Katsura Rikyu (桂離宮) revisited

In 1953, photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto visited Katsura Rikyu (Katsura Imperial Villa) for the first time.  He was returning to Japan after 14 years in the U.S.   Edward Steichen, then head of the photography department at MoMA, had commissioned him to take some photos of the villa.  The results were stunning.  Ishimoto's beautiful compositions reflected his deep admiration for the "New Bauhaus" in Chicago where he had studied, and evoked a modernism more commonly associated with Western art and architecture.  

These photos would later be compiled and published in a book called Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture with accompanying essays by legendary architects Kenzo Tange and Walter Gropius.  Tange, pursuing his own architectural agenda, would become over-involved in the project pushing Ishimoto into the background.  While perhaps different from Ishimoto's original vision, this book would nonetheless become an influential touchstone for Japanese architecture.

Ishimoto's gorgeous black and white photos of Katsura Rikyu were featured in an exhibition entitled "Modernism of Katsura" at the Museum of Kyoto last summer, which I was lucky enough to see.

Inspired by this,  I decided to visit the villa again myself.  I wanted to see the Katsura RIkyu that Ishimoto saw.

Completed in 1615, Katsura Rikyu is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of Japanese architecture.  It is so thoroughly and thoughtfully planned it is hard not to be impressed.  Each building took into consideration both the seasons and the cyclical lunar path in its design and construction.  It is, as Tange asserted, completely modern.  It is also graceful, effortless and unassuming.  Were it not for the tightly organized tours, it is a place in which you could easily drift through an entire day enjoying the splendid architecture and tranquil garden as Prince Toshihito might have so long ago.

Kimono (着物)

I have generally regarded tourists dressed in kimono (or yukata in the summer months) with amusement and mild disdain.  It is akin to someone visiting the States and dressing up in a cowboy hat, chaps and spurs for a day.

The kimono is a deceptively simple and stunningly elegant garment.  There are more than a thousand years of history behind this four panel, T-shaped robe cut from a single bolt of fabric 11.5 meters long.  It has remained more or less unchanged since the Edo period (1603 - 1868).  It is so quintessentially and thoroughly Japanese that anyone wearing one without pure Jomon bloodlines appears a little strange, silly even.  For some reason it just doesn't quite work.  There is a something a little off, like buttoning up a shirt in the wrong holes.

So it was with some ambivalence I decided to don a kimono recently.  My friend, Murakami-san invited me to a kabuki performance at Minamiza in Kyoto.  This venerable theatre on Shijo-dori just east of the Kamo River was founded some four hundred years ago.  The current building, built in 1929, had recently undergone an extensive renovation.  This was the the grand re-opening, the first kabuki performances since 2016.  In addition, November always marks the beginning of the kabuki calendar which is celebrated each year with the "kaomise" - a special performance featuring the top kabuki actors from across Japan.  A grand occasion to say the least.  One that called for something more than an ordinary suit and tie.  In the West this would probably be a tuxedo for a gentleman and a formal gown for a lady.  But this is not the West, this is Japan.

A friend of mine, Miyagawa-san, is in the kimono business.  He designs kimono and has a small shop in Katsura where he sells and rents new and vintage kimono.  I told him I was thinking about wearing a kimono to Minamiza and asked him what he thought of gaijin in kimono.  He convinced me it was okay because a) he doesn't stock the cheap, made-in-China, rayon kimono seen on tourists around the city, and b) I'm not a tourist.

He put me in a stylish gray kimono made of light-weight wool bouclé, and a black silk haori (kimono jacket) that he had customised.  We agreed on a deep green obi and wood beaded haori-himo (accessory).  Because kimono have no pockets a furoshiki (wrapping cloth) served as a bag for my wallet, glasses and things.  Finally, white tabi (split-toe socks) and zori (sandals).  I thought it a very cool ensemble, but a look in the mirror at my Euro-American face and I almost balked.

The first thing I noticed when I left Miyagawa-san's shop is that, while a kimono is loose and comfortable, it does not allow for large strides when walking.  A person dressed in a kimono sort of shuffles along.  It is effortless and graceful when performed by a maiko or geiko, almost like floating.

I feared everyone would be staring at me.  Somehow I made it from Katsura to Gion with barely a glance at me.  The kimono seemed to have made me invisible.  Only once did my appearance illicit a comment.  "You look wonderful." an older gentleman said to me near Minamiza.

An oft discussed subject among foreign residents in Japan is the concept of uchi and soto (inside and outside), the distinction between social groups.  Visitors are by default soto and even long-term foreign-born residents fall into this category.  One could live 20, 30, 50 years in Japan and never quite be accepted.  Dressed in a kimono I felt oddly more uchi.  Rather than standing out, I seemed to almost fit in with the smartly dressed kabuki crowd.

The kimono grew on me.  It was strangely transporting.  I felt somehow more deeply embedded in Japan.  When I finally undressed and returned to my ordinary street clothes there was a sort of Cinderella effect.  I was just another gaijin in Kyoto.

Ephemera

Typhoon (台風 ) 21

Japan has been battered this summer.  The Kansai region (western Japan including Kyoto and Osaka prefectures) has been the most abused.  The gods are angry for some reason - earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and typhoons.  In ancient times something would have been done to appease them.  Prayers would have been said, fires lit, dances danced, processions processed.  In modern times we just suffer the assault.  We're too wise for invocation and ritual.

Typhoon 21 (or "Jebi" in Western meteorology) was well-hyped in the media before its debut.  "The most powerful typhoon in 25 years!"  It began like any other typhoon.  Late in the morning on September 4th the winds began to blow and the rain began to fall.  It quickly grew into something more violent and frightening.

The rain stopped "falling" in the traditional, gravitational direction.  Instead it was whipped sideways in wide, vicious sheets.  This horizontal rain lashed my windows with such force it seemed to be coming from a water cannon, and the volume was so great my apartment appeared to be submerged in water, a sort of reverse aquarium.

The wind was totally indecisive, like a drunk in a brawl, lunging forward then back then right then left.  It shook not just my windows but interior walls, the whole building trembled.  We've all seen "The Wizard of Oz" and a dozen other films featuring hurricanes.  Objects unhinged from somewhere began flying past my window.  Not just leaves and twigs, not a plastic shopping bag dancing in the wind, but large debris, things normally attached to buildings, were hurtling through the silver sky like busted arrows from a crazed archer.

Outside, all around, I could hear things breaking, the sound of an impetuous, angry child on a rampage.  I waited for the roof to tear off.

This went on for several hours.  My tension grew.  I poured myself a beer.  I watched.  I listened.

Eventually things stopped flying, things stopped breaking.  The storm passed just before dusk and an eerie stillness fell across the city.  The fury and havoc of the previous hours seemed almost a dream.

Looking for Autumn

I went to Uji in search of Autumn.  I knew her number wasn't for another couple of weeks.  Still, I thought I might find her backstage preparing, warming up for the start of her show.

I walked along the river for a long time.  The water was green and cool.  But I could see only the white burn of the Summer sun across its surface.

I crossed the Amagase Bridge, wood and cable bound together in an unlikely friendship.  Autumn wasn't on the bridge.

I cut into the forest, a narrow path, muddy from a rain long forgotten.  I thought for sure I'd find her here, maybe with a large block of ice and a fan rehearsing an October breeze.  It was warm and moist in there like a kiss with the tongue after a cup of tea.  The forest was throbbing with the heat.  Autumn is a classy dame; she wouldn't stand for this vulgarity.

I left the forest and wandered back to town and the train slightly embarrassed by my foolish endeavour.  Autumn wasn't even in the theatre, let alone on stage.  An overeager fan.

cool (涼しい)

There is no ocean in Kyoto.  There are very few swimming pools.  When siting in an air conditioned room all day begins to feel claustrophobic, the river is the best place to cool off on a hot, humid summer day.  Though swimming is discouraged, if not expressly forbidden, dipping one's toes in the cool, rushing water will garner no looks of disdain and will rejuvenate your wilting spirit.

Kabuki (歌舞伎)

Kabuki is one of those things in every Japanese guidebook.  Everyone knows the word and might be able to connect that word to images of kabuki actors on stage.  But I think few gaijin, tourist or resident, really know what kabuki is.

I got my first taste of kabuki recently when a friend of mine invited me to a performance at Shochikuza Theatre in Osaka.  I was simultaneously enthralled and baffled.

I have been to the opera in New York.  I thought this experience might function as a gauge for kabuki.  No.  It is apples and oranges.  The only thing they have in common is a stage.

Kabuki began in the dry riverbeds of the Kamo River in Kyoto in the Edo period (1603-1867).  The founder was a beautiful, slightly eccentric woman named Izumo no Okuni who performed oftentimes risqué dances and playlets there.  The original meaning of the word kabuki was "unusual" or "unconventional", and early kabuki troupes were comprised of mostly prostitutes and other social outcasts.  In an effort to halt the moral corruption of the population, in 1629 the Tokugawa shogunate banned the troupes and forbid women from appearing on stage.  This lead to all-male performers, a tradition which persists today.

We went to a matinee on a scorching hot summer afternoon.  The performance was divided into four parts - two shorter pieces (20-30 minutes each) followed by two longer ones (a little over an hour each) with a brief intermission between each one.  These were not acts, that is, four chapters of one story.  Each was its own one-act play unrelated to the others.  

As the curtain opened (not up, but across the stage) I was immediately taken by the costumes and makeup of the actors.  Each ensemble was like something from a Paris couture show, fantastic, gaudy even, the makeup fierce and exaggerated.  An impressive and unique characteristic of kabuki is the onstage costume transformations known as hayagawari.  Stagehands will suddenly appear at key moments and help the actor peel back or remove a layer of clothing to reveal another costume beneath.  There is another group of stagehands called kuroko, more shadowy and stealth, that will sneak onstage and give or take props from the actors as needed.  

The dialogue was fairly incomprehensible.  It may be something like listening to Shakespearean English, archaic and highly nuanced.  Or it could just be my poor comprehension.  But what was impossible to miss was the incredible vocal range of the actors, moving up and down from a canine growl to an adolescent squeak, from a pathetic whimper to a drunken howl.  Such powerfully expressive speech I have never seen or heard before in any language.

Even if you don't know the artist or actor, most people are familiar with the 18th Century ukiyo-e print of the kabuki actor Ōtani Oniji III by Tōshūsai Sharaku (above).  Hands splayed as if about to strangle someone, a grim scowl on his face, eyes crossed.  I always took the crossed eyes as artistic parody.  So I was surprised to see one of the leads, Matsumoto-san, at a climactic moment freeze and cross his eyes.  This is actually a famous pose in kabuki called mie.  It is accompanied by a musician just off stage striking the floor with hyoshigi (wooden clappers), first slowly then building to a crescendo.  The audience was delighted.

The audience at a kabuki performance is not entirely passive.  They will from time to time shout their approval.  This is known as kakegoe.  This is itself almost an art form, highly structured and refined.  The calls are perfectly timed and phrased and come from only seasoned veterans of kabuki theatre.  There are actually kakegoe guilds.  I had read about this before, but it was still somewhat startling and rather funny to hear; the theatre equivalent of shouting at your favorite player during a baseball game, "Come on Joe, knock it outta the park!"  

The various aspects of kabuki are innumerable, and perhaps very subtle or obscure.  It could take a lifetime of theatre-going to identify and understand them all, to become part of the kakegoe elite.  It is easy to see why in 2005, UNESCO added kabuki to the list of "intangible cultural heritage".  It really is intangible.

I ❤ Gion Matsuri

I've written about Gion Matsuri before.  Each year I grow more fond of this month-long annual festival in the heart of Kyoto.

Gion Matsuri is summer.  It is summer in Kyoto.  It is hot as hell.  It is crowded.  It is wonderfully and unassumingly exuberant, and somewhat mystifying.  Everyone dressed in yukata and geta, glistening with sweat, uchiwa waving, beating at the warm, moist air like the wings of a bug caught in a swimming pool.

It is a sort of joyous suffering, like over-drinking on a night out.  Just as you know that last drink is too much, that you'll pay for it, everyone knows Gion Matsuri takes place in the summer, and summer in Kyoto is generally brutal.  Still they come.  Not a couple hundred people, but thousands, streaming through the hot, sticky afternoons and evenings.

It is not like a large crowd packing into a stadium on a hot day to see a sporting event.  Gion Matsuri is fluid.  There is movement.  Movement spread over nearly 10 square kilometres.  Movement spread over 31 days.  There is a rhythm to the festival, a beat.  Like a piece of music, there is a pianissimo intro and outro, and a crescendo in the middle.  The soundtrack is a beautifully discordant and somber march of flutes, gongs and drums.  The tempo is like a New Orleans funeral parade that carries you along, but doesn't ask too much.  It is sedate, languid, perfectly in sync with the sultry weather.

For a gaijin Gion Matsuri feels thoroughly Japanese, authentic and undefiled.  Kyoto city is ever evolving.  I am witness to the constant and rapid changes.  Gion Matsuri functions in some way as an annual reminder of the city's past, of its roots.  The summer sun burns this into the hearts of its people, as well as the hordes of tourists, which ensures its continuation.  Long live Gion Matsuri!

The river (川)

Katsura River (桂川) 12:10 6 July 2018 

How high's the water, Mama?  Five feet high and risin'.

- Johnny Cash


I have long wondered about the not-so-pretty concrete levees that edge most every river in Japan.  The beauty of Kyoto's Kamo River that snakes through the city is significantly diminished by these man-made borders.  While nature and time have softened the hard ugliness with moss and various river grass, they do remind me of the epic eyesore built to contain the Los Angeles River in the late 1930s.  Like LA, the levees in Kyoto were built in the modern era in response to cyclical flooding.

There is a lovely promenade along both banks of the Kamo River that is popular with strolling lovers and picnickers in the spring and summer months.  This too made me wonder, why doesn't the city plant some trees?  How much more beautiful would this esplanade be with graceful tree branches shading the path.  It all seemed somehow incongruous with a city famed for its gorgeous gardens and high artistic aesthetic.  Furthermore, I couldn't imagine this thin, shallow river ever swelling to the width and height of the embankment.

Those questions were answered in a dramatic and threatening way this week.  Typhoon No. 7 rolled into town Wednesday evening and basically parked the bus.  It rained and it rained and it rained, with barely a pause.  In 24 hours Kyoto received more than 250mm (9.8 in) of rain.  The Kamo River, normally less than a meter deep, was sloshing over the top of the levee and the nice pedestrian path along the riverbank was inundated with muddy water.

Closer to home, the Katsura River had risen to 4.15 meters (13.6 ft), well above the so-called "flood precaution level" and had begun to breach its banks in places.  The riverside trails where I frequently walk had disappeared under water.  So too had the man-made waterfall that cuts across the river north of the Imperial Villa.  The famous Togetsukyo Bridge in Arashiyama was nearly submerged.  Some 40 kilometers further upstream, the Hiyoshi Dam was at capacity and discharging 900 tons of water a second.  It was incredible to see this normally placid river stretched to its full width and power.  Nature is an awesome and humbling force.  

The rain finally subsided Friday evening, and so too did the startling emergency notifications (which I can't read) squawking out on my mobile phone.

Zazen (座禅)

Early morning at Kenninji temple in Gion.  Much, much too early for the maiko who flit through the streets of this district in the evening.  A light rain falls coloring the wood and stone of the temple, the green of the gardens.

The zendo (meditation hall) is set with perfectly spaced dark green zabuton (cushions) in four neat rows on the tatami floor.  The room is mostly empty when my friend and I arrive, but quickly fills up.  I am surprised to see two children, not more than 7-years-old, with their parents.  Sitting still is an impossible task for most children.  This is clearly not their first time.  They approach the ritual with a quiet maturity well beyond their years.

A bell rings three times (shijosho).  The first of two 20-minute sessions begins.

My knowledge of zazen is rudimentary: sit, meditate.  And maybe that is all there is to it.  In most Zen Buddhist practices it is best not to overthink, not to analyze, really to not even try.  It sounds easy, but I find it rather difficult.  Instead of clearing my mind, reaching the desired mushin (no mind), I find myself thinking of zazen in a very self-conscious way: "here I am doing zazen."  I am thinking about writing about the experience.  It is annoying, this thought pattern.

There is a barefooted monk with a long, flat stick.  He walks very slowly up and down the rows, each step measured, thoughtful, like a crane negotiating a stream.  The stick he carries is called a keisaku (awakening stick).  It is used for whacking sleepy or distracted meditators.  I had read about this stick somewhere, but was a little startled by the sharp crack it makes shattering the stillness of the hall.  At first I wondered, what is this sound, where is it coming from?  Then the woman across from me bowed before the monk and pressed her hands together as in prayer, the signal to him, "My mind is preoccupied.  I've lost focus."  The stick is placed on the right shoulder and - thwack!  Then the left - thwack!  Bows are exchanged and silence returns to the room.  While this is probably just the jolt I need to break free of my self-awareness I let him pass me by each lap he makes.

In Japanese za means “sitting” and zen means “meditation”.  The impossibly difficult "full lotus" position replicates Buddha's posture.  Dogen Zenji (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, is generally credited with introducing zazen to Japan.  He layed out the principles in an instruction manual called Zazengi which emphasized the harmonizing of body, breath and mind.

The "effortless non-striving" required for proper zazen, as prescribed by Dogen, may seem unattainable to a beginner like myself, but then zazen really isn't about attaining or getting or reaching anything at all.  Trying to do zazen is really to fail.  So, another day I will attempt not to attempt zazen.

What is zazen good for?  Zazen isn't good for anything.

- Sawaki Roshi (1880 - 1965) Soto Zen Buddhist priest

Mt. Kurama (鞍馬山)

There is a funny little one and two-car train in northern Kyoto called the Eizan Railway.  I take this train very infrequently, but it has always intrigued me.  So, I decided to find out where it goes.

I perhaps picked the wrong day to explore this 8.8 kilometer train line as there was a queue of a hundred Golden Week tourists waiting at Demachiyanagi Station.  It was a crush of people, and everyone seemed to have the same destination: Kurama - shūten (end of the line).

I really had no plan.  I'd never been to Kurama and I knew nothing about it.  I saw on the Eizan route map that there was a shrine and a temple somewhere in the vicinity of the train station, so I went in search of these.  This was not difficult.  The main gate to Kurama-dera (est. 770) was just 200 meters from the station exit.

Beyond this nio-mon (guardian gate) were lots of stairs and a series of switchback trails winding up the mountain.  Without hesitating I began the ascent through the lush green landscape, past trickling waterfalls, myriad sub-shrines and a dense canopy of giant trees.  It was very cool, not more than 17°C (62°F).  I was grateful for this.  Though Mt. Kurama stands at just 584 meters (1,916 ft), I was winded.

The view from the large terrace in front of the temple's honden (main hall) was impressive, of course.  But my trek was not finished.  Through a back gate was another trail leading further up the mountain.  Hmm.  Where does this go?

This trail was much more rugged, steps (where there were steps) crudely fashioned from logs, stones and tree roots.  Where large trees had fallen across the path, the middle section was simply cut out rather than moving the entire obstruction.  And there were a lot of fallen trees.  Great giants with a tangle of roots like the tentacles of a mythic octopus.  What force could fell such a colossal tree?  Centuries of havoc wrought by Mother Nature.  There were trees creaking like old doors, drunk, propped up by their neighbors.  And yet, something will grow from this.

Near the summit is a shrine called Osugi Gongen-sha dedicated to one of these great sugi (cedar) believed to be inhabited by Mao-son, the evil-conquering Earth spirit.  This sacred tree is a beautiful gnarled sculpture, ravaged by time and the elements.  An incredible sight.  I sit for a long time and listen to the wind through the trees like ocean waves, the shrine noren (curtain) flapping.  I can understand why a shrine would be built here.

When I finally make it to the end of the 3.9k sando (sacred path to a temple/shrine) I discover I am no longer in Kurama, but Kibune.  Kibune is a charming little village famous for Kifune Shrine and kawadoko, al fresco dining rooms which hover just above the rushing Kibune River.  I'd seen photos of these restaurants and had long wanted to eat at one so, when in Kibune (suddenly)...

I was halfway through my lunch, enjoying the food and the pleasant ambiance when it began to rain.  The terrace is covered with a thin thatched roof, which will protect you from the sun's glare, but it won't stop rain drops from falling in your rice.  The waitress gathered up my tray and put me at a table inside the main restaurant across the narrow road opposite the river.

I waited for the rain to let up and then wandered down the road to the train station, everything wet and gleaming - trees, plants, moss - a phosphorescent green so vivid it was almost painful to look at.

Since ancient times the awesome beauty, power and mystery of nature has been revered at Mt. Kurama.  It's easy to see why.

Press

I am pleased to share my first bit of Japanese press.

Keihoku was the last stop of the installation tour.  The other three paintings of the (four)est art project were already in situ.  En route to this densely forested little town my friend, Okamoto-san got a phone call from Kawaguchi-san.  She is the founder of the so-called Kuroda Village Station and sort of my contact person for this location.  She said there was a journalist coming from Kyoto Shinbun who wanted to interview me about the project.  What?!  Wow.

Mitani-san had the look of a real newspaper man with his sport coat, notepad and pencil, someone from a different age of reporting.  We sat down in the 200-year-old converted farmhouse and drank tea.  He asked me questions and I stumbled through Japanese replies.  Okamoto-san translated when the communication gap was too great.

The interview was brief - just the facts - which was okay, as it was beginning to rain and I was anxious to get the painting in place, wherever that might be.   Mitani-san followed me to the edge of the forest in the drizzle.  Then I disappeared up the mountain with my painting under my arm.

(four)est: preview and installation

Preview: be-kyoto gallery

一 (one)

二 (two)

三 (three)

四 (four)

paintings in situ...

美山  |  Miyama

一 (one)

京北  |  Keihoku

二 (two)

久多  |  Kuta

三 (three)

亀岡  |  Kameoka

四 (four)