Kyoto living

Monday was my first day back at work after a lovely long week of relaxing my way into the new year.

After days and days of preparations, the new year began with the bells at the Buddhist temples across the city tolling at midnight, 108 times for the 108 delusions that affect humankind. Many people stay up till dawn to see the first day break of the new year, some even hike up the hills surrounding Kyoto to view dawn from a mountain top. And then comes family time. New Year’s is a family holiday in Japan. I’ve been told that at breakfast on New Year’s day, many families have a ritual of thanking each member for what they have contributed to the family in the previous year.

First prayers of the New Year are also significant. A visit to one of the many shrines and temples is often the first outing of the New Year. Fushimi Inari with its famous pathway under a succession of orange torii gates is a favorite site for New Year’s visitors as shown by the sea of people crowding the path in the photo above. During the New Year’s holiday, several million people visit Fushimi Inari. While there, people write their hopes and wishes on small decorative wooden plaques called ema, shown at right. Being an inari shrine, many of the wooden placques are shaped like a fox head, since foxes are regarded as a spiritual messenger of Inari. But for New Year’s, each shrine will issue a limited edition of holiday ema featuring the animal that represents the new year, for 2008 a mouse, and some image that reflects the shrine, in this case the path of torii gates. Each shrine offers their own special ema and often they become collectors items.

For those who practice Chado, the way of tea, another important “first” is hatsugama or “first kettle”. One of the most colorful and festive of Tea ceremonies, it is a time for using the most auspiciously decorated tea bowls, tea kettles, and other tools to create an elegant and welcoming celebration of the New Year. The lobster design on the cup at right serves as an indication of the luxurious sentiment that accompanies the first Tea of the New Year. Guests will dress in their finest kimono and the tea master will prepare the most elegant foods to accompany the Tea drinking.

Of course, there are also many many gatherings that are less formal than Tea. Called shinnenkai (New Year ‘meetings’), they represent the first time friends get together in the New Year and will continue to take place throughout the month as people re-new and re-fresh contact with various circles of friends, colleagues and associates.

But for now, as we come to the end of the first week of the new year, we arrive at kotohajime, the first day of work. For me, that was January 7th.

Like all cultures, Japan has some treasured holiday favorites. The most basic and most important is making mochi. Mochi is made by pounding boiled rice to a smooth elastic paste. Unlike other forms of food preparation, pounding the rice to a paste was traditionally the husband’s job, like the couple pictured at left pounding home-made mochi in their carport despite the rainy day. It’s not uncommon for social groups or neighborhood associations to turn the task of mochi-making into yet another shared festivity that forms part of the New Year’s preparations. For the less energetic however, mochi can also be bought in shops like the one pictured below. After the rice has been thoroughly pounded, the rice paste is formed into balls of various sizes, dusted with rice flour and left on trays to air dry.

For the holidays, two or three large cakes of dried mochi in graduated sizes are stacked up rather like a snowman and topped with a tangerine to form yet another New Year’s decoration that signifies prosperity and thankfulness. Smaller mochi are often added to o-zoni, a sweet New Year’s soup made from red adzuki beans or else they can be toasted till the mochi have turned melty soft and puffy, making a wonderful hot winter treat.

Osechi is New Year’s party food. It can be a wonderfully elaborate visual treat, served in elegant lacquered or porcelain trays. Many of the foods are pickled or preserved and served at room temperature, so that they can be made in advance and allow the hostess to relax with the family and guests during the period of New Year’s entertaining. Traditionally, women did not cook for the first day or two of the new year, but in order to get to that brief period of respite, they are currently engaged in several, several days of pre-New Year’s preparation.

And to top it all off, the sweet shops are offerng the most delightful display of New Year’s candies. Those on the far right of the picture are decorated with little mice, the Chinese horoscope sign assigned to 2008. The twelve animal signs also transit through a longer 60-year cycle of elemental associations: Metal, Fire, Wood, Water and Earth. Each of the elements persists for 12 years, that is, one complete cycle of animal years. Being the first in the cycle of twelve signs, the Year of the Mouse is considered a particularly auspicious time for beginning new projects, launching new endeavors. And being the beginning of an earth cycle, those new endeavors are considered destined toward slow but stable growth over many years to come.

So good luck to you all in your 2008 ventures, and may you be well prepared to have a Happy New Year!

Christmas may be small in Japan, but New Year’s is really big. In fact, it’s HUGE. On Friday, my office closed for the holidays and won’t re-open till January 7th. All over Japan, people are getting ready for a new year and a new beginning. Bonenkai parties (forget-the-old-year parties) have been going on for several weeks now as people repeatedly “wring out” their worries and grievances from the old year while sharing a bottle of sake and assortments of grilled food with their co-workers, friends and neighbors at a seemingly endless parade of parties and gatherings that have spanned the last two weeks.

But now as we head to these final few days, preparations are becoming more serious with lot and lots of cleaning and tossing out anythng that’s worn out or broken, since the New Year should be greeted with freshness and cleanliness. Doorways and entrances receive particular attention and after a good sweeping, are decorated with woven rice straw, bits of greens and tangerines or dried persimmons, like the decorations shown at the shop in the picture above. The rice straw expresses appreciation for the past year’s good harvest (prosperity), green, of course, is a universal symbol of life; and the fruits, both being orange, symbolize gold or good fortune in the year to come. And tiny pine saplings with their roots still attached symbolize the continuing cycle of life and are placed on either side of the entrance gate as a welcome to blessings in the new year.

And indoors there are wonderful ikebana. My flower class this weekend focused on holiday decorations. Over steaming cups of green tea, my sensei and fellow students explained the symbolisms involved in the various plant choices.

So many of the elements seem so similar to western Christmas decorations, which of course, were borrowed centuries ago from winter solstice celebrations in northern Europe. There is a plant with red berries and green leaves similar to holly but different, the leaves are softer and less pointed. Called senryo, the name means “thousand treasures” and is yet another expression of the wish for prosperity. The chrysanthemums are white for purity. Pine branches symbolize the continuation of life in the midst of winter and it is an ancient Shinto belief that God comes down at midnight on New Year’s Eve to touch the tallest tips of pine trees. Thus, the pine branch that forms the tallest element in a New Year’s arrangement is considered an invitation to God to enter our homes in the New Year. Is that why we in the west put an angel or the Star of Bethlehem on the tops of our Christmas trees? There is so much self-reflection that comes with exploring the customs of others.

Christmas weekend was long and lovely. And though I may not have a Christmas tree, I have the very good fortune of living right next to the largest Christmas tree in Kyoto. Every year Doshisha University, which hosts the “Center for the Study of Christian Culture”, decorates a positively huge tree in the center of their main campus. It stands a glorious four stories high with beautiful lights that cheer me along as I bike homeward on these blustery winter nights.

Not to be outdone, one of my neighbors has put up their own little version of a front yard tree, though such personal displays are rare here, since Japan is a Buddhist country and Christians comprise a minority 2% of the population. Still the most commercial trappings of Christmas have been imported and broadly disseminated. I suppose that’s the way of the world these days: so many things are converted to just another gimmick to keep the cash-flow flowing. All the stores here have Santa Claus displays to encourage the shopper’s spending. And Christmas Cake, a peculiarly Japanese confection of yellow cake, whipped cream and strawberries decorated with tiny Santa Claus figurines, has been sold and consumed all over Japan this week. Some of the restaurants advertise Reindeer steaks for Christmas Eve dinner, which generally causes Westerners here to moan, “Oh no! you don’t understand! Santa needs his reindeer alive tonight.” But such is the skewing of Christmas symbols in a Buddhist country, you just sort of shake your head and smile wryly.

For myself and my friends, we have our own traditions of life abroad. This weekend was the annual Women’s Network Christmas potluck. Last year I started a tradition of embroidering holiday napkins to add a festive touch and everyone gets to take theirs home as a holiday souvenir. I wish I could remember where I got the design. It was one of the many many freebies that I downloaded last year and I’m afraid I can no longer say where it came from. But the message is so true to the spirit of Christmas and I wish it to one and all — no matter which part of the world you live in or what silly things they do with images of Santa or reindeer — Let there be Peace on every corner of our Earth, tonight and throughout the coming year.

Although commercial machine embroidery is well established in Japan, the home version has never really taken off here the way it has in the US and finding supplies localy has sometimes proven to be a challenge. Thread is the stuff of life for an embroiderer and during the past year I’ve tried talking to my local fabric store (but they had no interest in machine embroidery) and ordering from the US (but the shipping nearly doubled the price). Surely Kyoto with its specialized trade stores for every other textile craft imaginable must also have a store for machine embroiderers. The problem was just in finding it.

So when my friend Judith Clancy commented that she was working with Mr. Fuji to develop contacts with kimono embroidering factories for the 2008 Kyoto Textile and Design Tour, I asked her to find out where the factories bought their thread. “Oh they buy from Mr. Fuji” she responded casually. To my slack-jawed surprise, I realized that the Mr. Fuji she had been referring to is the founder of Fujix Thread, the largest thread company in Japan. Without even the proverbial six degrees of separation, I found that one of my own closest friends in Kyoto turned out to have a long-standing friendship with the Fuji family. Not only that, the company’s international headquarters are only a few blocks from my house.

My trip to Fujix Thread was the highlight of life last week. Most companies have about 300 shades of polyester thread, but Fujix, which caters to the exacting demands of the kimono industry, offers an incredible 600. The subtle progression of shades within each hue is both inspiring and overwhelming. The little picture of the color chart shown below hardly does justice to the selection.

I can hardly wait to pick up my first thread order next week. And I’m also looking forward to seeing the itinerary Judith puts together for the Textile and Design Tour next year. It ought to be a fabulous adventure!

So often we in America conceive of the world as a series of bilateral relationships, but life abroad is simply broader. Exploring and appreciating a wider and more complex variety of international relations is one of the small joys of that broader world, and I suppose my Irish-American blood gets a particular trill from encountering the Irish-Japanese community.

Moya Bligh, a good friend from the women artists’ group in my last post, is a printmaker and woodblock artist from Kilkenny, Ireland. She came to Japan some 35 years ago on a Japanese government scholarship to study art and has lived here ever since. Now an art professor at Seika University, Moya recently curated a print exhibition, idir/aida – a celebration of Ireland in Japan at Artislong (life is short), a gallery here on the west side of Kyoto. The show marked the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries and featured five printmakers, three Irish and two Japanese, who had each studied and worked in the other’s country. The works reflected each artist’s interpretation of the cross-cultural influences in their shared experiences.

As delightful as the show has been, it is not an isolated phenomenon. Artists and writers from Ireland and Japan have been finding inspiration in each other’s culture for quite some time. In the late 1800s, Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish writer who became fascinated with Japan, translated and popularized Japanese ghost stories in the west and his books have continued in print for over a century. Contemporary Irish writers have continued the tradition with no lesser degree of fascination.

And the reverse is also true, I have several Japanese friends who regale me with stories of their lives in Dublin as we sit in one of the several Irish pubs that dot the cityscape of old Kyoto.

Facing a new life in a new culture with a new language can be daunting at times, even for the most adventurous. I often hear friends in America complain about immigrants not learning English and I’m certainly aware of Japanese who suspiciously grumble, “Nihon ni nihongo de hanashimasu!” (In Japan, speak in Japanese!) But the truth is, there is such a comfort in speaking your mother tongue in a strange land.

Being a city of considerable size, Kyoto has several foreign language communities — Chinese, Spanish and English to name a few. And I happily play within the latter. Of course, there are a variety of circles and subsets in any community and three of my favorites are “Women’s Network”, a monthly potluck of English-speaking women; “Asian Studies Group”, English-speaking scholars of Asian history, arts and humanities; and “Women Artists’ Association”, a grouping of foreign women artists from a wide range of countries and continents.

The artists’ group (pictured to the right at a recent outing to a Turkish restaurant here in Kyoto) includes potters and painters, calligraphers and printmakers, papermakers and several textile people. Kyoto is, afterall, the textile capital of old Japan and attracts fabric enthusiasts, collectors and artists from around the world. And the beauty of Japanese paper is legendary throughout the world.

Kiyomi Yatsuhashi from Boston, Massachusetts (front left in the photo) specializes in the most beautiful indigo blue fabric dyeing and Deborah Stout, a papermaker from Australia (way small on the right in the back of the photo) makes the most beautiful lamps and wall hangings from her own hand-made paper. As a group, we share information on places to buy art supplies, techniques and inspirations, and create exhibition opportunities for our work.

A recent exhibition by Regina Altherr (second from the left in the group photo above), a potter from Switzerland, shows the fabulous influence Japan can have on an artist’s work. And so it is with each of us, bringing the skills and talents we developed in our home countries into play with the culture and mythos that surrounds our lives in Japan.

Last night I digitized my hanko.

Hanko is a Japanese word for an object more commonly known in the West by its Chinese name, “chop”. Basically its a stone stamp carved with characters, known as kanji, representing the person’s name. Although there are now machine-made hanko available, a first-class hanko is always hand carved and is a very personal thing. Like a master calligrapher, the hanko carver may exaggerate the thickness or thinness of a stroke, elaborately straighten or curve it, or even deliberately deform an ideogram to create an artistic effect. While calligraphers may work with a variety of scripts, a hanko is most often carved in tensho script, a squarish blocky type of character that lends itself to stone carving more easily than the fluid curving lines one sees in brush writing.

Foreigners usually write their names in simple phonetic symbols known as katakana. These are purely sound-based symbols with no “picture-meaning”. But for a birthday many years ago, my daughter-in-law gave me a kanji “spelling” for my name. Selecting kanji is a time-consuming process and my kanji is a gift that I constantly treasure. First a number of optional kanji choices with the desired phonetic are identified and then the picture meaning must be considered and when several kanji are combined the sounds and meanings often change, so that must be considered as well as the visual balance of the strokes in the final comination. There are even fortune-tellers who claim to predict your future based on the number of strokes in the kanji comprising your name and so, that can be another consideration. Reading my kanji from right to left, the sounds are PA-WA-SU for Powers, my family name, and the picture meanings are “green leaf”, “peace and friendship”, and “long life”. When my Japanese friends see my name written, they smile and say, “Oh, that so suits you!” I am afterall, still something of a flower child.

After receiving my kanji I had a first-class hanko made and I’ve used it to sign my art for some 14 or 15 years now. Last night I made my hanko digital. It took me a few hours, but I digitized a scan of my hanko so that I can now stitch it out as a computerized embroidery file. So now that I’m ready to embroider my name on my art, I really must get sewing so that I’ll have artwork to sign.

On Saturdays, I study flowers.

Just as community groups in the west might gather in a church hall, my flowers class rents a room in one of the local temples. There are perhaps 15 of us, but the class time is flexible with people coming and going throughout the afternoon as suits their own schedule. Like most Japanese temples, the grounds include an beautiful garden with a small koi pond that we can see while we work on our arrangements. Ono-sensei, our teacher, has been studying flowers for more than 30 years and her arrangements are simply amazing. I’ve been studying for about 5 months now, my arrangements are decidely UN-amazing, but I’m hoping to do better.



Learning Ikebana is more complicated than just learning to stick flowers in a vase nicely. At my first class, there was so much information about lines and angles and degrees that it felt more like a geometry lesson. Everyone receives a package of flowers and foliage that are generically referred to as “the materials”. And then with whatever materials you’ve received that week, you endeavor to create something pleasing within a particular katachi (a model style or form). Each katachi is defined by dominant lines and angles of placement, which is where the feeling of geometry comes in.


And of course, seasonality. Ikebana is a compound word composed of ikeru (to live) and hana (flowers), that is, “living flowers”. Seasonality is a reflection of the life cycle. The lotus at left are shown in summer and fall arrangements, mirroring the life cycle of the plant. Even the withering leaves have beauty.


Both of these lotus compositions are advanced arangements using nageire (upright vase), far too advanced for a mere beginner such as myself. The forms taught at my level are much simpler and use wide shallow bowls or a small pedestal bowl as shown below. All three of these arrangements show hiraku-katachi (radial form). Despite the use of different materials, the dominant lines are similar. The top and bottom arrangements were done by my classmates, while the middle arrangement is mine (with lots and lots of coaching from Ono-sensei).

There are few things in life that speak so eloquently of luxury and elegance as filling your home with fresh flowers. And it is a treasure indeed to find so lovely a group of women who come together each week just for the love of flowers. It’s the same with my embroidery and sewing friends, so lovely to build social relations around the sharing of something wonderful.

With more than 1600 Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines in Kyoto, it’s no surprise that Kitano is not the only shrine to host a monthly flea market in its garden. Each of the markets has its own character. While Kitanois known as a treasure-hunter’s paradise, Chion-ji is known for contemporary crafts. All of the vendors must have made their wares.

Woodwork, pottery, and cultured pearls comprise just a part of the range of visual treats available to Chion-ji shoppers. There is simply every craft imaginable along with lots of garden vegetables and homemade food, even homemade Japanese bagels.

And of course, there are fiber artists of every persuasion: dyers, weavers, quilters and patch workers. Lots and lots of patchworkers. With so many kimono being turned into doll clothes, western clothes, cell phone cases and mobile fantasies, it’s no wonder that kimono prices are becoming so dear!