ISHIYAMA-DERA

Some photos from our recent visit to Ishiyama-dera, one of our favorite local places, posted on before...

DEEP MOVES

I was standing at the kitchen sink at 6:20 this morning doing the usual - having my tea, looking out the big window into the garden, letting the veil of sleep fade and slowly recovering in greater detail who I was – when I heard a way deep and growing sound , seemed to be coming from the north, then it felt increasingly like I was standing on some kind of foot vibrator as the rumble and vibe intensity increased at high frequency-- then it peaked and faded, the upper timbers of the house gave one big 'crack' as though the house had just uncricked its neck, and all was dawn silent once more.

It had been an earthquake. The force - in a mass, not as distinct waves – passed through the house in less than ten seconds, as a strong vibration deep in the earth; there was none of the usual vibration associated with earthquakes, like when I experienced my first quake not long after arriving in Tokyo back in the early seventies, ran out of the swaying, rattling house and heard the earth grinding like huge cobblestones, saw trees swaying strongly in no wind.

The soil beneath Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya - and most major cities of the world - being alluvial, is in fact just a stage above liquefaction, like a vast tract of pudding. The temblor forces travel through it in large waves: first one side of a building is upward, then the other side, the building on alternating sides of the wave thus flipping back and forth until the oscillation wanes. But mountains, being fairly solid rock, don't transmit the force in waves; instead, it seems to pass through deep down, in a 'solid' mass like a shock wave, that can generate avalanches and landslides.

This had been smaller than the boom of force that had passed instantly though our solid concrete house in Kyoto, early on that morning in 1995, after having devastated Kobe. As I'd done back then, I turned on the tv immediately (as one always does here after earthquakes) to see where the epicenter had been: Otsu, so close, right at the southern end of the lake, the tremor ranking only 1 on the scale. At that point Echo got up, said she hadn't heard or felt a thing.

Sometimes deep in the silence of the night I hear the rumbling way down in the earth as our planet makes its deep moves, yet without a tremor up here at the surface; it sounds like giant subway trains traveling across the landscape far below daily life. At such times, lying there in the calm darkness atop what is in fact a mass of seething volcanic tectonic turbulence, I can sense how small and fragile we are in the face of all that lies beneath us, feel a touch of reality that makes our waking moments all the more precious, our struggles for power and hegemony like friction among microbes…

BASHO'S FINAL HAIKU Part II

It was no mystery that Basho, at the end of a life spent wandering in pursuit of plain and humble beauty, chose as his resting place this small, quiet temple that perfectly manifests the principle of sabi, its thatched roof the earth-brown color of Basho's robes. It is also no mystery given the view of the Lake this place afforded during Basho's time; he visited here often for poetry gatherings and no doubt steeped himself in its history.

The mystery for me was why Basho, after an entire life spent in pursuit of the ephemera of words, as a lover of beauty, as a recluse who lived much of his life in simple austere refinement, as one who named himself after a useless banana plant (growing in a clime too cold for it to bear fruit) and having visited the many beautiful places in Japan on his far wanderings, should in his will reveal the wish to have his grave placed beside that of Kiso Yoshinaka, a renowned, ambitious, vengeful warrior who had been slain by his Minamoto cousins on the spot where this temple, Gichuin (Gichu is another pronunciation of Kiso's name) was built to commemorate him, warrior star of the Heike Monogatari, centuries before Basho was born.

Basho himself was born to a lowly samurai family of Ueno and was reputedly a ninja (Iga-ueno was (and still is) the ninja ‘capital’ of Japan), but not much credence is placed in this theory, which might link Basho-as-samurai to Kiso-as-samurai. I think it's more likely, given Basho's skills, that in choosing this place he did the same thing he did in his poetry: he combined very disparate elements to great dissonantive effect. Much more evocative than a monotone grave in a forest somewhere.

So there they lie, side by side: the tragic, vainglorious, multiply betrayed warrior and the simple, reclusive wandering poet, in precincts dotted with many haiku-carved stones - placed there by Basho's students and admirers over the centuries - and the grave stone of Kiso's Kyoto mistress over there in the corner (she killed herself upon hearing Kiso had been slain; Kiso's wife was forced to marry into the victorious side of the Minamoto clan, later became a mendicant nun and returned to Nagano in her final days...

By choosing to reside in these simple grounds, Basho has created his final, unspoken and unending poem, evoked in the spirit of all who come to visit here and let the long silence tell the stories that lie quietly in this place...

***

Here's an English translation of Basho's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (Oku no Hosomichi).

BASHO'S FINAL HAIKU - Part I

After our visit to Ishiyamadera we went looking for Basho's grave, which I'd been surprised to learn was in Otsu (where Basho spent lot of time) and had since wanted to visit. In our fully intact expedition naivete we didn't need a map, of course; who would need a map to find the small-town grave of Japan's most famous poet and the whole world's haiku master?

We simply got off the train at Ishiyama Station and headed in the general direction down one of the narrow streets that follow the slope toward the Lake, looking for all the signs and other myriad indications that would no doubt surround the famous final precincts of such an illustrious artist - pointing fingersigns, flags, fireworks, billboards, neon signs flashing "This way to Basho's grave," hot dog stands, loudspeakers, haiku recitations, haiku CD hawkers, fleets of tour buses and what not: these would lead us to the location of one of Japan's must-be-most-famous tombs...

There were a lot of interesting shops to see as we walked and walked around and around: a bakery, a mahjong tile shop, a bicycle shop, a great looking sake bar, but just typical old-Japan neighborhood shops, no sign whatsoever that the supreme being of haiku was anywhere within a hundred kilometers of where we journeyed along the narrow road to the deep nowhere. Not even a Basho t-shirt store; I would've bought one. We checked the local area maps that are posted here and there at key intersections to aid seekers of known addresses (buildings in Japan are addressed in the order of their construction, so a known address is about as useful as "go south"), but the maps had never heard of Basho, or his reputed grave.

So we asked a young woman who lived around there, she didn't know. We asked in various shops; an elderly man (the elderly remember the ancient things) said "it's down there somewhere, ask down there." We went down there and asked, they said "ask over there, they might know." Over there they said "it's down that narrow alley over there, you see that alley? Go down there."

We went down the narrow alley, still no signs of any kind bespeaking local pride in the fact that Japan's most famous poet, the guy who wrote the world-renowned frog haiku, was resting just a gravestone's throw away. We came out of the alley and there, from over the non-descript wall of an unassuming precinct along a side street peeked a couple of basho (banana tree) leaves, especially green in the rain. That must be the place. What a haiku, bright basho leaves telling us where Basho was. Bet that was his idea.

Nobody else in the neighborhood seemed to notice. We were the only ones there, for our entire visit. It appears that Basho, who never liked fame and preferred seclusion, had chosen his gravesite well, in a humble place amid local folks who honored his wishes. And there in that small, quiet temple in the rain I encountered another of the many mysteries about Basho...

(To be continued...)

OTSU INCIDENT, PART III: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS



Well, as if directed by the hands that led us through the maze to the grave of Ernest Fenollosa, on this try we made it in no time at all to the very conveniently located and amazingly accessible Otsu Museum of History to see the Otsu Incident exhibition, which you know all about if you've been following this, and if not, we'll wait here while you go back and catch up.

The exhibition was all we expected, and extremely fascinating as history. Prince Nikolai (on left in poster above) and his cousin Prince George of Greece were given the grand tour on that day in May 1889: rickshaws from Kyoto, a tour past the transport canal that goes through the mountain to Kyoto, a steamboat ride out on the Lake to view the famed ancient pine of Karasaki, then back to Otsu where they toured an expo of local products at city hall and George purchased a fine rattan cane.

Then on through the city (very narrow streets, head-high roofs...and no electric poles!) in rickshaws heading back to Kyoto, when Nikolai was attacked by the sword-wielding Japanese policeman (photo on right above), the rickshawmen deflected the blow, and everybody rushed to subdue the attacker, George beating him with his new rattan cane. Then, according to the exhibition, Nikolai was taken to a kimono fabric shop right at the scene, where he was treated for two heavily bleeding but rather superficial wounds to the right side of his head. The attacker (who had struck because he believed Nikolai was reconnoitering for a future invasion by Russia, a not uncommon suspicion at the time) was then taken away and jailed nearby.

The point of the exhibition, however, was that, following imperial family demands for the attacker's immediate execution, several radical lawyers called for a standard modern legal approach and won out, thereby beginning to wrest the Japanese legal system from imperial dominance. According to exhibition data, the attacker died in the same prison a few months later, of pneumonia. The exhibition showed it all: the endless paperwork involved, the princely visaless passports, detailed maps; photos of the princes, the then-mayor of Otsu City, the governor of Shiga Prefecture, the conservative lawyers, the radical lawyers, the kimono shop owner with his imperial medal, the nationally famous superhero rickshawmen wearing the medals awarded by the tsar and the emperor (they also received huge rewards and generous pensions); the actual sword, the bloody handkerchief with a small bit of the corner clipped off (for forensic DNA research on the findings at Ekaterinsberg), the rattan cane, even the original sign from the shop where the rattan cane had been made, but not one single photo or mention, not one word, of Doctor Usui. Strange. I had been looking specifically for further details regarding the story of this hero who had, according to his own version of events, practically saved Nikolai's life, and there was nothing. Even the leading radical lawyer's wife's photograph was there, but nothing of the good doctor. Re-reading Doctor Usui's story, I note that he says (automatic translation): "It [Nikolai] had been transported in the hall of a hotel in the vicinity... I spontaneously placed then my two hands on the left side of the head of the patient and directed my intra-psychic perception inside the wound." Hotel? Left side? Was he actually there? Was the good doctor... the founder of Reiki... indulging in a bit of creative imagination? If not, why was he left completely out of the exhibition? The mystery continues...

OTSU INCIDENT, PART II

Last week, you remember, I posted a post about not being able to make it to the Otsu Incident exhibition at the Otsu History Museum, and said I would post about it when we finally made it there. The exhibit ends on Monday, so we decided to go today since Monday would likely be busy for us and Sunday likely busy for the Museum.

So there we were, on our way at last, having been to the Museum before and confident in the normal way of getting there again whenever in our lives we might want to, and we took what appeared to be the same turning as before into the ancient maze of west-side mountain streets that still thread through that part of Otsu, as in all old cities in Japan built around rice paddies (don't get me started on Tokyo), and wound up in some narrow cul de sac under an overpass high in the upper reaches of junglehood, so we headed south, thinking we were lost northward, and wound up in another maze of a big park we remembered seeing as part of the vista from the Museum balcony, and since the upward roads were conveniently closed to traffic we parked and began to walk, but it was getting late; entry to the exhibit closed at 4:30 so we were hustling in what by now we knew was the right direction. Then we saw a map in the park that seemed to indicate that if we continued the way we were going we might not get there, but if we went this other special way we'd get there no-o-o-o problem, and being the trusting souls that we are, we opted for the latter and set off on a stone path into the woods, and I do mean woods, it was Hansel and Gretel in the orient, as the sun was setting and the Museum was closing but whatya gonna do, we had no other plans.

So we plunged on, up and down and in and around through bamboo groves and across stone bridges and up and down stone staircases, and then when we had at last arrived at what appeared to be the end there was nothing like a museum. Instead there was a map on one of those helpful tourist guide poles that said the Museum was back somewhere we'd just come from so we figured forget it and started back, took a wrong turning and, emerging from a wildly overgrown path through tall bamboo, wound up... at the bottom of some stone steps... that led up to the gate... of a temple called Homyo-in, before which an old sign said in Japanese "Grave of Ernest Fenollosa." Sure, I thought. But having little better to do we went up there and through the gate into the grounds of the temple, which had clearly seen much better days, there was a tarp over the roof and all buildings were closed up tight with no one around, and all the gates open, but the view was splendid, as we were in shadow while all below and the Lake was still sunlit.

And over there just ahead a bit was a crudely hand-lettered sign pointing up some stone steps into the forest behind the temple, we went up there into the deepening shadows and sure enough, there was the actual grave of Ernest Fenollosa himself, the most seminal western scholar in Japanese history, and recipient of the highest imperial honor ever bestowed upon a foreigner, among his countless other honors and accomplishments. And here he was resting almost a century now in this very quiet and apparently little-known place. The man was a hero in my own past; countless times I had seen his name in just about everything I'd ever read about Japanese culture. Indeed, part of my reason for being in Japan could be traced back to him and his work. Among many others he influenced Hearn, Pound, Yeats, all the way up to Rexroth, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder in our own day, the list lengthens and widens and his influence goes on. Yet with all my time in Japan I never even knew he was here, at this now declining and unvisited temple that he loved for its beautiful view. (He had become a Tendai Buddhist at this temple (imagine the radicalness of that in Victorian times!!), and spent much time here.

Fenollosa died suddenly during a visit to London in 1906 and in his will requested that his ashes be placed here. The temple still has the telescope, globe, favorite chair, oil lamp and gramophone he left on his last visit, but they wouldn't let us in to see anything; a person on the intercom from deep within who didn't even want to come to the door said they don't show the place anymore. I had the distinct feeling that they weren't all that interested in, or appreciative of, the heritage in their charge.

There were no flowers at the grave, and only a few coins had been placed on the stone base. I left a one-word note pinned to the stone with a twig I cut from a nearby sakakitree. Perhaps just as amazing as Fenellosa being here, and just as generally unknown: right beside Fenollosa's grave is the grave of William Bigelow, scion of a very prominent Boston family, who also became a Tendai Buddhist and was assistant curator (Fenollosa was curator) of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to which Bigelow bequeathed perhaps the world's greatest collection of ukiyo-e and other priceless objects of oriental art. But the amazement didn't end there: facing their graves is that of Kakuzo Okakura (Tenshin) who with Fenollosa first cataloged the incredible treasures of Horyuji in Nara, and later wrote the classic Book of Tea. What fascinating stories are here, right here, and not a soul around; nor, apparently, likely to be. Never did make it to the Otsu Incident, but instead stumbled onto something much more profound, that had no doubt been intended all along.

THE OTSU INCIDENT, PART I

My suddenly crowded work schedule today has absolutely nothing to do with the title hereof, other than that it obviated my plan to visit and post herein about the Otsu Museum exhibit on the little-known Otsu Incident, in which Crown Prince Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia, on a pleasure tour of Japan in 1891, while touring Otsu at the southernmost end of Lake Biwa (Japan's first capital, just over the mountains here from Kyoto) was attacked and seriously wounded by one of his sword-wielding Japanese police guards. This reputedly was an important pretext to the Russo-Japanese war, which fanned Japan's colonial ambitions. We all know where that led. I will try to make it to the exhibit next week; but for now, for a fascinating read, search Google for Mikao Usui+Otsu Incident, hit translate if you don't read French, scroll down a bit and read the amazing account of the Japanese doctor who witnessed the event and gave Nicholas emergency treatment. He was the doctor who later founded Reiki, a form of which he used in treating Nicholas. Another historically fascinating aspect is that the cloths and bandages used to treat the wound were saved, and recently sampled for DNA to authenticate the remains of then-Emperor Nicholas and his family, murdered by the Bolsheviks, who had grown in power as Nicholas waned with the humbling loss of the R-J War. The tangles of history come full circle, just down the road!!

TRUTH OF ADVERTISING

Saturday went to the impressively located Otsu City Museum of History to see an exhibition on the history of Japanese advertising from the Edo era to the 1950s or so, the ads (from woodblock prints and old wooden signs to lithographed posters and signs of paper and metal) to no surprise predominantly promoting drinks and pharmaceuticals and insecticides.

One poster showed a sexy young lady ecstatically spraying her immediate 1920 environment with deadly chemicals; another promoted an earlier version comprising a bent straw through which the kids of the household could blow, spraying toxic chemicals on the insects hovering around their elders, such fun!

But back then there were few rules; thus the surreal sight of a poster featuring a dainty woman in kimono driving a big beer truck in 1911, another young beauty in kimono touting rubber cement for men to repair their bike and truck tires with, another featured a naughty flapper girl with skirt hiked up to here holding yet another beer. In perhaps one of Japan's earliest e-commerce posters, a kimono'd woman talking on a wooden wall phone in a lithographed poster for a Tokyo kimono shop says "For the finest in kimonos, dial 18"! It was totally rad when it came out, much like what is totally rad now.

Things have changed in some major regards, though, the big illnesses then being syphilis and worms; also, the image of Bismarck was a big draw, but the general concerns then as now were bad complexion, bad breath, indigestion, headache and dandruff, one brochure touting a "medico-chemical oily tonic for dandruff scales containing cholestero-lecithin"; another blithely promoted the World Congress for Leisure Time and Recreation in Hamburg, July 23-30, 1936, with the very concept of leisure about to undergo blitzkreig, as evidenced in the wartime propaganda posters (which the Japanese visitors seemed to avoid) shouting how America had killed Japan's friends, and picturing art-deco Japanese bombers swarming over art deco American industrial sectors, others idolizing the kamikaze who stood gazing infinitely into the wind; yet others promoted Japanese war bonds, a bad investment, as things turned out.

There in a several room nutshell was the truth of (not in) advertising (and its bedfellow, politics) anywhere in the world, at any time. I left hoping that visitors weren't viewing the exhibition as merely a cute but simplistic version of a now mature and reliable medium, but as evidence that advertising is no nearer the truth now than it was then.