Nihon News Part IV

"Clearly you go to very polite toilets," one of you wrote, "because the guys who have visited the ones I've frequented have much, MUCH more to say than merely recording their visit." This is a valid point, but since I didn't carve suggestive forms into my Ikebana twig, I still think the polite analogy suffices. Besides, Japanese toilets tend to be polite: the worst I've found was "Any Gay man here?" and "le riz ça constipe."

The latter brings me to the topic of food, and here I pick up the loose thread from my last letter, for even in Japanese hotels the day begins with breakfast. Only here it consists of rice, and maybe fish, miso soup, or an egg, which is nourishing enough, but I still have not been able to shake my preference for bread. However, this was a day for Japanese food: the lunch menu included raw pregnant shrimp - shrimp roe is turquoise - and, again, seaweed-in-gelatine, this time deviously served in a wine glass. Seaweed, for me up to now only an annoying impediment to swimming, is one of the most polyvalent constituents of Japanese cooking, used as condiment, salad, edible wrapping, or soup ingredient. Usually, it tastes good; occasionally, it tastes like a mouthful of stagnant harbor water.

Of course, we did more than just eat. We visited a feudal house, the museum of kiriko lanterns (essentially in order to take a group photo), and the Wajima morning market (essentially in order to buy souvenirs). Wajima also being famous for its wooden lacquerware, called urushi, we visited the prefectorial art museum there. This museum focused primarily on traditional crafts and lacquerware, explaining in a video all the steps from tree to tureen, but one room was set apart for sculptures and paintings of contemporary Japanese artists. The styles varied wildly, and so I got into a small argument with Nebraska (from the PII program) on the artistic value of a painting depicting rice fields at sunup. She claimed that the point of art was to "mess with reality," and that this picture was merely the result of someone sitting down and painting what he saw. That irked me doubly, because I liked the picture (which made me want to call it art), and because I felt her definition of art was too restrictive. Is photography not art? Are the renaissance masters undeserving of their title? Is a compulsive liar an artist? And even if her definition should be correct, what if the picture had been painted in the heart of Tokyo? What if the painter had named it "Winepress," or given it some other apparently absurd title? Those are the questions I wish I had thought of then, but instead they came to me later, especially upon reading "Was ist Kunst?" (What is Art?) by Michael Hauskeller, which Stefan lent me. Nebraska would have thought Adorno adorable and Croce a crackpot (I've been reading O. Henry lately) - and with her major being art history, I suspect that's what did or will happen. However, I didn't bring up our disagreement in order to embarrass her, but to show how our differences in opinion came from nothing more reasonable than differences in taste. Thus, when I comment on culture, when I criticize urban planning, and when I complain about seaweed, remember it comes from someone with limited understanding and Western tastes.

On thing Japanese and Westerners enjoy equally (though in different ways) is natural beauty. Accordingly, our last stop was at the rugged coastline of western Noto. Our portal to nature was an omiyage shop which despite bright lights and cleanliness seemed yellowish and oppressive to me. I'm not sure it was intended as a portal for any reason beyond boosting sales, but given the dualist approach the Japanese have to nature - an attitude of reckless domination where nature encroaches on human interests and an attitude of laissez-faire everywhere else - the imagery fits: what the Japanese have separated, man shall not join together.

On the other side of the portal, a path hewn into rock ran down the face of the cliff and turned into a boardwalk which led to a cove, passing a two-tiered waterfall that sprang from the greenery and vanished between the rounded rocks jumbled together on the beach. A large boulder of dark rock dressed in a suit of verdant bushes and guano pinstripes looked out over the turf at the mouth of the cove, and to its right, the combined forces of wind and waves had carved a rugged promontory into an arch, making it the photographic negative of a missing tooth. Adjacent to the arch an oblong cavern led to a passageway upward through the rock which emerged not far from a path stretching from the gift shop portal to the tourist boat landing.

As you can tell from my description, I have exaggerated the Japanese stand toward nature. I also exaggerated the brevity of our stops, for here we were allowed over an hour before boarding the bus for Kanazawa. Furthermore, these are certainly not the only instances of exaggeration of which I am guilty, but it is easier for me to paint in broad strokes what I judge to be characteristic traits rather than worrying about pencilling in the details.

I should add that we were very fortunate with the weather on this trip, for June is the rainy season in that part of Japan, but nearly every time it rained, we were indoors or on the bus. Kanazawa was different: I was soaked more than once, even though I had fashioned a rain poncho out of a 100-yen vinyl bicycle cover and staples. (A nod and a smile to my Mom for the quick-drying seersucker shirts!) With these meteorological conditions it is hardly a surprise I stayed inside and read - books, not toilet stalls.