About this blog

Echos from a Distant Mountain is just a blog. I use it to comment on things I find interesting or amusing.

It also serves as a place for me to make available journalism which has appeared in print and which I own the copyright to, but which I am unlikely to sell on and which may be out of print. This includes book and movie reviews as well as time-senstive feature articles that appear in print in Irish and UK newspapers and magazines. I strongly assert my copyright over this material when identified as published journalism.

If you like what you find here, or are moved to disagree with something I have written, leave a comment.

What does ‘Echos from a distant mountain’ mean?

“Echos from a distant mountain” is a rough translation of a Japanese phrase, yamabiko, used by poets and philosophers in the past, and by Masaaki Hatsumi, a modern-day martial arts teacher and philosopher whose work I admire. It’s an artistic expression, referring to the idea that you can shout unknowable questions at the distant mountains of the kanto plain and then listen carefully to the reply echo back to you.

In modern Japanese, the term yamabiko is more likely to be recognised as the name of an express train from Ueno to Morioka on the Tohoku mainline. In this sense, it has a double meaning, both of seeking for answers to life’s great unknowable questions and also of being on a journey, possibly doing both things at the same time. It’s a pretty affected term, but I have grown to like it.

Alex Meehan