Swami Bhaktipada

MARGALIT FOX “Swami Bhaktipada, Ex-Hare Krishna Leader, Dies at 74” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/us/swami-bhaktipada-ex-hare-krishna-leader-dies-at-74.html

ハレ・クリシュナの元指導者 Swami Bhaktipada（本名Keith Gordon Ham）、印度のムンバイにて死す。享年74歳。2004年に出獄した後、印度に移住していた。

Mr. Bhaktipada, also known as Kirtananda Swami, was born Keith Gordon Ham on Sept. 6, 1937, in Peekskill, N.Y., the youngest of five children of the Rev. Francis Gordon Ham and the former Marjorie Clark.

The elder Mr. Ham was a Baptist minister steeped in old-line tradition, Gerald Ham said.

“My father would fit in very well with some of the evangelical people we have today raising such a ruckus,” Mr. Ham said. “The Bible was inerrant. We were all indoctrinated and baptized and so forth. Keith, too.”

Keith Ham earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn., in 1959, graduating first in his class of 118. As a senior, he received a prestigious Woodrow Wilson fellowship for graduate study.

He entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a doctorate in American religious history. But in the early 1960s, his brother said, the university asked him to leave after a love affair he had with a male student came to light. He settled in New York, where he did graduate work in history at Columbia.

Like many young people then, his brother said, Keith Ham became an experimenter and a seeker, dabbling in LSD and above all looking for a spiritual haven. In 1966, after leaving Columbia without a degree, he met Swami Prabhupada, who was running a storefront mission on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He joined the Hare Krishnas and was initiated as a swami in 1967.

バプテスト派牧師の息子から宗教史研究者へ。そしてドラッグ体験を経て、ハレ・クリシュナに入信。この頃は同性愛がばれて大学院を追い出される時代だったんだね。彼はベビーブーマー*1よりは上だが、取り敢えずはGetting Saved From the Sixties(Steven Tipton)な人だったといえるだろう。

Getting Saved from the Sixties

さて、Swami Bhaktipadaはヴァージニア州Moundsvilleの郊外に米国で最大のハレ・クリシュナのコミューンNew Vrindaban*2を建設したことで知られる。

New Vrindaban eventually comprised more than 4,000 acres ― a “spiritual Disneyland,” its leaders often called it ― with a live elephant, terraced gardens, a swan boat and bubbling fountains. A major tourist attraction, it drew hundreds of thousands of visitors in its heyday, in the early 1980s, and substantial annual revenue from ticket sales.

The baroque frenzy of the place stands in vivid contrast to the founding tenets of the Hare Krishna movement. Rooted in ancient Hindu scripture, the movement was begun in New York in the mid-1960s by an Indian immigrant, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada*3. It advocates a spiritual life centered on truth, simplicity and abstinence from drugs, alcohol and extramarital sex.

しかし、1980年代半ばから地元自治体、州政府、連邦政府との軋轢が強まり、ハレ・クリシュナ内部からもSwami Bhaktipadaの独裁的傾向に対する批判が強まってくる。1987年に紐育のハレ・クリシュナ本部はSwami Bhaktipadaを破門し、翌年には彼はNew Vrindabanからも放逐されてしまう*4。さらに、1990年には詐欺、New Vrindabanにおける信者殺害への関与、幼児への性的虐待の容疑で裁判にかけられ、1996年には司法取引に応じ、詐欺についての罪状のみを認め、懲役20年に処せられる（後に12年に減刑され、2004年に仮釈放される）。

*1:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20090816/1250355437 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20100618/1276885921 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110119/1295457854 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110226/1298693399

*2:http://newvrindaban.com/

*3:http://www.prabhupada.com/

*4:ハレ・クリシュナには1998年に復帰。

紐育の韓流

JON CARAMANICA “Korean Pop Machine, Running on Innocence and Hair Gel” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/arts/music/shinee-and-south-korean-k-pop-groups-at-madison-square-garden-review.html

K-Pop米国進出の話。SM Entertaiment*1所属の韓流アイドルたちがマディソン・スクエア・ガーデンで行ったSM Town Liveを巡って。

American teen-pop at its peak has never been this productive. K-pop ― short for Korean pop ― is an environment of relentless newness, both in participants and in style; even its veteran acts are still relatively young, and they make young music. Still, there were subtle differences among the veterans, like BoA and TVXQ, and the newer-minted acts like Super Junior, Girls’ Generation and SHINee.

Members of the younger set are less concerned with boundaries, drawing from the spectrum of pop of the last decade in their music: post-Timbaland hip-hop rumbles, trance-influenced thump, dance music driven by arena-rock guitars, straightforward balladry.

Of these groups, the relative newcomer SHINee was the most ambitious. From the looks of it, the group’s men are powered by brightly colored leather, Dr. Martens boots and hair mousse. Their music, especially “Replay,” “Ring Ding Dong” and “Juliette,” felt the riskiest, even if it only slightly tweaked that polyglot K-pop formula; these vocalists were among the night’s strongest.

But SHINee came in a recognizable format, the same size as American groups like ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys. But what K-pop has excelled at in recent years are large groups that seem to defy logic and order. Super Junior, which at its maximum has 13 members, was one of this show’s highlights, appearing several times throughout the night in different color outfits, shining on “Mr. Simple” and the intense industrial dance-pop of “Bonamana.” (K.R.Y., a sub-group of Super Junior, delivered what may have been the night’s best performance on “Sorry Sorry Answer,” a muscular R&B ballad.)

Super Junior was complemented by the nine-woman Girls’ Generation, which offered a more polite take on K-pop, including on “The Boys,” which is its debut American single. Girls’ Generation gave perhaps the best representation of K-pop’s coy, shiny values in keeping with a chaste night that satisfied demand, but not desire. (It was an inversion on the traditional American formula; in this country young female singers are often more sexualized than their male counterparts.)

In the past few years K-pop has shown a creeping global influence. Many acts release albums in Korean and Japanese, a nod to the increasing fungibility of Asian pop. And inroads, however slight, are being made into the American marketplace. The acts here sang and lip synced in both Korean and English. Girls’ Generation recently signed with Interscope to release music in the United States. And in August Billboard inaugurated a K-Pop Hot 100 chart. But none of the acts on the SM Town Live bill are in the Top 20 of the current edition of the fast-moving chart. This is a scene that breeds quickly.

See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110805/1312481934 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110906/1315336631

*1:http://www.smtown.com/

北杜夫

『読売』の記事；

「どくとるマンボウ」北杜夫さん死去

　ユーモアあふれる“どくとるマンボウ”シリーズや、大河小説「楡家にれけの人びと」で知られる作家、芸術院会員の北杜夫（きた・もりお、本名・斎藤宗吉＝さいとう・そうきち）氏が、２４日死去した。

　８４歳だった。告別式は親族で行う。

　近代短歌を代表する斎藤茂吉の次男として東京に生まれた。旧制松本高を経て東北大医学部に進学。卒業後の１９５４年、初の長編「幽霊」を自費出版した。

　６０年には、水産庁の調査船に船医として半年間乗った体験をユーモアを交えて描いた「どくとるマンボウ航海記」を発表。「昆虫記」「青春記」などマンボウものを出版して人気を博した。

　同年、ナチスと精神病の問題を扱った「夜と霧の隅で」で芥川賞。６４年には斎藤家三代の歴史を描いた「楡家の人びと」を刊行、毎日出版文化賞を受けた。「さびしい王様」など、大人も子供も楽しめる童話でも親しまれた。「青年茂吉」など父の生涯を追った評伝で９８年、大仏次郎賞を受けた。

（2011年10月26日03時01分 読売新聞）
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/culture/news/20111026-OYT1T00081.htm

中学一年で『どくとるマンボウ航海記』、『昆虫記』、『青春記』を読み、中学・高校の間に純文学系の作品も幾つか読んだ。このように読書生活を北杜夫から始めたという人は私の世代では少なくない筈だが、後の世代ではどうなっているのかは知らない。

幽霊―或る幼年と青春の物語 (新潮文庫)

どくとるマンボウ航海記 (新潮文庫)

どくとるマンボウ昆虫記 (新潮文庫)

どくとるマンボウ青春記 (中公文庫)

夜と霧の隅で (新潮文庫)

上の『読売』の記事に付け加えるべきは、北杜夫氏が自ら精神科医であるとともに躁鬱病（双極性障害）を生きていたということか。
いちばん好きな作品は「白毛」という短篇か。

天井裏の子供たち (新潮文庫 き 4-14)

安妮宝貝説（メモ）

葉弥衫「安妮宝貝：写作於我是一種庇護」『南方人物週刊』2011年10月17日、pp.91-93

作家、 安妮宝貝*1へのインタヴュー。例えば「有読者批評你的小説内容一直在重複、認為你這些年没有進歩」という突っ込みに対して、曰く、

首先、所有的小説都是在重複相似的題材和故事、日光之下併無新事、人類現実生活中的事情就那麽幾件。題材上我不是幻想類或推理類的作家、需要側重情節的跌宕起伏、活潑生辣。我的小説関注的是人的内心和精神領域的辺界、包括了人與自己、人與他人、人與時空的関係。這些部分我感得是持続探索和深入的。
其次、所有的小説都是有自己的情節部分和試図闡釈的哲学核心。我不覚得這些批評触及到核心、這没有試図用平等心和耐心、真正進入一本小説。如果不能通過故事表象抵達一本小説的内涵、因本身経験和感受的有限、関注於情節的細葉末節、拿人物的打扮和身份等話題来一味説事、這很可惜。他們揪着一些皮毛、却触摸不到其中血肉、他們也許読了書、却無法成為這本的読者。如果互相不能聯通、放弃閲読最佳。（p.93）

*1:http://blog.sina.com.cn/babe See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110305/1299293785 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110313/1300035730 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110813/1313208109