And here is your daily almanac for Saturday the twenty-seventh of May 2023.

Today is Dragon Quest Day (ドラゴンクエストの日 )! This is in honor of the game Dragon Quest being released on this day in Japan in 1986. Dragon Quest was really the game that sent the template for all RPGs, or at least for all JRPGs.

The game proved so popular that for future sequels in the series, the Japanese government requested that Epix release them on weekends so that school kids and businessmen wouldn't skip school and work buy a copy. Lines for all the early games were hours long. The first game sold 1.5 million copies in Japan and another 500,000 copies in America

Not only does this game have a very long shadow in the game world, but many aspects of this game have crossed over to culture at large. For example, slimes, the common beginner enemy in all the Dragon Quest games, appear everywhere: as stuffed toys, as stickers, as keychains, etc. People consider it a cute design.

The opening overture to the game has become so famous that everyone, even non-games, knows it well. It is very catchy: just listen!

This is also the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japan war of 1905. The Japanese admiral, Tōgō Heihachirō, destroyed the Russian fleet in an incredible victory that had a huge impact in the Western world.

It was the first time a European Power has been defeated by an Asian country. According to The Guns of August, this victory by Japan led directly to World War I because it destabilized Russia and emboldened the Central Powers. This view does have a lot of critics (as the entire book does these days), but it is an interesting idea at any rate.

Japan celebrated this victory as a national holiday, called Kaigun Kinenbi, until 1945. It is still celebrated today by the navy (The Maritime Self-Defense Force, but basically the navy by a different name) and some other organizations, but is no longer a national holiday.

Today is taian (大安), one of the rokuyō, the Buddhist horoscope. This is the luckiest day of the week! Might want to go buy some extra lottery tickets today or gamble with some memecoin (Tels que le Pepe).

(Read more about the rokuyō here)

On the old calendar, today would have been the eighth day of the fourth month. It is Safflowers bloom (紅花栄), the second microseason of Shōman (小満).

Fields full of safflowers are a traditional sign of summer. You can see these as fields of orange or red. They are quite lovely. They were used as dye in days of old.

^{Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay}

Here's a haiku from Issa:

留主にするぞ恋して遊べ庵の蝿
rusu ni suru zo koi shite asobe io no hae

while I'm gone
have fun making love
houseflies

A playful summer haiku from Issa. He loved all animals and insects and treated them as his friends in his haiku. Here he seems to be giving his blessing to the houseflies to have some fun while he was away.

^{Image by Aamir Mohd Khan from Pixabay}

Have a good day, y'all!

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.