It’s a strange world we’re about to enter.
If I were the organizing type I would set up a “Heian Society.” In flowing robes and court caps, we would compose pun-laden poems simultaneously lamenting and celebrating the transience of life and beauty. Wine would flow, inhibitions dissolve, talk grow heated. What would we talk about? Why — about the things that matter: the seasons, the moon. Which season is more conducive to poetry — spring or autumn? Which moon — the misty one of spring, or the clear one of autumn — does more justice to the music of flute and koto?
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![What of friendship, of non-sexual intimacy [in the Heian Period]? Paul Gordon Schalow, who teaches Japanese literature at Rutgers University in New Jersey, delves deep into such arcane amours in his illuminating study, titled 'A Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship in Heian Japan,' published by the University of Hawaii Press earlier this year (top). Those involved in such relationships were likely to have looked something like this military official in formal dress (above).](https://cdn-japantimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/fl20070812x1b.jpg)
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