Snowfall on the Plum Blossom
Between past and present in Japan
Welcome to all new subscribers. I originally published this travelogue last year but have decided to repost it again now.
In early 2016 I spent five days in Japan, on the back of an academic research trip to New South Wales, Australia. What follows is a record of my trip, and my impressions and reflections on the country.
The plane from Sydney touched down at Tokyo’s Haneda airport early on Monday morning. It was late February and in the space of a night I had gone from the brightness and stickiness of a particularly humid New South Wales summer to the crisp dry brightness of the late Japanese winter. Strictly speaking this was the second time I had touched down on Japanese soil in a month. I had been in Australia for over three weeks to do research for my doctorate. Since I was over the other side of the world anyway, I thought, I might a well take advantage of the situation and take a detour nine hours north to another place I had long wanted to see—Japan. This was therefore my second Japanese stopover. The first, on the way out from London to Sydney and thus born out of pure necessity, had been enclosed within the confines of that familiar but grey and nondescript territory, the modern international airport. Airports are among the world’s ‘non-places’, to use Marc Augé’s neologism. Neither here nor there, where the individual is shrouded in anonymity. I had around six hours to pass and as is often the case in such scenarios there was very little to do so I spent a good portion of my time sitting comfortably at the ‘Hokkaido Kitchen’ with a steaming bowl of Miso soup and the best airport coffee I have ever had.
The intermediate experiences of international travel—the time spent on planes and passing through the non-places—have a tendency to blur into one grey, homogenous mass. The globalisation of the twentieth century made the world a smaller place and in so doing tended to flatten out distinctions. Nowhere is this more readily felt than in the travel hubs of the world. Exceptions exist, but these prove the rule. Around me, the baggage tugs scurried along to the sound of the dwarves’ song from Snow White, “Heigh-ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go!” An imperfectly translated sign warned me to keep an eye on my belongings—“Oops! Where is my baggage? The theft is increasing!”
The second time I landed at Haneda, nearly a month later, I was back for more than just a temporary stop before an onward journey. I had five days in which to have a fairly good crack at a few of the thing I wanted to do in Japan. I knew I had to go to Kyoto. The reason was plain. I was more interested in seeing the historical Japan, a glimpse into the soul of the nation, than in the gleaming skyscrapers of the ultra-modern metropolis. Tokyo had its place in my itinerary but it played second fiddle to Kyoto. I wanted a sense of time as well as space. My reasons were purely personal. For many years I had collected in my mind a tableaux of images, things I envisaged when I thought about Japan. Drawn from many sources, they were part real and part semi-real. I wanted to materialise these impressions and give physical shape to the ethereal dream-world the mind tends to conjure.
Kyoto is considered the cultural capital of Japan, but from 794 AD until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 it served as the imperial capital. Although it was not bombed during the Second World War it had actually been one of the original intended targets for the devastating atomic bombs of August 1945, but had been spared after the intervention of the American Secretary of War Henry Stimson. As such, the staggering panoply of historical monuments—palaces, temples and more—remained intact. My journey began in earnest at Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station. On the platform, one of the few other Westerners there at the time, a New Zealander, came up to me and instinctively offered some helpful advice. I was indeed on the correct platform for the Kyoto train which would arrive shortly. He was obviously well-versed in this environment and had clearly recognised that I was undergoing the same ritual of arrival that he once had. Dead on time and with all the gracefulness of a swan on a mill pond, the unmistakable streamlined white Shinkansen, or bullet train, glided into the station. The bullet train is one of the great marvels of Japanese transport. One of the things I particularly like about it is how retro-futuristic and fluid it is. This is possibly one of the closest living expressions of what people in the mid-twentieth century thought the future would be like—sleek, tidy and efficient. In Japan this future came early. Bullet trains have been running since 1964 and typically operate at speeds of around 200 to 275 miles per hour.
Despite this, it still takes over three hours to get from Tokyo to Kyoto, a fact which reinforces in the mind the sheer size of Japan. This distance is just a fraction of the total length of the Japanese archipelago, whose proportions are reflected in the remarkable geographical and climatic variety present, from the frozen wilderness of the northern island of Hokkaido to the subtropical lushness of Kyushu in the far south-west. Mountains, like a great alpine spine, run down the middle of the country. My carriage was only semi-full and all the other passengers seemed to be businessmen donning the customary uniform of their class and occupation: dark suits, dark ties and side-parted hair. Periodically, the conductor entered the carriage, bowed deeply and proceeded with his work. A girl came in selling refreshments. I bought some lunch, a pork cutlet sandwich and a bottle of Aloe Vera King, and stared out at the changing landscape wondering what the next five days would bring.
When I arrived in Kyoto the first logical step was obviously to go to the hotel. Trying to find it myself on foot, luggage in tow, I took a few wrong turns. A couple of elderly men came to assist with directions. They spoke no English and I spoke no Japanese yet we all successfully made ourselves understood and half an hour later I arrived at the hotel. The majority of this first day was therefore consumed by basic logistics. When evening came, on the recommendation of the staff on the front desk I visited a nearby restaurant, a Korean barbecue. It was a very good meal but travel fatigue meant I was in no position to properly savour the experience and I realised I would have to return another time in a fresher state of mind. I returned to the hotel to sink into sleep.
Tuesday morning came. It was time to go out into Kyoto. Since Kyoto has rather a lot to offer so it was a case of prioritising a few important things rather than lose myself in an endless supply of palaces and temples. I made my way to the Golden Pavilion, Kinkaku-ji, one of the city’s most picturesque sights and a World Heritage site. Aesthetically it would be difficult to find a scene more classically Japanese. The pavilion sits amid refined but not excessively decorative gardens, typical of the zen style, its bright golden sheen reflecting brilliantly in the water even on a grey day. The temple dates from the fourteenth century when the villa there was purchased by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu from the Saionji family. The shogun’s son converted it into a temple but all of this, except the pavilion, were later burned down during the Onin war (1467-1477). In the twentieth century, the pavilion itself would be consumed by fire. In July 1950 a young monk, Shoken Hayashi, burned it down before trying, and failing, to commit suicide. It was a spectacular act of destruction and self-destruction, a fictionalised version of which would appear in Yukio Mishima’s 1956 novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Mishima, one of modern Japan’s greatest writers, would himself follow a similar path. An ultra-nationalist, he was intractably opposed to what he saw as the bland, lifeless transformation of Japan that had occurred since its defeat in 1945. He desired a restoration of the ‘real’ Japan with the spirit of bushido, the code of honour and behaviour governing the samurai of old. Modern life had lost its vitality. A brief but enlightening window into his perspective can be found in an interview with him broadcast on Japan’s NHK Television back in 1966. The mystery of human life, he argued, was such that we are incapable of living only for ourselves but must live for something greater. It followed that we must also die for something greater than ourselves. Modern democracy offered no such noble causes and yet without such causes, life was meaningless. To Mishima, modernity could only promise sterile comforts and the probability of an inglorious demise at the hands of illness or old age. He drew a parallel between his own time and that of the writer of the Hagakure, the early eighteenth-century text on the life and death of the samurai which stated unequivocally that “the way of the samurai is found in death.” The resemblance between the two periods was strong. In those earlier days, the era of warring states was gone and while samurai still trained in the martial arts the possibility of a “glorious death” was unlikely. In Mishima’s words, “There was corruption, a fallen aristocracy, and delinquents like today’s ‘Ivy Set’ began to appear among the samurai.” Yet despite the author of the Hagakure’s repeated emphasis on the necessity of glorious death such an opportunity eluded even him and “he himself died in bed at a ripe old age.”
By contrast, Mishima’s own life did reach a violent climax. In the late 1960s left-wing student protests proliferated in Japan just as they did in many of the countries of the West. Alarmed, Mishima formed the Shield Society, or Tatenokai, a private militia whose membership was largely drawn from right-wing university students, dedicated to the traditional martial values of the old Japan and the emperor. They hoped to reinvigorate this ancient Japanese spirit and rouse the nation from its comfortable postwar slumber. The Shield Society was even granted permission to train with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Events reached a head on the 25th of November, 1970. Mishima and four other members of the Shield Society visited Ichigaya Camp, where the Eastern Command of Japan’s military was based in Tokyo. Once inside they barricaded the office of the commander and tied him to a chair. Mishima went out onto a balcony to give a speech to the soldiers below. What was intended to prompt a coup d’état and restore the emperor to his traditional position was not well-received. Failing to arouse much beyond jeers and mockery, Mishima went back inside and, with the assistance of his compatriots, committed ritual seppuku. An immensely-gifted and complex figure, he is today regarded as one of the most significant literary figures of twentieth-century Japan. That day, he had written his own tragic final act. I cannot claim any expertise or special insights into Mishima. There are others who can do so much better. Before I visited Japan the only one of his works I had read was Sun and Steel, his account of how he tried to remake himself physically and mentally through bodybuilding and his reflections on life and death. I think that among other things, the climax to his life shows that there is this particular element of traditional culture, perhaps something deep within the national psyche, which while very much falling into the shadows of modern society, has never totally disappeared.
Lunch was a satisfying but not especially refined culinary experience: the all-you-can-eat buffet, Japanese-style. The man on the front desk started a large analogue clock ticking. I had an hour to indulge in as much stir-fried beef and noodles, vegetables and tempura prawns as I wanted. Thus fortified I spent the afternoon going up and down the metro lines, getting off wherever I felt like it and exploring. I settled on the botanical gardens, one of the great treasures of Kyoto. Because of the season, there were few people around. It was cold but sunny—that particular golden quality of sunlight that late February often brings, that adds a pleasant sheen to winter while reminding you that warmer days lie not too far ahead. I was too early to see the famous sakura, or cherry blossom, but as beautiful as that undoubtedly would have been I was content. February meant the plum blossom and a welcome lack of the sort of crowds that its more famous relative would have brought. After a surprisingly good can of ‘Wonda’ coffee I wandered around the gardens.
One of the attractions of botanical gardens is the way they show how different people choose to interact with their environment. They are places of cultivated wildness. Locating such spaces close by or in a city is an obvious aesthetic and experiential contrast. When I was working in Sydney earlier in the month I had often spent lunchtimes in the Sydney Botanical Gardens. There it had obviously been a different season but the winding and looping paths around what seemed quite a large space brought a riot of colour—flowers of brilliant blazing hues and the lush greens of trees against the deep blue summer sky. The aesthetic touches of the early twentieth century were dotted around everywhere, from classical motifs to summer houses. On the perimeter was the magnificent sweeping vista of the harbour. The sight of the tall concrete structures of the central business district and the many people who were clearly taking lunch breaks from corporate and commercial jobs—some sunbathing, some walking, others running—were a constant reminder that even among the pleasures of summer, the fast and frenetic pressures of modernity were never too far away. The peace and tranquility was an interlude, a parenthesis between periods of business.
By contrast, Kyoto’s botanical gardens seemed a thousand miles away from modern life. The Japanese garden provides a muted aesthetic. The obvious imprint of man on nature is kept to a minimum and what there is is allowed to appear aged and worn, willing and resigned victims to the passage of time. There was a waterwheel of an old mill and the typical stone lanterns and arched bridge. February’s grasp brought solitude and a more reflective mood. The cold breeze of the late season rustled through the pine branches. The sky above was a gentle patchwork of milky white and powder blue. Splashes of pink and white plum blossom were the only real contrast to the subdued greens and browns of winter. But there was a definite atmosphere of expectation, a sense that spring itself was not too far away. These gardens would not remain quiet for long.
That evening I wandered the streets looking for somewhere interesting to eat. I settled on an unusual looking place. I don’t remember the name now, unfortunately, but I think it would best be described as a teppanyaki restaurant, where the meat is grilled by the chef at the front of the dining area in open view of the patrons, the vast majority of whom here were young. It had no solid walls but was instead cloaked with a sort of thick polythene cover which gave it the appearance of some kind of semi-transparent tent. I ate some very good grilled pork, sliced and neatly arranged on a wooden slab with a large dab of wholegrain mustard. This had been prefaced by a basket of a delicious type of bread dotted with raisins. Once again this was proof that eating very good, supremely well-prepared food in Japan need not be at all expensive.
For the uninitiated, the onsen is one of the great treasures of Japan—steaming natural hot springs with special bathing facilities. I first encountered the image of the onsen as a child when I had watched a wildlife documentary about the snow monkeys, Japanese macaques to be precise, which are known in certain mountainous regions to ‘take the waters’ of these steaming natural spas as readily as the human population. In some parts they even have their own specially designated onsens. I visited the village of Kurama. To get there requires the use of a private railway that takes you from Demachiyanagi Station in Kyoto up into the mountains that surround the city. It was a pleasant, quiet ride, the train gently rattling as the gradient increased and we slowly ascended to our destination. Outside it was much cloudier than it had been the previous day. Snow flurried but it was far too dry for any serious accumulation. After leaving the station I wandered up the village towards the onsen. The streets were very quiet. The houses were smart, neatly arranged and built in the traditional mountain village style. The onsen itself was part of a larger spa complex. Since it was lunchtime, the first port of call was the restaurant. There was nothing overly salubrious about it but it was comfortable even sitting on the floor.
After lunch I made my way up the winding path towards the onsen itself. There was a little gatehouse. I paid the requisite cash and the attendant provided a ticket and a small towel. Most onsens in Japan operate on segregated lines. The men go to one, the women to another. Swimwear is usually forbidden and you are supposed to wash properly before entering the pool. The small towel is either deposited on the side, where the hot water sloshes over it until it can barely serve its intended purpose, or it is placed on the head as locals do.
The onsen itself was surrounded by a light wood perimeter that set it apart from the cobbled stones around it. At one end there was a wooden canopy above. Looking out provided a view of the mountains, draped in evergreens and fir trees, still and quiet in the soft snowfall. There were around half a dozen people already there when I arrived and there was little conversation except a smattering of chatter among some of the locals. One of these, clearly working out the exertions of the week, kept stretching his arms and shoulders and groaning. Another Westerner was perched at the opposite end of the pool. In an onsen, the water itself can feel uncomfortably hot upon first contact. Gradually you become accustomed to it but it is a good idea to punctuate lengthy visits with colder breaks on the side. In some winter resorts it is normal to make use of the snow to cool off in between. Here, though, there wasn’t enough snow to make any difference.
The quiet state of affairs continued until the groaning man finally turned to me and asked me “Where are you from?” I told him I was British. The conversation snowballed at which point the Westerner chimed in asking “What is your PhD on?” He was American and it turned out he was in Kyoto to make a documentary about the dangers of genetically modified foods. He did not advertise the fact but I later learned that he is a well-known figure. Another tourist arrived and joined in the conversation. He, Moussa, was a businessman from Mauritania and was in Japan to run the Tokyo marathon. This fact simultaneously impressed and confused the groaning man. Moussa did not possess the usual marathon runner’s physique. The groaning man was intrigued: “But you look like boxer!” he exclaimed, clenching his fists in a mock fighting stance. The next two hours went by absorbed in cross-cultural conversation. We were joined by another Japanese man, an architect who had worked in restaurants across Europe. He patiently answered many of our questions about Japan, its people and it culture. The conversation easily meandered from one thing to another. At one point it turned to the subject of tattoos. Context here is important. For those who do not know, tattoos have long been a bit of a taboo in Japan and, despite their popularity in many other countries in the twenty-first century, remain so. The reason is their cultural association with Japan’s mafia, the yakuza. It is not uncommon to see signs at onsens and the like that read ‘No tattoos permitted’. At this very point in the conversation the group suddenly went silent. Entering the pool were a few men, a couple of whom had clear and prominent tattoos. It later turned out that they were Korean tourists fresh from national service.
It was the sort of serendipitous afternoon which makes for some of the longest-lasting memories of travel. A disparate group of individuals drawn from different corners of the world and different shades of life exchanging stories. Around us the snow continued to softly fall. By the end of the afternoon most of the party had gone their separate ways. I stayed in conversation with Moussa who was full of fascinating stories of travel across the world. He seemed to know Japan quite well and had a host of recommendations of places to visit and foods to try. We took the train back to Demachiyanagi and then shared a taxi back into central Kyoto. As we parted he reiterated his earlier advice: “You must make sure you try the Kobe steak!”
A large boulevard cuts through the heart of Himeji, leading from the station to the dominating feature of the landscape, the famous ‘White Heron’, a feudal castle dating originally from the fourteenth century. It was a clear, bright Thursday morning and I had made my way by bullet train from Kyoto, passing on the way through the sprawling concrete jungles of Kobe and Osaka. I advanced up the boulevard towards the stately fortress, which has the honour of being the largest intact feudal castle anywhere in Japan. Against the blue sky, and dotted around with yet more plum trees in blossom, the White Heron had a regal, queenly pose. Surrounded by a moat and imposing walls, it has a striking appearance and is composed of a five-story main keep and three additional keeps. The castle underwent significant modifications during the seventeenth century when it was an essential lynchpin ensuring the enforcement of the Tokugawa Shogunate. It has never been damaged in warfare, most impressively of all surviving the bombs of the Second World War.
Shoes were deposited in a bag upon entry. In total there are 83 rooms in the castle. Linking the rooms are long passageways, decked in dark wood. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, there is a theory that the complex layout of the castle’s walls, gates and baileys was designed to resemble a maze and thus be disorientating to any attackers, who would be forced to circle the castle on their advance to the keep, further exposing them to defending fire. It is just a theory but winding around the complex corridors and up and down the staircases, it seems credible. The long passageways had a slightly mysterious feel about them even in the middle of the day. I can imagine that in the tricky half-light of dusk they could take on a rather eery quality, like something you might encounter in folklore or fairy tales, such as the ‘stories and studies of strange things’ in Kwaidan.1
The feudal era came to an end with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Following this, Japan embarked on a period of rapid modernisation. From 1873 the castle served as barracks for the 10th Regiment of the Imperial Army. Despite continuing use in this way, the White Heron fell into a state of disrepair. The Imperial Government did embark on a major project of renovation in the 1930s but this was interrupted by the war. Himeji itself was bombed rather severely during the Second World War but the castle escaped largely unscathed. It was during the period of reconstruction of the town at large during the 1950s that the castle at long last underwent the necessary repairs and the project was completed in 1964. In 1967 film audiences across the world were acquainted with the castle’s majestic beauty when it featured in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, starring Sean Connery, Akiko Wakabayashi and Tetsurō Tamba. It served as the headquarters for ninja training led by Bond’s ally ‘Tiger’ Tanaka. During filming in 1966 the Japanese media got wind of this leading to outrage over presumed damage to the castle. The producers had to go to great lengths trying to reassure their host nation that props had been used and a false wall built and the castle itself had been unharmed. Despite these explanations of their actual innocence, production was forced to leave.
Himeji Castle remains arguably the best visual legacy of feudal Japan, the age of samurai, shoguns and the code of bushido. As in Europe, Japanese feudalism consisted of an arrangement between lords and vassals, the former bestowing favour to the latter in exchange for military services rendered. At the top sat the emperor. The Japanese monarchy has been one important constant and extends back in an unbroken chain over two thousand years from the present. Despite this, for many centuries the emperor did not actually possess much power and was instead a distant, yet sacred symbol. Beneath the emperor was the shogun and the daimyo, the land-owning magnates. Beneath them were the samurai. Beneath the samurai were the artisans and peasants. At the bottom were the merchants. Feudalism is a fine-tuned system based on reciprocal rights and responsibilities. Alien though it may seem to us today, it has clearly cast a long historical shadow well beyond its own demise. In Japan, one lasting legacy is the exceptional politeness encountered everywhere. It is a largely forgotten point today but politeness and a refined system and practice of etiquette has historically been a hallmark of hierarchical, warrior societies. There are many examples across the world. Think, for example, of the almost excessive politeness encountered in, say, the France of Louis XIII, as portrayed by Dumas in The Three Musketeers. The reason is simple. Politeness represents a realisation of one’s place within the social structure, a tacit acceptance of the social code which unites all. While today transgressions of these codes can result in social opprobrium, in the past such errors could well result in violence.
I emerged from the dimness of the White Heron’s passageways into the glare of midday, which was accentuated by the bright white walls of the castle. I walked back down the boulevard, past the ‘Kensington Coffee Garden’ towards the station. Historical interest had been satiated for one day. I headed back to Kyoto and towards another quasi-feudal experience. That night I was to stay in a ryokan. For those unaware, this is a traditional guesthouse and, in essence, provides travellers today with the same experience of hospitality that would have been usual in the old days. They do vary in size but most traditional ryokans only cater to a small number of guests. The one I was to stay in had only eight rooms. I wanted everything to be as Japanese as it could be. I do not see the point in travelling that sort of distance, for that kind of experience, to simply eat a continental breakfast or stay in modern, Western clothes. Dressing the traditional Japanese way is a learned art and in my case, at least, obviously required the assistance of the hotel maid. She was a cheerful lady in her sixties, apparently armed with only a small amount of English. The casual form of kimono worn in the ryokan, the yukata, is supposed to worn such that the right-hand collar should be in front of the left-hand one (the other way round is only done at funerals). Adjusting it so it fell properly she admired her handiwork. “Very becoming” she said, “like samurai!” There could have been no better commendation.
This particular English “samurai” existed only in imitation. It was a very pale reflection of the original example, William Adams. He was a navigator from Kent who in 1600 sailed to Japan on a Dutch trading ship, the Liefde, before disembarking with the second-mate Jan Joosten whereupon the two men became Western samurai. Adams found swift success and was promoted to become advisor to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. The shogun was particularly interested in Adams’ views on lots of different things including religion, politics and Western technology. Adams used his position of trust to steer the shogun’s foreign policy in favour of the Protestant English and away from the Spanish and Portuguese who had been present in Japan for some time. He was also particularly effective in the realm of ship-building, which he directed according to Western styles, and was awarded an estate on the Miura Peninsula.
Despite this favoured position Adams was homesick and wanted to return home where he had a wife and children but was refused permission and he ended up marrying a Japanese woman and having another family with her. He wrote letters to the English and Dutch to try and facilitate trade and between 1614 and 1619 embarked on a number of missions abroad on behalf of the shogun, visiting as far as southeast Asia. The shogun Ieyasu died in 1616 and his successor pursued a considerably more isolationist policy abroad bringing to an end the closer relations that the Japanese and the English had briefly enjoyed. Adams clearly thought a lot of his family at home in England, since he continued to support them financially and left a considerable sum to them when he died in 1620. It is a curious tale and all things considered, quite a sad one.
Back in our own time I had plenty of time for reflection. The experience of a ryokan is mostly confined to the privacy of one’s own room. The room had a hot bath, small in diameter and topped off with a wooden lid to keep the heat in after preparation. Dinner was a ritual. There is no menu and guests eat whatever the chef prepares. This was served, dish by dish, in my room. The maid entered in the traditional fashion in an almost supplicatory posture. This all took quite some time and when it was all over I was thoroughly satisfied. Although I had followed the normal custom of bathing before dinner it just did not seem right to not make full use of the option to use the larger bathing facilities in the ryokan. Explaining this to the maid took a little time because I kept mistakenly using the term onsen to refer to it which she obviously took to mean the outside variety. When she suddenly realised what I meant her face lit up. “Ahh” she exclaimed, “Big Bath!” It was indeed a big bath, more like a small pool than anything else. There was an interval of about twenty to thirty minutes before it was ready. I had the whole thing to myself. The dim glow of golden lights lit up the room with a gentle warm ambience as the reflections of the rippling water danced upon the wooden panels and the walls.
The night, spent on a tatami mattress on the floor, was a comfortable one although sleep was elusive for the first few hours, no doubt due to the rather strong matcha green tea I had drunk at dinner. The next morning I was refreshed, however, and the special ritual of traditional dining began anew with breakfast. This time there were two options—the Japanese breakfast or the ‘continental’. Thoroughly committed to the authentic ryokan experience I went for the first. I tend to think that breakfast is the one meal to which taste is most closely tied to culture and habit. Put another way, there are some foods which seem right to eat first thing in the morning and others which do not. With that in mind, the thought of fish and rice for breakfast was so far off the beaten track I wasn’t sure what to make of it. In the clash of the moment, novelty reigned supreme. I was, temporarily at least, a convinced Japanese.
I learned that in ryokans it is customary for the owner to visit guests and talk with them. In this case, the owner was an extremely elegant and interesting woman, middle-aged and carrying herself with an almost aristocratic air. We had a long conversation. She asked me what I had spent my time doing in Japan and where I had visited. She told me a bit about the late Heian Period, her time in Europe and many other things. She pointed out the tasteful haikus inscribed on the walls of the room, a traditional custom of builders, and taught me the proper way to drink green tea. You must make sure to rotate the cup the right way before picking it up and to always hold it with two hands.
My time in the ryokan was drawing to a close but I still had time to kill before leaving Kyoto for Tokyo again and kindly, the hostess allowed me to leave my luggage there even after checkout time. That way I would be able to explore a bit of the surrounding city without being encumbered by suitcases and the like. I wandered through the nearby markets, a tight network of interlocking streets, and on towards Gion District. Gion is a lovely part of Kyoto with pleasant promenades, tea houses and restaurants. Walking through I was struck by the numbers of young people wearing traditional garb. At one point a young Japanese couple asked if I would take a souvenir photo of them which I duly did. I spent a leisurely couple of hours wandering, to nowhere in particular. It was gloriously sunny so I just walked up and down the tidily swept streets and paths, admiring the pretty old town houses, or machiya, the rows of neatly clipped shrubs and small trees set about by serene and stately pines. After a morning spent idling like this I made my way back to the ryokan, stopping briefly to purchase some souvenirs, a nice set of chopsticks of the kind that you never actually use and a beautiful ornamental diptych featuring a crane and various other birds. And so, having bid my final farewells at the ryokan it was time to head back to the Central Station from where the Shinkansen would once again carry me to Tokyo.
For reasons I have already explained, Tokyo did not draw me as much as Kyoto. Despite this, however, it was important to see it even if mainly for the sake of experiencing the electric buzz of the largest city in the world first hand. Tokyo has held this distinctive honour since the 1950s which in some ways seems remarkable given the ferocious bombing campaign wrought on it during the war. That had been the second great episode of destruction to be inflicted on the capital in a little over twenty years as much of the older city had been razed during the devastating earthquake of 1923. The ability to bounce back quickly and decisively from such disasters and defeats serves as a testament to the durability and resilience of the Japanese people.
One of the observable facts of Japanese history is the sense of continuity and the linkage of past to present. After all, we all hold our societies in trust, inheriting them from our ancestors and passing them on to our descendants. Many Japanese take this very seriously. As with anywhere else, the country has undergone waves of transformation, fomented by both internal divisions and external forces as well as the inevitable change wrought by the most inescapable of dimensions—time. It is said that time and tide wait for no man and we can well apply this to nations too. All people at all times have to respond to their own particular challenges. Each generation must decide how to try and overcome them to preserve their essence and build a definite legacy. Early twenty-first century Japan is not a utopia any more than any country is or was. The nation is beset by serious problems—political, social and economic. Some of these are the same deep fissures present in other developed societies across the world. Others are more culturally unique to Japan itself. The solutions to these problems lie with the Japanese people. Whether they are able to do so or not, we can be certain that there will be lessons for others too.
I suspect one of the reasons I am prone to reflect in this way on Japan, and one reason why I have for so long been drawn to it, even subconsciously, is that there are numerous parallels and points of comparison between it and the British Isles, and more specifically, to England. I became aware of the extent of the parallels some years ago reading Alan Macfarlane’s book The Savage Wars of Peace. An anthropologist and historian, Macfarlane was trying to understand exactly why Japan and England seemed to uniquely escape the so-called ‘Malthusian Trap’, the phenomenon where high fertility tends to be offset by high mortality. Both countries went through the same processes of development, at roughly similar times. There are also more general points of comparison. Both are of similar size and consist of groups of islands. Both are located at a similar distance from either end of the Eurasian land mass, a geographical fact which has enabled both to simultaneously absorb influence from their continental neighbours whilst also allowing them to develop along their own particular lines and follow their own individual destinies. It is a fascinating study and it makes me wonder what parallels might play out in this particular century.
Tokyo at night is quite an experience. The masses of people swarming over Shibuya crossing, businessmen all in the same dark suits, white shirts and ties, the jangling cacophony of vehicles and the blaze of neon signs. My final dinner in Japan was taken at a small restaurant in Shinjuku. I had tonkatsu, a deep fried breaded pork cutlet, with shredded cabbage and rice. It was a simple yet satisfying finale. Tired, but happy, I withdrew to the hotel. The next morning I was to fly home. With this impending departure and the necessity of an early wakeup to make it to the airport in time, sleep did not come easily. Outside, many storeys beneath, the streets rang to the endless drone of traffic and loud and frequent sirens. Morning came, and ahead of my flight my mind almost instinctively began to re-orient west and I did a complete reversal of the previous day’s modus operandi and made the most of the full Western breakfast on offer. It was a combination of the usual English bacon and eggs with an endless supply of French and Danish pastries, washed down with copious amounts of coffee. After, I took the bus towards Haneda Airport.
Entering the airport I was back in a non-place. Once more I was ‘in-between’. In some ways my whole visit to Japan, stopover as it was, had been full of a sense of the in-between. Between Australia and home. Exploring a country torn between a turbulent, colourful past and an uncertain present. I had been too late for the proper winter snows, yet too early for the cherry blossom. In retrospect, it seems a suitable metaphor. I have come to the realisation that there is a lot of satisfaction and joy that can be found in the in-between spaces and times if we are ready to look for it. Sometimes the beauty of these times can arrive quietly, without fanfare or spectators, just like the plum blossom breaking through the gentle stillness of late winter.
I found my seat on the All Nippon Airways flight NH211 and was pleasantly pensive. On an eleven hour flight, in-seat entertainment can only distract attention for a while. The plane rose from the tarmac and the land beneath shrank away, quickly taking on vague, non-defined hues just like a map. We passed over the Sea of Japan. Down below were golden brown rocky outcrops jutting out from the far eastern fringes of Russia. We began the long, slow arc that would take us over the frozen wastes of northern Siberia and onwards to home.
All photos © Alastair Paynter
An anthology of unusual Japanese folk tales, collected and translated into English by Lafcadio Hearn in 1904.