Returns
Tanabata and thoughts on coming home after three weeks away
Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
That’s a line from Robert Lowell’s poem, Home After Three Months Away, written, it seems, after a spell in a mental hospital.
I've just come back from a three-week holiday, returning to the heat of Tokyo, to the prospect of a busy summer of work, and also to Substack, where I have sadly neglected the many wonderful writers I follow. I’m looking forward to catching up on all the great writing I’ve missed.
July is also the month in which my birthday falls. It’s something I only grudgingly celebrate these days (I guess my grudge is against Time), but no doubt I will receive a message at some stage that will say, “Many happy returns!” It’s always struck me as a curious phrase.
The UK had its general election this week, and as expected, the Labour Party swept to power, though with a few surprises along the way. In each constituency, no matter what the result, there will have been a returning officer presiding. This person is responsible for giving the official result of the result locally to Parliament—by completion of a return. However, many former MPs will not be returning to Westminster for this new Parliament, especially among the Conservatives.
Another return: One of my key tasks upon getting back was to follow up on my Japanese tax return and pay my residence tax. I love tax returns so much that I may be completing a UK return later this year…
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And on July 7th, Japan will celebrate 七夕 Tanabata (literally, “evening of the seventh”), a story of cosmic return. It’s also known as 星祭り, Hoshi matsuri, the Star Festival, and is ultimately derived from a Chinese legend of the Weaver and the Cowherd, which is celebrated on August 10 this year.1 The legend was apparently brought to Japan as long ago as the year 755 and is now celebrated in a blaze of colour as paper strips called Tanzaku (短冊) are hung on trees or bamboo stalks. All over Japan, there will be festivals held to celebrate this legendary celestial event.
The legend itself is a girl-meets-boy story, featuring Orihime, a talented seamstress who lived near the heavenly river, represented by the Milky Way, and her lover, Hikoboshi. For the astronomically minded, Orihime is the star Vega, and her lover is Altair.
Orihime spent her days tirelessly weaving exquisite clothes, but she longed for love. Her father, a god of the heavens, arranged for her to meet Hikoboshi, a cowherd, on the other side of the Milky Way. When they met, they instantly fell in love. After that, they neglected their work, which caused outrage in the heavens (which doesn’t sound like heaven at all). Orihime’s father became less obliging as a result and banned them from seeing each other.
Eventually, Orihime was able to strike a deal: the star-crossed couple could meet but only once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th month, on the condition that Orihime must continue her weaving. So Tanabata is that rare love story, with neither a happy nor sad ending but a kind of suspended state between the two.
Incidentally, a popular food during Tanabata is そうめん (素麺) or somen, noodles made of wheat flour, usually eaten cold, and which are white and very thin. They are taken to represent the Milky Way and Orihimi’s threads.2
I’m reading William Hazlitt at the moment (I’ll come back to him in a future post), and in one of his essays, he quotes Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well:
‘It is all one as we should love
A bright particular star, and think to wed it.’
In the play, Helena thinks Bertram is as unattainable as a star, but, as the title suggests, things turn out well for her in the end.3 I guess Orihime and Hikoboshi weren’t quite so lucky but will have to be content with their many—infinite?—happy returns.
Hazlitt, though thinking of the perpetuation of fame in his essay, rather than this legend, somehow captures the everlasting drama of the two celestial lovers:
A name ‘fast-anchored in the deep abyss of time’ is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.4
Meanwhile, as I struggle with jetlag, taxes, the return to work and the searing heat of summer, a part of my mind can only feel, upon my return, with Lowell in the poem quoted above, “frizzled, stale and small.”
More like a meteorite that has fallen to earth than a returning star.
But soon the humid rainy season will end, the skies will clear, and the celestial return of Orihime and Hikoboshi will be visible.
Happy Tanabata!
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The Chinese festival is also called 七夕, the evening of the seventh, but the Chinese date of the festival follows the lunar calendar.
If being married to such a self-regarding character can be counted as "happy.”
Returning home from traveling certainly can feel more like a crash than a starry descent!“More like a meteorite that has fallen to earth than a returning star.” Especially with tax returns waiting. It’s usually so good to be home though.
I also have doubts that Helena actually got her happy ending.
I have had many returns home. To me, each new place I live or stay absorbs me, so that I feel as if I had always lived or could always live there. When I return home, which I also love, it is not as if now I feel more comfortable or at home, but rather as if I am passing from one dimension of living to another.