Word: sumida
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Composer Benjamin Britten was introduced to "a totally new operatic experience"-a Japanese No drama. Fascinated by the stark economy of style and the eerie mixtures of guttural chants, drums and flute, Britten decided that it might be interesting to give an English background to the simple tale of Sumida-gawa- a demented mother seeking her lost child...
...like old times in the famed wooden geisha houses along the river Sumida. A geisha party before the war meant soft lights from many-colored lanterns, the tinkle of the samisen, a mossy garden with elegant dollhouse trees, a banquet starting with pickled sea-urchin eggs, dried seaweed, bonito entrails, mushrooms, and cuttlefish served with maple leaves and chrysanthemums. Above all, it meant the geisha girls themselves, in lacquered wigs and colorful kimonos, who poured sake from porcelain vases, performed their slow and discreet dances, and sang their sad, seductive love invitations...
...blow. With the government beginning to look into the once-secret and tax-exempt expense accounts that businessmen used for geisha parties, 20 of Japan's leading firms issued an ultimatum to their employees: no more parties, except for gullible foreigners. "Japan," says one oldtime patron of the Sumida houses, "is the land of the vanishing geisha. In the end they will wind up as purely tourist attractions-like the Navajo Indians." The plain fact is that the stylized coquetry of the classic geisha is no longer fashionable. "Frankly," said one Japanese businessman last week, "they have become...
...cope with a U.S. economic program which seemed only to produce less money and more hardships, the old days seemed the best days. At week's end a 42-year-old Tokyo factory worker, Hiroshi Hori, took his wife and five children to view the cherry blossoms in Sumida Park. When they got home Mrs. Hori cooked up some bitter-tasting bean" paste for supper. The four younger children refused to eat it. Next morning they found their father, mother and eldest sister dead of cyanide poisoning. "Due to living difficulties," once-wealthy Father Hori had written, "the family...
Along the Sumida river, in the Yanagibashi district are the houses where subsidiary elements of the Black Dragon Society meet, particularly the army...