This Japan travel guide presents a journey into the true heart of the Kyoto experience—one which brings you deep into the world of Kyoto’s ancient Zen Buddhist culture.
This is the first comprehensive guide to Kyoto’s most important Zen garden and temple sites. Kyoto’s Zen heritage represents one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Millions of visitors travel to Kyoto yearly in search of their secrets, and here for the first time is a comprehensive overview of every major site.
Over 50 Japanese temples and gardens—including all World Heritage Sites—are captured in sensitive photos by acclaimed Kyoto-based photographer John Einarsen. A detailed introduction to each temple by local expert John Dougill includes information about special opportunities for visitors to the temples—such as early morning meditation sessions, temple food offerings and special green tea sets provided to enhance the contemplative experience—along with other “insider” information that no other guide provides.
The foreword by Takafumi Kawakami, the deputy head priest of the respected Shunkoin Temple in Kyoto, serves to place the book in the context of eastern and western Buddhist thought and practice. His widely viewed TED Talk “How mindfulness can help you to live in the present” has been viewed by over 100,000 people.
From the time the first Christian missionary arrived in Japan in 1549 to when a nationwide ban was issued in 1614, over 300,000 Japanese were converted to Christianity. A vicious campaign of persecution forced the faithful to go underground. For seven generations, Hidden Christians—or Kirishitan—preserved a faith that was strictly forbidden on pain of death. Illiterate peasants handed down the Catholicism that had been taught to their ancestors despite having no Bible or contact with the outside world.
Just as remarkably, descendants of the Hidden Christians continue to this day to practice their own religion, refusing to rejoin the Catholic Church. Why? And what is it about Christianity that is so antagonistic to Japanese culture? In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians is an attempt to answer these questions. A journey in both space and time, In Search of Japan’s Hidden Christians recounts a clash of civilizations—of East and West—that resonates to this day and offers insights about the tenacity of belief and unchanging aspects of Japanese culture.
A new fully-illustrated release of In Praise of Shadows by Junichirō Tanizaki, translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, has just been published by Vintage Classics. It comes with stunning images chosen by the iconic book cover designer Suzanne Dean. This short but detailed essay on Japanese aesthetics provides deep insight into a culture with more layers than a senshyu onion.
Tanizaki was born in 1886 and died in 1965. He’s one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers, well-known for his intricate understanding of Japanese society. He’s favoured for his attention to detail and the magic he evokes but this fascinating essay in addition to being an inspiring work of non-fiction, is complemented by stunning calligraphy, ukiyo-e woodblock prints and delicate washi paper patterns.
“My concept for the redesign included the fold–out cover and full colour text design. I wanted the fold-out cover to feel architectural. The idea of the pages getting darker through the book came to me as I read the text. Shadow and tone felt so important.”
The cover features part of the illustration Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night by the woodblock print artist Suzuki Harunobu. “I loved the way the woman is holding up the lantern. I cropped the picture to keep the design simple and clean,” said Dean in an email interview.
Woman Admiring Plum Blossoms at Night
The emphasis on plum blossoms for the cover ties in perfectly with the contents. The author’s ephemeral thoughts are expressed in a haphazard manner as he jumps from one subject to the next. Plum and cherry blossoms express beauty that is fleeting and therefore precious.
Japan has long been considered a land of mystery, difficult for Westerners to understand. Tanizaki breaks down these illusions by proving darkness can be more conducive to relaxation and meditation.
Throughout this discourse, the author reveals his preference for low lights over bright electric illumination. Westerners may be more inclined to drench their homes in sunlight and flick on an electric switch but this writer is partial to shadows filtering through shoji paper screens that cast striking silhouettes onto tatami mats woven with natural straw.
Readers might assume this wordsmith, a purist and lover of Japanese traditions, is a fan of both Kabuki and Nō theatre, the latter being the oldest surviving form of theatre in the world. But Tanizaki dislikes the way the Kabuki actors’ faces, covered in heavy makeup, look so harsh under modern floodlights. He’d rather watch the participants in the more subdued Nō theatre. For him, nothing is more beautiful nor convincing.
Tanizaki finds the modern use of ceramics detestable and instead prefers the splendour of lacquerware. When he eats in a traditional Japanese restaurant, he likes to sit at a table illuminated by candlelight. For him, this is the best way to admire the beauty of a lacquer miso soup bowl. Looking into the multi-layered richness of up to 30 layers of lacquer, reminds him of a deep pond.
A subject one would likely never expect the author to dwell upon so passionately is the type of toilet one finds at a temple in Kyoto or Nara. Yet he is persuasive in his description of this convenience in a traditional setting. When he mentions the scent from the moss on stepping stones, the sound of insects or falling rain, one begins to understand. Add to that a view of the moon and lavatory walls with a grained wood effect, one feels like a trip to the loo can be an occasion to cherish! Rather than stark white tiles and shiny metal taps in Western bathrooms he opts for designs that allow for contemplation and spiritual repose.
This book was first published in the 1930’s but Japan has radically evolved and modernized in ways the Japanese of the early Shōwa period would never have imagined. Is Tanizaki’s appreciation of shadows outdated? Maybe a little, but a more fulfilling understanding of Japanese aesthetics wouldn’t be possible without the master’s postulations in this remarkable book.
In this issue of Books on Asia, we explore disasters of all kinds from earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions to dictatorships, religious prosecution, crimes and environmental hazards. The issue spans major events in Japan, the Koreas, Thailand, and Indonesia.
The Hon Podcast features an interview with journalist and Times correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry. Podcast host Amy Chavez talks with Parry about two of his three books People Who Eat Darkness: the Fate of Lucie Blackman, about a high-profile murder case in Japan and Ghosts of the Tsunami, about the Great East Japan Tohoku Earthquake of March 2011.
In this episode of the Hon podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with Lena Baibikov who has translated Haruki Murakami’s non-fiction works from Japanese into Russian. Lena has translated What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Radio Murakami and a book of Murakami’s short stories as well as works by Banana Yoshimoto, Ryu Murakami, and Yukio Mishima and several children’s book authors. This podcast recording takes place in Lena’s kitchen in Ashiya, just 100 meters from where Murakami’s parents lived until the Kobe Earthquake of 1995. Lena also took Amy on a tour of the neighborhood Murakami grew up in. She tells us how she got started translating and what it is that intrigues her about Murakami’s works. (Click “more” below to see the Show Notes).
God is, even if He is not.
Also He is humorous enough
to resemble some kind of man.
This time
with a gigantic phallus over
the horizon of my dream
He came on a picnic.
Incidentally
I regret that
I did nothing for Sumiko on her birthday.
I would at least like to
send the seeds of the phallus God brought
into that thin, tiny, lovely voice of
Sumiko who is at the other end of the line.
Forgive me, Sumiko,
for the phallus has grown larger day by day
until, now in the middle of the cosmos,
he refuses to move like a bus that has broken down.
So, if you want to see
the beautiful night sky where the stars are scatttering or
some other man dashing down the highway with a hot woman
you really must try
to lean out of the bus window
and peer in.
The phallus
begins to stir and if he’s near the cosmos
he’s good to look at. At such times
Sumiko,
the lonely way light shifts in the starry sky,
the funny cold of the midday,
really gets to you,
what you can see, heartfelt, you see so well
any human can only go insane.
The phallus has neither name nor personality
nor has he a date so that
it’s only when someone passes by
carrying him like a festival shrine
that from the way people fuss, sometimes,
you know where he lives.
And in such hubbub
the primitive riots and the sudden hollow of
oaths and curses of the seeds yet
uncontrolled by God
reach your ear. On occasion
God is prone to be absent;
instead, He leaves only debt and phallus
and goes off somewhere, or so it seems,
and now, the phallus God forgot to take with him
is walking toward you.
It’s young, cheerful, and
full of such artless confidence, so that
it resembles the shadow of an astute smile.
It may seem as if the phallus has grown numerously
and numerously is walking toward you,
but in fact, he’s singular and walks alone.
From whatever horizon you see him,
he’s evenly devoid of face and word,
Something like that,
Sumiko, I’d like to give you on your birthday.
I’d like to cover your existence with it; then
to you yourself would become invisible, and
you might become the will itself called phallus
and wander, endlessly,
until I embrace you amorphously.
About the Author
Kazuko Shiraishi is Japan’s leading “Beat” Poet. Born and brought up in Vancouver but taken back to Japan before the Pacific War, Shiraishi at age 17 was discovered by the modernist Kitazono Katsue (1902-78) who founded the artists’ group VOU. Her initial influences were Miró, Dali, Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, and Faulkner’s Sanctuary. She published her first book of poems, Tamago no furu Machi (Town Where Eggs Fall), in 1951, when a university student.
Every day of my life when I was a kid, he used to beat me. Some days it was just a tap across the face or a box on the ear. Other days it was a real drubbing around the shoulders and back, with his fists or anything handy – a piece of wood, a rake handle. My dad used to be really strong. He was a builder. Carried heavy ceramic roof tiles and installed them all over the village. He had huge muscles in his arms. I used to go around with big bruises all over me.
His voice is really loud, too, and he never shuts up. All the time he was hitting me in my boyhood, he was yelling. I think kids’ hearing must be more sensitive than adults’. His yelling made my head hurt. Some days I didn’t know which hurt most – my head or my body.
I’m big now, I’m a grown man, so he doesn’t beat me – that’s changed, at least – but he still yells, and I can’t stand it. Sometimes my head hurts so bad it feels like it’s going to explode. That’s how it feels tonight. He just got through yelling at me because I forgot to bring the sake back from town. So what? He drinks too much anyway.
Tonight’s the night. I’m going to pay him back.
I think it’s dark enough now. He’s watching TV with my mother. I hate her too, for letting him do those things to me. But it’s him I really hate. Wait till he sees what I did!
Sneak out the back door with the kerosene can. Boy, it’s heavy. Don’t forget the matches. Don’t turn on the light in case they notice. Sneak down the lane in the dark, all the way to the shed where he parks his precious truck. He won’t let me drive it. I have to go everywhere by bike. I hate him.
Squeeze past the piles of roof tiles. Open the truck door in the dark. It smells like him – his revolting breath, his clothes. My head is throbbing. Lift the can and slosh the kerosene all over the seat. Now the match. Whooo! Look at those flames. I feel the heat on my face. Shut the door and sneak into Mr. Sato’s yard next door, hide behind the fence.
The fire gets bigger and bigger. The light shines through the chinks of the shed. I hear the fire roaring. What’s that? Another sound. Someone has seen the fire and called the volunteers. It’s the siren on the big red fire engine they keep down by the school. It’s coming this way.
Hey – what are you doing? Let me go! Hey, Sato-san, let me go!
⁂
(two years later)
It didn’t work. All the planning, all the guts it took to set dad’s truck on fire, and what it got me was a jail sentence for arson. It’s not fair. No one ever asked me why I did it. No one ever thought that dad might be to blame. That dumb Mr. Sato caught me and they figured out I did it, I don’t know how. The truck didn’t even burn much. Just the seats. The firefighters got there before the fire reached the gas tank. I was hoping for a big explosion. Oh, how I was hoping the whole shed would go up – dad’s livelihood gone. But it didn’t work. My head hurts worse than ever. It never stops now.
They sent me home – but I won’t live here anymore. They can’t make me.
Only, where can I go?
Actually… why should I leave? This is a perfectly good house.
Dad is out shopping with mom in his new truck. Fire insurance. Holy hell. He gets everything and I get nothing. Well, that changes now.
The official seals and bankbooks with his name – out the front door with them. They land on the path. I don’t want to leave him with nothing. I want him to live and think about what he did and be miserable every day.
Lock the doors on the inside. Move the furniture — the big wooden kitchen cabinet, the chests, the bureaus — up against the doors and windows. Barricade the place. I’m strong now, myself — as strong as he used to be. He’s an old man now, he can’t do anything.
Let him live in the shed, him and mom. They won’t ever get into this house again. This is my home now. The son takes over from the father, that’s the rule, and it starts now.
Oh, my head.
Copyright Rebecca Otowa, courtesy of Tuttle Publishing.
The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper available for order here.
About the Author
Rebecca Otowa was born in California arrived in Kyoto in 1978. She has an MA in Buddhist Studies from Otani University. Her first book At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery is a collection of self-illustrated essays about her outer and inner life.My Awesome Japan Adventure is a children’s book describing life in Japan from the viewpoint of an 11-year-old boy. Rebecca illustrates all her books. She lives in Shiga Prefecture.
In all the years I’ve been studying Japanese, one of my dreams has been to read Haruki Murakami in Japanese. I mean, I’ve done it, using annotated readers to study two of his essays, but it’s hardly the same as picking up his novels and breezing through them unassisted.
Anyway, his Japanese unexpectedly came my way when I was writing about this term in essay 1681 on 濃 (concentrated, thick, dark, undiluted, dense):
濃淡 (のうたん/noutan: light and dark; shade (of color)) dark + light
When I took a break, the following passage immediately popped up in my Facebook newsfeed:
“It’s not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.”
―Haruki Murakami, After Dark
What a coincidence! Wondering if the original Japanese included 濃淡, I asked my proofreader if he could track down that text. To my delight, he did! Unfortunately the passage (the next-to-last paragraph at the link) doesn’t include the keyword, but I no longer care. I’m just tickled to have a manageable piece of Murakami’s Japanese to devour. On the off chance that you relish the same challenge, here it is, buck-naked (that is, without any yomi or translations). See what you can do:
To block the “answers,” here’s an image of my book about kanji:
Okay, now I’ll dig into the text and see what it’s really like! Here’s the first sentence of the three:
ねえ、僕らの人生は、明るいか暗いかで単純に分けられているわけじゃないんだ。
It’s not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark.
ねえ (hey; you know what); 僕ら (ぼくら: we (for men)); 人生 (じんせい: life); 明るい (あかるい: light); 暗い (くらい: dark); 単純 (たんじゅん: simple); 分ける (わける: to divide, shown here in the present-progressive form of its passive form, meaning, “being divided”)
Hey (ねえ!), that was straightforward! No fancy tricks, nothing to make me sigh in desperation or feel locked out of a secret room. So far, a few things jump out at me:
• Murakami is famous for his use of 僕. In the 2002 book Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, author Jay Rubin spent several pages analyzing the uses of 僕 by Murakami’s male narrators. I know 僕 works fine for those narrators, but this statement is a universal one about the human condition. Why limit it to men? Oh, my proofreader suggests that the narrator may have been speaking to a man when he said this…. But no, I’ve just located the passage on page 226 of Rubin’s translation of After Dark, and in fact a man says this to a woman. The point isn’t to differentiate men from women, either; the woman has just said that people tell her she has a “darkish personality.” (Incidentally, darkness is a major theme in the book, which should come as no surprise, given the title and the premise; the novel is about people who are wandering around Tokyo between midnight and dawn. Shadows are important in the story, too. I found comments on page 204 about racing with one’s own shadow and the inability to outrun it.)
• There’s instant gratification, in that the “light and dark” bit has come right away in 明るいか暗いか. I’m surprised that Murakami used 明るい for “light” because I always see that translated as “bright, cheerful.” But given that 暗い can mean “dim” (not just “dark”), 明るい and 暗い are natural antonyms. As to why a か follows each word, that makes the phrase literally translate as “whether it’s light or whether it’s dark.”
• The word 濃淡 (のうたん: light and dark, dark + light) suggested to me that the Japanese habitually think of “dark” as preceding “light” in such pairings. In English it’s the opposite; native speakers say “light and dark.” With 明るいか暗いか, though, the sequence of the Japanese matches that of the English. My proofreader explains that, when listing items like this without a set expression, the Japanese often go from positive to negative.
Okay, on to the next Murakami sentence:
そのあいだには陰影という中間地帯がある。
There’s a shadowy middle ground.
Ah, the last kanji term is delicious and intriguing, particularly because I didn’t realize (until my proofreader suggested “twilight zone” as a definition) that “twilight zone” could mean anything other than, you know, The Twilight Zone!
The Japanese is certainly far more complex here than the English translation. And although “middle ground” sounds reasonable, balanced, and highly desirable, it’s shadowy in this case. At this point I have no idea if that’s positive or negative. “Shadowy” puts me on alert, as if dangerous people are lurking in the midst. Still, if you mixed light and dark, you’d come up with a grayness that I suppose one could call shadowy without any negative nuance.
Maybe the next sentence will clarify matters:
その陰影の段階を認識し、理解するのが、健全な知性だ。
Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.
Well, he has certainly served up an enticing batch of vocabulary words! I could feast on these for quite awhile! I know all the kanji, but I usually see them assembled in different pairs.
As for the shadows, I think what we ultimately have is a caution against black-and-white thinking. Or an acknowledgment that, as the saying goes, every life has ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.
But what’s this about recognizing and understanding the shadows? Is there much to recognize and understand about the middle of the roller coaster ride, the part where it’s neither agonizing nor exhilarating?
I feel as if I’m failing his basic emotional intelligence test! But that’s okay. I set myself the challenge of understanding his Japanese, and I think I made good progress with three sentences. Imagine tackling 1Q84 in Japanese at this rate!! I would need 10 lifetimes!
Haruki Murakami is Japan’s best-known contemporary Japanese author. Born in Kyoto in 1949, he grew up in Ashiya, Kobe and went on to attend Waseda University in Tokyo. His books have been translated into more than fifty languages. In addition to novels in the genre of magical realism, Murakami also writes non-fiction books, travelogues, and translates English works into Japanese. Although he has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, has yet to take home the award.
In this issue of Books on Asia, we look over his 40 years of books chronologically including fiction, non-fiction and short-story collections. The Hon Podcast features an interview with Lena Baibikov, a Murakami non-fiction translator. She lives in Ashiya, and gives us some insight on Murakami as a child and the neighborhood where he grew up.
This issue’s “New Writing” (scroll all the way to bottom of page) features an excerpt from Rebecca Otowa’s upcoming book: The Mad Kyoto Shoe-Swapper (Tuttle 2020), some Murakamiesque kanji by Eve Kushner and Hiroaki Sato offers a translation of Kazuko Shiraishi’s poem “The Phallus.”
The title of this magnificently translated volume of poetry by the recently deceased Japanese poet Makoto Ōoka immediately conjures a sense of the surreal. Even a cursory look at the individual poetry titles in the table of contents reinforces this feeling: “Daybreak Leaf Alive,” “Cerebropolis,” “Comrades–the Earth is Cold,” and the enigmatic title poem which in many ways forms the nucleus of this collection, “Song of the Nuclear Submarine ‘Thresher’, Its Sexual Sea Passage and Suicide.”
One does not normally associate Japan with the surrealist movement that was an integral part of soul searching that defined 20th Century western thought. Nonetheless, surrealism in contemporary Japanese writing is not without precedent. When I was an early student of the Japanese language, I discovered the works of Taruho Inagaki (1900-1977). His One-Thousand-and-One-Second Stories (1923) is a collection of fantastical, unrelated stories that defy logic but at the same time are perfectly attenuated to the times in the way they poked fun at the monolithic, inflexible thinking that was prevalent in the nationalistic group-think of Japan in the 1920s. But even now, post-war, post-modern and post-bubble, Inagaki is a liberating read, and his writings are as profound and thought-provoking as any of the absurdist fiction by Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett or Franz Kafka.
Like Inagaki, Ōoka deftly blends and conjures words that are a reflection of his fantastical thoughts, his profound scholarship of traditional Japanese literature, and his love of language together with a highly sensual approach to the physical world. The result is a wonderful and entertaining journey through an extraordinary mind with thought processes informed by both the total immediacy of the present and the rich traditional literary heritage of Japan.
To quote from the book’s preface written by one of Ōoka’s contemporaries, the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, Ōoka’s attraction to surrealism “lay not only in a personal affinity, but also in surrealism’s resonance with the dominant pantheism at the heart of the traditional Japanese sensibility.”
Reading this passage, I recalled a conversation I once had with Ōoka-san while attending one of his famous New Year’s Parties at his house in Chōfu. These parties were attended by visual artists, theater folk, musicians, writers and publishers, and oftentimes they included impromptu performances, readings or musical performances. Somehow Ōoka-san ended up giving a poetry reading while I accompanied him on the shakuhachi. Though I forget the poem’s title, what struck me about the work was its clear and pure sensuality, and that his words made me feel as if I were being seduced by a lofty, almost deific force. After that small performance, the topic turned to Shintō pantheism and how fluid and unalloyed the Japanese kami deities seem in their sensual and sexual proclivities.
It is the role of the artist to reflect the actions and thoughts of the gods. For Ōoka-san, this meant celebrating the love for his wife (and by extension, women in general), and for Inagaki it was an aesthetic love and appreciation of the young male (Shōnen Ai no Bigaku). Both are honest and valid expressions of the same primordial principle of existence.
Tanikawa calls this approach “paneroticism,” and writes that it is Ōoka’s salvation, “which saves him from the abyss of abstraction.” Indeed, Ōoka’s poems are written from the heart, overflowing with love but fully informed by the intellect.
“Cerebropolis”
—Leave tomorrow’s wind to tomorrow, you say?
Something terrible was going to happen.
Every room in every house felt it.
Some people were already secretly building shelters.
Some had already drowned in the sewers, trying to escape.
From the town’s first cell-room to its fourteen billionth,
shock and tension at the slightest change in wind pressure.
And yet the sounds of music echoed, and there was love.
Lovers walked together tenderly.
but they too held their breath and waited.
That voice for which everyone was waiting
was within each of them:
“Oh, let’s just tear it all down already.
I want to breathe easy again. Easy.”
To let it out:
That was the most terrifying
thing of all.
Translating contemporary Japanese poetry is a herculean task requiring precise scholarship, linguistic prowess and an ear tuned to the innate musicality of each word. (It is telling that the Japanese word for poem, shi,is a late 19 th century construct. Before that, in Japan all poetry was simply referred to as song, uta, signifying the importance of the human voice and musicality in recitation.) The translator must essentially recreate the poem in English, which means that each word of the original, imbued as it is with significance and inner cadence, must ring with the same resonance in English.
Janine Beichman does this with great success. Her translations are fluid and deeply informed by her long personal association with Ōoka and her knowledge of the subject matter. It is also helpful that all the poems in this volume are included in the original Japanese as well, which makes it invaluable for students of Japanese literature or students of translation. I found myself referring to the original just to satisfy my curiosity, and oftentimes I was pleasantly surprised to see how certain Japanese phrases and words could be rendered in English so clearly and artistically. Another helpful aspect of this book are the reproductions of Ōoka’a inimitable calligraphy of his own poetry. Beichman thoughtfully includes the reading and translation of the poems, thus enabling the reader to have another peek of this man’s extraordinary creativity.
About the reviewer
Christopher Blasdel is a shakuhachi performer and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa.
From the time the first Christian missionary arrived in Japan in 1549 to when a nationwide ban was issued in 1614, over 300,000 Japanese were converted to Christianity. A vicious campaign of persecution forced the faithful to go underground. For seven generations, Hidden Christians—or Kirishitan—preserved a faith that was strictly forbidden on pain of death. Illiterate peasants handed down the Catholicism that had been taught to their ancestors despite having no Bible or contact with the outside world.
