Edited by Ken Rodgers and John Einarsen (Tuttle, 2025)

This beautiful work, in hardback with a color photo spread and many black-and-white photos and drawings throughout, is dedicated to Ken Rodgers, who died suddenly last year at his home. The dedication reads:

This book is dedicated to the memory of Ken Rodgers (1952-2024),
poet, farmer, impresario, pilgrim, doting grandfather, and managing
editor of the Kyoto Journal for nearly forty years.

We all miss Ken, and are glad that this book will bear this dedication, and all our thoughts of him and his life’s work as a very knowledgeable pillar of Kyoto’s ideas and feelings, go with this volume.

The book contains eighteen stellar essays on the subject of ma — the list of contributors at the back is a compendium of contemporary writers, artists and photographers on the subjects of Kyoto and Japan. Each, in his or her own way, has thrown some light on this quality of Japanese aesthetics — some academically, others artistically.

The collection opens with an Introduction by Alex Kerr, “What is Ma?” in which he says, “this collection is perhaps the most definitive book yet published on the subject.” He enumerates three kinds of ma, according to a play-turned-novel he is working on, inspired by his friend and late admired Japanophile, David Kidd: Primal, Artistic and Cultural Ma, and provides tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the three. It is an excellent and readable introduction to this in many ways formidable topic. I myself eagerly look forward to this novel.

The second essay, by Gunter Nitschke, “Ma — Place, Space, Void” (three translations of the word into English), gives a comprehensive view of the character ma 間 as it is used in various words, with their origins and meaning, explained as The Domain of Objectivity, the Domain of Subjectivity, and the Domain of Metaphysics, each divided into several realms.

I won’t enumerate the content and thrust of each essay here, except to say that the essays deal with the concept of ma in such disciplines as tea, martial arts, the Heart Sutra, calligraphy, gardening, photography, and more.

My own experience of ma, in the Japanese discipline I know best, the tea ceremony, is my favorite moment: the sudden cessation of sound occasioned by the pouring of a ladle of cold water into the hot water of the kama (kettle) at the end of the last part of the ceremony, that of usucha (thin tea). As a matter of fact, this part of the total chaji (tea gathering) which also includes a meal, sweets, and koicha (thick tea), could be seen as a way of rejoining the ordinary world after having one’s awareness raised above it by previous experiences in the chaji. The deep and spreading silence of the cessation of the whisper of boiling water (that sound referred to as matsukaze, “the wind in the pines” which has unobtrusively accompanied activities throughout the chaji), occasioned by the addition of cold water, serves to remind us, as we come back down to the level of regular life, that this august realm is always available through encounters with the most ordinary material things. This is the essence of ma, which encompasses both the spiritual realm and the material one. At least this is how it has always seemed to me.

Another aspect of ma dear to my own heart is the phenomenon of yoin 余韻, an aesthetic word describing the carefully timed short silence at the end of performances, be they music, dance, or drama, to name a few, after the last motion has been achieved, or the last note has died away. This is ma at its finest, in my opinion.

As you can see from these examples, for me ma is intimately connected with silence, freely given, noticed or not, which is indeed a form of space. I guess I am a silence aficionado. Ma is essentially a wordless idea. We human beings do require words in order to approach this wordlessness, however, and this review is no exception.

This book provides many different aspects of ma, and those of us who live a long time in Japan have our favorites. In the end, ma is an experience shared between oneself and the material world, which cannot be put into words, and this book is a very well-written introduction, including many visual examples, which to me are essential for developing the concept in the mind. It is indeed, as the book’s superscription says, “an invitation to awareness.”

Mike grew up in San Francisco, and attended USF as an undergraduate before earning his PhD in Artificial Intelligence at MIT. While there, he helped co-found MIT’s literary magazine Rune and studied poetry under David Ferry at Wellesley. In 1977, he was named a Luce Scholar with an appointment to Kyoto University. Mike and his wife translated They Never Asked, a collection of senryu poetry written by Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in 2023. Mike’s most recent book is a translation of the Hyakunin Isshu, published by Tuttle. Mike has been an active member of Writers in Kyoto for some years.

A New Year’s holiday evening in the 90s, and in our home, a Hyakunin Isshu tournament is in progress. The drone of my mother-in-law reading the poems and repeating the all-important last two lines; the silence as the card is searched for; the slap of the card as it is taken from the floor; the barks of triumph and the moans of defeat. I listen to the familiar sounds from the kitchen where I am washing dishes. My upper-elementary-school-age son, who is in the card team currently being coached by a local priest, is involved in the game. This traditional New Year pastime, called One Hundred Poems in Japanese, involves, to win the game, taking more cards with the last two lines of the poem printed on them than your opponent. The poems are in the traditional waka format, 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per poem. To be really skillful means memorizing the first half of the poem so that you can find the card with the last two lines quickly. In our house, the “answer” cards are splayed as for the card game “Concentration,” but in a real game between experts, such as one sees on TV at this time, they are lined up between the two contestants, who sit facing each other. It’s really a two-person game, but anyone can join in, the way we play. I used to try, but it is really too hard for me to read the archaic hiragana script of the cards, so I mostly just listen.

One Hundred Poems from Old Japan would be a welcome addition to any Japanophile’s bookshelf. Handsomely illustrated with Edo-period woodblock prints specially commissioned from artistic masters Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and Kunisada, each opened page consists of an illustration, the number of the poem, the author and sometimes court title (from the Emperor’s court during the Heian period, around the tenth century), the English translation, the Japanese original, and the romaji (alphabetic rendering) of this last, arranged beautifully over the space.

Michael Freiling came to Kyoto in his youth, and his big project as a Henry Luce scholar in 1977 at Kyoto University was translating the One Hundred Poems into English, several of which graced the pages of the 4^th Anthology of Writers in Kyoto, Structures in Kyoto. As one of the co-editors of that anthology I was glad to see his translations of other poems as well, the complete work in fact, in this book. I knew that these poems can be read on many levels, and it was interesting to see how the translation, in many cases, included nods to these various levels. For example, my favorite of the collection, No. 66, ends with the lines, hana yori hoka ni / shiru hito mo nashi (“No one sees the blooming of the mountain cherry except the flowers themselves”), which is one level, that of a natural scene; another is a lament by the author, the former Archbishop Gyoson, for his loss of status; as translated by Freiling, “…for both of us [me and the blossoms]/ no other friends are left.” It is true that these levels of meaning have not been, by and large, arrived at by asking the poets themselves, but by inference through information about their lives and preoccupations provided by their friends, later commentators, etc. But it is interesting to be aware of them. The levels are arrived at naturally using poetic words and images which have more than one meaning in this poetic framework. It would be interesting and educational to see translations of the poems from the viewpoints of some of these several levels in the same place, for comparison purposes.

The Introduction, which is fascinating, covers such themes as “Court Life in the Heian Period,” “The Merry-go-Round of Love,” and a very interesting portion which lists localities in modern Kyoto which are associated with the poems, “Modern Kyoto and the Hyakunin Isshu,” as well as short biographical notes about some of the more well-known poets featured in this collection. The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu collection was originally made by Fujiwara no Teika, a member of the very important court family Fujiwara. Works of several members of this family, who were poets as well as public figures at that time, can be found in the collection, including a poem by the compiler himself, No. 97. It is to be noted that many of the included poems were written by women, including Sei Shonagon and Lady Murasaki, women being a very important part of the literary and cultural life of the Heian court. Lady Murasaki Shikibu, particularly, is famed for writing the novel The Tale of Genji, which sheds much light on the court as it was at the time of these poems.

The illustrations are full of life and wonderful in design, which one would expect from such experts in the field of woodblock printing and artistry. I confess that I was a bit confused at first by the juxtaposition of the illustrations and the poems – “what are they supposed to be illustrating anyway?” I thought. I should have read the Introduction first, which states, in the words of the author/translator, “The … illustrations… are from the series The Ogura Imitations of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Ogura nazorae Hyakunin Isshu)… The print series was made specially to illustrate this volume of poems, and the imagery in each print is based on scenes from Kabuki theatre that relate to the theme of each poem.” Thus the illustrations, although all showing human beings, are not of the poets themselves (this was the initial source of my confusion), and sometimes the theme connecting the picture to the poem is rather difficult to grasp for a modern reader, but those that, for example, include the moon (No. 59), maple leaves (No. 24) or snow (No. 15), are self-explanatory. (The compendium of illustrations is described as “playful” by one Google commentator, not particularly serious that is, but one would have to be conversant with a lot of literature and literary figures to feel the playfulness.) It would be nice to know which Kabuki play and which scene are being referenced, but such information is not within the scope of this book. One also must keep in mind the discrepancy in period between the poems (around tenth century) and the illustrations (around eighteenth century). Still, the illustrations are impressive, and beautifully rendered.

This edition includes a link to free audio recordings of the poems at the end of the Introduction.

He bowed to Mrs Okada in the shop, remembering how the boys vied for her attention in high school. On the way out he greeted an old workmate who insisted they went for a beer. ‘Could be our last chance, Hitoshi — we’re in our twilight years now!’ 

He’d been out two hours when he finally set off for home, but Hitoshi knew his wife would still be waiting outside. He tucked the cane underneath his arm so he could carry a shopping bag in each hand. When he reached the corner he placed them on a neighbour’s wall, then brandished the stick to signal all was well. Michiko waved her arms and rolled her eyes as though she thought him an old fool. It was a game they played every day.

A petal had caught in her hair, and he pictured the bloom of her skin when they first met; her body an unfurling flower on their wedding night; their hanami honeymoon in Kyoto.

She took the shopping bags from him — talking, talking. He nodded distractedly, returning to that perfect week: Tetsugaku no Michi clouded with blossom; moonlight on cobbles; swaying lanterns; laughter, sweet as temple bells; the light in Michiko’s eyes as they stood on the platform at Kiyomizu-dera. 

‘Look, Hitoshi,’ she’d said, ‘the city of flowers is spread out at our feet, stretching into the distance like our life together. We’ll live well and long — in fact we’ll live forever.’ 

He reached forward now and plucked the petal from her hair, unaware of the tear on his cheek.

‘You daft old man,’ she said, shaking her head.

The passage up to Seki is filled with lingering snow. I’m riding what’s called the Shinobi Train, geared to tourists, with the word shinobi written in Roman letters, though only a Japanese speaker would know what that means.

Seki is perhaps the best-preserved post town on the Tōkaidō, yet just off this main street of machinami row houses, a new housing development is being laid out on a tell-tale grid à la California suburb. Before long I come to the torii gate that marks the start of the Ise Betsu Kaidō, the connective tissue that extends out toward the grand shrines of Ise. From here, the true machinami begins. 

With the wind and the faded paint of the old buildings, I feel like I am a gunfighter strolling into a frontier town of the Wild West. The bank is constructed in a nice classic look in keeping with the rest of the town—an effort that won it the Mie prefectural architecture award. Directly across the street, incongruous to all, is a restaurant that despite a traditional frontage, announces its specials in a garish neon scroll. 

I time the start of my walk to coincide with the opening of a pair of old homes that now serve as historical museums. They contain the usual artifacts, though I do learn a few things, namely that the feudal post road system ended in 1872. One museum has done up a room with a futon and a set of lacquerware to display the hospitality a traveler could expect during a sojourn down the old road. The real charm of these places, and others, is the architecture, all solid beams and darkened corners. The best displays can be found in Seki’s guest house, decorated with items from the previous century: telephones and motorbikes and a long row of sake bottles. As I am examining the latter, I notice an odd form not far from my left foot. A guest has been given a space in the hallway, his bearded face barely visible in a sleeping bag tightly cinched. Seki must have been busy this holiday weekend. And cold.

I brave the latter as I continue to wander the town. They’ve done some nice things here, in creating small parks, sitting spaces, and a balcony overlook providing a different view of the town. While my initial impression of Seki was that it was a bit of a sterile museum piece, the more I poke around the more it charms me. I begin to see that the residents have gone to great lengths to preserve the history here, the usual blemishes aside. But they have also found ways to engage with the life of its current residents. In that way Seki is different than the truly preserved post towns of the Kiso Valley, where there is little to do but admire the pretty look of things, and one finds oneself quickly bored. But here there are ample cafes and abundant galleries, including one shop specializing in fossils. It is interesting to see how they have adapted these centuries-old spaces. The best perhaps is the flea market held in the open courtyard of Jizo-ji temple. Other temples and shrines similarly offer their vast environs for the good of the community, and I find the sight of a new children’s playground on the grounds of a shrine refreshingly optimistic.

It was easy to see why Seki was chosen as a barrier station, as the tall jagged mountains ringing this narrow valley offer good natural defense. I move toward them, as the sky darkens and threatens rain. I feel a drop now and again, and I want to believe that the weather will hold off as the gods debate awhile just what form the precipitation will take on such a chilly day. The forecast had promised sunny skies, but the current temps are near freezing, especially with the strong wind that keeps up a constant tattoo upon my face. In fact, it was the forecast itself that had encouraged me to leave the house at all.

The weather finally compromises on frozen rain. This goes on for a while, but at one point I notice my shadow moving out in front of me again. It points me toward a trio of walkers just ahead. From the way they keep glancing at their book I know that they too are walking this old road. Tokyo-ites, they have been walking it in stages for over a decade. The oldest man in the group is interesting to talk to, and we discuss awhile the Tōkaidō and its best sections. The woman, probably his daughter, is merely interested in the usual inane questions about where from and how long. The guy I take to be her husband couldn’t be bothered with me at all. So I push on.

I parallel a small river for a while. It is lined with an array of viper warning signs, compliments of the PTA, which I presume are more about keeping school kids away from the water. The clouds ahead to my left look equally vicious, and sadly I am heading into their waiting jaws. Just ahead, I notice a small rise lined with 53 posts, each emblazoned with the name of one of the stations on the Tōkaidō. Near the top of the rise is a beautiful old building that still serves as the community center. A guy is working in the garden out front, in a light sweater vest, bearded and pony-tailed. I greet him and receive a smile in return, and though I never break stride, I am half hoping that he’ll invite me for a warming cup of tea. I am curious about him, for beards in Japan generally signify an interesting character, one who has opted out of the comfort of mainstream society and found an alternative way to pay tribute to their dreams 

I am alone now, moving steadily toward Suzuka Pass. As I am puzzling out where to leave the road and enter the mountains proper, I see a couple just up the road, carrying the same guidebook as me. Thus set straight, I move into the forest and take a side trip to explore the ruins of a shrine. The road steepens from here, and I find out later that this is one of Japan’s 100 passes, whatever that means. It was always considered one of the hardest sections of the Tōkaidō, sharing infamy with Hakone in the East. Though hard going, all is peaceful in the lightly falling snow, and upon arriving at the top, I find myself surrounded on all sides by rows of freshly dusted tea bushes. 

Going downhill now, the weather too. The roads remain free, but the countryside, and more worrying, my clothing, are coated in white. I think that if the storm worsens that I will call it a day, but I don’t really have an escape plan as there are no trains or buses nearby. The steady traffic tempts me to hitchhike, but I convince myself that the weather will improve once I am out of the mountains. 

A long walk through blowing snow brings me to the beginnings of a town. I cross the bridge that appears in Hiroshige’s corresponding woodblock print, and rather than the cold I would happily settle for its title, “Spring Rain at Tsuchiyama.” Over the bridge is the sprawling Tamura Shrine, atmospheric with its stone bridges over twisting brooks. It holds a close second in interest to the thought of lunch, for it is getting late in the day. I find a convenience store nearby and as I warm myself inside, the sun comes out, to accompany me for the rest of the afternoon.

This section of the Tōkaidō through Tsuchiyama is over two kilometers long, and even as it leaves the town proper, it will maintain its distinctive traditional look for the day’s remaining 10 km. I imagine that this is how things had always looked back then, and as my overall distance on the day lengthens, this thought keeps my spirits high and my body strong. I nearly forego a detour to the Tsuchiyama’s Tenmakan, which appears at first to just be a simple rest stop for walkers, but has secreted away a pair of incredible exhibitions on its second floor. One room has prints of Kurosawa Shigekazu’s “revisionist” print series on the Tōkaidō, and in front of each of the 53 prints are plastic replicas of the food best known from that particular town. In the opposite room hang Hiroshige’s prints, the scenery of each reconstructed in a bonsai-type bowl by a local pair of confectioners. Once again, I will express amazement at such simple but unsung works of art hidden away in the recesses of this country. 

The lateness of the afternoon and the waning light spur me onward. I match step with another walker, who will finish his own Tōkaidō walk tomorrow in Kusatsu. Later, an old man begins to talk with me as he walks to a neighbor’s house somewhere up the road. On the outskirts of Minakuchi, a quintet of aging Zen monks do their begging rounds, their age dictating the use of a flute rather than the usual deep resonant chants of their younger counterparts. Two young children in happi accompany them as they go. Rows of tea bushes fill the gaps between houses. And finally then the train line, serviced at irregular intervals by a single old rattling carriage. Today it is filled with young riders, a completely different demographic than expected. I am the oldest person on board and must look it, as I shuffle aboard on legs weary from 27 km and sub-zero temps.

Naosuke Togawa (1917–2010)¹, a film critic, contributed not only to Japan’s famous film magazines including Kinema Junpo and Eiga Hyoron, but to English-language publications: The Education of the Film-maker: An International View issued by Unesco Press and International Film Guide, to name a few. In honor of his great contributions to the film industry, he was given the 13th Kawakita Award² in 1995. (The first winner was Donald Richie, who toasted Togawa at the award ceremony.³) 

Back in late 1945, Togawa made a visit to Kyoto. He recorded what he had seen and felt there, which ended up appearing in the December 4, 1945, edition of the periodical Jiji Tsushin Eiga Geino. His report, titled “Shusengo no Kyoto (Postwar Kyoto),” started as below: 

“Kyoto, the only megalopolis that was free from war damage, is so fortunate that it looks like it used to be and shows no signs of fatigue — which is a totally superficial view. Indeed, its scenes of nature remain the same, but the city does nothing but show us that people there are in the terrible plight of a defeated nation.” 

Togawa kept on dealing with the city’s miserable situation, referring to these two things. 

• More than 500 street people rushed from Osaka and Kobe to Kyoto every day. 
• There was also an influx of war evacuees, who were a few hundred times as many as the above-mentioned homeless. 

According to Togawa, the downtown of Kyogoku and the vicinity of Minamiza were jammed with lethargic or absent-minded people. Regarding the Kyogoku area, the critic added an explanation: 

“The theaters are fully packed, and Teikoku-kan⁴, which screens The Gift of the Fox⁵, has such long lines of moviegoers that I feel pity for them.” 

In Teikoku-kan, he saw a great number of people standing on tiptoes along its passages to watch the film. However, the film was shown in such a bad environment that it made him think: 

“Even a train trip without a seat can take us to any place as long as you pay the fare. That said, it is extremely unreasonable that people have to pay the same amount of fee even if a film cannot be seen or heard.” 

Togawa went on to lament the extremely poor performance of singers, dancers, and theater people on stage. Furthermore, he complained about the cost of going to the theater as below, comparing it to that of buying something to eat: 

“Food stalls have been made in a row on lots that were vacant due to building evacuation. They sell a dish of almost rotten vegetables cooked in soy sauce for one yen. If it costs a yen for something we can eat in 20 seconds, then can we think it less expensive to spend time at a theater for two hours even if it costs 10 yen? No, it is a wrong idea.” 

Incidentally, before visiting Kyoto, Togawa wrote an article about the cruel situation in postwar Osaka⁶. He found heaven and hell next to each other in the Dotonbori area: 

“Street children, whose parents had been killed in the war, were vending a bun for six yen, their voices getting hoarse. Inside the huge theater behind them, meanwhile, young women of the Takarazuka Revue Company were performing Pinocchio under the dazzling lighting. At the neighboring theater, The Gift of the Fox was so popular that there was a line of people.” 

Yuki Yamauchi came across the 1945 articles of Naosuke Togawa while looking for articles on filmmaker Akira Nobuchi, about whom and whose film he has written articles: 

Notes

1. He often used the pen name Naoki Togawa, but did not for the articles regarding postwar Kyoto and Osaka.  ︎
2. An annual award given by the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute to “an individual or an organization (local or foreign) who has significantly contributed to the development of Japanese cinema and/or to the diffusion of Japanese culture over the years through films.” Reference: https://www.kawakita-film.or.jp/kmfi_english.html  ︎
3. The photograph of Richie and Togawa can be seen here: https://www.kawakita-film.or.jp/kawakita_award_3_13.html  ︎
4. Teikoku-kan opened in 1913 at Nishiki-koji Agaru, Shinkyogoku, Nakagyo-ku. It was closed in 1971. The photographs of the theater in 1935 and 1938 can be seen here: https://www.nfaj.go.jp/onlineservice/digital-
   gallery/dg20140408_006/ ︎
5. The Gift of the Fox (Kitsune no Kureta Akanbo in Japanese) is a film released on November 8, 1945. It was Tsumasaburo Bando’s first starring role after the end of WWII. ︎
6. The article, titled “Shusengo no Osaka (Postwar Osaka),” appeared in theNovember 29, 1945, edition of Jiji Tsushin Eiga Geino. ︎

WiK member Stephen Mansfield’s newly released book, The Modern Japanese Garden, is explored in an in-depth discussion with Amy Chavez for her Books on Asia podcast.

The cultural center is located in Fujisawa, a Tokyo bedroom community, and Hasegawa has talked about the “liquidity and diversity” of her sites, of the process of planning and conceiving architecture as a “work of making topography.” That fluidity and inclusion of landscape contouring is evident in the conflation of silvery surfaces, cage-like panels of steel, perforated aluminum trees, a riverbed made from tile, stained glass, vine-hung stainless-steel pergolas, and a set of cosmic spheres. 

Hasegawa was the first woman to win an architectural competition of this type, and reactions among the older male fraternity of Japanese designers were less than flattering, with one well-known architect comparing her plan to a “naïve child’s drawing;” another deriding it as “gaudy, pop, idiosyncratic, and eccentric.” There are certainly playful elements in the design, with sea shells embedded in its floors and concrete walls, tile pavers embossed with animal tracks, and green and blue marbles placed above perforated ceiling panels. This is a garden very much within the public domain. When its winding stream, made from artificial tiles, is filled with water, children magically appear to paddle and play, creating the atmosphere of a fairy tale village in the midst of a cluttered urban residential zone. Unbeknown to the gamboling toddlers, the yari-mizu, or winding stream, is an ancient garden component.

Interestingly, the completion of the project was also a small but significant triumph over gender discrimination. Hasegawa recalls obstructionist male local officials treating her, “as if I were a radical social activist.” As a woman, she recalled, the local bureaucrat assigned to supervise the project, felt that “like the sumo wrestling ring, women should not be allowed to enter a construction site.” Hasegawa prevailed, and the project was completed in 1990.

The absence of natural materials does not appear to have diminished the popularity of the site, or its recognition by locals as a garden. This raises some interesting questions. If the unstated intention of the contemporary landscape artist is to create a modernist utopia, a futuristic garden prototype, is it possible to do so by means of purely synthetic materials? 

© Michael J. Freiling, 2025. All rights reserved. Permission to publish brief quotes or excerpts is hereby granted, provided the quote or passage is attributed as follows: “Michael Freiling, in Observations from Kyoto.”

The year was 1978. The month was late August or early September. The place was Ryoan-ji, site of the best-known rock garden in Japan. I was well into the last month of my Luce Scholarship year in Kyoto, not to return for at least six years. So it was time for farewells — farewell to my dorm mates in Yamashina, and farewells especially to the places I had come to know and love in Kyoto. Ryoan-ji was one of those.

The rock garden of Ryoan-ji is in some sense the “queen of all rock gardens,” the quintessential exemplar against which all others are measured. If you were to open a book on Japanese rock gardens, you’d only see it as one among many, perhaps not even the most attractive. But open any other book on Japan, Japanese culture, Japanese Buddhism, or what have you, and flip through the book until you come to a picture of a rock garden. I’d wager the odds will be heavily in favor of discovering a picture of Ryoan-ji.

What accounts for the respect accorded to this rock garden? Could it be a sort of “branding effect?” Once anointed the queen of all rock gardens, photographs abound and time-pressured content creators have simply gravitated toward the most accessible source? 

Could it be that this garden’s very simplicity and abundance of negative space lends itself to modern photography in a way that others do not — whether the photographer wishes to focus on a single formation, or create the illusion of sweeping vistas in a space that, once seen up close, appears remarkably confined?

Or could it be that Ryoan-ji hits some sort of sweet spot between the representational and the non-representational — call it “almost representational” if you will — capable of becoming a sort of tabula rasa on which the viewer is invited (or even tempted) to assign representations that fascinate because they are deeply personal?

During my scholarship year, I developed just such a fascination. One of the abiding advantages of Ryoan-ji is the gallery of bleacher seats, situated slightly above the garden, from which the visitor can sit for a while and contemplate an unimpeded view of the entire space.

So here I was, sitting on the lowest level of the gallery bleachers, quietly contemplating the rocks, hoping this time to fathom their mysterious significance, since it might be a long time before I would have the opportunity to do so again.

As I sat there surveying the scene, I began to hear some discussions going on behind me. The conversation was in Japanese, and conducted quietly. In those days, most of the tourists were themselves Japanese, and not prone to loud commentaries so much as quiet expressions like eh… or so desu ne.

Listening more closely, the dialog was taking the form of a question and answer session, the questions being posed by an older, deeper voice, and the answers given by small groups, likely families.

The question seemed to repeat itself over and over — doku iku? Where are you going? Each time the question was asked, it was answered by a litany of several of the more famous tourist spots in Kyoto — Kinkaku-ji, Nanzen-ji, Kiyomizu, Fushimi Inari, punctuated by the older voice interjecting with an ahh … or a naruhodo, as appropriate.

An odd conversation, to be sure. Or rather, an odd sequence of conversations. Almost like I was listening to a quiz show, waiting for the contestant who could come up with the prize-winning answer. But no, the questions went on and on, the contestants came and went.

Finally my curiosity got the better of me, and I twisted my upper body around to get a better sense of what was going on. Back behind the gallery, in the flat strip that opened into a hall of temple rooms, I saw a Zen monk, fully robed, speaking with a Japanese tourist family. He asked the question, they provided the answers. He would nod sagely, mutter his aahh . . . or naruhodo, and move on.

On closer scrutiny, it became clear that the monk was having a very good time of it. As he moved from family to family, his sage and earnest face would dissolve into an impish grin. The grin lasted only a moment — then the sage was back, stalking his next quarry.

Was it a hobby? Was it a sport? Was he trying to teach a lesson? If so, just what exactly was the lesson? Pondering this question over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that “lesson” comes the closest, but it was not an immediate lesson he was aiming for. Rather, it was a sort of deferred lesson, one intended to lie latent in the soul, ready to spring into bloom at the appropriate time.

The question itself can be asked on many levels. In its most quotidian sense, it is roughly equivalent to “What do you plan to do next?,” which is the way most of the tourists he talked to chose to interpret the question. But of course, there are many other dimensions. Where are you going to school? Where are you going in your career? Where are you going in your life?

To those who search for universals among the world’s manifold spiritual paths, the deepest sense of this question — Where am I going? — ranks as one of the three questions that drive every spiritual search, the others being Who am I? and Where did I come from?

Its surface simplicity masks the fact that it is the most trenchant of the three, the one that demands an answer right now — an answer in the form of action. It is immediately recognizable as the “Quo vadis?” of the Western tradition¹. These four simple words (just two in Japanese) burn themselves into our soul, hounding us for an answer. And not just any answer — an answer that speaks to the heart of who we are.

This deeper meaning represents what I believe were the monk’s true intentions. Acting as a kind of spiritual Johnny Appleseed, planting small seeds of insight and self-realization that he would not see germinate — that would reach fruition in some unknown time, in some unknown place, in a parent or a child. A time and place where the question “Where are you going?” might emerge from the depths of the unconscious with irresistible urgency.

I like to imagine a young boy or girl, aged 6 or 7 at that time, listening to the question and not realizing that a seed has been planted. Perhaps some 20 years later, the full impact of these two Japanese words comes into view, compelling this young person to embark on a serious search for a suitable answer.

Our monk at Ryoan-ji was certainly playful. But was this a sustainable playfulness, or was he simply in a good mood that day? To put it differently, what would happen if we tried to knock the monk off balance with a question of our own that he could not answer? Or an insult, or an accusation? How would we evaluate his response?

The literature of Zen is full of stories that illustrate what we might expect. But in the end, we would each have to make up our own minds as to what qualifies as evidence of sustainability. I’ve tried a number of thought experiments to determine my own criteria, and I usually get to the same place.

Let’s say somebody walks up to the monk, gets in his face, and says something like “You know, you really are a fraud. Walking around with that look on your face, like you were Dogen or Eisai². Trying to impress everybody with your faux-erudite question.”

What would we expect him to say, if he were truly the man we hoped him to be? The best answer I’ve come up with is that the monk gets that impish grin again. He does not argue, or even try to refute. He simply says “You’re right! Sometimes I disappoint myself,” shrugs his shoulders and walks away.

But as he moves on, he breathes a silent prayer to Kannon for mercy on that poor guy who seems so much more concerned with the monk’s soul than he is with his own.

Notes:

1. An adaptation of this story for Western readers unfamiliar with Zen may be found at shimenawa.org. ︎
2. Dogen (1200 – 1253) was the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism. Eisai (1141 – 1215) founded the Rinzai school of Zen. ︎

In the different homes I’ve inhabited in England, Spain and rural France, I’ve always inherited someone else’s garden. In Japan, we were able to buy a used home in the decidedly uncool city of Funabashi in Chiba prefecture, where I could start to make a garden almost from scratch. This video shows the result: the work of a determined, but flawed amateur.

By Japanese urban standards, the plot, at around 250 sq.m. was decently proportioned. The L-shaped house took up roughly half the space. The former owner, a cheerful widow in her sixties, was to be commended for her efforts in creating a garden, but tastes differ, and the more I looked at the design, the more I wanted to replace, or superimpose a new design, one that would loosely follow the principals of a Japanese-style garden. 

First off was creating privacy, by planting 18 maki (podocarps) along three sides of the garden. Over time, the trees would grow together, creating a green ikegaki (living fence). Stones of different sizes and heft would be placed at the front rim of a slightly elevated earthen section at the back. Aesthetically pleasing rocks can cost a fortune, so we shopped around to get a good deal, eventually bringing them in from Gunma prefecture. This was the point where I needed some help. Under my directions regarding placement, a local garden company took over, using a traditional pulley system to lower the stones. Logs placed under the rocks were used to haul them from the truck. This was also a chance to remove some of the previous owner’s possessions, such as ornamental cement logs and plastic garden furniture. One of the garden crew was delighted to come into possession of a row of garden gnomes. Everyone was happy.

Most of the original garden was covered in gray sand, not unlike industrial road gravel. Although it was early spring when we moved in, I could imagine mosquito-infested puddles forming in the summer and dust whorls blowing up on dry days. The whole area was covered in turf, 400 pieces in all, creating another tonal graduation on the theme of green, one that would also cool down the garden.

Last in were the plants and miniature trees: fragrant olive, Japanese yew, junipers, fatsia, azalea and cycads, with mondo grass and ferns as ground cover. The only ornamental touches were a row of border-creating inverted roof tiles, two old mill stones, some ceramic basins for water hyacinths, and a small stone basin.

This, more or less, is what you will see in my first YouTube video, ‘An Englishman’s Japanese Garden (in Japan)’.

After class this morning, over delicious muffins, Aimi joined Benoît, me, and José, who leads an ideal life: spring and fall in Kyoto, winter in India, and summer in Luxembourg. As ingenuous as she is beautiful, Aimi is frequently the butt of Benoît’s teasing. When Aimi told us she was twenty-four, Benoît told her why he came to Kyoto exactly twenty-four years ago: “I heard you were coming.”

The conversation revolved around colours. Aimi had led us in a visualization meditation in which we were asked to imagine the colour emerald green, which Aimi told us was the colour of love. José complained he couldn’t keep the colour in his mind, it kept changing to magenta, then black. Aimi told us that, contrary to most thinking, black is a good colour. “It certainly is,” said José. “As you can see, all my clothes are black. So that I don’t have to wash them as often.” Aimi averred that she mostly wears white, but that gradually she too is leaning to black.

We discussed our real age and how old we actually felt. Clearly, we were all feeling younger than usual this morning. I rattled on about the subjectivity of time in the noh play I saw last week, Kantan. I told her the plot, about how a young man in China who is on his way to the capital to write the civil service examination stops in Hantan (Kantan in Japanese). The lady at his inn bids him rest from his travels while she makes some gruel for him. She gives him a magic pillow, and he dreams that a messenger comes from the capital announcing that he has been chosen as the next emperor of China. There follows in his dream a lifetime that only gods and emperors can enjoy: fine food, sweet music, beautiful companions … Fifty years flash by in the blink of an eye. Then the old lady wakes him from his nap. “A magic pillow?” Aimi was intrigued.

Benoît steered the conversation back to colours. “I have a story,” he said. “So, José and I were having this debate over white and black—which is better? He said black, I said white. It went back and forth. Finally, I convinced him to buy my black and white TV, saying it was colour.”

Aimi was bemused. “Don’t you know he’s pulling your leg?” said José. “I’ve known this guy for ten years and still can’t tell when he’s being serious. Why, just yesterday, Benoît told Eri I was opening a kakigōri shop this summer in Luxembourg and she laughed at me. But the fact is, I really am!”

A shop selling Japanese snow cones in Luxembourg? Maybe the joke was on José. But no, I find out, the joke’s on us: José is spiking his snow cones with alcohol, like frozen daiquiris.

A year later, Aimi left for greener pastures, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say she took a piece of my heart. This morning for the first time I returned for the morning class with her replacement, Tina. As I entered, the ladies behind the counter told Tina that this was the guy they’d been talking about (kore ga uwasa no Cody) “Huh?” (nan ya sore?) I replied. God knows what they’ve been saying about me.

In Tina’s class I ran into an old friend of Aimi’s whom I hadn’t seen in months, Nanami. The last time I saw her she’d told me she was tired of life with her old partner; they didn’t have the same interests. “You’re young,” I said, “maybe it’s time to move on and find someone who lights the spark you need.” Today, she thanked me for my advice. Not only had she broken up with the old boyfriend, but she’d found another guy and they got married! She’d brought him to class with her and introduced me to him as the man who had brought them together. I felt conflicted, both cupid and homewrecker, but it was clear that she was happier than before.

The studio is on the third floor. On the second floor is a smaller studio and the cafe and shop selling hippie things. At the back every Sunday morning is Yūko, baking muffins. I ordered a cup of chai from her and, delivering it, Yūko said she approved of the advice I’d given Nanami. “Cody’s everybody’s dad here” (Cody wa minna no otōsan da), she concluded. Well, I thought. There are worse things to be.

Homewrecker

A family of pigeons have made a home out of one of my pocket balconies ever since I moved in. Last spring two pigeons became five: I discovered that they’d nested under the heat pump fan. The building manager was on at me for all their shit that was landing some ten stories down on the pavement, right in front of Wasabi, which is frequented by my drinking buddies Odani-san and Oi-chan. This spring, as I sat on my couch I looked out and mom and dad were at it again, fucking on the fan. Here we go again, I thought. On the manager’s urging, I contacted my landlord, and he sent over a crew to install some netting to prevent the birds from roosting there. Mother pigeon had already laid five eggs. I felt like the guy who’d sent a hitman to do a job. “What did you do with the eggs?” I asked. “We disposed of them,” the foreman said, but I noticed later they had left one. Mom was back this morning, perched on the netting looking at the one child left behind, looking at me, askance in the way pigeons do.

A Yoga Sex Comedy

Mark and I had gone to see the comedian Issey Ogata perform at the Kyoto Prefectural Center for Arts and Culture. We noticed a young foreign guy having an avid conversation with a young Japanese woman after the show. In the bicycle parking lot, Mark started chatting with him and we ended up inviting the lad to dinner with us. Joseph was from Boston and had a BA in Computer Science, but he was currently working for an NPO in Mongolia. He was visiting Japan to give a couple of talks. The woman at the theatre was a circus acrobat and had invited him to a party in Osaka that weekend.

 Joseph had spent his gap year between high school and university in Florianópolis, an idyllic beach resort in Brazil. Mark, who had once had a boyfriend from Brazil, plugged Joseph about Brazilian sexuality. It was Mark’s sense that Brazilians were highly sexed, yet their sexuality existed along a non-binary spectrum, the object of one’s desire being entirely situational, fluid.

We took ourselves to Que Pasa on Kawaramachi, which is run by a Japanese guy who learned on YouTube to make his quite authentic Mexican dishes. Another young fellow, a Filipino American from San Diego, was also working in the kitchen. A student at Ritsumeikan, he was a serious foodie. Simé, an Argentinian woman with a lot of tattoos and piercings, was serving us. Two other friends, Josh and Chris, presently joined us, making it a table of four middle-aged white men and one young, twenty-three-year-old white boy. We had been the first bunch into the door and had ordered our food early, but Simé had evidently lost the order, because we watched latecomers getting their dinners and leaving before we even got our food. The drink service was quicker, and the men were getting liquored up. A crude joke about the taco’s resemblance to the female genitalia had a Chilean friend of Simé’s, who was sitting next to us eating a burrito, rolling her eyes.

Josh invited Joseph to his guitar gig in Gion on Friday night. “Are you free?”

“That depends on what night the acrobat invites me to her birthday party in Osaka,” said Joseph. “My plans are a little liquid at the moment.”

“Fluid, you mean surely,” said Mark.

“I was trying to avoid that word,” said Joseph, parrying Mark’s earlier remark about gender and sexual fluidity among the Brazilians.

“More liquid, like I spilled my drink on the floor.”

We were all trying, each in our own way, to make the new boy our pet. Joseph was smart, well read, and adventurous. Who wouldn’t want his company?

Joseph, on the other hand, was looking for a good exit. This came when Josh noticed an attractive young woman at the next table. Josh eyed me. “Don’t you think she’s got a yoga body?” he asked me. “I’m gonna introduce her to you.”

“Hello, young miss? Senorita? My friend and I were having a debate here. I was saying you must be a yogini, but my friend doesn’t believe me. This is my friend Cody. He’s seriously into yoga.” Nice opening, Josh.

The girl turns and smiles. No, she doesn’t do yoga, she says. We all introduce ourselves; her eyes vaguely survey us, then turn to Joseph, who is sitting closest to her. Her name is Nanaho. Why are there so many Nanas passing through my life? The two young people immediately connect.

“You’ve been to Brazil?” asked Nanaho. “I’ve been to Brazil! You play the drums? So do I!”

The two of them immediately connect on whatever social media platform they use and take their party elsewhere.

Hanachan

One Sunday afternoon I attended another class at my downtown studio. There were just three of us, the instructor, who had lived in Toronto, and Hanachan, a young woman with whom I had taken classes before. The last time I saw her was on a retreat in Ishigaki this spring and she threw herself into my arms when I left. After class she told me she would be returning soon to Nagano where her husband awaited her. She has been periodically shuttling between Kyoto, where her mother is, and Nagano. “I bet it’ll be cooler in Nagano this summer,” I said. Not so, she said. Where they lived sat in a bowl surrounded by mountains just like Kyoto. Matsumoto? I wonder. That’s where Aimi was from. Maybe the girl of my dreams lives there, not in Kyoto. As I was leaving, she said, “give me a hug,” and we embraced warmly and for a long time. “I may not see you till next year,” she said regretfully.

I am too old (if not too wise) to fool myself into thinking there was anything romantic budding between us. Chalk it up to some paternal charge I gave off, or some unaccountable bond that sometimes Japanese people pick up on—袖擦り合うも他生（多少）の縁. In other words, perhaps it was karma from another life or something. Whatever it was, it made me unaccountably happy for the rest of the day. It is good to love and be loved.

Memento Mori

How I am feeling today. Life has its ups and its downs and sometimes its spills. A couple of weeks ago I sprained my left shoulder, then last night, trying to avoid an old couple, this old man slipped, riding his bike over a wet manhole cover. I managed to right the bike without falling over but tore my rotator cuff in the process. Where’s Hanachan when I need her? In Nagano no doubt.

These topics came up at a writers’ weekend hosted by longtime WiK member Rebecca Otowa on May 10-11th. Rebecca’s home deserves a special mention: her husband is the 19th generation of his family to occupy the 350-year old farmhouse in rural Shiga Prefecture. (For more on this, I recommend Rebecca’s book At Home In Japan – Tuttle, 2010.) They recently acquired the property next door and refurbished it as guest quarters, where our small group stayed.

Among the many experiences my fellow WiK members Rebecca, Karen Lee Tawarayama, Jann Williams and I share is that all of us have co-edited past WiK anthologies. We had coped with similar challenges of how to juggle the logistics of the project with our own busy lives — and we came to the same realization that prioritizing time for ourselves was not just an indulgence, but was vital to allow us to continuously approach our editing tasks with a fresh mind.

The weekend’s weather cooperated, and the predicted rain never fell. The four of us were able to take long walks around the village of Otowa, from which Rebecca’s family took its name. We foraged in their spring garden for snap peas, which Rebecca fried into exquisite tempura. 

But writing remained the focus, and our conversations somehow always returned to it. Rebecca suggested we do a series of exercises to unleash our creative energy — to stretch our muscles, so to speak.

My favorite of these involved selecting a book from her large library, opening to a page and writing down a random sentence to be the first line of a story — and then passing around the paper, for others to take a turn adding their own sentences. The results were surprisingly more coherent and compelling than I had expected.

In some ways, this exercise imitated life: all of us are born into random situations, and we then make our own marks before handing everything on to those who follow us to complete. Of course, in real life, we don’t always get to read the endings — instead, we have to imagine them, and understand that we’re just a single part of a long, unbroken circle.

I set the scene for the interview with my own recent experience of silence in an abbey in Belgium.

It is ultimately a simple wooden door, utterly discreet, that marks the passage between the outside and the inside. I had rushed to secure one of the few remaining parking spots along the road leading to Orval Abbey, a touristic and spiritual landmark in southeastern Belgium. On this weekend, a steady stream of visitors poured into the abbey shop and then on to the medieval ruins. Beyond the simple door, a paved courtyard awaited me, which I crossed to reach the monk-host’s office. Like dozens of people every day, I had come here for a retreat—a secular one in my case—to rediscover a state of mind that we tend to forget even exists, yet which we may well need: inner silence.

As I make my way to my monastic cell, which is reduced to the essentials (a bed, a table and a toilet), I cross the large courtyard, which has been landscaped into a park with a pond. A wall separates this haven of peace from the public part of the abbey, from where I can hear the joyful buzz of voices filtered through the distance. The few people I meet there avoid eye contact, while some offer a faint smile as we cross paths. Everyone is here for the same reason: to learn what silence can teach us.

Learning from Silence is precisely the subtitle of the book written by Pico Iyer that I brought with me. Released earlier this year, Iyer’s book with the main title Aflame recounts his very personal experience with silence during his 35 years of retreats at a Benedictine monastery in Big Sur, California. Iyer, who does not claim any religious affiliation, is best known for his travel writing, which has taken him from California to Nepal, North Korea to Japan, always in search of that connection between inner and outer worlds that seems to be the driving force of this modern-day nomad. In Aflame, Pico Iyer stops and withdraws from the world to observe a small community of monks and the visitors they welcome. Occasionally, he drives down the dusty roads of California to visit his friend, the late Leonard Cohen, who has retired to a Zen Buddhist monastery. Like Iyer, the famous troubadour and composer of “Hallelujah” dedicated a significant part of his life to spiritual retreat rooted in silence. And they are by no means the only ones; throughout history, countless men and women have embraced silence in order to reconnect with themselves and the world. I spoke with Iyer to clarify some questions that arose from reading his memoir.

Pico, what would you say to Blaise Pascal if you were to meet him?

I love this question, Robert, and not a single soul has mentioned Pascal in all the interviews I’ve done so far. But if I were to meet him, I would say, “thank you for putting your finger on the heart of the human predicament, 300 years or more before the rest of us were waking up to it. Thank you for reminding us, all those centuries ago, that ‘distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries’ and then continuing, ‘and yet it is, itself, the greatest of our miseries.’ Thank you most of all for living all the truths you pronounced and finding a way to help science illuminate some aspects of our life.”

Originally, I confess, I had lots of Pascal in this book, in part because this great mathematician and man of science, credited with inventing the hydraulic press and even the mechanical calculator, rejoiced in being able to feel “a sense of peace and the passion of fire” at the same time. Few thinkers have dwelled so intently and with such rigor on the inner life; a copy of the Pensées sits always beside my desk here in our tiny apartment in Japan. And maybe most of all because of his “night of fire”—perfect for a book entitled Aflame”—in which he collapsed into almost wordless cries of joy, and sewed his testimony into his jacket so he would never forget it, the great epiphany that put all his other discoveries into perspective.

If Pascal sensed this need for an inner life and quiet even in the 17^th century, how much more urgent is it in our age of constant updates, texts, beeps and breaking news? One reason I have never used a cell phone is that I feel I have more than enough data and distraction in my life; what I lack—and deeply need—is the time and space to make sense of all of it. I only wish I could have included more on Pascal—and many others—here. But my self-imposed mission was to condense 4,000 pages of notes, taken over 33 years, into something as short and direct as a haiku.

Withdrawing from the world, as monks do and as you have done during your retreats in Big Sur, may be seen by people who have never had such an experience as an escape from the challenges of the real world. What is your view on this? In your book, you argue that retreat is not so much an escape as a reorientation and a reminder. So does paradise on earth exist anywhere other than Baudelaire’s artificial paradises?

I only believe in a paradise that exists in the middle of the real world, that takes in mortality and pain and shadow and that is available to everyone, not only to those who subscribe to a certain belief. But for me, to go on retreat is a way to see what is truly real and to step behind the performances and surfaces of everyday life. As I go through my days, chattering away, driving to the bank, taking care of my taxes, I always have the feeling that this is not the whole of life, nor the end of the story. Most of us sense that there is something more, beyond our daily routine, what T.S. Eliot called “the life we have lost in living.”

Beneath my social and chattery self is a silent self and it contains the best of me, the part that lives beyond words and that, as Meister Eckhart notes, is “the part of the soul that has not been wounded.” And behind the pantomime of daily life lies a deeper truth that we sense now and then—when we’re in love, when we’re terrified, when we step out onto a terrace in Tibet—but that we misplace along the way. It’s only when I go on retreat that I feel I’m encountering something real—a lens cap has fallen away—and that reminder allows me to see my life in the world in its proper proportions. As I cite in the book, a friend asks me, wisely, if it isn’t selfish—a flight, as you say—to go on retreat. And I tell her that for me it’s the only way I can learn to be a little less selfish.

Otherwise, I’m captive to my unthinking habits and unexalted responses and can never step back far enough to see through them or beyond them. I’m keenly aware that many people don’t have the time or resources to go on retreat regularly as I try to do. But I think nearly all of us sense that we need strength and clarity to deal with the world and we need to build up our inner resources, or what I think of as our invisible savings account. So, if you can’t go on retreat, I think you’ll only be a better friend and a deeper person if you take a long walk, if you visit a friend without your cell phone, if you find some way to ground yourself in what is best and clearest in yourself.

I used to think monks were fleeing the world; but after spending 34 years in their company, I realize they’re actually moving towards what they regard as most real—and in fact giving their lives to an unsparing regimen of hard work, prayer and caring for others. I know few people who work so hard and without a break, in the very real world (I’ve come to think of monks as emergency-room physicians “in a way”).

My fundamental question of myself is “what can I bring to the intensive care unit in a hospital where I and most that I love are likely to find ourselves at some point?” I don’t think driving along the freeway, babbling to my friends, and following the Kardashians online is really going to give me the strength and confidence to deal with such urgent moments. But sitting quietly in silence might.

Many religious traditions praise silence, but it is also promoted almost as a doctrine by many secular thinkers and philosophers, from Seneca to Wittgenstein, Nietzsche to Rousseau, and finally Henry David Thoreau, who, in his essay Life Without Principle, advocates inaction based on the findings of scientific and medical research. How do you relate your own “mystical” experience to all these traditions, and what is the connection here, if there is any?

Again, this is the perfect question, Robert! I took great pains to take all my quotations in this book from people not generally associated with religion, and not part of any formal religion, starting with some soaring mystical words from no less than Nietzsche! But from Henry Miller to Camus, from Emily Dickinson to Etty Hillesum—to, as you say, Wittgenstein and Marcus Aurelius and Admiral Byrd, I wanted to show that anyone who sits quietly alone now and then, just as Pascal recommended, will come to the same conclusions.

None of this is particular to any religion, or corner of the world, which is why, in a book about Benedictine monks (written by someone who’s not a Christian), I worked hard to include the Zen monk Leonard Cohen, the Tibetan Buddhist monk the Dalai Lama, a Zen abbess in San Francisco, a Hindu nun. At a time when our world and our nations seem so furiously divided, I wanted to bring us to a place where men and women from every tradition—or none at all—all voice the same truth. Henry David Thoreau is a perfect example, drawing on the wisdom of Persia, east Asia and India and bringing it all into the heart of America. His essays are to me the great American scripture, in part because they cannot be limited to any one doctrine. They’re neither Christian nor non-Christian.

He also is the perfect answer to your last question. What people often forget about Thoreau is that he retreated to his cabin at Walden Pond for two years, two months and two days mostly so as to be a more productive member of society and a better friend to those around him. His first lecture at the Concord Lyceum was not on the subject of “solitude,” but “society.” He was known around town as a kind and gregarious neighbor who looked after Emerson’s wife and children for ten months at a stretch while Emerson was on tour, who held melon parties every year, who fixed people’s ovens. And while he was living alone, he was completing a book that was in essence a love letter to the brother who had died in his arms. At its center is a 23-page ode to friendship beyond anything I have seen elsewhere.

I write about silence in a world of contention and anxiety because it sits on the far side of all our beliefs and ideas and, I think, can offer medicine to anyone. And Thoreau has been such a gospel for me, for almost fifty years now, that I take words for him as the epigraph to almost every book I write.

I wonder what you think about the link between solitude and silence. It’s interesting to note that the vast majority of people who seek silence don’t isolate themselves completely, but instead are often part of a supportive community. In your case, for example, you could have chosen to rent a log cabin somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, but you chose a cell in a monastery. Thoreau met the residents of Concord during his stay in the woods (and even his mother for Sunday lunch, as you mention!), Buddhists have the sangha. So how important is the support, even indirect, of a group, and how can the experience of our fellow human beings influence our own lives?

Community is everything, just as you perfectly suggest. And silence and solitude, as Thoreau exemplified, are only a means to a richer sense of companionship and compassion. I recently read how Ananda, the Buddha’s favorite disciple, once said, “admirable friendship is half of the holy life.” To which the Buddha replied, “wrong! Admirable friendship is the whole of the holy life.”

Your question is so beautifully put, and certainly speaks to my sense that I’m never alone when alone. As Thoreau had it, “why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?” I happen to be someone who loves being by myself—an only child who chose to be a writer because it allows (in fact forces) me to spend many long hours alone each day at a desk and who loves to travel because that too enables me to wander alone around the world, in beautiful conversation with it. So when I found myself in a little room above the radiant Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, with all my needs taken care of, and nothing required of me—for thirty dollars a night—I was in heaven. But then I started staying with the monks in their “enclosure” and saw that they could seldom afford to be silent or alone. They were working hard, all day, to look after one another and to tend to their fifteen or so guests. And all the time spent alone was simply a means to clearer and kinder action in the world.

I sometimes think that I would never have chosen to get married had I not spent time in that solitary monastic cell, which told me that the point of solitude is companionship. And in truth I felt and felt close to my loved ones much more in the undistracted silence of the cell than when we’re in the same room with the TV on, or when I’m hurrying from supermarket to pharmacy. The beauty of spending time alone, for me, is to realize that one’s never alone, and never needs to be. So yes, my time in intense solitude was really a training in the value and beauty of companionship.

You quote R.H. Tawney in stating that, traditionally, humans were spiritual beings who took care of their material needs; today, more and more of us are materialistic beings who occasionally take care of our spiritual needs. Is there a way to go back, knowing that there may not be a way back?

It is a central point and, once more, you are the first person to mention it. I suspect, when the “death of God” was announced in the late 19th century, many found that they had thrown out the baby with the bathwater, as we say in English. To this day, many people rightly find fault with the church, in its dogmatism, in its intolerance, in its hypocrisies, its humanness. And yet we all long for something beyond—and there seems to be a deep human need, as you suggest above, for community, for ritual, for meaning.

Certainly, for a sense that we are not the center of the world and are, in fact, a tiny part of a much larger picture. Which is one of the reasons many people—like yourself, perhaps—go on long walks, and others go to places such as Big Sur, where human beings look very tiny and mortal in the presence of tall redwoods, a huge unbroken stretch of ocean, high cliffs and much else that will be around long after we are gone.

If we put our mind before our spirit—or, even more crazily, our body before our mind—we’ll always feel lost when reality makes a house call. None of us can survive without inner resources and a close connection with our inner landscape (sometimes quickened by an encounter with the outer landscape). Some people call this “god,” some people call it “reality,” some don’t feel the need for words at all. But in every case, we need this inwardness if we are to survive. And my worry about the current moment is that the external world is so deafening and intense, so everywhere, that it threatens to crowd and drown out the inner and leave us entirely lost.

To quote Meister Eckhart again, from many centuries ago, “so long as the inner work is strong, the outer (which I take to mean one’s career, one’s relationships, one’s connection with one’s ‘better self’) will never be puny.” But to put the material, temporal world before the spiritual is akin to buying a gleaming Ferrari and not caring that it doesn’t have an engine.

Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer is published by Riverhead Books (January 2025).

(This article is in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and is a reminder to see that outrageous censorship in wartime never happens again.)

On June 22nd, 1939, the period drama movie Murasaki Shikibu by Akira Nobuchi was released through the Shinko Kinema Kyoto film studio. This featured the author Murasaki Shikibu and her renowned work The Tale of Genji earlier than any other work. Later versions include NHK’s period drama Dear Radiance and Kozaburo Yoshimura’s movie The Tale of Genji. In a brochure, Nobuchi wrote about this:

“The point I would like to show most strongly is not only that Murasaki Shikibu was faithful to her husband but that she was a person of letters who gazed at herself objectively. I included scenes in which she overcame temptation from Koresuke and the influential Chancellor Fujiwara no Michinaga, in order to protect her sole child Katako and also to adhere to the ideal of marital fidelity according to cool reason and judgement. Intentionally I put a scene of her writing, as if possessed, The Tale of Genji at Ishiyama Temple as the movie’s climax.”

Nobuchi made such an interpretation with a focus on marital fidelity, which is thought to have been an effort to soothe the censors.

In addition, an adaptation of The Tale of Genji was deemed impossible since this was regarded at the time as profanity against the Imperial Family. Therefore, he chose Murasaki Shikibu as the main theme of his work.

According to Nobuchi’s assistant director Toshio Mitsuboshi, the preview met with success. The movie depicted three main elements: a romantic relationship between men and women, the elegant artistic way of life in the Imperial Court, and a power game influenced by love and desire.

What happened to Murasaki Shikibu?

Nobuchi’s effort was shattered. On the evening of June 14th, Tokyo Asahi Shimbun ran an article under the headline:

“Ready to Show at Last After 800 Meter Cut – ‘Murasaki Shikibu,’ Movie in Question”

The article says that the Shinko Kinema film studio, though it had already taken steps to bring the movie into line with prevailing attitudes, had to agree to the substantial cut so that it could release the movie. As a result, it was reduced to a 40-minute piece.

Why Did This Happen to Murasaki Shikibu?

The same article alludes to the reason for the cuts made, quoting a comment from an unidentified censor:

“The work treats Murasaki Shikibu well, but the nobles such as Michinaga and Izumi Shikibu are regrettably depicted.”

It is not clear here why the movie was heavily censored except for this vague explanation. However, I came across a detailed article in the magazine Eiga Asahi when I visited the Ikeda Bunko library in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, last December.

The writer was Gencho Ohashi, who had worked as Chief Editor of a movie magazine, Katsudo Shashin Zasshi (Motion Picture Magazine). He pointed out that almost all of the scenes featuring Michinaga were cut because the chancellor’s descendants were still alive at the time. He went on to say that court ladies in the movie should not have chatted about noblemen even though those women lived in a sphere of life that no men were allowed to enter. In addition, he railed against the scenes in which Murasaki Shikibu and Koresuke cuddled together to excess. Ohashi went so far as to cast a slur on Nobuchi’s personality.

There were many different kinds of trimmed scenes, but Ohashi intentionally stopped mentioning them as he would be in danger of having his own article banned. Instead, he referred to various prohibited matters provided by Naimu-sho, the Home Ministry. Below are some of them, which he implied were true of the movie.

Any expression that could defile the dignity of the Imperial Family

Any expression that could harm the dignity of Japan

Any expression that could harm public morals

Aftermath

According to Ohashi, Murasaki Shikibu ended up coming under the strictest censorship in Japan. Unfortunately, this helped critics pan the film:

“On the whole, the movie has a disconnected structure and fails to develop smoothly. The work is careless about the minds of its characters and therefore the director seems to feel content with showing a decorative pretense of costumes.”
— Evening edition of Yomiuri Shimbun (June 17th, 1939)

“I cannot understand why the nonsensical movie is showing. Censors may have allowed it to hit the screen as incomprehensible pieces do no harm to the public. No other movie will cause filmgoers more inconvenience than this cinematic puzzle.”
— Jun’ichiro Tomoda on Kinema Junpo (July 1st, 1939)

“Since it was cut by about 800 meters due to censorship, this movie can no longer be properly evaluated.”
— Tadahisa Murakami on Kinema Junpo (July 11th, 1939)

As far as I know, no article exists which gives Nobuchi’s own opinion on the appalling censorship and severe criticism. Mitsuboshi, however, speculates that Nobuchi must have been heartbroken, as if he had seen his child after losing limbs in a traffic accident. He also supposed that the director must have been full of regret when The Tale of Genji was cinematized by Kozaburo Yoshimura in 1951.

Even after Murasaki Shikibu, Nobuchi suffered from restrictions on freedom of expression. Under the post-war censorship of the Allied occupation, he stayed away from samurai movies and made movies about itinerant entertainers, kabuki actors and geisha.

Nobuchi passed away in 1968 and rests in a certain cemetery in Kinki Region (I have visited three times). His gravestone has no inscription about censorship. That said, I cannot help thinking that it silently warns against the threat to freedom of expression, as the Hitler birthplace memorial stone in Austria continues to remind us that this kind of fascism must not be repeated in the interests of peace.

Yuki Yamauchi came to know stage director and filmmaker Akira Nobuchi thanks to the fact that his theatrical group Elan Vital performed dramas of Lord Dunsany in Kyoto (no other troupe did so in Kyoto earlier than Elan Vital). The Irish playwright has been one of the author’s favorite writers for about 15 years.

Secretary of State Stimson

When Herbert Hoover won the 1928 presidential election and offered Stimson the post of secretary of state, he accepted and resigned as Governor-General of the Philippines. The inauguration of the Republican Hoover as the 31st president of the United States was held on Monday, March 4, 1929. (In 1932, an amendment to the Constitution changed the inaugural date to the one we now know: January 20.) Stimson was, on March 4, leaving Kyoto for Tokyo by train, on his way back to Washington. Stimson’s diary, typewritten by this time, shows that he arrived in Kobe on Sunday March 3^rd. Again there was a delay, this time on account of a storm in the Yellow Sea, and he and his wife arrived between three and four in the afternoon instead of the scheduled 11 a.m. They were met by the U.S. consul, the governor of Hyogo, the mayor of Kobe, and other dignitaries. The Stimsons left at 4:54 p.m. for Kyoto by train in a special compartment furnished by the government. They reached Kyoto at six o’clock and, as before, enjoyed a “very comfortable night in the Miyako Hotel.”

By this time the Japanese and world press were reporting Stimson’s every move. Photographs appeared of the couple in Kobe, and the local Kyoto Nichinichi newspaper even had a photo of them in Kyoto in the next day’s edition. The following morning they caught an 8:15 train and arrived in Tokyo at 6:35 p.m. One is tempted to say they obviously had no time for sightseeing in Kyoto and yet the Japan Times reported that they took the train “after a brief sight-seeing in the ancient city.” At 8 p.m. they attended a dinner given by the Prime Minister, Tanaka Giichi, in Stimson’s honor at the Foreign Minister’s residence (Tanaka also held the position of Foreign Minister). Members of the Japanese Cabinet, and all manner of dignitaries, attended.

It might seem that the night spent in Kyoto betokens a man with an obsession for the city but the facts support no such assumption. Originally the plan had been to go by ship from Kobe to Yokohama, but, as Stimson confided to his diary, “The delay at the piers made it impossible and we were obliged to make the hard journey across by land.” The Osaka Mainichi newspaper reported that “The banquet in Tokyo started at 8:00 p.m. Although there were no formal salutations, the guests talked about the scenery in and around Kyoto and exchanged pleasantries in a congenial atmosphere and dispersed after 10:00 p.m.” Stimson left Yokohama on the afternoon of the 5th on the S.S. Franklin Pierce, reaching San Francisco on the 20^th.

Why did Stimson remove Kyoto from the target list?

Stimson turned 78 in September 1945 and retired from public life. He suffered a heart attack two months later. In the post-war period a physically weak Stimson worked with McGeorge Bundy to produce an article to justify the decision to use the atomic bomb. The article appeared only after review and input from other important figures desirous to defend the use. It was published under Stimson’s name in Harper’s Magazine in February 1947, headlined ‘The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.’ In it we read “Because of the importance of the atomic mission against Japan, the detailed plans were brought to me by the military staff for approval. With President Truman’s warm support I struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared.” I don’t think this really explains why Kyoto was spared.

We need to consult Stimson’s diaries from the summer of 1945 and, of course, also the remarks of other important figures involved in the decision, such as General Leslie Groves, the Army officer who oversaw the Manhattan Project. Only then can we understand what was obviously a complicated decision. Scholars Alex Wellerstein and Sean Malloy have usefully discussed the topic.

On 30 May 1945 Stimson found out from Groves what cities were on the target list for the atomic bombing. They were Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata; of which Kyoto was the preferred target: “It was the first one because it was of such size that we would have no question about the effects of the bomb.” According to Groves, Stimson wanted Kyoto struck from the list: “[Stimson] went on to tell me about [Kyoto’s] long history as the cultural center of Japan, the former ancient capital, and a great many reasons why he didn’t want to see it bombed. When the [targeting] report came over and I handed it to him, his mind was made up as soon as he heard the word Kyoto. There’s no question about that. … He read it over then he walked to the door separating his office from General [George] Marshall’s, opened it and said: ‘General Marshall, if you’re not busy I wish you’d come in.’ And then the Secretary really double-crossed me because without any explanation he said to General Marshall: ‘Marshall, General Groves has just brought me his report on the proposed targets.’ He said: ‘I don’t like it.’” In reality Stimson rejected all three cities as targets at this time.

We can tease out three main reasons for Stimson’s protection of Kyoto. One reason, but surely not the most important, was that Stimson had been to Kyoto, was impressed with the city, and thought it would be a shame to see it destroyed. A second, and surely more important, reason was that he wanted to place the American bombing campaign on a moral footing. The Harper’s essay omits discussion of this and speaks of Kyoto’s ‘considerable military importance’. But his summer 1945 diaries show that Stimson persisted in the belief that Kyoto was a ‘civilian city’, and, as such, should be spared, whereas a ‘military target’ like Hiroshima might reasonably be attacked. Reality complicates this idea; we might conclude that Stimson was deceiving himself. By 1945 Kyoto was, in fact, producing war materiel, and the atomic bomb targeted central Hiroshima, the population of which was decidedly civilian. Perhaps 90% of victims were civilians. Wellerstein writes: “Stimson could not spare Japan, for many reasons, but he could spare Kyoto.” Stimson, while expressing his disapproval, had failed to make any effective objection to the firebombing of Japan. Part of the reason for the saving of Kyoto, I feel sure, was Stimson’s guilt over the firebombing.

In a diary entry dated 24 July 1945 Stimson said President Truman agreed that, if Kyoto were to be bombed, “the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians.” This third reason—the desire to have the Japanese aligned with the West, not the Soviet East—was surely the most important. President Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes wouldn’t have seconded Stimson’s wishes but for this reason. The goodwill engendered by the sparing of Kyoto was one factor which made the post-war occupation of Japan a little easier to administer. As it happened, many Japanese mistakenly attributed the sparing of Kyoto not to Stimson, but to a general U.S. policy brought about largely by the actions of Langdon Warner, the art historian. This error makes for an interesting story, which I will tell on another occasion.

There are a couple more things to discuss. In 1953 Charles W. Cole, President of Amherst College, visited Japan. Otis Cary served as his interpreter. Cole relayed to him an anecdote he’d heard from John J. McCloy, assistant secretary of war under Stimson. This is how Cary remembered it:

“On a spring day in 1945, Stimson caught McCloy with a question in which he described Kyoto, her charms and heritage, ending with, ‘Would you consider me a sentimental old man if I removed Kyoto from the target city of bombers?’ After a little thought, McCloy encouraged Stimson to do so.”

I suspect this story and its mention of sentimentalism somehow misled Reischauer into thinking of honeymoons. In fact McCloy himself had been responsible for sparing the medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany. Allied planes bombed it on 31 March 1945, toward the close of the war. But McCloy successfully arranged for the city to be surrendered, on 17 April, without being shelled.

In his book Japan Subdued (1961), historian and economist Herbert Feis speaks of “the chance events which fostered Stimson’s determination not to permit the bombing of Kyoto.” Feis’ error-riddled treatment of the affair continues:

“The Secretary [Stimson] had not known of the distinction of Kyoto as a former capital of Japan. But one evening during the early spring of 1945, a young man in uniform, son of an old friend, who was a devoted student of Oriental history, came to dinner with the Stimsons. The young man fell to talking about the past glories of Kyoto, and of the loveliness of the old imperial residences which remained. Stimson was moved to consult a history which told of the time when Kyoto was the capital and to look through a collection of photographs of scenes and sites in the city. Thereupon he decided that this one Japanese city should be preserved from the holocaust. To what anonymous young man may each of the rest of us owe our lives?”

Otis Cary quoted this story and made strenuous efforts to identify the ‘anonymous young man’—a feat he in due course achieved. The Stimsons had no children of their own, and doted on their younger relatives. Stimson was particularly close to Alfred Lee Loomis (1887–1975), a young cousin whom he treated like a son. And Alfred’s son Henry Loomis (1919–2008) proved to be the “anonymous young man” in uniform. The meeting in question took place in February or March 1945. Some readers have misunderstood Cary’s point. Cary wants to show that Feis is grossly inaccurate and that Henry Loomis was not, in fact, the impetus for Stimson’s decision. Firstly, Stimson knew of Kyoto’s long history from his visits there in the 1920s, a fact of which Cary was well aware. Cary writes: “Loomis’ clear recollection that Kyoto was not discussed adds further weight to the idea that the sparing of Kyoto was Stimson’s own personal decision” (p. 17).

If there be any doubt, Cary also quotes McGeorge Bundy’s letter of 18 September 1974:

“[Bundy] recalled that at one point in [his] long collaboration [with Stimson] ‘the old gentleman explicitly denied to me that his attention had been directed to Kyoto by Langdon Warner and … he gave me to understand that he did not need instruction about the cultural significance of Kyoto from anyone’” (p. 17-18).

To finish, I offer remarks from two books. The first, Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative (1956), is by Arthur Holly Compton, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics, and a key figure in the Manhattan Project. He says this of Stimson’s thoughts about Kyoto:

“The objective was military damage … not civilian lives. To illustrate his point [Stimson] noted that Kyoto was a city that must not be bombed. It lies in the form of a cup and thus would be exceptionally vulnerable. It is exclusively a place of homes and art and shrines.”

I would next highlight a remark by McGeorge Bundy. Bundy assisted Stimson in writing his memoir, On Active Service in Peace and War (1948), and became intimately acquainted with the matters at hand here. Stimson’s diaries dating to summer 1945 show that he hoped that the Japanese might be persuaded to surrender without the deployment of the atomic bomb. (This was a view he shared with Joseph Grew, former Ambassador to Japan.) In Danger and Survival (1988), the second book I’d cite in closing, Bundy wrote:

“After the war Colonel Stimson, with the fervor of a great advocate and with me as his scribe, wrote an article intended to demonstrate that the bomb was not used without a searching consideration of alternatives. That some effort was made, and that Stimson was its linchpin, is clear. That it was as long or wide or deep as the subject deserved now seems to me most doubtful” (p. 92-93).

I’d like to thank Mark Richardson for his invaluable help in writing this essay.
— Joseph Cronin

The director of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan, told the New York Times that the line wasn’t in the original script. The actor playing Stimson, James Remar, read the honeymoon story while preparing for his role. He enthusiastically relayed the story to Nolan, and Nolan let him add lines about it to the relevant scene.

It’s true that Stimson was responsible for saving Kyoto from the atomic bomb, and also from heavy targeted conventional bombing (there were a few instances of bombing within the city of Kyoto in 1945, leading to the deaths of 92 people, with a further 247 injured). Although he had visited Kyoto, in fact twice, the honeymoon story is false. Remar likely found it in a book, or even perhaps on Wikipedia. Within days of the release of Oppenheimer in the U.S. on 21 July 2023, the main page of the Henry L. Stimson Wikipedia entry was edited—on 25 July 2023, in fact—to remove the story. The Wikipedia editor who made the excision cited the nuclear science historian Alex Wellerstein, whose blog, Restricted Data, had a post—dated 24 July 2023—titled “Henry Stimson didn’t go to Kyoto on his honeymoon.” While Wellerstein’s instincts were right, he didn’t have all the facts. I give them here.

Henry Stimson married Mabel Wellington White on 6 July 1893. Henry’s letters to his bride-to-be discuss their trip to New Brunswick, Canada. The two would go canoeing up the Nepisiguit River, for a journey of a hundred miles. Stimson’s letters talk about buying Mabel a sleeping bag and the kind of clothing she would need (Reel 152). Henry doesn’t use the word ‘honeymoon’ but does say ‘our first trip together after our marriage’ (My Vacations, p. 75). Stimson had a great love of the outdoors. This was his third visit to the Nepisiguit. When he was eighteen, he spent two months of his summer traveling there accompanied solely by a native guide.

Where did the Kyoto honeymoon story come from? Edwin O. Reischauer (1910-1990), a Harvard University professor, served as the U.S. Ambassador to Japan for the years 1961-66. In his memoir My Life between Japan and America (1986), Reischauer wrote: “As has been amply proved by my friend Otis Cary of Doshisha University in Kyoto, the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.” It’s ironic that Reischauer’s praise of Cary, who had written to correct common misunderstandings about who was responsible for saving Kyoto, came with a sting in its tail introducing yet another misunderstanding. Since 1986 the honeymoon story has appeared in a number of books and essays, though the 1987 Japanese translation of Reischauer’s book omits mention of it.

Otis Cary (1921-2006) was, like Reischauer, an American born in Japan of missionary parents, fluent in Japanese. In 1975 he published an article “The Sparing of Kyoto – Mr. Stimson’s ‘Pet City’” (Japan Quarterly 22 (October-December 1975): p. 337-347). Later that year the article was reprinted in book form, together with a Japanese translation that had first appeared in the September 1975 edition of the Bungei Shunjū magazine. Cary’s article carefully explains why Stimson, and not Langdon Warner, a Harvard professor and the Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard’s Fogg Museum, is the person responsible for the sparing of Kyoto from atomic bombing. Cary however had little knowledge of Stimson’s actual time in Kyoto and made one very unfortunate mistake. I aim to tell a fuller, more accurate version of the story.

Henry L. Stimson

Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) was a Harvard graduate. He became a successful lawyer and also served as a high-ranking politician. A Republican, he served as secretary of war (1911–1913) under President William Howard Taft, secretary of state (1929–1933) under President Herbert Hoover, and again secretary of war (1940–1945) under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, who were both Democrats. Stimson’s visits to Japan occurred in the late 1920s. His friend General Leonard Wood (1860–1927) served as governor-general of the Philippines from 1921 to 1927. In 1926 Stimson spent a little over a month in the Philippines at the invitation of Wood. The purpose in making the trip was to investigate conditions in the country and offer advice as to what American policy should be. With the death of Wood in 1927, Stimson replaced him as Governor-General of the Philippines, a position he held until 1929, when he was appointed secretary of state in the new administration of Herbert Hoover. Stimson’s visits to Japan were, in fact, more or less incidental to his trips to and from the Philippines, which each time involved a voyage by steamship with stops in Yokohama and Kobe (and also in Shanghai).

We know some of the details of the 1926 trips to and from the Philippines from Stimson’s handwritten diary. The Henry Lewis Stimson Diaries are held in the division of Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. But they were microfilmed, many libraries have a copy, and I’ve consulted them. On 21 July Stimson’s ship, the President McKinley, arrived in Yokohama from San Francisco. For two days prior to arrival, Stimson suffered a bad case of lumbago, a complaint of many years’ standing; he didn’t stir from the ship. But his wife Mabel went ashore twice to see the shops and do some errands. Two years later Stimson’s diary notes that the U.S. Consul at Yokohama, Graham Kemper, together with his wife, had been kind to him and to Mabel in 1926. That episode likely dates to the July stopover. But it could also date to the return trip the Stimsons made in October, or indeed to both. In any case, on 23 July 1926 the ship arrived at Kobe. Here the couple went to the steamship company agent’s house and had lunch. The agent, a man by the name of S.A. Stimpson, had Stimson massaged “with great benefit” by a blind masseur. The Stimsons arrived in Manila on August 3^rd.

After just over a month in the Philippines the Stimsons departed on the long trip that would ultimately take them back to New York. On this voyage transpired what we might best call ‘Henry Stimson’s trip to Kyoto’. The couple first went to China: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tientsin (now called Tianjin), and then up by river to Peking. After coming back to Tianjin a week later they took a boat for Kobe, arriving there on 2 October, delayed two hours by a broken pin in the steering gear. They were met at Kobe by the U.S. Consul and Vice-Consul. They transferred most of their baggage onto the S.S. Taft, and then packed lightly for the trip to Kyoto, arriving by train at 6 p.m. (also on the 2^nd). For the evening they had a comfortable room and enjoyed a delicious dinner at the Miyako Hotel. Terry’s Guide to the Japanese Empire, widely used at the time, praises the Miyako, “a celebrated and popular hostelry” situated “high above the city” and possessing “the advantage of pure air, wide views, proximity to the chief temples, a charming situation and many home comforts.” “Some of the finest of Kyoto’s private landscape gardens are near the Miyako,” says the Guide. And “the scholarly manager of the hotel” was, by reputation, “a mine of information regarding Buddhist art, landscape gardening, etc.” (p. 400).

Sunday October 3^rd was a beautiful day. The Stimsons went sightseeing, using the services of a rickshaw man recommended by friends. In the morning they went to Chion-in Temple, Maruyama Park, and Kiyomizu Temple. They also went to a Shinto shrine in Gion, which must mean Yasaka Shrine, and did some shopping. After taking lunch they headed north, going to a beautiful private garden; this will have been in the Nanzenji Temple area. Finally they went to the Silver Pavilion (Ginkakuji) a little further north. The diary ends here. The Stimsons’ sightseeing route that day, all in the eastern part of central Kyoto, is one I might recommend to visitors today who only had one day to see the city. In the late afternoon the Stimsons took the train back to Kobe. Their ship left that evening for Tokyo.

When writing his 1975 essay Otis Cary did not have access to Stimson’s 1926 diary and could not say exactly where the Stimsons had been while in Kyoto. He had, to be sure, suspected that Stimson visited the city. And, on searching records at the Miyako Hotel, he found what he was hoping to find: “Sure enough, ‘Mr and Mrs. H. L. Stimson’ had paid ¥30 ($15.00 at the time) for room #18 on October 2 and proceeded on to Kobe and returned October 30, to stay until November 4 in room #56, while #57 was occupied by ‘Miss Stimson’ for $14 a day.”

However, a 1987 reprint of the same essay silently alters one detail—an important one. The section just quoted now reads: “Sure enough, ‘Mr and Mrs. H. L. Stimson’ had paid ¥30 ($15.00 at the time) for room #18 on October 2 and proceeded on to Kobe and wrote to a friend, ‘I feel that we have duly sacrificed to the Goddess of Sightseeing!’” What has happened here? In the intervening years Cary had realized that the second group of Stimsons—in rooms 56 and 57—was another family altogether. In fact the Stimsons who checked in on October 30th were Mr. and Mrs. Charles Willard Stimson and their daughter, Miss Jane Stimson. No relation. The Japan Times of October 29th has them arriving at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo on October 27th. The error in Cary’s article means that to this day some people will imagine that Henry Stimson and his wife spent a lot more time in Kyoto than they did, presumably visiting such storied places as Nijo Castle and the Imperial Palace. Henry and Mabel spent one day in the city (2-3 October) and departed. Though three years had passed since the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the damage was still obvious in Tokyo and Yokohama. Kyoto was, in 1926, much more of a highlight for visitors to Japan.

Stimson’s letter about sightseeing was in fact addressed to General Wood in Manila. The letter mainly consisted of very considered advice concerning U.S. policy in the Philippines, but it began with a private note: “We had a very interesting week in Pekin and afterward a day each in Kyoto and Tokio. So I feel that we have duly sacrificed to the Goddess of Sightseeing!” On the evidence of a memoir published late in his life, Stimson’s own taste in vacations was more for the wilderness, and for activities such as fishing and hunting. His personal interest in cities like Kyoto, though sincere, did not run especially deep.

From Kobe, the Stimsons went up by ship to Yokohama, checked in to the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and did some sightseeing. The next day, October 5^th, the S.S. Taft set sail at 3 p.m., with the Stimsons aboard. They reached San Francisco on October 20^th.

In 1927 General Wood died and Stimson succeeded to the position of Governor-General of the Philippines. He departed from San Francisco on 3 February 1928 on the steamship President McKinley. At 6:30 on the morning of Monday, February 20th, Stimson arrived in Yokohama. He went to Tokyo where Prime Minister Baron Tanaka Giichi had arranged a special gosankai (luncheon) for him. There he met powerful political and economic figures, including Shibusawa Eiichi and Kaneko Kentaro. In an interview reported in the Japan Advertiser of the next day Stimson remarked: “I have known many Japanese Ambassadors at Washington and my firm has represented Japanese interests in law cases. My knowledge of the Japanese people and Japanese affairs extends over 20 years.” Concerning the ‘many’ ambassadors Stimson mentions, I might point out that this is almost certainly an exaggeration. On 2 February 1928 he told a Japan Times representative that “he was quite well acquainted with the former Ambassadors Shidehara and Chinda whom he met while they were stationed at Washington.” This was reported in the newspaper of the following day.

General elections were being held in Japan on this day—the first after the introduction of universal male suffrage. Despite the situation Tanaka seemed unconcerned. There was “an entire absence of electoral preoccupation,” says Stimson in his diary. “No telegrams were being received and the Baron seemed to be entirely detached from any anxiety.” Tanaka’s party won 217 seats, the opposition 216. On account of this one extra seat Tanaka kept his position as Prime Minister.

The ship left Yokohama at 6 p.m. The next morning everybody in Stimson’s group got up early for a spectacular view of Mount Fuji. The diary makes no mention of Kobe, so I suspect Stimson was extremely busy with preparations for the Philippines and mainly stayed on the ship.

On March 1^st Stimson arrived in Manila and was immediately inaugurated as governor. For nearly a year he worked in the Philippines, loving his work. Stimson’s younger sister Candace Stimson came out to Manila later in the year. The Japan Advertiser of 29 November 1928 reports that, en route, she and a friend had arrived in Yokohama and would take the overland trip to Kyoto. They would then reboard the ship in Kobe.

(End of Part 1. Continue to Part 2.)

‘Clouds are born from the womb of the mountain, which is why rocks are called the roots of clouds,’ writes the French academician of Chinese origin François Cheng, quoting a poem from the classical Chinese tradition. It has a similar poetic and symbiotic vision that inhabits the mountains of Japan, made up of mid-range peaks eternally covered in their green mantle. Nature holds the secrets of the world in François Cheng’s poetry, which is rooted in thousands of years of Chinese Taoist thinking. This same thought still permeates the minds of men and women who spend time in the sacred mountains of Japan in a quest for spiritual rebirth in contact with the sacred elements: they are called yamabushi, ‘those who lie down in the mountains.’ They perpetuate rituals that are more than a thousand years old and can be traced back to the legendary figure of En-no-Gyoja, a shaman or spiritual wanderer who led an ascetic life in the bear-inhabited mountains south of Japan’s first capital, Nara.

During one of my earlier travels in Japan, along the pilgrimage paths of the Kumano Kodo, I caught a glimpse of these singular figures, dressed in white and caramel robes, with headbands decorated with red or black pompoms, wearing animal skins around their hips, and carrying enormous triton conches that they use as trumpets to announce their arrival to the gods when entering the mountains. Yamabushi engage in strenuous walks, accompanied by prayers and mantras, expose themselves to the void on vertiginous cliffs, meditate under cascades of icy water, and walk over the glowing embers of ceremonial open-air fires. The mountain symbolises the womb of Mother Earth, and the ascetics enter it in a quest for purification and rebirth before returning to their daily lives, often in urban areas.

As someone who loves walking in the mountains, in contact with the natural elements, rocks and water, and who has a keen interest in Eastern spirituality, particularly Taoism and Zen, I decided to retrace the steps of the yamabushi in the mountains of Japan. Between October and November, the Japanese mountains offer an unparalleled spectacle, ablaze with the vivid colours of kōyō, the season of red leaves, the cloudless sky as if swept by a particularly meticulous Zen monk, and the scarcity of rain, creating favourable conditions for walking in the mountains. My first destination in the Autumn of 2023 was in northern Japan. On Mount Haguro, in Tōhoku, those provinces of the deep north immortalised by the itinerant poet Matsuo Basho, I meet Naoko, a young retiree who has embarked on a spiritual path after a long life spent serving others as a nurse. Her vitality and lively spirit are proof of the benefits of spending time in nature. Her spiritual guide is Master Hoshino, a vigorous 77-year-old Japanese who is something of a national celebrity and the author of several books on yamabushi practices as a way of personal growth. When asked about the meaning of asceticism in the mountains, Master Hoshino’s answer was:

‘Immerse yourself in nature. Listen to your senses. Then reflect on how you felt. That’s all.’

The apparent simplicity of his words reminded me of the kōan of the Zen tradition, the unanswerable questions or anecdotes used by Buddhist masters to train their disciples and help them progress along the Way.

A change of geography and atmosphere took me more than 2,000 km south to the island of Kyūshū in my search for yamabushi. Since time immemorial, the Kunisaki Peninsula has been a spiritual centre and cradle of syncretism between Shintō — Japan’s ancestral religious system — and Buddhist practices, which were introduced from nearby Korea via China and India. Here I meet up with Everett, an American who has lived in Japan for more than four decades, an artist-photographer and practitioner of shugendō. This religious current, followed by the yamabushi, combines esoteric Buddhist, Shinto, Daoist and shamanic practices. With Everett, I walk the rugged ridges of the Kunisaki volcanic mountains in search of a more powerful echo. Everett plays the horagai, the traditional yamabushi conch shell with its deep, ancestral sound, a sound that for him means resonating with the landscape: ‘The spirit of the landscape and my spirit have met and been transformed by it, so that the landscape is really within me.’ (cit. François Cheng).

Everett also tells me about dreamtime, the spiritual dimension he reaches through the practice of horagai, but also through asceticism under cold waterfalls. He learnt this training in the company of itako, the blind women shamans of Aomori province, and then perfected with the yamabushi of Mount Haguro. Listening to Everett’s story, I feel as if I’m holding in my hands the pieces of a greater picture that I’m beginning to visualise. But I’m still missing some key elements. So my next stop is Yoshino in central Japan, a remote village surrounded by hills on which 30,000 Japanese cherry trees were planted centuries ago in homage to the gods. This is where you’ll find two of the most important temples for yamabushi, Kimpusenji and Sakuramotobō. Here I meet a yamabushi monk that advised me to climb to the top of the Omine mountain range, the most sacred place in shugendō, where En-no-Gyoja spent the height of his asceticism according to historical sources. I am joined by Takamasa, a lay monk living at nearby Mount Kōya, the cradle of the esoteric Buddhism of the Shingon sect, as well as Takagi, another Shingon monk who will guide our group on this pilgrimage.

We begin the ritual ascent from the hot springs town of Dorogawa Onsen, nestled in a secluded wooded valley. Over the course of 5 hours, we climb to the main ridge at 1,700m, invoking mantras to Fudō Myōō, a fierce-looking protective deity, and a key figure in the yamabushi pantheon. Close to the summit and the Omine-sanji mountain sanctuary, we climb rocks exposed to the void with the help of metal chains before approaching the rock ‘looking west’, i.e. towards the Pure Lands of Buddhist tradition. This is where beginners are suspended by a simple rope above the void and told to confess their sins. I ask Takagi for his advice on good practice: ‘Take responsibility, experiment and sooner or later you’ll get the answer. Hard practice will help you to free yourself from all useless thoughts.’

Back in Kyōto, I head for Wani, a rural village nestled between the mystical Mount Hiei, the guardian mountain of the former imperial capital, and Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest body of fresh water. This is where you’ll find the Wani-Ontakesan shrine run by the Okamoto family, whose members practise a unique syncretism that worships Mount Ontake. Japan’s second highest volcano (after Mount Fuji), located in Nagano Prefecture in the southern Japanese Alps. The worship of Mount Ontake has a long history although it has only been accessible to lay believers for around 200 years after being ‘opened’ by two ascetics in the late 18^th century. This sacred mountain religion now has hundreds of thousands of followers across Japan. A particular feature are the oza, possession ceremonies, during which the group leaders enter into a trance and act as mediums between the deities and the believers. The Okamoto brothers developed their spiritual powers through years of physical training typical of yamabushi, including daily meditation under the waters of a mountain waterfall.

In Kyoto, I also meet Jann, an Australian doctor of natural sciences, who has been following the Okamoto brothers’ training for years. Jann tells me about her experience of a winter pilgrimage to Mount Ontake, braving the snow and low temperatures. This is also when the faithful practise takigyō, the asceticism of meditation under the icy waterfalls. Jann tells me that the whole pilgrimage was a revelation that she finds hard to put into words. I find her courageous to have accepted such a challenge, and I remember the words of the Okamoto brothers: ‘Fear is the gateway to shugendō. Fear engenders respect for the mountain and the elements, and also destroys excessive ego. Practitioners are naturally selected through trials. Many beginners give up. It’s not physical strength that matters most, but strength of heart. Kindness is essential, because through kindness you can help others, and this is the supreme aspiration of every yamabushi.’

The end of my journey approaches as I visit Mount Ontake to experience the sacred mountain in person. From the top of the 2,000 metre-high eighth station I take in the 180-degree panorama. The sky is blue, from azure to cobalt, and the wooded slopes of the mountain gleam with ochre colours, changing from mustard yellow to vermilion red. At this altitude, it’s the Japanese larches and their golden needles that take pride of place on the palette. The summit of the volcano behind me sleeps peacefully. There are few reminders of the infernal event that took place in 2014, when an estimated 63 hikers were killed in a sudden eruption. As I contemplate the landscape at my feet, thoughts turn to the mountains of Japan and the people who worship there. The words of an Italian mountain legend, Walter Bonatti, come to mind: ‘There are no mountains that belong to us, you know, but there are experiences that belong to us. Many people are capable of climbing mountains, but no one will ever be able to encroach on the experiences that belong to us and that will remain with us.’

An experience that has now taken root in me.

More about the author’s experience in the Japanese mountains can be read — in French — in his newly published book Yamabushi — La Sagesse des montagnes (Transboréal, Paris, January 2025). Website: www.theroutetokyoto.com

*some names of persons have been changed in order to protect privacy

No no no, it ain’t me, babe,
It ain’t me you’re looking for, babe.

Then amidst the pile of rubbish I saw something move—it was Kai, looking like Miss Havisham. No doubt under the mess was a mouldering wedding cake too. No one else was there.
    
This is the place where Kyoto’s best and brightest have hung out for decades. A wave of sadness washed over me. Here I thought I’d find a saloon full of smart people, and all I found was an old geezer on his own. I felt like this fucking pandemic has turned us all in Miss Havisham, waiting for our prince to come. But he doesn’t, does he? The scene was more Beckett than Dickens. All around, while war is being whipped up in Europe, I feel witness to the deaths of cultures and subcultures, the very stuff that keeps people alive and sane, here and everywhere else.
     
Kai said because of mambō he couldn’t serve liquor but if I wanted a Corona he could crack one open for me. He got up from his nest and went behind the bar. “Do you want a glass?” I looked at the glasses covered in dust and said just the bottle would be fine. We soon discovered we had a lot of mutual friends; this is no surprise because Kai seems to know just about everybody.

About a half hour or so later an old barfly entered with a bottle of 12 year-old Glenlivet which he proceeded to open. Kai got him a glass and some ice. I got to taking with the barfly and we discovered we had a mutual friend, playwright Sakate Yōji. Glenlivet had at one time tried to make it in Tokyo theatre during his university student days but was called back to Kyoto to take over the family business, which was a foundry for making Buddhist bells and other bronze images, using techniques passed down by Chinese artisans over 1,200 years ago. He launched into an interesting discussion on patina, how different alloys create vivid colours, like green, crimson, magenta, that are perfectly smooth under a magnifying glass where modern methods create pockmarked surfaces because of the off-gassing of various elements. It turned out we had another mutual friend, a musician and storyteller whom I’d known in Canada, a Japanese woman who periodically visited and performed there. I’d lost touch with her a dozen years or so ago. He called her and over the phone we very quickly picked up the threads of our frayed friendship.

One speaks of six degrees of separation, but in this town it’s easily only one or two degrees. It’s a small world. Kyoto is even smaller, and Hachimonjiya is its omphalos.

Read another colourful tale by Cody of Kyoto’s nightlife.

See Sara Aoyoma’s intimate account of Kai in the 1970s.

Read an account of an exhibition of Kai’s photos.

The fourth writer of this series is one who is likely to be familiar to readers who enjoy modern literature set in Kyoto. Two books from his Kamogawa Food Detectives series have recently been translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. You may remember that Matsuda Michio, the third author in this series, was a noted pediatrician. Interestingly, Kashiwai is also in the field of medicine as a practicing dentist. Is there something about the medical profession that encourages the art of writing? Kashiwai does not yet have an English wikipedia entry, but I’d expect one would appear soon.

Kashiwai’s fiction falls into the category of light reads and the beloved “coffee/cat/food” genre that readers around the globe are immersed in right now, judging from the number of translations coming out of Japan that fall into this category. But my initial purchases of his books were a few of his nonfiction books on Kyoto — of which there are more than you can imagine. Some are guidebooks, some are very specific guidebooks, some are essays and some are a combination of the two. They are very readable and his likes and dislikes come through clearly. If you enjoy learning about Kyoto, they are must-reads. I do not see that any of them have been translated into English. I hope that they will be.

Biography

Kashiwai Hisashi was born in Kyoto in 1952. As of this writing, he is still alive. He grew up in Kyoto and graduated from Osaka Dental University in 1976 and opened a dental clinic in the Kita Ward of Kyoto City. Biographical information about him is scarce, but a glimpse at a few websites for his dental clinics reveals that the Kashiwa family have been dentists through four generations.

He started writing a series of short stories that later were published as the Kamogawa Shokudō books in 2013. One can easily infer that he is a foodie. In 2016 NHK aired the stories from the first two books as a television series. In addition to his novels and essays, he writes mysteries under the name of Kashiwagi Keiichiro.

Books on Kyoto

Kashiwai is a prolific writer and with new books coming out in both October and November of this year (2024). I’m simply going to tell you about the books of his that grace my own bookshelf.

Fiction

Here are a few from his most popular series.

Nonfiction

I enjoy nonfiction more than fiction and I love reading about Kyoto and filing away tidbits of information. If you are this type of reader, Kashiwai has written and continues to write about every single corner of Kyoto that you can imagine. Here’s what happens to be on my own shelf. I look forward to the day when they are translated into English and/or other languages. They are meant for the average reader and are not particularly profound.

Resources

Kamogawa Shokudo – the Japanese wikipedia entry on the series. A very complete list of the books and stories and a listing of the particular dish that each story features.

Discover Japan articles – This is a link to the articles tagged with his name that he wrote on Kyoto for this journal. They include articles on travel, food, hotels, and traditions of Kyoto.

Entry point for the NHK dramatization – This is a Daily Motion link where I found the aforementioned series, subtitled in Chinese. Access may be limited by location, but I was able to view them from the USA. They are visually quite beautiful. They have that NHK feel to them.

The Kashiwai Dental Clinic – It looks like his son is currently in charge and he would be the fourth generation of dentists in this family. If you need a good dentist.…

For this third profile I’m veering away from novelists and writers actually born in Kyoto. Matsuda Michio is a transplant to Kyoto and he always qualified any writing he did about Kyoto by stating that he was not “Kyoto-born,” though his family moved to Kyoto when he was just six months old. It is evident that he developed an appreciation of Kyoto and he wrote a few books that expressed that. He may be an unlikely choice; none of his works seem to be translated into English, though it appears they’ve been translated into both Russian and Chinese. Matsuda doesn’t even merit an English Wikipedia entry. But when I first came to Kyoto in 1976, Kai Fusayoshi, a manager at the now defunct Honyaradō, plucked a copy of 京の町かどから(From the Corners of Kyoto) from the second-floor bookshelf and handed it to me, with the suggestion that I improve my Japanese reading ability by tackling some of the essays in said book.

I found it much too difficult to read and to this day I have not read all of this book. But I went on to read a few of this Kyoto-ish author’s other books which were intriguing to me due to their unexpected and sometimes bold content. For example there was an essay entitled “Women Have No Place in the Academic World.” This sounds dreadful, but if you read through the essay you realize that it is a bit of a click-bait title, because what he is actually saying is that academics must totally immerse in their studies and it would be impossible for any professor to do that if he didn’t have a wife at home taking care of and supporting his daily needs. Since women as a rule, don’t have wives (at that time) or that kind of support system, they would not be able to equally immerse; in this way it is an ode to the role women self-sacrificing-ly play in supporting others.

Biography

Matsuda Michio (October 26, 1908 – June 1, 1998) was born in Ibaraki Prefecture. However, his family moved to Kyoto when he was six months old, so he was thoroughly immersed in Kyoto life, at least outside of the home. He comes from a long line of physicians as it was the custom for doctors to inherit the family trade of medicine. His father was a pediatrician in Kyoto. Many of the medical doctors at that time were respected and prestigious as their practice was almost an act of charity. Matsuda followed in his father’s footsteps as a pediatrician, but also became a writer. His politics tended to be radical as he flirted with both Communism and Socialism, and in that sense I often think of him as comparable to our American Dr. Benjamin Spock. Both of them wrote bestselling books on baby and child care and had views that were ahead of their respective times.

During World War II, Dr. Matsuda was extremely conflicted internally over the practice of medicine in the war time system. He could not escape from serving the state that executed the war while his colleagues were exhausting themselves as they devoted themselves to working in the slums or in the laboratories.¹

In 1967 he left his pediatric practice to become a full-time writer. Though most of his books had to do with pediatrics, they were largely geared towards the average parent and reader, rather than fellow physicians or academics. Climbing the ladder to become an esteemed academic was never his goal; he was always focused on being a neighborhood doctor, good citizen and free thinker. Two of the books he wrote were written in the voice of the child and one of them, 私 は二歳 “Being Two Isn’t Easy” was even made into a popular movie, directed by Ichikawa Kon. You may be able to find it on certain movie sites or you can rent or buy a copy from Amazon etc. It is quite interesting, especially if you are intrigued by danchi life in the Showa period.

Should any student want to take on a complete examination of his life and works, there is a Matsuda Michio Collection at Kumamoto University that houses his personal book collection and other documents. Personally, I think he is a Master’s thesis just waiting to happen.

Books on Kyoto

The first book I mentioned that is solely focused on Kyoto is called 京の町かどから and is an unusual collection of his essays that seems primarily geared towards explaining the habits of the people of Kyoto to outsiders. Contents include an essay on the well-known bubuzuke (ochazuke) story where the Kyoto host politely offers bubuzuke to a guest which is really a signal that it is time for that guest to leave.

Another book of his on Kyoto is called 『花洛—京都追憶(岩波新書, 1975) and examines some of the historical anecdotes of Kyoto. It was retitled and re-released in 1995 as 明治大正 京都追 憶.

His other books, while not focused on Kyoto per se, offer anecdotes and thoughts about the people of Kyoto in the context of childrearing or academics or broadly on everyday life. His views on women and relationships are oddly both behind and ahead of his time and are interesting to read. He is not shy about addressing controversial topics.

He also had a best-selling book using the dagashiya or traditional Japanese candy store as a vehicle for talking about how to live one’s life. It’s meant as a starting point for discussions about the future and the past and what lessons are offered.

The counterculture intellectuals of Honyaradō gave me a copy of 自由を子どもに “Give Children Freedom” which was published in 1970. Matsuda seemed especially taken with the opportunities the children of Kyoto had for all types of play on the banks of the Kamo River based on what he himself enjoyed in his Kyoto youth. Imagine, if you will, that Matsuda, in the late 1960s was already bemoaning and writing about the freedom children had lost–-the freedom to explore on their own, cruise the neighborhood and beyond, and hang out without parents. He is probably turning over in his grave at the state of things today. I can’t help wondering what he’d think about the impact of smartphones and the like that we live with today. One almost wishes he was alive to share his thoughts.

Finally, I will add that the two books 私は赤ちゃん “I’m A Baby” and 私は二歳 “I’m Two Years Old” should be of interest to parents–and they are fairly easy to read.

Footnote

1. Nakao, H. (2024) Based on a personal email to Sara Aoyama, August 30, 2024 ︎

Resources Consulted

• 松田道雄 – Wikipedia — Japanese entry
• Being Two Isn’t Easy — English wikipedia entry on the film
• Matsuda Michio Collection — at Kumamoto University
• The Ideology of Matsuda Michio — An excellent and thoughtful examination of his life as it connects to his writings and action
• An Essay On The Thoughts Of Dr Matsuda Michio Concerning The Infant Education — From the Kyoto University Research Information Repository
• Personal Correspondence from Professor Nakao Hajime — Author and past president of Kyoto Seika University

In this second entry in the series, I’m introducing a woman writer, Yamamura Misa. She is well known as a mystery writer and a very prolific one at that. Many of her books have been adapted for television mystery series and a few of them have also been made into video games. She has been translated into Chinese, Russian, French etc. but I was unable to find any of her books currently available in English. While many of her books are set in Kyoto, she has also set her mysteries in other parts of Japan, both near and far. Additionally, there are a few of her mysteries set overseas in such places as Paris and Guam.

Biography

Yamamura Misa (August 25, 1934 – September 5, 1996) was born in Kyoto City proper. During the war, her father served as a principal of a college in Korea, so she spent some time there as well. After graduating from college with a degree in Japanese Literature, she went on to become a junior high school teacher in Fushimi. Upon marrying at the age of thirty, she retired from her teaching position. She took up writing a few years after that and quickly found success as both a novelist and a writer of screenplays and drama. But her mysteries were what she was most well known for and perhaps unique for the times, one of her favorite recurring characters was an American woman named Katherine who was the daughter of a fictional American vice president. The ‘Katherine’ novels were adapted for television quite frequently and the role has been played by both Japanese and Western actresses, the most recent being Charlotte Kate Fox, an American actress and singer from New Mexico, who also appeared in the NHK morning drama, Massan.

Yamamura was also well qualified in Japanese arts such as flower arranging, tea ceremony and traditional dance, and this enabled her to incorporate traditional arts into her Kyoto mysteries. She passed away of heart failure, leaving behind her daughter, Momiji, an actress. In her will she requested that Momiji be given a role in any future dramatizations of her work.

I was drawn to Yamamura Misa’s works purely for her Kyoto settings, but I wondered if I could really read a mystery in Japanese and be able to follow the plot lines and pick up on the clues. Yamamura is a clever writer and her success is due to her so-called tricks that she employs when she writes. But with an American character, I found it easy to relate to her adventures and though it may be impossible for a budding Japanese language student to pick up on every clue, they are quite readable; it should be quite easy to find a copy of many of her books in a used bookstore. Should you happen to catch an airing of one of her dramas or find one on the internet, that will aid you in understanding her storytelling style. And finally, a few of her works have also been published as manga.

It is very difficult to find photos of this author. And she seems to have been somewhat of a mystery herself. Despite being a very popular author of her time, there is little written about her and it seems that this is how she wanted it to be. Although the Wikipedia articles are written decisively, it is possible that even her real age at death is unknown. Seeking to remedy this, a more contemporary Kyoto author, Hanabusa Kannon published a book in 2020 entitled ‘The Famous Mystery Writer of Kyoto that Nobody Really Knew.’ At one time there was an official website for Yamamura Misa, but it has (mysteriously) disappeared.

Books set in Kyoto

The number of books set in Kyoto is so extensive that rather than list them here, I will list the Kyoto locations or events that are featured in a sampling of her Kyoto works. My suggestion is that you pick a locale that you are familiar with and dive in. There are also a number of works that at least partially take place in Kyoto but don’t refer to a location in the title. Examples would be Kyoto Gourmet Journey, Kyoto Engagement Journey, Kyoto Honeymoon Journey and Kyoto Divorce Journey etc.

The books that feature the fictional Katherine Turner may also be of interest as they reflect some of the gaijin experience in Kyoto. The Japanese wikipedia entry for Misa Yamamura has a list of the books in that series.

General Resources Consulted

• Yamamura Misa — Wikipedia entry (English). A rather brief entry.
• 山村美紗 — Wikipedia entry (Japanese) Includes a list of her complete works.
• 山村美紗のおすすめ作品5選！ドラマ化も多くされたミステリー作家 (2021) — An introduction to five of her novels.
• 山村美紗おすすめ８選をご紹介～衝撃のトリックに酔いしれる～ — An introduction to eight of her novels.
• 山村美紗の作品一覧 — An annotated list of her books. Very useful.

Almost every member of WIK has written something about Kyoto and while there are many famous authors writing about Kyoto both in the distant past and the present, there are also many that remain unknown to us simply because they haven’t (yet) been translated into English. Like many other readers, I love to immerse myself in a book with a setting that is familiar. So when I was learning to read in Japanese, I would search for books set in Kyoto. My criteria was not necessarily great literature; for me, this was purely reading practice. Through trial and error, I found that a setting in Kyoto and/or a novel with ample dialog was my best bet. I did not try to understand every word or look up each unknown character. The only time I picked up my dictionary was when an unknown word or character made multiple appearances and I felt a compulsion to know the meaning or the reading.

In this short series, I want to introduce a few authors who used Kyoto as their setting for a number of their books. Once you understand an author’s style, it becomes easier and easier to read their books. My hope is that this will encourage intermediate and beyond Japanese language learners to try some of these books out. They are, for the most part, older books, so it should be easy to find copies in used bookstores. Most of all, I hope this encourages you to browse a few bookstores and find other wonderful authors that are still unknown to most English readers.

I begin with Mizukami Tsutomu. Or, Minakami Tsutomu. There seems to be little consensus on how to read his family name, or even his first name. I have heard Kai Fusayoshi refer to him as “Ben-chan” and I believe he was, at one time, a patron of Honyarado. He is certainly a prolific and colorful author. Surprisingly, I found his books on the contemporary geisha world and bar hostesses in downtown Kyoto fairly easy to read.

Biography

Mizukami Tsutomu (March 8, 1919 – September 8, 2004) was born in Fukui Prefecture in a small village. He was the second son of five siblings. At the age of nine, he was sent to live with a relative in Kyoto and to become an apprentice priest at a sub- temple of Shōkoku-ji called Zuishunin. However, the hard life of an apprentice priest didn’t suit him and he ran away at age thirteen.

He was brought back, this time to Tōji-in and the library he found there drew him into the world of literature. In 1937 he entered the Department of Literature at Ritsumeikan University. Having had tuberculosis, he was not assigned to active duty in the military during wartime, but instead was assigned to an army unit stationed in Fushimi.

After the war, he moved to Tokyo where his first book was published. He worked in many different fields (he claimed to have held 36 different jobs) to support his family. In 1959 his first mystery was published and sold quite well, establishing his name as a writer. From then on he was quite prolific and often wrote mysteries taking place in Hokuriku and Kyoto. He addressed a wide diversity of issues in his writing depending on where his interests took him. His family life was also quite colorful. His literary works won him a great number of awards and stretched into just about any genre you could imagine, including works for children. Though his works have been translated into both Russian and Chinese, he is oddly ignored by English language publishers. Only a few of his stories have been translated thus far.¹ I note that there was also a translation published of a selection from his book called ‘Eating the Seasons’ in the Kyoto Journal Issue 83 on Food.

Mizukami’s works set in Kyoto are by no means considered to be his best books or the most representative, but I present them here because they are not terribly difficult for a student of the Japanese language to read. In fact, they provide an excellent introduction to the Kyoto dialect spoken in the geisha quarters and by some Kyotoites today. The story lines are quite simple and the settings provide a good introduction to different areas of Kyoto. Here are a few that I read many years ago when I was learning the Japanese language. It should be easy to find copies of them in used bookstores in Kyoto or elsewhere in Japan.

Books on Kyoto

五番町夕霧楼 [Gobanchō Yūgirirō] Published in 1962. Considered to be his representative work on Kyoto, it was written as a contrast to Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. A young girl from Tango is sold into servitude to the Gobanchō District in Nishijin. In fact, she is sold into prostitution. There are love triangles, suicides, and misbehaving priests, all culminating in a fire at Hōkakuji Temple. With all of these elements it is no surprise that it was made into two different TV dramas (1968 and 1974) and a Shochiku film in 1980.

沙羅の門 [Sara no Mon] “Sara’s Gate” Published in 1964. It’s a tearjerker of a story about an unwanted pregnancy of a woman lodging in a temple near Yasaka Shrine. There was also a film adaptation made the same year and directed by Seiji Hisamatsu.

京の川 [Miyako no Kawa] “Kyoto River” Published in 1965. The life and troubles of the geisha world in Kyoto. This was also serialized for the NHK Ginga Drama in 1969 with a total of 25 thirty-minute episodes.

女の森で [Onna no Mori de] “In the Forest of Women” Published in 1969. A two- volume work on the lives of the Gion geisha. This was serialized for the NHK Ginga Television Novels series in 1975 and has a total of 20 twenty-minute episodes. It’s an excellent book to immerse in.

波影・貴船川 [Namikawa Kibunegawa] Published in 1969. A collection of five short works. A good starting point as the works are shorter and you can pick and choose.

出町の柳 [Demachi no Yanagi] “The Willow of Demachi” Published in 1989 Another collection of five short works.

Also notable is 土を喰ふ日々, published in 1978 which was made into a film starring Sawada Kenji as recently as 2022 entitled The Zen Diary in English about a writer living in the mountains and what he cooks throughout the seasons. See the trailer.

General Resources Consulted

• Mizukami Tsutomu — Wikipedia entry (English). A rather brief entry.
• 水上勉 — Wikipedia entry (Japanese) Includes a list of his complete works.
• 戦後の京都と「赤線」の町 ―水上勉「五番町夕霧楼」論 — An article on post-war Kyoto and the red-light district where Gobanchō Yūgirirō takes place.

1. The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen. Translated by Dennis C. Washburn in 2008. ︎

The normally reliable Hearn appears to have made a mistake about Emperor Kammu’s succession, since officially he was the 50th of the imperial line, not the 51st. He also writes of the ‘original scale’ of the palace, whereas Heian Shrine is slightly scaled down and modelled on 5/8ths of the Heian-era building. The description below not only shows Hearn’s remarkable gift for colourful description (‘architectural necromany’), but also his fascination with the part played by ‘ghosts’ (i.e. the dead) in Japan’s spiritual culture.

Kyoto, April 21. The noblest examples of religious architecture in the whole empire have just been completed; and the great City of Temples is now enriched by two constructions probably never surpassed in all the ten centuries of its existence. One is the gift of the Imperial Government; the other, the gift of the common people. The government’s gift is the Dai-Kioku-Den,- erected to commemorate the great festival of Kwammu Tenno, fifty-first emperor of Japan, and founder of the Sacred City. To the Spirit of this Emperor the Dai-Kioku-Den is dedicated: it is thus a Shinto temple, and the most superb of all Shinto temples. Nevertheless, it is not Shinto architecture, but a facsimile of the original palace of Kwammu Tenno upon the original scale.

The effect upon national sentiment of this magnificent deviation from conventional forms, and the profound poetry of the reverential feeling which suggested it, can be fully comprehended only by those who know that Japan is still practically ruled by the dead. Much more than beautiful are the edifices of the Dai-Kioku-Den. Even in this most archaic of Japan cities they startle; they tell to the sky in every tilted line of their horned roofs the tale of another and more fantastic age. The most eccentrically striking parts of the whole are the two-storied and five-towered gates, veritable Chinese dreams, one would say. In color the construction is not less oddly attractive than in form,-and this especially because of the fine use made of antique green tiles in the polychromatic roofing. Surely the august Spirit of Kwammu Tenno might well rejoice in this charming evocation of the past by architectural necromancy!

Looking lost, my husband wanders outside with a wet rag he’d just used to clean the bathroom sink.

I pop my head out of the window.

“Otoosan”, I say, “hang it over there near the washing machine, near the other rags. When there’s more, I’ll wash them all together”.

As I close the window, it occurs to me, not for the first time, how odd it still feels to keep calling my husband the Japanese equivalent of “Dad”. But I’ve been doing that ever since our first child was born around 26 years ago! I’ve gotten so used to it, yet also, it does still occur to me that it seems strange.

Of course, I know that it’s common for older couples with kids here in Japan to call each other “Otoosan” (Dad) and “Okaasan” (Mom) while younger couples with kids typically prefer the more modern “Papa” and “Mama”. When our daughter was born, we were living in the smallest prefectural capital in a rural and very traditional part of western Japan, Yamaguchi. I’d often hear women in my neighborhood sing out “Otoosan!” when they were calling their husbands. Or I would hear them in shops: “Otoosan, look at how cheap these apples are today!” At first it seemed awkward to me, but soon I got totally used to it. It’s true, though, that I didn’t hear the reverse as much, the men calling “Okaasan” to their wives. I put it down to men’s naturally being less talkative. And also, I’ve sometimes heard men here calling their wives by nicknames, such as “Mi-chan” for “Miwako”.

I remember learning that calling your spouse—or indeed anyone―by his or her first name is kind of bad luck here so obviously I didn’t want to call my husband by his first name, Takeshi. I noticed that his family members mostly called him “Take-chan”. For a few years, before our daughter was born, I tried that for a while too, (my husband seemed amused by this), but that seemed strange to me as well. We’d lived in Chicago for four years before we’d moved to Japan, so I was quite used to calling him “Takeshi”. But when we moved here and I heard that using first names with your spouse was perhaps bringing bad luck, calling him “Takeshi” suddenly seemed like not only a brazen flouting of cultural norms, but possibly an invitation to disaster.

So, when our daughter was born, it was a relief to turn to the safe term “Otoosan”, and later, when I heard younger couples using “Mama” and “Papa”, perhaps I felt outdated, but I didn’t mind.

Still, I can’t help but feel, as a foreigner, maybe a little self-conscious still, about calling my husband “Otoosan”, which after all means “Dad”.

So what does my husband call me? Usually it’s, yes, “Okaasan”. But occasionally he will use my name, Marianne. Perhaps he’s not as superstitious as me? Or perhaps, as I’m a foreigner, there’s not so much bad luck attached to my name?

Now that having kids has become rarer in Japan, I’m also curious about what younger married couples would call each other since they might not ever become “Mama” and “Papa”. I feel like the answer is nicknames.

I investigated the topic of “bad luck surrounding first names in Japan” by asking my husband. He said that traditionally when kids were young, it was considered bad luck to use their first names because they still belonged partly to the spirit world, and using their real names could function somehow to call them back there.

Still, I remember clearly reading (but I don’t remember where) that it is even bad luck for a wife to call her husband by his first name. But is this merely an “old wives’ tale?”

And now so much water has gone by under the bridge, as they say, that I can’t call him “Takeshi” naturally any longer!

Here is what I found on Quora about this topic. The answer is written by a Japanese man in his 50s:

My mother still refers to my father by our surname when she is talking to her friends or siblings.

Among ourselves, she calls him “Granddad” and me “Eldest Bro.” Within a family, we call each other by our roles from the viewpoint of the youngest member. When I was a kid, they would call each other “Dad” and “Mom” respectively, and now “Granddad” and “Grandma” from the viewpoint of my kids. I had two younger brothers so hence “Eldest Bro” even now.

So, in a nutshell, Japanese people avoid using their first names by any means. It’s almost like an obsession, on par with those wizards at Hogwarts against calling the noseless villain his name. My uneducated guess is that it has something to do with the culture’s strong propensity for high-context indirectness mixed with a sense of deity that we associate with people’s names.

The samurai class of old days had this unique tradition where they gave children “childhood names” that were exclusively used until they finished coming-of-age ceremony (genpuku) and were granted a real adulthood name. The childhood name was for protecting children from the evil, while the adulthood name was treated as a sort of taboo, and it was not supposed to be mentioned until after the person was deceased.

I believe there was a similar “taboo name” culture in China, too.^[1]

^[1] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-common-for-Japanese-girls-to-call-guys-by-their-first-name

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For other writings by Marianne Kimura on the Writers in Kyoto website, please see here. Marianne also has a sizable following on TikTok, describing herself as a Shakespeare performer and academic witch, and can be found under the name uguisu77.

Last week, I spent the afternoon with PhD student Ran Wei, who has been in Osaka on a Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We had planned to meet at Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, tour the garden, and then enjoy a long and luxurious meal discussing her dissertation on Japanese prose fiction set in the city of Osaka.

I checked on the garden schedule, she searched for good restaurants near Kitano Tenmangu and made a reservation at the Sakurai-ya.  We arranged to meet at the shrine entrance at 10:30, walk around the garden, and then head to the restaurant by 1:00.  

Ran and I met right on schedule and enjoyed working our way through the shrine grounds to the garden. We stopped to rub the noses of the bronze oxen statues and to pay our respects to Tenjin-sama, the God of Learning, his spirit resting augustly in the shrine depths. We both were looking for some divine intervention, Ran for her dissertation, me for my second novel.

It was the season to celebrate the summer maple leaves, ao momiji. We purchased our tickets and entered the garden expectantly. 

At every turn we walked deeper and deeper into a tunnel of green—of many greens: emerald, cyan, fern, moss, and malachite. The maple leaves, glistening with the morning dew, were splendid, but they were not alone in their lush glory. Standing in small clumps here and there, tall stalks of bamboo rivaled the maples for attention, the newest shoots were a rich Persian green, nearly teal. A vermillion bridge and ornamental balustrade stood in stark contrast to the greens making both colors all the more vibrant. The graveled pathways were surprisingly unkempt, with vines and brambles stretching out to snatch at passersby, who were few—a small blessing in the normally crowded Kyoto. We agreed that the tangled atmosphere of the garden only enhanced its charm. 

After we had bathed in the eddies of green for what felt an extraordinary amount of time, we emerged to discover we still had nearly two hours before our lunch reservations.

We decided to stroll to my lodgings in the middle of the Nishijin area, famous for its production of exquisite brocades. Occasionally when I walk through the streets on this or that errand, I’ll hear the sounds of weaving, the click, clack of the looms, the soft thud of the shuttle. 

 “What’s this?” Ran asked, pointing to a sign on an old machiya row house we were passing.  It read in English:

Soushitsuzure-en
Textile Studio

Off to the side another sign announced in Japanese kengaku, which means “observation” but literally reads “look and learn.”

“Let’s try?” Ran suggested.

We followed a long, covered walkway that opened into a sunny courtyard. We were not sure what to expect. We noticed another kengaku sign and followed it to what looked like the door to the studio.

We rang the bell and within minutes a young woman appeared. When we asked if we might kengaku, she pulled two pairs of slippers from the shelf to her left and placed them on the floor before us. 

We stepped out of our shoes and entered a very cluttered space full of seven or more looms, walls of thread, and lots of papers with illustrations stacked upon almost every flat surface.

“Irrasshai.”

A thin, bespectacled elderly man with kind eyes emerged from one of the looms to greet us. The young woman disappeared. The man introduced himself as Mr. Hirano.

For the next hour Mr. Hirano told us about the weaving process. He showed us a short video narrated in English that explained each step. Mr. Hirano stopped the video regularly to explain the processes himself, in Japanese, elaborating and allowing us to ask questions.

We watched the way the weaver prepares the loom, first selecting the thread, twisting two different colors of threads together to make elaborate hues, spinning the thread onto spools, different spools for different colors.  It can take weeks just to load the thread, depending on the pattern to be woven.

Mr. Hirano, we learned was born into a weaving family.

“I’ve been weaving for 70 years,” he told us.  

Later, when we learned he was 78, we imagined him as an eight-year-old boy twisting threads onto spools.   

“It takes at least 40 years before you’re really a full-fledged weaver.”

Ran turned to me and quipped with a smile, “I guess writing a dissertation isn’t as bad as I thought!”  

When the video ended, Mr. Hirano spread a beautiful museum catalogue before us and pointed to the photograph of an elegant Buddhist figure. We thought it was a painting until he revealed it was Nishijin brocade. He had led a team of six weavers, all over the age of 50, in the project. It took them over three years to complete the weaving, which unfurled at over three by six feet. The piece is now in a museum in Shiga Prefecture.

“We keep these covered, you know,” Mr. Hirano explained as he led us to a wall of spooled and bundled threads.  He turned on the overhead light, allowing us to appreciate the amazing array of hues. 

“Excessive light can fade the dyes.”

Next, Mr. Hirano showed us the piece he was currently working on and the way the weaving is done “backwards,” that is to say, the front of the piece is face down as the weaver works the loom.  They need to carry a mirror to check the underside of the loom.

Tall but limber, Ran crouched down under the loom to photograph the underside, then held her camera out for me to see.

So much of the craft is done by instinct and inspiration.

“Tsuzure-ori,” he explained, “is the oldest of the Nishijin weaves. Weavers use their bodies in harmony with the loom—their feet to move the heddle, their hands to set the loom and pull the shuttle, and especially their fingernails to slide the threads tightly in place. Nowadays so much of this weaving is done by machine, so this studio was founded to help preserve the old techniques.”

In addition to the young woman we met at the door—who retired to a corner of the studio to work on a computer, perhaps keeping the accounts—there was only one other person in the studio, a woman working quietly at her loom in the other corner.

“We cater to local artists and to people who weave as a hobby.”

Aside from the large museum piece, most of the other items Mr. Hirano showed us were small.

“Hardly anyone orders obi sashes and kimonos anymore,” Mr. Hirano explained. These had been the mainstay of the Nishijin industry. A few businesses still produce the sumptuous robes used on the Noh stage, but smaller operations like Mr. Hirano’s have had to become more industrious to stay in business.

Not that Mr. Hirano was much in business anymore.  His interests now were mainly in preserving the art form.

For a small fee, visitors could make their own accessory: a lampshade, a coaster, or a small item like a keyring.  

We decided not to. Our restaurant awaited us.

But we did purchase a small piece of jewelry each, to commemorate our visit, and took a few photos with Mr. Hirano.

We thanked Mr. Hirano, slipped into our shoes, and off we went to our lunch reservations.

Over a delicious meal of seasonal vegetables and fish we reflected on what we had learned—Mr. Hirano’s patience, his focus and diligence.  Good lessons for both of us as we face down our various writing projects.

Our impromptu kengaku was the high point of our very wonderful Kitano Tenmangu adventure.  Tenjin-sama clearly heard our prayers.  

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Rebecca Copeland is a writer of fiction and literary criticism and a translator of Japanese literature. Her stories travel between Japan and the American South and touch on questions of identity, belonging, and self-discovery. Her academic writings have focused almost exclusively on modern Japanese women writers, and she has translated the works of writer Uno Chiyo and novelist Kirino Natsuo. Copeland was born to missionary parents in a Japan still recovering from the aftermath of war.  As a junior in college, Copeland had the opportunity to spend a year in Japan, where she studied traditional dance, learned to wear a kimono, and traveled. Afterwards she earned a PhD in Japanese literature at Columbia University, and she is now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The present work, The Kimono Tattoo, is her debut work of fiction. More information may be found on her website, rebecca-copeland.com.