Calligraphy town


19th February 2012


Outside some restaurants in Japan you will find paper and a pen. If you arrive at one such restaurant and there's a queue outside, add your name and the number in your party to the list.

But if you're in front of an old sushi shop in Kyoto called Izuju, this is the paper and pen left for you:






There's also an ink stick in case the ink runs out and you have to grind some more.

A letter from the eastern dragons


18th February 2012


Dragons of the East, by birthright and by nature, Rulers of the Four Seas, Kings under the Waves, River Gods and Storm Lords, to the Children of Man, also known as Human Beings and now styling themselves Primate: Greeting.

It has come to our attention that the arrival of another Dragon year has roused interest in all matters dragonish.

In particular, it has been put about that the humans of the West regard our kind as creatures of malevolence while those of the East possess a clearer understanding of our true nature.

It is true that there are those among you who adopt fitting postures of veneration. You name your young after us and adorn your places of worship with our likenesses. This is meet and as it should be.

Nevertheless, not even the humans of the East have always conducted themselves in a manner so becoming.

Consider the matter of the dragon king Zennyo in the year numbered 824 according to one of your calendars. You will recall that the land you now call Japan was troubled by drought and that the emperor ordered two priests to conduct rain-making ceremonies.

The holy man named Kukai prayed for several days but to no avail. Whereupon he discovered that the other priest – his rival, we surmise – had captured all the dragons of the inner and outer seas through magical means, and trapped them in a pitcher.

Only one – Zennyo – had not fallen under the priest’s spell. It was to this dragon that the human Kukai appealed. At his behest, the emperor made offerings to Zennyo. Finding them pleasing, the dragon called down the rains and ended the drought.

This episode is sometimes advanced as proof of the benevolence of dragons and their powers over the weather. We feel the more pertinent point is the unlawful confinement of our kin.

We lay another case before you. Five hundred years before this occurrence, the emperor of the time ordered that a man named Koromo no ko be sacrificed to one of the dragon river gods known as Mizuchi. An embankment built to hold off a flooding river had given way and could not be repaired. This man’s life was offered up that the bank might be restored.

Yet the wretch did throw two gourds into the river and spoke thus: ‘Sink these calabashes that I may know that you are a true god and I shall enter these waves most willingly. But should you fail, I shall know you for a false god and who is fool enough to offer his life to such a one?’

Whereupon there was a great disturbance in the waves as the Mizuchi sought to draw the calabashes down into the river. But an empty gourd is an unsinkable gourd and thus outwitted, the dragon was forced to allow the rebuilding of the bank.

This astounding reluctance to be eaten perplexes us. Is it not an honour to be consumed by beings as august as we?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all dragons are created superior,
that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dinner. That to secure these rights, awe shall be mandated among men, deriving its dread powers from the despair of the quelled.

Yet some of your kind – priests and the like – have made representations to us. Such were their claims: that you do not accept our appetite for humans, whether raw or lightly seared, and that such habits of consumption are cruel.

Cruel! And what, if we may inquire, do you eat?

We ate the priests at first.

But they kept coming, and the warriors too, with their iron. They chained us to rocks, they struck us with swords, they cut off our heads. Yamata no Orochi, a mighty dragon whose length spanned eight hills and eight valleys, was lost in this manner. You regard this as legend, not fact, but we remember.

We remember Orochi and his eight heads, all cut off.

We are not unreasonable; we have considered the matter of human sacrifice from your perspective, taxing as it was to approximate the thinking of an ape. And we have been moved to accept substitutes.

Understand that the unseemly assaults on our kind have in no way wrought this change. As a gesture of magnanimity – the generosity of dragons has long been the marvel of the civilised world – we have hazarded our persons on a human-free diet. We find ourselves partial to water buffaloes, deer and also, fruitcake.

But no more chickens.

We are weary of chicken.

Pay heed and you shall be rewarded. We shall in our munificence shower upon you rain and double rainbows and, perhaps, kittens.

We have observed the digital imagery that you exchange among yourselves and noted the prevalence of juvenile cat videos.

We ourselves profess a certain fondness for domesticated felines. This brings us to another matter. In some depictions of the dragons of the East, there appears to be a ball or pearl near the head.

This is a misunderstanding, due no doubt to the distance between the dragon and the human observer. The spherical object is no pearl but a cat, curled up after hours of play.

As a mark of particular favour then, we shall bestow on you kittens. Do not wake them at all hours to summon the rains nor confound them with calabashes. And – heed this or risk our wrath – see that you do not confine them in pitchers and such small spaces, nor poke them with sharp objects nor deny them food.

We trust that even you would not be so cruel.


Given at our secretariat in Ryugu-jo this first day of the first month of the Year of the Black Water Dragon.

An American visits Japan


11th February 2012


'Kyoto is like dreaming, watching Glee, eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut and being in “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” at the same time.'

More here.

If you're planning a visit, pay attention to the point about cash and ATMs.

Winter lights


20th January 2012


Tuesday marked the 17th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, better known outside Japan as the Kobe earthquake.

But there's a permanent memorial in a park in the Kobe city centre. The names of the quake victims have been inscribed on little black plaques in an underground chamber. When I was there last December, someone had left offerings of flowers and paper cranes.

























I was in Kobe for the annual Luminarie, a light festival held to remind people of the quake that devastated the city. This was the first installation.







































Above the rose window-like centre, a half moon.
















Then onto and under the shining arches.



There were food and souvenir stalls along the way. This little boy had a bowl of soup gyoza but when he saw his father get some noodles, he wanted them too.




It's a wonder that the parents of young children get to eat at all but I have been told that you can do quite well hoovering up whatever the kid leaves behind.







The highlight of the event: an enclosure composed of giant light panels.




























Photography frenzy. And if you wanted everyone in your party to be in the shot, a volunteer photographer was on hand to take the picture.



I found it hard to look away from the lights.




Designs by Italian studio Valerio Festi. The Luminarie is a European tradition dating back to the 16th century and is particularly associated with southern Italy.



More light architecture.





But this time, with a reflecting pool.



Nearby, the obligatory food stalls. This one sold crepes. You could order a crepe with a creme caramel pudding inside.

I'm not sure how I should respond to that.




Grilled tuna on a stick. I don't think you're allowed to order the head though.




Doner kebab world domination proceeding on schedule.




But the event is more than a festival of the flesh. This installation was titled Garden of the Spirits.




Reflection.

Visiting relatives


6th January 2012


In winter, the monkeys of the Jigokudani Yaenkoen nature park get serious about bath time.





Images like this one from the park staff is what draws visitors from all over the world to this mountainous corner of Nagano prefecture.

But when I visited in May last year, there were some monkeys in the hot springs too. Just without the surrounding snow.



Japanese macaques are unusual because most primate species are found in the tropical or sub-tropical belts. For adapting to life so far north of the equator, the macaques have earned the nickname, snow monkeys.

But, as the park staff are keen to tell you, there's more to the macaques than their fondness for hot springs.




A monkey is groomed, whether it likes it or not.




A youngster playing on some ropes near the hot springs bath. I saw many people in the park with the same expression as the one that this visitor has.




There were so many monkeys wandering around that some were overlooked.




But how close really can you get to the macaques?



This close...




This close...












But not this close. The hand belongs to the chief of the park. Another official - I was there on a work trip - told me that the only human the monkeys will approach like this is the chief. 'It's like they know he's the boss,' he said. He sounded a bit envious.




And, unless you're another macaque in the herd, getting this close is probably a little out of line.

Still, the amount of access is remarkable. Especially since they seem happy to ignore you and get on with the business of grooming, bathing and foraging.

While the images of the macaques in the snow have made them famous, if you visit them in other seasons, you'll might see something like this.










Visitor Masako Ito took this shot of a baby monkey seeking shade under a bench.

I think my Kawaii-O-Meter just broke.

Autum dark, autumn light


11th December 2011


When the crowds show up at Kodai-ji on autumn evenings, this is probably what they're hoping to see.





The queue can be long but there are things to see on the way to the temple's ticket office.
































And the wait, I think, is worth it.

































The water was so clear we got two autumn landscapes for the price of one.

















Though this young gentleman was more interested in the lights than in what was being lit up.




I hope he saw the phoenix though.





















And the gold on the hall where the temple's founder, Nene, is enshrined.












If you follow the arrows along the path, they will take you to a bamboo grove...








...then lead you back to the start for one last look.

Tamasaburo V


29th November 2011


More womanly than women themselves - that's how the men who play female roles in kabuki theatre are sometimes described.

But the onnagata - literally, female form - will say that they do not try to be women or even imitate them. They aim to be onnagata.

In 1629, the shogunate banned women from performing in public - ostensibly because of the audience brawling over actresses - so the female roles went first to boys and then to men.

Over the 360-odd years of kabuki history, men came up with an artificial image of women. These stage women walked a certain way, spoke a certain way, danced a certain way. The point was not to be true to real life; the point was to be true to kabuki.

Probably the most famous onnagata alive is Bando Tamasaburo V, known not only for his career in kabuki but also for crossing genres in collaborations with people like Yo-Yo Ma.

Earlier this month, Tamasaburo V was presented with the Kyoto Prize, a 50 million yen award given out each year by the Inamori Foundation, set up by the founder of manufacturing company Kyocera.

As part of a series of events held in conjunction with the award ceremony, Tamasaburo and the other two laureates - both scientists - held lectures, workshops and forums.

Most of the events took at the Kyoto International Conference Centre, where there was also a Tamasaburo photo exhibition. I took a lot of photos of people taking photos of photos.






















In 2008, Tamasaburo appeared with China's Suzhou Kunqu Opera Company, playing the female lead (in photo of photo above) in The Peony Pavilion: a role that he said he spent three years preparing for.





A 2009 photo by Takashi Okamoto of Tamasaburo in Sagi Musume (Heron Maiden). The dancer plays both a tortured heron spirit and a girl in love.





Another notable role: the courtesan Akoya in Dannoura Kabuto Gunki. Photo by Takashi Okamoto.





Make-up is an important part of role creation in kabuki, with actors adding their own individual twists to the "face" of a character.


A few days after the prize presentation was a student forum.

I still remember his hands. For a country where people prefer to use their hands to make things than to talk, Tamasaburo's hands carried on a dialogue all by themselves.




A lot of the photos looked like this: face clear and hands a blur because they wouldn't stop moving.

Here's one sequence:














Dancers are the people who move even when sitting still.