Lost Japan (16 page)

Though the age of mosquito nets, candles and kimono has ended, a special world lives on at Tenmangu even now. This is a very simple thing: nature. When I return to Tenmangu after a trip to Tokyo or abroad, I always find that the cycle of the seasons has shifted a bit, and new natural phenomena await me. According to the old Chinese calendar, the year is divided into twenty-four mini-seasons, with names like ‘Clear and Bright', ‘White Dew', ‘Great Heat', ‘Little Cold' and ‘Squirming Insects'. Each has its own flavor.

The god of Tenmangu was originally a tenth-century courtier named Michizane, famed for his love of plum blossoms; as a result, the thousands of Tenmangu shrines across the country invariably have a plum tree planted in the grounds. The mystique of plums is that they bloom at the end of winter, when snow is still on the ground. Soon spring comes, and the old cherry tree in the garden blooms, along with azaleas, peaches and wildflowers. But my favorite season comes later, around the end of May or the beginning of June, when the rainy season starts. The frogs in the surrounding paddies start croaking, and my friends calling from Tokyo are amazed to find that they can hear them even over the phone line. Little emerald gems, the frogs hop about and ornament the leaves and stepping stones. Then lotuses burst into bloom, and the heavy rain drums pleasantly on the roof of my bedroom. Sleeping during the rainy season is always a joy.

Then one evening, a lone firefly appears in the garden. With a friend, I climb down behind the garden to the creek bed below, and we wait in silence in the darkness. After a while, from the thickets on either side of the ravine, glowing clouds of fireflies come floating out. In the summer, the village children come to swim in the pool below the waterfall. My cousin Edan, a little blonde imp, spent a whole summer playing under the waterfall. From my living room I can hear the children's voices as they dive into the pool. The trees on the mountain slope beyond sway in the breeze, and a black kite lazily spreads its long wings high above. The end of the summer brings typhoons and autumn's crimson maple leaves, yellow gingko, ruby nandina berries and, at the end, hanging onto the bare branches of winter, orange persimmon fruit. On winter days, frost descends on the garden, and each blade of grass sparkles like diamonds in the morning sun. Frog emeralds, frost diamonds, nandina rubies – these are Tenmangu's jewel box.

But these seasonal changes are being slowly erased from today's Japan. For example, in most cities it is standard practice in autumn to cut off the branches of trees lining the streets, in order to prevent falling leaves. To modern Japanese, falling leaves are not a thing of beauty; they are messy and to be avoided. This accounts for the stunted appearance of the trees which one encounters in most public places in Japan. Recently, a friend here told me, ‘Just going to look at the mountain wilderness – what a bore! It is only when you have something to do that nature becomes interesting. You know, like golf or skiing.' This may explain why people feel compelled to bulldoze so many golf courses and ski slopes into the mountainsides. My wilderness remains that of the Chinese poets, my nature that of Basho's haiku. A frog jumps into an old pond; just that sound brings me joy. Nothing else is needed.

When Diane was living at Tenmangu, the house had almost nothing inside of it. However, in time, Tenmangu became the
setting for my growing art collection. Japanese gold screens, Chinese carpets, Tibetan mandalas, Korean vases, Thai Buddhas, Burmese lacquerware, Khmer sculpture – all things Asian were crammed into every inch of the house. ‘Crammed' is not, I realize, the most aesthetically pleasing of expressions; it hardly conjures up images of elegant refinement. But the artworks of every country and every historical period of Asia made up a jungle of such luxuriance inside Tenmangu that the foliage outside was almost outclassed: it was a greenhouse of beauty. One friend called it ‘Aladdin's Cave'. On arrival, visitors would see a dilapidated old house which looked not much different from the Tenmangu I found in 1977. Then they would enter the foyer, and – ‘open sesame!' – colorful screen paintings, thick blue-and-yellow rugs, and the luster of polished quince and rosewood met the eye.

In recent years, the novelty of owning all these things has worn off a bit and I have cleared out Tenmangu considerably. The rugs and the furniture are still there, but taking a hint from old households which used to store their possessions out of sight in the
kura
, I have loaned most of the screens, statues and paintings to museums. Now I keep just a few favorite things, and rotate them as the mood strikes me. I suppose I will keep removing more and more, until eventually the house will come full circle and there will be only a bare tatami room looking out onto an open garden.

In the meantime, even with a much smaller number of objects on display, Tenmangu still has an Aladdin's Cave feel about it. I think it has something to do with color, one of the things I learned about from David Kidd in the days of my apprenticeship. To digress slightly, I once read an account of life in Tibet before it was invaded by China, when Tibetan culture still flourished. One day, the author met a group of Tibet's high-ranking statesmen traveling in a convoy across the steppe. They were a blaze of color: even the horses were draped in gorgeous silk and handwoven blankets. The statesmen wore garments of yellow brocade
on which blue dragons, purple clouds and green waves danced wildly, and in their hair they wore beads of turquoise and coral.

In today's world, people's sense of color has faded considerably. Just think of the drab suits of modern politicians and you'll see what I mean. This lack of color is especially true of Japan, where all lighting is fluorescent, and most household items are made from aluminum and synthetic materials. However, Tenmangu is alive with rich, deep hues. It is a striking contrast to the ash-gray color of life in Tokyo. First, there is gold, a color which, as Tanizaki pointed out in
In Praise of Shadows
, does not generally go well with a brightly lit room; this may be why gold is hardly seen in modern Japanese life. But in Tenmangu there is the gold leaf of screens, the gold of Buddhas, gold lacquer – many different kinds of gold. Within gold, there is green gold, red gold and alloyed gold, which tarnishes with time. In addition to gold, there are painting pigments, especially the vivid green seen in Tibetan mandalas. Then there is the deep red of lacquerware, the pale blue of Chinese celadon, and the somber and cloudy oranges and tea greens of Japanese brocade.

As a calligrapher, living in Tenmangu could not be more propitious. I feel as though I receive direct inspiration from the deity of the shrine. Although I am not a Shinto convert, I have a secret belief in the god of Tenmangu, who has been worshipped since antiquity as the god of scholarship and calligraphy. Sometimes, I step out to the shrine, ring the bell and say a prayer. Actually, ‘prayer' is too strong a word; it's more like an informal greeting. When high-school and college-entrance exam season rolls around, students come to pray at the shrine before class, and their prayers probably have a little more urgency than mine. The early-morning ringing of the bell often wakes me up, serving as Tenmangu's alarm clock.

There are many gods in Tenmangu. First of all, there is the household altar above the studio room. In the center sits a figure of Michizane, and to the left and right of him are paper charms,
talismans from shrines and temples, and rosary beads. Above the entryway there sits a small, blackened, wooden statue of Daikoku (god of prosperity). The statue is only about twelve centimeters high, but it radiates power as though it were carved by the sculptor Enku. Of all the things that were in the house when I first moved in, this is the only one I've kept, and I think of it as the true guardian of Tenmangu. On the central pillar is pasted a charm from Kuwayama Shrine, and a likeness of Marishi-ten (god of contests) seated on a chariot of swiftly moving wild boars. In the living room, a
tanzaku
plaque by Onisaburo Deguchi hangs on the pillar of the
tokonoma
. In the innermost room is a Thai Buddha, and next to that a small altar to Shiva. This may seem an extreme sort of superstition, but I am only following the typical Japanese religious pattern: not wanting to be bound to a single religion, I subscribe to them all – Buddhist, Shinto, Hindu. Gods and Buddhas float ceaselessly in the air of Tenmangu, and their warm breathing fills the house.

Living in the countryside brings with it a number of inconveniences. Foremost among these are the insects. From the time of ‘Squirming Insects' around the middle of March, legions of mosquitoes, moths, bees, ants, centipedes, spiders and helmet bugs sally forth. Doing battle with them is quite a chore. When Diane lived here, she had a thirteen-stringed
koto
which she kept on one side of the living room. Once, late at night, the sound of the instrument suddenly broke the silence. Strumming chords floated gently across the room –
chiri chiri chiri zuru zuru zuru
– but Diane and I were under the mosquito netting, alone in the house as far as we knew. Taking a candle, we went over to the
koto
, but there was nothing to be seen. Even as we watched, ghostly fingers continued to play and
chiri chiri chiri zuru zuru zuru
cascaded through the house, while Diane and I clung to each other in terror. Finally, I could bear it no longer and turned on all the lamps in the house, to find that a large moth had got itself trapped under the strings of the
koto
.

Ghost concerts I could live with, but mosquitoes were another matter. Mosquito netting is strange stuff: while not actually having any holes, it always seems to let some mosquitoes in. In the end, as a result of the mosquito problem, I finally put up glass doors against the garden, installed air-conditioning and effectively divided inside from outside. However, one hundred and fifty years have passed since Tenmangu was moved to its present spot, and as the result of a succession of typhoons and earthquakes, all the pillars lean and there is not a single right angle in the entire house. Insects manage to find a way through the gaps, and I don't think Tenmangu will ever be completely liberated from them.

Another problem is the length of the commute to Kyoto and Osaka. In truth it is not really all that long: twenty-five minutes to Kyoto by train, and one-and-a-quarter hours to Osaka by car. But for city dwellers, the distance to the countryside feels wider than the Sahara, and it is not easy to get the courage to cross this desert. I once got a call from an art collector in Amsterdam. ‘I'm going to Japan next month. I'd love to visit Tenmangu,' he said. A month later, when he arrived in Tokyo, he called again, ‘I'm going to Kyoto tomorrow. I'll see you the day after.' The next day, a call came from Kyoto, ‘I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.' Then, on the morning of the appointed day, he called to say, ‘I'm sorry. I can't go to Kameoka. It's just too far.'

At the turn of the century, the Comte de Montesquiou ruled the Parisian social world with an iron hand; nobody ever turned down an invitation to one of the Comte's soirées. But one day Montesquiou moved from the east side of the Bois de Boulogne to a larger palace on the west side. It meant only a two-kilometer drive through the park, but from the day the Comte moved, high society tossed him aside without a qualm, and Montesquiou lived out the remainder of his days in isolation.

Certainly visitors to Tenmangu are not numerous. It's bad for the art business, but I don't feel particularly lonely. On the contrary, the distance from Kyoto and Osaka screens me from casual
visitors, so that most of my guests are good friends. As a result, having guests over to my house is always pleasantly relaxed and enjoyable.

Over the past eighteen years, Tenmangu has seen a stream of Japanese friends who have lived here with me or taken care of the house. They all shared one thing, which was not an interest in art, nor a love of nature, as you might think. Their aim was to escape from Japanese society. There are very few places in Japan where you can escape from the constraints of this society. It is nearly impossible to ‘drop out' and live a hippie life in the countryside: the stranglehold of complex rules and relations is at its most severe in the rice-growing countryside. On the other hand, in the big cities life is so expensive that it is all one can do to just pay the rent. In Tokyo, people who want to work in an environment that is free of Japanese social constraints typically try to get a job with a foreign company; but working in one of these offices is a rat race that brings its own strains and hardships. So the relaxed life at Tenmangu seems like a peaceful haven for such people, at least until the next step, which usually involves leaving Japan.

A Japanese friend once said to me, ‘I always associated old Japanese houses with an image of poverty. When I saw Tenmangu I realized for the first time that one could live well in an old house.' The key to the destruction of the city of Kyoto lies in this comment. In the eyes of the city administration, rows of old wooden houses look ‘poor'; they are an embarrassment, and should be removed quickly. This is not only true of Kyoto – the same feeling lurks deep in the hearts of people all over Japan. If this were not so, the rampant destruction that has occurred here would have sparked a strong public outcry; but until recently there has been hardly a peep of protest.

Kameoka has already been completely transformed, for the wave of ‘uglification' that threatens all of Japan is advancing here as well. Every year a few of the rice paddies surrounding Tenmangu are torn up to become parking lots or golf driving ranges.
Fortunately, the grounds of Tenmangu are spacious and the mountain behind the garden is shrine property, so for a while, at least, we should be safe.

There is a framed calligraphy in the foyer of Tenmangu which reads ‘Nest of Peace and Happiness'. It was written by an Edo-period literati and harks back to the house of one of the Sung scholars who revived Confucianist philosophy in the twelfth century. Though he did not have much money, he surrounded himself with books and scrolls in his small cottage. He invited friends over to his ‘nest', and there they laid the grounds for a revolution in thinking. For me, the true charm of Tenmangu lies in its air of relaxation. My friends and I may be plotting revolution, but due perhaps to the quiet surroundings, or to the ‘black glistening' of its four-hundred-year-old pillars, whoever enters Tenmangu quickly succumbs to its relaxed atmosphere. The visiting businessman, the type who always rises punctually for breakfast meetings, inevitably oversleeps at Tenmangu, or forgets to fax or call his office. It is quite common for a guest who planned to stay only a single night to lose track of time and stay for several days.