The bento box was shiny red and black with four rectangular compartments asymmetrically but pleasingly placed. In the Edo-Tokyo museum I found that there are centuries of development in Japan of the specific art of placing asymmetric shelves in an alcove. There are some woodcuts by Hiroshige that prefigure the placement of frames in modern comic strips, even though he died in 1858.
The largest compartment was rice, with a pickled cherry in the middle surrounded by a few black sesame seeds. When Japan was a poor country, this compartment would have been a whole meal: it was called the National Flag Meal. The cherry was brown and interestingly wrinkled on the outside, but deep red and richly flavoured inside, with a large stone. The rice was white, sticky and bland. The compartment reminded me of the famous Zen garden I'd seen at the Ryoanji temple in Kyoto, five small groups of rocks in a rectangle of raked gravel. It was a mysterious and beautiful place. It seemed that there must be a meaning or rule to the placement of the rocks, but after a while I decided I didn't want to reduce its mystery. It seemed to be about everything. The layout led me to contemplate the bare white gravel - and then the empty air above it.
"What's so special about the garden at Ryoanji?"
I asked him...
"The spaces between the rocks", he replied, with
his mouth full of toothpaste.
(Alan Booth, Looking
for the Lost)
My guidebook had said that the only colour in the garden was given by patches of green moss. But in fact the garden was full of colour. Each rock was a different shade, there were colour gradations and veins in the rocks, and the sunlight patches moving across the sand changed its colour in continuous slow ripples. In that garden I realised that the spare Japanese aesthetic can be luxurious rather than abstemious. It heightens your senses. That's why when you can eat anything you like for pleasure rather than hunger, you still might like part of your meal to be a compartment of rice with one cherry.
A grey-robed Buddhist monk with shaven head and very calm face indicates to you to take off your shoes and walk to the next compartment.