Kiyomori appeared to have won
Yoshitomo and co. sure looked done
Though the Taira seemed set
They would later regret
They let live Yoritomo, his son

Event: Birth of Minamoto no Yoritomo, first Shogun of Japan
Year: 1147
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_Yoritomo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genpei_war

“I don’t know.  That’s up to you.  You’re the one with all the freedom, here.”

“You’re going to be playing that card a lot, aren’t you?” Peter said, grimacing.

“Hey, my deck only has one card.  But don’t worry about it.  I’m sure you can find people.  You seem resourceful.”

Peter shook his head.  “First I’m smart, now I’m resourceful . . . I don’t know what you’re basing all these claims on.”

“I’m basing them on the fact that if you’re not these things, then I’m going to stay stuck down here.”

“So . . . no pressure, then.”  Peter stared at the ceiling.  It wasn’t quite yellow, it wasn’t quite brown, and it wasn’t quite white, but it was certainly unpleasant-looking.  He wasn’t afraid of pressure—was he?

“You said you have a large repertoire of songs with mysterious powers,” he said.  “What are some of them?”

The woman suddenly felt tired.  It was a tiredness that had nothing to do with sleep or the lack thereof.  A week ago she would have thought that she’d be overjoyed to spend hours talking to someone who actually wanted to hear what she had to say, to explain in detail every aspect of her proposed escape plan and, really, her life in general.  But in actual practice, it was just tiring.  The kid was relentless with the questions, and she found there was actually a lot that she didn’t feel like explaining.  There was also a lot that she couldn’t explain.

“I don’t know.  There are hundreds, maybe millions of them.”  Out of those potential millions, the one she had thought of most over the preceding months inevitably came to mind.  “Like, suppose there’s a song that you associate so strongly with a particular place, it’s almost like they’re the same thing inside your head.  You hear the song, and all of a sudden it’s as though you’re actually in that place; you smell the smells and see the sights perfectly clearly in your mind.  Well, from there, it’s not much of a stretch for playing or singing that song to physically take you there, now is it?”

“You’re saying the song can teleport you?”

“I don’t know what the scientific term is, but one second you’re in one place, and then the next, you’re there.”

“It could be any sort of place?”

“Pretty much.  Any spot you have a particularly strong emotional connection to.”

“Could you teach me one of them?”

The woman’s irritation level was gradually rising.  “That’s . . . not the kind you can teach.  It’s kind of a personal thing.”

“Well, what’s one you can teach me?”

A. 田　B. 心　C. 金　D. 隹

E. 立　F. 日　G. 木　H. 里

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?  Well, let’s see what kind of wholes turned up.

Seeking to recreate a bell, Theoman put together ‘metal’ and ‘bird’ and ended up with . . . a drill.  Well, they both make noise, certainly, though one of them is typically seen as more pleasant than the other.  The idea of a ‘mind-tree’ was very close to ‘think,’ but he didn’t quite get there–you need to stick an eye in there as well (this is not, however, the same character for ‘think’ that I had intended).  A sun and a village, with an extra line tossed in for good measure, make ‘quantity,’ presumably referring to the large quantity of sun in Sun Village, which is the main reason people like it so much.  Standing in a rice field sure seemed like a lock for ‘gather,’ but the character I was thinking of was gather in the sense of ‘assemble’ rather than ‘harvest.’  So you put birds on top of a tree, because that’s where birds assemble.  Turns out, if you stand on top of a rice field, and add a tail, you get . . . a dragon.  Go figure.

Shirley put B, D, and E together and came up with a pretty good ‘idea’ . . . that is, if you assume that she must have accidentally typed D instead of F.  Heart-bird-stand doesn’t get you much, but stand-sun-heart is an idea, alright.  I’ll make sure to give you guys a stone to work with in the future so you can take care of these birds more efficiently.

A Fan thinks he can make me look silly by making references to a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, but I still know a thing or two.  I remember the octopus scene from Deer Hunter.  At least, I assume there must have been an octopus scene, because that’s what A Fan built with his ‘stand,’ ‘rice field,’ and ‘sun’ (okay, to be fair, you have to stick in a few other parts as well to get an octopus, but with that combo, no other kanji comes closer).  Then again, if he had just left out that field, he could have made some real ‘noise.’  He could have also achieved a similar effect by putting together a bell, which, by his logic, is a combination of Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and about one-third of Deer Hunter.  Which leads us to the inevitable question: are these movies really that different from each other?

So, to review:

To build a bell: ‘stand’ on a ‘village,’ with ‘metal’ on the left
To build a thought: ‘rice field’ over ‘heart/mind’
To build a sound: ‘stand’ on the ‘sun’ (that’d better have you making some sound, anyway)
To build a gathering: ‘bird’ on top of ‘tree’

I realize that was a bit hard, so let’s make the challenge slightly different this time.  I’m still going to give you a bunch of kanji parts and their meanings, but I’m not going to tell you which is which.  We’re going to assume that Theoman already knows what most of these are, anyway, so assembly will be his job: give me responsibility, a wizard, to like, and a swamp.  A Fan and Shirley can choose to attempt this as well, or they can take on the simpler (?) task of identifying the pieces: a person, a knife, a mouth, a woman, a child, a mountain, a king, and water.

A. 子　B. 王　C. 刀　D. 水

E. 山　F. 口　G. 人　H. 女

Wanting Anne, Henry was quite distraught
And to marry her he the Pope fought
After all of that noise
She could give him no boys
Which was treason–well, that’s what he thought

Event: Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII, is arrested on charges of treason, adultery, and incest
Year: 1536
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn