Book Review of The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (560 pages)
Reviewer: Rebecca Otowa
Readers of this website may remember that I wrote a piece called “Insight on a Rainy Day” in August 2022, largely about the Heart Sutra (Hannya Shingyo) and its central message, “Emptiness is none other than form; form is none other than emptiness”. It was a surprising serendipity then, to hear Ruth Ozeki herself, in an interview to Guardian Live about her most recent (fourth) novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, saying that the title came from that very phrase. She is a Zen priest and familiar with the Heart Sutra. I wrote to her via her website and asked her permission to write a review for Writers in Kyoto, and she assented, mentioning that she herself used to be a Writer in Kyoto back in the day and is very nostalgic for Kyoto. In the interview she said that her personal view is that “emptiness” (ku 空) is like an ocean, from which waves or “form” (shiki 色) appear for a time. They are what we know as “matter” or the “material world”, and include inanimate objects as well as human beings. We all, we members of the material world, have form for a time and then sink back into the ocean.
Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author and Zen priest, born in 1956. Her mother was Japanese, but the name Ozeki is a pseudonym. She has written four novels in which environmental, spiritual, and social themes combine. She has received the Women’s Prize for Fiction with her latest book, and previously was awarded the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
In a recent Zoom presentation for WiK, one of our leading members Ed Levinson gave an overview of his lifework, embracing photography, writing, spiritual practice and smallholding on the Boso Peninsula. His energy and enthusiasm brought the presentation to life, and the result of his ‘soil with soul’ philosophy was evident in the wonderful slide show he prepared for the occasion.
Pictured below is the house that Ed and his wife put up, atop a small hill with commanding views, In 2000 when they bought the land, it was just an empty plot with no connection to electricity, gas, water or sewage. There was not even a road!
The house sits on the side of a hill, with two separate wings for work space, storage and residence. The top floor of the larger two-storey building on the left is on the same level as the one-storey building on the right. They are connected by a wide wood deck and covered hallway.
On the surrounding land Ed and his wife established a series of six terraces on which they grow vegetables, trees and flowering plants. Their guiding principle was to be as natural as possible, leaving plants to go to seed where appropriate. Some overhead drone shots showed the flourishing result. Ed’s interest in gardens reflects the likes of William Morris and Monet’s flowers and Japanese water garden. In his early days in Japan he worked for three years with professional Japanese gardeners, giving him the basic knowledge and techniques along with insights into Japanese culture.
In addition to tending his garden, Ed has taken part in a wide range of activities and done volunteer work, making firm ties with the local community. It felt a privilege to hear of his work, and by common agreement it was an inspiration to achieve more for all those who attended. Many thanks to Ed for sharing his remarkable project with us and showing just what is possible if one sets one’s mind to it.
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For a self-introduction by Ed, with some of his excellent photos and poems, see here.
As summer winds down and autumn gradually brings refreshingly cooler weather to Kyoto, let us settle in to read another prizewinning submission from the Writers in Kyoto Seventh Annual Writing Competition.
Ukrainian-born Tetiana Korchuk’s “The Promise” was selected as the winner of our Unohana Prize, awarded to the national of a country in which English is not an official language. Her heartwarming piece, a true story, was chosen by the judges for its skillful depiction of the onset of love and a vision of the future. “The Promise” also illustrates the setting of the Kamo River as a gathering place for locals and lovers. The young couple joins this parade in the cycle of time. Expressions of affection, however, continue to evolve throughout the generations.
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The Promise
It has happened in our early dating days, when you still can’t quite wrap your head around the thought that feelings are actually mutual. You feel drunk with love, almost feverish from every single thing going on in your head. Everything around you seems magical, full of hidden meaning and perfectly imperfect. Everyday is almost like the night before Christmas, when the next day should be even happier than today, and you are ready to experience that happiness with every tiny cell of your body.
I was waiting for him at the Keihan station, our usual meeting spot, just to walk alongside Kamogawa river, like many times before. At university class we recently started studying The Tale of Genji, and my thoughts were wandering, trying to imagine Kyoto of those times. For just a moment I felt like I could see it, petite young ladies in kimono, fishermen in large straw hats, black-haired, tanned children running around barefoot. Children’s laughter sounded almost like a melody of colorful wind chimes, hanging near entrances of the riverside houses. I could even smell freshly cooked food, probably made by a mother waiting for her family to gather for dinner and felt the taste of tart green tea on my tongue.
That moment I spotted him finally approaching, tall and easily noticeable among others. My heart skipped a bit, and I immediately was brought back to reality. We held hands and started slowly walking our usual route, talking about everything and observing other couples sitting close to each other facing the river. Someone was practicing saxophone under one of the bridges, housewives were walking their cute fluffy shiba dogs with round tails. As evening approached, groups of young people with music and drinks started gathering here and there. Near the station performers were advertising a fire show starting in a few minutes.
Suddenly I saw a nicely dressed elderly couple walking towards us in a traditional Japanese manner, the wife just two steps behind her husband’s back. They were smiling and talking quietly.
“Would we also be walking here when we are in our seventies, what do you think?” asked I. Immediately feeling a little nervous, like if my life depended on his answer.
“Sure, I can promise you that,” he said. “But we will also be holding hands.” He was smiling only with his dark eyes.
My heart was full. Full of love to that elderly couple, the slow waters of Kamogawa, and cute shiba dogs. Full of love to him.
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Tetiana Korchuk is a translator, teacher, and author born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine. She first arrived in Japan in 2014 as an exchange program participant. After graduating from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a major in Japanese Language and Literature, she moved to Japan permanently in 2017. She now resides in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture and enjoys learning about traditional Japanese culture, writing short stories, and cuddling with her shiba dog named Sakura.
Writers in Kyoto stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine during this very challenging time in their country’s history, and therefore we asked Tetiana if she would like to write more about her connection with Kyoto and her feelings about the current situation in Ukraine. She writes:
“I first came to Kyoto in September 2014, a proud and excited exchange student, who finally managed to make her dream of visiting Japan into reality. My luggage was lost on the way (though found and returned to me safely after a couple of days), so I started my new life almost empty-handed. My first night, wandering the streets around the dorm where I was staying, I was feeling happy and confused, but mostly stunned by the city.
Eight years have passed since then, and now I live in another place, but still close enough to visit often. Years spent in Kyoto — first as a student, and later living and working there — has helped me to create a bond with the ancient Japanese capital. Now, arriving at Kyoto Station with its modern design, view of Kyoto Tower, and people going up and down on a cascade of escalators, always feels a bit like home.
Why is Kyoto so special to me? I don’t know. Maybe because I totally adore its history, shrines and temples, festivals and crafts. I enjoy that it is full of surprises and hidden treasures which you can’t find in tourist guidebooks. Maybe it’s because several of the busiest and most adventurous years of my life were spent there.
It also happens that among all Japanese cities, Kyoto is also special to me for one more reason. Actually, in 1971 Kyoto established a sister city relationship with Kyiv, the city where I am originally from and where my family still lives. These two beautiful cities have more in common than is apparent at first sight. Both are ancient capitals with an amazing history, culture, and proud people. Nowadays one of the parks in Kyiv is called ‘Park Kyoto’, which has a beautiful alley of Japanese cherry trees. My heart goes to Kyiv right now, and I also think about the festive blooming of the city’s chestnut trees.
Since the Russian invasion started on February 24th, Kyiv is not the peaceful, gorgeous city I used to know. It is not safe anymore, and many other places aren’t either. My heart hurts thinking about people who lost their homes due to this war. People who lost their loved ones. People who lost their lives. I can’t stop thinking about schools, kindergartens, and hospitals being shelled. Children being killed.
Being an emigrated Ukrainian these days is not easy, constantly being worried about family and friends and not being able to help much. Therefore, I’m forever grateful for all of the support that the people of Kyoto and other Japanese cities have shown to Ukrainians during these hard times — organizing charity events, peaceful demonstrations, accepting refugees, and much more. I feel that Ukrainians are not alone right now. We pray together for peace, and I believe that peace will come soon.”
Tetiana in traditional Ukranian clothing, on a hilltop beside Arashiyama, KyotoFamily of Three – A Happy Life in Japan
Time has stopped at Wachi Station, where my companion and I are waiting to meet our host, Mr Yamada. I watch the tiny movements of a swallow patiently building its nest under the roof of the grocery shop where we drink coffee. Delicious. My thoughts wander as I follow the comings and goings of this small travelling creature, and I remember why I am here at this place, at this time. For me, for whom the Côte Vermeille of my childhood already represented a mysterious and exotic land, my thirties were the gateway to the world, the journeys to distant countries, Morocco, India, South Korea, Japan. Life is an exciting journey, and it was precisely a passion, an attraction to the aesthetics of Japanese gardens and the magic of small trees – the art of bonsai – that, from my adolescence, made me dream of Japan, of a Japan anchored in its ancestral nature and its unchanging seasons, its mountains cloaked in misty forests, its rural hamlets populated by strange inhabitants wearing straw hats and small statuettes with monks greeting the traveller at the corner of a hidden garden… This dreamed Japan was as distant as a planet in a far-off galaxy: It seemed to me that, to get there, I needed a kind of secret initiation, the codes of which I did not know. Years passed, the process of living took all my time: there was none left for anything else. A lot of reading nevertheless gave a glimpse of a different world: the art of erecting stones, the Japanese aesthetic according to Donald Richie, the Zen of Dogen and D. T. Suzuki, the poems of Basho, Shiki, Santoka and Soseki, so many travelling souls who became faithful companions of my keen desire to decipher the world. This first trip to Japan was so eagerly awaited that it caught me off guard: we are never ready to live our destiny, we just have to get used to it.
Yamada-san arrives with a big smile, and we are soon driven through the Miyama Valley in his old Toyota. The path to his house is marked by a gigantic bulbous tree; according to Yamada-san, its age is estimated at 1,000 years! I find it difficult to identify the exact species, but I am fascinated by its almost human presence, as one can be fascinated by the presence of a person who emanates experience and wisdom. Trees are the writers of time, they record and observe in silence, and it is this silence of eternity that deserves our respect. In Japan, remarkable natural elements such as old trees are regarded as deities: the huge trunk is wrapped with a rope, a shimenawa, indicating veneration as an expression of the spirit of nature. Not surprisingly, a Shinto shrine stands nearby, next to the road leading to Suisen-an, the residence where we will be staying for the next two days. In Bäume, Hermann Hesse wrote: “He who has learned to listen to the trees no longer wishes to be a tree. He desires to be nothing but what he is. This is home. This is happiness.”
Happiness clearly lies in this house, made so welcoming by the omotenashi, the all-Japanese hospitality, of Mr. Yamada and his wife, who do everything to make us feel comfortable. The spacious living room is bordered on the side by a bay window with a view of the valley below; an ikebana is set on a stool, with a Japanese lily in the centre of the composition. In the extension of the living room, a space with tatami mats on the floor serves as a bedroom: it can be closed with sliding doors to ensure privacy at night. On the living room table, two cups of roasted tea and chestnut wagashi have been prepared for us. Our hosts retreat, leaving us to immerse ourselves in the darkness of the place, an atmosphere that was so familiar to me thanks to Tanizaki’s classic In Praise of Shadows.
“What is the right way to live?” This question comes to mind as I think of the old tree and Yamada-san, a kindly, vigorous sixty-year-old. I suspect that a possible answer lies here, in this remote valley in the north of Kyoto Prefecture, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Yamada-san bought the land and house he lives in with his wife many years ago, and the landscape has changed with him. He tells us that in the past he planted not only rice fields, but also sakura (ornamental cherry trees) along the road, so that he could admire them in the years to come. This consideration for our surroundings is something I have often observed in Japan: the patience of the gardener who does not think of immediate gratification but plants a seed and waits to receive the fruits – perhaps, one day. Is this the meaning of aging well? To improve things little by little, year by year, embracing the uncertainty that accompanies all change?
At lunchtime, Yamada-san asks us to accompany him to the small garden behind the guesthouse. When he whistles, we wonder what will happen. A few seconds pass and we get the answer: a hawk appears from the mountains and dives towards us. Yamada-san throws a piece of raw chicken into the air and the hawk, obviously used to the ritual, catches it in flight and disappears into the green hills. Is living in touch with nature, with one’s own nature, the secret of a good life?
Misty Miyama
The next morning, the mountains emerge from the mist like mysterious islands rising from the waves. Mi-yama, the magic mountain. I get up early and sit in front of the big bay window watching the mist rising, at an imperceptible pace. This meditative view resonates within me: I feel the call of this world that seems so familiar, a familiarity embodied by a thousand-year-old tree. And I desire nothing more than to stay in this moment, which is sufficient to itself, to empty my soul in order to nourish it with the fruit of this moment.
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For other writing by Robert Weis, see Mind Games in Arashiyama, or 71 Lessons on Eternity. For more on his travels, see his account of a walk from Ohara to Kurama here, or his spiritual journey to Kyoto here. His account of Nicolas Bouvier in Kyoto in the mid-1950s can be read here.
An Edited Funeral Service Talk in Osaka, Japan, 2022-04-29 byReggie Pawle
(For reasons of confidentiality, the name of the deceased has been changed.)
Master of Ceremony: As other people have said, exactly one year before Richard received his diagnosis, he lost his beloved wife (through a very unexpected tragedy). They were married for over twenty years and over the next couple of years he worked, he saw people, he went places, and he did what he had to do, but the loss never faded and the pain was always there. A few months ago Richard invited Dr. Reggie Pawle to talk to us today about grief and loss and healing.
Reggie: Richard asked me to speak about grief and how to deal with grief. A lot of what I wanted to say has already been said, because people here seem to know about grief. I’ll try to add some understanding to what has already been said.
I was Richard’s counselor for about 11 years. I know him in a different way than most people here know him, because he only came when he had a deep challenge and I only saw him in my office. Still, even though we always talked about problems, the light, the brightness of Richard that has been talked about and shown here today, was really clear all the time in the midst of all his struggles.
When you lose somebody through death, the initial reaction is always shock, no matter how much you’ve been prepared, how much you know about it. The finality of death, right, you’re never going to be able to meet the person again. It seems unreal, the surreality, the disorienting feelings that come up, the mystery, all of the unknowns, the intensity. You don’t know what to do. In daily life we don’t commonly have these kinds of deep and strong feelings. The pain, the hurt, the confusion.
The deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. Your grief and your pain is part of your connection to your loved one. As time passes, grief and pain become one of your most tangible connections that you feel for your loved one. You might not want to let these painful feelings go. You might feel guilty if and when the pain lessens over time, as if the lessening of pain is because you are caring less for your loved one. Regrets about “if only I had…” can plague you. Loneliness can be strongly felt. You cannot share together with your loved one anymore. You do not get the feedback and responses that were so much a part of your relationship together. All of your future plans cannot happen. You can’t accept that your loved one has passed away. The feelings of loss, the feelings of emptiness. How can you go on?
I am going to read a couple of poems by Earl Grollman (1995), who wrote a book (Living When a Loved One Has Died) about grief. This poem is entitled, ‘And It Hurts’:
When you lose, you grieve. It is hard to have the links with your past severed completely. Never again will you hear your loved one’s laughter. You must give up the plans you had made; abandon your hopes.
Like all people who suffer the loss of someone they loved, You are going through a grieving process.
The time to grieve is NOW. Do not suppress or ignore your mourning reactions. If you do, your feelings will be like smoldering embers, which may later ignite and cause a more dangerous explosion.
Grief is unbearable heartache, sorrow, loneliness. Because you loved, grief walks by your side.
Grief is one of the most basic of human emotions. Grief is very, very normal.
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Grief is a normal emotion. It’s important to understand that each person grieves differently. You are your own expert in how to grieve. With grief you can’t say how to do it, because everybody does it in their own way. There’s no timeline for grief. It comes in many forms, like, for example, for those of us who are gaijins (foreigners) in Japan, the experience of a long plane ride back to our home country when a family member has died. In my own case when my mother died, I booked a return ticket for two days later and canceled all my appointments, except for one. This woman begged me, so I said yes. Then she came the next day and told me her story of just returning to Japan from being in her home country to be at her mother’s funeral. She cried. I didn’t tell her my own story, but I cried, and we cried together. It was surreal. Then the next day I left for my own mother’s funeral. There’s no explaining death.
This is a diversity approach to life and death. Everybody has different experiences and everyone responds differently. It is important not to let social ideas of how to grieve tell you how you should grieve. Live your grief process.
This is a second poem by Earl Grollman (1995), called, ‘But It Hurts… Differently’:
There is no way to predict how you will feel.
The reactions of grief are not like recipes, with given ingredients, and certain results.
Each person mourns in a different way.
You may cry hysterically, or you may remain outwardly controlled, showing little emotion.
You may lash out in anger against your family and friends, or you may express your gratitude for their concern and dedication.
You may be calm one moment – in turmoil the next.
Reactions are varied and contradictory.
Grief is universal. At the same time it is extremely personal.
Heal in your own way.
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Talking to other people at this time is sometimes awkward. They can be very irritating. Platitudes don’t work. Sometimes people just don’t know what to say. Sometimes you will hear dimwitted questions like, “How do you feel?”, when a better question would be, “How will you remember them?” Everyone it seems has an immortalized memory in their heart of their loved one.
You still have to deal with the business of living. If you park in a bus stop, like I did when I was upset after being informed that my grandfather had died, the local laws will still apply to you. It was the middle of the workday and I had to go to a building for a work function. I couldn’t find a convenient parking space. I recall myself thinking, “I can’t deal with this. I’m barely holding it together. I’ll park in the bus stop.” So I went in for a few minutes, only a few minutes, came back out, and I had a parking ticket.
Just manage each moment, hour, that leads to another day without your bright and lightness that shone so vibrantly before. Try to relinquish your sense of control and agenda and ride it out, while being attentive to what’s going on, to what you are experiencing. Do what helps you. Some share with others who have had the same loss and find incredible support and strength. Listening to others’ stories can help, as does telling your stories, like we’re doing here today. Crying is natural when you are grieving. Some write haiku (17 syllable poems), some read books like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, some go for walks in the forest.
As some have been doing here today, it is ok to give yourself license to express positive emotion and affirm other aspects of yourself that you value outside the tragedy. It can be psychologically healthy to focus on the parts of your identity that are not touched by the tragedy. It is ok for the grieving athlete to play in an important game. The same goes for the student who wants to take their final in the wake of a campus tragedy. Some have said that doing so will makes them feel more in control and helps them cope better down the line. There is not a right way or one way to grieve. Find your personal way.
You’re dealing very directly with the existential realities of death and time. Everyone dies and nobody can stop time from continuing and passing. Grief can feel like collapsing on the ground. Yet it is through being on the ground that you can stand up again. Japanese people invoke this understanding when they say about Daruma (the person who brought Zen Buddhism to China from India), “Seven times falling, eight times standing”. The number is one more for standing than falling because the assumption is it is natural for a person to stand up and be active in life. However, many times we get knocked over. The belief is that each time something in life knocks us over, we need to find our ground and stand up again.
Death happens to everyone. Therefore, it can’t be bad. Your loved one is okay and you also will be okay when you die. It is written (Inoue, 2020) that the wife, Yoshie Inoue, of Zen master Gien Inoue said to her husband on June 2, 1946, “I’m indebted to you for all that you’ve done for me these many years. Now, I’m going to die.” Gien said, “Are you alright?” Yoshie laughed, saying, “I’m alright,” whereupon she died. You don’t have to be afraid of death, you can find your way to deal with the passing of your loved one from this world, and you don’t have to be alone. You can be at peace.
So, (as I turn to face the large photo of the deceased on the altar) I want to say, thank you Richard, for what you’ve given to all of us, and for me personally, for the brightness that you always had in the midst of all your intense struggles that we shared together. You live on as a part of us.
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References:
Grollman, Earl. (1995). Living When a Loved One Has Died. Boston, MA, USA: Beacon Press, pp. 13-16. Inoue, Gien. (2020). (Trans. D. Rumme and K. Ohmae). A Blueprint of Enlightenment. Olympia, WA, USA: Temple Ground Press, p. 31.
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For more about Reggie Pawle and his psychotherapy work, see www.reggiepawle.net. For his self-introduction, see here. For his work combining psychotherapy and Zen, click here. For his piece on Zen and the Corona crisis, see here.
This essay originally appeared in German as one of six contributions to, then Japan-based German photographer, Hans Sautter’s large format book, ‘Japan.’ Each contributor was assigned a theme to write about, in my case, the Japanese city. This month sees the English language version of the book from an American publisher.
A saxophonist practicing under the arches of a Sumida River bridge.
In Maurice Rheims’s book, La Vie estrange des objects, a character, offering a collector a handful of sand mixed with crushed marble and porphyry, suggests, “Take this to your museum and say: This is ancient Rome.” The Japanese equivalent of this episode might be a handful of gray, post-war cement dust, its best effort at antiquity.
Like all cities, the human societies inhabiting Japanese metropolises are far greater than the sum of their historical pasts, or the physical components and materials that constitute their archeological strata. In the pullulating, demographically engorged hives of cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, host to endless cycles of birth and death, the forces of renewal and replenishment are primary.
As they engage in ongoing experiments in architecture, town planning and lifestyle, Japanese cities create a circulation of ideas, empirical metaphors and paradoxes based on the effects of passing time. The sense of regret, even bereavement, attached to the loss of heritage buildings in Europe, is less acute in the Japanese urban milieu, which is driven by disintegration, interruption, ruptures, and creative metamorphosis represented as progress. Every new city structure, in this view of metro evolution, is an opportunity to redefine the urban scape, to improve on older archetypical forms. The visitor savors the strangeness of these cities in fleeting, incomplete moments, akin to allowing the mind to freely navigate images contrived by an over-ingestion of psychotropic drugs. And like a powerful chemical infiltration, your own perception will determine whether you experience the city as a wonderland or nightmare.
The rectilinear boulevards of 19th century Paris, designed in part to supersede a cobweb of medieval alleys easily barricaded by the Communards, and the formal grid of urban planner, Ildefons Cerda i Sunyer’s Barcelona, are models of important urban centers that have adapted well to the imperatives of the modern age. It would be a simplification to say that Japanese cities, once defined by a relatively formal order, have succumbed to entirely formless disorder, but this is invariably the first impression. Unlike the calculated irrationality of surrealist art, in which the omission of logical co-ordination between objects and the collapse of spatial assumptions, ignites the imagination with limitless possibilities, Tokyo’s jumble of structures and signage is apt to merely baffle. Compounding the dissonances is a stylistic fondness for the kitsch. Donald Richie went so far as to assert that Japan was a, “kingdom of kitsch and Tokyo is its kapital. Mt Fuji ends up as a tissue dispenser, and the Buddha’s sandals – three meters high – adorn a ferro-concrete temple pretending to be timber.” In the end, the infidelities of style are so prodigious you cease to even notice them.
Today’s supercharged urban centers, fueled by unbridled consumerism, illuminated by garish, fitfully kinetic neon, and masses of signage, have created a landscape akin to urban bricolage. In the contemporary Japanese city, a traditional preference for the discreet, the modestly obtuse, is replaced by a craving for maximum visibility. In acquiring the added function of advertising props, Japanese urban centers have been transformed into surfaces of running commercial text and scroll. In cities like these, where pedestrians for the most part only ever see one side of a building, the one overlooking the street, views are flattened into two-dimensional planes. This sequential, episodic experience of the city is narrative set on constant replay, or re-write, the text as fresh, or shallow, as urgently produced as the script for a TV advertisement. With one set of commercials trying to scramble contiguous signals, style can subsume substance. The result is architecture that, buried under a morass of text messages and images, runs the risk of becoming secondary. In the contemporary Japanese city, it is not heritage buildings but electronic screens that embody the flow of time.
It wasn’t always like this. In photographer Felice Beato’s 1865 Panorama of Yedo from Atagoyama, a monochrome image consisting of five combined albumen prints, we see a singularly ordered, carefully zoned city. Japan’s Edo era (1603-1868) was micro-managed and class stratified to a degree that edicts and proscriptions were issued on everything from the materials used in building a house, the quality and type of food permissible for consumption, how language, to the usage of grammatical modifiers, verbs and pronouns could be employed, the deployment and striking of facial and gestural expressions, the colors and type of fabrics that could be worn, and even the type of material that could be utilized in footwear straps. The planning of Japanese cities and castle towns was based on a preconceived matrix of auspicious geomancy, social hierarchies and delineated trade districts, a formal space defined and managed by an intrusive, unassailable, authoritarian order. With the dissolution of the totalitarian state, the feudal city prototype, a political as much as social blueprint, was hastily disassembled in favor of an anti-systemic model characterized by subversive freedoms.
The writer at the Digital Art Museum on Odaiba Island.
The downside of perpetual change are cities with no memory, or at best, accuracy prone collective retention. Few of the structures in Japan’s most prominent cities are historically original. Like literature and film, often requiring a voluntary suspension of disbelief, to fully appreciate architectural reconstructions in Japan, the viewer must enter into a suspension of attachment to the authentic. From the Japanese perspective, replicating the past is a means to understanding the process of tradition. The reconstructed castles of Nagoya and Osaka, with their ferro-concrete buttresses and elevators, are admired for their progressive additions, rather than ostracized as adjuncts to architectural duplication.
If European cities, with strict preservation laws and zoning regulations, are models of controlled order and surveillance in the higher cause of heritage, Japanese cities epitomize creative anarchy driven by economic imperatives, novelty, and a thirst for renewal. This presupposes the risk of mediocrity, and yet these cities represent some of the most electrifying urban spaces on earth. Ultimately Tokyo, with its economic ascendance and cultural dynamism, is the most visible touchstone for change. As its memory landscapes are lost, however, the creed of impermanence becomes a catalyst for psychic instability in an amnesiac city.
Contemplating the wonders and caprices of the fictive metropolis of Eutropia, Italo Calvino wrote, “Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred, worked this ambiguous miracle.” Tokyo also has its presiding deities. Ebisu, the god of commerce, is a prominent figure, but so too is Benten, female patron of music and the arts, a sensual, counterbalancing presence, radiating higher aspirations, tempering venality. If Tokyo has renounced a material past that consolidates memory, the spirit and supernatural worlds endure. One need look no further than the capital’s countless temples, shrines, mortuary halls, Buddhist home altars, ancient tombs and sarcophagi, to the primacy of ceremony, ritual and community festivals, or to the shadows of corporate towers, where faith healers, numerologists, palmists, and fortune-tellers ply their trade, to sense the spirit in the machinery of modern life, to feel time bending backwards. These concrete cities, we must conclude, pulsate with supra-natural forces, their shape-shifting forms supporting a spiritual cosmology that forms a power grid of semi-invisible, but palpably sensed forces. Extending the metaphor of a city devoted as much to the spiritual as the commercial, we find in the relentless superimposing of buildings, each new structure usurping the previous, a cityscape embodying the Buddhist notion of mujo, impermanence.
The common contention that Tokyo is less a city than a series of villages may seem implausible in the contemporary context, but when you move from the corporate central districts of the city, the icy beauty of their buildings, the air perceptibly changes. A warming takes place. The human temperature rises. It would be a mistake, therefore, to characterize Tokyo as a machine, a centrally controlled mechanism, as one prominent writer did. Cities are not machines, though well-lubricated ones like Tokyo possess mechanisms to forestall lassitude, indolence, decline. Far from being an industrial fabrication, the city, in its radical unorthodoxy, is a model of creative evolution, perpetual mutation. Arguably, Tokyo is the prototype of these cities of temporality, metro-scapes that prioritize attachment to ideas over form, that attempt to forestall the decomposition of time with persistent facial surgery. Tokyo’s greatness rests not in an august past, of which there is scant evidence and little interest, but in an endearing optimism about the future, a conviction that the best is yet to come, that the present is a preliminary for something truly extraordinary.
Water, light and steel. Ryogoku Bridge
The powerful electromagnetism of the city generates an exuberance, an effervescence of largely unfettered ideas and experimentation that, ultimately, accelerates the dissolution of antiquity, confirming Tokyo’s preference for deliquescence and regeneration. In its ingenuous anarchy, a creative formlessness that is fluid rather than rigid in its refusal to bend to an overarching plan, lies its essential humanity and originality.
Home to the highest nocturnal concentration of light on the planet, one senses the air filling with electrons, thunderheads of impending change massing behind this most existential of cities. How you respond, will depend on whether the city liberates or incarcerates you.
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In After Act, Stephen considers virus related literature in a pandemic world.
For a review of his life in writing, given as a lunchtime talk for WiK, see here. For a review by John Dougill of his book, Stone Gardens, click here.
For a short treatise on light and dark in Japanese culture, see here. For a review by Josh Yates of Stephen’s book on Tokyo: A Biography, see here.
For Stephen Mansfield’s review of the WiK Anthology 3, Encounters with Kyoto, please click here. For his amazon page with a list of his books, please see this link.
In KJ102, a newly released digital issue, we bring together accounts of formative experiences, in the context of historical momentum. A good example would be Vito Tomasino’s tale of visiting Kyoto as a U.S. Marine on R&R from Korea in 1954, taking the opportunity against significant odds to throw himself briefly into judo training with a Kyoto police team, when post-war Kyoto was re-opening to the world. At age 20, Vito is unknowingly on a trajectory that will lead him to becoming a “top gun” fighter pilot. Poet Garrett Hongo, translator Meredith McKinney, and essayist Pico Iyer each recount significant encounters in their early times in Kyoto, in the early 70s and mid-80s. Present-day Kyoto as a hub for creative collaboration provides the background for ‘A Composer and a Theoretical Physicist’—an article by Susan Pavloska and Lane Diko highlighting Yannick Paget’s new symphony.
Looking further afield, excerpts from Amy Chavez’s new book (The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter) introduce her neighbors on Shiraishi island in the Inland Sea, and the major changes that are transforming their lives there. Another book excerpt, from Scott Ezell’s Journey to the End of the Empire, plus a short “prequel” and postscript, focuses on how the historic village of Dali, in China’s Yunnan province, has been reinvented over decades of tourism “development.” West Bengal poet/calligrapher Nilanjan Bandyopadhyay has visited Japan 29 times; his absorption of Japanese aesthetics inspires him to build a contemplative teahouse (named Kokoro) in Santiniketan. Kala Ramesh, from Goa, also discovers and adopts the ancient Japanese tanka style of poetry, in addition to haiku—literary forms also evolve through time. We meet diviners from Hong Kong and Seoul using traditional systems to advise present-day (Covid-era) clients; another book excerpt, from the prolific Marc Peter Keane’s new Arcs and Circles, illuminates a vital early shift in the aesthetics of Japanese tea ceremony. We are introduced to notable bookstores offering translations of children’s books, especially in China, to the richly decorative world of Japanese kites, a new take on Japan’s yokai folklore, and the disturbing depths of an Akutagawa Ryunosuke story. Plus a short fiction piece from Pakistan. Also included, among other poetry, a visit with Cold Mountain poets Kanzan and Jittoku—guided wryly by John Gohorry—and a wide-ranging collection of reviews.
KJ102 is available now for immediate download via the KJ website, for just ¥800.
For our next print issue, planned for spring 2023, following up on KJ101 (‘Water in Kyoto’) we will focus on the myriad aspects of Flora in Kyoto—exploring seasonal flowerings, cycles and events, exquisite flora-related decorative arts, ikebana, historical literary references… and more. We welcome imaginative proposals for short articles! (submissions@kyotojournal.org)
“About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters …”
Auden, Musée de Beaux Artes
On the wall of the little sitting room in our Kyoto house is a reproduction of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs, one of those delightfully busy portraits of a host of peasants up to no good. An odd thing for the wall of a Japanese room.
It was an enormous, meticulously assembled jigsaw puzzle. Where did this come from? I asked my wife. “Oh, Uncle Goldfish across the way made that,” she said. “He’s got a lot of time on his hands.” Uncle Goldfish (kingyo no otchan) was so named because he kept a large tank of goldfish out on the landing in front of his apartment. A regular in the coffee shop my wife ran, he was very tall, well over six feet, and in his early seventies> He was a former yakuza oyabun, or boss. He was a particularly gentle, Japanese version of Junior Soprano, a retired gangster, leading a quiet life, tending to his goldfish and other harmless hobbies. There was a certain courtliness about the man. You could trust him, my wife said. An honourable thief. The yakuza have a reputation for being trustworthy. Richigi was the term she employed.
Occasionally after closing time at the coffee shop, Uncle Goldfish would invite us over to his apartment in what he called in English “the longhouse,” a literal translation of nagaya, a tenement. Inside were two straw-matted rooms and a kitchen, with a small bath and toilet off the veranda behind. The back room had a bed, a dresser, a flat screen TV, and a low table around which we’d sit to eat and drink. He had more channels than we did, so it was always more interesting to watch TV at Uncle Goldfish’s. Short of money like a lot of pensioners in our neighbourhood, he’d wait till six when they sold off the sushi and bento boxes at the local supermarket. In his fridge he kept a jug of shōchū, white liquor, cut with water. Whenever we visited him it was clear that he’d already had a few. A large man, his voice grew larger whenever he drank, and he was persona non grata in most of the local pubs. He was never violent, but he could be rowdy.
One night, Uncle Goldfish opened his wardrobe and showed me the old suits he’d kept from better days, when (as one of Bruegel’s proverbs goes) he’d “tiled his roof with tarts.” He pulled out one bespoke but particularly garish jacket, made of multicoloured strands of raw silk. “I’ll never wear this again. Why don’t you try it on?” It was much too large on me. Besides, where could I have worn such a thing?
Uncle Goldfish had been head of a local chapter of his yakuza family. He had his own clubhouse and when he rose in the morning, two henchmen would dress him like a French king; he’d stand there, arms and legs akimbo, as they put his shirt and trousers on. I didn’t pry into how he made his living then, though occasionally he made mention of the trips he’d make to Southeast Asia or of the time he grew marijuana at home. Drugs, prostitution, gambling, and protection were how yakuza made their living. Just why he’d left the life I wasn’t sure, but he found himself singularly unsuccessful at making honest money. For a while he ran a video store, but that folded. What little he hadn’t spent already went on alimony and child support when his second wife left him, having caught him with his mistress at the clubhouse. There was a son in town (he ran a bar) who occasionally visited.
And there were the goldfish, out there on the front landing. There were also the stray cats, noisily fucking on summer nights in the narrow crannies—you could hardly call them alleys—between his tenament and the house next door. All the cats were interested in his fish. One evening he made me a proposal. “You’ve got a car. Why don’t I get some cardboard boxes and round them up? We’ll stuff them in the back and drive them across the bridge and set them free on the other side of the river. Cats won’t cross a body of water.”
Great, I thought: if the cops ever pulled me over on the other side of the Katsura in my Daihatsu Move, loaded with a passel of protesting cats and a lanky old yakuza riding shotgun, how would I explain? Luckily I never had to. The cats were a nuisance but couldn’t get into the aquarium. Whenever my grandson came for a visit, he always headed straight over to see the old man’s goldfish.
In the summer when it was hot, sometimes I’d see him stripped naked to the waist. Strange for a yakuza he had all his fingers but no tattoos. He said he’d never been into body art—it was unnecessary for his line of work—and he’d committed no indiscretions that would have made him give up a digit. Losing the little finger wasn’t pretty, he told me. What they’d do was apply a tight tourniquet with a rubber band to the finger that was to be severed. This would not only stanch the blood but also numb the pain, which was still considerable. But I noticed a nasty scar across his belly. How’d you get that? I asked. He tld me that he and a buddy were horsing around one day and got into a fight over a girl. The other guy pulled out a short sword and stabbed him. The cut wasn’t so bad, but he stumbled down a flight of stairs and burst his spleen.
We’d been visiting him regularly for dinner for a couple of years when I heard that he’d been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I saw him only when I was in town, so months would pass before we’d meet again. Pinned to the wall over his bedstead was a large package of the pills he was taking.
On Christmas Day in Kyoto I try to visit the flea market at Kitano Tenjin Shrine, which is held on the twenty-fifth of every month. That year, when I mentioned that I was going, Uncle Goldfish asked to come along. We went in my Daihatsu. Accordioning his long legs into the passenger seat of the little car, he reflected on his driving days and his fine automobiles, many of them foreign. He’d driven for close to fifty years without a license, he said nonchalantly. “You mean to tell me the cops never stopped you?” I asked. “Oh, they stopped me all right, but I dealt with it,” he said vaguely. “The last time, though, I had a problem. I got pulled over with a girlfriend on the way to a love hotel. I gave up driving after that.”
We parked the car in the lot of a family restaurant behind the shrine. Uncle Goldfish pointed out to me a restaurant in Kami Shichiken, the geisha district behind the shrine, where he and his friends would play hanafuda and gamble. In my mind’s eye I conjured scenes from a slew of yakuza movies where half-naked men and women with tattoos sat in rows and played cards like ritual war.
The last time I saw Uncle Goldfish we were over to have dinner. By then he was eating little and drinking nothing. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said, and popped a disk into his DVD player. A fanfare of trumpets played over an aerial shot of Kyoto. The camera panned from one famous tourist site to another, then zoomed in on the main clubhouse for the gang he’d belonged to. Inside was a hoard of gangsters, in a great room festooned with curtains in celebratory red and white stripes. Besides the top bosses from all the country’s gangs—there must have been a good dozen of those—were the members of the local chapter, numbering well over a hundred. Everybody was there: the guy with the little Hitler moustache, the walleye, the glasses, the scarface, the buzz-cut, the punch perm, the double-breasted suits, the tuxedos—not a single woman among them—there for the investiture of the gang’s new oyabun. A half dozen responsible for carrying out the ceremony were dressed in pure white linen kimonos and when they raised their arms to carry various ritual items—sake, tall cones of salt, a sea bream—one could catch a glimpse of flowery tattoos running down their arms from their backs and shoulders. The emcee, responsible for the blessing of the sake and the fish with salt, was missing the little fingers on both of his hands. Though his voice trembled, he poured out the sake with a flourish and took the first drink—to prove it wasn’t poisoned—before pouring out individual cups for the outgoing and incoming Dons. The ceremony was fascinating, an amalgam of Shinto wedding and imperial coronation. The new boss surveyed his gathering with a stony gaze. I imagined him calculating which of those present he was going to get rid of once the ceremony was over. I know I wouldn’t have been welcome. Cameramen dressed in suits, like you might find at a wedding, danced around recording the event. The finished product had all the trappings—the jump cuts, the close-ups, the portentous music—of a B-grade gangster movie.
When it was over and the DVD popped out of his player, he said, “Keep it. I’m sure you’d find some use for this.” That was his parting gift to me. I returned to Canada soon after. His final days were not spent entirely alone—a tag team of local ladies tended to him before he died.
I wonder which of those Dutch sayings best summed up Uncle Goldfish’s life? Surely leaving the life of crime has been for him Van de os op de ezel springen—he’d fallen from the ox onto an ass, which is to say, on hard times. Some might say he’d spent his life “crapping on the gallows.” Assembling Bruegel’s painting from a thousand pieces of a jigsaw puzzle must have been a kind of penance for him, an exercise in reassembling his chequered life in a trail of scatological proverbs. To me, he’d accepted his lot with stoic dignity, but maybe he’d only been pissing at the moon.
Illustration taken from Wiki Commons
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To explore more of Cody Poulton’s work, click here. To learn more about his work as professor of Japanese studies at University of Victoria, click here.
This year’s Japan Local Prize was awarded to Writers in Kyoto Member Malcolm Ledger for “Plum Tree by the Eaves”, depicting an ancient tree which embodies the sophistication and elegance of the Heian Period on the grounds of a once-opulent manor. To reside in Kyoto is to be surrounded by history, but unfortunately such significant locales are sometimes ignored and left abandoned. Malcolm illustrates how the plum tree is a timeless bridge between the past and the present, evoking feelings of mono no aware — the gentle melancholy rising from the recognition of the passage of time.
Born in Belfast (United Kingdom) in 1948, Malcolm graduated from Trinity College of Music (London) and London University Institute of Education. He became interested in Zen Buddhism, joining a Zen group under the instruction of Daiyu Myokyo Zenji (formerly Ven. Myokyo Ni) before moving to Japan in 1977 to continue his training. He was accepted as a disciple by Soko Morinaga Roshi at Daishu In (Ryoanji), and also began to study the Way of Tea. After teaching English in a Japanese high school for thirty-one years, he retired in 2014 and came late to writing. Malcolm now resides in Takagamine, northwestern Kyoto. His favorite authors are Patrick White, D. H. Lawrence, and Dostoevsky.
The judges congratulate Malcolm for his thought-provoking submission, and also wish to express their heartfelt feelings of gratitude to Writers in Kyoto member Robert Yellin (owner of the Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery) for his continued support of our annual Kyoto Writing Competition and this year’s generous Local Prize award of an Onta vase from Oita Prefecture.
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Plum Tree by the Eaves
There is a small, dilapidated temple in Kyoto, standing on the site of the former Shoto-mon-in palace of Emperor Ichijo, where Lady Izumi once lived. She was renowned for her beauty even then, and appears in Zeami`s Noh play ‘Toboku’ as the Boddhisatva of Song and Dance. A thousand years ago she planted a plum tree on this spot.
All that remains now is the shabby, run-down temple, its wooden gates falling to pieces, its white plaster walls crumbling. It is deserted, forgotten, overgrown with moss, weeds, and ferns. The garden has gone to seed, and is quite unkempt and forlorn.
But there, in the rain, in the full glory of maturity, bloom the cold, aristocratic plum blossoms, faintly pink, and with a chaste, delicate fragrance which does not overwhelm the senses. There are also clusters of tight, pink buds, like tiny white flames. Rain-wet, what a lovely contrast they make against the dark eaves, sweeping up and up.
Even in mass, the blossoms lack the overpowering, voluptuous extravagance of cherry. Each flower is simple and complete. They do not crowd each other, but remain individual and aloof.
The pathos and beauty of Lady Izumi’s restrained, slow dance is reflected in these elegant blossoms. The dominating mood is one of profound serenity and peace, of liberation and gratitude, sustaining and amplifying the dream-bound world that is hers.
And now, Toboku temple has grown dark. The rain drips and trickles in unseen corners, and in the twilight you half expect Lady Izumi’s ghost to re-appear in her scarlet skirt and plum-white dancing robe, to dance once more for us here by her plum tree, singing as of old:
Though I am no longer of this world, Fleeting as a dew-drop on the wayside grass, I still dwell within this flowering tree.
Malcolm Ledger holding his prize (an Onta vase from Oita Prefecture), courtesy of the Robert Yellin Yakimono Gallery
Like many of you, living in Japan has meant I have a special relationship with the Hannya Shingyo (“Heart Sutra”), that one-page piece of writing that is said to summarize the teachings of Buddhism as taught in many sects, including Zen. In my student days, while studying Japanese Buddhism at Otani University in Kyoto, I attended several different meditation sessions at various temples, and the Heart Sutra was always part of the preliminary. I was quite jealous of the old-timers who could recite it from memory; now I have joined their ranks. I even translated it into English for a friend circa 1981 (sadly, I didn’t keep a record of it, so my translation is lost; it would have been interesting, now, to know how I viewed the Heart Sutra at that time).
Broadly, this little sutra can be divided into two parts: the first part which is the core teaching, and the second part which extols the power of this teaching to neutralize fear and bring the practitioner to the highest degree of enlightenment. It ends with a Sanskrit mantra, which plainly expresses the feeling engendered by meditation upon it. In the inimitable translation of Ruth Ozeki in her novel, A Tale for the Time Being (Penguin 2013):
This experience I wrote about in my most recent blog post, “What Does it Matter?” Briefly, my idea was that you can’t divide the universe into things that matter and things that don’t, because as human beings, our experience is not great enough to make pronouncements like this. For example, one might say, this living creature is annoying me, therefore it doesn’t matter and I can kill it, but I wouldn’t kill a different living creature because “it has a right to live”. My belief is that everything matters, and what matters most is our attitude toward what we experience. I also explored the tendency of human beings to judge and evaluate everything based on their own particular set of senses, which everyone would agree, with a little thought, is very limited – even with the addition of science, which is basically a very well-organized and tool-based enhancement of these senses. Animals, plants, and yes, inanimate objects, have their special way of feeling and experiencing themselves and the world around them, which is not the same as human senses; some creatures we would compare with ourselves and say their senses are “better” than ours, e.g. the eagle’s eye or the dog’s nose. Many we would, in the same way, say they are inferior to ours (especially in “sentience”, which when you think about it is a very slippery concept indeed).
Thus far, it is well known to many people, both foreign and Japanese. I would like to share an insight I had about this while staying recently at a mountain pension on a rainy weekend.
The things of the material world, as they present themselves to our senses, are what is meant in the Heart Sutra by shiki 色. Then there is the world beyond our senses, which in Buddhism is represented by ku 空. This is usually translated “emptiness”, which sounds very Buddhist, and is the traditional way to translate this word, which is also the Japanese word for “sky” (sora). I myself prefer something like “potential”, because whatever that state is, it doesn’t feel “empty” to me. In the Heart Sutra it is written, shiki ku i fu ku fu i shiki 色不異空空不異色 (“Emptiness does not differ from the material world, and the material world does not differ from emptiness.”) and also shiki zoku ze ku ku zoku ze shiki 色即是空空即是色 (“The material world is itself emptiness, and emptiness is itself the material world”) These translations are from Alex Kerr, Finding the Heart Sutra (Penguin 2021). To say the material world is emptiness, or to say that emptiness is the material world – these two statements engender opposing images of what the Universe is like, either so closely packed as to be completely full, or free and empty as floating clouds, which images themselves cannot be thought of as separate from each other.
What hit me about this is that the whole question of whether things matter or not, and which ones do and which ones don’t, which we human beings deal with on a daily basis, becomes moot. For us to base our lives on what our own senses tell us of the material world is to limit ourselves. There are always different beings, different senses, different levels; though it is inevitable (what else are we to base our experiences on?), it is admittedly rather arrogant to use ourselves as a basis for comparison to the entire rest of the universe. The Heart Sutra goes on to say that the senses themselves, as well as our physical sense organs and the objects which seem to generate our sensory feeling (these three are clearly delineated in Buddhism), are non-existent (mu 無).
The Heart Sutra, especially the lines I quoted above, cuts through all that. The material world as we experience it is no different from the world outside our senses! They both exist at the same time and we are free to experience both! They are so close together that there is no separating them. Any attempt at separation, that cruel lie which ensnares humanity, falls away meaningless. This universe of ours, seemingly so close-packed and at the same time free to dissolve and fly away free as a bird, this is our home. We can’t, and shouldn’t, limit ourselves.
Much has been written about “enlightenment”, but I will only mention the old Zen proverb, “Before enlightenment – drawing water and carrying wood. After enlightenment – drawing water and carrying wood.” （Some versions say, “chop wood and carry water”, but this is the version I learned.）What the Heart Sutra seems to be saying is, enlightenment is the same as these little everyday tasks. We may get a flash of insight from time to time, as I did when gazing out the window at the rain in the mountain pension, but we can’t live there, in the eternal “emptiness” beyond the senses. We must come back to the material world and do the little tasks – maybe with a changed and chastened spirit, but the tasks remain to be done. This is where we live. But the emptiness, the large mind, the big picture, is always there to refresh us when the material world becomes too overwhelming with all its small pieces and demands.
If everything matters, then both the material world and the world beyond the senses matter equally. We must live in both and acknowledge both. Recently I re-watched the movie, “The Razor’s Edge”, which starred Bill Murray, from the book by W. Somerset Maugham. Larry, the main character, felt the pull of the material world, and also of the spiritual realm he was studying in his travels. He was determined to see that they are inseparable and both matter, which was not the view of the people that surrounded him. This is the true Razor’s Edge, I thought. Walking on the fine line between the material and the spiritual, and the realization that they are both the razor – they both are part of the same enormous thing.
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