From Tokyo I traveled to Kanazawa, a beautiful city in north-western Ishikawa Prefecture in the Hokuriku region of Japan and is bordered by the Sea of Japan to the west. Its castle is renouned as are the grounds, and the seafood market a delight. Kanazawa also has a historic neighborhood of old wood houses, that -- despite being nearly all devoted to tourism -- is lovely. It shows the scale and intimacy of the old city, and, of course, walkable. Museums in Kanazawa are exceptional. The modern art museum had an exhibition in which the museum commissioned contemporary artists to make creations based on Pokémon. The artifacts were stunningly beautiful, in a weird way, and gorgeously executed, from pottery, textiles, glass ware, sculpture and lacquerware, done by some of Japan’s greatest artists. The intricacy of the work was pretty staggering. At first, I resisted going to the exhibition, I mean, Pokémon??? But in the end it elevated Pokémon to, perhaps, the high art that it is. Gave me a whole different idea about Pokémon, for sure. But the exhibition was also an example of the way in which the Japanese translate popular culture into high art in a most unexpected way.
From Kanazawa I traveled to Suzu, where a 6.0 earthquake had just occurred a couple of days earlier. I could discern no damage. I stayed (again) at a ryokan where I had stayed before. Suzu is in the Noto peninsula and must have been at one time an important fishing village. Now sea facing properties are not all inhabited, some clearly abandoned for a number of years, slowly decaying, but they interspersed others whose ocean frontage was filled with well tended vegetable gardens: onions, potatoes, sugar snap peas and green peas, still protected tomatoes just starting, similarly with eggplant, and lots of flowers. The soil was clearly a result of decades and decades of care. So inspiring. The land use is quite different than in the US, of course. In this region, there are many rice paddies, interspersed with houses, scattered about throughout the landscape. I am not sure I would want to live among paddies! Probably lots of mosquitos. The first week in May is the golden week, a week of vacation, but also the week when rice is planted. Fields are flooded the week ahead to soften the soil, then the farmer uses rice plugs. Some have small tractors, especially configured for small fields, with rice plug dispensers, other farmers still do it by hand. In either case the straightness of the rows was impressive, no lasers used here.
The Ryokan, as I have written before in earlier blogs on staying in Japan, is a contemporary building, but built according to tradition. It has a wonderful onsen, one in granite for women, one in lacquer for men, heated by wood. In fact the whole place is heated by wood and there are stacks of firewood everywhere, winters are cold with a lot of snow. The remarkable serenity the owners have achieved, with the draping maples 15 ft high, casting dappled shade at the entrance, the little creek running through the property, and the true beauty of the architecture, dignity of the entrance graced with a large, deep stone basin with a fountain, puts you into a different frame of mind. There is a big platform where you step into the ryokan’s hall on one side, after removing shoes. The hall has windows on one side to a lovely viewing garden. Rooms are on the other, with sliding doors. Some of the space is open to the outside, not heated, so in the winter you move from smaller intimate spaces that are heated, to the corridors leading to the toilets and wash sinks, that are open air. Warm to cold, cold to warm, and then to the onsen where you come out totally warmed up in your kimono, and go to dinner. Food is locally sourced, including from the very large ryokan garden up the dirt road to the end of the little valley, including the fish, the soba, the soy beans used to make the miso and the tofu. Spring is the season of new bamboo growth, and ferns too, so fresh bamboo shoots and fiddle neck ferns with tofu was one of the dishes, quite delicate and delicious. And there were other forest greens I could not place. The experience changes the sense of time, slows the body, mind and calms the senses. It was hard to leave as I have also gotten to know the family, and we are surprisingly close for not spending a lot of time together, nor my knowing Japanese, and their limited English!
From Suzu, I traveled to Niigata province, just north of the Noto peninsula, also on the Sea of Japan, to Joetsu. It is a large city. On the way there, driving on the freeway, one could see aluminum manufacturing anomg other facilities filling the small valleys along the way, just on the coast. The mountains are very steep, their feet in the sea, intersected by short, deep valleys. The freeway and shinkansen infrastructure is astonishing. For the freeway (2 lanes each direction, separated), there were tunnels over 2.5 km long. The tunnels were immaculate, well lit, smooth and well maintained. Very impressive, and one imagines the shinkansen tunnels must be the same. In an open plaine, no doubt a flood plaine, there is Joetsu city, behind it, the mountains are snow covered, part of the Japanese alps, and apparently a big ski and mountain climbing area. In Joetsu, I met Sekihara, a local leader who formed a non-profit to support and advocate for the use of local timber. Apparently after the war, Japan wanted to reforest the country to increase timber production. Cedar was planted throughout in immense plantations, it is everywhere, and has displaced what would have been largely broad leaved forests – cherry, maple, beech, magnolia, bamboo too, and more. Wisteria vines grow wild and smother trees, casting great fragrance in so doing while in bloom, azaleas are native too, as well as camilia.. Sekihara is working to reestablish a forest products industry, but, like in California, many of the distributed sawmills were closed in a (misguided) effort to consolidate the mills into a few very big ones. They failed and have largely closed when Japan decided to then start importing timber from Indonesia and other countries in East Asia as labor costs were much cheaper, for one. This undermined the massive effort that had taken place, and the forests have gone feral.
Sekihara is attempting to introduce thinning, harvesting and processing of the timber for use in furniture and other uses. This is an uphill battle as the timber is no longer considered of high quality, it has knots, for example, and trees may grow in a curved manner at from the bottom due to the weight of snow, then straightening out. Previously, that curved shape was important in the construction of traditional houses, supporting roof framing. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but in the 21st century with steel beams, for example, there is little use for that shape, which inventively was indispensable historically. Sekihara also started a non profit to service the villages – hamlets – in the watershed he is working in. Now, one must understand that the mountains are REALLY steep and the hamlet are just that, a collection of houses and a few surrounding fields. In the summer there is rice in the terraced paddies, alongside intensive vegetable growing. Today, out of a hamlet of 500, there are only about 20 people left, for example, and they are old, and tough, especially the women. The women work and socialize, the men drink – or so I was told. The non proft goes out in the winter when there is easily 10 ft of snow, to bring the old residents food, and to make sure everything is ok. To think when they were young, this was the life, subsistence farming and winters with 10 ft of snow. Wood heat. And before fossil energy, walking up and down the mountain, among villages, between houses. Rough lives. Sekihara has been collecting artifacts from the homes, traditional dishes, baskets, miso making vats and more, as well as agricultural implements. He is storing these in a middle school built in the 60s, and no longer in use due to the dramatic populations decline (a pretty big school). The pieces are amazing, and there are lots of them (they would have been burned otherwise, no one has any use for them). In one room there were the tradition wooden bowl and plate sets, stored in a rectangular box about 2 1/2 ft high by 12 wide with shelves, dozens of boxes. These sets were used for wedding and funerals. Households had several to serve the dozens of guests at these special ceremonies. The utilitarian baskets and miso making vats were beautiful. And, apparently, collections like this are all over Japan. What to do with all the items??? Never will they be made again, but that kind of material culture is hard to store and valorize. So poignant. And the school desks and chairs were stacked up ceiling high, perfectly serviceable and really well made (I loved the small desk chairs. . . ).
Sekihara has been working with the mayor of Joetsu, who is an exceptionally young mayor, to try to develop programs to prioritize the use of local materials and to develop a market for local products. I met with the mayor and his city aids – the head of regional planning, the head of local planning, the head of implementation – and no one spoke Japanese. Fortunately there was a translator, but it was still laborious. The mayor explained that he ran on a door-to-door campaign, not being rich, in which he validated the beauty and resources of Joetsu to people he spoke to. He won and hopes to be mayor for 3 -4 year terms, to put this agenda in place, that of programs to restart local production of local goods based on local resources. This seems to be occurring at small scales all over Japan and it would be interesting to map them to see their distribution and size. The concern about population decline was very explicitly stated. Perhaps such programs will at least help slow down the rural to urban migration, but the life in those mountains must have been very hard, laborious and requiring stamina. Of course, if you had no choice, then that was the life. Its important to realize that most of Japan, in addition, did not have many domestic animals, maybe some chickens, in some parts water buffalo and horses, but this meant farmers relied on night soil and harvesting greens, leaves and pine needles, from the forest for fertilizer. Hugely labor intensive, but indispensable.
After Joetsu, Kyoto, the jewel city of Japan, the one spared from allied bombing, the first capital of the country. I have been here before, including living here 3 months in the Fall about 5 years ago. One thing striking was the lack of Chinese tourists, very few anywhere, according to people I talked to, and the Japanese do not miss them. There are many more westerners than I recall, but perhaps its also the season, approaching early summer. It is a very lovely city, walkable, bikeable, great subway network and buses, lovely scenery with the rivers traversing the city, temples, mountains, and great museums. I adore Kyoto.
I visited with a former colleague who is Dutch, married to a Japanese woman, and who has lived in Japan for many years. He is part of a club of older people who have developed an experiment in the forest just at the city edge. They are working to create forest conditions for the growing of matsutake mushrooms. This involves clearing the forest of the cedar and all other vegetation, scraping the soil clean, planting pine trees. Apparently matsutake likes soil that is not very fertile. I saw several patches in different states of cultivation and age, no mushrooms yet. And as the effort is being carried out by older Japanese who are retired, it is a kind of hobby. I had a nice, damp walk through a pretty dense forest, and apparently the forest remains pretty cool even when the city gets very hot and humid.
Kyoto is gracious, the river, while channeled has a kind of natural feel, lots of ducks and ibis like birds, wide verges with walking/biking paths. It feels calm. There are excellent museums, I visited a couple and the most memorable was the exhibition on Shinsen at the Kyoto National Museum. It was a very extensive exhibition. Shinsen was a 11-12th century monk who espoused the Pure Land approach to Buddhism which involved chanting as a way to enlightenment. He wrote extensively, many original scrolls were on exhibit, as well scrolls about his life. The scrolls were also illustrated to show how he lived and his experiences. What was striking was the use of perspective, and that the monasteries had women and children, in fact Shinsen was married and had children. The buildings, typically Japanese, had screens for the rooms that opened wide to the outside, to extensive gardens all around the buildings, and the orientation of the buildings to views welcoming air flow. And this in a climate that can be quite harsh. A very different relationship with nature.
Kyoto, understandably, attracts visitors from all over, including Japan. The neighorhoods are riddled with little restaurants, shops of all sorts, hair cutters and other beauty services, streets are narrow, no parking, and cars, bikes and pedestrians share the road. Obviously, speeds are slow. The fabric is heterogenous, high rises, old traditional houses with courtyards and vegetation, temple complexes here and there with beautifully tended gardens, trees. When thinking of ‘biophilic’ cities, perhaps this scale is what is needed? In the U.S. we have a notion that big parks are necessary to relieve the suburban sprawl (an odd idea given that most single family homes have yards), most city densities – to my mind – don’t warrant that approach. Rather, I think, what people are craving are places to be with other people, the park is a social sphere too, and perhaps most importantly. With densification, then there is a chance to have more sociable spaces, right now we are isolated in our cars, moving from space to space, spiritually longing, in my estimation, sociability in beautiful spaces. U.S. land use is about individualism and isolation. Not Japan. People still put pots out in front of their houses, apartments and commercial complexes. There seems to be no theft, even though there are bonsai and very nice plants. There seems to be little theft in general, and one feels quite safe in Japan, over all. Like anywhere, there is a lot to discover in Kyoto, knife shops, fabric shops, clothing, arrow makers, tatami makers, hardware, antiques, and places that sell traditional craft based artifacts. Its easy to spend days poking around. A feast for the eyes. There is also the contrast! The mega store of electronics, children’s toys, cameras, household goods, software, computers, sporting goods, food, over 7 or eight floors, brilliantly lit up with fluorescents, almost blinding. Finding the entrance and exit was totally challenging, was I under ground? What floor was the exit? The senses were assailed by the amount of stuff displayed for sale, disorienting, overwhelming, and quite a few shoppers! I had to ask directions to know how to get out.
Reputedly, Kyoto has left 35 homeless people, at one point the city determined to do something about the creeping up numbers. They did. And I saw a very few homeless in Tokyo, though there is a ward where poor people live, described as such. I did not visit on this trip.
The shinkansen to Tokyo goes through a tea growing area, and lots of small scale agriculture, less rice than further south. There is so much more to see in Japan, the regional variations are myriad, though the country is dominated by steep mountains and forests gushing creeks and rivers. The most scarce resource is flat land for agriculture.
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Next I will reflect on some perhaps superficial impressions of Japan, certainly not original with me, and in no particular order.
The Japanese are very discrete, few women expose their upper arms or above the knee. They take care in their dress, looking sharp in the most varied dresses with dressy tops overlaid them, frills at the bottoms of the dresses, patterned socks, sometimes one wonders if they are not on their way to a party, though I think it was just that they are going out. No sweat pants here! No bare midriffs, yet expressive and varied (in fact, I could not figure out where they bought this remarkable array of clothing). Of course, there were those who were very modestly dressed too, especially the much older generation (much older). Old people were mobile if bent over, very active and capable of maneuvering stairs and long corridors. Few overweight people in Japan.
So, on the one hand, both men and women dress in ways that cover their bodies, even in the heat, and it gets hot and humid (they wear hats and deploy umbrellas), and on the other, onsen the public bath (typically fed from a hot spring), but not always. There was one in our hotel (men and women separate) and here you are naked in a hot bath, with complete strangers, generally of your own gender. There is, of course, a whole ritual, washing thoroughly before you get in. So public nudity, but a lot of body modesty. Women still often cover their mouths when they laugh, even young ones. And Japanese, despite slurping their noodles, manage chopstick and fingers in a delicate way, politeness in dress, in eating, in washing, in greeting.
There is a pervasive precision often verging into punctiliousness in transactions, whether its buying a grocery item, or sending a package at the post office. The client is shown the cost (the use of calculators to display the charge to the client is common), then there is a line-by-line pointing out of each item (not at the grocery store, but the post office, or a clothing store), to ensure there is agreement. Then one pays, and the handling of money is also specific, you pay with the face of the bill facing the clerk, and if you have bills for the change, they hold them in a particular way between the fingers, to count them back. The way trains are sent off and greeted is notorious for this type of specific patterned precision, every departure has a set of procedures to ensure the driver is paying attention, that the conductors and service people are present and ready. At the airport, the ground crew lines up and waves goodbye to the plane they just serviced. Taxi drivers at red lights put their taxi into park and pull the hand brake. Subway drivers and the quay staff have rituals for each approaching and departing subway. These types of procedures are pervasive. Not only do they make sure there is consensus on the transaction, for example, but noticing, being present in the moment, and safety are paramount. Hotel rooms have flashlights or battery lanterns, there are fire extinguishers clearly visible in many places. There is an attention to detail, to routinized but purposeful procedure that is impressive. Everyone is obliged to go through these processes, rich, poor, everyone. It levels the playing field.
The precision applies to construction as well. Joints are fitted, windows are well installed and do not leak, surfaces are carefully finished, switch plates are level, modern sliding doors are smooth in their action. There is attention to detail and beauty, as well as functionality. Workers, one must think, are trained in their specialties. This probably means a lot of bureaucracy, permits, certificates and more, but the outcome is a testament to the system in place. I suspect one can’t just put out a shingle as a contractor, take a test for ones’ license, and just assume the responsibility.
The size and diversity of small vehicles, utility vans, passenger cars, is vast. We see none of them in the US. yet they are compact, well designed, functional and offer plenty of room. In contrast, the cars in the U.S. are sloppy in their design, offer a lot of space in a crude way. They are the outcome of profligacy and wasteful approaches to solutions. And all U.S. car manufacturers have to offer is large, bulky, over powered and largely ugly vehicles. You have to wonder, what is going on? Well, we know, those vehicles are hugely more profitable.
I learned too, that one of the reasons neighborhoods are so clean is that there are neighborhood organizations that one has to participate in, these are responsible for making sure trash is covered with a net, or protected from the crows, the proper recycling has occurred, and that things are tidy. The responsibility rotates among the residents. There are also regular, and required, neighborhood cleaning days during the year. Residents weed, make sure there is no trash and so forth, while at the same time, regularly sweeping in front of their own houses. No surprise, then, that things are clean. How long this can endure is a question, will the youth be willing to carry on the tradition? Do people experience it as oppressive and a burden. Probably to some extent, but then, what are the alternatives?
I also learned that due to the rural to urban shift and the decline in population in villages, there has been land use reform, consolidating villages and town into larger urban agglomerations. This means the urban boundary all of a sudden becomes huge. The question is how that has affected land planning, one which I have no insight into, except to say many urbanized areas seem quite sprawling. New houses are being built. While apartments are also being built, they are, of course, small, houses seem large, in the order of 2,000 + sq feet. Traditional farm-houses I saw, are very big, often 2 stories.
At the same time, this is a country where the population is in decline. People are not having children, despite subsidies. Women don’t want to marry. There is no economic growth, there is little poverty. There is little direction in the country either. It seems like it moves along, continuing to build infrastructure to keep people employed – continuing to pour lots of concrete for bridges, tunnels and other things. One of my friends, a professor who had taught in the US and recently moved to Japan and obtained a teaching job, said of his students they were smart, diligent, but had no particular ambition. They did not strive to be inventive, to find creative solutions to problems. Is that bad? Is the striving to be ‘creative’ a U.S. individualist thing, based in our competitive society (that is far from a level playing field no matter how creative you are).
The transition to renewables is slow, few electric cars, the continued use of coal for power plants, the talk of reopening now closed nuclear power plants and extending their life. While there are solar installations around, ground mount, on scrapped hillsides and some wind installations, there seems to be little urgency though a colleague did remind me that after Fukushima, the Japanese went into a state of emergency and electricity use plummeted. . . for a time. It would be worth understanding how that occurred and the consequences. He seem to think that meant the country could use considerably less electricity. I do not know, however, if that affected industrial production.
There is an expressed concern about the decline of Japanese agriculture, and I learned of an agricultural high school in Kyoto. For students who do not wish the more academic track for high school, which also requires, by and large, prep classes for the tests that are expensive. However, there are other tracks, including an agricultural training. My friends’ son will likely go there and so, perhaps, there may be a growing new generation of farmers. The difference with the US, is that there is land access here, a bit complex with the older generations, but it does exist with the rural to urban migration and the abandonment of fields. I am convinced that if in the US it were possible to get land access, there would be serious interest in a new generation of farmers, particularly if there was ag subsidy reform and it were possible to farm smaller acreages and have a distribution network. Ag in the US has been totally captured by big interests and corporate interests whose business model is entirely about making money, not producing food. Suicide rates are high among US farmers. . .
Of course, the obvious question is related to the country’s relative homogeneity, people have grown up here, there is little immigration, little heterogeneity. The ‘other’ is limited. The country had a brief foray into imperialism, but did not import slaves, or continue to colonize other countries. Indeed, until the late 19th century, the country was relatively closed, and food self sufficient. How can Japan accommodate people with different morays, values, ways of life and maintain its discipline and identify, its relative equality? What are the lessons to be learned for the west that can apply to our deeply individualistic and capitalist cultures that might lead to greater social solidarity and sense of responsibility to that society? Japanese pay taxes, they do not resent the state. And the state is very present. Things work, places are clean, people take care. What does it take to achieve those values? Must a society be relatively homogenous? There is certainly a need to cultivate a sense that the whole is greater than its individual parts; that me, as an individual, cannot truly succeed without the rest of society. People in the US pretend that is not the case. It seems, that at one time, Unitedstatesans (I can’t use the word American as it covers Canada, Mexico and some of Central America!), had a bit more national solidarity, that there was less trash, more politeness, more civicness. Libertarianism and the unleashing of capital has deeply eroded those traditions. Worrying.