Letter from Burma (No. 9) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News
Monday, January 22, 1996

NOW'S THE TIME TO JOIN TOGETHER
AND LOOK TOWARD HEAVEN
"New Year Notes"

Our family saw in the new year of 1986 with Japanese friends in a small town in the vicinity of Kyoto, in fact on a hillside overlooking Lake Biwa. The last evening of 1985 was clear and mild and we all walked leisurely down to a local temple discussing, among other innocuous subjects, the beauty of fireflies. At the temple we waited until midnight, then joined in the ringing of the joya no kane. The sound of the bell floating out through the velvety night seemed to me an assurance that the coming year would be an exceptionally happy one. And indeed 1986 was a most pleasant year, even though it began with a slight domestic upset in our friends' household.

Noriko, our hostess, had asked her husband, Sadayoshi, to take charge of the o-mochi (rice cakes) baking in the oven. Sadayoshi, a typical academic who found it difficult to give to anything so mundane as cooking the meticulous attention he brought to research, failed to check regularly on the o-mochi, with the result that the beautiful rice dumplings were slightly charred. Now, Noriko is an excellent cook who accepts nothing short of perfection in her kitchen. Once shopping with her at Oxford I had been awed by her majestic demeanor at the butcher's. She asked for veal and the butcher asked which cut she required. "The best," she replied serenely. Then she asked for steak, and when the butcher inquired what kind of steak she would like, she again answered, "The best." And so it went on. For one such as Noriko, the charred o-mochi was a disaster. To prove to Noriko that the slight charring had done nothing to detract from the essentially comforting texture and flavor of the o-mochi, I ate five. I like to think that this act of stamina stood me in good stead through 1986, which was year of much travel.

Now, 10 years on, my family and I saw out 1995 in a way somewhat remote from Lake Biwa, joya no kane and o-mochi. In Rangoon one does not hear the pealing of bells at midnight on the thirty-first of December. It was merely the tooting of car horns which told us that 1995 was over and 1996 had begun. The Burmese in general do not celebrate the beginning of the year according to the Gregorian calendar, since the New Year according to our lunar calendar takes place only in April. Yet here too, as elsewhere throughout the world, January is a time for renewal and hope, for resolutions and rededications.

Perhaps the hopes that fill the hearts of the people of Burma are not quite the same as those with which the people of Japan look forward to 1996. For how many people in Japan would a reasonable price of rice form the core of their hopes for a happier New Year? It is long past the days when a variation in the price of rice meant the difference between sufficiency and malnutrition to the ordinary Japanese. Yet there must be many in Japan who still remember what it was like when it was still a largely agricultural economy striving to rise above the terrible devastations brought about by the war.

A professor of geography in Kyoto explained to me in poetic terms his emotions as a child growing up in Japan at the end of the war. He described a day when an American soldier had appeared at his village in search of antiques. He had looked up to the tall stranger and was filled with a strong awareness of the fact that he, the little Japanese boy, was ill-nourished and puny and ill-clothed, while the big American soldier was well-dressed and obviously well-fed. He recognized the world of difference between the strong and the weak. But, the professor told me, all through his childhood, as he and his family struggled for daily survival, he would always look up toward the heavens and he knew that behind the clouds was the sun.

When he was a grown man and Japan had become an economically powerful country, he went on a field trip to an Indian village. And one day as he stood speaking to some Indian villagers he became suddenly aware that he was well-fed and well-clothed while the villagers were malnourished and poorly clothed. He and his countrymen were now cast in the role of the strong. But, he said to me with a smile, our young people these days, although they are rich and have never known what it was like not to have enough to eat, they do not look up toward the heavens, they do not care whether there are clouds or whether there is a sun behind them. I do not know how may Japanese people would share the views of this gentle professor of geography. But I think many people in Burma will recognize the instinct that makes us look up toward the heavens and the confident inner voice that tells us that behind the deeply banked clouds there is still the sun waiting to shed its light and warmth at the given hour. The beginning of a new year is a time when we all like to turn our faces towards the heavens, when we look to our friends all over the world to join us in our quest for light and warmth.

"Joya no kane" is the ringing of the temple bell 108 times; each toll is thought to protect us from one of the 108 sins or other evils to which we might fall victim during the coming year (I think).

-- C. Schlenker