Kirk here. Happy new year! I’m sharing a “new year’s card” (nengajo) made by my daughter. This year is the year of the cow (or ox or buffalo?) in the Chinese zodiac, so that explains the bovine theme.
2021 may be the year of the cow in more ways than one. I think we are all hoping that the COVID-19 vaccines, which have an import cow connection, will help us return to a more carefree, maskless lifestyle. The cow connection is that the word “vaccine” comes from the Latin “vaccinus” (“derived from a cow”). As you may know, vaccines began with the practice of inoculating people with cowpox virus in order to prevent lethal smallpox. It seems that the cowpox virus is similar enough to the smallpox virus to evoke an effective immune response, but not as dangerous.
While I’m on the subject of cows, I’d like to make a note about cows in Kumamoto. It is frequently noted (in Japanese, at least) that the field’s in Aso have been burnt each spring for over 1,000 years in order to facilitate the grazing of livestock. Currently, you see more cows grazing in the Aso area than horses. As far as I can tell from Japanese-language web pages, however, the cows are relative newcomers. The following page, for example, says that as early as 905 the Aso area was know throughout Japan for the horses raised there but cows don’t appear in this chronology until the Meiji period, probably as a result of the introduction of Western culinary culture:
https://www.aso-sougen.com/now/01/keep_02.html
At any rate, happy new year! I was mostly AWOL in 2020 but I hope to do a little better in 2021. Yoroshiku!