It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had any update here, and I’m sorry for that. I’ve been working pretty hard, and besides working not much particularly notable has happened recently, so I haven’t really taken the time to write anything. I’ve been doing my taxes — Japanese and American — and teaching a bunch of English classes to save up money, and studying Japanese as well, because I really want to pass level 2 of the JLPT this summer.

But I have been painting! I’ve been working hard on 3 landscape oils, which are almost dry but still tacky enough that I don’t want to place them on my scanner. (I’ve still got some green smudges on my scanner backdrop from the last time I scanned something too early.)

Today’s post is a piece I’ve had in my mind for some time now. As you may know, there are two dinosaurs named for Fukui prefecture: fukuiraptor and fukuisaurus. They’re fairly unremarkable dinosaurs, but I like them a lot. I was impressed by their displays at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, and I’m fairly certain that’s the only place in the world you can really see them. Last year they finally began selling little toy fukuiraptors and fukuisauruses, so I bought them both.

Well, besides just liking them, one of the top keywords that leads people to my website is “fukuiraptor.” I have no idea why — I think I only briefly mentioned fukuiraptor in a post a long time ago. Yet it remains among the top search terms, after my own name. So I’ve always thought maybe I should paint a fukuiraptor just to satisfy all these searchers who come here looking for it. And being that Fukui is big on dinosaurs, and Japan is big on trains, I thought that I should do a series on dinosaurs riding trains. So here is my first one: Fukui Raptor at Takefu-shin Station.

Fukuiraptor at Takefu-shin Station (Click for a larger version.)

I worked on this one simultaneously with the Founding Father, but I fought a lot more with the background, and the paint took a lot longer to dry, so I haven’t been able to post it. But finally I have deemed (hah) it dry enough to scan, so here it is! The 20th Chicken of the World: The Eskimo.

The Eskimo

I wasn’t sure what to name this one at first. “The Eskimo” was the idea that popped into my head but I had it in my head that the term can be offensive, that Inuit is the correct word… I guess it turns out that’s only in Canada. In the US, Eskimo is an acceptable term (and more importantly, the Eskimos in the US actually prefer it to other terms). At least so says Wikipedia. I also wasn’t sure about naming it after an ethnic group as opposed to it’s occupation (“The Dog Sled Rider?”), as most of my other chickens have names like “The Shogun,” “The Emperor,” “The Legionnaire,” etc., with a few exceptions like “The Viking,” “The Aztec,” and “The Zulu.” Is that offensive? I don’t know… I don’t really think so. I could have easily given them generic names like “The Sailor” or “The Warrior-Priest” or “The Chieftain,” but those terms are kind of generic and not very descriptive or immediately obvious as to what they are.

For these past two chickens I’ve been trying a new kind of paint. It’s called Aqua Duo by Holbein. It’s oil paint, but its suspended in a water-based medium that allows you to thin it using regular water instead of toxic solvents. I had been really itching to return to oil paints after painting so many yokai and kami-sama in gouache and acrylics, but because we have a 1-room apartment shared with a small bird, I didn’t want to risk using any solvents when I can’t leave the window open for ventilation. But these have done the trick! I was pretty skeptical at first, not the least of which being I didn’t want to spend $100 on new paints if they were going to suck… But they really are great! You can mix them with oil-based medium or water (though not at the same time), they dry at the same speed as oil, and mix exactly like oil… Well there’s not really anything to say except that it is oil paint — it just can be thinned with water. After the water evaporates it’s permanent, so there’s no worry about getting it wet once it’s on the canvas. So I think I’ll be using these as much as I can from now on.

I’m working on a couple of commissions now, which I’ll post as they dry, and after that I hope to get back to doing more chickens. Thanks for reading!

Being a long-time Philadelphian (well, 5 minutes outside of Philadelphia anyway), I’ve been pretty interested in American history — particularly colonial American history — for much of my life. Particularly, I’ve always been a huge fan of Benjamin Franklin, who is perhaps my favorite person from history; he’s an American da Vinci, if there ever was one, and the US would not be the same today (or might not even exist today) if not for him. He was a true polymath, a renaissance man: statesman, printer, author, inventor, among other things. So this chicken is an homage to good ol’ Ben and Philadelphia, with Independence Hall as a backdrop

The Founding Father

I hope it can also serve as a reminder today that even in our country’s infancy, our founding fathers were just as divided over political issues as we are today. Maybe we can remember that no party — Democratic, Republican, or other — truly holds a monopoly on the dreams of the founding fathers. I think that’s an important point especially today, as we face a rising tide of passionate political grandstanding and claims that one party has lost sight of our past, or that one party is not representative of “Real America.” Ben Franklin would have called bull on that one and reminded everyone that we are all true Americans, from those of us whose ties go back to the pilgrims to those of us who just swore a citizenship oath this morning. Farmers, suburbans, and city-dwellers; intellectuals and idiots; we’re all Americans, and the only un-American thing is attacking your countrymen as “un-American” for having different ideas.

I was reprimanded the other day by a Shintoist for saying that Susano’o was the evil storm god. He is the storm god, but not evil; he’s just kind of a jerk.

It probably all started from his birth. Susano’o was born at the same time as his sister Amaterasu and brother Tsukuyomi. Only, while they were born from their father’s eyes, Susano’o was born from the water that fell out from the inside of Izanagi’s nose. Kind of a divine snot rocket. Shortly after, he began making trouble — especially with his big sister Amaterasu. One day in particular, he got really drunk and angry and trampled all of her rice paddies and filled her irrigation ditches; he flung excrement into her shrines; he flayed a horse and threw its corpse at her loom, killing one of her handmaidens. Amaterasu was so upset she hid herself in the Heavenly Cave and didn’t come out for a long time.

Susano’o was punished by his father for this by being thrown out of Heaven. From this comes one of the most famous Susano’o stories. He went to Japan and met an elderly couple who had eight daughters. Or, they had had eight daughters; every year, the terrible eight-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi would come and eat one of them. Their last daughter, Princess Kushinada, was soon coming upon her final days. Susano’o, being a total badass, went and killed Yamata-no-Orochi. Afterwards, he noticed a funny lump inside the serpent’s corpse; he cut the beast open and discovered the sword Kusagani, which became one of the Three Sacred Treasures of Japan.

Eventually, in order to reconcile with his sister, he gave the sword to Amaterasu as a peace offering. She accepted it, and eventually passed in down to her grandson Ninigi, who passed it on to his grandson, Emperor Jimmu of Japan.

Susano'o

This will be my final painting in the Oh My Kami! series for a little while. I’ll be showing them at a gallery next month, and I’ll be returning to my Chickens of the World series for a time. This print — and the others in the series — is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

Tsukuyomi is the Japanese moon god. While Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was born from Izanagi’s left eye as he purified himself after leaving Yomi, Tsukuyomi was born from his right eye.

This was a fairly difficult image to create in that there are precious few myths involving Tsukuyomi. From what I can tell, he’s only even mentioned twice in the mythologies, the first story being his birth, and the second one being when he killed Ukemochi (I wrote about that at the end of Inari’s entry); Amaterasu was invited to a feast by the god of food, Ukemochi. She was busy, and so she sent her brother in her place. However, when Tsukuyomi saw the disgusting way in which the food was prepared — Ukemochi made the food by turning to the ocean and spitting out a fish, then facing the forest and spewing game out of her anus, and finally turning to a rice paddy and coughing up a bowl of rice – he got angry and killed the goddess.

Amaterasu was so upset with Tsukuyomi for killing Ukemochi that she refused to ever look at him again, and moved to another part of the sky. That is why we have day and night.

Tsukuyomi

Oh, and I added a Google Friend Connect module to my site (it’s on the sidebar, underneath the tags and categories) so if you’re using Google Reader or Blogger or anything like that, you can easily subscribe to my site if you’d like.

This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

Amaterasu is the Shinto sun goddess. She was born from Izanagi’s left eye as he purified himself after having returned from Yomi. Her brothers are Tsukuyomi, the moon kami, and Susano’o, the storm kami. She is also the origin of the divinity in the Japanese imperial line, as the imperial household is said to be directly descended from her. Her grandson Ninigi was sent to Earth to pacify Japan, and he brought with him the three sacred artifacts — the sword, the mirror, and the jewel — that became the Japanese imperial regalia. Ninigi’s grandson became Emperor Jimmu, the first emperor of Japan.

Amaterasu is also credited with inventing the cultivation of rice and wheat, and the use of silkworms and the loom.

Her most important shrine, the Grand Shrine of Ise, is interesting in that it is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. I’ve heard that this is in order to preserve the techniques of shrine building for all future generations (apparently books are not enough). The shrine also houses one of the three sacred artifacts — the mirror — although it’s not open to the public. (The sword is enshrined in the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, and the jewel is enshrined in the Imperial Palace.)

The mirror and the jewel are well documented in a famous story about Amaterasu. One day, her brother Susano’o was being a real jerk. He got really drunk, trampled all of her rice fields, filled in her irrigation ditches, and then threw excrement into her shrines and temples. Amaterasu was so upset she shut herself into the Heavenly Cave and sealed it shut with a rock. With her gone, the world became dark, and everything began to wither and die. All of the gods gathered outside the cave and begged her to come out. The hung the sacred mirror and jewels outside the cave to try to lure her out, and Uzume — the voluptuous goddess of revelry — exposed herself in some kind of divine striptease. All the gods cheered at this, and finally Amaterasu peeked out to see what all the commotion was. The other gods explained that they found a new goddess to replace her, and pointed to the mirror. When Amaterasu went over to look at the mirror, the gods closed the cave behind her and begged her to return to Heaven. She did, but from then on, she always carried a bow and quiver just in case her jerk of a brother started up again. (In this picture, she’s carrying the sword, Kusanagi, which was eventually given to her as a reconciliation gift from her brother Susano’o.)

Amaterasu

This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!

Yesterday we heard the story of Izanagi and Izanami creating the world, the islands of Japan, and many of the gods and goddesses. After giving birth to the god of fire, poor Izanami was too badly burnt to live, and she died in her husband’s arms. Izanagi was so angry that he slaughtered the infant god of fire, cutting him up into many new gods. But his grief didn’t end there.

Izanagi was so upset that he determined to travel to the underworld, Yomi, to retrieve his wife. He searched and quickly found her (presumably there weren’t too many dead at this point in history). At this point it was too dark to see her, but he called out to her to come back to the land of the living. Izanami spat at him that he came too late, as she had already eaten the food of the underworld and could no longer return to life.

Izanagi refused to accept this, so he waited until Izanami fell asleep, and snuck up on her to carry her back to the land of the living. When the light of his torch fell upon her face, he was horrified, as she was in a terrible state of decompose, with maggots and worms crawling through her once beautiful face. Izanagi shrieked (wouldn’t you?) and fled, waking up Izanami in doing so. Izanami was so indignant that she sent eight hell-hags after her husband, instructing them to bring him back to live with her forever.

Izanagi fled the underworld and quickly threw a huge boulder over the entrance, keeping the demons and hellbeasts — and his now-hellish wife — trapped in Yomi. Furious, Izanami shrieked out at him that if he left her, she would destroy 1000 lives every day for the rest of eternity. Izanagi replied that if she did that, he would give life to 1500 new lives every day.

Izanagi left his wife forever that day, and went to perform a cleansing ritual to purify himself of having visiting Yomi (and presumably to wash off any bits of his wife that were stuck to him after that traumatic venture). In cleansing himself, the water that fell out of his left eye became the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The water that fell from his right eye became the moon god Tsukuyomi (we heard about him in Inari’s story too). And whatever it was that came out of his nose (yuck!) became Susano’o, the evil storm god.

As for Izanami, she became the queen of the underworld.

Izanami

The Japanese version of hell, or Yomi, isn’t really like the Christian concept of hell. Originally, it was quite similar to the Greek underworld, Hades. After Buddhism came to Japan, Yomi was incorporated into Buddhist cosmology and became one of the many hells one can go to if they’ve been a bad person…

Extra credit to any of you who caught the similarities between the story of Izanagi and Izanami and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Double extra credit to any of you who caught the similarities to the Mayan myth of Itzamna and Ix Chel, the Indian myth of Savitri and Satyavan, or the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s decent into the underworld. Myths are fun!

Anyway, as usual, head on over to Etsy if you’d like to support me by buying a print!