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.
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 afuroshiki (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.
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.
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.
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 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.
