VOX POPULI: No longer a need to tend the fires of the past

Words lose their currency when what they represent becomes obsolete. One example is the verb kuberu. It means "to feed the fire," and was commonly heard in olden days when people heated their bath water by stoking a wood- or coal-burning stove attached to the bathtub.

I imagine many younger Japanese today have trouble visualizing exactly how it was done.

A haiku by Bosha Kawabata (1897-1941) goes: "Soaking in the tub/ In a rain shower/ I call out for another log." Nowadays, all one has to do to reheat the tub is push a reheat button on the control panel. Kawabata's haiku must fill many older Japanese with nostalgia.

For city dwellers, building a fire is no longer part of their routine. They have no chance to even observe the traditional custom of burning their pine-and-bamboo New Year's decorations after the holiday season. The vernacular Asahi Shimbun recently ran a letter from a reader who said some city residents toss their used decorations out with kitchen garbage.

In fact, I realize that few neighborhoods today do an annual dondo-yaki, or building a community bonfire to burn New Year's decorations.

As for another once-familiar sight--people burning raked leaves in late autumn and winter--I can't quite remember the last time I saw such a scene. The custom is on the verge of extinction. There is an old children's song about leaf-burning that is still sung today, but city kids today obviously don't know how it feels to be entranced by flames that shift their shapes like living creatures.

Sansei Yamao (1938-2001), a Tokyo-born poet who relocated to Yakushima island, penned a poem in which he urges his children to "make a fire."

"Upon turning into a good fire/ The orange flames become your present hearts/ Flaming intensely," the poem goes. "We were/ We are a living thing by making the fire/ If we can make the fire we are human ... ."

Wherever there is a fire, people are attracted to it. A haiku by Mantaro Kubota (1889-1963) describes: "One person leaves/ And then two newcomers join/ In the ring around a bonfire." But gone are the days when people enjoyed convivial conversations around a bonfire, warming their hands and then turning around to warm their rears.

Each such gathering invariably had someone taking charge of poking and stoking the fire. When dealing with a live fire, it feels more accurate to say that one has to "make it grow" rather than "feed" it. With the obsolescence of the verb kuberu, perhaps we are becoming out of touch with the age-old esoteric technique of fire-tending.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 12

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.