Dog days of July…hot and getting hotter in the Great Lakes. “Dog days” are:
- Mid-July through mid-August or,
- 3 July to 11 August
- Dogs are said to go mad/contract rabies;
- Sirius the Dog Star is visible in the northern hemisphere within that window;
- Someone called them that long ago and it stuck.
Take your pick. The ancient Egyptians paid attention to Sirius because it coincided with the periodic flooding of the Nile, which enriched the otherwise desert soil with nutrients. The Greeks, not relying on a periodic flood for survival, thought that same star just made the world hotter. But 19th-century American farmers thought that rain during the dog days made for a bad harvest. And they had a rhyme (From the Old Farmer’s Almanac):
Dog Days bright and clear
Indicate a happy year;
But when accompanied by rain,
For better times, our hopes are vain.
But 30 July was an eventful day in history. On this day in 1419 was the First Defenestration of Prague, when Bohemian Hussites (a Catholic sect) threw a burgomeister and several town council members out a town hall window (that’s what defenestration means, by the way: to throw something or someone out a window). This action triggered the Hussite Wars (1419-1434) and a number of crusades that I just don’t have space to go into here and now. Yes, there was a Second (and better known) Defenestration of Prague in 1618 that triggered the Thirty Year’s War. And, on 30 July 1898, the “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck died in Friedrichsruh in Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck had been responsible for the machinations that created the Concert of Europe in the late 19th century, the one that created the German Empire out of a customs union and put Wilhelm II on the throne of it; Willie didn’t like being restrained, so he had fired Bismarck in 1890. Finally, on 30 July 1997, Emperor Bao Dai–the last emperor of Vietnam–died in Paris. Born Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy, was the last of the Nguyen emperors who ruled that part of the world from 2879 BC (traditional) to the abolition of the monarchy in 1945. Bao Dai was briefly Head of State of South Vietnam, but after 1949 he spent most of the rest of his life in France. Today is also National Cheesecake Day (for reasons beyond understanding) and National Whistleblower’s Day (commemorating a Congressional resolution passed in 1778). But today we’re talking about the death of another emperor, and about fathers-in-law.
Less than a year after Mutsuhito’s birth, Perry’s squadron muscled its way into Tokyo, and Japan was never quite the same.
The Meiji Emperor Mutsuhito was born Sachinomiya in Kyoto on 3 November 1852 to the Komei Emperor and a favored concubine, Nakayama Yoshiko. That the boy survived to adulthood was both a good omen that suggested he was destined to lead Japan to great things, and a medical miracle, as five of his brothers and sisters (and ten of his fifteen children) died in childhood. Less than a year after Mutsuhito’s birth, Perry’s squadron muscled its way into Tokyo, and Japan was never quite the same.
By the time the Komei Emperor died in January 1867 and the fourteen-year-old Meiji Emperor was enthroned, Japan was ripe for civil war.
There are conflicting accounts of Mutsuhito’s childhood, but he was given his adult name in 1860 not long after he was named the heir to the Komei Emperor. By that time the great daimyos were making restive noises about the Tokugawa shogunate and their bakufu–all the more restive because those nasty treaties with the West were bringing foreign influence into Japan. By the time the Komei Emperor died in January 1867, and the fourteen-year-old Meiji Emperor was enthroned, Japan was ripe for civil war.
The seventeen-year-old Meiji Emperor had better advisors and had the allegiance of the great daimyos that his father did not.
Emperors in Japan had always been more-or-less powerless figureheads, but the daimyos were using his happiness or unhappiness as an excuse for what they did. The Meiji Emperor, very early, wasn’t immune, but by the end of the Boshin War in June 1869, he was ready and willing to take some command of his country. The official change had been made a year before, but the seventeen-year-old Meiji Emperor had better advisors than his father and had the allegiance of the great daimyos that his father did not.
The Meiji Constitution made the War and Navy ministers co-equal with the civil government, enabling the samurai in the Army and Navy to control the destiny of the country.
As Japan modernized and industrialized externally, its social structure and core values could not move ahead at the same pace. The samurai–the class of swaggering swordsmen who had dominated the archipelago for centuries– was a dominant physical, social and economic influence whether their traditions had been abolished or not. When the Meiji Constitution (issued in his name but he didn’t write it) took effect in 1890, it enabled political parties and an elected lower house (Diet), but real power was reserved for those who wielded it in the non-elected cabinet: traditional lords and strongmen. Worse, the Meiji Constitution made the War and Navy ministers co-equal with the civil government, enabling the samurai in the Army and Navy to control the destiny of the country.
The Meiji Emperor had a son and five daughters who lived to adulthood. Yoshihito would become the Taisho Emperor on the Meiji Emperor’s death on 30 July 1912. The Meiji Emperor, after all of that, was primarily a pacifist who penned this poem:
The seas of the four directions—
all are born of one womb:
why, then, do the wind and waves rise in discord?
His grandson, the Showa Emperor Hirohito, read this poem in an Imperial Conference in September 1941 to show his displeasure at the samurai’s growing threat of war with the West.
Today is also National Father-in-Law day for reasons unknown. Generally speaking, fathers-in-law are older gentlemen who are the parents of one’s spouse who are privileged with some title associated with “father.” My quasi-step-son-in-law has never, to my knowledge, acknowledged any such relationship with me, and my step-father-in-law Howard, an estimable gentleman that I didn’t meet until my wife and I had been married for 22 years, has never asked anything of me at all. There’s a great deal to be said for having your in-laws always living in another time zone, though in-laws generally get a bad rap that they may or may not deserve.
The trouble is, some fathers-in-law come with nothing but trouble: the guy at the top of this blog was the father-in-law from hell for Galeazzo Ciano. Ciano served Italy from 1934 onward, and when his government dismissed him, he fled to Germany to escape his country’s wrath after his ouster in September 1943. Nope, guess again: the Germans turned him over to Papa Benny, who had his fellow fascists declare him guilty of treason, then try him, sit him in a chair and shoot him. Gee, thanks, Papa.
So, for all those of you who have fathers-in-law who weren’t (or aren’t) like Mussolini, think pleasant thoughts about the old boy today. For those who are, hope your day it at least quiet.
And in News of the Future-Past, on this day in 2018 Beezelum (pronounced “Smith”), Professor of Studies-Studies at The Miskatonic University Extension-Wherever, announced, “Beezelum has determined that reality as you know it does not truly exist in time and space because it lacks definition.” Beezelum, who eschews titles of all kinds and whose personal pronoun is “Deity of Deities,” insisted that “reality, as it is now known, can only exist in non-sis-gendered racially defined time and ethnically-challenged and redefined non-space, and therefore does not deserve the distinction of being real.” To further study this post-Derridasist pseudonarrative, Deity of Deities announced a new studies program intended to redefine definition and is seeking a grant of $1,000,000,000,000 from the US Department of Education for the effort. Contacted for further information, a Department of Education spokes-entity replied “what?”
Now you don’t know that either, future archivists.