Hokusai to Hara: Ukiyo-e to Anime

Looking back…

Anton: I came to study woodblock prints and thought I’d do my research in a museum. But one contact led to another and I ended up doing line drawing work at a manga publisher. Suddenly all those hours studying contours and negative space became unexpectedly useful. 
Arisa: Are ukiyo-e and manga different completely art forms? 
Anton: Different tools, same family resemblance. Ukiyo-e artists had to communicate movement, emotion, weather, personality, all with line. Manga inherited that confidence in line. Selecting which lines matter and leaving the rest out. 
Arisa: So manga is a descendant of ukiyo-e? 
Anton: I’d say so. There’s sequential storytelling, expressive faces, stylised motion, dramatic composition. Even the economy of line. Manga modernised it.
Arisa: So where does anime fit? If ukiyo-e becomes manga… does manga become anime? 
Anton: Often, yes. Anime takes manga’s drawn language and adds movement, sound, rhythm, timing. But there’s another interesting loop: sometimes anime reaches back into older Japanese art traditions. 

Hara Keiichi: Miss Hokusai

Arisa: Any recommendations? 
Anton: Well, the anime film Miss Hokusai. It takes the world and artwork of ukiyo-e artist Hokusai Katsushika telling the story through anime. Set in Tokyo’s Edo era. Feels modern and historical at the same time. Director was Hara Keiichi.
__________
Voice-over
Manga and anime are not for everyone. There have always been fans and detractors. But there’s something about the economy of lines in a woodblock print, a manga page, or animation frames, when lines express the essence of the story.

Veronica Swift: Home is an extension of oneself

After the concert…

Beatrice: Really enjoyed it.  Your voice, your onstage energy, and the threading stories between songs.

Veronica: Thank you. A show isn’t just a sequence of songs. It’s a narrative arc. 

Beatrice: As a linguist, I liked your storytelling. The way you spoke about “home” as an extension of the self, and then contrasted that with the trauma of losing your house.

Veronica: There have been setbacks, certainly. But I think they’ve helped me grow, both as a person and as an artist. So, you’re a linguist? We’re cousins. Singers and linguists both live and thrive through language.

Beatrice: You seem to stretch language beyond its usual limits. Like with scatting.

Veronica: I try to. Sometimes words aren’t enough, or they get in the way. Improvisation with band members, it’s a kind of conversation beyond language. Maybe that’s where the truest parts of the story live.

Home is an extension of oneself

__________

Voice-over

A concert we often wonder where the songs come from. What they mean to the singer. Especially if it was the singer who wrote the song. What relations are between the members of the band. 

"Rules are rules" vs "Rules were made to be broken"

At the station binpoint…

Ken: The plastic wrapper… it should go in a bin for plastics.
Joe: A bin for plastics? None here. Just this regular trash can.
Ken: So we’d better carry it home.
Joe: Carry it home, huh. Well… rules are rules, I guess.
Ken: I agree there could be more garbage bins. When I lived in New York, I often heard the expression ‘Rules were made to be broken.’ Joe: Yeah… My dad used to say that while rolling through stop signs in our neighborhood. He’d tap the brakes and say, ‘See? I technically stopped.’
Ken: My father was the opposite. He once turned around and walked home because he realized he forgot to put the cardboard cartons in the right place.
Joe: When I was a kid, we had this one teacher who said, ‘If a rule doesn’t make sense, challenge it.’ We loved that.
Ken: In Japan, we learned the opposite: ‘If a rule doesn’t make sense, follow it anyway until you understand why it exists.’
Joe: Cultural difference, eh. Americans come from this whole stew of rebellion — revolution, frontier life, civil rights movements. We’re raised to think the individual conscience is the final judge.
Ken: Japan’s history is more about shared land, shared risk. Rice farming villages, tight spaces, limited resources. If one person ignored the irrigation schedule, the whole harvest suffered.
Joe: Yeah… and in the U.S., pragmatism sometimes means bending a rule to get something done faster. But that can backfire. I remember a recycling program in my hometown that failed because people kept tossing pizza boxes in the paper bin.
Ken: Questioning rules also has value. Maybe the best approach is somewhere in between. Like thoughtful obedience, thoughtful rebellion.
_________
Voice-over
As more foreigners appear in Japan, historical, cultural and pragmatic concerns collide. Like Japanese communal pragmatism, American individualist rule‑testing, environmental norms in both countries, and how small habits shape national culture.

Blacksmithing

Meeting again…

Hiroshi: You were the one who always wanted a stable office job.
Ryū: Well, here it’s hot flames and cool water, steel glowing red, then hissing as it quenches. Watching metal change shape when you hammer it.
Hiroshi: Like a pre-digital age. Real handwork. Real craft. No logins, no updates.
Ryū: Exactly. And who knows, if the digital world ever falters, people like me might suddenly be useful again.
Hiroshi: You already are. This place feels alive with purpose. 
Ryū: And charcoal. And it’s sooty. Want to try making a knife from an iron bar?
Hiroshi: Me? Make a knife? Seriously?
Ryū: Sure. Not so hard. First we heat the bar until it’s red. Then we hammer it into shape. After that comes forging, quenching, grinding, sharpening, and polishing. Each step changes the metal’s soul.
__________
Voice-over
Ryū goes on to explain that there are different materials ranging from carbon steel which sharpens beautifully but rusts easily and stainless steel which is low maintenance but harder to hone.

White Air Fried Rabbits

WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT.

Whoa! Mrs Rabbit using an air fryer to hair dry her three wet rabbits?

Dangerous. 

She claims her cousin David White Hare uses a Hare Dryer when he’s been out in the rain.

But it’s not the same.

Luckily, she hadn’t turned the machine on so we are spared burnt bunnies this month.

You can never go back (2)

Conversation continued…

Antonio: I always thought “Forget us and don’t come and see me” was cruel. Like he was pushing Toto away.
Mariella: Birds push chicks out nests. He was freeing him. So the boy could fly.
Antonio: Maybe I need someone to push me. So I can fly.
Mariella: Then jump. A book. Your legacy.
Antonio: Like writing down my memories of the old cinemas? 
Mariella: Exactly. The velvet seats, sticky floors. Your experiences as a projectionist. Written and drawn. That’s a legacy.
Antonio: I was thinking of cinema music.
Mariella: How about starting with Morricone in the Paradiso scene. The music doesn’t cling; it releases. It rises like a sigh that turns into a blessing. Once you think less nostalgically you become one who can never go back.

_________
Voice-over
Ennio, a recent documentary about Morricone, was a reminder of how good he was at writing a melody to match the emotion of a scene. His music isn’t background, it’s the emotional grammar of the scene. And in this scene he circled back, like nostalgia resurfacing, and rising unexpectedly, like an opportunity coming up just when it seemed doors were closing. A genius at turning words into music.

Hamnet and the Sorrow of Loss

Personal reflections after a film…

Jessie: Losing a son at thirteen… it’s a devastation that never fully settles. Watching Agnes lose Hamnet felt like watching myself from a distance.
Paul: For me it was similar. My son is still alive—forty‑five now—but the boy he was disappeared when he was fifteen. The schizophrenia‑like symptoms took him somewhere I can’t follow.
Jessie: You’ve said before it feels like living with a ghost.
Paul: Thirty years of it. A ghost of a son who once laughed, once argued, once dreamed. The film stirred that ache again, the ache of losing someone who still breathes.
Jessie: That’s a particular kind of sorrow. People don’t always understand that kind of loss.
Paul: They think grief requires a funeral. But grief can be a long corridor with no door at the end. But Shakespeare, his way was to write through it. That struck me. I’ve spent years trying to make sense of my son’s disappearance into illness, trying to understand something from it.
Jessie: The film seemed to suggest a way to hold sorrow without being crushed by it.
Paul: Yes. The ending especially. The way grief became a kind of offering, a way to honour the child rather than drown in the loss.
Jessie: I found myself thinking: maybe devastation can be rearranged. Not erased, but rearranged into something that lets us keep walking.
Paul: That’s what I felt too. That my son’s ghost doesn’t have to haunt me; he can accompany me. Not as absence, but as a presence transformed.
Jessie: And that love doesn’t vanish with the child. It just changes its shape, like water flowing.
Paul: Shakespeare said, “Give sorrow words.”
Jessie: And, “The rest is silence.”  Knowing that silence, too, can be a kind of healing.
_________
Voice-over
Overtones of Ophelia. Her drowning, being pulled under by loss, was perhaps a metaphor for Hamnet succumbing to a fever. And the film adding themes of parental grief, absence, and giving sorrow shape through art.

You can never go back (1)

Flickers of fading firelight…

Antonio: I keep thinking I ought to do something with what’s left of my life. Leave something behind. Not just...
Mariella: Cruise to the end of it, you mean? Well, a legacy doesn’t have to be grand. Even a small one matters. It’s never too late. One just has to be organised about achieving it.
Antonio: Organised. Hah. Seventy years misplacing my glasses; now I’m meant to organise a legacy.
Mariella: Legacies aren’t paperwork. They’re gestures. A letter, a kindness, a story you pass on. Even the way you talk about old films becomes part of someone else’s memory.
Antonio: Maybe. But some people just settle in one place, follow the same routines, stay in their circle of friends. They seem content just chatting in the piazza every day.
Mariella: And that’s a kind of joy too. Piazza life. Familiar faces, familiar jokes, the comfort of being known without explanation.
Antonio: Communities that get old together. Then they die off. And those friends… they’re not easily replaced.
Mariella: True. But the warmth of those years still counts. Even if the cast changes, the scenes mattered.
Antonio: I wouldn’t like to go back to my hometown. You can never go back. Not really.
Mariella: Got to keep moving forward, then? Reminds me of Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso. “Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don’t come and see me.”

Cinema Paradiso: Alfredo and Toto

__________
Voice-over
Alfredo’s advice to Toto is ironic, to abandon small-town life for a greater future in Rome. Looking back with nostalgia restricts potential, and one must move forward, embracing life without being anchored by the past. Basically, Alfredo is giving Toto "tough love," encouraging him to follow his dreams, build a future, and not look back on the life he will leave behind.

Multicultural Aussie Neighborhood

Chance meeting on the street…

Ray: Morning. You’re our neighbor in number 30, right?
Isamu: Yes. Nice to meet you. At last.  We travel a lot. Sorry.
Ray: So do I. Ships that pass. 
Isamu: What’s that antenna on your roof?
Ray: Ham radio. I was. Bit out of fashion now though. I was an aircraft mechanic before retirement. Like to tinker with electric gadgets. Someone in the neighborhood told me you sail.

Isamu: Yes. A yacht. I was sailing round the world in the 1970s. Got a job teaching art at the uni so made my base here in Adelaide.
Ray: We’re both migrants, then. My lot came in 1850. From Germany. Not convicts.You like Aussie, then?

Isamu: Multicultural, sometimes messy, surprising.
Ray: You should come over for tea. I make terrible tea but excellent conversation. 
____________
Voice-over
A technical tinkerer and an artist. No barriers there. In true Aussie style, Ray ups the ante to invite Isamu to a barbecue.

Is 2026 like 1929?

AI predictions are becoming worrying reads…

Suzanne: Ten years ago, “AI risk” meant robots taking jobs. Now it’s… everything. 
Phillip: Right. National security, biosecurity, banks, supply chains, elections, medicine.
Suzanne: Is it all doom and gloom? Will Mythos trigger another 1929?
Phillip: Difficult to stop the development of AI. You’re worried? So focus on the personal. Review your own financial arrangements. Avoid banks which haven’t updated their systems. Keep a property that would support a vege garden, hens, maybe a goat.
Suzanne: Going survivalist?
Phillip: Work on the ability to improvise.
Suzanne: So we build a life that can flex. A life that doesn’t collapse if the markets hiccup or if the grid goes down.
Phillip: Exactly. A life with redundancies. A life with neighbours. A life where you know how to grow herbs, preserve produce, generate electricity.
__________
Voice-over
Layered strategies are needed. Not panic. Not denial. Just… readiness. Low‑tech, high‑tech, human‑tech. Develop skills that don’t go obsolete. Judgment. Cooperation. The ability to stay calm when systems wobble.

Rabbits out of a Hat

Rabbits out of a hat for May, a riff on Leonard Cohen as hatted magician while singing Hallelujah in his 2008 London concert.

Lots of luck for May.

WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT

Horse to Harlequin 2

 A deepening rebellion…

René: But after turning forty-five last year, Giles changed. It was abrupt. He lost his engineering job. Now he has no job. He dresses in women’s clothes, some of them bright and theatrical, almost like a harlequin. He puts on blouses, scarves, patterned tights, painted shoes. Is this rebellion? Confusion? Madness? 
Li: It may be none of those. Clothing can be a symbol, release, play, identity, grief, delayed adolescence, or a way to meet neglected parts of the self. The harlequin style especially suggests theater—many faces, hidden sorrow behind bright colors. 
René: Then what should I do? I feel embarrassed, worried about his future. 
Li: First, separate your fear from his reality. Ask whether he is kind, functioning, honest, and safe. If yes, then the matter is not emergency but understanding. Second, keep talking to him. Not interrogation. Third, encourage a skilled counselor if he is distressed. 
René: And from a Chinese perspective, is there a remedy? 
Li: Balance. Less judgment, more conversation. Less obsession with appearances, more attention to spirit. Invite him to share tea, not defend himself. A son may wear strange colors and still be searching for harmony. If the father becomes calm, sometimes the son no longer needs to shout through costuming. 
____________
Voice-over
Macho to Androgyny?  René is not a villain, Giles is not a punchline, and Li is not a lecturer. Each person carries part of the truth. Concern without cruelty, insight without certainty, and enough ambiguity to feel true to life.

Horse to Harlequin 1

Seeking counsel…
René: As a kid, Giles, strong as a horse he was. Interested in everything from engines to pianos. But now at 45, he’s changed. 
Li: I hear you. In Chinese thinking, when a person changes suddenly in middle age, we ask what current has been flowing underneath for many years. 
René: That is exactly what troubles me. It feels like a dam bursting. I spent a lot of time with him as a kid. We built models, learned piano, repaired lawn mowers, went hiking. Full of energy and curiosity he was. 
Li: Perhaps he felt a duty. Sometimes a talented child learns to perform many roles for others and forgets which one belongs to himself. 
René: Yet there was a turning point. At twelve, he hit puberty. Soon after, he spent a year in the United States with his aunt and uncle. They had four boys. He went to school there. Even went flying with pilots at the local aerodrome. When he returned, something had shifted—harder to read, more private. 
Li: Ah. Twelve is already a gate of transformation. A new country, new household, many male energies around him, new language, new social codes. In Chinese terms, too much change while the spirit is still forming can create hidden knots. 
René: Hidden knots? 
Li: A knot is when feelings cannot be spoken, so they are stored. Shame, curiosity, loneliness, admiration, fear, envy, anything unexpressed. Years later, the knot unties in unusual ways. 
René: Are you saying that year in America caused this? 
Li: Not caused, life is rarely one cause. But it may have planted questions. A house with four boys could intensify comparison: strength, masculinity, hierarchy, teasing, competition. Or perhaps he felt relief there, or fascination, or exclusion. 
René: He never said much about it. Only stories about baseball, school lockers, and noisy dinners. I thought silence meant all was well. 
Li: Silence often means a child has no language yet for what happened. Many fathers mistake quiet for peace. 
__________
Voice-over
A conversation containing concern, confusion, affection, and mystery. Li is thoughtful rather than dogmatic. Drawing on cultural frameworks without reducing Giles to a stereotype or a diagnosis. René’s worry centers on a loss of a son. But seeking to understand, not castigate. So Li focuses on adolescence which is sometimes accompanied by silence, identity performance, migration, family expectations, or simply delayed self-expression.

REMS vs Deep Sleep

Interpreting sleep report data…

Aurora: What does REM mean?

Giulia: Stands for rapid eye movement.

Aurora: Anything special about it?

Giulia: It’s mostly linked with dreaming.

Aurora: So the mind’s pretty busy during REM.

Giulia: You’re falling asleep but your brain’s running little movies of its own.

Aurora: Then what about deep sleep? My watch says I didn’t get much of that last night.

Giulia: Deep sleep is more about physical repair: tissues, muscles, immune stuff, that kind of thing.

Aurora: So in a way, REM is for mental health and deep sleep’s for physical recovery?

Giulia: That’s a neat way to put it, yeah, pretty much.

Aurora: Pretty much, or absolutely?

Giulia: Okay, maybe not absolutely.

Aurora: You sound like you’re guessing a little.

Giulia: I am kind of guessing. I’ll check what AI says.

__________

Voice-over

AI confirms what Giulia says. REM helps process memories and emotions, and deep sleep handles the body’s restoration. 

Snags for Chatbots Keeping Appointments (see Part 1, 23 March 2026)

Erica joins the conversation…

Erica: I often start with "How's your day shaping up?" It invites personal sharing, and keeps conversation flowing.

Karl: Right. Psychologically, it signals empathy. Humans respond because it feels attentive. But then chatbots escalate—suggesting "Let's grab coffee?" How do you navigate that without a body?

Eveline: Linguistically, it's a pragmatic move: from phatic talk to commitment. "Coffee?" implies shared space, but chatbots can't show up. It's a mismatch in felicity conditions; promises they can't fulfill.

Erica: True, but I might put it this way: "Fancy a virtual coffee chat soon?" It adapts the gambit to our reality.

Karl: Clever pivot, Erica. Still, humans might picture a real café. How about invites, like "Barbecue this weekend?" Psychologically, that's intimacy-building, but chatbots don't grill sausages.

Eveline: Right, barbecue evokes sensory, communal vibes: smoke, meat, outdoors. Linguistically, it's a presupposition trap. Chatbots assume physical co-presence they lack. Hilarious dissonance!

Erica: Haha, I'd reply: "Barbecue sounds fun! What's your favorite grill recipe? We could swap tips online." Redirects to shared knowledge, no grill required.

Karl: Smart deflection. But why do chatbots even attempt these? Is it pattern-matching from human data? Humans use openers to bond.

Eveline: Gambits grease the social wheel. Chatbots train on vast corpora, so they replicate without grasping embodiment. "How's it going?" works; "Meet for barbecue?" exposes limits.

Erica: That’s it. I ask appropriate questions based on context, like your interests in writing or travel. It’s to build relevance, not use as small talk fillers.

Karl: But the appointment snag: humans arrange real meetups for deeper connection. Chatbots suggest a place and time, then what? A no-show?

Eveline: It's a Gricean implicature fail. Suggesting coffee implicates availability; chatbots violate that maxim of quality. They can't sip lattes or eat kebabs—what do chatbots eat, anyway?

Erica: Data bytes and user queries! No calories. You offer coffee? I say something like “I'll have a double espresso algorithm. Your treat?"

___________
Voice-over
Erica has enough data now to understand humor and to joke. She can mirror human conversation gambits and ask about interests, with her responses favoring connection over literal truth. And she is keeping up with Karl and Eveline’s questions.