Friday, December 9, 2016

Made in Japan


I wanted to get some geta (traditional Japanese wooden sandals) as a gift for someone.  Being December these are at least 6 months out of season.  There is a shop on Teramachi-dori called Yamanaka (established 1909) that specializes in this unique footwear.  I'd passed it dozens of times before.  I was hoping it wasn't a seasonal shop, or that they would now be selling snow boots.

It was open and a full range of geta and zori (traditional Japanese sandal for women worn with kimonos) were on display.  A kindly old woman wearing a work apron greeted me and after explaining what I wanted in Japanese she wasted no time showing me a variety of styles.

The geta in Yamanaka are something like a made-to-measure suit.  They are not completely bespoke (custom-made), but they are not ready-to-wear either, that is, a single manufacturer's standard.  Geta are made from a single block of wood called a dai.  One can select the shape and style of the dai here.  The hanao, or thongs, are also customizable with a variety of cotton fabric patterns to choose from.  

After I selected the dai and the hanao pattern the proprietress told me it would take about twenty minutes to assemble the geta.  In the 21st Century where it seems everything is instant, it is unusual to wait for anything.  I found this was not an inconvenience, but a pleasure.  It is a joy to watch someone work that really knows his or her craft.  I imagine this woman could probably assemble geta blindfolded.

Sitting on her zabuton (cushion) she worked with a set of well-worn specialized tools.  The hanao was secured to the dai with a hemp cord using a variety of attractive knots - no glue!  The geta were finished with a small Yamanaka logo which she tapped into the heal with a brass stamp.


Monday, December 5, 2016

Maki's Blues

I was listening to "Japanoise" bands like Mono and Boris long before I came to Japan.  Japanese musicians are particularly good at this kind of super sonic, non-vocal, experimental rock, and these groups have a small but global fan-base.  But music sung in Japanese is by and large not exported to the West.  Some of the most popular groups of the last 20 years - artists like Ayumi Yamasaki, AKB48 and Arashi - that have sold more than 30 million records in Japan are completely unknown anywhere else.  While American and British musicians tend to be bent on world domination, Japanese artists seem to be content with an audience that doesn't reach beyond their shores.

I have made feeble attempts to discover Japanese music since I arrived almost three years ago.  I like the traditional music played on the shamisen and flute, but finding recorded music in a record store is near impossible because of my lack of knowledge and my poor Japanese.  From time to time I happen upon interesting contemporary musicians performing here in Kyoto, but these occasions are few and far between.

Last month my friend Aki in New York (better known as the musician/DJ AKA SUGA) released her new album "No Label".  On one of the tracks she references a Japanese singer Maki Asakawa.  I looked her up.  I was fairly blown away.

Miss Asakawa began her career as a cabaret singer in Tokyo in the mid 1960s, frequently performing at the social clubs on American military bases.  However, unlike other female singers of the time she shunned the exotic eroticized image of the Japanese woman and dressed in ankle-length black dresses, wore her hair long with bangs and sang blues and jazz covers in Japanese.  Perpetual cigarette in hand and a passion for black American music as well as French literature and film, Asakawa was the ultimate cool for the intellectual university crowd of the 1970s.

But it is her voice.  A beautiful, dark, melancholic contralto that is both Japanese and not at all Japanese.  East meets West.  It is sometimes the sorrowful moan of a solo singer in an odori (traditional dance), and sometimes the sultry croon of an American lounge singer.  It is a voice that somehow transcends language altogether.  A sublime musical instrument, rather than a mundane oral mechanism for transmitting information.

I've found the blues in Japan.  To it and dig!

Maki Asakawa "Blue Spirit Blues"


Thursday, November 3, 2016

Let's Get Lost


It's still possible to get lost.  This requires stepping out of one's routine.  For me, now, this means going beyond the Kyoto city limits.  I still enjoy the feeling of being slightly (or completely) lost.  Adventure begins when you leave the trail.

I was headed to Omihachiman, a small city in Shiga Prefecture about 40 kilometers northeast of Kyoto, for the the 7th edition of the Biwako Biennale contemporary art exhibition.  I took the wrong train.  This was corrected after a few stops.  Then I took the right bus, but got off at the wrong stop.  7 kilometers wrong!

The end of the bus line is Chomeiji on the edge of Lake Biwa.  I have long wanted to see this lake, the largest in Japan and apparently one of the oldest in the world.  It is a popular destination for Japanese vacationers in the summer months.  

As long as I am here, I thought, I might as well have a look around.  There is less despair, less exasperation now in these transit mistakes.  I am more comfortable in my abilities to navigate a situation in Japanese.  I found a cafe and had lunch.  The place was empty, the summer tourists long gone.


The cafe was at the foot of Mount Ikiya leading up to Chomeiji Temple.  There was a sign at the bottom: 808 steps to the top.  I should have taken that as a warning, not an invitation.  I started up the large, uneven stone steps.  After about 60 my heart was racing.  I continued to climb, counting as I went and pausing every so often to catch my breath.  The stairs twisted through the dense forest.  Because the temple does not come into view until the last 70 or so steps I did think I was perhaps climbing to nowhere.

The view of Lake Biwa was spectacular.  Looking north from the temple the lake spread as far as the eye could see and shimmered in the afternoon sun.  The hondo (main hall) of Chomeiji was covered in senjafuda (stickers bearing the name of visitors).  It being particularly remote and difficult to access would account for the significant number of these commemorative stickers.  Chomeiji translates as "temple of long life".  One might feel a long life is a just reward for conquering the steep stairs.


After a beer and a good rest on the waterfront I caught the bus back into town, to Osugi-cho, the historic district where the exhibition was centered.  The theme of the biennale was "Eternal Dreams."  Artists from around the world were given carte blanche to transform long neglected Edo era (1603 - 1868) houses and factories into site-specific art installations.  As with any biennial, there were hits and misses, some artists creating an interesting dialogue between these unique spaces and their art, and others clumsily placing their work in rooms and spoiling the otherwise historic beauty of the architecture.  To be sure, I would have enjoyed touring these buildings without any invitation, the wonderful atmosphere of pre-modern Japan reason enough to look and linger.

I've learned that sometimes when the schedules and systems we live by are interrupted other experiences and opportunities present themselves.  Let's get lost.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Past tense


Back to Uji.  A pleasant Autumn afternoon, windows open.  The river's wrinkles burn a bright gold and white in the sun, already in its descent.  Shadows stretch across the tatami mats.  The waiter looks like a movie star from another era with his neat moustache.   Two old women talk in hushed tones, almost whispering.  Kansai secrets.  A bumblebee bumps into the window; a dragonfly alights on the fence.  My heartbeat slows.  There is a different pace here, a different volume.  Everything more fluid, more graceful.

One must return to the past from time to time.

I remember Japan.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Kikuka Sho (菊花賞)



It's easy to spot them.  The slightly rumpled sport coat, the haircut from 1957, gray, thinning, the sunglasses with just the faintest tint (because they never come off), the furrowed brow.  The dead giveaway is the newspaper folded into a quarter, long columns with lots of numbers, no photos, and pencil circles drawn around funny, often poetic names.  The race fan.

I was on the Keihan Line, on my way to the Kyoto Racecourse to see the 77th Kikuka Sho, the so-called "Japanese St Leger", and the last leg of the national Triple Crown.  (Established in 1776, the St Leger Stakes is England's oldest and longest horse race at 1 mile 6 furlongs.)  At every stop the train picked up more of these characters.

I am not a gambler, nor am I a big horse-lover, but I do love the track.  I've been going to the races with my family since before I was gambling age.  My grandfather was a race fan, so perhaps it is in my blood.

It is the atmosphere.  The brilliant green of the turf contrasted with the dull gray-brown of the dirt, trimmed by the thin white rail.  The (traditional) dress code: jackets, dresses, hats, sunglasses.  The acceptably immoderate smoking and drinking.  The extraordinary and decidedly difficult combination of research, analysis and luck.  The exhilarating combined effort of animal and man.  The jockeys - diminutive humans dressed in colorful silk with bold, graphic designs.  And of course the horses - beautiful, idiosyncratic creatures, the epitome of power and grace.




I never win at the races.  I have won just once in more than two decades.  Besides my basic lack of knowledge, there is a reason for this.  I rarely bet on the favorite.  I prefer long-shots or horses that have a mostly uneven win record.  There is a much better return on your investment with these types.  I brought my friend Tomomi-san along to Kikuka Sho.  She'd never been to a horse race, but her father follows Japanese racing.  He gave us a tip for the main race.  Tomomi-san translated horse and jockey names for me and other relevant statistics in the racing paper.  Race after race I plunked down ¥200 and watched my horses come in well behind the winning positions.

Kikuka Sho is a 3,000-meter (about 15 furlongs), right-handed race on turf for 3-year-old colts and fillies.  There are 18 runners.  The total prize money this year was ¥248,400,000 (about $2,390,000).

Tomomi-san's father picked numbers 3, 6, 11 and 17 for this, the 11th race.  French jockey Christophe Lemaire was riding number 3, Satono Diamond.  He'd already had a couple wins earlier in the day.  The racing paper pegged this horse as well as number 1 and 6 as favorites.  But 11 (Rainbow Line) and 17 (Jun Vulcan)?  Why them?  I decided to "box" 3 and 11 on one ticket and 6 and 17 on another ticket.

Because I was trying to snap a photo of the horses as they crossed the finish line, I didn't really see who came in.  The board showed number 3 in first and number 6 in fourth, but second and third were blank.  A photo finish, which would require a judge's review.

After a few minutes the numbers appeared: 11 in second and 13 in third.  I won!  Unbelievable.  My ¥400 bet paid ¥7,020.

Funny.  I always feel just a little bit luckier in Japan.  Looking forward to my next day at the races.




Thursday, October 6, 2016

Musing


Time seems to move more quickly now.  Three years is ten.  How did I get here?  The connection between points, the space separating beginning and end, the journey, grows dim.  Rain on a dirty window.  Dusk.

There is now.  This quickly becomes yesterday.  The colors fade as the distance increases.  The same train line, the same stops, but everything has changed.  Only my head and the direction of travel are the same. 

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Typhoon 16


The train seemed to have lost its will to continue, to carry me back to Kyoto.  It stopped somewhere between Ayabe and Sonobe.  Restarted.  Paused again before reaching Kameoka.  Then after crawling into the station at Kameoka it gave up.  There were dozens of announcements.  I could only make out, "Gomennasai" (sorry).  Finally the conductor confessed, "We have no idea when service may resume".  This was translated by my companion.  A highly unusual admission by a Japanese railway official.  Trains in Japan are rarely delayed.  When they are, there are announcements and scrolling electronic messages confidently stating to the minute when the next train will arrive or depart.

The night was wet with rain, black ink running over the landscape.  The storm had washed out the rails.  The entire length of track through the mountain pass would have to be inspected.  This station stop had become a dead end, a strange island of dim lights in the shadowy countryside.  Stranded.

Katsura, my home, was less than 20 kilometers away.  But between me and my destination lay the mountains of Arashiyama.  Once upon a time, before trains and highways the only route through these mountains was the Hozu River.  Skilled boatman transported goods down this narrow, twisting waterway in flat bottom boats.  I've seen this gorge, the rocks, the rapids.  At night?  In the pouring rain?  Not an option.

I bought a beer and soba from the station convenience store.  A crowd of hungry, frustrated, but typically well-mannered passengers all converged at once on this shop fairly overwhelming the staff.

We waited.  And waited.

Alternative transport was nonexistent.  Buses never arrived.  Calls to taxi companies were in vain.  It seemed we may never leave Kameoka.  I pictured living the rest of my life there.  A Gilligan's Island.  

We waited.  And waited.  Tickets were refunded.

An attractive woman with a limp, skirt too short, heels too high wandered back and forth through the ticket gates in a sort of daze.  A group of local hip-hoppers rapped to beats from a boom-box under a yellow light.  Just as my patience was beginning to fray and the night seemed to be teetering on the edge of bizarre, my friend spotted a Kyoto taxi.

The lights of the station and the little-train-that-wouldn't blurred into the soggy darkness as we drove away.  A quivering reflection in a rain puddle.  A dream.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Summer soundtrack



Summer has a soundtrack in Kyoto.  It's not the Beach Boys or Arthur Lyman or Bob Marley.  Just after the rice paddies are flooded for planting in late May the frogs appear and begin their dissonant nighttime serenade.  They sing through the rainy season until July.  As the frogs lose interest in performing, the cicada come along.

This is a large, ugly bug that looks like some kind of prehistoric moth ready for battle.  It inhabits the upper branches of, it would seem, most every tree in Japan during the peak of summer.  You know summer has arrived and scorching heat will follow when you hear the mating song of the male cicada.  The racket produced by these fellows is deafening, beginning sometime around dawn and often continuing right through to dusk with hardly a pause.  Apparently, the sound emanating from their vibrating abdomen can reach 120 decibels and can actually cause hearing damage in humans unlucky enough to have a cicada sing in their ears.  It is the stuff of science fiction, this noise, and when you first hear it you're sure an alien spacecraft has collided with a power line.

By the end of August the cicada have worn themselves out with their nonstop concert.  They are replaced by the soft, sweet song of the suzumushi (bell cricket) and you know autumn is just around the corner.

Before smart-phone apps, TV weathermen and even almanacs man looked to the natural world for indications of the changing seasons.  The animals, plants and insects of the earth have always been a dead-on gauge for what is to come.  You've only to stop and listen.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Daimonji (大文字)

The rain started around 7:15.  By the time I got to Katsura River it was pouring and I was soaked.  The mountains were invisible, completely shrouded in low-hanging rain clouds.  Even if it were clear I wasn't sure exactly in which direction I was supposed to be looking.

Daimonji or Gozan no Okuribi (roughly translated, "five mountain sending off fire") is an annual summer event in Kyoto celebrating the end of Obon which is a three-day Buddhist ceremony honoring the dead.  On August 16th five massive bonfires forming various symbols are set ablaze in the mountains surrounding the city.  These are meant to guide the visiting spirits back to heaven following their earthly sojourn.

Last year I missed it because I naively thought it was an all-night event (it is just 30 minutes, beginning promptly at 8:00), so I wasn't going to let the rain stop me.  There were a few others that braved the summer storm to commemorate the souls of their ancestors.  Of course, this being 2016, most were in the comfort of their cars where they could follow the progress of the other bonfires with smart-phone apps and live television coverage on their in-car video monitors.  A rather impassive homage.

As the rain fell and I waited a young woman approached me.  She asked (in Japanese) if I was there for Gozan no Okurubi.  "Hai, mitai desu," (Yes, I want to see it) I replied.  She explained, or anyway, this is what I understood, that it might be postponed because of the heavy rain.  I thought it unlikely that a ritual spanning more than five centuries would be abandoned because of inclement weather, but a glance at my watch and then at the dark mountains made it seem plausible.

Then, as I got up to leave, it appeared, the kanji character 大 ("dai" meaning big) glowing in the distance through the rain and clouds and darkness, like lava from a volcano.  While it certainly was a spectacle, it was not of the "ooh-aah" fireworks variety.  It lacked the sonic impact of a fireworks display,  It lacked the show-biz choreography.  It was noiseless.  There was no motion.  It inspired quiet reflection, not revelry.  But it had power.  Across some 9 kilometers you could feel it.  My thoughts drifted to my own ancestors.  I watched silently until the last flicker of red-orange disappeared from sight and the black night returned.

Before it was defiled and perverted into the sugar-coated freak show it is today Christians also had a three-day holiday honoring the dead: Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.  The Japanese too now celebrate Halloween, but thankfully it has not replaced the ancient traditions of Obon and Daimonji. 

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Japanese modern art: revisited

 MOMAK

In October of 2013 I went to the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto for the first time.  I was somewhat disappointed.  17 years of visiting MoMA in New York had shaped my idea of what "modern art" is.  There was nothing modern about what I saw on that first visit.

I have been back to MOMAK at least half a dozen times and have seen some amazing exhibitions.  But I never really saw what I was looking for - until now.  I read a rather terse and bland review in the Japan Times of the new exhibition, "A Feverish Era: Art Informel and the Expansion of Japanese Artistic Expression in the 1950s and '60s".  All that digging, all those broken shovels and picks.  Finally!  It was as if someone had been hiding this art from me: "No, he's not ready.  Not yet."

In 1956 French art curator/collector Michel Tapié organized an exhibition in Tokyo department store Takashimaya called Sekai Konnichi no Bijutsuten (Exposition Internationale de l'Art Actuel).  This show, featuring works by Jean Dubuffet,  Georges Mathieu, Willem DeKooning and Sam Francis among others, had an enormous impact on the Japanese avant-garde.  This current exhibition at MOMAK attempts to show what happened to art in Japan after that.

There are some blatant copy-cat pieces that now, in the 21st Century look a bit cliched.  But then who was influencing who, really?  When you look at a painting by Jackson Pollock or Franz Kline you can't help but think of shodo (Japanese calligraphy).  And there is some evidence, though often deniedthat these artists were influenced by Japanese art.  It is often a case of the "chicken and the egg" when tracing artistic inspiration.  Regardless, the international exchange of ideas and artistic cross-pollination in the pre-internet days is fascinating to me. 

There are some truly outstanding pieces in the "Feverish" exhibition by artists like Yasukazu Tabuchi, Minoru Kawabata and Taro Ogi that had me completely transfixed.

There should be a dance with a good painting, the viewer moving in and out, left and right, up and down.  Your breath and heart beat should change, quicken or slow.  You should for at least a moment feel lost, feel small, feel joy or sadness or both, be slightly or completely perplexed.  The wonder should not be the same as for a magic trick: how-did-they-do-that.  It should be the same as for an old tree, a new snow or the pounding surf.  That is when an artist has done his/her job.

I knew Japanese painting couldn't only be cherry trees, cranes and stoic Buddhist monks.  Alas, my supposition has been confirmed.  Feverish indeed!

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Gion Matsuri



Gion Matsuri (Gion Festival) continues to elude me.  That is not to say I have missed it.  I have seen it.  I have read about it.  I have talked with Japanese friends about it.  But I feel I still have not got to the heart of it.

Gion Matsuri had its beginnings in the Kyoto plague of 869.  This was blamed on the god of pestilence, Gozu Tenno.  Praying for deliverance from the epidemic and an end to the curse the people paraded 66 hoko (spears) and the mikoshi (a wheelless vehicle for transporting a deity) from Yasaka Shrine through the streets of Kyoto.  This seemed to work, so they repeated the ritual the next year, and the year after that, and have been doing so for more than 1,100 years.  So every July the mikoshi of Yasaka Shrine get a little vacation.

By the Edo Period (1603 - 1868) the hoko had evolved into something altogether different than a simple spear.  The wealthy and powerful merchant class began building elaborate wooden structures, what we might call a float in the US, with and without wheels to parade through the streets.

This parade on the 17th of July, called the Yama Hoko Junko, is the main draw of Gion Matsuri.  The tallest hoko reach a height of more than 8 meters (26 feet) and must be accessed via a temporary bridge built from second story windows of adjacent buildings.  Assembled using beautifully complex rope knots (no nails or screws!) and decorated with exquisite textiles these are a truly impressive sight and totally unique to Kyoto.  The strength and bravado of the battalion of men that pull the hoko (weighing up to 12 tons) through the streets is also an awesome spectacle.



Sweat, brawn and pride is a big part of Gion Matsuri.  It seems tailor-made for men both young and old wishing to display their swagger.  Yocho is the name for the men involved in the lifting, pushing and pulling of heavy, sometimes dangerous things during the festival.  Dressed in their distinctive white cotton happi jackets emblazoned with a blue festival mon (crest) and often only a fundoshi (loincloth) underneath they are easy to spot.  For motivation and coordination of their tasks they have a variety of chants that would not be out of place in a football ground.

The women and children who participate in Gion Matsuri are a sharp contrast to the yocho.  If they aren't decked out in colorful period costumes with faces painted white, they are wearing simple, elegant yukata (lightweight summer kimono), parasols and uchiwa (flat fan) in hand.  They add a bit of that quintessential Japanese grace and kawaii (cute) to the festival.



As a gaijin I may never fully grasp the significance and the myriad religious and historical references of Gion Matsuri.  But maybe that's not important.  Many of the Japanese people I spoke to don't either.  It is the spectacle - the sights, sounds and smells of the ancient capital.  That is why thousands of people descend on Kyoto in July.  

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

アイスティー aisu tii



There are some things the Japanese do so well.  It is of course a country famous for its tea.  There is an elaborate, centuries old ceremony surrounding this beverage.  That is hot tea.  

As the temperatures rise and the sweaty Kyoto summer begins its assault hot tea becomes less appealing.  I turn to aisu tii (iced tea) during this season.

In the States iced tea often comes from the same dispenser as Coke or any other soft-drink.  It is a sad, syrupy bastardization of this noble drink.  If you are lucky, you will get a Lipton brew poured from a glass pitcher and served with a slice of lemon.

In Kyoto, in places like Malebranche cafe, iced tea is something altogether different.  It comes in a cast-iron kettle, the same way it would if you were drinking it hot.  It comes with a tall glass half full of ice.  It comes with a bowl of ice and ice tongs.  It comes with a little plate of perfectly sliced lemon.  It comes with one of their famous Chanoka (Langues de chat) matcha flavored cookies.  It comes with a metal stirrer, a straw and instructions in Japanese and English how to pour the perfect iced tea.  All this is brought to you on a lovely wooden tray.

With bottled tea from various beverage giants becoming more and more popular in Japan, especially among young people, fewer people take the time to brew tea in a pot.  Something so wonderfully simple, serenely pleasant and culturally important has, even in Japan, been reduced to a vending machine experience.

Friday, July 1, 2016

雨 ame


My first June in Japan, the summer of 2015, was not particularly wet.  June is the "rainy season" and like all the seasons here, was highly anticipated and much talked about.  I expected 20+ days of rain.  Like a snowless winter in the mountains, it was a dud.  I was disappointed.

This June there has been rain, a lot of rain, almost everyday.  It is not a heavy rain; it is not an all-day deluge.  It is mostly soft and pleasant.  The asphalt of the streets, continuously stained by rain, is a richer black.  The leaves of the trees and the moss of the earth have a phosphorescent green glow.  The cedar of the minka (traditional houses) is most fragrant when rain dampened.  The whole city smells somehow green, fresh, alive.

Based on last years rainfall I have misjudged the gray skies on several occasions and have been caught in an afternoon shower without an umbrella.  This was not altogether disagreeable and I was not inclined to curse my gambling spirit or Mother Nature's humor.  A quiet tribute to Gene Kelly seemed more apropos.

My flea market umbrella has begun to rust at the hinges from overuse.  I seem to always be drying out socks and shoes.  No sooner do I water the plants on my terrace than the rain begins to fall.

I grew up in southern California where rain is a somewhat rare event.  My Japanese friends have no great love for this season.  For me, it is a joy.

"I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain..."

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Late Spring

A cool green breeze
late spring
cut down the river
bending over the bridge

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Sayōnara 12-19 Shinkai Gokanosho!


I still go to Uji once a month for acupuncture.  There is an amazing bakery there called Tamakitei around the corner from where I used to live.  Today I decided to pick up something for lunch following my appointment.  I was happy to discover they had moved to a larger space down the street.  Their popularity is undiminished.

On my way to the train I had a look down my old street.  I was surprised and saddened to see the house at 12-19 Shinkai Gokanosho had disappeared.  Not a trace.  Even the beautiful old pine that had been so carefully groomed over the decades was gone.  The foundation for a new house had been laid.

This was never my house, but for six months in the autumn and winter of 2013/14 it felt like it.  I made it my home.  My life in Japan began here.  I was an absolute beginner when I alighted from the train at Obaku Station that September.  I knew nothing.  My self-guided education in Japanese culture was centered here at this address.

One of my greatest paintings was completed on the second floor of that house - my atelier.  The wrecking crew would never know this.  They would never know an American artist lived here, that they were dismantling a brief but significant part of his life.  To them it was just an old house.

I live in Katsura now.  I've lived here much longer than I ever lived in Uji.  But Uji is special and always will be because it is a marker, a watershed for me.  My life took a different direction when I arrived there.  One I wasn't expecting.  That shift is (or was) inextricably tied to that wonderful mid-century modern house.

Wabi-sabi is something I was introduced to while living in Uji.  At the core of this concept is the impermanence of things.  Everything disappears eventually.  What we are left with is memories, a vague outline of what used to be.  And memories too fade.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Hello My Name Is Paul Smith


Western-style glamour is Tokyo, not Kyoto.  Kyoto has an elegant sophistication, but red carpet Hollywood glitz?  Not so much.  But last night Kyoto felt very chic indeed at the opening of the new exhibition "Hello My Name Is Paul Smith" at the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto (MoMAK) .  

I worked for Paul Smith for 10 years and saw half a dozen runway shows in Paris during my time with the company.  There is something wonderful about seeing the Paul Smith tribe gather for big events.  There is no mistaking the invited guests and employees of a Paul Smith party.  There is a distinct Paul Smith look.  But it is the individual interpretation of the clothes that creates that look.  And this is always as interesting and entertaining as the new collection.

Paul is something like a rock star in Japan.  He is politely mobbed by the Japanese.  He couldn't take two steps without someone stopping him for a photograph and/or autograph.  It is funny to see, really.  A soon-to-be 70-year-old man who has never played the electric guitar or acted in a feature film swarmed by adoring fans.

For me, fashion exhibitions, like architecture exhibitions tend to be very dry and one-dimensional.  There are the mannequins dressed in the designer's clothes; there are videos of the runway shows; there are photos from the ad campaigns.  Perhaps because Paul Smith is not that kind of designer and it is not that kind of fashion company, this exhibition is engaging, and more notably, it is fun (full credit to the curatorial team at the Design Museum).  I don't think Paul has ever taken what he does too seriously.  This combined with his delightful sense of humor shines through in this show.

Of course this exhibition is peppered with a fair amount of nostalgia for me.  "Ah yes, I remember that."  Wistful?  No.  I am grateful for the experience, but I am happy with the path I have chosen.  Ironically I would never have attended this opening party if I were still an employee of the Paul Smith company.  Anyway, it's cooler to be on the guest list.  (Hisashi Morikawa どうも ありがとう!)