PROFILE

PROFILE:

My name is Michio MATSUSHITA born in 1938 in Japan. You can call me “Mitch” for short. I worked for one of the largest machine manufacturing companies in Japan for more than 40 years. My main jobs were mechanical design and plant export engineering.

My hobbies are listening to music, compose Tanka (poems of 31 syllables), traveling, magic, Japanese game of “Go” and so on.

WHERE THE TITLE OF MY HOME PAGE “A DEWDROP” COMES FROM:

For one thing, it comes from the image of myself born on a leaf of wood in the mountain and for another, it comes from two leaves of Tanka in Manyoshu.

Waka is a general term for a classical Japanese verse (poetry) form. Especially it refers to Tanka, a 31 syllables verse consisting of five lines with the pattern of syllables, 5-7-5-7-7. Manyoshu is the oldest existing, and most highly revered collection of about 4,500 leaves of Waka composed between 7 and 8 century. Tanka accounts for some 90 percent of the whole in Manyoshu.

Summary of the two leaves of Tanka motivated by dewdrop is;

Tanka sent by Otsu-no-miko (a name of imperial prince) to Ishikawa-no-iratsume (a lady attending on another prince).

“I had been awaiting you in the mountain as promised but you did not come. I had just got wet with dewdrops in the mountain.”

Tanka replied by Ishikawa-no-iratsume to Otsu-no-miko.

“If I had been the dewdrops with which you had got wet, I would have been very happy.”

In those days, to be in love with other’s wife or husband seems to be not very strict. There are many Tanka of unfaithful love in Manyoshu, but strangely enough, they leave a pure impression on the reader’s mind nowadays.

HOME PAGE PHOTO:

Mt. Ontake (3,067 m) View from Kiso, Mitake-Yashikino in January 23, 2007.