Impressions of
Japan: Autumn 2014
I have not had a long-standing interest in
Japan but once I decided to travel there, partly because the country and its
culture had become relevant to family and close friends, I started reading:
There was the 11th century
“Tale of Genji” written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, renowned as the
world’s first novel. And in my own
lifetime the four Sea of Fertility novels by Yukio Mishima: “Spring Snow”,
“Runaway Horses”, “The Temple of Dawn” and “The Decay of the Angel”, “Kusamakura”
by Natsume Soseki , “The Izu Dancer” and “Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata,
and Haruki Murakami’s more modern and surreal stories “Blind Willow, Sleeping
Woman”. Western writers have also given us interesting impressions: “Memoirs of
a Geisha” by Arthur Golden, “The Ginger Tree” by Oswald Wynd, the long
essayistic work “Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation” by Lafcadio Hearn along
with his stories, and from the sixties Joseph Campbell’s analysis of Japanese
religion in his “Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God”. Matsuo Basho’s 1689 poetic work “Narrow Road
to the Interior” had been for me a beautiful introduction to haiku and the
Japanese love of nature. I read it at a time when I was contemplating a walking
tour that would follow in this poet’s footsteps. (The tour was then cancelled;
after seeing a TV program on the heavy pollution of Fukushima province I
wondered if that was the reason.) Of course, I had combed through Eyewitness Travel’s
Guide to Japan which gives detailed information about the places we were to
visit. With all this reading I felt that I had an eclectic, dynamic and often
unsettling start to an understanding of Japan, though perhaps a little too
intellectual and highbrow. I had also seen the disturbing and to me at the time
puzzling images of Akira Kurosawa’s film “Dreams” which were obviously very
specific to Japan and hard for me to unravel. Here, as in my reading of
Mishima, parallels with Germany often came to mind. For in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries Japan borrowed from the world and in some areas specifically from
Germany; later these two countries would follow a similar course into imperialist
dreams and World War II. Moreover, I
possessed an excellent DVD on Japanese history, narrated by Richard Chamberlain
with much use of old Japanese woodcuts. It covered the years of the Civil War
with its samurai culture, the Christian mission begun by Francis Xavier and its
disruptive attempts at a takeover of Japanese culture, the Shogunate of Ieyasu
Tokugawa that at long last led to internal peace, the expulsion of Westerners,
and finally in 1853 the American challenge of Mathew Perry that forced
Westernization, the resignation of the Shogun and the reversion of power to the
Emperor Meiji. This DVD had been given to me a few years earlier when my
planned and imminent tour of Japan was aborted by the terrible tsunami and the
nuclear emergency it created. I also had another more recent point of interest;
my grandson’s partner Michiko had sent me a book on the work of the artist
Yayoi Kusama: “The Eternity of Eternal Eternity”. Kusama is one of the most
striking and many facetted contemporary artists I have come across. But what
struck me first was that, strangely, particularly in her “Love Forever” series
she seems to share the very un-western Australian Aboriginal vision of the
world of emotion and experience as the map of a landscape, as a topography.
So much for the mental baggage with which I
flew in to Japan to join a tour of New Zealanders whose “rim of fire” country
had obvious geological affinities with Japan. Over the years, these had led to
quite a variety of affiliations. Robyn,
our tour leader, told us that she, along with other New Zealand youth leaders,
had made her first contact with Japan in the seventies when they were invited
by their wartime enemy to travel to Japan by ship. On the journey, instruction
in the language and culture would be offered so that the ensuing tour of Japan
could be appreciated more fully. In
Robyn’s case this introduction led to years of residence as a teacher of
English and a student of Japanese culture, then as a representative of New
Zealand in the commercial field of dairy products, and finally as a film maker
for Japanese television. She had lived in every city we would pass through. Though
our tour program took into account the shopping interests to be expected of New
Zealand tourists, we were to have an unexpectedly knowledgeable, thoughtful and
bicultural tour leader.
We arrived at Narita airport in the early
dark of autumn and the more than ninety minute drive to our hotel in the
Shinjuku district of central Tokyo gradually led through more and more brightly
lit suburbs. At first it was pay-by-the-hour hotels conveniently close to
freeway intersections that caught our attention. There was apparently little
stigma attached to them; they were popular with married couples whose
restricted living space gave them little privacy and with younger pairs, who
enjoyed the themed settings often provided. November 7th was harvest festival
time and the almost full moon, a thirteen day moon, apparently particularly
valued because of its modest near rather than complete perfection, was very
visible in the sky. As a result the roads were more than usually congested and
our driver decided there was no advantage in sticking to freeways and took us
through the more interesting city instead.
On an arm of water we could see an array of brightly lit pleasure craft,
apparently not usually there, on which this festive Friday night was presumably
being celebrated with exquisite food.
The young woman with us, who represented the now privatized Japanese
tourist bureau JTB that was facilitating our tour, informed our guide that she
would be taking the weekend off. It turned out she was marrying. Japanese
people apparently need to have an important reason to take even a weekend off.
Our accommodation in the Sunroute Plaza Hotel was spotlessly clean, tasteful,
simple and well designed to make use of minimal space. No pandering to popular tastes. Unfortunately
it was also very over-heated, for winter was slow to come this year; our
first-class duvets became the enemy each night. Outside the trees were lit by
thousands of tiny Christmas lights; every evening during our in all five nights
in Tokyo there would be more. I had not expected that Christmas would be such a
feature in this Shinto-Buddhist country but it is obviously a welcome occasion
to create festivity and beauty and also shine the way to well-stocked
department stores like Takashimaya, Tokyo Hands and Isetan just across the wide
railway overpasses. Isetan, we
discovered a day or two later on the afternoon dedicated to shopping, was
prosperous enough to turn its entire multi-story building over to Scandinavian
products this year and even to import an artist to paint the marble surfaces
with reindeer and wide colorful Expressionist pathways. Modern city people
obviously need to be fed new sensations and ideas all the time. In Tokyo, we
were told, they also have plenty of money to spend because they rent rather
than buy their apartments; though where they might put their purchases
considering their tiny living spaces remained a mystery. The landlords are
apparently usually large corporations. Wider Tokyo has 33 million inhabitants
and leaving the city for recreation is consequently a major undertaking.
Day one of our tour was spent in Kawagoe,
almost an hour’s trip northwest by two trains.
As we traveled we noticed how small the house allotments with their
artfully pruned trees were even in the outer suburbs and how much food was
grown in the suburbs. We were told that
prohibitive Tokyo land taxes meant that every vacant scrap of land was put to
neat agricultural use. Along rivers and
canals there were avenues of cherry trees that can be imagined flowering in
spring. Twice during the 20th century Tokyo was almost totally
destroyed with huge loss of life: once in the 1923 earthquake that struck
during lunchtime cooking, causing raging fires, and then again in Allied
bombing raids during WWII. As a result Tokyo has since been rebuilt as a
planned modern city. Kawagoe on the
outskirts of the city, also popularly known as Little-Edo, escaped destruction
and now provides a taste of earlier times. We started at the Kita-in Buddhist
temple where we were shown how to purify ourselves with incense smoke and
ladled water, how to clap in prayer, donate and ring the bell. Charms are sold
there and people tie the prophetic warnings to strings for the gods to sort
out. An enclosed area contains statues of 538 “Gohyaku rakan” or Buddhist
saints, reputedly expressing every possible human disposition. You are certain
to find yourself somewhere among them, we were told, though time and the fee
made the group choose not to try. There
was also an impressive chrysanthemum show in the temple grounds. The temple
buildings are not normally entered. At Renkei temple there was a flea market
where I purchased a second-hand obi that can perhaps be used as a table runner
eventually. Kawagoe is crowded with Japanese tourists, surprisingly many in
kimonos, probably hired out for the day to give the laneways with their little
raised platform tatami-matted shops a more authentic feel. We noticed that
these shops tend to specialize: one will make every kind of delicacy imaginable
from kumaras, another from green tea including the green tea ice cream we savored,
another from red beans. We snacked for our lunch as we went. Fried rice
triangles soaked in soy sauce and strewn with dried shredded shrimp was another
traditional food to be tested. One shop sold cutting instruments for every
conceivable purpose; Robyn could tell us their extraordinary uses. Old Meiji
Rickshaws that seemed unwieldy in the tiny streets waited for a fare. There
were rows of grey storage and residential kura buildings, made of heavy clay
with beautifully tiled roofs, like potters’ artifacts. They were invented as
proof against fire. Fire from cooking fires had always been a great killer; the
high wooden fire and clock tower built in 1624 is still in a central position
and we watched its gong being struck by a ponderous log right upon three. The
Festival Museum, our last stop, has several large floats on loan, intricately
carved three storied structures, the bottom floor a platform for music and
dance, above it behind embroidered curtains a waiting room for performers, on
top the life-sized effigy of a symbolic patron. Some of these structures, of
which the area counts 29, each representative of a district (and all proudly
depicted in the brochure), can be collapsed to fit under the castle gate or
more recently under power lines. The
carts that hold them are each pulled by 60 men. When one or more of them meet
at crossroads, a mock battle for precedence takes place. We were shown it on
film. Apparently a million people attended the festival in October this year.
In the morning of the second day we walked
to the large imperial park close by to admire the first of many Japanese
gardens in their autumn colors, here in particular the chrysanthemum display.
The various traditional formations in which these national symbols of imperial
Japan are grown had already been on view in the Kita-in temple. Now we were also given names for each style
and the time of its formal invention. In one formation 418 flowers of precise
but varying height are grown from one root, with all blooms identical and
flowering at exactly the same time. It
is a strange art to spend your life perfecting. It seems that art in
traditional Japan consisted to a large part in exerting strict control over
nature. One style of chrysanthemum rearing in particular was, we are told,
originally a form of samurai discipline. All over Japan plants and particularly
trees are trained and fussed about like pets. In private gardens and parks
everywhere we would see arborists at work, giving branches neat little ball
shapes, plucking pine needles to make sure they all faced upwards, giving
trunks an expressive curve, dressing trees in protective straw and stringing
snow shelters around them even where there was little likelihood of much snow.
In the vast gardens around the Emperor’s palace in Tokyo, however, each pine on
the lawns has been assisted to become a unique and free individual, while
retaining its essence of “pineness” in an enhanced form. This seems to be a new
kind of garden, in tune with modernity.
On the evening of this day we visited the
Rake Festival or Tori no Ichi at the Hanazano Shrine twenty minutes walk from
our hotel. As we came closer, we could already see the first food stalls
spilling out onto the main road. The
lanes leading to the Shrine were then lined with them right and left; every
kind of traditional food imaginable was sizzling away, spreading its aromas
which seemed strong enough to slake any hunger of themselves. Eventually the
rake stalls too appeared, hundreds of them, with rakes of every size on which
symbols of good luck crowded each other for space. These rakes with all their
toy-like appendages are not cheap; people select them carefully to bring the
right kind of luck. Once somebody has chosen his or her rake a noisy clapping
ritual begins and then the hopefully fortunate buyer is showered with well
wishing handshakes. Tori no Ichi is a
harvest festival as the rake is a harvest tool.
Next day when we went to the 45-storey Tokyo Municipal Building for a
view over the city, a large rake accompanied by an explanation for tourists
from within and without Japan was on display. I have read that the Japanese as
a people are superstitious rather than religious. And it is true that in the
temples too, good luck charms seem of great importance. You only rarely see a
worshipper standing in prayer. Perhaps it is because in this country that
teeters precariously on the chasm between tectonic plates, over the destructive
power of which man has virtually no influence, good luck is really all people
can hope for. In the case of neither the terrible Kobe earthquake nor the very
recent eruption of Mount Ontake, had vulcanologists picked up any signals of
the impending disaster. From 45 stories up on the Municipal Building the
monster city of Tokyo with its occasional clusters of interestingly designed
skyscrapers, its parks and waterways, its freeway ribbons and the subtly varied
grey of its lower story buildings, a constant like a basso continuo, looks
clear and clean and unpolluted, a well designed work of art.
On the way to Nikko on our third day we
visited a paper or washi making display center at Ogawamachi. It was about to
be declared a world heritage paper craft precinct, obviously a matter of great
pride. Under close supervision we scooped up a thick soup from a large vat into
a subdivided frame and then tipped it out onto a sieve. There we had to
decorate our postcards-to-be with scraps of pretty cutouts, kindergarten style,
which would be incorporated into the paper. Once the mush was on the sieve, the
water gradually drained off. The washi would eventually be electrically dried
on a slanting surface. The mixture we used was made from a certain type of
mulberry tree, a mutilated version of which was growing in the courtyard. We
were told that when our postcards were ready the workshop would send them to us
at Kyoto. Like most older Japanese people the two women running the workshop
spoke no English so this was probably the best they could think of doing with
us. In Japan paper is used for the most
surprising things including walls in houses, so it would have been interesting
to learn more about different varieties and strengths of paper and their uses.
Throughout our tour visits to workshops ultimately seemed intended mainly as
opportunities to buy goods at the source of production.
Nikko, situated in a narrow valley high in
the mountains is reputed to be Japan’s most beautiful town. While the first peacetime shogun of Japan,
Ieyasu Tokugawa, had asked to be buried there so that his spirit could protect
the furthest frontier of the empire against the tribes of the unpacified north,
his grandson, heir to an era of peace and newly flourishing artistic activity,
saw Nikko primarily as a place of beauty that deserved elaborate enhancement by
the nation’s best craftsmen. Its unusually ornate carved shrine and temple
buildings, Shinto and Buddhist cults have more or less merged in Japan, have
remained unique. But even today, considerations of beauty seem to be central to
everything that is done in Japan. Perhaps this is no surprise. After hundreds
of years of terrible internecine warfare, peace brought beauty and beauty has
retained the gleam of peace. And beauty requires orderliness, of great value in
crowded cities. But even in Nikko with its relatively ornate carved temple and
shrine buildings, beauty has the basically austere simplicity that Shinto
veneration of the awesome grandeur of nature brought with it. The buildings –
they include a five-story pagoda and a high Torii gateway – are dwarfed by the magnificent
cryptomeria trees surrounding them. This is a variety of tall straight cypress
native to Japan. The majestic 36-kilometer avenue of cryptomerias leading to
Nikko was planted in honor of Ieyasu by one of the country’s daimios. We drove
along it on our way back to Tokyo.
In Nikko the autumn colors were at their
best and the gardens everywhere seemed designed to heighten their effect. The
stroll garden Shoyo-en was a fine example. The current stage of autumn
coloration can now be ascertained through a phone app for accurate timing and
it certainly brings out the visitors. Throughout our trip, the Japanese
tourists crowding the beauty spots we visited found it as hard to forget their
cameras as we did. We were accommodated in the Nikko Kanaya Hotel, the first
western style hotel to be built in Japan. I had a luxuriously large room with
huge windows overlooking the valley and mountains, a view one could happily
have contemplated all day. The hotel was a short walk from the famous and much
photographed red Shinkyo bridge marking the spot where Shodo Shonin, who built
the first Buddhist temple in Nikko 1200 years ago, crossed the river on the
backs of giant serpents. That night we were feasted with old-fashioned western
fare.
In the morning we drove up the windy road
that numbered 48 hairpin bends on its combined upward and downward stretches,
each named after one of the 48 letters of the Japanese alphabet. It took us to
Lake Chuzenji, just below the sacred Mount Natai, and then on to free-falling
Kegon Falls with the amazing basalt columns its waters have exposed over the
eons. That afternoon, after inspecting the shrine and temple buildings of
Nikko, we drove into the mountains again to Kawaji Onsen, a traditional inn
situated in a high and steep mountain valley beside a fast-flowing river. Here
I had a tatami-matted room with a lovely ikebana arrangement, a single
contemplative painting of swimming fish (fish are, by the way, to be seen everywhere
in the ponds and lakes of Japan’s gardens), low furniture, fine bathroom
facilities, a yukata and haori to change into and eventually a futon bed on the
floor. We learned the routines of
communal washing and bathing and got used to socializing together naked in a
hot outdoor pool. At dinner traditional foods were served in a succession of
small and beautiful, but never matching bowls. We would encounter similar
traditional inns with hot spring bathing facilities again and eventually even
remember to observe the many changes of footwear between outside and room and
spa and toilet. The Japanese love of cleanliness and of bathing is one of the
most immediately obvious characteristics of the culture; of course, bathing
beneath icy waterfalls has always been a Shinto ritual.
Our drive to and from Nikko and later
through the lonely mountain-enclosed alpine Shokawa and Kiso valleys
reemphasized for me the geographical nature of Honshu. The island comprises on
the one hand a relatively narrow coastal plain suitable for human habitation
and agriculture and at the other extreme the wild, mountainous, densely
forested, often forbidding and almost untouched center with its many active
volcanoes. Japan’s population of 127 million
people has no choice but to live in densely packed cities but their values come
from a natural landscape more primeval than almost any of the other highly
developed countries have to offer. In earlier times city people may never
themselves have visited this domain of the Shinto priest but it was transferred
to them in miniature. On our way back from Nikko to Tokyo we visited the bonsai
garden and museum of the renowned bonsai master Kunio Kobayashi. His tiny trees, on average hardly more than
half a meter high, are miniature replicas of characteristic venerable ancient
mountain trees, their features systematized. Chokkan Style (Straight Trunk),
Shakan Style (Slanted Trunk), Sukan (Sankan)Style (Double or Triple
Trunk), Bunjin Style (Abstract and Free
Style), Fukinagashi Style (Windswept Style),
Ishizuki Style (Rock Clinging Style), Kabudachi Style (Sprout Style),
Neagari Style (Exposed Root Style), Ikadabuki Style (Raft Style) and Kengai
Style (Cascade Style) are among the styles listed in a book I purchased there.
One of the trees we were shown in the museum was 800 years old, which meant it
must have been skillfully tended by 32 generations. Another, we were told, had
been valued at one million American dollars.
Some time ago Mr. Kobayashi reputedly sold a Bonsai tree to the Japanese
government for 10 million dollars; it was then given to the Chinese government
in a gesture of conciliation. The young
man who showed us around this museum had been an apprentice for six years; he
needed to serve another two years before becoming a master. These to us
extraordinary figures indicate the almost religious value attached to such
miniature representatives of Japan’s wild forests. On a slightly larger scale,
the gardens of which we were to visit so many in the coming days, were
typically also small scale mountain landscapes with lakes, bridged streams,
rocks, and an array of high vantage points each granting a unique vista. The
Rikugi-en Garden, for example, was designed in the late 17th
century. “The design recreates 88 landscapes in miniature from famous waka (31
syllable poems) so the view changes every few steps” Eyewitness Travel tells
us. Its highest manmade hill is named Fujishiro-toge (Fuji-peak-view) and other
Japanese landscapes are also alluded to. Japan has a variety of traditional
gardens: stroll gardens such as Rikugi-en, Paradise gardens to evoke the
Buddhist Pure Land, and the Dry Landscape Gardens of Zen Buddhist temples like
Ryoan-ji, which we saw in Kyoto, that encourage you to focus on two or three
rock islands in a sea of raked sand. At
the time we visited, the Bonsai Museum also had an exhibition of
interesting miniature rocks and on leaving we were given the catalogue of an
earlier such exhibition.
I really wanted to visit the museum of
Modern Art in Tokyo. Our tour leader was skeptical and it turned out with some
justification for this was a Meiji era collection of Japanese painters
faithfully mimicking successive European styles of the modern era. In the brief
time we had, I could register little more than the obvious imitations; and my
knowledge of Japanese culture would not have been sufficient to understand any
peculiarly Japanese references that could have enhanced meaning. The Japanese genius for copying styles and
inventions has been most characteristically employed in the interests of
international commerce; our later visit to the Noritake porcelain factory at
Nagoya offered an example of imitation at its best and most
indiscriminate. But Robyn also drew our
attention to the fact that in the digital age the Japanese have tended to
refine important western inventions so that they could be reduced to miniature
size, the transistor being an obvious example.
I have to admit that I have gained little understanding of how Japan’s commercial
culture interacts with its traditional culture. There are in actual fact a
great many things I did not understand, for instance how the cute and the
kitschy (a serious exhibition of the work of Rima Fujita, which we saw in the
Isetan gallery, seemed to my western sensibility to be pure kitsch) and the
trendy fitted together with the traditional. When was the relationship
satirical, when merely playful, when a holiday from values that were too rigid,
when a desire to be part of a global popular culture? One has, however, to
remember that even in traditional Japanese culture there is that contrary, even
ironical preference for slight irregularity, asymmetry and imperfection that is
careful to avoid absolute values. On the whole, it is easier for tourists like
us to appreciate the classical shapes embodied in a display of old and new
Celadon pottery, than to nut out such ambiguities. We were lucky to see these
beautiful often soft turquoise vases and bowls in a special exhibition of the
National Craft Gallery
We did, however, also see one art
exhibition by which we were all completely awed and enchanted. Ichiku Kubota
had built a fitting cathedral-like gallery for his work in the Fuji Five Lakes
area. A textile artist, Kubota created
48 of 80 planned over-sized kimonos during his lifetime. Nearly all of them
depicted Japanese landscapes, though we also saw an astronomical sequence. Each
kimono had taken a year to finish even with the help of a staff of sewers. We
were lucky to see the very intricate and subtle “Symphony of Light” Fuji series.
The landscape represented progressed from kimono to kimono and from season to
season around the mountain, ending with winter. There were 28 kimonos in this
series. The varied rhythms and structures of the natural landscape and its
foliage were delicately tacked into the heavy silk garments and then fixed by
steaming, whereupon the tied areas were painted before the threads were
removed. The technique led to extraordinarily delicate depictions. As a young
man, Kubota had been drafted into the Japanese army in WWII and had ended up in
a forced labor camp in Siberia. It was the beauty of the Siberian sunsets that
had kept alive his artistic aspirations and the superb signature kimono that
recreated this experience was also on show at the time. Though inspired by
traditional techniques of tie-dyeing, and using traditional silk materials to
represent the most iconic Japanese landscapes on the most iconic Japanese
garment, Kubota’s work is completely original and modern in conception. I found
I had to leave the gallery long before I could take in all I wanted to see.
Of course we visited many temples and
shrines both in Tokyo and in Kyoto. They were often very old like the Senso-ji
temple that goes back to the 7th century. In Japan nearly everything that is old has
been rebuilt, often many times, either because it was destroyed in the natural
disasters that so often sweep the country, or by war, or simply by age. The rule that the Grand Shrine at Ise must be
rebuilt to exactly the same specifications every twenty years can perhaps give
an indication of Japanese attitudes to age. What seems to matter is faithfully
preserved tradition; the actual materials can be of little account in a country
so prone to natural disasters. This
means, in effect, that the Japanese always seem to be living in all times at
once from the earliest to the most modern, from ancestor worship to the
internet. They appear never to have grown out of their history as other
countries have. In this respect Japan seems almost immune to loss. Cherry blossoms shed their petals but they
will bloom again next year; the old pattern is preserved but through new
flowering and plants.
And neither in the homes nor in the temples
is there usually much in the way of furnishings and art that cries out to be
preserved. Though people in Japan are constantly giving each other presents, it
is consumables that are preferred. Anything else is an encumbrance on daily
living. In much the same way, while examples of traditional craft may be
valued as models and demonstrations of tradition, they are in themselves of
limited value. I was interested to hear that in Japan each generation tends to
build a new house on their inherited land.
Unlike the Britons who are finding it harder and harder to live in their
aging buildings that slowly crumble but seem spared catastrophic destruction
for all eternity, the Japanese are always free to move into new modern and
convenient lodgings, suited to their generation’s needs, even if built in the
old place and in the old styles. The rules that apply to traditional gardens
apply to houses too.
It is hard to forget the geographic
volatility of Japan. My earlier trip was, as I have said, aborted a few days
before we were due to leave as a result of the tsunami. When my daughter
travelled to Japan six weeks before me, Mount Ontake erupted without
warning, killing sixty people in its remote vicinity and spewing volcanic ash
into the skies. On our trip from Nikko to Tokyo freeway warning signs were
suddenly activated and speed limitations reduced because there had just been an
earthquake in our area, though the drivers simply ignored the warning. Then on
the day after we flew out of Japan, when Robyn who had stayed back with friends
was having dinner in one of the 13th floor restaurants where we too had
eaten more than once, a 6.4 earthquake struck, slopping about the soup. Luckily
Tokyo engineers are now highly trained in earthquake technology and even a
largish earthquake usually causes little damage.
Once home again and pondering why Japanese
culture seemed to be so different to any other I could think of, I decided to
take another look at the catalogue of Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition: “The Eternity
of Eternal Eternity”. I had read the accompanying essays by Japanese art
critics who had strangely enough seemed unable to characterize her work
convincingly. But now even the exhibition title was beginning to make sense to
me. It was clearly the experience of
time that was so different. When Kusama paints a river it has ripples in all
directions, often interspersed with the static dots of light reflections, but
it does not flow. When she paints
people, there are hundreds of almost identical contours of faces shuffled
together into a pattern. “One thousand Eyes” is more like a sea of fallen
leaves or subtly moving water than anything specifically human. “Waking up in
the Morning” is not a unique moment or event but looks like a complex landscape
viewed from some vantage point. The
pumpkins of her large sculptures seem to epitomize her view of the world:
parallel, never identical, but very similar ribs or welts or bulges, decorated
with the timelessness of dots in repetitive pattern sequences, coming together
at the ends, covering and hiding a round shape whose essence is concealed by
this skin but which contains the real substance. These parallel ribs, or welts, or pathways exist
beside each other in her paintings and drawings too; but they never lead
anywhere. Kusama paints simultaneity, uniformity, symmetry, complex many-stranded
states of being. Her “portraits”, in which the stereotypical face seems a part
of the background pattern, are hardly discernable as people with an identity.
She creates maps of landscapes in the widest sense, but never action, drama,
events, sequences. For Europeans, life and history has always been a moving
sequence of events characterized by purpose and climax and uniqueness and
meaning. For Kusama everything is
pattern; there seems to be no identity. I
was put in mind of Yukio Mishima’s “Sea of Fertility” novels, in which the four
main characters are presented as reincarnations of each other but seem to share
only moles on their bodies and death at the early age of twenty. If this is
reincarnation, how then does it differ from the eternal directionless fertility
of spiritually imbued random nature? The work of both these Japanese artists,
Kusama and Mishimo, seems to epitomize what is unique to Japan: nature as the
physical and spiritual entity of which everything that has lived and existed is
an ultimately indistinguishable part, reincarnation without individuality, the
contemporaneity of past and present, indifference to progress in anything but a
practical application. Our tour leader
told us that when Japanese students complete their degrees they join a
corporation to which they remain attached for the rest of their working lives
and which will determine their career.
They themselves will have very little choice in the matter; individual giftedness
or ambition does not seem to be a factor to consider. Loyalty is what matters.
We saw many sights on our tour of Central
Honshu and my over 500 photos will keep them alive for me. Much was of real interest,
but it was usually not what I had expected to find interesting. Gardens were an
absolute delight. Craft demonstrations
taught me very little. Temples were a
disappointment; I had hoped to understand more about the interaction of
ancestor worship, nature worship and Buddhist beliefs in modern Japanese
religiousness but it was then Kusama’s and Mishima’s work that provided the
most convincing insights. I came back with no real impression of the private
lives of Japanese people, of how family relations work nowadays, of how
children are educated and what the role of old people is within their families.
But I observed that the school children, - and crowds of them, all wearing
bright yellow or blue caps for quick recognition, were on excursion at this
time of the year – were always exceptionally well behaved though delightfully easy
with their teachers and each other. And I noticed that old people were
frequently out with their families and appeared well looked after. To a
foreigner, of course, people of a different country often look much alike and there
is a temptation to generalize. I am aware that my observations are superficial;
it is nevertheless unsettling that Kusama’s people too seem so interchangeable.
Perhaps it is better to leave Japan with aesthetic and emotional experiences than
with conclusions. But if in Japan progress and achievement are not highly valued
as they are in the west, then it is also not surprising that purity in the form
of cleanliness, honesty, honorableness and beauty should be of such central
importance. And it is similarly not surprising that the country seems immune to
Americanization, immune to Christian beliefs in sin and redemption, and immune
to the Roman veneration of great leaders. The Japanese prefer to honor well-trained
warriors like the samurai or the country’s modern martial arts champions. (Sumo championships were prominent on TV while
we were there.) They admire laboriously acquired even if pointless skills and appear
to have little desire to change the world.
Silke Hesse
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