Life Tips & Miscellaneous Travel and History Zen Philosophy and History Art and Sport Navigation of this blog
Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba‘s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
From the 22nd volume of the Road to the Streets, Volume 23. In the previous article, we discussed it is the Ushu Kaido. the This time, it is a journey through France/Spain/Portugal. This time, we will follow in the footsteps of Francis Xavier, a great influence on Japan during the Warring States period, and visit Paris, France to the Basque Country in Spain, and then to Spain and Portugal, countries called “Nanban” by the Japanese during the Warring States period.
Francisco Xavier, also mentioned in the book “On the Roads of Shimabara and Amakusa and Christianity in Japan” was a Basque, the son of a lord of Navarre in Spain, a priest of the Catholic Church, a missionary, and one of the founding members of the Society of Jesus.
He is particularly famous for having been sent to Goa, India at the request of King João III of Portugal, who then introduced Christianity to Japan for the first time in 1549. Xavier visited Japan six years after the introduction of guns to Tanegashima, as described in “On the Road to Tanegashima, Yakushima and the Amami Islands“.
The arrival of guns and Christianity from the southern barbarians had both tangible and intangible effects on the island nation of Japan, which was a country full of curiosity. These were, for example, the Rasha coats worn by warriors in the Warring States period, and the “Tanegashima” (Tanegashima is the name of the island of Tanegashima).
In the field of armor, some Spanish-style armor was also made under the influence of Spanish armor.
Although Francisco Xavier would be considered a Spaniard by today’s nationality, he was born as the son of a lord of a castle in the kingdom of Navarre, which at that time was located at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, and strictly speaking, his ethnic affiliation would be that of a Basque.
The Basque Country is located on both sides of the Pyrenees Mountains, and is divided into the Spanish Basque Country and the French Basque Country, with representative cities such as Bilbao and San Sebastian.
The definition of Basque is vague: “a person who was born or lives in the Basque Country and does not self-define as non-Basque” or “a person who was born in a non-Basque country but can speak Basque or self-defines as Basque. In Europe, the difficulty of the Basque language is well known, with jokes such as the one about the devil who stayed in the Basque country for seven years trying to seduce a Basque girl, but could only learn “Bai” (yes) and “Ez” (no), or that Basque is the language of the Neanderthal Homo There is also a joke that Basque is the language of the Neanderthal Homo neanderthalensis.
In reality, Basque is an isolated island in a sea of Indo-European languages, with no phylogenetically similar languages. Basque is the only pre-Indo-European language in the West that has survived the 3,000-year wave of Indo-Europeanization.
The difficulty lies in the active case constructions and the multipersonal nature of the language. (There are, in fact, many languages in the world with similar features, so the absence of them among the major languages is merely coincidental.)
Active case constructions are sentences in which the genitive case is placed as the object and the active case as the subject.
1. Aita irakaskea da. My father is a teacher.
2. Aitak etxea du. My father has a house.
Here, both subjects are “father” Aita, but in 1 (subject of the automatic verb) they are genitive and in 2 (subject of the transitive verb) they are active case Aitak. da is “is” (e.g., Kori bakkarik da. All this.) Aitak is “to have.
du is the direct present third person singular when the object of “have” ukan is third person singular (see below).
It is somewhat similar to how in Japanese, for example, instead of “I have a younger sister,” it becomes “I have a younger sister” and “younger sister” becomes the genitive. In Basque, however, the object is genitive for all transitive verbs.
Incidentally, Basque has 13 cases.
The problem is multipersonality, which is probably inextricably linked to the nature of the object as the main actor of the sentence. In ordinary European languages, verbs change according to the person of the subject. Multipersonality is the dreaded phenomenon in which the verb changes according to the person of the object as well as the subject.
Hi maite haut. I love you.
Hik ni maite nauk. You love me.
Hik ni maite naun. You (woman) love me.
Nik zu maite zaitut. I love you.
Nikzuek maite zaituztet. I love you guys.
Hik naska maite duk. You (man) love a girl.
Hik mutila maite dun. You (woman) love a boy.
Maite is “love,” and haut, nauk, naun, zaitut, zaituztet, duk, dun are “have” ukan altered (beyond its original form) according to the personal signs of subject and object.
The personal sign of the object (N, H, D, …) comes at the beginning of the word, and the subject’s person marker (-t, -k, -n, -0) comes at the end. Since there are seven variations according to the subject and object being I, you, he (she), we, you, you guys, they, respectively, this means that a single verb can change in 49 different ways.
But the story does not end there. When it comes to the verb “to give,” three personalities must be incorporated into the verb: “who,” “what,” and “to whom. For example, ematen dit for “he gives them to me,” ematen dizut for “I give them to you,” and ematen dizkidazu for “you give them to me” (the person sign for “to whom” is incorporated in the middle (!) of the word). The person sign for “to whom” is incorporated in the middle of the word (!). In other words, there are 73 = 343 brilliant variations.
In addition to the above, there are also tenses such as past, half-past, present perfect, future, etc., and conjugations in imperative, possible, conditional, subjunctive, and other forms. When all of these combinations are taken into account, it is difficult to know how many different ways a single verb can change.
Some of the Basque words that are close to our daily life are beret and Basque cheesecake. A beret is a soft, round, flat hat without a brim or rim. It is made of wool felt, etc.
The original Basque beret, which is still in use today, was originally worn as a sunshade and windshield in the Béarn region of France before the Middle Ages, from the Roman era. It is believed to have been widely used in the Basque Country on the Spanish-French border in the Pyrenees, and was also used by aristocrats, city dwellers, peasants, and Landsknechts. Later, when Napoleon III visited the Basque Country, he called it the “beret Basque,” and it is known to have spread throughout France, Spain, Italy, and the world as the hat of the region.
Basque cheesecake, or Basque-style cheesecake, is a richly flavored cheesecake with a blackened outside.
This cake is a baked cheesecake based on a recipe from La Viña, a restaurant in San Sebastián, Spain, and is not distributed in the Basque Country under the name “Basque cheesecake. In Japan, it has been known as Basque cheesecake since around 2018 and is sold in various stores, including convenience stores.
Following in the footsteps of Francisco Xavier, the journey began in Carce Latin, France.
Over the Pyrenees, via Javier Castle, Xavier‘s birthplace.
Finish in San Sebastian, a famous resort area.
In the next article, we will continue our journey to Spain/Portugal as the Nanban no Michi.
コメント