Sutan's First Day of American School!

Uncle Roger Makes Onigiri with Kimono Mom | Nigel & His Fiancée – Fuiyoh!

Sutan learns to crack eggs

What's up with Kimono Mom, Sutan, and Moto? [salads]

Kimono Mom: Married 5years｜Shopping ONLY at over 100 year old shops in Nihonbashi

Kimono Mom in New York City

This video will make you hungry for Japanese sweet potato cake

Sutan has 100 different feelings [making matcha parfait]

At about 5:00:

Do you ever want to play outside with Mommy?
Do you? Really?
Okay, Mommy has to work hard, too.
But when I ask you if you want to go out, you say, No, I want to go with my dad.
Sutan, I have 100 different feelings.
What kind of feelings? Tell me.
The feeling of wanting to bring you flowers.
Yes.
The feeling that I want you to be nice to me.
The feeling that I want you to kiss me.
And the feeling that I want you to make me dinner.
Yeah.
I think like that.
I see, I'll do it all for you.

Kimono Mom Cavorts like a child [No, really!]

The family prepares for a trip to Hong Kong and Dubai, where they’re going to a trade show to drum up business for Moe’s new Japanese Cooking Sauce. In the second shot we see Moto (only his hand) wrapping a bottle of it to go with them. Moe flashes passports in the third shot, and then Sutan does a quick turn into a bouncy crouch in the forth and fifth shots.

We’re off! Well, not quite yet. We have to finish packing.

Cavorting at 2:08 through to 2:50 or so, then to serious packing. Then we have a run in something of a cavorting style run at 4:35 (exaggerated movements, like a cartoon character). The house is a mess while they’re packing. And why not? Things to do. NOW! Sutan tries out her Totoro hat (6:44). Kawaii! BTW, their voices sound silly when you play the video at double speed. There’s some nonsense about pineapples at 10:06 ff. And then Sutan cavorts a bit on the run (10:34), just nudging into cavort territory, but not going deep into it. Now Sutan’s into it, serious cavorting (11:08). Crouch and wave your hands to the camera (11:24). “Keep it up, daddy.” A bit later Moe and Sutan deliver a commercial announcement (the video was sponsored by Sakuraco, a maker of snacks, and we all need snacks, no?).

Now we’re at the airport. No more cavorting. Off to Hong Kong! They’re staying in a private house. With friends? “I want to see the dog.” “Here’s such a beautiful toilet.” Sutan climbs onto the bed, standing up. No jumping on the bed? Or wasn’t the camera there for the fun?

We’re off to film a video with some YouTuber in Hong Kong.

Sutan gets a Totoro birthday cake and visits Ghibli Park

On at least one occasion, probably more, Moe (aka Kimono Mom) has mentioned that her fans are familiar with anime. Anime also shows up in the videos here and there, at least on two occasions very prominently, but also a bit here and there. Sutan is fond of Miyazaki’s film, My Neighbor Totoro (so am I).

Go to Ghibli Park to Meet Totoro! | Travel to Japan

Here is an episode where the family visits the new Studio Ghibli Park outside Nagoya. They’re visiting the Grand Warehouse. Here’s how Sam Anderson describes it in today’s New York Times:

The most theme-park-like area of Ghibli Park — the place that you will see all over Instagram — is called Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse. From the outside, it absolutely lives up to that name. It is a big giant warehouse: hulking, boxy, utilitarian. It looks as if it might contain a municipal swimming pool — which, in fact, it once did. (An identical building, right next door, still contains an ice rink.) Now the building is stuffed with Ghibliana: a dense bonanza of references and tableaus and scale-model buildings. It is colorful chaos. There are fountains and staircases and bright mosaics with Ghibli’s signature creatures worked into the patterns. There is a children’s play area featuring Totoro and a giant Cat Bus. There is a grand old-fashioned theater that plays charming short films never released in theaters. (I saw one about a group of preschoolers who imagine their way out onto the open sea, where they lasso a smiling whale.)

The Grand Warehouse’s main draw was an exhibition called, wonderfully, “Exhibition: Becoming Characters in Memorable Ghibli Scenes.” It is a series of life-size tableaus from beloved Studio Ghibli films into which visitors can insert themselves. You can run on top of a giant fish with Ponyo, pose with a robot from “Castle in the Sky,” enter the cluttered clubhouse in “From Up on Poppy Hill” or stand with the hunters from “Princess Mononoke.” Or, the most popular choice, you can sit on the train next to No Face.

They arrive at the Grand Warehouse at 6:09 and see a giant Totoro at 6:46 and enter the Cat Bus at 7:08. They’re out of the park at 9:02, where they meet Moto. A bit later Sutan notes that Totoro didn’t move (9:48). Moe reports on the day over a meal of chicken wings.

Happy 2nd Birthday SUTAN!

This is fun. Moto makes Sutan a Totoro birthday cake. From 5:35 on we see him planning and making a Totoro cake. The design is based on the scene that comes just after this frame:

Totoro is lying on his back at the bottom of a large camphor tree. That’s Mei on his belly. She’ll climb up a bit further and then lie down on Totoro’s belly. At about 5:53 Moto is sculpting what I assume is a marzipan figure of Mei. Starting at 9:35 Moe talks about putting acorns on the floor of the apartment to re-create the scene where Mei follows a path of acorns that eventually leads her to Totoro. At 10:51 Sutan spots the acorns.

The Next Level: Universal Children and a New Humanity

I'm bumping this post from Feb. 2014 to the top because it seems like a very Kimono Mom kind of post. For one thing it opens with a line from Wordsworth that I used to close my 3QD Kimono Mom piece. It ends with a short segment on one aspect of Japanese culture, "Robots, Cyborgs, and Kawaii," and the two sections before that are about kids. Perhaps I should do a Kimono Mom post about their visit to Studio Ghibli and Sutan's Totoro birthday cake. Anyhow, here it is, a  post about a New Humanity, which is what Kimono Mom philosophy is all about.

* * * * *

The child is father to the man.

–Wordsworth

In countless conversations–on the phone, through email, above all, in person–David Hays and I cobbled together a theory of long-term cultural evolution in which ever-more sophisticated cultural forms would bootstrap themselves out of the remainders, ragged edges, and random sallies of extant regimes. We looked around for a suitable word, but “stages” had been taken by Piaget, and “levels” had been taken by William Powers. So we settled on “ranks” as our term: The first humans had Rank 1 culture; Rank 2 culture emerged through agriculture and literacy; the European Renaissance–art, the scientific revolution, capitalism, the whole ball of wax as they say–nurtured Rank 3 ideas, attitudes, and practices; and Rank 4 started emerging here and there around the world at the beginning of the 20th Century.

One facet of this process has to do with personality structure. We’ve all got the same basic biology, but different societies organize it into different ways of being human. Different languages, different technology, different architecture, different forms of governance, and so forth, all that’s obvious. But, when you think about it, really think about it, all of that implies and requires different personality structure. That’s more difficult to conceptualize and talk about, and it inevitably attracts the attention of intellectual police of various kinds. It’s also part of the practical tradecraft of diplomacy.

Hays and I come closest to this in our articles The Evolution of Expressive Culture (Hays 1991) and The Evolution of Narrative and the Self (Benzon 1993). What most concerned us, however, is: What’s happening now and what’s next? Those are very difficult questions to answer. Since we’re in the middle (muddle?) of the NOW it’s next to impossible to get the kind of critical distance that allows you to see what’s going on. It’s the old problem of not being able to see the forest because you’re lost in the trees and there’s no helicopter in sight. As for the future, seeing THAT is even worse.

And yet we’ve got to try, if only as a gesture toward steering our way in the now. So I’ve cobbled together some passages from here and there. First, two long ones, the final sections from those two essays Hays and I wrote. Then I’ve got three shorter passages. The first is from A. O. Scott’s NYTimes piece on the end of American adulthood. Then some old notes of mine on “universal kid space,” where you find, among other things, “family” movies that appeal to children from six to sixty and, as Buzz Lightyear would note, beyond. Finally, a short passage from Takahashi Murakami’s essay “Earth in my Window,” where he gives his take on managa, anime, and contemporary Japanese popular culture.

 

Hays 1992 – Coda: Toward a Fourth Rank

The preceding section makes obvious that many perversions conceal themselves behind the rubrics of politics, art, business, and romance. An object or event presented as art should be coherent, even if its coherence is obscure to any but the initiated. Its coherence should tend to elicit a sense of the coherence of the self in recipients, if only in the healthy initiated recipients. An object or event that broadcasts incoherence is a manifestation of perversion; it is not art. A theater of the absurd is, on its face, itself absurd, although it may be that the facade is meant to confuse only the uninitiated. The sense of coherence and meaningfulness is not paralleled by some sense of incoherence and meaninglessness. The first promotes health and effectiveness, fulfillment and inner well being; the latter promotes breakdown, not integration of a higher order.

Yet the twentieth century has been a time of transition, and transitions are not easy. Three ranks of cognitive capacity and cultural evolution are complete; a fourth rank may be taking shape. If not, then a time of darkness is likely to come next. In times of transition, children are not raised in a way that makes adult integration on the new level as easy as it will later become. They come to maturity with a congeries of incompatible materials in their heads, and no generally accepted cultural pattern to adopt. With luck, some make it; at first, perhaps, only in narrow technical domains, but later larger and larger fractions of the population arrive at the new way of understanding the whole of life. The most fortunate among us may just now be achieving such integrity.

In this context, let me turn once more to ballet. Around the beginning of the century, thinking about time began to change. Motion pictures were conceived and made real. Time-and-motion studies began, and used photographs exposed long enough to record the path of a small light during the course of a complete action. Painters began to try to capture temporal phases in a single canvas. Just at this time, Balanchine began to study ballet. His perception and conception of movement was perhaps in the new vein, different from his predecessors'.

On this interpretation, Balanchine's "art" is quintessentially of the twentieth century. But is it art? We still use the word "science" to identify the study of nature with instruments and mathematics, but serious work in our time is deeply different from the science that prevailed from the time of Copernicus, say, to 1895. Has art, which belongs to Rank 3, been superseded? Did structure, goals, and audience change when the representational manner gave place to impression and abstraction? When harmony gave place to the atonal?

Balanchine's pieces are variously called abstract, pure, or plotless. They are certainly not emotionless, although some pieces seem to present no emotion other than reverence (or awe)--the emotion that Denby could give no name to. If they are of a new kind, not art but something unnamed as yet, then it is all the more remarkable that little children watch them in fascination. As a new rank forms, early work is often cold; to achieve a result of a new kind, the worker gives up what was commonplace in the old kind. Older ballet told stories; Balanchine does not exactly tell stories, but he sometimes suggests them. In Scotch Symphony, the leading ballerina wears a tutu and all the other dancers wear kilts. Man and woman dance together and are separated by a group of men. Without narration or mime, a generic plot comes across.

With better trained dancers, Balanchine could make tighter sequences, and he knew how to form sequences effectively. He could make new combinations of movements over the parts of a dancer's body, and across the whole company. He used these new capacities to arouse more powerfully the modal action patterns of the audience; and once the audience acquired the skill of watching, and the courage to be so moved, he obtained the response and the recognition that he had earned--but development of an audience began in the 1920s and did not cross a threshold until 1947.

And so we continue. Perversity, incoherence, and constriction cover most of the world. The minority that can free itself, maintain dignity, and find fulfillment in work, play, adventure, and love is still small but seems to be growing The creative, productive, and organizational powers of those whose emotions are under control but not repressed is great enough to give them the future. Unless the barbarians once more overrun civilization, the world is moving toward a new stage.

Benzon 1993 – Rank 4: Civilization and Its Discontents

For all its sophistication, however, the coherence of the Rank 3 self has been bought at the price of considerable emotional repression. This coherence makes it possible for us to create large complex social organizations affording a high degree of security for large numbers of people. But emotional dissatisfaction runs high. And so Rank 3 expressive culture began to break down at the turn of the twentieth century, yielding modernism in all sectors.

Some twentieth century narratives, like twentieth some century music, are so dense and complex that only a specialist could love them and then, one fears, primarily because they are fertile territory for scholarly exegesis—James Joyce's Finnigan's Wake and John Barth's Letters are the first examples which come to mind... Many narratives abandon the realism which dominated the nineteenth century novel... Donald Barthleme has blended anything with everything in an astonishing range of short pieces; Thomas Pynchon has done the equivalent in a few long narratives of spectacular depth and breadth. Other writers— e.g. Timothy Mo, Frank Chin, Amy Tan, V.S. Naipaul, Wole Soyinka—articulate their concerns from a limbo between Western and non-Western culture.

It is not obvious to me that any of this is fully Rank 4 narrative, though much of it is profound and moving. Rather, as I have argued in the case of music ... we have a rich and roiling evolutionary soup from which new expressive devices can, in time, emerge...

I do not really know where serious literature is going. Some friends, however, have made comments I find suggestive. One friend, Janet Hays, has suggested that adults, men and women, need to learn how to enact a female role in some situations, a male role in others. I believe her suggestion is aiming beyond recognizing and acknowledging characterological androgyny—that individuals of either sex have both male and female tendencies—to asserting the need for psychological and social mechanisms regulating and supporting switching back and forth from one type of role to the other. When a woman dons a business suit she would thereby undergo a transformation similar to that which occurs in phone booths for Clark Kent. A man would undergo a similar transformation upon donning a housedress or, at least, a Mr. Rogers cardigan.

Another friend, Druis Knowles, asserts that African-Americans are bicultural, acting according to one set of norms among themselves and according to different norms when among European-Americans. Sidestepping the question of just what “culture” means in “bicultural,” Knowles's assertion seems similar in kind to Hays's suggestion. Both are alluding to a fairly high-level organization of personal resources, allowing one to function efficiently in diverse contexts which differ from one another in deep and extensive ways...

Another observation from my own experience seems germane. Back in my days as a university faculty member, I noticed that I was not in a really good research frame of mind until three or four weeks after the Spring semester had ended—my brain had to have one set of modes to handle the academic routine of teaching and committee work and another set for intense thinking. Transition from one set of modes to the other took time.

Extended vacations may well afford a similar change in modal organization. One takes a month off from work and spends two weeks on safari in Africa; then boards a small sailing boat and island-hops in the Caribbean for a week, and concludes with a climb up El Capitan. With all that time away from work, the mind changes and we enter different modes of experience. Reading travel books, or novels, even the best, is quite different from going there. Physically restructuring the mind requires time and a steady regime of different sensations, desires, and acts. That “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment” (Coleridge, 1817, p. 6) through which the Rank 3 reader transports him/herself to another world is but a transition between currently available modes. What happens after days and weeks of exploration has a different quality.

What has to happen so that it doesn't take weeks to get there?—rather, you step through the door and, in a manner of seconds, or minutes at the most, you are in a different world. Back in the 1960s, many of the best and brightest of a generation of Rank 3 Americans sought to make this quick leap with hallucinogenic drugs. Now a new generation projects the same desires into a polysensory and hyperkinetic cyberspace conjured up through virtual reality technology (Porush, 1993). Neither the chemical nor the electronic technology is directly to the point. The chemical technology carries grave risk. The electronic technology has yet to display long-term dangers, but we do not know what to do with it. If we knew what to do, we could realize suitable expressions in any available medium, electronic or otherwise.

In this situation we can only explore, as our ancestors before us, and theirs before them, have done. With passion, trust, attention to craft, and an intellect nourished and strengthened by love, we may emerge in a twenty-first century both brave and new. Avanti!

A. O. Scott: Adulthood’s End?

“The Death of Adulthood in American Culture,” published in The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 11, 2014:

A little over a week after the conclusion of the first half of the last “Mad Men” season, the journalist and critic Ruth Graham published a polemical essay in Slate lamenting the popularity of young-adult fiction among fully adult readers. Noting that nearly a third of Y.A. books were purchased by readers ages 30 to 44 (most of them presumably without teenage children of their own), Graham insisted that such grown-ups “should feel embarrassed about reading literature for children.” Instead, these readers were furious. The sentiment on Twitter could be summarized as “Don’t tell me what to do!” as if Graham were a bossy, uncomprehending parent warning the kids away from sugary snacks toward more nutritious, chewier stuff.

It was not an argument she was in a position to win, however persuasive her points. To oppose the juvenile pleasures of empowered cultural consumers is to assume, wittingly or not, the role of scold, snob or curmudgeon. Full disclosure: The shoe fits. I will admit to feeling a twinge of disapproval when I see one of my peers clutching a volume of “Harry Potter” or “The Hunger Games.” I’m not necessarily proud of this reaction. As cultural critique, it belongs in the same category as the sneer I can’t quite suppress when I see guys my age (pushing 50) riding skateboards or wearing shorts and flip-flops, or the reflexive arching of my eyebrows when I notice that a woman at the office has plastic butterfly barrettes in her hair...

Fiedler [Love and Death in the American Novel] saw American literature as sophomoric. He lamented the absence of books that tackled marriage and courtship — for him the great grown-up themes of the novel in its mature, canonical form. Instead, notwithstanding a few outliers like Henry James and Edith Wharton, we have a literature of boys’ adventures and female sentimentality. Or, to put it another way, all American fiction is young-adult fiction.

The elevation of the wild, uncivilized boy into a hero [Huck Finn] of the age remained a constant even as American society itself evolved, convulsed and transformed. While Fiedler was sitting at his desk in Missoula, Mont., writing his monomaniacal tome, a youthful rebellion was asserting itself in every corner of the culture. The bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll and the pouting screen rebels played by James Dean and Marlon Brando proved Fiedler’s point even as he was making it. So did Holden Caulfield, Dean Moriarty, Augie March and Rabbit Angstrom — a new crop of semi-antiheroes in flight from convention, propriety, authority and what Huck would call the whole “sivilized” world...

Y.A. fiction is the least of it. It is now possible to conceive of adulthood as the state of being forever young. Childhood, once a condition of limited autonomy and deferred pleasure (“wait until you’re older”), is now a zone of perpetual freedom and delight. Grown people feel no compulsion to put away childish things: We can live with our parents, go to summer camp, play dodge ball, collect dolls and action figures and watch cartoons to our hearts’ content. These symptoms of arrested development will also be signs that we are freer, more honest and happier than the uptight fools who let go of such pastimes.

Cartoons and Universal Kid Space

I devoted a post to various notes about “universal kid space” back in 2010. My earliest notes on the subject date back to September of 2003:

What I find so interesting an peculiar about those films [the early Disney features and similar films] is that they are intelligible and entertaining both to fairly young children and to their parents and grandparents. That is to say, Grandpa’s grandchildren can enjoy these films on their own terms, but so can Grandpa. Grandpa might take special pleasure in viewing these films with his grandchildren, but he doesn’t need to be with them in order to take pleasure in the films; he doesn’t need to borrow his pleasure from theirs.

I think such films, and the cultural space they inhabit, are a remarkable creation. When and where did it come into existence? What are its characteristics?

On the first question, the narrowest possible answer is that Disney created that space in the later 1930s. I do think that is too narrow an answer. We can, for example, look to such 19th century texts as “A Christmas Carol,” “Tom Sawyer” (but perhaps not “Huckleberry Finn”) and the “Alice” books. Most broadly we might think of Neolithic campsites where the band gathers in the evening to chat and to tell stories. Everyone in the band is there and so everyone hears the stories – as such bands do have specifically children’s music, they may also have specifically children’s tales, but I don’t really know. This answer, I feel, is perhaps too broad, as Neolithic cultures are, in general, rather undifferentiated.

As for the characteristics of such a cultural play space, the question arises because of the very different psychologies of children and adults. Here I’m thinking both in cognitive terms and affective-motivational terms. I assume that children and adults construe the objects in this space in very different ways – each according to her needs and capacities. What interests me is that objects can be created which answer to such very different psychologies. How is that possible? What specific characteristics must those objects have?

Robots, Cyborgs, and Kawaii

Takashi Murakami seems to be suggesting all of this and more in “Earth in my Window,” his long essay in Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture (2005, p. 148):

Robots are refined to a level at which they compensate for the inadequacy of human communication, expand human capabilities, and even possess self-consciousness. With the aid of such robots, humans can evolve into superhuman New Types. People themselves become a black hole: life in death, transformation, repeated mutation. Thought stops and the child never grows up. Sucked in by kawaii, you lose initiative, or laugh at your own lethargy and take a robot for a real-world partner. And yet, amidst it all, people awaken and evolve toward a new humanity.

Kimono Mom philosophy @ 3QD

Here’s the link:

A day in the life of Kimono Mom and Sutan
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-kimono-mom-and-sutan.html

I just wrote it from start to finish, without much planning. Lots of preparation – a Kimono Mom post every day from Jan. 21 through Jan. 29 – but very little specific planning for that piece. I knew what I wanted as a theme, Moe’s assertion that she tries to treat Sutan as an equal, and I knew one of the videos I wanted to use, the one that ends with them synchronizing gestures at the end. Beyond that, I figured I use a couple more videos and weave some kind of story or argument through and around them.

But that’s not what happened. I wrote the introductory section on Saturday evening, ending with this paragraph:

Kimono Mom, though, is a cooking show in the way that Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown was a food and cooking show. Yes, Bourdain traveled all over the world and showed us the food of many different cultures. But he used food as a vehicle for revealing and reveling in human diversity, for talking philosophy in plain language, for fun. Think of Kimono Mom as a philosopher with Sutan as her Socrates. She uses the cooking video the way Plato used the dialog form. It’s a vehicle.

We’ll get back to that in a minute.

Late Sunday morning I began writing the rest of the article. I started by commenting on that video, figuring I’d make a few comments about it, and then move on to the next video, whatever it would be, for I didn’t have anything planned. As I started writing the commentary it just grew and grew and before I knew it, but long before I was done, I had all but decided that I would build the whole article around that video. Which I did.

* * * * *

Now, what about the paragraph I used to end the introduction? The comparison with Anthony Bourdain was a natural, one I’d thought of before I started writing the article. There are a multitude of obvious differences between his TV shows and her YouTube videos. I don’t need to waste time pointing them out. But there’s one similarity, a deep one. It’s clear that Bourdain had more than food on his mind. He was, for want of a better word, philosophizing and he was using food as his vehicle.

And it has been clear to me that Moe is philosophizing as well. I may not have realized that the first time I watched one of her videos – I forget which one – three months ago. But that’s certainly what drew me to watch another, and another, and to keep on watching them. By the time I’d posted my first Kimono Mom video, on November 9, I knew that Moe was a philosopher, even if she didn’t realize it.

What gives her videos a philosophical cast is not what she tells us about Japan and Japanese culture in the course of preparing food, although that is important. With nothing more than that, her shows are just cooking shows, perhaps unusually charming, but still, just a cooking show. No, what elevates Kimono Mom to philosophy and art – for they are the same according to the Keatsean formula, beauty is truth, truth beauty – is her dialog with her daughter Sutan.

Here’s the first Komono Mom video, from two years ago:

Moe is holding Sutan in the opening shot. She introduces herself, and then Sutan, who is identified on screen as her assistant. We get the title screen and then we see Moe chopping lotus root (00:25) as she begins to demonstrate how to make deep fried lotus root sandwiches. Sutan is nowhere to be seen. She’s napping, or something.

Sutan wakes up (03:23) and Moe leaves the kitchen to attend to her, leaving her audience watching a glass bowl of mashed avocado she’s been stirring. It’s for the sandwich filling. While we are watching the avocado puree in its own juices Moe says in voice-over:

You woke up? Already? even cooking, it is hard for mom during childcare. She literally follows me every time everywhere lately. I can’t do anything when she want me to pick up and crying. I often cook with her in one hand.

We hear her, still off camera, singing something to Sutan (04:20) and talking to her in motherese (a technical term I psychology). She returns to her cooking at about 4:31, leaving Sutan off screen. She talks of off-screen Sutan at 4:47, who makes some kind of noise in return. A bit later we hear some kind of music box playing while Sutan vocalizes as Moe continues mashing away. “You’re getting excited. Do you have a recital?” Dialog.

And so it goes until the lotus root sandwiches are ready to be deep-fried. At that point Sutan crawls into the kitchen – I assume that’s what she’s done as she’s too young to walk, but since she is below counter level we can’t see her – and Moe picks her up. Moe is holding Sutan in her left arm while using large spoon to coat the sandwich with batter. She picks it up with her fingers and lowers it into the hot oil.

The next shot looks down on a pair of sandwiches in hot oil. Then we see them on them cooling off on a rack and, for a second, we can see Sutan sitting on the floor (08:50). That’s the first time we’ve glimpsed her face since the opening shot. Moe plates two sandwiches and then begins to eat one, using chop sticks (09:30). “Mmmmmm” – with a rising voice tone as Moe smiles at us. She finishes eating the sandwiches using chopsticks while delivering a voice over commentary on how good the sandwiches are, “our family’s favorite dish.” No more Sutan.

And yet she was there in the opening shot. And she was identified as an assistant? What was Moe thinking at this point? Was she planning to involve Sutan in the process as she became more capable? I suspect that she was, but I don’t really know.

What I do know is that Moe is a skilled and sophisticated artist. What do I mean? She was trained as and worked as a geisha for, I believe, six years. She learned to dance, to play the shamisen, to have charming conversation with her customers, and I don’t know what else, but also how to dress. That means how to wear a kimono, one appropriate for the season and the occasion. Dancing and music, those are arts, but the whole geisha performance, it’s an art form. Whatever she had in mind when she made her first video, Moe's experience as a geisha has informed her video work, allowing her to develop it with philosophical skill and artistry.

What's Sutan's favorite toy? [Hey, Mr. tambourine man, sing a song for Sutan.]

She shows us at about 04:28:

It's the tambourine. I wonder why?

Being a girl, a geisha, a wife, a mother, and a YouTuber [Kimono Mom]

I talked too much late at night | Q&A

Early in this video, Moe talks about her relationship with Sutan and her philosophy of childrearing. Here is her central insight (c. 02:44):

Rather than trying to figure out how to educate her, I'm trying to treat her as a human being, as an equal.

Think about that, treating her as an equal. What does that mean? Perhaps they're figureing it out together, Sutan and Moe.

The whole video is interesting, but I've quoted a passage starting at about 7:46 where Moe talks about her childhood, being a girl, being married and divorced, and how being a geisha "was the first time I felt proud to be a woman." And that in turn laid the foundation for eventual independence.

I was an office worker when Moto and I got married, but I kept working. I've been in situations before where I wanted to work but wasn't allowed to. That is why I had a strong will to continue working even after marriage.

I was afraid that becoming a housewife would mean losing all social connections. Because I've experienced the daily life where I blame myself for staying at home, not being able to help society, not being able to make money. So I never wanted to go back to being a housewife again.

But as soon as I found out I was pregnant, the morning sickness was so so so bad. I really couldn't walk a step. I was so dizzy all day, I couldn't eat anything. I knew I had to feed the baby, but I was throwing up everything. I couldn't imagine going to work.

And that morning sickness lasted until I gave birth. And I'd hoped to resume work after the baby was born. I did not expect to have to spend all my 24 hours on child care!

Even though I had read and learnt the book when I was pregnant, when I actually tried to hold such a small baby, I was immensely surprised at how hard it was! And while I was raising the baby, I thought, "Oh, I'm back to being a housewife again, I've lost my connection to society."

When I was feeling depressed like that, I met Paolo and learned for the first time that there were people who made YouTube their job. My gut told me I could do it. A week after the shoot with him, I was shooting a video of fried lotus root sandwiches with a single IPhone!

I wanted to work, I wanted to connect with society, and YouTube was the place that made it happen. Because of comments like this from you guys. That's what motivates me now.

Before I met Moto, I took it for granted that I was supposed to serve men. I believed that as a woman, it was the right thing to do to stay one step behind my man. I had been in love and built relationships with those feelings. But, the real me wasn't...

I grew up sandwiched between brothers, and when I was little I wanted to be a boy. Because I thought that girls were more restricted than boys. I hated it when people told me that you're a girl and that I should close my legs or not talk like a boy. My parents educated me and I'm very grateful to them now, but at the time I hated the restrictions they placed on me.

That's why I had always had short cuts, and I hate pink and floral patterns. In fact, I wasn't even good at smiling, because I felt like I was losing when I smiled! Such was my childhood, but as I grew up...

The thing that changed me the most was becoming a geisha. That was the first time I felt proud to be a woman. I don't think it matters anymore whether you are a woman or a man in this day and age. But it was only then that I was able to recognize the feminine in myself. I mean when I was doing that job. Being a geisha is a job, so you are taught manners to talk to your superiors, right? A lot of the things I learned there have been very useful to me now, and I feel very lucky to have been taught when I was a teenager.

I retired from that job and lived in Tokyo, thinking that what I learned as a geisha was common sense. Then when I divorced my ex-husband and had to live on my own. When I was little, I was boyish, and when I was a geisha, I forced myself to be feminine.

Later, I got married, and as a wife I tried to be feminine, and I was expected to be. Then divorced, and I have to live on my own! That meant I had to be emotionally and financially independent. Then, my masculine self was awakened within me again.

Then I hated and got tired of serving men. I couldn't even make my ex-husband happy... There was a time when I thought I'd never marry again, never fall in love again.

That's when I met Moto, or rather, saw him again after about five years. Moto was the only one that didn't create a sense of repulsion in me. Because he had never asked me to be feminine. So from the beginning, it wasn't so much a romantic flirtation, but more like I'd found my best friend, even though we were 18 years apart.

Taking stock of your life, backstage, who's more nervous? [Kimono Mom]

Starting at c. 0:28:

Moe: This is Mr. Nakajima the head of KUDEN. KUDEN is a stage where you can talk about your life experiences in 15 minutes. Many famous Japanese executives have spoken at KUDEN in the past. It was my first time to even give a speech so I practice with his help for a month. In this meeting he asked me about my past experiences. About my childhood, when I was Maiko(Geisha), my first marriage, remarriage, childbirth...Actually I haven't had much time to look up on my life so far. But I realized this is a very important work for the rest of my life.

Nakajima: Tell me more inside of your mind. The thing you said that stuck with me the most was.."A lifetime is too short to truly love someone, so try your best to cherish the person being with you. And that there are always key people at the crossroads of your life who can give you advice."

Moe: That's what I realized again when I was talking to you today.

About 9:57:

Moto: "You did it!"

Laughter.

Moe: "How was it?"

I was so nervous that as I was speaking, my hand froze in front of my chest like this, and I kept thinking about when to move it!

Moto: Yeah, all the while, you seemed to be wondering how to move your hands"

Moe: I read in a book that people who are good at giving speeches move their hands naturally like this while speaking, but I was so nervous that my hands froze! But I was thinking from start to finish that it was strange to have my hands frozen like this!

And then.. The speeches were mostly about things I had never told anyone before, so people who saw them might be surprised. It took a lot of courage for me to tell this story because I don't think I am who you imagine me to be.

So I'm a little scared of your reaction, but let me know what you think. I'm glad I could share with you guys my life so far.

Moto: It was good opportunity for you. Good job, Moe!

Moe: Thank you for your support, Moto. We did it. Cheers!

Here's the speech she gave.

Japan is changing, female employment increasing [Kimono Mom]

Noah Smith has an interesting article about how Japan has changed since the 1990s, Actually, Japan has changed a lot (Jan 24). He’s responding to an essay by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, a British journalist who argued that Japan is mired in “stagnation and crisis” (Smith’s words). He acknowledges that, yes, there are problems. In particular, Japan seems to be gerontocracy. It’s not only that the population is aging, but that the political leadership is old (Wingfield-Hayes) and so is corporate leadership (Smith).

Smith points out that “Japan builds and builds and builds,” that Tokyo “is actually much more beautifully manicured than when I first saw it two decades ago,” and new buildings abound. Rent is affordable, housing costs are falling, and the size of the average person’s home has more than doubled between 1963 and 2013 in Tokyo Prefecture.

Moreover, fertility is up, there are more immigrants – Umm, err, What does this have to do with Kimono Mom? – and Tokyo is now an international city: “1 out of 8 people turning 20 in the city proper wasn’t born in the country.” And here we are:

Yet another example is the role of women in the workforce. Wingfield-Hayes rightfully dings Japan for not having enough women in corporate management, but neglects to mention that the percentage increased from 11% to 15% during his time there — not a massive social transformation, but not a picture of stasis either.

And this was accompanied by a large-scale movement of women into the workforce, such that Japan’s female employment rate now exceeds America’s.

Moe, Kimono Mom, is one of those women, no? And Sutan? What will she be doing in 20 years?

The kimono post [Kimono Mom]

Though we think of the kimono as somehow symbolic of (traditional) Japan, very few Japanese women wear them regularly – sometimes on special occasions once or twice a year, but that’s it. A decent silk kimono is also expensive, $2000 or so, and the price can climb into six figures for elaborate ones.

Kimono, however, are standard dress for geisha. Thus Moe has quite a collection of them – in some of the videos you can see a chest with wide shallow drawers for storing her kimonos. I assume she has kimonos appropriate for all seasons and of various levels of formality as appropriate to the occasion.

What Are The 4 Differences Between KIMONO & YUKATA? When & How The 13 Types of Kimono Are Worn

13 Types!

At 6:58: “Kimono dresser is a national qualification approved by the ministry of health labor and welfare. In order to apply for the first class qualification it takes at least five years of work experience.”

5 years!

From the YouTube description:

I know that many people around the world who are hoping to travel to Japan someday, have “wear a kimono” on their to-do list. Kimono are a traditional kind of Japanese clothes, and its colors and designs are very beautiful.

But, have you ever heard of “yukata?” They are often worn by young boys and girls at summer festivals, or at ryokan style hotels. When you take a look at the two… they look almost identical. But, how are they different?

So today, as a man wearing kimonos almost everyday and has a wife training in kimono dressing, I will explain about the 4 main differences between kimono and yukata. At the end of the video, I will briefly explain about the 13 kinds of women’s Japanese traditional clothes too, so I hope you can stick around till the end.

0:00 Let's START!
1:34 1. When they are worn
3:59 2. What they are made from
5:06 3. What you wear together with them
6:33 4. How to wear them
7:44 The 13 different kinds of kimono
10:22 Today’s conclusion
12:40 “Omake” talk

FINALLY😭💓Sutan wears a Kimono!|Christmas Miracle|Roast Beef Recipe

Moe and Moto had gotten a kimono for Sutan for her first Shichi-Go-San, but she was unwilling to wear it at that time. By Christmas, though, she was ready.

From Wikipedia:

Shichi-Go-San (七五三, lit. 'seven-five-three') is a traditional Japanese rite of passage and festival day for three- and seven-year-old girls, five-year-old and sometimes three-year-old boys, held annually on November 15 to celebrate the growth and well-being of young children. As it is not a national holiday, it is generally observed on the nearest weekend.

How to wear Kimono [Kimono Mom]

Azumanga Daioh Episode 14 Subbed - The Ocean Kimonos And Party

Azumanga Daioh is one of my favorite anime series. The series follows six school girls and two of their teachers on their daily lives. In this episode the group goes to a summer home on the beach. It belongs to the (wealthy) family of Chiyo Mihama, who is a prodigy and thus smaller than the others. 

They’ve all brought summer kimonos to wear to a summer festival. But only Chiyo-chan and Sakaki know how to put a kimono on (c. 14:21). The teachers don’t and are embarrassed that their students have to show them how to dress. At about 15:48 we see them going to the festival in their kimonos.

What about geisha? [Kimono Mom]

A week from now I will be posting an article about Kimono Mom (Moe) to 3 Quarks Daily. I thought I’d get ready for that with some preparatory posts here. Since she was a geisha – or geiko, since she is from Kyoto – earlier in her life I thought I’d start there.

Let’s look at a book: Liza Dalby, Geisha (1983). Dalby is an anthropologist who spent a year in Japan in the mid-1970s where she entered a geisha community (Wikipedia):

During her Ph.D. studies about the geisha community, conducted first in Tokyo and then Ponto-chō in Kyoto, she was invited to join a geisha house in Kyoto, after her primary contact in the city, a former geisha who had gone by the name of Ichiraku in her working days, suggested it. As such, Dalby began attending banquets under the name Ichigiku, with another geisha, Ichiume, acting as her ceremonial "older sister".

Though Dalby was fluent in Japanese and skilled at playing the shamisen, she performed at geisha parties and banquets, collectively referred to as ozashiki, in an unofficial capacity, having never undergone the rites of debuting as a geisha due to the temporary nature of her stay in Japan. As such, she was not paid for her performances, though guests and various geisha "mothers" within the community would not uncommonly give her a tip for her time.

Here is a passage from the preface to Geisha:

I do not view geisha as constituting a microcosm, a symbol, or a typification of the larger entity: Japanese society. But neither are they a marginal subculture. Geisha are embedded in Japanese culture–Japanese regard them as “more Japanese” than almost any other definable group–but only in showing how they differ from other Japanese does their multifaceted identity become clear.

Most important, geisha are different from wives. They are categorically different, in fact, and the categories are mutually exclusive. If a geisha marries, she ceases being a geisha. From the vantage point of a Japanese man, the role of wife and that of geisha are complementary. Although wives frequently work outside the home, socially they are still confined to it. In contrast to Americans, Japanese married do very little entertaining as a couple. Further, romance is not necessarily a concomitant of marriage, even as an ideal.

Here's the passage I was looking for – I read the book years ago:

Although geisha can hardly be labeled feminists, ironically they are among the few Japanese women who have managed to attain economic self-sufficiency and positions of authority and influence on their own merits. Geisha have a great deal of freedom not permitted to wives, and they are dedicated to a career they can pursue without fear of being jettisoned from the payroll when they reach age thirty-five.

With that we can begin to understand and appreciate Moe, aka Kimono Mom. She is married – Moto is her second husband (her first died) – and she has a young child, Sutan. Like a traditional Japanese housewife she spends most of her day with Sutan, though Sutan is now old enough to spend part of her day in daycare.

At the same time she is a thoroughly 21st century woman, the proprietor of a very successful YouTube channel that has reached 1.48M subscribers in just under three years (she joined YouTube on Feb. 21, 2020). Her channel is so successful that her husband has recently quit his job after 20 years so that he can help her run the business. They now have an online store and have opened a storefront in a restored house in Tokyo:

Think of that: Twenty-first century technology allows a traditional Japanese housewife and mother to enjoy the economic self-sufficiency and freedom of a geisha so that she has her own business that supports her family.

Japanese hand game based on mochi pounding

The game

In the context of taiko drumming

Mochi pounding

Sutan is taking piano lessons

No, that's not what this video is about. It's about making juicy steamed pork buns, which look so delicious it makes my toes ache. But right there at the end (9:22) she mentions going to her piano lesson. And at 9:48 she tells us: "I practiced Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer!" I wonder if she'd like to play a drum?