Steve Forrest
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sforrest.bsky.social
Steve Forrest
@sforrest.bsky.social
860 followers 220 following 530 posts
Read teach eat run, bike write build. Traveller; always learning. Teaching (classical) Japanese at a public univ. in USA. Doing life and Japanese book history, etc. In diversity, strength; in equity, justice; in inclusion, an open welcome. LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍⚧️
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sforrest.bsky.social
Restorative time out on nearby trails on a mild Saturday afternoon, before starting in on the next batch of recommendation letters. (tis the season). The light on the leaves & water was glorious -- pics don't do it justice
#AmRunning #LateAutumn
Autumn woodland scene in late afternoon sunlight: a narrow trails curls between trees and up a wooded bank wetlands scene in the same woods: a pool stretches away into a little stream, as seen from a shaded bank. The trees across the water a bright with sunlight. looking down into the pool, where a stand of pine trees is reflected so clearly that the water is a surprise at the end of the run, close to day's end, a slightly broader stretch of trail, leaf-covered, and the woods are alight with the sun's golden hour glow.
November 9, 2025 at 4:07 AM
sforrest.bsky.social
On an almost impossibly perfect day for running, to Monson for this year's Memorial Classic Half. Well-organized, friendly folks, & the eats afterwards were top-notch, as ever. If you're in CT, western MA, or in nearby NY, & looking for a good 13miler, plan on it for next year!
#AmRunning
Monson Memorial hall, a 19th cent. stone building with bell tower and a lawn before it, and a flagpole out front -- the US flag flutters in a gentle breeze against and almost cloudless blue sky. Portapotties at lower right are for the racers, some of whom can be seen waiting around for the off. View from the arched-over stairs into the hall, looking out across the lawn to the street, to an ornate steepled church and some town buildings with a steep wooded hill right behind (Monson is generally pretty hilly!). Took this after I'd finished, but people are still coming in to the finish arch visible at lower left. Close up view of part of the Memorial Hall's granite (?) stone frontage -- the autumn sunshine picks out the texture of the stone blocks in amazing detail.
October 26, 2025 at 11:37 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Boarding call, time for one last trip across the pond this year. Tired enough to sleep sitting up, maybe?
A Delta airlines passenger jet docked at Terminal E on a cloudy late afternoon in Boston
September 16, 2025 at 10:23 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
...as well as in some well-known color prints from a bit later, e.g. this 1843 triptych by Hiroshige (used as cover art for Royall Tyler's translation of _Heike monogatari_, too) -- screenshots here, but you can see the whole thing at the Brit. Museum, here:
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
composite screenshot of nishiki-e (polychrome woodblock print) triptych showing Kiyomori clutching his sword as he looks from his veranda at snow in his garden that appears to be skulls and skeletons. Behind him (at right, on the first third of the image) a lady attendant shrinks back -- above her is a cartouche with a brief description of the scene.
September 6, 2025 at 5:09 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
That gōkan is from 1834, but this scene appears in earlier works too, e.g. this undated kurohon (maybe early 1700s? It's available on NIJL here:
kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/10006... )
double-page spread b/w illustration with embedded text, from a children's book called _Kiyomori ichidaiki_ 『清盛一代記』. Picture shows Kiyomori seated on veranda looking out at heap of skulls with two skeletons nearby, one in armour, another raising a hand in his direction. The moon rises over a fence in the background. What looks like the kanji 一心 appear above the heap of skulls.
September 6, 2025 at 4:56 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
TFW the skulls of your enemies are so numerous that they merge into a sentient mega-skull and ruin your evening reverie.

(from a gōkan called 『石橋山義兵白旗』, featuring Kiyomori in all his reputed horribleness)

(reposting with corrected text, sorry!)
double-page spread illustration (b/w, with embedded text) showing at right a burly grizzled man seated leaning on a veranda rail, looking down over his garden, where (at left) there is a heap of smaller skulls and one giant skull with living eyes glaring back at him. The scene is dark, nighttime.
September 6, 2025 at 4:19 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
No Mt Greylock Trail Race this year, so tried the road version, which is even simpler: just run up the road to the top. 183 of us got our runner's high that way today, and the views from the monument at the top were spectacular too. Now time to rest hard before semester opens on Tuesday!
#AmRunning
Back of race t-shirt with text reading, "50th Mt Greylock Road Race: As high as you can get in Massachusetts, 3491'." view of Veterans War Memorial Tower at summit of Mt Greylock -- a granite tower with viewing windows near the top. Picture is from a few years ago, as I didn't have my phone with me today.
September 1, 2025 at 2:41 AM
sforrest.bsky.social
Those pesky roof/plumbing leaks in my office building have been neatly plumbed away--a sure sign the school year is about to begin!
Part of hallway with two of the white ceiling tiles replaced by plastic faux-tiles with drain tubing leading away toward the wall, and then descending into a large plastic bin. One other ceiling tile is water stained. Two benches are placed next to the bin -- perhaps the dripping sound will make for meditative moments as students sit waiting for class?
August 26, 2025 at 2:31 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
To celebrate, here's a seasonal pic of some local wild cucumbers in fruit and flower, with twirly tendrils for good measure. Random pics from the UK trip to follow when I get back to my desk
Black chain-link fence topped with wild cucumber vines. There are several immature spikey fruits and a profusion of slender starry white blossoms.
August 24, 2025 at 7:05 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Finding joy in this peak season for local weed Eutrochium purpureum, aka Joe Pye weed. Noone particularly plans for them to grow, but grow they do, undaunted, in great size & ubiquity round here, rising above other weedy herbage. Now they color this swampy spot off a nearby road--lovely!
#Summer2025
view across an open patch of wetland in late summer, with trees beyond. In the mid-distance and foreground, among reeds, grass, and other weeds, are clumps of large-leafed and purple-flower-crowned Joy Pye weed. Close up of some stalks of Joe Pye weed in bloom. another close-up bringing out the color of the tiny flowers a bit better (none of these pics are very good -- if you're in eastern or central North America, now's the time to go out and see some for yourself!).
August 10, 2025 at 3:47 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Gorgeous, idiosyncratic #manuscript from today's work on katoku setsuwa 歌徳説話--scribal work like this makes it hard to remember I'm here for the content, not the aesthetics! TOC from late Edo (?) MS copy of _Shunrai zuinō_ 『俊頼髄脳』, w/ close-up: such effortlessly fluid kana! Not all of...
#BookHistory
double-spread from (probably) 19th C. MS showing two pages of the table of contents -- each item is followed by a number, in a more or less orderly layout of four rather cramped rows on each page, but the script manages to retain a spacious elegance when you look at each individual item. Quite magical! Script is a mix of mostly non-cursive kanji and very fluid kana. Numbers run from 32 to 121, with numbering down the page, with 12 columns of text on each page. Close up of one section, starting at top right with the number 43, followed below by item 44, Tatsugayumi 立弓 (kanji with katakana gloss), and ending with item 73, Kawosashite かをさして. Item 68, Ishibashi yoru no chigiri 石橋夜契, includes two cursive kanji, but the remainder are in block script; the kana are uniformly richly rounded and fluid.
July 23, 2025 at 2:58 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Poet's Seat Tower expressing my feelings when my back-up flight to Chicago was *also* cancelled -- now home again hoping for better luck (=weather?) tomorrow.

(Trains don't care about thunderstorms; this is a Fukuoka to Morioka sort of distance, just over 7 hrs on Shinkansen. Le sigh)
sandstone tower photographed from below looking up so that it's lower window opening looks like a mouth open wide in dismay and its upper windows look like eyes open wide in disbelief.
July 15, 2025 at 12:47 AM
sforrest.bsky.social
Took advantage of mostly good weather yesterday to bike out to the Poet's Seat Tower in Greenfield, a roundtrip ride needing 3 coffee stops & nearly 5hrs--definitely feeling it this morning. A bobcat crossed my path as I rode up the last hill: good luck, I hope!
A stone tower of three stories with unglazed arches, set in a small clearing among trees on top of a hill, against a hazy summer sky. View of the base of the tower, with my bicycle leaning against the foundation. Two plaques are visible; the larger one over the arched entryway reads, "Frederick Goddard Tuckerman 1821-1873; This Greenfield resident was a gifted solitary poet much admired by Emerson, Hawthorne, and Tennyson. Seeking solace in nature, e wrote verse and studied nature in Greenfield. This tower built in 1912 replaced wooden tower built in 1873. (sign donated by Greenfield Kiwanis Club)." A smaller one to the right reads, "Poet's Seat Tower; built 1912; refurbished 1977; architect Jerome R Allen; contractor Peter Barber; donated by Robert and Lena Barber Peno." View from within the third level out through a triple archway to treetops in sunlight. View from the roof level over a grafitti-covered wall out across treetops off into the far distance, where Mt Norwottuck is visible against a hazy clouded sky.
July 12, 2025 at 2:04 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
It's taken from an earlier _Time_ magazine review (8/25/1947, vol. 50 issue 8, p. 34, 2pp) of the same translation. It's quite something--I have students in my mod. Jpn lit. in translation class read it to add another layer to their reading (here in the US) of Akutagawa and mod. J lit. in general.
screencap of the opening paragraph of review of Akutagawa's Kappa, translated by Shiojiri. Full text of this portion: "Gulliver in a Kimono." Time, 0040781X, 8/25/1947, Vol. 50, Issue 8 In the days of the late Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the "banzais" of sword-shaking Japanese drowned out their more intelligent countrymen. The world of the '30s and the '40s had no chance to learn that modern Japan has also produced a fair quota of writers, thinkers and even humorists. Last month the work of one of them, a 20-year-old novelette called Kappa, was first published in English translation. To American readers, Ryunosuke Akutagawa's satire seemed almost too good to have been written by a Japanese. Akutagawa's kappa are a race of Oriental leprechauns, seldom over three feet tall, with short, ugly faces and webbed hands and feet. Like chameleons, they can change the color of their skins at will. Other kappa marks are large beaks and kangaroo pouches. Eve Came First. The only known visitor to the kappa country is Patient No. 23 in an insane asylum near Tokyo, who claims to have lived for months in the land of the kappa. No. 23 found the kappa pleasant, if unpredictable people, with their traditions often the reverse of human customs. They believe, for example, that the first kappa was a woman, who could not abide living alone. God pitied her and, taking her brain, created a male companion. His only instructions to the new couple were to eat, multiply and live as expansively as possible. For later kappa women, a good man was harder to find. Under a firm system of courtship in reverse, she-kappa had to chase and capture their husbands. In these efforts they were often assisted by parents, brothers and sisters. ("Oh, how miserable the he-kappa is!").
July 11, 2025 at 12:41 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Japan #BookHistory folks: has anyone come across this calligrapher's name before: Otajima Hōran 雄多島芳蘭女書?
Crediting a scribe for a preface is unusual, & the scribe being a woman makes it doubly so. Elegant work--but haven't found any other references to her. Text dates to Ka'ei 嘉永 2-3 (1849-50)...
Japanese woodblock printed book, open: left page, with fancy border, is inscribed a poem in Chinese; right page is the second page of a kanbun preface on Chinese style lined background. Highlighted is a scribe credit reading, "Otajima Hōran-jo sho 雄多島芳蘭女書." Same book, open to the previous spread: left-hand page is first page of the kanbun preface, titled "Giretsu hyakushu jo 義烈百首序" and right-hand page is the second page of a wabun preface dated Ka'ei 3 and signed Ryokutei Senryū 緑亭川柳.
July 10, 2025 at 5:13 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Getting through these difficult days by channeling my inner 江戸っ子
new garden tool, a small hand sickle or かま, on a wooden bench. tiny sculpture of a seated dog (ワンちゃん).
July 10, 2025 at 3:09 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
...point of interest (so far) in this #GenjiKashū #源氏物語和歌集 MS is that it contains 55 cards--the standard 54 chapters of _Genji monogatari_, plus one for the apocryphal "Kumogakure" 雲隠れ chapter.
For this, the poem given is, いつくにか雲隠れけむよものみつ光は月の名のみのこりて, with the second card reading, 光は月の名のみ残りて.
another pair of cards, again with the full poem and chapter title on the right card, and the partial poem on the left. Script and design are similar to the earlier pair. What is probably a decorative paper backing for the cards is visible as it has been folded over to make a border to the inscribed sides.
July 7, 2025 at 5:52 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
...is the one generally used as representative in collections of GM chapter name poems 源氏物語巻名歌, but the two cards don't quite match! The full poem,
いときなき初もとゆひになかき世をちきる心は結ひこめけむ,
ends with -kemu, but the shortened form on the second card end with -tsu ya (similar meaning, but still).
One other...
the two Kiritsubo chapter cards: at right, the full poem, inscribed rather casually in a fluid hand with conjoined but clearly distinct characters (mostly kana); the title Kiritsubo is written in kanji at right of the card, and the poem falls into four uneven columns of script. At left the second card, written in scattered script, carries only the final two lines, but the ending (-tsu ya) is different: ちきるこゝろは結ひこめつや
July 7, 2025 at 5:41 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Unexpected cancellation gave me some time this #ManuscriptMonday to take a look at another #GenjiKashū #源氏物語和歌集 MS, this one in the unusual form of poetry playing cards (uta-karuta 歌カルタ). The box inscription reads "Genji uta karuta" 源氏歌かる多, with each of the 2 card stacks in a thick paper wrapper...
image from Waseda Kotenseki DB website showing, at left, a wooden box with black ink title inscribed on top, and in center and at right, two stacks of rather worn playing cards, each wrapped in a band of thick paper (similar to the cards), covered with printed paper in a pattern of fans. The remnants of title slips are visible on the wrapper of each stack.
July 7, 2025 at 5:25 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
Out on the trails a couple of days ago and it was glorious, biking in solitary splendor along quiet green lanes... Hand-held phone is clearly not the most sensible way to take video, but I made it round the curve without slowing or coming off.
#Summer2025
July 7, 2025 at 3:14 AM
sforrest.bsky.social
Last year there was a massive bumper crop of acorns round here, just exceptional: the landscape crew were shovelling them off the green, the squirrels did their best, & we even gathered a bunch to make acorn flour--but the acorns did their job, & now the green is a temporary oak nursery.
#Summer2025
an expanse of grass off a residential street in partial shade under oak trees (several trunks visible), with many dozens of seedling oak trees sprouting from the grass.
July 6, 2025 at 9:25 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
There's a thunderstorm coming in right now, but this afternoon was glorious sunshine, and bees enjoying the blossoms in this micro-jungle of a thyme patch, right by our driveway.
#SummerThyme
bird's eye view of a small patch of mostly green thyme plants, with a good number of stalks in purplish-blue bloom rising above the rest. bee's eye view of the thyme patch, approaching at flower level; at left the driveway is visible and ahead, beyond the thyme and some grass, a street. close-up view of a couple of flower heads, each with clusters of small florets.
July 3, 2025 at 10:48 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
One of the interesting features of woodblock printing for books (vs moveable type) is the ability to switch to Dark Mode any time the designer wants to -- and the publisher can justify the extra ink cost. In this title page it's money well spent, wouldn't you say?
#BookHistory #wahon #和本
Title page of late Edo period Japanese woodblock printed book: the page is printed black with letters carved out, thus appearing the same color as the paper (off-white). The script is in three columns and reads, 緑亭川柳編輯　筆硯方福; 誠忠義臣略伝; 一陽斎豊国画　錦耕堂. There is also in the lower margin a modern index stamp, 目(or P/B?) 832 and an ownership seal, partly visible (from Tōdai's dept. of education?)
July 2, 2025 at 4:58 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
What better way to spend a sunny Saturday than trying out a new trail race: Edge Hill 30K, with lots of hills (ouf!), but beautiful shaded trails, & hermit thrushes singing as we passed. Started/finished on a rewilded former golf course. Now testing the finishers gift with a fine pale ale. Cheers!
view of grassy area at start of race (7:30am on a sunny day) with a few runners standing around (one with face obscured here by emoji); a barn in background with the registration tent in front of it. Coming in from the right is the finish lane, behind which are parked cars of runners and volunteers. A tall pint glass mostly filled with beer. Glass bears logo, Edge Hill Trail Race.
June 21, 2025 at 11:34 PM
sforrest.bsky.social
...this seems like a fairly standard copy of the text--but there's one big problem.
Here's the first page again, starting not with Ch. 1, "Kiritsubo no yūbe no kemuri 桐壺の夕の煙," but with the end of the Ch. 2 text & the name of Ch. 3, Utsusemi. So, at least one whole sheet (2 pages) has gone missing.
double-page spread from the MS, four columns of flowery script. Transcription of the double-page spread, thus: 花をひ可むう徒勢三の むなし支世をいとひて夕顔 の露のいのちを観し 若紫のくものむかへをえて末.
June 20, 2025 at 2:41 AM