Sunday, 5/12/02
More fun stuff from Japan! I can’t believe I’ve been here almost six weeks; it’s hard to imagine. I gave one class on Thursday (classical American music), and one fifth of the class was missing. Apparently, the entire university system in Japan goes into a bit of a decline after Golden Week, and people stop coming to class for (more or less) the rest of the semester. Dang. Or was it the prospect of facing contemporary American classical music? The good news is that one of my missing three small boxes arrived, so I now have vitamins, shampoo and other important stuff. Two boxes left to go, one of which contains books and academic papers that I really, really need. I should have brought them in my bags!

This past week I’ve heard live music from Indonesia, Ireland, and Japan…not simultaneously, fortunately. It was still part of Golden Week on Monday, so classes were cancelled and I went off with Yoko and her friend to a Javanese gamelan recital waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere. After a couple of train rides we got on a bus that took a gorgeous and circuitous route through the mountains somewhat north of Osaka and Kyoto to Myoken-yama. We went past beautiful waterfalls, towering wisterias, old-style homes, and rice fields with the newest stalks of rice just coming up. It was a perfect spring day! Once we got off the bus we walked about ten minutes to a marvelous old cedar building that had been used to make agar-agar in the past. It had open beams with plenty of space for the air to come in from outside (and the smoke and steam to escape), and it now houses a full Central Javanese pelog/slendro set of gamelan. The largest gong was one of those giant sternum-vibrating ones whose sound carries on forever. What a joy! There was one Indonesian there, a dancer who had married a Japanese graduate student in dance, and most of the musicians were really good. The leader (a Japanese ethnomusicologist) spends several months in Yogyakarta every year, teaching ethnomusicology and playing gamelan. Evidently it gets down below freezing in the winter, so they can rehearse comfortably only from April through November! Listening to the music (especially in that lovely old building) took me right back to Indonesia. I spoke later to the leader, as well as the Indonesian woman and her first-rate dancer of a husband, and since my Japanese is so poor and their English was rough, we switched to Indonesian and had no trouble at all. Whew. It was such a relief to be able to communicate effectively, quickly, and with an Indonesian sense of humor. The only big surprise was when the gigantic plates of sushi appeared at the end. Oh yeah, I’m in Japan.

On Tuesday Cary and Morgan had their first big traditional Japanese-style adventure: Himeji castle! Yoko had taken me there my first week, and now that Golden Week is officially over, it seemed like the right thing to do. What a difference it made to have no one around! We had the place almost to ourselves. That’s when the wood echoed softly and our stocking feet could really feel the floors. Morgan loved how high it was, and how much of a wonderful view it had. The television miniseries “Shogun” was filmed at Himeji, so we’ll want to rent that when we go home. I saw it only once in the early 80s so it’s been awhile, but I have a very strong memory of the castles! And of course, I never dreamed that I’d actually be living here. It started to rain just as we were leaving, so we went to the station and had delicious takoyaki (grilled octopus dumplings) and little freshly made buns with sweet red bean paste in them.

I gave my little speech in Japanese at two faculty meetings on Wednesday (general education group and the overall faculty meeting), and survived. Shodai faculty have their meetings all of Wednesday afternoon, just like at Evergreen. The president of the university began the meeting by introducing me right away, so I stood up, with microphone in hand, and became a dancing bear. No, actually, I tried not to rush too much. Luckily I had checked my speech over with Yoko beforehand, and she helped me to add several sentences that I simply couldn’t figure out how to phrase. I was enormously relieved that what I had already created was mostly correct. The gist of the speech was the self-introduction, apologies about my linguistic skills, how long I expect to be here, what I like about Japan, and my impressions of my students. So the most enjoyable part about doing the speech was when I said that I began studying Japanese four months ago – they gasped out loud. Maybe it’s the performer in me that always wants a reaction from my audience! I ended by saying that I would do my best, and thanked them for their kindness, and bowed as appropriately as I could. They applauded very kindly and the president excused me, and off I went, breathing great sighs of exhilarated relief. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t try to write it in English first and either translate it myself or ask someone to translate it. It felt right to write it in Japanese, and it gives me a (small) sense of what translators must experience in the Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese process. I’ve tried it with Indonesian, Sundanese, and Irish, and with each language it’s an entirely different process and way of thinking in both directions.

Morgan’s been diligently learning to read and write hiragana (she’s got about half of them now), and we’re having a great time reading signs and labels. She seems pretty well settled, and is just crazy about the food. We also enjoy the birds very much. It is hilarious to hear the squawk of pheasants here. They sound like a combination of goose, chicken and crow, and we hear them constantly. I see them only rarely in Olympia these days, and I’d never heard one until now. And the crows here actually say “Caw” instead of “Aw” like at home. It’s crystal clear.

On Friday, Cary and I went with Yoko to Kyoto to see a special exhibit at the Kyoto National Museum. The exhibit was of treasures from Tennin-ji, and including beautiful works of calligraphy, scrolls, and panels. One of the paintings was very famous: the Thunder God and Wind God. Wow! It was full of drama and excitement, and also had wide-open spaces. Yoko and others have been discussing the concept of “ma” with us – the best translation that I can think of is “meaningful calm.” Having an open space in a painting, or a piece of music, or a conversation seems to lend greater depth to the moment (not just to the active part, but to the quiet part as well). I have been getting my brain around this idea since I arrived in Japan. When we left the museum (oh my, it was raining cats and dogs) we crossed the street to Sanjusangendo, where 1001 statues of Kannon – the goddess of mercy – line up in rows, each with multiple arms and slight variations from one to the next. It was marvelous, and not just because of the gold leaf that covered each one of them. I was so impressed by the 28 guardians, many of whom were familiar from Indonesia (Indra, Dewi Sri, etc.). We were thrilled to have had the chance to see them up close, because the weather and the fact that it was a school day kept the crowds down. From there we caught a taxi to the kabuki theater.

I’ve seen kabuki on film, and I’ve seen kabuki in America (done by touring groups from Japan). But now I’ve really seen kabuki. We were in the front row of the second balcony, which allowed us to see everything on stage but blocked part of the hanamichi (the long bridge-like platform that some actors enter and exit from). Luckily all three of us had binoculars, so we were able to see the minute details of expression. There were two stories (one modern, one older style) and two dances. The first story: a man rescues a fox and its cub, and later the fox-child comes to him as a woman (the very image of his deceased wife, in fact). They fall in love and marry, but when they break her taboo by consummating their marriage, she dies and becomes a fox again. When it ends, he is carrying the little fox (shrouded in full-sized kimono) back to its home at the lake, where he plans to end his life. I never saw anyone walk with such heavy sadness in my life as when I saw this fellow carrying his little fox-wife away. Second story: Rival A kidnaps the mother of Rival B, whose operatives infiltrate Rival A’s castle. There follows loads of treachery, glorious makeup and movement and shouting and breathtaking costumes and fantastic sets. The good guy (Rival B) won, but ooooh, the bad guy (Rival A) got to make one of those marvelous poses (“mie”) at the end that left everyone cheering. All of this was done to the accompaniment of shamisen and vocalist (showing the story’s roots in bunraku puppet theater), along with hidden incidental music from the backstage (geza) area. It’s hard to summarize a kabuki plot, but I once heard The Odyssey summarized in one sentence: man goes home from work.

One of the dances was about a relatively mature courtesan reminiscing about her love affairs, and the last was about the transformation of a heron into a girl and back. The final dance featured the very famous actor Tamasaburo, one of the top onnagata (female impersonators) in Japan. I’ve known about him for years, and seen him in feature films. He’s really beautiful. And what a master of dance! I can really see why he and other onnagata can “do” women better than women can “do” women. He did three separate onstage costume changes: from the white heron costume to the brilliant red kimono of a young courtesan, to purple, and back to white. In these costume changes, two stage helpers dressed all in black come and pull out a series of threads, allowing the costume underneath to emerge in a brilliant flash of color and movement. It is always a high point in a dance like this one. He had a parasol as a prop, which he/she floated through the air multiple times, perfectly, and which circled around him on the floor. Wow. The music was nagauta (my favorite kind of Japanese traditional music!), featuring long, beautifully ornamented vocal lines, shamisens, drums, and chorus. The nagauta musicians were behind a screen and appeared at selected sections in the dance, then disappeared according to the lighting plan. It all took my breath away. I could listen to nagauta for days and never get tired of it. It was a five-hour performance, as the bunraku performance had been, but this had several intermissions and food and people talking. It was fun to be part of the crowd having bento boxes of sushi and tea. I didn’t even notice the length! One of the best parts was the group of older men in the upper balconies, shouting out the names of their favorites onstage. It was fantastic and lively and added a powerful sense of forward motion, rhythm, and energy to the performances.

The Irish studies group got together at Kyoto University on Saturday for a presentation by, uh, me. I spoke about the issue of transitional times, places, and things (twilight/dawn, crossroads, shorelines, seaweed, emigration, etc.) in Irish culture and in old-style Irish singing (sean-nos). I sang some examples in Irish and English, and they asked good questions at the end. Then we all went out for tea and “honey butter toast” (something I’d never heard of but which they all really liked and wanted to have). One fellow had come all the way from Tokyo to Kyoto, a three-hour train ride one way on the fastest bullet train. I was verrrry humbled. He said that it was the first performance of sean-nos singing ever in Japan, and that he didn’t want to miss it. He heard about me from the Japan-Ireland association in Tokyo. (my thought: it shouldn’t have been me, and this wasn’t a performance anyway.) He also told us that the famous early 20th-century Irish tenor John McCormack came to Tokyo for a performance in 1926, and sang the song “Una Bhan.” Micheal Hishikawa and I spent a long time on the train later, discussing a possible article to co-write on Irish music in Japan, and especially about how to handle the historical aspects of it. He also arranged for me to buy a copy of that marvelous Amami Island singer, Hajime Chitose, and translated the song titles and lyrics for me. Thank you, Micheal (and yes, he uses the Irish spelling of his first name).

We got into a fascinating debate about the transitional nature of Japanese onsen and rotenburo (public hot water bath centers), and whether they constitute an older version of “in-between-ness” in Japan. It’s a place where the boundary between men and women is flexible, where people can dress in yukata (sleepwear/bathwear) and walk in the street (in public), where people go for healing purposes, where the boundary between the underworld and the upperworld is permeable, where most people bathe during twilight and dawn, and where there is at least a suggestion of a spiritual component (or used to be). And don’t forget the sake. And all of that shape-shifting in the performing arts. At first, everyone sat there and stared at me like I was out of my mind, then a huge flurry of Japanese poured out from everyone. After ten minutes (and really, I caught only about 10% of it because they were talking so fast and in Osaka dialect) Micheal translated the basics for me and said that they’d never thought about any of it because they were seeing it as simply part of living here. Essentially, they were continuing the points from my presentation and applying each one of them to Japanese culture and especially to “onsen culture.” That went on for two hours, focusing on issues of public vs. private, men and women, underworld and upperworld, underground water passages between shrines and temples across Japan, volcanoes, Japanese spirituality, etc. What an enlightening conversation!

When I came home, there was a message from someone representing the Nagoya Ireland Society, asking if I would consider coming to Nagoya for a lecture and presentation in June. I also got a request for a series of intensive small-group singing workshops (again, in old-style Irish song) that would continue until I return home. Those messages led us to a spate of adventure planning, so that we don’t delay seeing the parts of Japan that we’d like to see before Cary goes home next month. We’re now thinking of visiting Takayama, Koya-san, Miyajima/Iwakuni, and more of the local areas like Nara (this coming Tuesday, in fact), Kyoto, and the towns of Okayama/Kurashiki/Takahashi. Morgan and I will have our own adventures after Cary leaves, but the big trips will all include him.

Cary brought home some SERIOUS body-scrubbing towels the other day. It’s like the roughest hand towel you ever tried, and it takes off the top layer of skin all round. Fantastic! It’s long enough so that you can really “do” your back by holding an end in each hand. I never felt so very, very clean in my life! It also makes one’s skin incredibly smooth. I thought it would become rather unpleasant after several uses (imagining moldy loofa scrubbers…) but you can wash them and they dry quickly. If any of you would like one as a gift from Japan, let me know. They feel great. By the way, I am very much aware that my time here is in sort of a hothouse environment (talk about a hothouse – just wait until July!). I am genuinely appreciating and enjoying everything I experience here, and, honestly, it makes me also appreciate the life I have at home. That includes all of you. And happy mother’s day to the moms; I’m quite a lucky one.

Cheers, Sean