わかりません

Language is a funny thing.  English dates to the 5th Century.  The emergence of modern English took place sometime in the 15th Century.   Little is known of prehistoric Japanese, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th Century.  It was basically a sibling of Chinese until almost the 13th Century.  So both of these languages have been spoken in some form for more than a thousand years.  

Let's consider cooking over a thousand year period: open fire, stone oven, cast iron stove, electric coil oven, microwave.  Or transportation: walking, rowing, sailing, ocean liner, jet airplane.  Massive developments here.  Why is language something that evolves so incredibly slowly, if at all?  Why do we cling to centuries old spelling and grammar rules that make absolutely no sense?  What's worse, we know they make no sense.  Can you imagine Mercedes-Benz refusing to modify their 1886 automobile?  "Vell, maybe vee just add za horn, ja."  It's absurd.

I've hit a wall in Japanese class.  Or rather, I've become a wall.  The lessons are bouncing off of me like rainwater against glass.  Nothing is seeping in.  I'm not retaining anything anymore (if I ever was).  Slowly I'm falling behind in class.  I'm frustrated and I want to tell someone, the Minister of Language, or some scholarly gatekeeper of Japanese, "This language is impossibly complicated.  Can't you please do something about it?"

Part of me wants to say fuck it, and quit.  I get no joy from these lessons.  In fact, they are a source of stress for me.  But I know, if I stay in Japan, I will be forever outside if I can't speak the language, the lazy expatriate skimming across the surface of the country in which he/she resides.  I want to prove not only to myself that I can do it, that I can learn this impenetrable language, but to the sensei, who I am sure at this point thinks I am hopeless. My name has a distinct inflection of disappointment now when she speaks to me, and the look on her face is one of concerned anguish, "Oh, Robert-san.  How will you ever make it in this world?"

I honestly wonder if I haven't developed some kind of learning disability.  (sigh)

Fushimi Inari Taisha

I did some research before coming to Kyoto.  And the 12-hour flight from Los Angeles allowed me plenty of time to dive into the guidebooks.  Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine was on my list, really based only on a photo I'd seen.  It looked cool.  I had no idea of the scale - more than 5,000 torii (gates) spaced only a foot or two apart - nor the locale - a steep mountainside just south of the city. 

The first set of brilliant vermillion colored gates is just steps from the honden (main shrine building).  There was a grip of tourists cameras and smiles at the ready.  I took a few photos myself because I thought this was it, 40, maybe 50 gates.  I entered.  I walked along, thinking this is pretty cool, despite the dozens of other people crowding the path.  There is a strange sense of movement once you begin your journey.  It is something like an automobile or train tunnel, except that it is not pitch black.  Daylight streams through the gates and you get the odd sensation of a zoetrope, light flickering, rapid broken motion.  It is weirdly cinematic.

I came to the end of the path of gates.  Oh, wow, there's more.  I continued along.  That set of gates ended and another began.  Then another.  And another.  And another.  With each new set of gates the climb up the mountainside grew more steep.  The number of tourists dropped off sharply as the level path gave way to stairs.  My excitement was growing with each new group of gates.  How many more could there be?  The mountains were cool and quiet, the path shaded in dense trees.  There was a lovely little stream that followed the gates (or visa versa), and little tea houses along the way for the less fit to stop and rest.  I raced ahead, heart and lungs pumping.

I reached the top and was rewarded for my efforts with an amazing view of Kyoto.

I heard somewhere that painting the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco takes so long, that by the time the workers reach the other end they must begin again.  Repairing and painting the gates at Fushimi Inari Taisha is a more daunting task, I think.  But it is much less methodical.  It seems to be done simply as needed.  So there are stretches of bright red-orange gates that were recently painted, followed by pale pinkish colored gates that have been faded by the sun.  There are also gaps where gates have fallen or been removed.  Only stumps of decomposing wood or crumbling concrete footings remain.  It was incredible to see the difference in paint color, to see the footings from centuries ago versus the more recent repairs, to see the rotting remains of pillars where nature had taken over.  This was a never-ending job that would keep a dozen or more people employed for their entire life.

Kinmokusei 金木犀

I have become a bit obsessed with this tree in Japan called Kinmokusei (金木犀), also known as sweet olive.  It is a species of Osmanthus native to Asia.  It has a small, clustered, orange-yellow flower that blooms in late summer and autumn.  (I'm not a botanist; I looked this up.)  Perhaps because of the extraordinarily warm debut to autumn here in Kyoto it is blooming late.  

The fragrance from these flowers really is intoxicating, and I'm not one that normally uses such a term unless it is in reference to alcohol.  I've never smelt anything like it.  It is described as ripe peaches or apricots, but for me it is something sort of like a gardenia.  I first noticed not the tree, but the scent at the Manpuku-ji Temple last month.  I couldn't quite pinpoint the plant in the temple garden from which this delicious smell was coming, so I let it go.  For all I knew maybe it was the laundry detergent of the monks.

I caught a whiff of the same sweet bouquet a few more times on the street in passing.  It seemed as the weather finally began to cool this heavenly scent became more prominent.  It was everywhere.  I had to know what it was.  Like a crazy person, or a dog, I began sniffing around.  I finally figured out that it was coming from this small, not really beautiful tree.  Now I knew the source, but I still didn't know what it was called.  Mineko solved the mystery after I sent this photo to her.

I love Kyoto for many different reasons.  Now I have one more, for its sweet sweet smell in October.

Pride of Kyoto

Oh, the beautiful game.  It makes me smile, even gives me the chills no matter what continent I'm on, no matter what the competition is.  I love the atmosphere of a live football match; there is something universal about the experience.  There is a certain sound, a certain smell, a certain sensation.  There is no mistaking it for any other sporting event.

Today I watched Kyoto Sanga FC battle Consadole Sapporo in the second division of the J-League.  Sanga is currently third in the table fighting for promotion into the top division with only four matches left in the season.   

I arrived by bus at Nishikyogoku Stadium on the western edge of Kyoto, about an hour from Uji-City.  I could hear the fans singing inside as I approached.  I didn't have a lot of time before kickoff, so I picked up my ticket (courtesy of Footy Weekends) then gulped down a beer and some kind of beef stew that was mostly fat and gristle.

The 20k + stadium was not full, but the crowd was lively, especially in the supporters section behind the goal.  This made me happy.  The Japanese in general are an extremely well-mannered people.  I feared a Japanese football match would be something like tennis or golf, the crowd clapping politely and nodding approval from their seats.  This section was an ocean of purple (Sanga's colors), singing and chanting, clapping, waving giant flags, twirling scarves.  They only stopped to sit during halftime.

There are certain football songs and chants that transcend the boundaries of nations and language.  There were a few sung by the Sanga faithful during the match that I recognized, my favorite being the Frankie Valli song "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" with the refrain "I love you baby/and if it's quite all right/I need you baby/to warm my lonely night" etc.  Of course the lyrics have been altered for the club and are in Japanese.  It is always funny to hear modified pop songs sung by a giant crowd of football fans; it is even better when that familiar song is in another language.  Something I did note was, as best I could tell, the opposing fans do not taunt one another the way they do in England and the European leagues.  The Japanese are too polite, I suppose.

The final score was  two-nil, Kyoto Sanga.  A good result.  After the match the players came to the supporters section and bowed, that quintessential Japanese display of respect.  The quality of football played by a J-2 club is never going to match that of the English Premiere League, but it is a joy to watch footballers playing for honor and glory rather than a giant paycheck.  Have I found a new club?  Hmm.

Defining modern and contemporary art

The first thing you have to do when you arrive in Japan, or I suppose anywhere in Asia, is throw out everything you know about anything.  Just leave it all on the airplane you just exited.  It simply does not apply.  If you've grown up in North America or Europe, history, culture, customs, language are all taught and learned from our own perspective.  Math and science may be the only commonalities as 2 + 2 is always 4 no matter what continent you live on.

Japan has an incredible history of art dating back more than a thousand years and I can say honestly without exaggeration I really know almost nothing about it.  As an artist this is a bit embarrassing.  But I am keen to learn.  Apparently there was no word for "art" in Japanese until the 19th Century.  The beautiful paintings and exquisite objets that are now part of museum collections around the country were simply things that craftsmen made.  It had no elevated status, as these same sort of things did in the West.

In America and Europe "modern" generally refers to avant-garde art produced in the first half of the 20th Century by the likes of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, etc.  After visiting the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art I think Japan might have a different definition.  

I had gone to see an exhibition called "Reading Cinema, Finding Words: Art After Marcel Broodthaers."  This was a really good show like what you would expect to find at MoMA in New York City.  Afterwards I wandered through the permanent collection.  I was sort of amazed and a tad disappointed to find paintings from the 1980s that looked like they might have been done in the 1880s or even 1680s.  The galleries were full of realistic pictures in watercolor and oil of birds and trees and kimono-clad women on scrolls or screens.  Was this Japanese neo-realism?  Why are these included in the collection of the Kyoto Modern?  This is probably me applying my Western ideas of modern art to Japan.  Maybe for a Japanese visitor to the museum, these pieces are radically different from traditional painting of past centuries.  I couldn't see the difference because I am outside the culture.

Before going to the museum I was at a cool contemporary art gallery on Sanjo Dori.  What did I see there?  Beautifully rendered watercolor landscapes.  Again I was sort of dumbfounded.  These paintings were really good, but so terribly conventional.  Where, I wondered, is the new school of Japanese artists that have dismantled their history, turned it on its head or tossed it on the dustheap.  I know they exist.  Maybe Kyoto is too traditional and conservative for really cutting-edge art.  Maybe it is elsewhere, in Tokyo or Osaka.  Or maybe Japan, like Italy or Greece, is sort of stuck in its glorious past.

What does this mean for me as I pursue my own art career in this great city?  Will I break the Kyoto art world wide open and be celebrated or will I completely confound them and be railroaded out of town? 

New directions

So, in case you thought my time is Kyoto was all meditating in temple gardens and drinking matcha and sake, this is to show you I've been working too.  Here are a couple of paintings I've completed since arriving in Kyoto.  You can see more on my website: www.rscottwallace.com.  I welcome your comments: "whoa, what the hell is this?!", "hmm, interesting", "holy crap, these are amazing", etc.

Ryoanji: notes and impressions

60 second meditation

Moss as thick as carpet.  Shades of gray and green.  Glistening with rain water.  Coniferous sculpting.  Simultaneously wild and manicured.  Gravel crunch.  The smell of evening rain.  Finding alone.  Arboreal life support.  Growing darkness.

Musing

ware tada taruu shiru (freedom from greed ensures a peaceful life)

- Mitsukuni Mito (徳川 光圀) (1628 - 1700)
Neo-Confucianist daimyō (feudal lord) who founded the Mito school of historical, moral and political thought.

Missing something

Disclaimer.
Anyone that has known me for any length of time knows that I am a bit of a nonconformist.  Not in a militant anarchist or hippy drop-out way.  I don't have any tattoos, I don't own a leather jacket, I don't ride a motorcycle.  But I have never been one to do what everyone else is doing, go where everyone else is going.  When I travel I like to go where I want to go, not where I am "supposed" to go.  I have guide books and I use them, but I prefer to discover things as they happen to appear.  I prefer the dérive, the sort of drifting theory developed by Guy Debord in Paris in the mid 1950s.

So, disclaimer in place I am going to say something that may be shocking to my friends from Kyoto.  I was not terribly impressed by Kinkaku-ji (The Golden Pavilion).  As a designated World Cultural Heritage Site and Kyoto's most iconic structure I was expecting to be blown away.  This is a must-see; one cannot come to Kyoto and not visit the Golden Pavilion.  Was I not dazzled because it was gray and rainy?  Has temple fatigue set in?  I don't know, I don't think so.  

Before I am deported I will say I liked it.  It is elegant, even delicate, in a way other temples are not.  But despite being covered in 50kg of gold leaf, I did not find it spectacular.  I won't say it is gaudy, but it is ostentatious.  Maybe that's it.  
Like Nijo Castle, it was swarmed with tourists, even in the rain.  We were guided through the grounds, given cues for taking photos, and sold something every 30 or 40 yards.  It could be that.
There is the pavilion, of course, but not a lot else to see on the strictly managed path.  
That could also be it.  Or maybe I'm just missing something.

I find when I'm at places where the tour buses are lined up and everyone is snapping photos like mad - the exact same photo - I ask myself, because I can't ask the other tourists, why have you come here?  Are you seeing Kinkaku-ji, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, or are you just checking off the not-to-be-missed sights in your guide book?  Here I am at ______________ (fill in the blank); here's a photo to prove I was there.  But why?  What does it mean that you were here?  Does it matter?  

The existential tourist.

Toyohari

Visiting the doctor is never a pleasant experience, even one you know well and have been seeing for 10 or 20 years.  Going to a doctor in a foreign country is even more disagreeable.  Depending on your fluency in the native tongue, it can be not only frustrating but scary.

I have a bad back.  From time to time it bothers me.  In 2009, on the recommendation of my dear friend Simone I began seeing an acupuncturist (Marc Passman) in New York City to treat the pain.  It worked, and I've avoided Western doctors for this kind of thing ever since.

A few weeks ago when I was experiencing back pain here in Kyoto, I thought, let me find an acupuncturist.  This is Japan; acupuncture is not "alternative" or "Eastern" medicine here, it's just what they do.  I found one with the help of Mineko.

I went to a local clinic here in Uji-City.  I was a little nervous.  Not because I don't know what acupuncture entails, but because I knew I really couldn't communicate what exactly was wrong, why I had come to see them.  Mineko had given them a brief history of my back problems and explained the pain I was currently having, but this was second-hand information delivered by telephone from another continent.  They were going to have questions for me.  Of course. 

In the West, acupuncture is a close cousin to a health spa.  That is, it is extremely pleasant, calming, quiet, relaxing.  It is nothing like a doctor's office.  There is a great deal of thought that goes into the design and decoration.  Unlike a traditional doctor's office it is a place you enjoy visiting.  There is Asian art, and books on healing; there is soft (albeit sometimes clichéd New Age) music playing, maybe incense burning; the lighting is warm and low.  

The acupuncture clinic in Uji-City was nothing like that.  It was something like walking into a physical therapy center, more casual than a proper doctor's office, but more clinical than my description above.  There is little or no privacy; it is pretty much a communal experience.  All the conversations of the other doctors and patients are there for everyone to hear (if they understand Japanese, of course).

The treatment was also very different.  More painful.  The doctor would flick the needles in, work them around a bit, then remove them, never really letting them rest.  I don't like needles, ironically, so I never watch.  But this felt like each needle hit a nerve, like the needles were the length and width of porcupine quills and he was pushing them as deep as they would go.  Oh man, it was unpleasant.  

He loaded me up with needles, removed them, then loaded me up again.  Then he did something I later learned is called moxibustion, in which burning cones of yomogi (mugwort) are placed on the skin at the acupuncture points.  It is meant to stimulate blood circulation.  They smell like incense and warm up like crazy.  This was followed by some acupressure, pressing and pushing different points.  I was there for more than an hour.

Unlike my treatments in New York and Los Angeles I couldn't wait for it to end.  The doctor was very friendly, concerned, helpful, but I have to say this was the most aggressive and harsh acupuncture I've ever encountered.  I was actually sore when I left, like I'd been to the gym or something.

So I consulted Simone again.  She said that what I experienced was a very traditional Chinese style acupuncture, and that I should find someone that practices Toyohari.  This is a more delicate form of acupuncture with an emphasis on pulse diagnosis.  Apparently it was developed by blind acupuncturists in Japan after the War.  I enlisted Mineko's help again.  

I am happy to report that Toyohari is amazing.  What a difference.  It was totally relaxing and revitalizing.  The environment at the new place called Matsuda-kanpou is still very clinical, but the overall experience is a hundred times more pleasant than the brutish thing I underwent two weeks ago.  I have even scheduled another appointment.

So concludes your lesson in traditional East Asian medicine.  Arigato gozaimas.

Arashiyama

Arashiyama lies on the western edge of Kyoto along the Hozu River.  Like Uji and really so much of Kyoto, it is an incredible natural escape just 20 minutes from the city center.  I suppose it is like the Catskills or the San Gabriel Mountains if you could reach them by train and be back for dinner the same day.

Togetsu-kyo - "Moon Crossing Bridge"

Chikurin-no-Michi - the Path of Bamboo

Okochi Sanso - the villa and garden of silent movie-star Denjiro Okochi (1898-1962)

Emiko

Your fearless reporter

The Unexpected

A week ago a gallerist whom I barely know gave me admission tickets to see an exhibition at a museum in Kobe.  Kobe is not exactly the next town over.  It is almost 75 km from Kyoto or an hour and a half train ride.  I decide to go.  I have no guidebook for Kobe, and I've done absolutely no research beforehand.  I have the address of the museum and that is it.  I am completely winging it.  In Kyoto and Tokyo there is something interesting around most every corner.  In Kobe...not so much.

I have to go to Uji to catch an express or long-distance train.  Obaku, my station, is a stop only for local trains.  I tell the gent in the Uji ticket office in Japanese that I would like a ticket to Kobe, to Nada Station.  He seems to understand.  The charge is ¥480.  I know something is wrong.  A train to Kobe has to be more than ¥480.  I look at the ticket.  It says Nara, not Nada.  I try to tell him.  No, not NaRa, NaDa - in Kobe.  "Hai, one-way ticket today Nara."  Ie, ie.  No Nara.  N-a-d-a.  Ko-be.  Same response.  He wants me to go to Nara.  I know Nara is about 20 minutes down the line, and Kobe is a good deal further.  I try once more.  Ko-be, Na-da Station.  He's not budging.  I'm going to Nara.  I'm going to Nara.  I take the ticket and wait on the platform for a train that will take me to someplace I do not want to go.

In Nara I purchase another ticket, this time for Kobe, but I have to transfer in Osaka.  More than two hours later I am in Kobe.  After a quick coffee in the station and a short subway ride I am at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art.  It's a really interesting piece of architecture by Tadao Ando, concrete and glass.  The exhibition, a retrospective of Hashimoto Kansetsu's early 20th Century paintings is also good, mostly watercolors on silk scrolls and screens.

I leave the museum excited to explore Kobe.  I have high hopes for this harbor town.  Well, like San Pedro, or a lot of ports, it is pretty ugly and pretty dull.  It appears to have had a building boom in the 1980s.  There is a lot of that bad, vaguely sinister architecture like what you find in downtown Los Angeles - buildings set at odd, unfriendly angles, semi-public plazas with no public, pedestrian overpasses that keep people off the street, and underpasses that invariably lead to shopping malls.

I happen down one pedestrian zone.  The place is deserted.  It is Saturday afternoon at 2:30.  No one.  The few restaurants and shops that are open are empty.  I'm starving, but I'm not going to stop here.  I want the famous Kobe beef.  I want to eat in a lively, interesting/attractive place.  I keep walking.  I pass one ugly multi-use tower after another.  "Come on, Kobe," I plead almost aloud, "where are you?"  As my hunger grows my interest in this city declines precipitously.  I abandon my goal of finding Kobe beef or an interesting place to eat, and sit down to a very average meal at the Shin Kobe Station.

I've pretty much given up on Kobe when I see this...

Then this...

Then this...

Well, to be fair, I did have to hike up a trail and several hundred stairs to see the famous Nunobiki Falls, but...wow, yeah.  Japan keeps surprising and amazing me.

La dérive

Discovery never stops.  I'm on my way to one place, or think I am.  I take a slightly different route, Higashi-oji Dori instead of Hanamikoji Dori.  

I find a tiny shop selling vintage Japanese comic books, action figures and other miscellaneous pop-culture ephemera.  This place is so small, and so packed with stuff there is just enough room to turn around.  The owner is friendly, talkative.  He boasts in his not terrible English of his New York clients.

I continue in a vague southerly direction.  I turn up a street and there at the top is the massive sanmon (main gate) to Chion-in Temple.  This was not on my itinerary.  But these places have a way of drawing you in.  They are not to be ignored; one can't just give them a miss, pass by.  I climb the stairs and enter the world of Jodo Shu buddhism for a couple of hours.  As dusk begins to settle over the Higashiyama mountains and the heavy gates of the temple begin to close I start my dérive again.  

I happen down Yasaka Dori.  There is a little Machiya house with a funny sign outside reading (in English): "I open when I wake up and close when I must sleep.  When I've had enough the store is closed".  Of course I have to see who is behind such a sign, a business model I might have created myself.  Inside I meet Ichimura Mamoru, an old artist who works exclusively in woodblock printing.  This is a Japanese art form in which I have long been interested.  I love the super bold, super flat, almost crude graphic nature of woodblock printing.  His "shop" is basically also his atelier, jars of ink and various printing tools are everywhere.  I like it.  No pretense, no tourist show (or is this the tourist show?)  He immediately hands me a hefty, carved woodblock stained with ink.  Then in broken English he explains the many stages of a full-color print.  His work is impressive, if not terribly original.  There are a few pieces I would buy if I had the dosh because I admire the labor and craft, and because I like Mamoru-san.  I show him my own handmade postcards, sign his guest book and say sayonara.

I continue down the road, right, left, right, left.  I remember an interesting/stylish yakitori place called Yakitori Tarokichi on Yamatooji Dori I had spied on a previous occasion.  The owner is just opening as I arrive.  I order a sake and settle in.  This place is cool.  It was the tiny zen garden that caught my eye a week ago.  I peered through the window and saw a woody contemporary modern meets traditional interior.  The owner explains he is placing a new ad in a Japanese magazine and asks if he can take my photo for it.  I laugh and agree; why not.  The sake is suddenly without charge and a beer arrives shortly thereafter.  Kampai!  The yakitori I order is tamaran (excellent).

This is how the days go in Kyoto.

Chion-in: notes and impressions

Tread lightly, slowly.  Listen.  The sotoba in the graveyard clattering in the breeze.  Ghosts?  Black lacquer and gold.  Sitting cross-legged on the tatami.  Alone.  Wondering.  What does it all mean?  A lifetime of unknowing.  The dead.  Chirping floorboards - "song of the uguisu".  Necessary renovations and temporary solutions - fluorescent lighting, air conditioners, televisions, faux-wood flooring.  Enormous prayer beads.  Monks sweeping tatami mats.  A cardboard box of apples - misplaced?  A delicate chime.  Heavy doors closing.