Yesterday, I finished reading Yukio Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which Jan selected to present to her book group.  It’s a heavily fictionalized account of the arson of a 500 year-old World Heritage site by a psychotic young Zen monk in 1950. The protagonist-narrator, Mizoguchi’s description of the building recalled my encounter with the reconstructed edifice last March in Kyoto:

Thanks to the power of memory, the various aesthetic details began to glitter one by one out of the surrounding darkness; then the glittering spread wider and wider, until gradually the entire temple had emerged before me under that strange light of time itself, which is neither day nor night…As my eyes took in the entire prospect, I could perceive the temple’s structure and the clear outline of its motif, I could see the painstaking repetition and decoration of the details whereby this motif was materialized, I saw the effects of contrast and of symmetry.  The two lower stories, the Hosui-in and the Choondo, were of the same width and, though thwere was a slight difference between them, they were protected by the same extensive eave; one story rested on top of its companion so that they looked like a pair of closely related dreams or like memories of two very similar pleasures that we have enjoyed in the past.  These twin stories had been crowned by a third story, the Kukyocho, which abruptly tapered off.  And high on top of the shingled roof the gilt bronze phoenix was facing the long, lightless night.

I was prompted to pull up  pictures I’d taken there to capture a bit of that encounter’s  power.

His account of the ascent of Beauty from the pool of sensual desire to the gilded phoenix at the apex of the roof reminds me of Plato’s ladder of love in the Symposium, the primary text of Western mysticism, reimagined here in a Japanese Buddhist framework.

The vast power of sensual desire that shimmered on the surface of this pond was the source of the hidden force that had constructed the Golden Temple; but, after this power had been put in order and the beautiful  three storied tower formed, it could no longer bear to dwell there and nothing was left for it but to escape…back to the surface of the pond, back to the endless shimmering of sensual desire, back to its native land….

Plato refers to desire as the offspring of Plenty and Penury, the appetite for the possession of beauty propelled by incompletion, leading to ever more elevated objects.  Mishima’s character imagines each satisfaction generating a more expansive need.

If one examined the beauty of each individual detail—the pillars, the railings, the shutters, the framed doors, the ornamented windows, the pyramidal roof, the Hosui-in, the Choondo, the Kukyocho, the Sosei—the shadow of the temple on the ond, the little islands, the pine trees, yes, even the mooring place for the temple boat—the beauty was never completed in any single detail of the temple; for each detail adumbrated the beauty of the succeeding detail.  The beauty of the individual detail itself was always filled with uneasiness.  It dreamed of perfection, but it knew no completion and was invariably lured on to thenext beauty, the unknown beauty.

But whereas Plato envisions ultimate perfection as the concentration of all being into pure unadulterated substance–the Form of Forms–Mizoguchi defines the final object as nothingness:

Such adumbrations were the signs of nothingness.  Nothingness was the very structure of this beauty.  …this delicate building, wrought of the most slender timber, was trembling in anticipation of nothingness, like a jeweled necklace trembling in the wind.

In doing so he seems to be adhering to orthodox Buddhist doctrine.  I think I can grasp the paradox of identifying ultimate being with ultimate nothingness, but what makes this novel so disturbing is Mishima’s habitual connection of salvation with the human destructiveness that brings nothingness into the world.  Mizoguchi’s crime turns out to be his redemption. He’s finally encouraged to go forward with the deed by his memory of another orthodox Zen injunction repeated to him earlier in the novel by his philosophically inclined friend, Kashiwagi.

“Face the back, face the outside, and if ye meet, kill instantly!”
Yes the first sentence went like that.  The famous passage in that chapter of the Rinsairoku.  Then the remaining words emerged fluently: “When ye meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha! When ye meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor! When ye meet a disciple of the Buddha, kill the disciple! When ye meet your father and mother, kill your father and mother! When ye meet your kin, kill your kin!  Only thus will ye attain deliverance.  Only thus will ye escape the trammels of material things and become free.”  257-8

This is confirmed by the spiritual vacuity of all the Buddhist institutions and traditions the book portrays while strangely omitting any reference to the experience of meditation.  Such fiery iconoclasm also permeates the apocalyptic utterances of the old and new testament prophets, where Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jesus excoriate the traditional religious institutions and authorities of their times.

On the last page of the novel, as he sits on a mountain top watching the Temple burning below, Mizoguchi lights a cigarette.  For the first time in his life he feels good about himself and wants to go on living.

Mishima’s death-loving life and art are diametrically opposed to the gratitude and service centered values that I aspire to, but while reading the book, my revulsion sometimes yielded to wonder and even inspiration.   If I remain on the path that led to Japan and Hollyhock, I may be meeting him again along the road.

Even though it was expensive and too close to our recent international excursion and our upcoming family trips to Idaho and Canada, it was hard to resist such a perfectly taylored educational opportunity.  Adding to the appeal was the workshop’s setting at Hollyhock, a legendary place I’d never visited that could be reached with a six hour kayak trip across the Georgia Straight from our place in Lund. Three years ago I’d considered making the trip in November, but concluded it was imprudent.

Ruth wrote a welcome email to the registrants, inviting us to bring our favorite writing instruments and any projects we were working on. My previous writing workshop experiences–NEH seminars at Berkeley in 1989 and Yale in 1993–took their enduring value from the clearly formulated topics and publication goals I’d come with, but this time I have no such motive in mind. “What,” I ask, as the plane finally gets airborne at LAX, “do I want to bring back from this quest?” Hints of answers coalesce and dissolve like cream on the surface of coffee. A poem or two, some experiments with forms I’ve never tried, a sense of future direction, a commitment, an adventure story?

Just as Jan and I woke up, You-ki returned home from driving the youngsters to the Shin Osaka station and started preparing us a breakfast of omelette and fresh greens. We shared a little sadness at their departure but also an afterglow in the quiet. The kitchen stereo played Tibetan monk chant. You-ki spoke of the value of a slow pace in early morning and of her regular meditation schedule, particularly important during her Noh training regimen. Conversation alternated comfortably with silence.  There was a lot of eye contact.  It was Easter.  Tomorrow we would leave.  She said she would miss us.   Though we were sitting around a kitchen table drinking coffee, it felt like the way of tea.

Jan and I were to meet Stephen P. at Tennoji station for a day’s excursion to Nara, Japan’s earliest capital and the site of one of its most celebrated temple and garden preserves. When he called to say he’d be half an hour late, we roamed endless walkways above a busy surface traffic intersection and several underground levels of train and subway tracks.

Even in the midst of this staggering urban infrastructure, the cherry blossoms claimed their space.

The train was packed this beautiful Sunday at the height of sakura.  We were swept by the crowd up the long walk from the Nara station through an ugly downtown to the ancient city precincts.  The steps to the Kokuru temple lifted us into another world of ringing bells, clouds of incense, and freely wandering deer.

But soon we felt swamped by the uncharacteristic noise—motorcycles and trucks roaring in traffic on thoroughfares inexplicably routed through the middle of the park, power tools clanking in buildings covered with scaffolding, people shouting while picnicking and playing  Frisbee. Stephen mentioned that a friend had recommended going to Isuien gardens to escape the clamor. It was worth the long walk and hefty admission.

Coming through the gateway and around the teahouse a prospect opened like an unfolding screen.

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I wanted to just stop and stare at this perfect static panorama of pond and shore, hillock and isle, creek and bridge, tree and shrub, mountain and sky, light and shade–guarded at its center by a discreetly positioned residence of gods.  And yet I wanted even more to enter its openings, wander its pathways, mount its rises, descend into its hollows, hear its birds, smell its flowers, feel the flow of its moving waters.

We spent an exalted hour in what turned out to be a surprisingly small area, walled off in back from a busy boulevard that separated the garden from the temple in the view.  Driven by hunger we returned to the packed streets and located the restaurant recommended by Ryoko as a place to eat kudzu, a sweet made from the vine which, in the southern U.S., is feared as an invasive pest.  Over lunch Stephen told us of his impending plan to enroll in an online  Master’s Program leading to a degree that would allow him to teach English in a University in Japan providing a good job for an indefinite stay.

Fortified we headed uphill to the most famous attraction of Nara, Todaiji Temple, the world’s largest wooden building, which houses Daibutsu, the world’s largest statue of Buddha, both originally built in the eighth century, but since then reconstructed several times after earthquake and fire. As we approached Jan reminded me of the story of our old friend and my former student at Columbia, Taigen Dan, whose life was changed by an experience in the presence of the statue that led to his remaining in Japan for years, training as a Zen monk, publishing several translations of Zen classic texts into English, and founding his own thriving Zendo in Chicago.

The crowd was thicker than ever approaching the Temple’s outer gate but neither loud nor unruly.

At a cascade nearby children frolicked in a scene reminding me of the creek in San Luis Obispo’s Mission Plaza.

The outer gate introduced the scale of construction of the temple itself.

Even at a great distance, the wide-angle lens of my camera could not contain the whole building, whose image required multiple stitches.

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Though size seems to be the temple’s most prominent feature, its immense scale, like that of European cathedrals, is intended to produce the sensation of humility before the magnificence of the sublime in those who enter.  Notwithstanding my own scholarly claims about the intimidating psychology of priestly power, I enjoyed giving myself over to the very human grandeur of this edifice.

As we headed down the long route toward the train station passing close to Isuien gardens, I looked back at Todaiji and suddenly realized that the discreet centerpiece of the garden’s serene prospect was its roof viewed from a half mile away.

Stephen joined us for dinner with You-ki, who for the last time treated us all for a fine meal at a simple Chinese restaurant not far from her house owned by another friend.

After saying goodbye to Stephen at the train station, we returned to You-ki’s home and she brought out gifts she’d purchased that day for us to take back:  green tea, cups and a little pot, which I drink from now as I write. I staged a final picture with the camera on timer.

Jan gave her one of the boards that Kano had calligraphed for us:

One Life One Encounter.

Morning in Tomonoura greeted us with sunshine and a breakfast of fish, tempura and miso soup.  A cup of coffee in the lobby cost five dollars extra.  We wandered along the shore to the central harbor, watching some small fishboats return with the morning catch

and mingled with a group of Japanese tourists led by a guide through ancient shops offering artfully designed mysterious products. I asked a woman if the brazier over which she was boiling a pot held “ocha” (tea) and she laughed and pointed to a rack of medicinal saki bottles.  After tasting a sample we bought one for Stephen to take to Kayoko.

A tiny alley led to a steep stairway mounting a promontory above the harbor upon which stood a temple overlooking the offshore islands of the Inland sea.  Our guidebook said that the view from this spot was famously described by the sixteenth century Korean ambassador as the best in Japan.

The place was empty of people, a little run-down, but furnished with treasures everywhere the eye could rest.

In front of a little building beside the temple, a plaque in Japanese and English reported that this was the location of the juniper tree mentioned in a poem written by Otomo no Tabito in 731 and collected in the oldest existing anthology of Japanese poetry:

This juniper tree
Still stands at Tomo no ura
My wife is gone
Who once saw it too.

Heading inland through narrow alleys we found evidence of an older style of community: a hand pump for water on a corner

and a tiny hardware store, which Jan suggested might carry some of the small pruning tools I’d been looking for

Inside, the wizened old lady cramped behind a counter had no trouble understanding my sign language for saws and took me to a cabinet in the back holding a large selection at corner-store prices. For my son, I got an exact replica of the little springsteel foldup saw I’d bought in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1973 that he’s always coveted.  As I paid, her husband came out and gave us two tiny animals he’d carved out of bamboo, which we brought home for the grandsons.

Back toward the hills we entered the graveyard gardens of a temple and sat on the porch looking at its blossoming trees and listening to the chants coming from inside its locked doors.

We hiked a little further to a large Shinto shrine complex up the hill, drank coffee from a vending machine and noticed the boarded up but intact Noh theatre preserved on its grounds, wishing again that we could have a chance to watch You-ki perform.

By way of another temple complex and museum perched on a hillock in the middle of the village, we made our way back to the hotel and boarded the bus for Fukuyama and the return train to Osaka.

Back at Tennoji Station we were greeted by Ryoko, composed and serene in full kimono outfit, an island of wabi in the hubbub of commuters, shoppers and traffic.

She ushered us into a cab back to her mother’s house, where we would have some quiet time with her before meeting up with You-ki, Taylor and Marie who had gone together for the day to Kyoto, and with Emma and Travis, who had spent it shopping in Osaka.

We drank tea and told about our adventures in transportation and then learned something about Ryoko’s life.  Much less extroverted than her mother, she shared many of her graces.  She said she loved to dress in kimono whenever she could find an excuse.  She’d been spending a good deal of time with her father traveling back and forth to Jeju Island, the ancestral home of both sides of the family, where he was tending the ancestors’ graves and preparing his own.  If I understood correctly she said he was planning to retire from a career of working brutally long hours and to spend most of his time there.

Her husband too worked hard and long to support their family, which they hoped would soon be expanded.

Ryoko had learned Korean, both at home and while she lived in Korea studying at University and working at the Japanese consulate in Busan.  Now she taught Korean several hours a week.  She had also studied  English, which was evident in her speaking and writing.  Having seen the copy of my book translated into Japanese, she told me that she loved Shakespeare, especially A Midsummernight’s Dream, in which she had once taken a part.  I told her about the Max Rheinhardt 1930’s film version of the play whose operatic splendor I thought would appeal to her.

Our conversation was ended by a call from You-ki who told Ryoko where to meet  for dinner.  She drove her mother’s car to the middle of downtown through rush hour traffic that moved smoothly on the tollways, and got off near the most impressive building I had seen in Osaka.

“What’s that,” I asked, and she said, “the Hilton,” and pulled into the garage.  This was our rendezvous.  The ostentatious luxury of the atrium was the kind of thing that would both offend my egalitarian sensibilities and make me feel unworthy, but as our entourage assembled under the 30-story hanging sculpture following You-ki’s confident lead, I felt as if I belonged.

After only a day or two separation we all seemed to share the excitement of reunion.  The wine and beer flowed and the sushi kept coming until even the young men said enough.  After dinner You-ki insisted on arranging for a cab to take her and Jan and me along with Ryoko and the others in her car for a lengthy ride to Osaka Castle, which I proudly recognized, because of recently watching  Shogun, as the scene of the defeat of Lord Hideyoshi and the founding of the Tokugawa dynasty.

We got out briefly to admire the illuminated  moat and then dropped Ryoko off at the station. There was no compunction about her taking the subway home across town dressed as she was.

Back at her house, You-ki brought out more wine, though never wetting her lips with alcohol, and suggested that we contine the party with a three part musical “collaboration.”  This was even more out of my league than sushi in the Hilton.  I gulped down my drink and for fifteen minutes felt like an undeserving soul awakening in paradise.

Afterwards You-ki sang us some of the unearthly songs she performed in her various Noh roles.

She brought out her own masks, which appeared as striking and precious as those we’d seen in the museum.

She gave Jan instruction on holding the Noh drum.

By 12:30 I was ready to turn in, but Travis and Emma spent another hour packing their bags for their next day’s voyage to visit her grandmother in Hokkaido.

I woke up in time to watch sunrise paint the distant mainland pastel pink and the beach just below fluorescent orange.

While meditating, I felt a serenity that recalled moments by the stove in the morning before our young children started stirring for the day. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that the wind had come up and a small boat was coming ashore.

Four men walked down a little gangplank, two dressed in the white flowing robes and black headdresses of Shinto priests.  They stuck  cut saplings into the sand, but only through the telescopic viewfinder on my little camera could I see what else they were up to: making an offering of small dishes, bowing and praying.

Then, leaving one man behind at the boat, the others walked off down the beach and disappeared behind a row of trees.

I felt as if the ritual had been carried out just for my benefit, an invitation to the great Itsukushima shrine we were about to visit.  After fifteen minutes back they marched, climbed into the boat and headed out into the waves.

The ryokan hotel ushered the six of us out punctually at 10:00 A.M.  We checked bags at the ferry terminal and mingled with the crowds browsing the dense cluster of shops and restaurants that by now was an expected adjunct of every large temple.

We made no effort to resist taking portraits framed by familiar features of the floating shrine.

Promenading along its winding wooden arcades suspended above the high tide reminded me of the dreamlike sensation of wandering in Venice.  Here too there were arched bridges, tree-lined canals, and plazas that opened on an unending succession of towers and altars.

The shrine’s identifying artifact was a rice paddle, supposedly invented here.  As I took a photo of Jan buying several of these wooden gifts packed in beautiful boxes for only two dollars each from a pretty young monk, one of her colleagues exclaimed “no pictures please,” and  I felt ashamed but triumphant.

The three couples went separate ways and kept reassembling with wondrous exclamations: Look at that…and that…and that…

However we had a schedule to follow.  We stopped for a lunch of the local specialty—a kind of cabbage omelet.

Marie gave Jan a lesson in reading kanji instead of paying attention to the hour, so  back in Hiroshima we missed the Shinkasen that would take the two of us to Fukuyama in time to catch the hotel shuttle heading for our anniversary hideaway in Tomonoura. Emma phoned and told them we’d catch the next train forty minutes later, they said OK, but when Jan and I got there, no shuttle was to be found. Instead, Stephen’s friend Kayoko, who’d made the reservation, phoned us extremely upset to say the hotel phoned her to say they wouldnt wait. We assured her we could find the way ourselves.  This was the only time during the trip we’d been left to our own devices, and I enjoyed trying with sign language to get five people on the bus to interpret between us and the driver, who couldn’t understand that we simply wanted to get off at the last stop.

Our destination, which we’d selected from the guidebook a couple of months earlier, was Tomo no ura, a small village on the coast. We learned from an internet site that this last well-preserved ancient port had  been slated for large-scale demolition by a government plan to run a highway and bridge project through its center and was recently rescued by efforts of local activists.

Fish fresh from the incoming boats were displayed on the sidewalks skewered through the eyes, eagles fluttered  above the docks, small wooded islands just offshore paraded in front of one another as we walked along the embankment, and little temples and gardens perched on rock outcrops thrusting above the street.

The hotel, along with several others built in the 1960’s, was out of scale, and its jagged rectangular profile disrupted the rest of the village’s waterfront views, but our room’s was unimpeded.  Dinner was specialties of the region—at least eight varieties of fish: raw, smoked, dried, barbequed, spiced, pickled and sweetened.  We found the rubbery-slimey texture of baby squid beyond our tolerance, but we ate everything else including julienned and sauteed jellyfish, which tasted a bit like grilled onions. Bathing in the hotspring tubs on the top floor deck brought our festive day to luxurious conclusion.

We gladly deferred to Emma and Marie for planning our overnight excursion together.  I didn’t expect that of all possible places they’d choose Hiroshima. We were to take the train to the Atomic Bomb Memorial in the morning and then in the late afternoon continue on to the Isle of Miyajima, whose Tori gate in the water was as familiar a tourist icon as Mt. Fuji.

Before we left, You-ki worked on healing Marie’s headache with a little tool she’d been given by her “shaman” and gave me and Jan a pungent herb concoction from her acupuncturist to clear our sinuses.

She insisted on escorting the six of us in two cabs to the ShinOsaka station and on treating us to breakfast.  Jan ordered the specialty of the house, which lived up to its name, Morning Dog.

When we arrived in Hiroshima it was raining, fitting weather for this destination. Stepping off the trolley we came upon the restored ruin of a large building that had miraculously escaped incineration at ground zero, surrounded by posters and engraved stones that told some of the story.

I walked away from the others to experience fully the heaviness of this place: the destruction of a city, the agony of men, women and children who’d been bombed, the ruthlessness of those who’d inflicted it, the national aggression that brought it on, the sadness of all those who’d come to it afterward.

I felt the history of our parents’ generation converging here with the generation of our children.  Jan’s purebred American mother and father, who met in the war against Germany and Japan, bearing one child who married the son of German refugees, and another who married a woman from Japan. Both linked families had themselves been victims in their homelands, mine as Jews persecuted by Hitler, Emma and Marie’s grandparents as Korean nationals kidnapped by the Emperor, their grandmother eyewitnessing both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Straddling the river, a sprawling complex of gardens and heavy concrete monuments extended in all directions.  In the distance stood the Museum, two blocky gray buildings joined by an elevated upper story suspended for 100 yards between them.  We joined busloads of other visitors streaming into a darkened hall filled with dioramas of the incinerated city, film loops of atomic explosions and display cases with posters showing Hiroshima’s past history and a chronology of the war. A mournful symphonic dirge repeated relentlessly on the P.A.

I found myself focusing more on the exhibit’s sanitizing of Japanese war crimes than on its graphic and strangely redundant representations of local suffering.

My curiosity was piqued by the brackets surrounding parts of the story of the Nanking massacre, whose recurrent Japanese denials I remembered had caused international outrage, similar to that produced by Holocaust deniers.

The tears warranted by this pilgrimage were finally released by accounts of the decision-making process of American leaders.

I found the exhibits of Hiroshima’s citizens’ fifty five year commitment to work for international nuclear disarmament genuinely inspiring.

One of them recalled the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which I lived through in terror during my senior year in college. I wondered how facing this evidence of the folly of military-industrial-political influence in the world was affecting the young people whose futures it could determine.

After three hours at the memorial and museum, the six of us agreed to move on and the rain stopped.  We trollied back to the train station, bought snacks and a bottle of whiskey, and horsed around till the departure for Miyajima.

The ferry approached the island in the late afternoon mist and the young people took advantage of low tide to walk to the Tori gate to place coins on it for good luck.

Jan and I checked into the hotel fronting a secluded bay on the other side of the landing.

Three adjoining rooms were reserved for the three couples, and we passed the bottle of Scotch back and forth across balconies while waiting for dinner to be served in another room next door.

There we reveled as the sun went down and then happily retired to our mats.

Maya sent us off in a taxi this morning on a home visit along with Nita and Janet, our fellow Californians, and an envelop containing her phone number and the hotel’s, the address of our destination, and 5 new 1000 yen bills to pay the fare.

We were let out at a non-descript looking house in a dense residential neighborhood and invited in with broad smiles by a couple carrying umbrellas and signing to remove shoes. “My name is Kane, like Citizen Kane,” laughed the host. “This is my wife Akiko, who speaks no English.”

He led us down a narrow corridor to the formal tatami reception room and immediately out the back door to the garden, where we donned slippers for the first stage of the tour. It was like a miniature Kenrokuen, packed with striking rocks, artfully shaped trees, stone lanterns, winding pathways and several water features.

The rocks, he informed us, were purchased from a garden supply store and delivered with a crane from the back alley.  The larger trees were pruned by professionals and he handled the shrubs and delicate bonsais. Behind a screen was his flower and vegetable garden and across the alley, Akiko grew 100 varieties of prize-winning roses.

Back in the parlor we sat around the table in low chairs and Akiko brought green tea and a sweet wrapped in a pickled cherry leaf.

We each were presented with gifts: a lovely ceramic cup and a CD about Japanese cooking, and in turn presented what we had brought, in our case the wrapped Trader Joe’s chocolate bar seeming not quite up to par.

Kano passed out his card and asked us where we were from. When he heard California, he laughed and told us that he recently returned from San Diego, where he went in his capacity as a Rotarian District Leader.  Jan replied that she too was a Rotarian and from her purse dug out a pin in the shape of a sushi roll she’d been given at a convention by a delegate from Japan  and handed it to him.  I was relieved.  He laughed louder than ever and gave Akiko a command in Japanese.  She returned with a plate full of Rotary pins that he passed out to everybody.

After tea, he stood up and showed us a beautiful scroll in the alcove painted by his calligraphy teacher.

He explained the meaning of the kanji, which included a maxim on the importance of humility—“not like George W. Bush for example,” he laughed. Jan and I laughed loudly with him and Nita and Janet smiled politely. He would return to making derogative remarks about our former president several times during the visit.

Next he moved to the elaborate Buddhist altar in another corner of the room, flanked by antique looking photos of his and Akiko’s parents.

We’d earlier learned that the production of these altars, popular throughout Japan was a traditional Kanazawa industry. “Very expensive,” he said. It was purchased by his mother with money from a life insurance policy. He explained various implements on the altar, including a book of prayers sung every morning. At Jan’s request he chanted one.

I could have listened for a long time.  Then he placed our gifts on the altar, “as an offering,” he stated.

Led now into the western-style portion of the house, we entered a family room adjoining the kitchen, containing computer, TV, and an American short-haired cat. “I’m a horse maniac,” he laughed, pointing to paintings of horses decorating the walls. “I drew them.” Other horse portraits were done in needlepoint by Akiko. Across a tiny enclosed garden was the adjoining unit now inhabited by his son’s family, including grandchildren.  Back out in the chilly vestibule he gestured toward a large wooden frieze of carved horses.  “I did those too.”

Then up the steep stairs to a former child’s room housing more horse paraphernalia, Akiko’s gold medals for roses, and above the door a little Shinto shrine. “This is for prayers of hope, the other one for thanksgiving.  Here we pray for peace, long life, health, and a little bit of money, not too much.  Remember humility.  Also for the Emperor and his family.  They are the oldest royal family in the world.”

Next he conducted us to the bedroom, where futons are pulled out of the closet and placed on the floor at night.  “The cat sleeps between us,” he laughed.  “Keeps us from making babies.”

Ignoring Nita’s concern that we get back to our hotel in time, he said “Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control,” and led us to a high-ceilinged office, where formerly he conducted his real-estate business, now his son’s.  He and Akiko ushered us to sit on leather couches around another low table and she brought more tea—this time a combination of hibiscus, rose hips and strawberry—“lots of vitamin C”–and delicate rice cookies. As we sipped, he took out his calligraphy set and effortlessly inked four characters on white cards bordered in gold leaf, one for each of us.

“The kanji signify this,” he explained. “‘One life, One encounter.’  It’s a Buddhist saying that applies to what has just taken place in this house.”  The room was silenced by the resonance of that proverb in that moment.

After a pause, I mentioned that it expresses how I feel about every class that I teach.  Nita said she’s been on fifteen home visits with OAT, but this has been the best. Akiko brought in elegant little shopping bags to pack up our gifts.

The cab was now waiting, and as he led us out the door of the office, Kano said, “this is most important,” and pointed to a fuzzy picture of a bunch of people in suits. His and Akiko’s faces were recognizable in the crowd.  In the foreground a distinguished gray-haired man was bowing.

“Who is that,” he asked?  Jan said, “Is it the prince?”  “No,” he said, “that’s the Emperor.”  He’d been at a meeting of the equestrian society to which the emperor belongs, where taking pictures was forbidden, but his friend snapped this one and then ran away, “like a papparazzi.”

Back to the hotel we zipped to meet Maya and the rest of the group and off to the train to Kyoto. On the way the sun came out briefly and made a rainbow over lake Biwa.

Jan and I read and reread the Kabuki play’s summary downloaded from the internet without full comprehension, since it was a sequel with many allusions to earlier scripts. The cab driver from the Kyoto station remarked on the theatre’s name we showed him with approval and said, “Empera here.”  Deploying her six-word vocabulary in Japanese,  Jan said “Sakura,” meaning Cherry blossoms. The driver nodded emphatically.  On the way along the river, we could see them in glorious bloom, about two weeks earlier than usual. Cherry blossoms in Kyoto is the number one attraction in Japan according to our authoritative Lonely Planet guidebook.  Anthony said our tour was $2000 cheaper than the one during the expected Sakura period.

We arrived at the beautiful old theatre about 30 minutes late, but the tickets were waiting at the box office.

We rushed upstairs to our seats in the last row of the top balcony.  The set was brilliantly lit and colored—a stylized version of the cherry blossom scene outside, itself a stylized version of a natural landscape.

The sets changed magically—one of the attractions of Kabuki—as did the costumes of the lead actor who played seven roles, both male and female.  There was lots of action, some of which we understood, including the accidental murder of the queen and the escape of the well-meaning perpetrator through a stormy sea created by windblown silk banners.

During our hasty entry I saw no prohibition on picture taking, so I snapped a few with the flash down, but an usher dashed upstairs to ask me please to stop.  Now I was paparazzi.

At the first intermission, we bought delicious sushi in a Styrofoam bento box, joining the other audience members in getting nourishment during the four and a half hour performance.  We were the only Caucasians in sight. The next act may have explained why. The set was a dimly lit scene in a humble  farmhouse.  The assassin was told of his error by the visiting courtier who deceived him earlier and who placed a sword in front of him.  For the next hour, the disgraced murderer lamented his dishonor and worked up to committing seppuku with the sword, in the presence of his blind albino child and his grieving sister. As they wept beside him, he did the deed, and it took the next 50 minutes of his incomprehensible groaning for him to finally die.

The remainder of the sushi tasted especially good at the next intermission, which was followed by a short final act, which included a swordfight ballet, brilliant acrobatics, the ascent of a ghost in a beautiful kimono to heaven, two more relatively brief seppukus, and the final vaporizing of the ghost as a result of the Emperor’s flashing it with a small image of Buddha.

Light from the rising sun pours into the sixth floor window of our ryokan perched on a steep slope inside the crater of Hakone.  Beneath it a ring of peaks is broken by the river valley that opens into the sea.  I drink green tea from a cup on a wooden coaster, brewed on the low table next to the futons where we slept and I lay wakeful for a good part of the night, overstimulated with impressions and still not adjusted to the seventeen hours lost by travel across the Pacific. I’m dressed in the elegant cotton yukata I wore to dinner last night and to the hot sulfur baths where I soaked yesterday afternoon and this morning at 5.

Our second day in was largely taken up with bus travel through heavy but smoothly flowing traffic in Tokyo streets and on expressways and tightly curved mountain roads during this Spring Equinox holiday weekend.

The transit time was enlivened by the variety of unfamiliar landscapes and the continuous offerings provided by our beautiful and hard working guide Maya.  She lectured on geography, history, linguistics, geology, cuisine and etiquette, using maps, color handouts, flip cards, little cheat sheets, and mnemonic songs.  I learned, and immediately forgot, basic greetings, numbers, some written Japanese characters, and a jingle in tribute to Mt Fuji.

After driving for an hour south from Tokyo through a dense urban world—all buildings outside the center appearing recent, angular, drab but clean–we suddenly entered a landscape of forested mountains, river valleys, little villages and artfully bordered rice patties. The brown pre-spring vegetation was offset by patches of evergreen and a few groves of plum blossoms. The expressway rest stop buzzed with vacationers, food vendors and souvenir hawkers.

First destination was Mt. Fuji, which the bus ascended to station 5 at about 7000 feet.  This is the busy trailhead for thousands of summer hikers who climb the remaining 5000 feet to the summit, a pilgrimage that Japanese expect to make at least once in a lifetime. We got off the bus and entered the crowd battling the cold wind. Away from the parking lot the ground was covered with snow and ice, but eventually we came upon an observation platform sheltered from the gale where one could get a clear view of the summit, which occasionally appeared from behind a streaming shroud of snow and cloud. Despite the buses and multistory tourist facilities, the place felt like a real and dangerous mountain.

After fifteen minutes we were ushered back on the bus for a ride to the Fuji information center near the northern base. The clearing skies allowed for a classic view of the graceful cone whose shape was familiar to me since early childhood from stamps and world puzzles as the icon of Japan.

It would have been nice to slow down and pay homage for a while, but the wind remained strong, the museum beckoned and the schedule pressed us forward. As the bus headed south, through the windows we caught fleeting glimpses of this huge image of unalterable perfection always changing before our eyes. Maya recited the proverb: watch Fuji for ten minutes and you get a hundred views.

Another stint in the bus brought us to Hakone, to the world of onsen–hot springs–and ryokan–traditional rooms.  Still under the spell of  the mountain, we opened the door to a space whose first impression was comparably familiar and overwhelming: the austere beauty of unfinished planed lumber framing large panels of wall and small panels of translucent rice paper, the tightly woven tatami mats, hard yet springy to the touch, their moldings of embroidered blue silk, the low black table and cushioned floor seats, all waiting for the hotel porter, who arrived just behind us with a pot of hot tea he placed inside a round laquered  box containing ceramic cups, wooden coasters and a coiled towel in a basket. He smiled, bowed, and disappeared, silently sliding the doors and leaving us to partake undistracted in the room’s celebration of squares, rectangles and circles.

After a quiet cup of tea, we changed clothes to prepare for the baths. The protocol was inculcated by the guidebook’s instruction, Maya’s gentle admonitions, and posters on the wall in English as well as Japanese.  There are two baths, one on either side of the elevator on the first floor, the red curtained for women, the green for men.  The designation alternates daily, marked by the changing of the curtain.  Yukatas and slippers supplied in the rooms are worn in the hotel, removed and stowed in the sink area and locker room outside the inner curtain and sliding door leading to the tubs.  Passing through them naked, I found a steam-filled chamber, to one side the three foot deep pool into which the mineral water flows continually, to the other a row of booths, each with a shelf holding a dozen or so bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body soaps and lotions in front of a full size mirror.

Several of the booths were occupied by men sitting on low plastic stools, assiduously scrubbing themselves with washcloths and brushes and then rinsing off with the hand-held showers attached to plumbing fixtures on the floor between their legs.  I followed their example to get clean before entering the pool, and then stepped into the bath and leaned against the wall near the inlet, where a stream of the extremely hot water from the thermal source mixed with a smaller stream of cold to maintain a tolerable temperature. I enjoyed the familiar sensation of pain and stiffness draining from my joints, especially knuckles and knees, and the occasional change in water temperature resulting from some subterranean valve adjustment.

Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to get out but the men in the booths were still busily scrubbing. After two baths in the deep tub and using the advanced toilet appliance in the Tokyo hotel, I’d already felt unusually clean before entering this chamber.  What in the world could these guys be doing?  But then I remembered the requirement to leave shoes at the door, the little cloth in the tea set, the damp towel offered with meals and the face masks worn by people on the street, and I realized that citizens of this tightly packed country had reason to make a cult of hygiene.

Light-headed after the day’s ascent and immersion, upon entering the banquet room I again felt overwhelmed–this time by the the traditional Japanese dinner panoply spread at my seat.  A dozen dishes each of a different shape, color and material held  elaborate combinations of artfully processed ingredients. I can picture a small wooden box with a plunger which required me to press a block of green-tea tofu into 20 sharp edged tiny blocks that tumbled into a bowl of misu soup containing scallions and buckwheat noodles, but the rest of the details are lost to memory since I didnt take pictures and neglected to keep the menu.  The second night’s dinner was equally complex without repeating any dishes or ingredients:

After this feast we turned down Maya’s invitation to watch a video of “Lost in Translation” and retired to our lodging. During dinner it had been converted from parlor to bedroom, the table moved aside and two futons covering the tatami mats made up with flower-patterned down quilts showing through a large oval window in their fitted sheets.

It’s been five years since Jan and I traveled abroad, my retirement began, and I started writing this blog.  Japan was the next destination on our list because we were attracted by what we knew of its culture–haiku, sashimi, kabuki, Toyota–and because we hoped to spend some time there with our nieces, Emma and Marie, whose mother is Japanese-Korean.  The nieces had gotten married and engaged within the last year and wanted to introduce their partners to the family, so the time had arrived to coordinate plans.  Jan and I would go on a ten-day guided tour of “Japan’s Cultural Treasures” and meet them afterward for a few days together in Osaka, where it happened a friend of ours from San Luis Obispo had been living for three years.  Once we decided our schedule, I contacted Kazumi Yamagata, an eminent scholar of English Literature who’d translated my book on Shakespeare and the Bible into Japanese, and he invited us to visit him and his family at home outside of Tokyo the day before the tour  started.

After 24 hours of travel and a good night’s sleep we were met at our hotel by a disciple of Dr. Yamagata who conducted us through the maze of downtown Tokyo to Central station where we met one of his disciples and boarded the bullet train for an hour’s trip north to the Professor’s home.

These men all teach English literature and were relatively easy for us to communicate with.  Kazumi’s wife, Satchiko, met us at the station in their daughter’s Jaguar and drove us to their  country home, where were we received warmly by the mentor, who’d turned 76 the day before.  We spent time gossiping about English literary critics, I signed their copies of his translation, and Kazumi brought out fourteen volumes of his collected works recently published–a minor portion of the 50 books that he’s written.

He was pleased when Jan mentioned that she’d written her M.A. thesis on Dante, who he’s now translating into Japanese.

After a couple of hours, they took us to a traditional restaurant in their neighborhood where we ate large quantities of melt-in-your-mouth and melt-you-away sashimi and tempura.

Then back to their house for tea and a tour of his study, and a visit with their daughter, Yumi, who’d just arrived from a concert she’d performed at in southern Japan.  Jan got to know her better than I did, but as her flute played quietly on the stereo in the background, they brought out gifts for us including a new CD of her work.

We toured their garden, where the same plants that we’d eaten in the tempura were springing up, plum blossoms in the background.

We returned to Tokyo in time to meet up with our tour group led by Maya, our striking and gracious guide. We marched together to a little dive for yakitori dinner and then home to this “modest” hotel, one of the best I’ve ever stayed in, that has a toilet with two different kinds of sprays for one’s undercarriage, along with a really deep bathtub.

February 28 2010

Ruth’s 90th Birthday

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