Writers in Kyoto Member Stephen Benfey is a fiction writer, copywriter, and father. He lived in Kyoto during the 1970s, attending college, working for a Japanese gardener, producing videos, and listening to Osaka blues bands. There, he met his future wife and began writing. After raising children in Tokyo, the couple moved to a tiny fishing village on the Boso peninsula. This year, he received honorable mentions from the competition judges for his cleverly conceived piece, “Emperor Uda’s Love of a Cat”.
Stephen writes: “I’ve taken considerable poetic license in rendering a diary entry written in Chinese by Emperor Uda who reigned 887-897 CE. My rendition suggests that the cat becomes a silent counselor to Uda who was thrust upon the Chrysanthemum Throne at age 20. Though the diary itself has been lost, remnants were compiled in the Edo period. Translations into Japanese and English vary in descriptive details.”
More information on the original diary entry can be found at this link. (Japanese only)
A complete list of results for the Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition can be found here.
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Emperor Uda’s Love of a Cat
“Prince Uda, my cat is now yours,” the Emperor said. “But father, why?” I asked. “Such a beautiful creature, black as ink!” “You will know, soon enough,” he said. I had no desire to rule over anybody. I had trained to be a monk, serene, silent, like a cat. When I saw my father depart in the Phoenix Carriage, I understood his words, for without my cat I would have come unstuck. My cat’s eyes are like sparkling needles. When he crouches he is like a dark jewel. When he curls up he is tiny as an ear of black millet. His ears point sharply to the heavens. His height triples arching like a bow. In motion he is soundless like a black dragon dancing above the clouds. He knows yin and yang. By following The Tao he keeps his coat satiny. That he is black as night is his advantage. That he is a mouser peerless in Miyako is not surprising. I give him milk porridge every breakfast like the Buddha ate after fasting. I ask him questions and he answers honestly, wisely, carefully, silently. I said to him, “You can see through me. I have no secrets from you. You know me better than I know myself.” The black cat raised his head from his paws and stared at me, eyes piercing. Then he sighed as if moved by my confession. As though words were not enough to express his heart’s emotion. His reply was more than eloquent.
This, I write in my diary in the first year of Kampyo (889), Heian-kyō.
The Rinpa (or Rimpa) school of Japanese painting was created in Kyoto at the beginning of the Edo period. Its patrons were old aristocratic families as well as wealthy merchants who commissioned large-scale works on fusuma folding doors or byobu folding screens for their homes. Rinpa’s numerous artists gave us masterpieces such as the Wind and Thunder Gods, Matsushima, or Red and White Plum Blossoms.
Red and White Plum Blossoms by Ogata Korin, MOA Museum of Art, Atami, Shizuoka
However, when Japan opened to Western influences, the public as well artists themselves lost interest in traditional Japanese arts and instead tried to soak up as much of the hitherto unknown modern world as possible.
The government tried to slow, if not reverse, the decline of Japan’s unique artistic style that had been developed over hundreds of years of isolation. Policies were created to upgrade the status (and thus, the appeal) of artists who infused their work with the newly discovered modernism. The government also sent established (but young) artists overseas to experience and learn new methods and styles first hand. One of them was Kamisaka Sekka.
Kamisaka Sekka, “June Hydrangea” from Flowers and Grasses of the Twelve Months,” end of the Taisho Era to beginning of the Showa Era, Hosomi Museum collection.
Kamisaka Sekka was born in 1866, just before the Meiji Restoration, into a Kyoto samurai family. His talent for art was recognized early, and at age 16, he started his studies under Zuigen Sunki of the Shiga school. Sekka’s acquaintance, the diplomat Shinagawa Yajiro, introduced him to European art and urged him to turn towards design. So, in 1888, he became a student of Kokei Kishi, an Imperial Household artist and designer. Through these different influences, he developed his own style and in 1895, he was awarded second prize for a design on an incense container.
Kamisaka Sekka, Box with Design of Spring Flowers, private collection
In 1901, Sekka was finally able to do his hands-on research on European art, when the government sent him to the Glasgow International Exhibition. There, he was introduced to the Art Nouveau movement, which would heavily influence his later works. He was equally fascinated by the Japonism that had captivated the West and sought to understand which facets of Japanese art were most attractive to a Western audience.
Upon his return to Japan, Sekka was determined to merge his new insights with his old teachings. He came to realize, however, that Japan already had an established decorative art —Rinpa. So, he took this as foundation for his experiments with Western methods and tastes, while the subject matter of many of his works remained rooted in Japanese tradition. Over time, he updated his style and became known for images that are reminiscent of rough designs rather than detailed paintings. They are often dominated by large areas of bright colors and show a unique sense of composition. Others described his style as “the return of Korin” (one of the Rinpa masters of the Edo period).
Kamisaka Sekka, “Yatsuhashi” from “Momoyogusa”, around 1909, Unsōdō Collection
Like many artists in the Rinpa tradition, Sekka did not confine himself to large-scale paintings, even though he believed that painting skills should be the foundation of every designer. His designs can be found on tea bowls, fans, textiles, wrapping or writing paper, and pieces of lacquerware. Especially notable is his Momoyogusa (A World of Things), a set of 60 woodblock prints depicting landscapes, animals, flowers and both classical and modern themes, published 1909/1910.
Kamisaka Sekka, “Puppies” from “Momoyogusa”, published by Meiji 42-43 (1909-10), Hosomi Museum Collection
Sekka’s influence reached beyond his designs and paintings, which he continued to exhibit regularly. He played a leading role in the Kyoto craft scene and from 1905, he taught at the Kyoto City School of Arts and Crafts. He also set up two of the forerunners of what would later become the Kyoto Arts and Crafts Institute. Sekka edited art magazines from the Meiji to the early Showa period, and in 1936 became a counselor at the Kyoto Museum (now called the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art). In 1913, he was heavily involved in the Koetsu-kai, a tea ceremony created in honor of Hon’ami Koetsu, who is considered the founder of the Rinpa school of painting. Kamisaka Sekka died in 1942, aged 77.
Many of his paintings and other artworks have survived to this day. Kyoto’s Hosomi Museum has a large collection of his works, and currently, they are holding an exhibition focused on them. You can see “Kamisaka Sekka – Inheriting the Timeless Rimpa Spirit”at the Hosomi Museum until June 19, 2022.
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All images (except the first: wikimedia commons) courtesy of the Hosomi Museum, Kyoto.
Over the coming weeks, submissions from the recent Writers in Kyoto Seventh Annual Writing Competition will be shared here on the website. We hope that our readers will also enjoy and be as moved by the content as the judges were in the very challenging process of selecting the winners.
While there were a limited number of top prizes, Honorable Mentions were given to four individuals, one of whom is Ed Shorer. Ed is a retired middle school teacher, residing in Los Angeles, who lived in Kyoto from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. During that time he apprenticed as a tofu maker and taught English at Kyoto Seika University. An early contributor to Kyoto Journal, he provided an essay about Kyoto’s Music Coffeehouses for Issue #2. He has degrees in Japanese and English Intercultural Studies and Popular Culture Studies, and spends much of his time in competitive slot car racing. Thank you for joining the competition, Ed, and sharing with us a memorable slice of Kyoto’s history.
(A complete list of results for the Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition can be found here.)
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Remembering Kyoto’s Music Coffeehouses
Kyoto Music Kissaten were my home away from home when I lived in Kyoto in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Honyarado for its beat poet spirit, and Shige-san’s brown bread. Zaco for the best blues. Ringo for Beatles albums I never knew existed. The Drug Store with its wall-to-wall-to-ceiling purple shag carpet, and nude poetry readings. Yamatoya with an exquisite sound system and jazz as smooth as the mizuwari that came out at night. Hitsujigoya, where the owner and I connected over our love of coffee, travel, and tofu: Hitsujigoya was formerly his father’s tofu shop, and I was a tofu-maker’s apprentice at the time.
These were not temples or gardens in the traditional sense, yet patrons attended regularly and with similar reverence.
When I last visited Kyoto in 2018, most of them were gone. Honyarado had burnt down. Mickey House and Zaco, shuttered. Still, I searched for that kissaten spirit that spoke to my soul so many years before: Masters who put their all into their passions. I could still read enough Japanese in an entertainment guide to figure out there was a jazz kissaten near Nijo Castle, and made my way there. Nijo Koya was tucked away down a tiny street, and my heart smiled when I found it. Entering I found the thirty-something owner in the middle of making a cup of coffee with as much attention as the finest tea ceremony practitioner. With Sarah Vaughn and Her Trio softly playing in the background I thought I had entered a time machine.
“Your shop reminds me so much of one I used to go to, Hitsujigoya,” I said in Japanese. “Hehhh… that shop’s owner, Fukuoka-san, is one of my regular customers!”
“Lemon” (Remon) is a short story by Motojirō Kajii. written in 1924.
Plot (The following is taken from Wikipedia. To see the full entry, click here.)
The protagonist, who has diseased lungs, is tormented by strange anxiety all the time. He lost his interest in the stationery store Maruzen, music, and poetry that he had been interested in before. He only continues walking around aimlessly in Kyoto.
In one such incident, he visits a fruit shop he likes on a regular basis through Teramachi (Kyoto Miyako Naka-ku “八百卯; Eight Hundred Rabbit”, closed January 25, 2009). There were rare lemons placed side by side. He bought one lemon that he was interested in; the coldness of the fruit in his hand was just right. After that, he felt uncomfortable, even though he stopped by his favorite shop, Maruzen, he began feeling uneasy.
He felt an unchanged feeling of dissatisfaction. Even though he looked at the usual picture albums that he used to like, he put the lemon as a time bomb on the pile of illustrations. Then he imagines the works of fine art flying out of the Maruzen shop, the excitement of blasting a lemon as a time bomb.
He was satisfied with what he had done at the end.
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Note: Maruzen was still near Sanjodori, Huyachotori in Kyoto at the time. After Lemon was published, it is said there was no end to people who continued leaving a lemon at the Kyoto Maruzen store (closed in October 2005. Now reopened in the Bal Building on Kawaramachi.).
The full story can be read in translation in its entirety by clicking on the bottom link of the Wikipedia page.
Writers in Kyoto offer their heartfelt thanks to all who submitted their short shorts to the competition this year. Entries were received from a highly creative group comprised of twenty-five nationalities, based both in Japan and across the globe. A milestone has been reached with this year’s introduction of the Kyoto City Mayoral Prize (supported by the Kyoto City Cultural Office), the Unohana prize for a non-native English speaker, and the Australia Prize (with thanks to the Australia-Japan Society of Victoria). Our contest announcement and prize details can be found at this link.
(In addition to the awards originally listed, we are also very grateful to Beth Kempton (Writers in Kyoto Member and Author of books including Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life) for offering a complimentary space in her Book Proposal Masterclass, beginning on May 16th, to the recipient of our Kyoto City Mayoral Prize. Thank you, Beth!)
The judges of the Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition are very pleased to announce this year’s winners, as follows:
KYOTO CITY MAYORAL PRIZE
“The Watcher” by Maria Danuco (Australia, based in Japan)
All submissions listed above will be published on the Writers in Kyoto website in the coming days, with judges’ comments. We will also share the following submissions, which received special recognition from the judges:
SOLIDARITY PRIZE
“Blooming Ukrainian Freedom” by Vladyslava Konotopets (Ukraine) In addition to our listed awards, the judges have decided to offer this special prize to a former international student in Kyoto who is now residing in Kyiv. Writers in Kyoto, based in Kyiv’s Sister City, wish to express our protest of Russia’s relentless and aggressive acts of war, our support for those who currently find their lives upended, and our admiration for the heroic spirit of the Ukrainian people. In due course, her submission and some of her further thoughts on the current state of affairs will be shared on this website. Ms. Konotopets will also receive a set of WiK anthologies and a complimentary one-year WiK membership (April 2022-March 2023).
As Competition Organizer, I would also like to express my gratitude to this year’s judges for their time, insights, and cooperation in the process of selecting the winning entries — a very difficult task, considering the excellent quality of the submissions received.
For the official announcement and submission details of our next Kyoto Writing Competition (#8), please be sure to check our website in the middle of November 2022. If you have not yet shared your work with us, we warmly welcome you to do so in the future.
Blurb: “In Wintermoon Robert MacLean distils twenty-five years of living in Kyoto, Japan, into a single seasonal cycle … of 119 haiku.”
Wintermoon, by Robert Maclean. Isobar Press, Tokyo, 2022.
A review by Mark Richardson.
I’m most at home with verse conventional to English from the 16th through the 20th centuries. I enjoy poems that argue or imply arguments. I want rhyme, well-framed stanzas, conceits. Give me Hardy, Herbert, Larkin, Frost or Bishop⎯or Seidel and Ogden Nash. Still, I’ve read haiku in English, and haiku-like poetry in English⎯a fair amount of it. I never acquired a taste for most Black Mountain School versions of haiku-like poetry, or for its Pound or Charles Olson incarnations. Robert Creeley, Snyder, and William Carlos Williams published a lot of haiku-like poetry, and much of theirs I enjoy. But I’ve never written about this kind of poetry, not a paragraph that I can recall. In that sense I’m new to the game. So, I’ll speak of its rules and conventions⎯givens that most readers of Wintermoon would feel no need to speak of. I’ll ask questions and cover ground not strictly necessary to a book review.
For example, there’s an elliptical grammar peculiar to haiku written in English. Wintermoon employs it. Consider this poem, the first in part five of the book, “Back Route on Fushimi Inari”:
main path that way go this way (37)
I assume two sentences are implied here, one indicative, the other imperative: “The main path is that way. Go this way instead”⎯this way being (again my assumption) the “back route” of the subtitle. Get off the beaten path. Leave the flock. Alright, sensei⎯I’ll try. (I think I know that un-beaten path, having once gotten lost, with no cell-phone reception, somewhere inside Fushimi Inari.) Now: exactly how does the poetry get into this haiku? Is it first by compression⎯the omission of an article, the copula, and an adverb⎯and then by lineation? I don’t doubt that the poetry gets in. Wintermoon is a lovely book, though “main path”⎯–I’ll refer to the poems by their first line⎯is not a high point. The sentiment, here, is unsurprising, and paradox always arises when you find yourself instructed to leave the beaten path (unless the imperative is self-directed). Of course, it’s unreasonable to single out, from a carefully ordered collection of them, so short a haiku-like poem.
Whatever the case, the elisions and line breaks seem: (a) meant to slow the poem down (requisite in a text of seven words), and probably meant also to suggest how it ought to be said aloud (with two little pauses and a beat at the end); (b) meant to reflect, in English, the fact that pronouns generally don’t populate haiku in Japanese, and the fact that Japanese sentences usually imply a subject, and so can strike a native speaker of English as merely predicative; (c) meant to reflect the fact that Japanese doesn’t have articles (hence one major difficulty Japanese learners of English encounter); and (d) meant to reproduce the two-to-three line arrays in which haiku in Japanese are presented (though these lines are often vertical in Japanese). These practices are evident in a great deal of haiku, and haiku-like poetry, in English. One thing more: “main path,” like most haiku, isn’t written for the speaking voice. Who talks this way? Nobody. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it aloud. But if you do, you must adopt the “voice” of English haiku, and that voice is distinctive proportionate to the distinctiveness of English-haiku grammar.
Another example, from late in the book:
Kyoto silent now no traffic temple bell rings 108 sins backward to zero (65)
Again, two sentences are implied: “Kyoto is silent now, with no traffic [in its streets]. A/The temple bell rings 108 sins backward to zero.” Maclean provides a helpful note, for readers unacquainted with this Buddhist ritual: “On Oshogatsu, New Year’s Eve, throughout Japan, temple bells are struck 108 times, voicing the ‘snares and delusions’ (bonno) of tradition. No one today seems quite sure what these 108 sins are, but it’s fun trying to find out” (83). In short, the poem captures an annual event, which happens immediately before midnight, with the city traffic all thinned out; the poem also captures the idea that this is a count-down, not a counting up, of the 108 sins (you start at 108, not at 1). The ringing of the bell is thought to help rid us, as if by sympathetic magic, of the sins of the dying year. “Zero” is the aim. In line two, at first blush, “rings” transiently seems intransitive (a temple bell rings). But of course, we see at once that it’s transitive, though in an unusual way, owing to the object it takes and the adverb that modifies it: the bell rings the sins backward. As with “main path,” I can’t quite say how the poetry gets into “Kyoto silent” by omission of articles, a copular verb, and so on. But again, I don’t doubt that poetry gets in, and the tongue-clapper in its bell (the verb “rings”) is the more eloquent for the unusual grammar.
Here’s a poem where elisions don’t quite work, I think, or at any rate become inadvertently salient.
stopping on Kitaoji bridge look down my drowned face
Line one, a participial phrase, doesn’t readily give in to line two, which, though presumably short for “I look down,” doesn’t banish⎯I mean altogether banish⎯the ghost of an imperative mood. Is “look down” a request to a companion on that bridge? I doubt it. The unstated “I” must be alone with his “my.” But I can’t be certain. How often do statements made in haiku imply an addressee other than the reader? Very seldom, I think. (See “hold hand-,” below, for a possible exception.) I also wonder if the omission of subjects and pronouns leads composers of English haiku to deal in quasi-imperatives⎯or in brief sentences that are ambiguously imperative⎯when they don’t really wish to. I’m not sure the past tense in line three sounds right. The larger sentence implied must be something like: “Stopping on Kitaoji bridge, I look down and find my face (its refection), drowning in the water.” Perhaps I’m sensing, or fabricating, a temporal problem, somehow springing from the fact that the three verbs are conjugated to different purposes: stopping, I look down, and my face has already drowned. Do its eyes give back no gaze? Does the serene composure of the reflected face immediately seem lifeless? Or is the tone of the poem dark, as if the watcher on the bridge somehow feels implicated in what he says and sees of his face? One might well hear the tone as whimsical: a face, not a person, drowns, of course (no jumpers here). The slight oscillation between moods⎯indicative, imperative⎯may be deliberate. I’m aware, of course, that English haiku aren’t equivalent to any grammatically complete sentences they may imply. Still, this poem asks a bit too much of English syntax and grammar. Its joints creak. Wintermoon is otherwise entirely free of ellipticalities that trip me up. One can see that a composer of haiku in English will always have a hard time telling how far to carry his language towards Japanese. Maclean almost always gets it right.
One more technical matter. Occasionally, though sparingly, Maclean splits words at line ends, giving us a poem that can be experienced only on the page, in type, as he does in this haiku:
lum inous empti ness (71)
The poet dispenses with hyphens (in one or two other instances of this kind he employs them), so we have, here, the effect at its most conspicuous. I do not think Japanese haiku provide a precedent for this. The technique must derive from such poets as ee cummings and perhaps some of the Black Mountain crew. Herbert, though, does similar things a couple of times in The Temple (1633). Marianne Moore splits a few words. Ben Jonson breaks a word up at least once⎯in “To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison” (lines 92-93: “twi- / Lights”).
But what can be the use of this technique in “lum”? I’ll take a flier and guess that we are to hear these lines in two ways: “loom in us, emptiness” (ad homonym, so to speak) and “luminous emptiness” (straight up). The second reading is indicative (it specifies that emptiness and illumination are related); the first is invocative (“Emptiness, loom in us”). Fair play? Why not, once in a while? Construed this way, the poem winks a little: its two incarnations reflect (or reflect on) each other. Maclean, as I say, has the tact to use this technique very sparingly. You can see its necessity here. The plain phrase “luminous emptiness” would make no poem, say nothing novel, involve no play, nor give anyone reason to utter it in a special way. Best to cut up with it in type. I should add that, read with the two haiku it follows, “lum” takes on a far stranger and more solemn aspect. Many of the haiku in this book are subtly, and artfully, altered by the ones that precede or follow them.
One other example from the broken-word school:
hold hand- lessness on your lap (63)
Why is the hyphen employed here and not in “lum”? I assume because “handlessness” is a nonce word and therefore needs the help; you also must know that the second line isn’t altogether to be treated as a word. This haiku is a sentence, imperative mood. It’s pedagogical, as are several others, and has to do, I gather, with Zen practice. Part one of the book is titled “Zazen at Tofukuji” and this poem is addressed (second person) to someone sitting. Is “hold hand-” that rarity I spoke of above⎯a haiku with an implied, on-the-scene-auditor, additional to the reader? Is it half of an exchange? I doubt it (unless Maclean is the addressee). Anyway, Maclean needs a word for a non-idea that lacks one, and he finds it, or a hint of it, in “lessness,” where the suffix -ness makes a noun of less, as it makes a noun of the adjective “empty.” Intensify lessness enough and you arrive at emptiness. But take the word whole, no line-break: handlessness. What can this mean? The state of being handless? And what then are we being told to hold? Something that we can’t lay hands on or should keep hands off. This is holding of another kind, as when we hold a thought, or an unthought⎯the thought of “handlessness,” for example. Hard work. But then “hold hand-” appears in part eight of the book, “Rohatsu Sesshin at Tofukuji.” A welcome note in the appendix explains: “A sesshin is an intensive training retreat, usually for seven days; literally, ‘to gather the mind.’ The Rohatsu sesshin is held in December to commemorate the Buddha’s enlightenment and is noted for its severity” (my emphasis; 82). This accounts both for the imperative in “hold hand-” and for what that imperative asks of us. Can you handle it?
Wintermoon consists of 119 haiku. By my count 53 of these either are or contain proper English sentences (about half), ranging from the indicative to the interrogative to the imperative mood. Maclean is at ease in or out of proper English sentences (except, perhaps, when he’s on that bridge at Kitaoji). And he’s appealingly unsystematic in setting his haiku up (as Robert Bringhurst notes in the jacket copy). Maclean is no 5-7-5 poet, as what I’ve quoted shows.
The poems are by turns observational, riddling, seasonal, instructional, humorous, and enigmatic. A reader gathers from one haiku that the poet hails from a much colder clime than Kyoto (a biographical note on the back of the book tells us where: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia).
wind bell icicles my distant country (34)
This poem appears in part four of the book, “Summer Solstice.” The metaphor rings as lovely as it does plain: wind chimes, touched by a summer breeze here in Kyoto, remind the poet of icicles⎯and with that thought comes a wave of nostalgia (for a maritime province in Canada, or anyway somewhere cold and a long-haul flight away). Wind chimes are like icicles in that both typically hang from the eaves. Wind chimes are also metallic and often cool/cold to the touch, and, like ice, they glint in the sun. For their part, icicles are like chimes in that the wind can play clacking tricks with them. (I know from my decade in Michigan.) The metaphor comes over us quickly, as it must have overcome the poet, and precisely in the steps implied by the lineation: one, two, three. The poem⎯caught in the act of having its idea⎯summons winter in summer, ice in the heat, with a paradoxical grace (homesickness involves its own relief). One question remains: why the singular bell, and the plural icicles? We may not be speaking of “wind chimes,” in which case some of what I’ve said may not apply. The poet has been a bit more precise than me: he likely means fuurin (風鈴).
As for observational haiku, here is a good example, from part three of the book, “Three Mat Room” (for readers unfamiliar with Japanese domiciles, that means a very small room: about fifty square feet):
5 a.m. old ladies gossiping by blue garbage bags (23)
No figurative work at all, here. Instead, the interest comes in the setting implied, which must be urban. This is the sort of thing you can only hear, from inside your bedroom (it’s 5 AM), when living in close quarters⎯and when living in cities, we infer, with ordinances that proscribe leaving garbage bags out overnight, and which govern recycling (the bags are the same color for a reason). Also implied is enough competence in Japanese to know “gossip” from some other kind of talk; we are learning a lot from a little about the poet. Another thing we learn is that he knows when not to omit an article or a preposition. Remove “by” from that last line and see what happens.
A haiku on the page following “5 a.m.” confirms that these are city poems. This one offers a bit of “how to” advice.
how to navigate crowds deadman’s float (24)
Maclean doubtless speaks from experience, hard-won in, say, Shijo Station during Gion Matsuri. Christ, those crowds. You can lift both feet off the floor in them. This haiku is witty⎯and, as I’ll suggest in a moment, perhaps something more into the bargain. (Maclean’s best haiku are expansive condensations.) The wit has to do with the fact that “navigation” cannot be a passive act, a letting go. “Navigation” implies control and a destination, whereas in “how to” we are advised to treat the crowd as an ocean or river, as a thing with currents in it, and advised then to let ourselves float on those currents. But not float in just any way: we are to dead–manfloat, exertion-less. Is there a slight imprecision here? If you dead-man floated in a crowd, you’d somehow have to get atop it⎯though remaining facedown (this isn’t crowd surfing). Whatever the case, “how to navigate” says, in a whimsical-humorous way, what we’re elsewhere, many times, told to do in Wintermoon: relinquish or abolish “self” (an aim, as I understand it, of Zen and zazen). Compare “how to navigate” to this haiku, from part one, “Zazen at Tofukuji”:
fall inside yourself until that word too is gone (13)
Another sort of dead-man’s float: a fall is passive, non-exertive, a letting go–anything but a jump. And the idea is to fall so far that the word you once used to refer to yourself follows you right down the self-hole like a Kennebunkport windbreaker no one will ever again need. Yes, let go of the thing; let go even of the word for the thing. Unscrew the doors of perception from their jambs. But to return for a moment to “how to navigate.” Surely I won’t be the only reader familiar with the navigation of crowds in Japan to point out that there’s another technique than the dead-man’s float: the extension of the right hand in a chopping, blade-like maneuver, tipping your head and quickstepping in the direction it indicates. This always parts the waters. Some unspoken social contract concerning the use of this gesture must exist. If I’ve seen it deployed once (and to astonishing effect), I’ve seen it deployed a hundred times. The gesture is unique to Japanese men, I should add. I don’t recall ever seeing a woman use The Blade. How they “navigate” our denser crowds I don’t know. I’ve used The Blade a few times myself. The glances I sometimes get suggest I’m committing an act of appropriation, as if The Blade can’t be used by just anyone. But all this only seconds the quasi-philosophical point made in “how to navigate.” Use of The Blade in a crowd is highly Self-Assertive, thoroughly directional, as aimed as is any arrow. And, no, we just can’t have any of that in Wintermoon. A dead-man float it must be.
I implied that we learn a good deal about the poet in Wintermoon. We learn not only that he is (or was) an expat from a cold climate practicing/studying Zen in Kyoto. We learn that he was a teacher. From “Three Mat Room”:
even though they seemed to be listening how quickly everyone leaves
You might take this as an observation about a crowd in a concert hall, but you’d be wrong. We are in a classroom. Who other than a teacher would feel the pathos in the aptitude with which students so deftly disembark? Everyone in the teaching racket wonders how real apparent listening is. Do we expat-native-sensei have a harder time gauging this than our Japanese colleagues? I haven’t asked. The other question implied in “even though they seemed” is harder to put and more humbling: “Was what I just said worth listening to?” Maclean follows this haiku, and its quiet air of doubt, with the only answer that can rightly be made:
erase the whiteboard turn off the light bow to the empty room
Did Maclean-sensei perform this last act? ¥10,000 says he did. Keep it all modest, leave the classroom cleaner than you found it, and never forget your due respects⎯without regard to whether anyone sees you pay them. And really, does it matter whether the students were listening, or matter what it was they supposed they’d heard? No classroom is a crucible. I like the attitude these poems take towards teaching.
This haiku, also from “Three Mat Room,” gives us a way to think about Maclean’s art.
my voice a rusty knife whittling these shavings
Call this an equation haiku, with the “is” or equal sign left out: “my voice [is] a rusty knife whittling these shavings.” “Voice” we take for poetic voice, the chiefly silent vocalizing you get into when making poems (and by which the poems are recognized as yours). Only here, writing is whittling, and the poems are the shavings the knife-voice reduces our lumber-language into. Whittling⎯at least in North America⎯is the very type of a pleasant but aimless endeavor. Whittle and slip outside of Time. Whittling was already a figure before Maclean got to it. (The Andy Griffith Show whittles.) Whittling can be purposeful, if what you want is a proverbial sharp stick in the eye (the thing all other things are said, in American English, to sure beat). But really, whittling is the place where aimlessness and craft have their encounter⎯in a kissing-cousin way. I think “my voice” suggests that Maclean finds the wellspring of his poems right there, where aimlessness somehow acquires purpose, or where purpose feels effortless. Is there Zen in this? You want, he seems to be saying, to have as little will in the act, which means as little Self-assertion in it, as is needed.
And yet, there’s a fully realized personality in Wintermoon: zazen-sitter, city-dweller, husband, father, cat lover, very likely a guitar player, an animist, mourner, expatriate, neighbor, teacher, philosopher (more in a minute), and disciple. You wouldn’t mistake his shavings for those made by any other knife. His voice is a “rusty” knife anyhow, oxidized, corroded a bit by life. Rust is a slow burn, but a burn nonetheless. This whittler’s voice⎯his instrument⎯is tarnished, roughed up, aged; this is part of its appeal. Does anyone ever clean a knife before whittling with it? The acts seem incompatible.
Wintermoon is, to be sure, a philosophical book. This is announced by haiku and section-titles that derive from or name Zen practices. Some haiku strike me as animistic, and of a more ancient vintage than Zen.
light pulses in the ventricles of a stone (33)
The elliptical grammar of English haiku raises a question. Is “light” an adjective or a noun? If the latter, this is a seen event and not a felt one (no nurse’s geo-sensitive fingers laid on here). “Light” as a noun would also make this haiku a sentence. But who’s to say this isn’t a felt event, that the poet didn’t touch the stone, and that this isn’t an eight-word phrase? The poem makes me suspect we’ve been slandering the mineral world all these years by giving unempathetic people “hearts of stone.” Maclean’s hearty stone has ventricles, and he’s tender about it. Is some litho-cardio-vascular worry implied? Sclerosis?⎯from the Greek “sklērós,” or “hard.” God forbid. Other stones in Wintermoon give⎯I don’t think they take⎯“language lessons” (39). Some may even converse with cats (51).
Two haiku concern insect emotion (including “love”). This one might have been written by a Jain:
cockroach scuttles across the sidewalk afraid (19)
The omission of the article at the head of the poem allows for a momentary experience of “cockroach” as adjectival and “scuttles” as a noun. What kind of “scuttles”? The cockroach kind. But the point is sympathetic: insects, too, know fear. Or better still, and closer to the language of the poem: cockroaches are often sore afraid. That adjective can involve a latent tenderness, or pathos, as the translators of the English Bible knew; “scared,” for example, lacks it. (“Scared” turns up once in the KJV; “afraid,” 232 times.) I almost wish Maclean had added the adverb sore, but the rules of the game forbid it.
This haiku sent me to Wikipedia and to PubMed.gov (one of the internet’s Incontestably Great Sites). Your cockroach, it seems, is not a “true bug” (i.e., not a member of the order Hemiptera). He/she/they are more ancient. Still, the cockroach is a social insect. In fact, Adrienn Uzsák and Coby Schal have shown that, in females of the species Blattella germanica (the German cockroach), “social isolation slows oocyte development, sexual maturation, and sexual receptivity.” Female Blattella need a little foreplay: the “tactile cues” that come from crossing antennae. So, we can speak of cockroach fear and of cockroach loneliness, and therefore obviously of cockroach happiness. Incidentally, the tone of the Wikipedia page for Blattella germanica suggests it was composed chiefly by entomologists in the pay of Big Pest Control. Uzsák and Schal (and Maclean) have considerably more fellow feeling.
This brings me to the haiku that concludes “A Walk by the Kamo River” (part two of Wintermoon).
creaturely world translations from a lost original
Does the plural in line two require that we regard each creature in our “creaturely world” as a translation of a “lost original”? Or is the creaturely world we now inhabit⎯taken tout court, cockroaches and all⎯the last in a long series of “translations” from an “original text” now “lost”? Both seem possible. (Incidentally, here is a case where omission of an article, or of the possessive pronoun “our,” at the start of the first line is necessary to the view implied.) This haiku may remind some readers that “translation” has a meaning in metempsychosis. Souls⎯ themselves immortal⎯are “translated” from body to body, but, after a dip in the waters of the river Lethe, they must, with each birth, forego memory: all previous “editions” of a soul are “lost” to it. The most celebrated statement of the idea comes at the conclusion of The Republic. We meet a modified version of it here. Now, imagine that first line as “animal world” or “this animal world.” That wouldn’t do, and not because it excludes the plant kingdom. “Creature” is to “animal” as “afraid” is to “scared” (see above): there is a pathos to “creature,” unavailable to “animal,” probably owing to how it holds within it the idea of creation. “All animals great and small, / The Lord God made them all” is awful⎯in sound and doctrine.
Maclean works with ready material. Jargon borrowed from writing now pervades talk of genetics, and therefore talk of biology: “editing,” “transcription,” “code,” “decoding,” “translation,” and of course DNA, “written” by us spellers in a four-letter alphabet: AGCT. In biology “translation”⎯so says my dictionary⎯is the conversion, during protein synthesis, of a sequence of nucleotides in “messenger” RNA into amino acids. (Messenger RNA: language again.) “Translation” is a function within “the language of life,” to borrow a phrase from Francis Collins⎯former head of the Human Genome Project (and member of the creaturely Pontifical Academy of Sciences). In what sense is our “creaturely world” a “translation” of a “lost original”? As a neo-Darwinian, I grant that every “creature” now living⎯and of course let’s bring the plant kingdom in⎯is a fresh phenotypical “utterance,” at times with slightly new “spelling” and a novel “idiom” or two, made in an underlying “language” (the genome). Some scientists quest after the Last Universal Common Ancestor of everything now alive (LUCA), which must have been a phenotypical “utterance” in the “ur-language of life.” They expect to find its first “speakers” in (say) prokaryotes or protoeukaryotes dating to the Archean Eon. The dinosaurs were “translated” into the Library of Birds, and so still may be “read” there, albeit in the Avian. Or think of birds as theropods “written” in “Cenozoic,” or “translated” from the “Cretacean” into the Cenozoic. (I may mistake my nomenclature.)
I assume the idea in “creaturely world” requires that we suppose the “translations” will continue. Obviously, at some point no creature will “speak” the AGCTs peculiar to the human genome. Whether its “language” will ever be “translated” is doubtful; we seem bent on ensuring it won’t, so jealous are we of legatees. The language called “cockroach,” by contrast, is proverbially immortal. Haiku are often said to catch “moments.” This one takes much less than a moment to utter. But its clock is set to geological time.
One more, this time from part seven of the book, “Autumn.”
crickets pulse all night harmonic of a deeper tuning (49)
Maclean hears the stridulating “pulses,” or chirping, of the crickets as if in hertz; they indicate a certain frequency beneath which (“deeper”) you can infer a more fundamental, or tonic, frequency, even if you can’t “hear” it. The metaphor is acoustic. A “harmonic,” in the sense used here, is a frequency some specifiable order of magnitude higher than that of a given tonic note (or “first harmonic”). Guitar players produce harmonics by lightly touching the A string, say, above the fifth fret and then plucking it. The tonic, or first “harmonic,” here is 110 hertz, the third, what you hear when you employ the technique, is 440 hertz (two octaves up, a note you can sound by plucking the high E string at the fifth fret). Lightly touch the A string at the seventh fret, while lightly touching the low E string (82.41 hertz) at the fifth, pluck both, and you get the same E note (329.64 hertz, now two octaves up). That’s one way to harmonize your guitar. And “crickets pulse all night” concerns harmony⎯obviously, the harmony of the natural world, which includes us. The Great Tonic Note of the whole affair may be “deeper” than any we can actually “hear.” But this haiku assumes, or simply posits, that the tuning of the world is nonetheless sound and well-tempered. The assumption entails the idea that the natural world involves, or maybe is, a kind of “music”; that everything in it is probably reading off the same score; and that, although our senses always afford us only a partial audition of this music, we can, given sufficient clarity of mind, discern that it is whole. This haiku presents itself as a record of exactly this kind of discernment and implies (again) a particular philosophical outlook. The world, for that matter the cosmos, is somehow consonant, agreeably ordered, and, so far as I can tell from this book, all’s pretty much right with it. Maclean’s is not a tragic view, at least not in Wintermoon. Nor is he a pessimist or a cynic.
Wintermoon, in “crickets pulse all night,” recalls Dryden, in his Lucretian “Song for St. Cecelia’s Day (1687):
From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony ——-This universal frame began. ——-When Nature underneath a heap ————Of jarring atoms lay, ————And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, ————“Arise ye more than dead.” …
From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony ——This universal frame began: —–From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, —–The diapason closing full in man. (479)
Maclean doesn’t share that last sentiment. He’s no humanist in the old sense, as Dryden is. I think it safe to call Wintermoon a vote against any humanism that takes “mankind” as the starting point⎯or culmination⎯of inquiry. Mankind is the center of nothing, nor is it the fulfilment, resolution or “close” of anything (Dryden uses “close” in its musicological sense). And if ever we hear a dissonant note in all the “music” Maclean hearkens to, it will be⎯count on it⎯sounded in a man or a woman. Only our minds are unsound or unclean.
But the world, as we know it in Wintermoon, is right in tune. We don’t say who the Conductor of all this music is, let alone the Composer. I suspect the idea is that we inhabit an auto-composing and auto-conducting world (or cosmos), and it somehow “knows” how to “play” or “perform” itself. And the music is darn good, maybe even another Pet Sounds. The “cricket” haiku says something like what “creaturely world” says: stipulate that we can’t get at the “lost original” of which this creaturely world is a translation; stipulate also that we can’t really get at, by transcription, the score of whatever “music” the world “is” or “plays.” We can, however, deduce that the “original language” once existed, and that the “score” still exists and sounds out its first harmonic. And we can dig it. This book hints at the reality of the unseen⎯to borrow a phrase from William James⎯but also at the reality of the unheard.
Wintermoon, on any number of pages, suggests (or states) ideas of the kind found in “crickets pulse all night.” The book is of a piece. Its wholeness suggests a much “deeper” composure, which we might on occasion achieve, or anyway sense⎯with practice, lots of practice. At times, the book speaks of terrific bereavement, as, for example, in a haiku of three lines almost too much to bear in their plain-spoken way (see page 70; I will not quote the poem here; leave it to the privacy of its pages, which afford and reflect consolation). Bereavement is one thing a “creaturely” world must involve. But Wintermoon is equal to it. As I’ve hinted, this book is pitched in a major key, though not without its moods indigo (see the image on the cover: “Tsuki,” by Sarah Brayer). I take it as written by an exponent of something like the “religion of healthy-mindedness” William James describes in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). “One can but recognize in such writers … the presence of a temperament organically weighted on the side of cheer and fatally forbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperament linger, over the darker aspects of the universe. … Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from its field of vision” (83, 88). But no, that’s wrongheaded: Wintermoon “deliberately excludes” nothing from its field (except those pronouns and articles). If it exemplifies “healthy-mindedness,” it does so in a nuanced form⎯healthy-mindfulness, say. Does this book entail a variety of religious experience? Yes. And its constitution is of the “twice-born” kind, as James would say. Wintermoon derives from an experience of enlightenment or conversion, or something very like one. Healthy-mindfulness of the kind it implies acknowledges the wickedness of the creaturely world, but “places” or “sorts it out,” and attains thereby its resolution (as James says Buddhism can). And its attainment is the work of many a year, even if it sometimes arrives⎯I can only assume, sick soul that I am⎯as if in a wind-chimes-to-icicles-to-Canada instant.
Wintermoon is a tonic. I commend it to any reader. True, five days out of seven I turn to unregenerate poetry of the irrefragably mordant, once-born kind⎯and in rhyming stanzas or sonnets. Hardy’s poetry, as I said above. Or Frost’s. Or Larkin’s. (How does “This Be the Verse” relate to the desire to escape the Wheel of Existence?) The gracefulness these poets achieve is the more striking because they don’t imagine a world with any grace in it at all. Their world is a jangle. On occasion, they deliberately include evil in their “field of vision” of it. (See “Christmas: 1924,” by Hardy, or “Deceptions” by Larkin.) And the only “practice” these poets embrace is the practice of making poems. But that’s neither here nor there. Whatever gets you through the night is all right.
WORKS CITED
Dryden, John. “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687.” In Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. New edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1940.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York and London: Longmans, Green, 1902.
Uzsák, Adrienn and Coby Schal. “Sensory Cues Involved in Social Facilitation of Reproduction in Blattella germanica Females.” PLoS ONE 8(2): e55678. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055678.
Down the hill from where she lived and up a side street was a little shop that Ann had grown to love. The woman there spared Ann the “Help! It’s a gaijin!” act. Nor did she mouth misremembered middle-school English while deaf to Ann’s Japanese. No, Tanaka-san was helpful and caring, if not always understanding.
On this particular rainy Wednesday morning in Kyoto’s northwestern corner of Takagamine, Tanaka-san was drawing a blank.
Ann couldn’t imagine why. Like, what’s not to understand about “butter?” It’s a loan-word—English with a Japanese accent, no?
Ann had tried baata, baataa, bata, baattaa, and even battoru.
At wit’s end, Ann said, “Anou, pan ni nuru mono desu. ‘Batta’ desu.” Uh, it’s what you spread on bread. A “grasshopper.”
The woman’s face lit up. “Ah! ‘Bataa’ dosu na? Shou shou omachi okureyasu.” Oh, “butter,” right? Just a moment, please.
Ann pursed her lips in consternation. Isn’t that what I just said?
She thanked the proprietor and headed home. How long, oh Lord, would it take?
Conversing with people in Kyoto was complicated by Kyoto-ben, the local dialect. Her college courses taught hyojungo, Standard Japanese. Standard for TV and exams, but not necessarily family and friends—unless you hailed from Tokyo or Hokkaido. Can’t blame the teachers. Would a Japanese university teach Bronx English?
Not counting cases like today’s butter slip-up, Ann’s standard Japanese worked just fine. It was the respondent’s Kyoto-ben that threw her. Kyoto-ben was more than an accent. It had a different vocabulary and conjugations. Where you’d say “kawanai” in standard Japanese to indicate you weren’t buying something, here people would say “kawahen.”
Months after arriving in Kyoto, Ann was still baffled by the words, “sakai ni.” She heard it everywhere, but couldn’t find it in any dictionary. Another mystery: where had the basic Japanese phrase “da kara” gone?
Eureka! In Kyoto you used “sakai ni” instead of “da kara” to mean “because” or “therefore.”
Ann was also confounded by the ubiquitous “ooki ni.” Satori: it was how you said “doumo arigatou”—“thank you” in Kyoto.
As her self-consciousness faded, a funny thing happened—people stopped looking at her. Not that being stared at was a constant. Near Kyoto’s landmarks—Gion, Nijo Castle, Kinkaku-ji, Ryoan-ji, and the rest—foreigners outnumbered pigeons. But take a few steps down a narrow side street and—bam!—you were the lone gunslinger walking into a saloon. The place goes silent. Even the dog raises its head to size up the stranger.
Ann knew an exchange student working on his doctorate at Kyoto University. His surname was Ono, coincident with a common Japanese family name. People would cross the street to avoid him at night. They feared he was a bakemono, a fox spirit, a ghost or a god—his skin was blue-black .
At times, Ann “passed,” like, she imagined, a light-skinned person-of-color might in North America. But this only happened, she had to admit, with people who had forgotten their eyeglasses or who were desperate.
There was the elderly lady who asked if the next bus went to Arashiyama. The taxi driver who pulled up beside her near Ginkaku-ji. He needed to get to Nijo Castle but his GPS wasn’t working.
Mulling over the cabbie’s odd choice of informants, she concluded that asking a Japanese person would have been deathly embarrassing. He’d be laughed at. That, or the guy wanted to see her face.
She had learned to enter shops casually, expressionless, not looking at the proprietor until they had responded to a simple question or comment. Preferably a non-judgmental one such as nakanaka, my, my; or he–, registering pleasant surprise.
She also asked questions in the negative so people could respond in the positive if the answer was no. Strategies and tactics were there for the using.
Her friend Diana said if they’re going to look at you, give them something to look at. Diana’s multicolor, variform ensembles awed, frightened, or delighted, depending on the viewer’s personality. A living, walking Rorshach test, she was.
Then there was the Japanese gardener she met at a bar, who spoke an unusually direct version of Kyoto-ben whether he was vacationing in Rome, working in Hong Kong, or visiting Tokyo. Salt of the earth, he made people comfortable by his very being— no agenda, no self-image issues, no trepidation. He flew below their radar. Before their conscious minds had registered “strange male, speaking unknown tongue,” their hearts and guts had been drawn to him like warm spring rain to a thirsty earth.
He got what he wanted, usually more.
On days dreary with rain, feeling depressed and unloved, Ann told herself she was murahachibu, an outcast, expelled from the village as punishment for, whatever. It was the rainy season—uki—the fifth season of the year, an honor denied by a near universal insistence that Japan was unique in having four seasons. In the face of this unanimity, it would be cruel to suggest that the Bakufu should have informed Vivaldi of this fact before he composed Le quattro stagioni.
One such day she decided to splurge and wash her clothes at the nearby laundromat. On a weekday morning there’d be no waiting for washing machines or dryers.
The tiny washer outside her tiny apartment was near useless this time of year. Her clothes might mildew before they dried. Even on rainless days it was that humid. A dryer was a nonstarter. It would trip the circuit breaker.
She put her dirty clothes in the big machine. She put in the laundry soap and the coins and pressed start. She told herself she would study kanji while she waited. A shaft of light entered the room. She saw a patch of blue pushing through the clouds. Ann stepped outside into the sunlight.
In the distance she saw a man and a small boy. Suddenly, the boy, who looked to be five or six, sprinted in Ann’s direction, leaving his father behind.
She stepped aside to let him pass, but the boy stopped right in front of her. He tilted his head back, directly under Ann’s face so they were eye-to-eye. The boy stood there, half her height, his face blank, yet alert as a pet cat scrutinizing its human.
Ann broke the silence. “Nan desu ka?” she said. What is it?
The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth formed an “O.” He swiveled back toward his father, still a good way off, and at the top of his lungs yelled, “gaijin ja nakatta!” It wasn’t a foreigner!
# # #
Stephen Benfey’s homepage with examples of his short stories can be found here. For his short story on gardening and rocks, see here. For a New Year story, click here. For his piece on foxes, see here.
Kaiserslautern is not the kind of place where you look for a piece of Japan. Nestled in the forests of the Palatinate, this town of 100,000 inhabitants is relatively isolated from Germany’s cultural hot spots. But there is one attraction that is the local pride: the Japanese garden, at 13,500 square metres the largest in Europe, which was created through a unique public-private partnership inspired by the city’s partnership with the Japanese town of Bunkyo on the outskirts of Tokyo.
The garden opened in 2000, but the whole complex is remarkably harmonious. Like many Japanese gardens, for example in Tokyo and other large cities, the Japanese garden in Kaiserslautern is fully integrated into a modern urban environment. The site, a former stone quarry, is located on a slope to the north of the city center. It was once an English-style landscape park, created in 1893, but abandoned after the Second World War. Many old trees survived and blended harmoniously into the new design. The garden therefore looks much older than it actually is, with a good deal of wabi-sabi permeating its paths. It has all the main elements of a classical Japanese landscape garden.
A rockery at the top of a hill symbolises the mountains of Japan; this is where the largest of the four waterfalls starts. From the top of the slope, the “borrowed” view (shakkei) extends beyond the garden walls: towards the city centre with the Apostle Church as a focal point, and the Palatinate hills on the horizon. The garden has three ponds, all of which have a different mood. The largest has a fine selection of koi carp from the Niigata region and offers beautiful views of an authentic Japanese teahouse, originally built in a Tokyo park around 1900 and later sold to Germany; it was rebuilt with the help of Japanese architect Kunihiko Akamatsu. The teahouse is not usually open to the public, but tea ceremonies can be booked in advance. There is also a dry garden (karesansui), which was designed in 2004 by Japanese garden artist Kazuo Makioka. The garden is inspired by the Zen garden of the famous Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto.
We visited it on a cloudy, cool day in late April: the yaezakura cherry trees were in their last days of flowering, and beautiful hybrids of camellias, peonies and rhododendrons were in full bloom. Seventeen varieties of Japanese maples showed their beautiful fresh matcha-coloured leaves. Overall, the garden’s composition exudes a harmony that may come as a surprise in this setting, far from Japan: for those sensitive to the ever-changing beauty of Japanese plants and the spiritual significance of Japanese gardens, this place immediately appears as a spiritual home away from home.
After a tailor hits seven flies with one swipe, he embroiders the words “Seven at One Blow” on his belt and sets out to advertise his prowess to the world.
Age 18 A golden September day and she is returning to her dorm, Canaday Hall, the boxy, modern Harvard freshman dormitory, from a shopping trip. Classes have not yet begun. The sky is a gorgeous, ethereal blue color, and it almost seems like it would be a waste of planetary beauty to go inside.
A young man with sandy hair and a bright smile stops in his tracks and focuses his gaze on her. “Are you a student here?” he asks brightly, then, “I’m Peter. Have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ?”
Peter is a Harvard student too. A nearby dorm room will shortly be the scene of a prayer gathering and he enthusiastically sweeps his arm around her shoulders and propels her to the stairs of his dorm nearby. She tries to think of an excuse to escape, but is worried about rudely offending a fellow Harvard student so early on in the year. Soon they are in the room and a crowd of the devout is gathered. Peter introduces her, everyone claps and then another male student, some sort of leader with a Bible, gives some introductory remarks. Then everyone closes their eyes and starts swaying while making strange glottal utterances with their tongues and lips.
Amazed, she watches them for a few seconds and then the phrase “speaking in tongues” floats to the surface of her brain. She has gotten that puzzlement out of the way. Now what?
She spies the door just on the other side of the room. Everyone’s eyes are thankfully still shut, Peter’s too, and she walks carefully to the edge of the room unnoticed, moving around the people who are all raising their hands, lifting their faces and crying out in their devotion. She quietly turns the door handle and slips out, then hurries down the stairs, free.
For weeks she dreads running into Peter again, but fortunately, she never does. It is as though he never existed.
Age 46 A tiny college in a rural part of Hofu has hired me on a part-time basis to teach English every Wednesday afternoon starting at 1pm. There is another English teacher, a Japanese woman named Ueda-san. Her English class is held the same time and day as mine.
In the teacher’s lounge after classes Ueda-san casually mentions a certain “light temple” she belongs to. “A light temple?” “Where we all give each other light”, Ueda-san says. “Light? How does that work?” “Let me show you.”
Still sitting in her chair beside mine, Ueda-san holds both her palms about 30 centimeters away from my arm, like a character in a comic book doing a magic spell. Her hands hover above my body and after a minute or so, she shifts her hands to another spot. “Do you feel anything?” she asks. “Hmmm, not really.”
From Ueda-san, I learn various things about the light temple. Its founder has built a magnificent compound in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, about five hours away, and all the devout are expected to visit every month and bring large cash gifts to support the temple’s many activities.
Unfailingly and a bit surreally, Ueda-san always insists on “giving me light” every week as I sit sipping canned green tea and skimming through students’ essays in the lounge after class.
My two kids laugh with glee to hear about Ueda-san later when I get home and tell them about her over dinner. (Then in school, my children are old enough to know that grownups are much weirder than we purport to be.)
I am invited again and again, by Ueda-san, to attend light sessions at the local light temple with her, but luckily she always takes my refusals with a gracious and good humor. A few years later I move to Kyoto and Ueda-san and I don’t stay in touch.
Age 18, part 2 Same Harvard dorm, Canaday. But this time inside the spacious suite, four rooms for three roommates. That is, they each have a bedroom and there is one common room, for socializing, and it seems, now also for proselytizing. For one roommate is a devout Catholic and is bent on saving the souls of the other two roommates, who are not interested in religions at all.
Many invitations to attend sermons at the Catholic Church on Sunday are extended, parried and refused. Finally the smiling face who belongs to the devout Catholic roommate, named Fran, starts to frown and a threat is tossed out one day in their common room: those who fail to convert will inevitably meet with the standard theological fate.
“Do you understand what that means?” Fran asks us, with dread and impatience in her voice like a school teacher at the end of her tether. “Hmmmm”, says one of the irreligious roommates, pretending she has never heard the lore. Though she was raised as a religious “none” (a relative rarity back in those days in America), her mother, a former Lutheran, who had become an atheist before marriage, had explained the rumors to her out of her concern that her daughter would understand western culture.
But surely everyone had seen cartoons of heaven and hell anyway. The pearly gates, the angels, the clouds, the halos, the bearded deity, the horned devil. These are the clichéd tropes that every school kid knew and it was bizarre that Fran thought her roommates had never been exposed to such common mythology.
In her frustration, Fran’s face turns a pinched red and white color and she announces the cruel edict of doom. “You will burn in hell!” Despite this being pretty banal information, it’s still a shocking moment. A violent image hangs in the air―of licking flames and the devil prancing around supervising the roasting of any obstinately heretical or heathen roommates.
But at least Fran’s invitations to them to accompany her to church cease. A true blessing.
Age 56 A neighbor, Mrs. N, is one of those quiet yet kind people, around 65. Her hobbies are feeding stray cats in the neighborhood and gardening. Since I have four cats, we start chatting about cats and plants. Soon we are quite good friends.
One day recently, she brings me a pamphlet from her Buddhist new religion. I smile and say I cannot join any religion because my research, on Shakespeare and his pantheist ideas, necessitates that I must be as spiritually as free as the air. She appears to accept my refusal, but a potted blue flower is sitting in our genkan one day when I return from work and my son tells me she brought it over for me.
I feel an ominous sense of puzzlement but don’t (stupidly) link it to the pamphlet, because I’ve forgotten all about the pamphlet. A few days later, on a weekend (when I am almost certain to be home), Mrs. N, this time accompanied by her daughter, appears again, this time with some mochi rice cakes.
“Special ones from a good shop in Kyoto Station!” Mrs N says smiling, “my daughter here bought them for you on her way here from Ayabe!” “Thank you!” I warily accept the cakes.
I am busily, of course, wondering why she is bringing me gifts.
Then Mrs. N tells me about her friend (living a few streets away) who belongs to the same Buddhist new religion, and I then remember the pamphlet.
This friend, who I will call Mrs. S, apparently lived in Canada for 13 years and is married to a Canadian. Apparently this fact is somehow supposed to make me more inclined to join the group?
Mrs. N then asks if she and Mrs. S can come over the next day to tell me all about their new Buddhist religion. I want to say no, but I’ve already accepted the rice cakes.
So I agree, though reluctantly, and brace myself for battle.
The next day, Mrs. N and Mrs. S appear and we stand at my gate to chat. After introductions they ask me about my work, so I tell them my standard story about my research on Romeo and Juliet.
“I’ve found an allegory in the play about the history of man and the sun. Romeo meets Juliet and they use the language of religion. This is paganism, like other countries used to have, and Japan still has.” I give them both a mischievous little smile.
“Then in the next scene where they meet, Juliet is on the balcony. This represents monotheism, Christianity, and so forth. Nature is removed from humans as a spiritual being. Humans can still see nature, but Juliet’s distance represents the new separation. Actually, this spiritual separation did not happen in Japan. Shinto is still here”, I pause and smile (I’m subtly signaling, as part of my resistance strategy, that if I have any loyalties it is to Shinto, which thankfully, as far as I can tell, has no groups), “and Christianity was kept out during sakoku, for two hundred and fifty years. In his play, Shakespeare was, of course, trying to characterize his own society and Europe, not Japan.”
They look intrigued. I continue
“The third scene in the series about mankind and the sun is where Romeo escapes after spending one night with Juliet.” Mrs. S furrows her brow. “I don’t remember that scene”, she says. Mrs. N smiles, “Oh, I saw the movie with DiCaprio many times”, she says, “I remember this scene. Romeo has been exiled, so he has to flee from Verona.”
“Right”, I say, “in the allegory, this scene represents when people became separated from the sun economically. In England that was happening fast in the last few decades of the 1500s as coal production increased massively. Forests couldn’t supply the booming population with enough fuel, especially in the cities. And the first line of the play is “Gregory, on my word, we won’t carry coals”. Gregory, honto ni, sekitan wo hakobanai.
Mrs. N and Mrs. S are listening attentively, despite the fact that I am pretty sure my Japanese vocabulary level is probably not quite adequate to my task.
I continue, “Of course, in Japan, this separation in economic terms happened after the feudal system ended with the forced opening of Japan by Colonel Perry and the United States Navy. Did you know Perry’s ships ran on coal?” They both smile and nod at me again.
“Finally”, I rush onwards, “the tomb scene represents when people will return to using the sun. The sun looks dead from an economic standpoint because it supplies so little of our energy. About 3%. But anyway, fossil fuels have a limited future.”
“Sugoi,” they both say. Gosh.
“Thank you”, I say, “But there is one more scene, symmetrically in the middle, the one where Romeo and Juliet marry,” I continue, “this represents Shakespeare always trying to bring the sun and people together. Shakespeare cloaks himself in the persona of Friar Lawrence, a spiritual and monkish figure”.
I pause and look up at the gorgeous blue sky. Sometimes I wondered if his ghost was hanging around listening to all the theories I had come up with related to his work. What would he say? Would he agree with me? Or would he laugh and say “oh no, that’s not what I meant at all!”
“I think you should know that I’ve understood what Shakespeare had to say only because I live here in Japan, because I noticed some things here that I could never have noticed had I stayed in America.”
I am trying to tell them indirectly that it is absolutely no good to try to bring me into any organized religion, that I am tied through my research to the natural world only, but of course they refuse to take the hint.
The next thing I know, Mrs. S is fishing her smartphone out of her purse and scrolling through it.
“If you like Shakespeare”, she begins in a dramatically warm and enthusiastic tone, like a kindergarten teacher, “our dear founder has written a beautiful essay regarding King Lear”. I cringe inside, fully expecting what I would hear next, which is, indeed exactly what she comes out with: “King Lear is about suffering but still continuing to love our near and dear to our utmost.”
“Nah”, I say dismissively. I don’t recall how that came out in Japanese. (This was the heat of the battle, you see.) I think I may have said chigaimasu.
I continue, “King Lear is just another allegory like Romeo and Juliet about the sun. The stupid old man exiles and rejects the simple good daughter, Cordelia, the sun, and chooses the nasty cruel and overly suave wicked daughters, who represent coal”.
Mrs. S and Mrs. N digest this information and their jaws drop slightly. There is silence.
From that point on, the whole tone shifts. I cheerfully steer the conversation to my favorite topics of witches, good luck charms, the moon and magic. It almost seems that it is me who is trying to convert them, which is quite funny, I think, and not at all the case. Maybe it is slightly beyond the pale, but I even end up telling them that they may be witches.
“You like plants and cats, do you not?” I say to Mrs. N., who nods happily. “Well there you go then, yappari”, I say, “and you” (I turn to Mrs. S) “you are most likely a witch as well. ”
She looks quite happy to hear this.
The conversation is now just fantasy and speculation. It is time to end it. Mrs. S. has 3 school-age children and needs to get back home. I’m amazed she could even stay here for as long as she has.
When I check the clock in the kitchen a few minutes later after they leave, I note that my successfully failed conversion took one hour and ten minutes. Time for a cup of tea.
Dear reader, you are probably wondering why I’ve only given you four accounts of people trying unsuccessfully to convert me when the title of this story specifically promises seven cases.
In truth, I was born under the sign of the moon, and the moon having three phases, 3 is therefore my lucky number, so I contend that the extra three accounts can be grouped briefly under the three headings of Bahai, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.
Some Bahai people are good friends of mine here in Japan and they have in general not particularly tried to convert me, although once in a while some ventured to invite me to their religious study groups (I always demurred, having no interest at all in religion of any kind).
Jehovah’s Witnesses appear at my door from time to time and I always quickly close it as soon as I figure out who they are.
The Mormons are an interesting case as far as Japan goes because, it now occurs to me, they used to knock at doors, including mine, to convert people to Mormonism about 20 years ago or so, but for some time (way before Covid), I’ve not seen a single Mormon anywhere. They’ve vanished, like moths or sparrows might disappear, with no excuse or explanation. It is as though they never existed.
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For more by Marianne Kimura, please see her story of Last Snow. Or an account of how her second novel, The Hamlet Paradigm, was taken up by an independent publisher. Or her double life as academic and fiction writer, or her third prize winning entry for the Writers in Kyoto Competition. See also an extract from a work in progress, Seven Forms of Infiltration; an interview with her about goddesses and ninjas; or an extract from her first novel, The Hamlet Paradigm. For her original story, ‘Kaguya Himeko’, please see here, and for a short story about a witch see here.
It’s that time of the year again when people leave their March madness behind them and go nuts over flowers. You know, the ones that flower in all shades of pink all over Japan. There’s even a weather term named after them – the 桜前線 ‘sakura zensen’ or cherry blossom front. People will go out in droves and celebrate the blossoming of cherry trees in full bloom. Most people prefer to view the blossoms in tranquility and peace and reflect on their beauty, which could very well be summed up by a haiku by一茶 Issa:
犬の子のふまえて眠る柳かな The sleeping puppy pushing his feet against the bole of the willow (This and following haiku and translation courtesy of Stephen Gill)
I can imagine a little puppy yawning and stretching out its little paws in the warmth of the mid-day sun under a sakura canopy. But sometimes, celebration does get out hand. One of the most famous spots in Kyōto for ‘hanami’ is Maruyama Park next to Yasaka Jinja shrine. Maruyama Park is Kyōto’s oldest park and is very spacious, covering 86,00 square meters or more than twice the size of the Hanshin Kōshien baseball stadium. Because of the space it affords, it is frequented by big groups of revelers of all ages who either make use of the red-covered raised platforms provided by tea rooms or spread out their own mats on the ground. The shoes neatly arranged around them often belie the mayhem going on inside. There will often be some groups, invariably kids in their early twenties or so, who can’t handle their alcohol, get out of hand and spoil the fun for others nearby. It’s times like this that a magical Japanese expression springs to mind – 阿呆満開 ‘aho mankai’ which roughly translates as ‘idiots in full bloom’ or ‘blooming idiots.’
Photo courtesy of forestpost-jp.com
Be that as it may, viewing the blossoms at this time of year is a national pastime deeply ingrained into the culture and psyche of the Japanese. Just as plants and flowers are getting ready to emerge from their hibernation, so too are people – they are invigorated by the onrush of fresh greenery and want to shed off the gloom of winter and celebrate life. And, what better way to do it than under a canopy of flamboyant pink petals?
Part of the attraction of ‘sakura’ is its fleeting, ephemeral nature. The sight of petals blowing in the wind and fluttering to the ground will continually draw sighs from those around. In Japan, this has always been used as a euphemism or analogy of a samurai’s death in battle. During the 2nd World War, the falling of the cherry blossom was synonymous with dying a beautiful, heroic death. This was driven home to schoolchildren in pre-war textbooks, specifically, the 国定教科書尋常科用小学国語読本 (literally ‘State Textbook Elementary Course Elementary Japanese Reader’).
サイタ サイタ サクラガ サイタ ススメ ススメ ヘイタイ ススメ Out, out, out has come the cherry blossom. On, on, on soldier, march on (My translation)
In this respect, that famous haiku by芭蕉Bashō would have made people reflect on the frailty of their existence:
さまざまの事おもひ出す櫻かな How very many things they bring to mind – the cherry blossoms
I didn’t write this piece to extol the virtues of sakura or otherwise. I want to introduce a certain subset or family of Japanese flora and plant life that, I feel, is often overlooked and neglected – namely, 山野草 ‘sanyasō’ or wild grasses and flowers. Most probably unbeknown to or hardly noticed by the majority of people, the hanami season is also a time when these plants and flora come into their own. A word – that even I as a translator find difficult to put into succinct English – I often use to describe them is素朴 ‘soboku’ or simple and unaffected (or something along those lines). They have a distinctive subtle elegance and charm that is often overshadowed by the cherry blossom which appears so ostentatious by comparison.
Here, I will introduce a few favorites of mine. Let’s begin with the山芍薬 ‘yama shakuyaku’ (Paeonia obovata or Paeonia japonica). A single bulb of this perennial peony produces a reddish stem which further branches off into two or three stems each consisting of no more than nine leaflets. I find the symmetry of these leaves most attractive, a marvel of simplicity amid Nature’s many designs. It produces only one small round bud covered in thin, gossamer-like light-green scales which gradually pops open to show yellow or orange-red stamens and red anthers. The flower is even more short-lived than the cherry blossom. Once it has come out in full-bloom, it lasts only a few days. Such fleeting drama.
Photo courtesy of Chateau Holmes. All subsequent photos are from the palatial grounds of chez nous unless mentioned otherwise.
Its petals curl up at night as if they are neatly tucked up in bed
Such a dainty, delicate flower – and ephemeral, too. Gone in just the short space of two or three days…sigh.
Next, we have the八角蓮 ‘hakkakuren’ or Chinese May apple (dysosma pleiantha). You’ll immediately notice that each leaf is more or less hexagonal in shape and has eight or sometimes up to ten lobes. The ones in my pictures are small. These leaves, however, can grow up to 35 cm across. They have a thick texture that is always glossy and shiny and have prominent veins. The Chinese May apple produces clusters of hanging, cup-shaped, deep red or purple flowers below the leaves which grow into deep red fruit. Despite its good looks, though, you have to handle this plant with care as it is toxic. But, that green – it’s so refreshingly vivid and invigorating.
Photo courtesy of Mrs. Fujita just around the corner from me
Here, you can see its buds dangling from its stem.
Here, you can see its buds dangling from its stem.
Now about to bloom. A lovely shade of purple; Ian Gillan would be proud
The 斑入り鳴子百合 ‘madara-iri naruko yuri’ or variegated Solomon’s seal (polygonatum falcatum) is a very hardy perennial. As you can see, its oval, pointed leaves are bordered with narrow white streaks. Its distinctive white bell-shaped blossoms dangle down from reddish arching stems and release a delicate fragrance which attracts pollinators. In late summer the flowers turn into bluish black berries, and the ribbed foliage turns a golden yellow color in autumn. Solomon’s seal thrives in the shade and stays vibrant during summer. I love listening to its faint rustle in the wind.
If you want a brighter, more vivid looking plant in your garden or flower patch, you can’t go wrong with theタイツリソウ ‘taitsurisō’ or bleeding heart (lamprocapnos spectabilis). Just look at those leaves. Aren’t they delicately inviting? They have an alluring symmetry and their vibrance is so invigorating. The flowers are not what you would expect – dainty pink-purple heart shapes dangling down from its stalks. In fact, the stalks are so heavy with flowers that they look like lures hanging down from a fishing rod. Maybe this is why the plant’s original name in Kanji (Chinese characters) was鯛釣草, meaning ‘sea bream fishing grass.’
On the other end of the feast-for-the-eyes spectrum is the うらしま草 ‘urashimasō’ (arisaema urashima (species of cobra lily)). As it emerges from its bulb, its spike looks very much like the purple conical pointed spike of the 蒟蒻 ‘kon’yaku’ or Devil’s tongue (amorphophallus rhizome). But then, things get weirder as the spike rises up and unfolds. That strange elongated thing that looks like a pitcher is called a ‘spadex.’ If you look closely, the tip of that, the appendix, elongates into a free hanging thread that can be 45 to 60 cm long which dangles down from the top leaves. After the leaves wither in summer, a fruiting spike is left to ripen in autumn. It’s a very hardy perennial and produces more bulbs under ground during the winter months. These can be broken off and repotted. If you like weird, then this is for you. However, a word of warning. Handle with care! Its red berries contain high amounts of oxalic acid which causes painful skin irritation.
In the pot on the left you can make out its spike. The spike then unfolds like the one in the middle to eventually flower like the one on the right.
Close-ups of its flower. Gorgeous, aren’t they?
And a side view
I’ve left this handsome fellow till last – the武蔵鐙 ‘musashi abumi’ or Japanese cobra lily (arisaema ringens) a close relative of Jack in the Pulpit. Isn’t he a real beaut! I would say that this one is a true rarity as exemplified by the paucity of people who’ve ever heard of it; say ‘musashi abumi’ to people in Japan and you’ll most likely be greeted with a look of bewilderment. They will, however, get the picture if you say its English name in a heavy katakana-ized accent – ジャパニーズ・コブラ・リリー.
This is one very intriguing plant. It grows to 12 to 18” tall. It has two stalks with three trifoliate elliptical leaves appositely facing away from each other. A flower that looks very much like a cobra head rises up from the center of these leaf stalks. This flower is a green and purple striped spathe with a hood that covers the inner yellowish white flower spike known as the spadix. If hermaphroditic, this will produce a cluster of red berries in mid to late summer when the spathe withers. As with cobras, this fellow has to be handled with kid gloves as its roots contain calcium oxalate, the calcium salt of oxalic acid which is poisonous.
In the process of unfolding
Here’s a side view. He looks like a cobra rearing its head.
In all his glory. Such a dashing chap
All of these plants can be bought in select plant shops in Kyoto from early to mid-March onwards for reasonable prices, though some like the Japanese cobra lily can be a little pricey. (Some cut flower shops also may stock them.) They can be turned into very colorful – and quirky – potted plant arrangements. As you can see in the picture below, they don’t grow into big bulky plants. Considering the size they grow up to, their bulbs are quite tiny and can be planted in smallish pots which can be easily re-arranged as soon as they have reached their prime and their leaves start to wither.
A picture of my ‘tokonoma’ taken a few years back. You can see almost all of the plants I’ve mentioned plus a few others to liven and brighten up the arrangement.
If you live in Kyōto, I would recommend a visit to the Suzaku-no-Niwa Garden and Inochi-no-Mori (Living Forest) near the Umekōji Train Museum. Admission is 200 yen but it is well worth it. They have been, in my view at least, artfully landscaped and offer a view of flora and other plant life that you would normally not have the chance to see up close in an inner city. I recommend allowing yourself at least two or three hours to go around and enjoy what they have to offer. I find it quite surprising that these gardens are located only a short distance from the main station of a major city – a veritable green oasis. You can find out more about these gardens at:
This time of the year is vibrant and invigorating not just for colorful sakura but also for lovely, little things that tend to go unnoticed. Why not collect and plant or pot a few yourselves to brighten up your garden? Something else to look forward to in spring every year.
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