a Japanese friend in Fukuoka recently contacted me and told me that Yokohama Noh would be performing the Noh drama "Lao Song", and he was in charge of buying tickets and invited me to see it.
Although I have entered the 36th year of my stay in Japan and have been labeled as "the first person to be introduced to Japan" by some networks, I still have no knowledge of Japan's unique stage arts, Noh theater and kabuki. How many times have I pretended to want to see. No, at first glance, it becomes the Japanese version of "lullaby". At this time, I will think of the older generation of "Japanese experts" Mr. Liao Chengzhi and others, who talked about Noh opera and Kabuki in front of the Japanese, which made the Japanese stunned, no wonder in the 70s of the last century, the mentor introduced Liao Chengzhi in front of the Japanese, saying: "He can run for the Diet when he goes to Japan." ”
I remember that when I was studying abroad at Kyushu University in the early 90s of the last century, an old man named Ryo Yamada, who had been "employed" in Northeast China in Fukuoka, had a lot of contacts with me. One day, he enthusiastically drove me to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, which was very close to Fukuoka. He gushed along the way. At that time, I was really not good at Japanese, and because he had a strong "Kyushu dialect", I could understand about 20% at most. However, I understood the word "Sugawara Michizane" when he said it. Before I went to Fukuoka, I lived in Kameido, in the Shitamachi region of Tokyo, and there is a Tenjin Shrine near it, which enshrines Sugawara Michizane, who is known as the "god of learning" in Japan. At that time, I wondered how the "god of learning" enshrined in Tokyo had come to Dazaifu in Fukuoka.
Sugawara Michizane is known as the "God of Learning" in Japan, and is even called the Japanese version of "Confucius", however, the Japanese scholar Nagatomi Akiro wrote in "The Hosodo of the Tenjin Sugawara Michima Kiyuki" (Toyo Books; 2011 2 First Edition) says that none of the historical materials about Sugawara Michizane's boyhood are credible. To put it bluntly, it is because of his humble background that it is most appropriate to call him a "grassroots scholar".
Since then, I've been to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine many times, because it's a great place to enjoy plum blossoms, just like Tenjin Shrine in Kameido, Tokyo. It was also the place where Japan's "Tang envoys" returned during the Tang Dynasty; There are also many relics related to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894.
Having said that, Sugawara Michizane was probably "in his prime", although he was born with a low background and good education, he made an exception and was promoted to the "right minister". That's right, if there is a "right minister", there will be a "left minister", and now I finally realize that the "right" and "left" are not arranged for the sake of symmetry and good-looking, but are really set up for mutual containment. Here, Sugawara Michizane, who is the right minister, is "scholarly and scolds Fang Xuan", but the left minister Fujiwara Tokihei over there is slandering him to the emperor, and in the end, Sugawara Michizane is really "misfortune comes from the mouth", and he ended up with an idle position of "Dazai Foreign Marshal", which is actually "exile"!
In my opinion, Sugawara Michizane is fragile in his heart, fragile emotionally, and fragile in spirit, and he died two years after being "exiled" from the capital to Dazaifu. The ox cart that was carrying his body slowly was halfway there, refusing to move forward anyway. The people who sent him to the funeral thought that this was Sugawara Michizane's intention, so they buried him here, and built a "Rakuji Temple", which is very close to the pronunciation of "euthanasia" today. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan's ** "abolished Buddha and destroyed the Buddha", and "Anrakuji" became a ruined temple. And when Sugawara Michizane was down, an old nun saw that he was hungry, and the "plum branch cake" that gave him "plum branches inserted in rice cakes" has been passed down to this day. It tastes sweet; When I think about it, it's a bitter ......
Many years later, a man from Umezu who admired Sugawara Michizane went to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine and searched for the pine and plum trees that had been with the down-and-out and lonely Sugawara Michima in the inner courtyard of the palace, so that later generations could interpret the ...... of the Noh dramas "Old Pine" and "Red Plum Palace".
For Chinese living in Japan like me, who is over the age of five and adds five, when it comes to pine trees, I am familiar with the "eighteen wounded and sick like the eighteen green pines" in the modern revolutionary Peking opera "Shajiabang"; Speaking of red plums, I am familiar with the "Ode to Red Plums" in the opera "Sister Jiang". So, in a foreign country, I refused to watch the Noh drama "Lao Song" recommended by a Japanese friend......February 9, 2024, Chinese New Year's Eve, written lonely in Tokyo Lefengsai).