The Earth Moved

About an hour ago as my daughter and I sat in the blue chairs reading and my spouse was watching his evening action movie, our 28-floor apartment building began to rock back and forth like a big creepy cradle.  The dining room ceiling light swayed.

"Earthquake,"  my daughter said.  And we all looked at each other and hung on for the ride which seemed to go on and on and on.

Low in intensity; but long in duration.

It finally stopped and we all leapt up and grabbed our me-machines to find out what the heck had happened and where.

A 7.8 and the epicenter was out in the Pacific Ocean (south of us).  The Japan Meteorological Society website has this map showing where it all began at 20:24 (x marks the spot).  Note that by the time it arrived chez nous, it was a 2 or 3 (maybe even a 4).

We were hardly alone in being jolted out of our evening routine.  This graphic from Fark Japan Quake map shows just how far and wide this one was felt.

Will the Fun Ever End? Possible New US Person Reporting Requirement

Some mornings I read some delightful missive in my inbox, and then I put down my coffee, walk over to the nearest wall, and knock my head against it.  Made for a very satisfying thunk back in Versailles where the walls were 1929 solid.  Not nearly as effective in my modern Osaka apartment since the room dividers are covered in cheesy thick white wallpaper which cushions the blow.

But I make do.

So what had me banging my head against a wall this morning?  A possible new US Person reporting requirement.

According to Allison Christians, a McGill University tax law professor and all around Fine Person (she loans me books and buys me coffee) based in Montreal, Canada, reports that the US Bureau of Economic Analysis  has decided to make its bureaucratic life easier, and by extension other people's lives much harder.

Their form (and isn't there always a damn dead tree form?) Benchmark Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad, the BE-10a-d, was used by the BEA to gather information about US investments outside the Land of the Free.  It was voluntary;  now it's required.  The due date for new filers of this form is June 30, 2015 - the very same day millions of US Persons around the world must have completed their Fincen 114 reporting (aka FBARs).

Christians says that the now mandatory BE-10 filing concerns "any US Person that directly or indirectly held 10% or more of the voting securities ("US Reporter") of any non-U.S. business enterprise (a “Foreign Affiliate”). There are no de minimis exceptions: no matter how small your nonUS corporation might be (or have been-you must file for the year even if the corporation ceases to exist), you must report or face the penalty."

The penalty for non-filing is "$2,500 to $25,000 for nonfiling, plus $10,000, or a year in jail, or both, if the nonfiling was wilful."

That's the bare bones info.  I imagine that most of you have just one burning question and that is:  Does this filing requirement apply to US Person me, my investments, and my small non-US family business or consulting company?   Once my head stopped spinning from all that wall banging, I watched this BEA video and, for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. Christians herself is looking into it, and if it isn't obvious to a professor of tax law, then no wonder little ol' me is confused.




Just out of curiosity, were any of you Costco (or local equivalent) shoppers out there aware of this?   Did anyone send you a note, give you a heads-up, cc you on the memo?    Or are you reading it here for the first time?

Because, setting aside for the moment the question Is this reporting necessary? (for some reason that escapes us peons) this highlights once again that there is a serious communication gap here between the homeland and Americans abroad.  Did the people at BEA think for two seconds that there might be 8 million US citizens and Green Card holders abroad (not to mentions those living in the US) potentially affected by this requirement?  And if those 8 million+ people were taken into consideration, might that not change how the requirement was designed, implemented and communicated to the population concerned?

It's not just the BEA but the entire US government that needs to get a grip on globalization and the fact that it has a Domestic Abroad, a population that does not live in the US and may never ever live there.  Yes, taking them into account makes things messy and harder to implement but if laws, policies and regulations are applied to these people regardless of where they live, and they run the risk of draconian fines or jail time for failure to comply, then, at minimum, government has an obligation to clarify and inform.

And don't give me that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" crapola.  According to one source, US Federal law has over 23,000 pages in 50 volumes.    The US tax code alone is over 7,500 pages written in the weirdest, obscurest language comprehensible only to a small, select group of scribes (some of whom charge 500 Euros an hour for the "translation").   With numbers like that ignorance isn't a choice, it's a chronic condition.

What to do?  Instead of roiling in fear and frustration one option is for us to start banging on their walls instead.  BEA has a contact email: be10/11@bea.gov and a phone number (202) 606-5566.  Ask for clarification and be sure to get them to put it in writing that you do or do not have to file this pesky form.  Let them know that you are not the only US Person abroad asking these questions and suggest that they provide additional information on their website pertinent to US Persons who do not live in the US. And then send everything to your US Congresspersons so that they are in the loop as well.

Maybe it will work and maybe it won't.  It's worth a try, if for no other reason than the possibility that sending those emails might just assuage some frustration and save a wall or two.

Update:  Professor Christian has updated her post and says that, as far as she can tell from the instructions, non-resident US citizens are not required to submit this form.  Between you and me, I would still ask them directly and extract an answer in writing.  Cover your ass?  Absolutely.

Bi-lingual Word Play

A few things that are too good not to share.  First up is a site called Wordsmith which offers an English Word a Day message that shoots straight to my email..  Every morning in my inbox I get a new whimsical word with all the trimmings:  definition, pronunciation, etymology and usage.  I am enchanted..

This week they are offering a special treat:  French words that have become English words.  These are terms from the language of Molière that are now standard in the language of Shakespeare.  Here are the ones I've received so far this week:

politesse
laissez-faire
de rigueur
soi-disant

But perhaps you would prefer to expand your vocabulary in French.  If so, check out Kristin's French Word a Day.  Same principle as the Wordsmith list but Kirstin adds her own flair to the service and it's always fun to savour her musings.  This week features an English word that is now used by the French:  Le Memorial Day.  Not sure that one is good usage in France but, hey, she found it on a French language Wikipedia site. Whenever I see this kind of appropriation from English, my burning question is always:  how do they determine if a borrowed word is masculine or feminine?  Is it arbitrary or are there rules?

If that weren't enough richesse (also a perfectly good English word used by both Chaucer and Spenser) for a lazy Friday morning reading email over coffee on the 14th floor of my apartment in Osaka, a note came in from the website of one of my favorite authors, Ilona Andrews.  This is actually the pen name for a couple who write drop dead wonderful Urban Fantasy.   The husband, Andrew Gordon, is American and the wife, Ilona Gordon, is originally from Russia.  Their "Magic" series is very popular and with good reason - I have dived into it at least three times;  they are rollicking good reads and I recommend them with no reservations whatsoever.  Last night, I decided to read them again and stayed up very late reading the first couple of volumes.

So sweet serendipity was definitely at work here when I saw their email this morning.  Today's offering is a post about characters, change, and the creative process.  She writes:

"Despite being logical, I operate mostly on emotion when I engage with books, our own and others’. My emotions change from day to day, sometimes drastically from hour to hour. Every day when you sit down to write, you run the risk that you mind will become fascinated by a different aspect of the story and sometimes, when you are struggling with the narrative, and suddenly your brain presents a different route to get where you are going, it feels like true, genuine inspiration."

And that reminded me of the way I sometimes use my French and English:  to force my brain to find another pathway in order to solve problems and to get unstuck when I write.  Feeling frustrated because the words won't come and the sentences are stiff?  Switch to French. 

Why does this work?  I don't know but it feels like switching gears and tapping an alternate persona to take the wheel and steer for awhile.  I don't feel like I'm the same person in French;  I don't think the same way and I don't feel the same things.  The world is simply a very different place depending on the language I use to frame and view it.  And with the switch I can be a very different person without ever having to step out of my own head.  

Proof that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is correct?  I think there is something to it - though I am well aware that their theory does not enjoy the respectability today that it once did.  But that's just me overthinking things once again.  It doesn't matter if it's true;  what matters is that I believe it and it works for me.  I am surely not the only bilingual who does it either, although I have never had a direct conversation with any writer about the connection between switching languages and creativity. 

The topic makes me edgy and uncomfortable because I've never been able to describe it to my saisfaction.  It always comes out sounding like a share in a 12-step meeting:  "Hello my name is Victoria and my personality splits along linguistic lines..."  But here is part of a poem by Diana Anhalt which comes close to what I would like to say.  It is, as all poems are, an indirect and illuminating conversation that uses words and word play to transcend the limits of all language.. 

Spanish curdled my tongue,
turned me wordy, oblique, insincere.
With its treacherous Rs, languorous vowels,
devious music, each sound colliding
with the next, it yielded one unwieldy run-on word,
too big for my child-sized mouth.

Today I speak Spanish to survive,
but I write in English for its punch,
for the way it slices through excess, draws blood,
attracts sharks. (They know this voice and come to me.)

Restoring Lost Citizenship

Very good post up today on the Isaac Brock Society website.  Eric, who writes from Asia, calls attention to the case of a South Korean pop star who renounced S. Korean citizenship in 2002.  Yoo Seung-jun (these days a resident of China) now wishes to reverse that decision - he wants to renounce his American citizenship and have his South Korean citizenship restored to him.   Here is the link to Eric's post:

An exile wants to give up U.S. citizenship and come home to South Korea.

Is it possible to regain a citizenship that a person has lost or renounced?  The answer is that it depends on the circumstances and the country.

Italy, for example, has a pretty straightforward procedure for re-acquisition of citizenship.   Italian citizenship is restored in two ways:

"1.  Automatically one year from the date in which they established residence on Italian soil, unless they renounce it within that term of time.
2. By specific declaration:

• serving in the Italian armed forces; 

• by being or having been in the employ of the Italian government, even abroad;

• if a foreign resident, once legal residence in Italy is established, within one year of the declaration for reacquisition submitted to the Italian consular authorities; 

• once legal residence in Italy has been established for at least 2 years, and it can be proven that the applicant has left the foreign government employ or military service undertaken despite express prohibition by Italian law."

 The conditions (as of 2008) for restoring Vietnamese citizenship are even more interesting:

"1. A person who has lost his/her Vietnamese nationality as prescribed in Article 26 of this Law and applies for restoration of Vietnamese nationality may restore his/her Vietnamese nationality, if he/she falls into any of the following cases:

• Having applied for permission to return to Vietnam;

• His/her spouse, a natural parent or a natural offspring is a Vietnamese citizen;

• Having made meritorious contributions to Vietnam’s national construction and defense;

• Being helpful to the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam;

• Conducting investment activities in Vietnam;

• Having renounced Vietnamese nationality for acquisition of a foreign nationality but failing to obtain permission to acquire the foreign nationality.

2. Persons applying for restoration of Vietnamese nationality may not restore Vietnamese nationality, if such restoration is detrimental to Vietnam’s national interests."

And what about U.S. citizenship?  The one where potential renunciants are warned and warned again that their loss of citizenship is "irrevocable"?  Well, not quite.  Read the fine print in the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 9:

"A loss of citizenship is permanent and irrevocable, unless the U.S. Government subsequently overturns the loss for involuntariness or lack of intent." (Italics are mine)

According to Ben Herzog in Revoking Citizenship, between 1982 and 1985 the US Board of Appellate Review (the entity responsible for validating or reversing loss of citizenship cases at the time) reversed the loss of US citizenship in 35% of the cases reviewed - even those that involved a individual  who had formally renounced US citizenship at a US consulate.

Between 1973 and 1990 about 400 members of the Original African Israelite Nation of Jerusalem official renounced US citizenship.  After some members left the group, they asked that their US citizenship be restored.  "In 1990, the board dealt with eight cases.  It decided to restore citizenship in five cases, and rejected the other three.  Later that year, the board revisited those three cases and concluded that the renunciation had been psychologically forced and hence reversed its prior decisions."

So, regaining US citizenship even after a formal renunciation was possible;  the State Department had a procedure and a board that reviewed such cases.  A reversal was never guaranteed but there was a chance.

It appears that the Board of Appellate Review ceased to exist around 1991 - about the time the State Department changed its policies (following the results of US court cases that set a new standard for "voluntary" and emphasized "intent") about expatriating acts and dual citizenship.

Today in 2015 a renunciant can ask the State Department for an administrative review (see U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 7) of that loss of US nationality if any one of the following apply:

"(1) The law under which the holding of loss of nationality was made is later held unconstitutional; for example, a law concerning voting in a foreign election;
(2) A major change in the interpretation of the law on expatriation is made as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision; for example, the decision in Afroyim v. Rusk or Vance v. Terrazas;
(3) A major change is made in the interpretation of the law by the Department or is made by another agency and adopted by the Department. Most of these changes arose under previous statutes and prior to the decision in Afroyim v. Rusk; for example, cases involving naturalization of a minor; and
(4) Substantial new evidence of involuntariness or intent, not previously considered but contemporaneous to the time when the potentially expatriating act was performed, is presented by the individual."

And if the former US citizen is denied, then he or she can then file a court case asking that State's decision be over-ruled.

Given that standard for "voluntary" and "intent" what are we to make of the cases before us today? US citizens are renouncing in record numbers, but many openly say that they feel forced into doing so.  Not, mind you, because of taxes, but because of a tax system with onerous requirements with which it is difficult and expensive to comply.

I am dead certain that there will be requests for restoration of US citizenship in the future from some of today's renunciants.  How will the State Department judge those cases?  No idea.  Will it go to the courts?  Absolutely.

A suivre.  

The Frenchlings and the Fruits of Multilingualism

This week the younger Frenchling and I took the shinkansen to Tokyo.  The train system here in Japan is a marvel - clean, fast and comfortable,  Lovely ladies in cute caps glide through the aisle with drinks and snacks.  Conductors walk through the car making sure everything is as it should be, and when they reach the end, they turn and bow to the passengers.  From Osaka, Kyoto is a mere 30 minutes away;  Tokyo about two and a half hours.  A superior form of travel.

When the Flophouse relocated to Tokyo years ago, the Frenchlings studied at the Lycée Franco-Japonais (now known as the Lycée Français International de Tokyo).  They liked the school; I loved it.  It was this school that finally flipped on the English switch in my little darlings' psyches.

Prior to our moving to Japan the first time the Frenchlings attended French public school and their French was solid.  English, my first language, was used at home (One Parent, One Language) but it was the inferior language - the one their Red, White and Blue mother imposed on them for their own good.   That was my justification at the time  - that I was going to all this trouble to make English a living language in our house for them.  In retrospect, I see that it was a much for my benefit as theirs.  Bilingualism was a standard I set for our family that would prove that I was a good mother and a good American.  Oh, the tyranny of parental expectations!

Under my tutelage, and with the help of family in the US, they made progress and could understand spoken English and answer in the same when it was required of them.  But for all my efforts I could not make them love the language, or even force them to place English at the same level as French.  And once they left the house to go to school in Suresnes or Versailles, English was demoted to a household language spoken by an immigrant mother which had no utility - none of their friends spoke it and authority figures like teachers didn't value it.  Worse, it made them different, and what child wants to be different from her peers?

All that changed when we moved to Tokyo.  The Lycée Franco-Japonais was an international school that served the children of French expatriates and other nationalities who aspired to send their children to France for university.  This well-educated, well-heeled population had very high standards for the education of their offspring.  The parents also had a very different worldview - for many of these French families Japan was their second, third or fourth country. For all that the school followed the French national curriculum and taught for the French bac, multiculturalism  and multilinguism were the norm;  knowing only one language or culture was the exception.   (When the elder Frenchling moved to the US after university she was rather taken aback to be told by some of her American friends that her experiences in France and Japan were not what they meant by "multiculturalism".  Why, I'm not sure, but perhaps some of my readers in the US can clarify.)

This meant that there were many language options on the menu.  English was offered and for the first time in their lives the Frenchlings had grammar, literature and creative writing classes in the language of Shakespeare taught by native English speakers:  Canadians, British and Americans.  Their progress was phenomenal and was due as much to the environment and the values of their peers, as it was to the curriculum and the pedagogy.  English suddenly became not only useful, but essential.  As the Frenchlings went out and about in Tokyo with their friends, it was rare to find fellow Francophones but English-speakers were, if not common, certainly more prevalent.

The French school also had required Japanese classes.  It was here that the Frenchlings had their first initiation into that language and from the very start the younger Frenchling was captivated.  As for me, the parent who struggled for bilingualism, the idea that my children might be inspired to learn a third language was simply beyond me.  I was so invested in the language wars in our home that my linguistic world was strictly limited to the two European languages I knew;  I was simply not capable of encouraging a third language, an interloper in my grand, but strictly bi-lingual, plan.

We returned to France and the elder Frenchling went to an English-speaking university in Quebec (McGill) where she refined her English even more.  She graduated with honors and I was so proud to read her thesis  written in flawless English. The younger Frenchling on her own initiative found a French-English international program offered at a public French high school near Versailles. Delighted that she could continue her English studies, I barely noticed that Japanese was also offered and was only mildly encouraging when the younger Frenchling included that language in her program. (And I note here that the Frenchling's French grandmother was very disappointed that they never studied German - a language that she considers far superior to all others.)

In due time the younger Frenchling followed her sister to Canada.  At first it was physics, but after taking her first university-level Japanese class, she changed her major  and is now working on a degree in Asian Studies.  I find it rather amusing that she is living in Canada, attending a French-speaking university and studying Japanese.  How could I not have noticed all those years her efforts and persistence in finding ways to learn more and more Japanese?  The optional Japanese language classes in high school;  the request for a Japanese tutor in Versailles;  the hours spent watching Japanese anime on her computer.   What I dismissed as something peripheral to her main course of study is now the center of it.

When I was dreaming bi-lingual dreams for my children, I thought the sun rose and set with French and English,  My worth as a mother was to an appalling extent contingent on their language skills and I never questioned the tyranny of those expectations.  I could offer English up with every menu, but I could not make them chew on it with pleasure and swallow.  Such are the limitations of parental power.  I do not regret that they know these languages today, but I recognize that their bi-lingualism was only partly due to my efforts, and that school and peers played a much larger part.

Today what I face as a parent goes beyond accepting past truths:  in a role reversal that I was hesitant to accept, my Frenchlings have become my teachers.  From my talks with the elder Frenchling I am re-learning American culture.  It and the American language have changed in ways that sometimes irritate me, especially when I hear a word, phrase or cultural reference I don't understand  As for the younger Frenchling, she has been our guide and translator as we explored the Kansai region.  For, to my surprise, my Japanese instructor who is now tutoring my daughter during her stay, has pronounced my daughter proficient in Japanese.  She has a good accent, she said, and can hold her own in a conversation.  A conversation?

How astonishing, was my first thought, followed by harsh judgement of my own feeble efforts to learn the language.  For all that I raged all through the Frenchlings' childhood that English was not valued enough in our home, here I was making a similar judgement about Japanese.  I simply did not value the language as highly as French or English and I certainly did not see it as a language to love learning for its own sake as my daughter does.

So, when I agreed to go off to Tokyo with my daughter this week, I put myself in her hands.  I listened really listened to her speaking Japanese.  When I didn't understand or needed a word, I asked her.  And as we strolled through the Naruto exhibition at the Mori Arts Gallery and I looked up and saw a kanji that intrigued me, I turned to the younger Frenchling and asked, "What is that beautiful but terribly complicated character up there? "

And she smiled at her mother and replied, "Love, Mom.  It means Love."

For Good and Evil: the Impact of Taxes

“The utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations.”

James C. Scott

If you've been reading the Flophouse then you know that taxes are a frequent topic here. Frankly, I am less interested in the mechanics of taxation than I am in what I have heard referred to as the sociology of taxation.   Underneath all tax issues, I am learning, are a host of social and psychological factors.    

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has done some fascinating research about this and Ken Devos in his book Factors Influencing Individual Taxpayer Compliance Behaviour does a fine job of summarizing their work.  In particular, the discussion around "tax moral" - how taxpayers view taxes in light of their beliefs and societal norms - was illuminating.  Any lawmaker or citizen who says that the feelings of the citizenry around taxes don't matter because "the law is the law" is delusional.  The lower the tax moral, the lower the rate of voluntary compliance, which means less tax revenue.  Not simply because people don't pay, but because more and more tax money must be diverted to administration and enforcement.

Perceptions, ethics, and social systems matter.   The battle for hearts and minds and wallets is conducted in the political arena where different interests squabble over the meaning of "fair" or "equitable".  For every tax or tax system there are attempts at persuasion - mostly transparent morality tales that paint the uncooperative citizens or the greedy grasping government in the blackest possible terms.  

When I picked up Charles Adams' book For Good and Evil:  the Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization, that is exactly what I was expecting - a polemic on good and evil taxes and tax systems - all the more since I had a vague impression that Mr. Adams was something of a libertarian.  Whatever his ideology, he did a very good job of putting those opinions firmly in the background.  A careful reading of the text will expose them, but they are not the focus of his book.

Instead Adams tells a series of stories about taxes, tax systems and strategies going back to antiquity.  It is not a definitive history of taxation by any means, but it is not a bad place to begin thinking about the historical context and to see how the social, psychological and even religious context around taxation has always mattered a great deal.

How interesting to read that taxpayers in the Middle Ages had "God on their side."  Unjust or excessive taxation on the part of kings was a sin and incurred the wrath of God.  Conversely, a king who taxed justly and modestly would enjoy peace, prosperity and be "blessed with many sons."

New (or unheard of) taxes were particularly odious.  This principle was called exactio inaudita (which we can summarize as "no new taxes")  and greatly limited the raising of revenue by royalty.  Europe's rulers were daunted by this until they found a population that, in their eyes, did not have God on their side - the Jewish people - and laid that burden upon them.

Taxes played a role in the spread of Islam. The jaliya was a tax on Jews, Christian and other non-believers.  Since Moslems did not pay it, the fastest and easiest way to relieve one's tax burden was to convert.

Adams point out that this was very close to the Greek practice of taxing foreigners, not citizens. In ancient Athens foreigners paid a monthly tax called the metoikion.  The opposite of modern citizenship-based taxation, and completely contrary to the notion that taxes are a responsibility of citizens, only non-citizens (metics) were consistently and directly taxed.  Citizens themselves were only directly taxed in extraordinary emergency circumstances like war - the eisphora.  Not only were these taxes canceled once the reason for them was over, "if there was any booty from the war it was used to repay or refund the eisphora."

Those who rail against international tax competition in our day should know that, far from being a new phenomenon brought on by 20th century globalization, it has a long and venerable history.

Around the 4th century B.C., says, Adams,  the island of Rhodes became a thriving center of banking and commerce. Internally, it was politically stable.  Externally, it successfully avoided becoming embroiled in other countries' conflicts.  Rhodes was also a port of call for ships coming from the east to deliver cargo to Rome and Greece.  The port charged a 2% harbor tax "based on the value of the cargo, even if the cargo remained on board."  When Rhodes found itself in conflict with Rome, the Romans attacked them indirectly by creating another port in 166 B.C. on the isle of Delos which, in addition to possessing good facilities and services, was tax free.  The result?

"The trade of the east immediately bypassed Rhodes and went to Delos.  In one year trade declined by 85 percent.  Annual tax receipts, which normally had run about 1 million silver drachmas, declined to 150,000."

Which just goes to show that "harmful tax competition" has at least  a 2,000 year-old pedigree.

"Tax habits could be to civilization what sex habits are to personality.  They are basic clues to the way a society behaves."  Ideas about what is "fair" and "equitable" change - surely the Christians of the middle ages in Europe found taxing the Jews to be very fair indeed, and the Athenians had no problem exempting their citizen-selves from any direct tax obligations.  What do today's most pressing tax issues tell us about the societies in which we live?

For the most part, Adams tells his stories straight without manipulative moralizing.  He believes that taxes can be a force for good, are necessary for civilization,  and have "built great nations and brought much good to their inhabitants."

But he also argues that there are taxes and tax systems so bad that they actually undermine the civilizations they are meant to support.  Tax systems that are overly complex and ultimately unenforceable generate contempt, not revenue.   Governments that approach their citizens or subjects with arrogance, and rely mostly on compulsion to fill their coffers, fare badly as avoidance and evasion become rampant.  And anyone who believes that harsher laws and draconian punishments are the only proper response to widespread non-compliance should take a few moments to look at the ATO research.

And while we are speaking of punishment -  if it is good, right and necessary for taxpayers to be under threat, then surely a case can be made that governments and their agents need it too in order to be properly motivated and compliant with their responsibilities to those they govern.

In ancient Egypt under the pharoah Haremhab "a tax-collecting scribe found guilty of overcharging a taxpayer was sentenced to have his nose cut off, followed by banishment to a desolate part of Arabia."

With that kind of punishment, and if we could convince the US Congress that taxing simply and coherently would "bless them with many sons", the bureaucrats and lawmakers just might find the motivation to undertake that politically dangerous but desperately-needed tax reform.

Nara: Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines

This weekend one of my spouse's colleagues took us on a tour of her hometown:  the city of Nara.

Nara is located in the Kansai region and and was Japan's imperial capital from 710 to 794. In 794 the emperor/empress moved to Kyoto but the many temples and shrines remained.   It's a city every bit as magical as Kyoto and we had a fine time walking in Nara park, feeding the deer, and visiting the Kasuga shrine (Shinto) and Tōdai-ji temple (Buddhist).

In the modern Christian countries I know best in Europe and North America there are many debates about the role of religion in society, and between atheism (there is no God) and monotheism (there is one God).  There is another, older ism and that is polytheism which posits that there are many Gods and Goddesses.  As we strolled through Kasuga I asked our guide to explain something about Shinto, a religion that was not part of the curriculum at my Catholic high school (though Buddhism was).

She confirmed that there were indeed many gods in the Shinto pantheon but there was a hierarchy with some gods being more powerful than others.  When she was a child, she said, there were several shrines in her parent's house to which she brought offerings.  Not so common today, she noted, but important life events are still marked by a visit to a shrine to, for example, present a newborn child for the priest's blessing 30 days after the birth.




Though I thought I would be on firmer ground at the Buddhist temple Tōdai-ji, I was soon confronted with just how little I knew about it.  Buddhism has many different schools with subtly different philosophies. Tōdai-ji is the center of the Kegon school of Buddhism in Japan. And I should note here that there is another ism that I should add to my previous list and that is nontheism.

 Buddhism is, in my mind, most definitely a religion but one that has "no reference to such a singular, personified deity."   But "If we interpret the nature of gods, small ‘g’ and plural, or divinity even more broadly conceived as a sacred basis of reality, then certainly Buddhism has much to say on this matter."

Walking through the Kasuga shrine and Tōdai-ji I found that "sacred basis of reality". There were many things that felt comforting viewed from my own religious tradition, Catholicism.  The use of water, for example, to purify oneself before entering a holy place; the use of fire - the votive candles lit by believers and laid around the statue of the Buddha Vairocana; and, of course, the many monks and priests in their special garb.

As we left I was stung with regret that I did not have a better grounding in either religion.  Like a cathedral, everything in a temple or shrine has a pedagogicial purpose, but I didn't know enough to be teachable.  I could only admire and speculate.

But ignorance, once diagnosed, is curable, and I like what Thomas Merton had to say about studying other traditions:  "The Christian scholar is obligated by his sacred vocation to understand and even preserve the heritage of all the great traditions insofar as they contain truths that cannot be neglected and offer precious insights into Christianity itself".

Wherever I go in the world I carry a rosary in my purse that belonged to my great aunt and I often wear a medallion around my neck with a picture of the Lady (the Blessed Mother).  To this collection I have now added a Shinto shrine charm - a talisman called omamori that, according to our guide, confers protection against bad luck or evil events.

At Tōdai-ji the younger Frenchling made an offering for a ceramic tile - one on which she was asked to write her name, the date and a desire, and will be used to replace a damaged tile on the temple roof.

And what was her request?  Her wish? Her heart's desire?

To one day publish a book.