Kyoto living

Though it was frequently freezing cold, winter in Kyoto was relatively snowless this year. We usually get at least one good snow storm, but this year we were limited to a few snow flurries and a lovely dusting of the great “dai” symbol on the mountain slope overlooking the east side of the city.

Known as “daimonji”, it is one of the iconic images associated with Kyoto. The symbol is carved by carefully controlled bonfires set on August 16th of each year to celebrate the end of O-bon. A total of five such bonfires are set on different mountain sites encircling the city and the visual effect of this summer festival is magical. Daimonji is the most easily visible from several vantage points throughout the city and its iconic presence remains just as potent even in the throes of winter.

But winter has never been my favorite season, and I must confess delight in feeling the weather pass into spring. Earliest of the spring signs, I found these plum trees blossoming in the garden of Shokokuji temple last week. Starting in mid to late February, Kyoto is blessed with plum blossoms ranging from pale pink through deeper shades of rose and even red. The flowers shown at left are the pale pink variety and from a distance may appear much like cherry blossoms, but those won’t bloom until April.

In Japanese art, even the most stylized representations of plum and cherry blossoms can be easily distinguished by a dimple at the outer edge of the cherry blossom petal, whereas plum blossoms have fully rounded petals.
And though it may seem surprising, plum blossoms are considered more feminine. This association comes from the plum’s ability to bloom against the adversity of winter, a subtle acknowledgement of the social constraints that often make the lives of Japanese women difficult. Cherry blossoms, on the other hand, were associated with the samurai warriors, who adopted cherry blossoms as their symbol of the brief but glorious life of a soldier slain honorably in battle.

Of course, the Japanese love of cherry blossoms is legendary, but the beautiful plum blossom, loved for both its seasonality and representation of femininity, is also loved for its association with Hina Matsuri. Popularly known as Girl’s Day, Hina Matsuri is celebrated on March 3rd. Though in earlier times, the third day of the third month was a purification festival, the form of celebration changed during the Muromachi period (1333-1573 AD) and has continued since that time to involve an elaborate display of dolls. The styles of dolls have evolved over the centuries and many public displays of historical doll retrospectives will be on view this month. Among my personal favorites are the dairi bina (Emperor and Empress dolls), such as the pair shown below.

All in all, I expect March will be a glorious month gliding ever futher into spring.

This year setsubun is February 3rd. Considered the “turning point” between winter and spring, setsubun literally translates as “seasonal division”. Soon Kyoto will be enjoying plum blossoms as a first early sign of spring. But just in case some mischief-making oni, like the one shown on that poster above, tries to sneak through the crack between the seasons and turn your luck all topsy-turvy throughout the rest of the year, get ready to pelt him with a fist full of dried soybeans while chanting:

“Oni wa Soto; Fuku wa Uchi!”

“Demons out; Good luck in!”

Afterward it’s traditional to feast on makisushi like those shown at left and all the sushi shops around the country do a brisk business during this holiday. For this holiday, giant sushi rolls stuffed with a wide variety of egg, eel, cucumber, fish roe, and other treats are rolled in a layer of vinegared rice and seaweed. And at the end of the night be sure to place an image of a treasure-ship beneath your pillow to ensure dreams of good fortune in the coming year.

In Shinto mythology, oni comprise a wide range of ambivalent but powerful spirits, capable of behaving in unexpected ways — at times, demonic, at other times mischievous, and still others benevolent. The four-eyed demon named Hôsô is actually considered a good guy, who will assist mere mortals by helping to chase evil demons away. Interestingly, his image is painted on the saké cask at right. So if throwing beans doesn’t get rid of your demons, there is presumably an alternate path.

In Japan, there is a lovely tradition of celebrating whenever you meet an old friend for the first time in the new year. Of course, the first celebrations are with family and closest friends, but like ever-widening circles rippling across the surface of a pond, a succession of parties called shinnenkai or New Year’s gatherings continue throughout the month of January.

This weekend I met up with friends at the Asian Studies Group for our annual shinnenkai at Sake Bar Yoramu. The ASG is a wonderful group that has added untold joy to my life in Kyoto. Comprised mainly of university professors, graduate students, and anyone else with a lively curiosity about Asian history, music, art, culture, religion and literature, the group sponsors monthly lectures that have taught me so much on all of these topics as well as many others.

And given the propensity of this group to revel in the details of history and subtleties of philosophy, it’s no wonder that our annual shinnenkai would be a sake-tasting at Yoram’s Sake Bar.

Halle O’Neil, a doctoral candidate from the University of Kansas, came dressed in her “Japanese Art Historians for Obama” t-shirt to celebrate that world-changing event taking place this week on the other side of the planet.

As I was arriving, Reggie Pawle, a doctor of Buddhist psychology, was thoughtfully considering some point being made by Catherine Ludvik, a Buddhist art scholar from Toronto fluent in both sanskrit and Japanese and specialist in Benzaiten, the goddess of art and literature. Later in the evening, Reggie told me of a cosmology discussion group in Kyoto that he’d recently heard of. With so many colleges and universities in Kyoto, there are just countless groups and sub-groups focusing on so many different ways to stimulate the mind.

But for this evening’s party, the agenda was not cosmology but the enjoyment of sake — good sake, sake with a robust range of flavors. And for that purpose, Sake Bar Yoramu is the best place to be. A delightful little vest-pocket bar with limited seating, half the length of the narrow room is taken up by the glorious stepping stone entryway shown in the top photo. This pathway leads you back to Yoram himself and a seat at his bar. An Israeli ex-pat, Yoram is a long-term Kyoto resident and has had this sake bar for the past decade.

Sake is essentially a simple beverage made from rice, water, yeast and koji bacteria — four ingredients and a world of flavors. Or at least it could be, if sake brewing weren’t controlled by a handful of large breweries that have filtered, blended, pasteurized and stifled it into a bland standardized and flavorless alcoholic drink. I was never a great fan of the stuff, until I met Yoram. An expert in the family-run microbreweries of Japan, Yoram has carefully selected each sake he serves for its distinctive character and can recount the details that not only make it different from each other sake but also very different from anything you’ve tried before.

In previous years, I’ve sampled a wonderful lemon-y flavored sake brewed by a recipe dating back to the Kamakura period (~1200 AD) and milky white nigori sake that still contains bits of the rice it was brewed from.

This night’s tasting started with a genmai (brown rice) sake made in Saitama (near Tokyo). And to complement the sake, we were served a plate with bite-sized pats of cream cheese drizzled with a mix of soy sauce and wasabi, top right. This was definitely non-traditional, but definitely a taste treat.

This was followed by an unpasteurized, undiluted, somewhat sweeter, full-bodied brew from Shiga, the prefecture next to Kyoto. And accompanied by roasted green peppers (fourth picture down).

And then we had Karadahanke, a slightly sour, slightly acidic sake from Chiba (also near Tokyo). This was a natural yeast sake brewed by a multi-stage process, served with nanohana, a green vegetable popular in Japan, flavored with sesame seeds. (second picture from the top).

For our fourth taste treat, we had a slightly sweeter sake accompanied by the most interesting dish of the night (shown as the middle image). A salad of shredded daikon with a rice vinegar dressing topped by salt-preserved cherry blossoms. Simple but amazingly elegant in its presentation and equally amazing to taste.

And then the night was capped by a 10-year-old sake that just rolled across the palate, accompanied by steaming bowls of “wafu risotto”. Yoram’s own recipe for a hearty Japanese-flavored risotto with mushrooms.

Can mere words ever do justice to such a multi-sensory experience? But perhaps the best part of the evening was the way our normally staid and erudite academic group turned into a bubbly, chatty and slightly giggly group of friends renewing our friendships for 2009.

Once again I’ve had a lovely and langourous start to 2009, enjoying many of the Japanese rituals for welcoming each new year. Several were documented in my posts last year, but one that seemed to need particular attention this year is the Toka Ebisu festival on January 10th.

Ebisu is one of the seven lucky spirits, popular in northeast Asian mythology. Each of these seven deities represents a particular virtue and is the patron of one or more occupations. Traditionally, Ebisu was associated with the sea, sailors and fisherman, but became the patron of commerce and business during the Edo period. On the 10th day of the New Year, Kyotoites flock to the Ebisu shrine at Kenninji to say a prayer for good business in the coming year. This year, the shrine was filled to capacity with long lines of people waiting to say prayers for a more prosperous 2009. A limited sense of how crowded it was may be seen in the photo above, although you won’t quite feel the jostling of actually being in the midst of the throng.

The altar was laid with a giant tuna and behind the altar, bottles of sake line the shelves. The crowds wait patiently as each individual takes their turn in ringing the altar bell loudly to attract Ebisu’s attention before saying their prayers and tossing a few coins into the collection bin.

But of course, no shrine pilgrimage would be complete without purchasing an omomori to carry home.

Although loosely translated as “good luck charm”, omomori actually function as a surrogate-self or double. When there is danger, illness, bankruptcy or other problems in the air, these nasties are attracted to the brightly colored omamori rather than to the individual or in this case, their business.

For that reason, the omomori is returned to the shrine the following year, so that omomori and all of the problems it has absorbed during the year can be ritually destroyed. Then of course, a new omomori must be purchased for the coming year.

The circular bamboo platter shown at top is decorated with images of both Ebisu and Daikokuten, the patron of farmers, as well as fish, rice, gold and a crane for longevity.

Below that is a similarly decorated bamboo rake. The rake is a favorite luck symbol for business people, since in Japanese as in English, the implied association is “May you rake it in!”

The red mobiles shown next represent crowds of customers flocking to your business. And then, for those who prefer a customized “charm”, there is a veritable smorgasbord of items to select from. These are attached to a bamboo frond that has been blessed by the dancing shrine maidens shown below.

Of course, all of these luck charms carry fees that range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. If the luck can be purchased, you would already have to be fairly lucky to afford some of the larger omomori.

The final ritual before leaving the shrine is to pound the wooden wall along the back route out of the shrine. Ebisu is a prosperous old fellow and variously thought to have grown a bit deaf in his old age, a bit lazy with his success or a bit drunk on his many bottles of sake. Either way, Kyotoites believe it’s necessary to wake up old Ebisu and remind him of their prayers one more time before leaving. And this year the wall rattled thunderously as many hands gave the wall repeated and resounding thuds to wake old Ebisu up.

May 2009 be a better year, bringing prosperity and good fortune to us all.

It’s New Year’s Eve and the city has spent the last week preparing for this magical night as the Year of the Mouse turns to the Year of the Ox. Everywhere I look, little cow decorations are dressed to the nines ready to celebrate their turn in the Chinese horoscope. According to tradition, the Year of the Ox represents prosperity through fortitude and hard work, but these features are a bit less apparent in the whimsical party favors popping up in the stores this week.

Many people are, of course, familiar with the Chinese Horoscope as a 12-year cycle of animals, but the full cycle actually takes 60 years, as each of the animals cycles through each of the five element/color sequences: Wood/green, Fire/red, Earth/ yellow, Metal/white, Water/black. Thus, 1997, the last Year of the Ox, was a Red Ox (dynamic, volatile, impulsive), while 2009 is a Yellow Ox (stable, grounded, sincere) and will take on a different character. What it becomes will even depend, even more than in other years, on the work we are willing to put into it.

May all of your efforts bring you great rewards! Happy New Year to all.

…there were a variety of games to play.  And since my wonderful computerized electronic whizball of a sewing machine had to be sent off for a week in a sewing machine hospital, I was forced spend the weekend trying to remember what I did before that lovely electronic toy entered my life.

Fortunately for me, there was a Genji exhibition at the Museum of Kyoto this week, celebrating the thousand year anniversary since The Tale of Genji was published by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, an 11th century aristocrat. Widely considered the world’s first novel, Genji is a classic of Japanese literature detailing courtly life in ancient Kyoto.For ten centuries The Tale of Genji has been a source of inspiration for the Japanese arts. Bugaku dance and Noh performances have re-enacted the life of Prince Genji, while the games and pastimes described in the story were adapted and expanded to reflect the novel. The playing pieces for the 19th century board game shown at right were painted to represent all the main characters from Genji. The center panel of the woodblock print above shows the same game being enjoyed by a cluster of noblewomen.

Likewise, the kaiawase clam shell matching game with its hexagonal storage box were delicately painted with scenes from the novel. Kaiawase matching is an ancient game, but quite similar to the card game “concentration”. Pairs of cleaned and polished clam shells are painted with matching images, then multiple sets of clam shells are collected to form a complete game set. To play, the clam shells are placed painted side down and the players take turns trying to find and match the identical pairs. Though I’ve never had a chance to play the game itself, I’ve always been fascinated by the elaborately detailed imagery painted on the shells and storage cases.

And of course, there is manga. Reading manga has always been one of the quintessential forms of Japanese entertainment. The books shown here are examples of a 19th century retelling of Genji. Never having been stigmatized as “mind-rot”, the way western comic books have been, manga have always enjoyed an appreciative audience in Japan. In an earlier time, they were simply called e-hon (picture books) and attracted some of the brightest artistic stars of the day.

There were, of course, vastly more games on display in the exhibition, involving skills as diverse as incense sniffing and poetry reciting — far too many of course for a simple blog entry to recount. But it seemed as though in a simpler world, the goal was to find ways to delight each of the senses rather than just to kill time.

Under the gorgeous full moon a few nights ago, my friend Judith Clancy and I attended a gagaku concert in the garden surrounding Shimogamo shrine. Areas of the garden were lit with flood-lamps, which guided our way as we walked through the large gardens toward the stage outside one of the main buildings of the shrine. Though the autumn nights are definitely getting cooler, it was still lovely to join the audience clustered before the open air stage. Many in the audience had also attended Tea Ceremony before the concert and were still dressed in kimono.

Gagaku is the oldest form of classical music in Japan, having been brought to Japan from China in the 7th century A.D., a time when Japan was busily assimilating extensive amounts of Chinese cultural and political practices. The word gagaku translates as “elegant music” and is played by an ensemble of 3 percussion instruments and 3 wind instruments. As the tradition developed in Japan, gagaku was performed by hereditary guilds of musicians and even today many members of the Imperial Palace Music Department are descendants of the old guilds.

Gagaku is often accompanied by a classical dance called bugaku. And of course, the spectacular costumes worn by both the muscians and dancers, as well as the draperies gracing the stage, added a visual treat to the evening’s entertainment.

The beautiful red O-higan-bana are blooming in the gardens of Shokukuji temple near my house. Known as “red spider lilies” in English, O-higan-bana translates literally as “the equinox flower” since it blooms suddenly but briefly, around the time of the Fall Equinox in late September. They spring up almost overnight in clumps and clusters throughout temple gardens and along the narrow paths through rice fields, a last showy gasp of fiery flowering color before the full onset of autumn.

The equinoxes, both of them — spring and summer, are national holidays in Japan. So Tuesday was a day off my normal work schedule and a chance to do a bit of catching up. Which means it was finally time to unbundle those bundles of haori that I bought a few weeks ago and prepare them to be posted on the Vintage Kimono section of my website. That involves quite a bit of work behind the scenes, so I was really grateful for the help of Wendy Carroll, good friend and dear heart, for spending part of her holiday helping me get started with the measuring and cataloging that needs to be done.

With a friend to help the task speed along, each colorful piece of this jumbled bundle was tagged and measured by the end of the day. Next comes the photography, trying to show the color, the details and making sure to identify any flaws. But making pictures of garments on a homemade scarecrow appealing must require a special talent, and thus far such talent has eluded me. But I will keep trying and soon, I hope, these lovely little kimono jackets will be listed for sale.

Gaijin is the word used to describe foreigners in Japan. Literally translated, the word simply means “outsider”, but can be loaded with undertones depending on the attitude of the speaker. And just as in every other country, Japanese attitudes toward foreign immigrants run the political spectrum from conservative to liberal.

Often our unfamiliarity with Japanese customs sometimes leaves people annoyed or shocked and sometimes just amused. But there is also curiosity: Why did we foreigners come here? Why do we stay? What do we like about our lives in Japan? And to address those questions, local television shows sometimes like to interview “an interesting gaijin“.

So all of that gives a little background of how I wound up taping a segment for Japanese TV this week. The show will air in mid-October, but the taping took place at my house yesterday afternoon.  Shown above are Hiroko Hayashi, who translated for me and the director, Takashi Matsushita as they prepared to begin taping. I admit to being quite nervous at the start but both Hiroko-san and Takashi-san were such wonderfully charming and delightful people that I soon relaxed. Sharing my love for Kyoto and talking about how much I have learned from Japanese design made conversation easy.

Computer embroidery is a highly developed commercial industry in Japan, but home embroidery machines don’t seem to be as popular here as they are in other countries. Perhaps that’s why the producers found my efforts to digitize so surprising. As he left, the director said he thought it was one of the better segments he had filmed and promised to send me a DVD of the finished segment. So I suppose in a few weeks, I’ll see how it turned out.

It’s been so hectic these last few weeks that I’ve barely had time to breathe, let alone open my beautiful bundles of haori that have patiently waited for my attention for almost two weeks now. But hectic as its been, I still squeezed in the time to enjoy the Kazari exhibition at Kyoto City Museum before the show closes.

Kazari is a Japanese word meaning “adornment” and this exhibition was devoted to the history of the Japanese penchant for adorning object surfaces with beautiful and intricate designs and then arranging those objects to adorn public and private spaces. The world of Japanese design is so often renowned for it’s brilliant minimalism and yet intricate elaborations of surface design also play a strong role as shown by the items selected for inclusion in this exhibition.

The elaborate Jomon pottery shown at left dates back some 10,000 years to the earliest hunter-gathering societies of pre-historic Japan. Although its peaked and coiled form may defy practicality and its uses remain uncertain, this vessel is but one of the hundreds of such archeological finds from that era.

In contrast, the Arita porcelain jar shown at right was produced several millenia later in the 18th century Edo period, yet it reflects an equal penchant for elaboration. In this case, however, the form has been simplified while intricately painted glazes provide the design interest.

With dozens of examples in each category, there is of course no way to reprise the entire exhibition for you here on my little blog — pottery and porcelain, saddles, swords and armor, lacquered boxes, hair ornaments and altar pieces, each decorated exquisitely with painstaking attention to the finest detail. But of course, my favorite pieces in any show are always the textiles. Below are a few of the exquisite little embroidered pouches. The two sets shown immediately below feature bamboo and chrysanthemum designs, respectively, would have been used by a man to carry his tobacco and pipe in elegance and style.

The purse at right might have been carried to Tea ceremony. Notice the the tiny carved bird that forms the clasp in perfect complement to the embroidered swallow.

And of course, kimono. With so many many many gorgeous examples it was hard to choose a favorite. This one from the early 20th century features birds among bamboo in the snow, dyed and accented with embroidery.

But the intent of this exhibition was more than simply a display of beautiful relics. Rather, the emphasis lay on the transformative nature of Kazari. In the preface to the catalog, the curator writes, “We are delighted to be able to present to you the timeless world of kazari, where functionality, beauty, the sacred and the secular collide to form an unexpected unity. The act of kazaru (adorning) momentarily lifts one’s spirits from the everyday realm. Efforts to adorn (kazaru) have at times revealed a surprising disregard for practicality but have proven to be a profound motivating force in Japanese culture.”

And even though I had an insufficient amount of time to spend surrounded by such beauty, I went away uplifted.