Chamberlain's Japanese Things: obsolete beyond saving

Basil hall Chamberlain was a scholar employed by the Japanese government. After arriving in Japan in 1873, he first taught at the Imperial Naval School in Tokyo, and then was professor at Tokyo University. Chamberlain was a giant among Westerners in the Japan of his period, and helped many others, such as Lafcadio Hearn. His achievements include the first publication of a translation of the Kojiki, studies of the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages, and as co-writer with W. B. Mason the 1891 edition of “A Handbook for Travellers in Japan.” 

But Chamberlain is perhaps best remembered for his informal and popular one-volume encyclopedia “Japanese Things,” which first appeared in 1890 and which he revised several times thereafter. I have the 20th Tuttle reprint from 1994, and that was not the last one. But wait… what value has an encyclopedia from 1890 in 2023? I have been browsing through my old copy and to my regret the answer must be: none, it is totally obsolete.

The only thing you can get out of it is how the late 19th c. Westerners looked at Japan. Not surprisingly, their views are mostly very Europe-centered. Japanese literature "lacks genius," according to Chamberlain (he obviously had not read “Genji Monogatari”), and as the Japanese were only strong in small things, "they were weak in architecture." Well, what about Horyuji?

This a book where you may go for some quaint, superseded ideas, how Europeans in 1890 thought about certain aspects of Japan, but not for real information. When you need to know more about the form of the Japanese government, about literature and history, about Buddhism or festivals, of course only a modern encyclopedia will be of use. Even Wikipedia, despite its many flaws and the frequent blunders in articles about Japanese subjects, is a better resource. A reprint of this book is not necessary!

Bushido is NOT the Soul of Japan - a critique of Nitobe Inazo

Nitobe Inazo (1862 – 1933) had a very impressive career as an educator (Sapporo University, Kyoto University, Tokyo University) and after that as a diplomat/politician (Japanese colonial government in Taiwan, League of Nations, House of Peers). He had studied for 3 years in the U.S. and was married to the American Mary Elkinton. But his fame today seems to rest mainly on a small book he wrote in 1900, "Bushido, The Soul of Japan," in which (as a Japanese Christian) he tried present a unifying, Japanese way of thought that could vie with Western philosophical and religious ideas. In writing this booklet, Nitobe was strongly influenced by Western ideas about chivalry (which never had a place in Japan) and the result is more fiction and fantasy than fact. 

[Nitobe and his wife Mary]

Bushido is a modern invention (by Nitobe and others in the 1890s) – even the term ‘Bushido’ was not generally used before modern times, and such a code – or even something resembling it – was never recorded in the house codes of the various feudal domains in the Edo period.

Bushido is popular among some Americans and Europeans, at least when one looks at the large number of books published in English on the subject, but the point is that Bushido is not a mainstream Japanese ideology and definitely not the ideology of the warrior caste (‘samurai’) in the past.

In the Edo period, the dominating philosophy of the samurai class (who were not warriors anymore due to the long peace, but had turned into nonviolent bureaucrats / administrators) was not a non-existent Bushido, but Neo- Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism was a rational, humanistic philosophy centering on filial piety. Other values, such as frugality, loyalty, discipline and trust, were also important (the seven virtues Nitobe mentions as typical of Bushido, are in fact Confucian: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor and loyalty). 

According to original Confucianism, the first duty of each person was towards the parents – that was the meaning of filial piety (in China, where Confucianism originated, the family was in fact more important than the state). Therefore it was one’s duty to preserve one’s life (the body one had received from the parents) and live to a ripe old age – self-immolation, including seppuku, was seen as a great evil. Bushido in fact turns the real philosophy of the samurai on its head. If asked what his personal convictions were, not a single samurai would have told you, “Well, Bushido, of course.” Bushido was pertinently not the ‘religion of the samurai.’

In the chaotic Warring States period in Japan, from the late 15th to the end of the 16th c., when many small states fought with each other for dominance under fierce warlords, personal loyalty between leader and warrior had been important – not a little bit of loyalty, but an absolute and totalitarian form of submission, as the times demanded. Death was seen as the ultimate demonstration of that loyalty, but the vassal received powerful protection and status in return.

In the 17th century, when the long Tokugawa peace started (one of the longest periods of peace in world history), this personal loyalty changed into a rather more general loyalty to one’s domain. There were a few exceptions – for example, a primitive thinker as Yamamoto Tsunetomo with his Hagakure and his philosophy of reckless death – but these were rare and heterodox instances – there was nothing mainstream about the ideas expressed in the Hagakure. The philosophy of death of the Hagakure was in fact unknown in its own time and deeply buried in forgetfulness, until it was unearthed in the early 20th century. And we all know to what terrible excesses the Bushido invented by Nitobe and others has led in the various aggressive wars Japan fought in the first half of the twentieth century, by forging an unholy link between the few Edo period ‘philosophers of reckless death’ with extreme nationalism.

So what about the “Forty-seven Ronin” and other famous samurai stories? Were these not very popular in the Edo period? Yes, but not among samurai. They were popular thanks to the Joruri (puppet theater) and Kabuki, two theatrical forms of the common people (not of the samurai, who had their Noh theater, in which we of course do not find anything resembling the Forty-seven Ronin story). Now Bushido was of course also not the ideology of the common man in the 18th century. Neither was he Confucian. But he liked a good story, and that is what these two types of theater offered: a tale of revenge ending in a battle, murder and mass suicide. Gruesome, but totally unconnected to daily life, as all good stories should be.

Read more about The Ako Incident and the Forty-Seven Loyal Retainers (Chushingura) at: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ako-incident-and-forty-seven-loyal.html 

 

 

Legends of Tono by Yanagita Kunio (review)

It is almost 100 years ago that Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) wrote his famous "Legends of Tono" (Tono Monogatari) and to celebrate this the 1975 translation by Ronald A. Morse has now been republished in a beautiful expanded version. It is an excellent translation that captures the terseness and realism of the original. In addition, there are several introductions: a new one by the translator, and previous ones by him and Richard Dorson about the author, the book and its significance. There is also an extensive new bibliography and the text has been enhanced with some well-chosen photographs.

[Yanagita Kunio]

Yanagita Kunio was one of those privileged persons who married a well-to-do partner and could spend most of his life dabbling in his hobbies: literature and (increasingly as a real vocation) folklore studies. The early (1910) Legends of Tono stands on the borderline of these two activities: it is excellent literature but also a precious record of peasant life in the rural Tono area.

I would not in the first place call it legends, though - as Dorson says in his introduction, many of the 119 short pieces are rather "memorates," i.e. "remarkable and extraordinary experiences told in the first person." Although two fairy tales have been included as well, many of the records are not even stories, but flimsy pieces of things heard or seen. That makes the book all the more interesting as a real account of the world of Tono - both things seen and unseen... much space is taken up by the fear for the supernatural.

[Tono Furusato-mura]

We find the mountain god and deities who guard the home, such as oshira-sama; goblin's like kappa and tengu; weird behavior by monkeys and wolves; cases of kamikakushi, strange disappearances of people; and the superstition that whoever gets rich, the choja, must have had supernatural assistance. But there is also a story of a son who murdered his mother, a real and shocking happening.

We also can see Yanagita's fascination with mountain folk religion start in this book. The "memorates" were told to Yanagita by Sakai Kizen, a young native of Tono whom he met in Tokyo. Subsequently, Yanagita also visited the area, riding on horseback through the villages.

[Kappa in a scarf - statue in Tono]

Countless memorates like the above must have existed, but they have been wiped out with the brains that contained them. Thanks to the record Yanagita Kunio so carefully took only those about this small northern group of villages and market town of Tono have survived. It is no surprise that Legends of Tono is by far the most popular among the hundreds of scholarly books Yanagita wrote. The town of Tono now lives off these legends - it has based its tourist industry on them.

Branding Japanese Food: From Meibutsu to Washoku (review)

After Cwiertka's impressive Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, “Branding Japanese Food” is somewhat of a let-down. Katarzyna Cwiertka and co-author Miho Yasuhara have an ideological ax to grind, and in this book they do little else but grind their axes, chopping away at the rather innocent concept of “washoku.”

Now in my view it was an important milestone when Japanese cuisine was in 2013 added by UNESCO to their “Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” In that listing Japanese food was described as “Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese, notably for the celebration of New Year.” There is a longer definition which says something about “the form of the daily meals at home of the Japanese (consisting of rice, soup, side dishes and pickled vegetables), eating habits at annual events, celebrations and ceremonial occasions that strengthen the bonds between people in local communities (such as o-sechi dishes at New Year, or the joint mashing of rice cakes) and local specialties.” (read the full definition at the UNESCO website: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/washoku-traditional-dietary-cultures-of-the-japanese-notably-for-the-celebration-of-new-year-00869)

I hoped that this registration and the positive news it generated would promote interest in Japanese food, and also en passant help that wonderful beverage, Japanese sake, spread further around the world (and I think it indeed did so, as it enhanced the soft power of Japanese culture). The Japanese government undoubtedly also hoped it would give the Japanese more pride in their own food culture, which is under siege from fast food and changes in society which mean people have less leisure to prepare this time-and-labor consuming cuisine.

Now we come to the present book. Rice is central to washoku, but the authors argue that for most of the Japanese population, white rice was only for a few decades in the modern period a real staple food (it was too expensive, so other grains, tubers and beans were added to brown rice). They also maintain that most meals do not consist of the holy washoku set of “one soup and three side dishes” (plus rice and pickles), as most people through history ate only one side dish or none at all. I don’t see the problem the authors have here: rice was sacred in Japanese culture, so whether it was a daily dish for everybody or not, is irrelevant: eating rice was the ideal (and the same is mutatis mutandis true for “one soup, three side dishes”).

Another problem is that the authors don’t understand that advertising and promotion is something different from academic work. They look at the promotion of local specialties (meibutsu) and souvenirs (omiyage) in Japan in the past and see a parallel with the promotion of washoku, for these specialties were often linked to historical persons or origins which were not always historically proven. Perhaps they were not – product promotion is after all different from historical research.

Then the authors are irritated by the term “washoku”. This term - complain the authors - was very little used until it was picked up by the committee preparing the UNESCO application. And although the definition of Japanese food in the application is broader, Cwiertka and Yasuhara maintain that in fact it was in the first place the elite Kaiseki “haute cuisine” which was registered. Again, so what? Kaiseki is the apex of Japanese food, and its ideology has pervaded Japanese culture. We are talking about “branding” here, not about scientific definitions. Registering “Kaiseki” would have been too narrow, and the advantage of calling Japanese food “washoku” was exactly that it was a little used and therefore open term. On top of that, it is a word easy to pronounce and remember also for non-Japanese – that is exactly what you want when you are branding something!

Finally, the authors blame their colleagues, Japanese food scholars, including the great food historian Isao Kumakura, for not standing up against these "problems." As argued above, I don't really see these concerns (or they are too small to get excited about), and I am glad that these Japanese scholars looked over the walls of their classrooms at the greater good: the effective promotion and branding of Japanese food.

See also this interesting review by professor Eric Rath: https://networks.h-net.org/node/20904/reviews/6128874/rath-cwiertka-and-yasuhara-branding-japanese-food-meibutsu-washoku

Orienting Arthur Waley: Japonism, Orientalism, and the Creation of Japanese Literature in English, by John W. de Gruchy

Orienting Arthur Waley: Japonism, Orientalism, and the Creation of Japanese Literature in English, by John W. de Gruchy (review)

Japanese culture was an important part of the modernist movement in the arts and literature that took place in Europe from the late 19th c to the early 20th c. Japanese arts exerted a strong influence on impressionism, imagism, and on poets as Yeats and Pound. Less well-known is the crucial role played by English translator Arthur Waley (1889-1966), who introduced Japanese and Chinese literature to a wide public. Waley wrote nearly forty books and more than 130 articles. Of course, not all of these were about Japan - Waley's first translation was "A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems" (1918) and, from the mid-1930s when Japan invaded China, Waley stopped translating Japanese literature but focused on China.

[Arthur Waley by Rachel (Ray) Strachey]

In this study, John de Gruchy examines the historical and cultural circumstances surrounding Waley's translations from the Japanese. He "orients" Waley as a member of an elite Anglo-Jewish family; a top graduate of Rugby and Cambridge; and a younger member of the Bloomsbury group. He also locates Waley's translations within the political context of the japonism movement, British imperialism, and the development of Japanese studies in England.

De Gruchy looks in detail at three major translations Waley made from the Japanese: (1) "Japanese Poetry: The Uta" (1919); (2) "No Plays of Japan" (1921); and (3) "The Tale of Genji", in six volumes, (1925-1933). These three works mirror the development of Japanese studies in Europe. First came the struggle with the language, when dictionaries and grammars had to be compiled - this is reflected in "Japanese Poetry", which in contrast to Waley's beautiful translations from Chinese poetry made around the same time, gives only literal translations, with extensive grammatical notes - in other words, this small volume is not a literary translation, but a textbook which teaches how to read classical Japanese poetry.

It is a big step to the "No Plays of Japan", which presents us with a beautiful literary translation, although also this book is a scholarly text with a historical introduction and bibliographies of sources. Waley truly deserves the honor to have unearthed the important Japanese dramatist and critic Zeami.

The situation changes completely in "The Tale of Genji", which abandons the scholarly apparatus and presents itself as a modern English novel - it is the best and most important translation Waley ever made, with an unforgettable hero, and was very influential as English literature - and it is still eminently readable, although we now have three more full translations of the Genji. There were even English critics in Waley's time who (falsely) believed he had taken major liberties with the text, for they couldn't imagine a Japanese novel from around the year 1,000 could be that good... With his translation of "The Tale of Genji" Waley challenged contemporary European notions of cultural supremacy.

About Waley's personal life almost nothing is known (there are no diaries or letters) - he had a lifelong relationship with English ballet dancer and dance critic Beryl de Zoete, whom he met in 1918, but they never married; one month before his death, when he was already mortally ill, Waley married Alison Grant Robertson. Although he had many friends and traveled every year on the European continent, Waley was something of a "hermit scholar." De Gruchy speculates that Waley was a closeted homosexual who found in Japanese No plays and in the Genji "an aesthetic outlet for a suppressed and inhibited sexuality," but such connections - if they exist - are indeed very subtle.

Waley was different from modern scholars in the sense that he avoided academic posts (he had a connection with the British Museum for about 16 years, but for the rest he lived from his translations) and also that he never visited China or Japan - or even felt inclined to do so.

This is a fascinating study in which De Gruchy presents Waley's translations, especially the Genji, which strongly appealed to Western nostalgia for an aesthetic golden age, as an important part of English literature and culture in the years between both world wars.

I am only left with one question: when do we get a book about Waley's translations from the Chinese?

See my introduction to the Tale of Genji: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2020/04/murasaki-shikibu-and-tale-of-genji.html. 

The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture by Orlando Figes

The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture by Orlando Figes



An absorbing chronicle of the genesis of a shared European culture in the course of the 19th century, showing how the arts (painting, music, literature) became a unifying force between the nations.

Figes has constructed his large and detailed book around three central personalities of the age: the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), who was a true cosmopolitan and whose work (although eclipsed by overblown attention to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) is still very much worth reading; Louis Viardot (1800–1883), a French scholar of Spanish art, who was not only an art expert and collector, but also writer of art books and travel guides, a literary translator, and a director of opera; and the famous singer Pauline Viardot (1821–1910), who stemmed from an artistic family and became the wife of the much older Louis; she shone in works by Meyerbeer and Gluck, but was also an important teacher and pedagogue, a composer, and the organizer of a musical salon where the greats of the 19th c. rubbed shoulders.

Turgenev was in love with Pauline from the first time he saw her, and for decades he traveled in her wake through Germany and France, himself never marrying, living next door or later even in the same house as the Viardots, going from romantic involvement (he may have been the father of Pauline's son) to more quiet friendship, a relationship ignored or even condoned by her husband Louis - in fact, Ivan Turgenev and Louis Viardot were good friends who liked to hunt together. It is the most famous ménage à trois in history!

The three of them seem to have known everyone of cultural importance in 19th c. Europe (from Schumann and Brahms to Wagner, from Dickens to Henry James).

Some of the important changes described in the book are:
- the rise of mass tourism thanks to the development of the railways since the 1840s; guidebooks were written and guided tours to Europe's cultural monuments became popular.
- not only tourists, also writers and artists, books and paintings, operas and orchestras traveled easily across the continent.
- the cosmopolitan atmosphere led to the establishment of one "canon" across Europe, in the fields of music, of paintings and of literature.
- a canon of light music was also formed across Europe - Offenbach was everywhere popular, as was Johann Strauss II.
- photography and other reproduction techniques brought famous art works into everyone's reach.

The first shock to this cosmopolitan system was dealt by the war between France and Germany of 1870; the death blow came with the "Great European War" in 1914. In the last 50 years or so a second cosmopolitan Europe has appeared, but that, too, is again under siege...

Turgenev is a truly great writer of stories like "First Love" and "Spring Torrents," and novels like "Fathers and Sons." Much of his work is not in print at present, but can be enjoyed freely at Project Gutenberg and Archive.org.

See the overview of his stories on my website:

Turgenev (1): Early Stories

Turgenev (2): Lyrical Stories

Turgenev (3): Late Stories

(Some music by Pauline Viardot can be found on Youtube and books by Louis Viardot are available on Archive.org)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars at Goodreads.

"Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" by Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) had one life-long obsession: the quest for the odd, the exotic and the monstrous. Born in Greece from an Irish father serving in the British military and a Greek mother, his first name recalled Lefkada, the island of his birth. At age two he was brought to Ireland and discarded by both parents whose marriage soon broke up - he would never meet them again. Hearn was brought up with Christian severity by a wealthy great-aunt who mostly sent him away to boarding schools - also one in France, which gave Hearn his excellent command of that language; interestingly, he was a classmate of Guy de Maupassant, and maintained a life-long interested in French literature. In a fight at school in the U.K., Hearn lost the sight in one eye and this made him look rather grotesque: he had to go through life with one blind eye and one bulging, staring eye and was very myopic. He was also painfully introverted. The strictly religious upbringing gave him a strong dislike of organized religion and later in life Hearn professed himself as a pagan, harking back to both his Greek heritage and beliefs he encountered in Japan.

[Lafcadio Hearn]

After Hearn's great-aunt was swindled out of her money, Hearn had to start fending for himself, and at age 19 he crossed over to the United States to seek his fortune in the New World, where he ended up in Cincinnati. After working as a proof reader, he started doing journalistic work, finally becoming a reporter for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, achieving local fame for his lurid accounts of murders and other sensational crimes. At this time, already, Hearn was drawn to anecdote and exoticism. A relationship with an African-American woman, illegal at the time, led to his dismissal as editorial writer and, enticed by the exotic South, in 1877 Hearn moved to New Orleans, where during the next ten years he wrote for several papers, such as the Times-Democrat. His main interests were the Creole population and its culture, including its cuisine – Hearn even wrote a Creole cookbook. He wrote odd fantasies and arabesques for the paper and also contributed articles and sketches to national magazines, such as Harper's and Scribner's; in addition to publishing his first creative works: the novella Chita (about a tsunami that destroys an island in the Gulf of Mexico, sweeping everybody away, the only survivor a child clinging to the dead body of its mother), Stray Leaves from Strange Literature, a retelling of stories from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Buddhist legend, etc., as well as translations from the lushly decadent French author Théophile Gautier.

Hearn loved the dilapidated streets and crumbling wooden houses of the Creole town, the vestiges of French and Spanish culture, the ancestor worship and the voodoo ceremonies. But the South was modernizing, too, having recovered from the Civil War, as was symbolized by the World Fair of 1884 held in the city. Incidentally, the World Fair also became Hearn's first deeper acquaintance with Japan - he dedicated several articles to the Japanese pavilion and the fine workmanship of the crafts on display and befriended Hattori Ichizo, who was in charge of the Educational Exhibit. But all the newfangled electric lights brought on by the Fair meant that the Creole City was losing its charm and in 1887 Hearn left for more exotic climes. He was sent by Harper's as a correspondent to the West Indies and lived for two years in St. Pierre on Martinique, which led to two books about these exotic islands, one a travelogue and the other the novel Youma.

Then in 1890 Hearn had the chance to travel to Japan to write a series of articles, but once there, he liked the country so much that with the help of Basil Hall Chamberlain, the well-known English Professor at Tokyo Imperial University with whom Hearn had been corresponding, he stayed on and started working in various teaching jobs. His first teaching job was in Matsue, a town with an old history, rich in legends and folklore, in Western Japan on the Japan Sea coast – a place exactly after Hearn's heart. During his 15-month stay in Matsue, he married Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a local samurai. Later, he became a naturalized Japanese with the name Koizumi Yakumo. The stay in then still heavily traditional Matsue was formative: Hearn developed into the collector of miscellany, the transcriber of local lore, countless bits of information from the old Japan that was fast being discarded by the Japanese themselves. He wrote about Buddhist festivals, fireflies, the Japanese smile, women's hair, any traditional subject that intrigued him.

[Hearn and his wife, Koizumi Setsu]

After a further teaching job in Kumamoto (a matter-of-fact modernizing city Hearn was not so fond of) and a stint as journalist in Kobe, in 1896 Hearn could move to Tokyo where he received a prestigious teaching position at Tokyo University (thanks again to the help from his friends). Hearn, an extremely hard worker who had ruined his health with his frenetic journalistic jobs and fits of extreme poverty in the U.S., died in 1904 of heart failure, aged only 54 years.

Hearn's first book about Japan, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, was published in 1894 and until his death, every year a new book would follow, including the famous Kwaidan (1903). In these books, Hearn concentrated on folklore, ghost stories, insects, quaint things and, of course, graves. Hearn became known to the world by his writings about Japan, and is more famous in Japan than in the West, where critics accuse him of treating his adopted country in an exotic way. True, Hearn was not a great original author, he was a re-teller, an interpreter of other cultures for a Western public. But his hunting for strange pieces of literature from the whole world reminds me of Borges; while his writings, mostly short, diverse, about any topic that happened to strike his fancy, are like a superior blog.

Hearn has always been honored in Japan because of his reverence for the Japanese tradition, for which he even gave up his own culture, although much of that tradition was in the process of being discarded by the Japanese themselves. In contrast to other foreigners in Japan at that time, he was not arrogant and did not look down on the Japanese - on the contrary, he disliked the Western community and evaded it as much as possible. Hearn lived in his own imagination and his many books provide fascinating vignettes about old customs and quaint lore, about the odd, the exotic and the monstrous - subjects Hearn sought after for his whole life. But as the selections below show, in Japan Hearn also found happiness. They are not only interesting as glimpses of Japanese culture, but also as Hearn's visions of the bizarre.

My favorite book by Hearn is Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, originally published in two volumes in 1894, because Hearn's observations about Japan, just after his arrival in both Yokohama and Matsue, are the freshest. Take for example "My first Day in the Orient". Hearn had long been in love with Japanese culture before he arrived in Yokohama on April 4, 1890, and here he describes his first impressions of the country during a ride by kuruma (rickshaw) out of the European quarter of Yokohama into the Japanese town. Also today's reader can still experience that "first charm of Japan, intangible and volatile as a perfume."

In "The Chief City of the Province of the Gods" Hearn describes his arrival in Matsue, the capital of remote Shimane Prefecture. Hearn received a position as teacher English and arrived there on August 30, 1890. This essay gives his first impressions of the city he loved most in Japan. Other impressive essays are for example "In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts," "In a Japanese Garden" (in which Hearn describes the garden of a samurai house he rented in Matsue, now open to the public as "Lafcadio Hearn's Residence" together with a neighboring "Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum"), the strange "Of Women's Hair" and "From Hoki to Oki" about his visit to the Oki Islands.

In the pages of this book are the customs, the superstitions, the charming scenery, the revelations of Japanese character, and all the other elements that Lafcadio Hearn found so bewitching. Here, for example, are essays on such subjects as the Japanese garden, the household shrine, the festivals, and the bewildering Japanese smile—all aspects of Japanese life that have endured in spite of the changes that have taken place during the modernization of Japan. The Japanese character and the Japanese tradition are still fundamentally the same as Hearn found them to be, and for this reason, his writing is still extremely revealing to modern readers.

Hearn's work is in the public domain. Below is a list of his books about Japanese culture, starting with "Glimpses:"

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan I, 1894

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan II, 1894
Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan, 1895, Hearn's second Japan book; especially the sketch "The Dream of a Summer Day" is beautiful.
Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, 1896; I like "At a Railway Station" in this third volume.

Gleanings in Buddha-Fields: Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East, 1897.

Exotics and Retrospectives, 1898 - here "Fuji-no-Yama" is very good, as well as "The Literature of the Dead".

In Ghostly Japan, 1899 - I like "Fragment".

Shadowings, 1900 - excellent pieces are "The reconciliation," "Kimiko" and "Semi".

A Japanese Miscalleny, 1901 - great stories are "Of a Promise Broken" and "The Story of Kogi the Priest"; a superior essay is "Dragonflies."

Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, 1903.
Kwaidan, 1903, is of course very famous, also thanks to the film by Kobayashi Masaki from 1965; I prefer "The Story of Mimi-nashi Hoichi".
And Hearn's final book is the posthumously published The Romance of the Milky Way, 1905, in which "A Letter from Japan" is of particular interest.

The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan by Adam Clulow

The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan by Adam Clulow

(Book review)

It is often thought that the Europeans in the 17th c. were so superior with their naval power that by using violence they could set the whole world to their hand and impose their will around the globe. This may have been true of, for example, South America in the century before that, but the European experience in Asia was dramatically different. In Asia the Europeans found old and well-established cultures (India, S.E. Asia, China, Japan) which had their own legal systems and ways of doing things.

[Dutch trade-post Dejima in Nagasaki]

This book focuses on the story of the Dutch East Asia Company (VOC, a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state) and its relationship with the Tokugawa shogunate. Over time, there were various clashes over diplomacy, sovereignty and violence - the Dutch attempts to use violence in waters ruled by Japan were systematically blocked. The author focuses on a handful of flashpoints where both came into conflict. In each such encounter, the Dutch had to retreat, abandon their claims and remake themselves - from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from defenders of colonial sovereignty to loyal subjects of the shogun. The Dutch were entirely encapsulated into the Japanese legal system and ended up as formal subordinates of the Tokugawa state. They had to assume an inferior position in the feudal hierarchy of Japan and were forced to behave according to Japanese laws and rules (the most normal thing of the world, we would say today, but in the colonial discourse this was seen differently).

There is however one black page in Dutch history in Japan where the VOC is somewhat exculpated by Clulow's revisionist (and undoubtedly correct) vision: the 1637 Shimabara Rebellion, when the protestant Dutch sent a ship to use its firepower to batter the walls of a sea-side castle where 40,000 Christian (catholic) rebels were desperately defending themselves from government troops (the castle fell after the Dutch had left - their canons were not very effective, apparently- , after which the rebels were exterminated by the shogunate). This assistance is often presented as an act of base mercantile duplicity ("the Dutch just wanted to trade, no matter at what moral cost"), but in Clulow's new perspective this act now rather appears as the fulfillment of their oath as subordinates of the shogun (as a sort of "Dutch samurai"). In other words: in the Japanese system of which they had been forced to become part, they simply could not refuse.

A fascinating book, thanks to its new and extremely interesting perspective on the unexpected form European expansion did take.

Sarashina Diary, by Lady Sarashina (book review)

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams:
Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-Century Japan, by Lady Sarashina

translated by Ivan Morris

Sarashina Nikki (Sarashina Diary) is a wonderful book, but the title is a misnomer. It is not a diary, but a personal memoir, and it has nothing to do with Sarashina, a locality in Nagano (one of the poems in the book refers obliquely to Sarashina, but that is all). The translator, Ivan Morris, therefore opted for the the fancy title “As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams,” which is beautifully poetic and apt, as the author often describes her dreams (and it is a reference to the last chapter of The Tale of Genji, Lady Sarashina's favorite novel), but it is not satisfactory either because it seems to point at a wholly different book. So let’s keep the name Sarashina Nikki, under which it is after all known in Japan, and let’s for convenience sake call the author “Lady Sarashina” as is commonly done.

Yes, this is not only a book without an original title, it is also a book written by a woman with no name. That last defect is normal for the Heian period: women didn’t use their names in public, but were called by the names / titles of their husbands, fathers or other male family members. Our writer was the “Daughter of Sugawara no Takasue,” and she was born more than one thousand years ago, in 1008, and died after 1059. Her father, from the well-known Sugawara family (which by this time had lost its power), was a provincial administrator, so a middle-ranking aristocrat. She lived with her father, taking care of his household, but at age 31 also started to serve as part-time lady-in-waiting to one of the imperial princesses. At age 36 she married, with a husband who was six years her senior, and a provincial administrator like her father. This was a very late marriage, as in Heian times marriages at ages as young as 16 were normal. She had a son and two more children by her husband. When she was 49, her husband returned ill from one of his postings and died (postings to the provinces were often "tanshin funin" in modern business terms, i.e. without the family). She continued to write her memoir for two years more (it is assumed that most of it was written in her later years), and then her voice falls silent – we don’t know if she died herself, or perhaps took refuge in a temple as a nun.

[Statue of Lady Sarashina
in front of Goi Station
(Ichihara, Chiba prefecture)]

The author was one of a group of literary women who flourished in 10th and 11th c. Japanese court society. They were well educated, had leisure and a favorable social position. Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, was one of them; others were for example Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book), Izumi Shikibu, and the author of the Kagero Nikki, again a nameless woman (and the niece of Lady Sarashina).

Our author is intensely personal in describing her feelings, hopes and disappointments, but she tells us very little of the practical facts of life, as was customary at the time. But what she describes, is all very beautiful. What makes her work outstanding are the interesting descriptions of travels and pilgrimages – she was the first author in the genre of travel writing, and a very accomplished one. Her father had been posted as assistant governor to what is now part of Chiba prefecture, and when Lady Sarashina was 12 the family traveled back to the capital Heiankyo (Kyoto), a three month long journey. Her remembrances of this journey open her memoirs, and although terse and sometimes geographically inaccurate (because she wrote so many years after the event), it is unique in Heian literature. She writes about Mt Fuji (then still an active volcano): “There is no mountain like it in the world. It has a most unusual shape and seems to have been painted deep blue; its thick cover of unmelting snow gives the impression that the mountain is wearing a white jacket over a dress of deep violet.”

In her 10s and 20s, Lady Sarashina was addicted to reading tales, Japan’s earliest fiction, and her favorite book was The Tale of Genji. There was of course no publishing industry, books were privately copied and re-copied by hand. After reading the "Wakamurasaki" chapter of the Genji, Lady Sarashina yearns to possess the whole novel, even dedicating a Buddhist statue so that this wish may be fulfilled. Her joy knows no bounds when after returning to Heiankyo, she is presented with a whole copy (“more than 50 chapters”, so the Genji at that time probably had the same length as today’s 54 chapters). She dreams of being a heroine like Yugao or Ukifune, with a smart lover as Genji – it would be enough if he visited only once a year, for the rest she would look forward to his beautiful letters… In this way, the memoirs are impressive records of Lady Sarashina’s travel and of her day-to-day life.

Later she blames herself for her addiction to tales, and for having neglected her spiritual growth. That is later in life, when she has become a sincere Buddhist, making frequent pilgrimages to famous temples as Kiyomizudera, Ishiyamadera and Hasedera. Such pilgrimages were usually long trips of many days; not only the journey itself was long, but the pilgrims would stay for several nights in the temple, sleeping in the hall and hoping for prophetic dreams. Lady Sarashina paid great attention to dreams and describes about a dozen. Her dreams are no fortuitous interludes, but are consciously grasped as having a definite, inevitable meaning.

The Sarashina Nikki is also a memoir of the poems the author wrote. As was usual at that time, she includes a generous amount of her poetry and describes the occasions at which the poems were written. The level of Lady Sarashina’s poems is very high and several became famous and were included in official imperial anthologies.

The most literary episode in the book is her “meeting” with a cultured courtier. Lady Sarashina herself seems to have been rather timorous, introspective and solitary – she never felt at home at court because of her awkwardness. She met the elegant courtier (whose name she never learned) on a dark, rainy, night, when he passed the room where she sat behind screens as usual at the time, They exchanged a few words and the man won her admiration for his lyrical description of the seasons. But nothing came of it – while an Izumi Shikibu might have taken the man as her lover, Lady Sarashina was too shy, and after this one, poetic discussion with him, she only met him once more, briefly. But it is an interesting episode, a whiff of the Genji in the life of one of that novel’s most assiduous readers.

Sarashina Nikki is remarkable for its wistfulness and sensibility. The vulnerable author found happiness neither at court nor in her family, but projected into her writing her dreams and poignant longings. The portrait of a young woman who lived entirely in books is very touching.


Other translations besides the one by Ivan Morris:
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, by Annie Shepley Omori and Kochi Doi, 1920 -  the oldest English translation, by far not as good as the later ones, but freely available;
The Sarashina Diary: A Woman's Life in Eleventh-Century Japan, by Sonja Arntzen (2014, Columbia U.P.) - contemporary academic translation.

== I bought the Ivan Morris translation many years ago as a Penguin Classic, and am still satisfied with it. It has extensive notes and a good introduction, and reads smoothly. Ivan Morris (1925-1976) studied Japanese language and culture at Harvard University and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He wrote widely on modern and ancient Japan (The World of the Shining Prince; The Nobility of Failure) and translated numerous classical and modern literary works. He was a friend of Mishima Yukio. ==

Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater by William T. Vollmann (review)

Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater by William T. Vollmann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have a problem with authors of huge books - books which are not only too fat, but which also have been crammed full with odds and ends. Before sitting at their keyboard, such writers should get rid of their superfluous energy by an hour of jogging or so. Vollmann calls this 500 page book "small..."

But first the positive side: Vollmann modestly confesses that he doesn't know anything about the No theatre or Japanese culture, but his descriptions of No are some of the best and most riveting I have ever read (during a stay in Japan, he sees a great variety of No plays, has interviews with important actors and also meets a mask maker). He just describes what he sees, but he is a good observer who knows how to translate those observations into inspiring prose.

Then the negative side: in the No female characters are played by (often elderly) men with masks - those masks are perhaps the central aspect of No. Different from Kabuki, where the onnagata (male players of female roles) will move and talk in a feminine way, in No the players of feminine roles will speak, sing and move like the elderly men they are - the fiction of femininity is wholly in the mask (and the fantasy of the viewer).

This leads Vollmann to the teasing question to what extent femininity in general is a performance and the even more fundamental question: what is a woman? - a problem which takes Vollmann not only to transvestite bars in Tokyo and geisha in Kyoto, but also has him discuss Kabuki's onnagata, Greek cult statues, Norse sagas, transgender women, porn queens, Valkyries and Venus figurines. In other words, he jumps from one thing to another without any clear thread and fills the big book with only loosely related snippets and anecdotes. It is all too much like late night bar talk – I wish Vollmann would have concentrated more on the No theater (about which there is still a lot to say).

So if Vollmann's descriptions of the No theater inspire you, quickly find a book with translations of No plays to enjoy the real thing (see my article Japanese No Plays in Translation).

P.S. This hardcover book was published on such sub-standard paper that already within 10 years it is severely discolored...


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The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan by Adam Clulow

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It is often thought that the Europeans in the 17th c. were so superior with their naval power that by using violence they could set the whole world to their hand and impose their will around the globe. This may have been true of, for example, South America in the century before that, but the European experience in Asia was dramatically different. In Asia the Europeans found old and well-established cultures (India, S.E. Asia, China, Japan) which had their own legal systems and ways of doing things.

[Dutch trade-post Dejima in Nagasaki]

This book focuses on the story of the Dutch East Asia Company (VOC, a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state) and its relationship with the Tokugawa shogunate. Over time, there were various clashes over diplomacy, sovereignty and violence - the Dutch attempts to use violence in waters ruled by Japan were systematically blocked. The author focuses on a handful of flashpoints where both came into conflict. In each such encounter, the Dutch had to retreat, abandon their claims and remake themselves - from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from defenders of colonial sovereignty to loyal subjects of the shogun. The Dutch were entirely encapsulated into the Japanese legal system and ended up as formal subordinates of the Tokugawa state. They had to assume an inferior position in the feudal hierarchy of Japan and were forced to behave according to Japanese laws and rules (the most normal thing of the world, we would say today, but in the colonial discourse this was seen differently).

There is however one black page in Dutch history in Japan where the VOC is somewhat exculpated by Clulow's revisionist (and undoubtedly correct) vision: the 1637 Shimabara Rebellion, when the protestant Dutch sent a ship to use its firepower to batter the walls of a sea-side castle where 40,000 Christian (catholic) rebels were desperately defending themselves from government troops (the castle fell after the Dutch had left - their canons were not very effective, apparently- , after which the rebels were exterminated by the shogunate). This assistance is often presented as an act of base mercantile duplicity ("the Dutch just wanted to trade, no matter at what moral cost"), but in Clulow's new perspective this act now rather appears as the fulfillment of their oath as subordinates of the shogun (as a sort of "Dutch samurai"). In other words: in the Japanese system of which they had been forced to become part, they simply could not refuse.

A fascinating book, thanks to its new and extremely interesting perspective on the unexpected form European expansion did take.




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"Sir Vidia's Shadow" by Paul Theroux (Non-Fiction)

Sir Vidia's Shadow, written in 1998 by Paul Theroux, is a fascinating account of a mentor-disciple relation between two unusual men, the authors Paul Theroux (the disciple) and V.S. Naipaul ("Sir Vidia"; the mentor). The book details how that long friendship started, how it developed when the disciple became a successful author in his own right, and how it ended when Naipaul gave Theroux the boot. Theroux's reaction was typical: he started writing the present book, as he felt liberated, he says - he finally had come out from under the shadow of his mentor.

The friendship began in 1966 in Uganda. Theroux was then 25 and teaching at Makerere University, Kampala, after originally having come to Africa (Malawi) for the Peace Corps. While enjoying the African continent and the free life, he was also trying his hand at poetry and magazine articles. Naipaul was about ten years older and the already famous author of five novels including A House for Mr Biswas, and several non-fiction works as his account of India, An Area of Darkness. He came to Uganda for six months as "writer in residence." The two soon met and Theroux, who spoke the language and drove a car, became Naipaul's guide and interpreter, while Naipaul coached him in writing - having him rewrite an article almost ten times.

Theroux provides a good portrait of the brilliant but eccentric Naipaul, but also of himself as an ambitious starting writer. We see Theroux literally at the feet of the idolized older artist, studying his work in detail and listening to the smallest scrap of advice. Theroux also proofread the book Naipaul was then working on, The Mimic Men. Naipaul in his turn gave the young Theroux the confidence to continue writing and later helped him find a publisher.

“Friendship is plainer but deeper than love. A friend knows your faults and forgives them, but more than that, a friend is a witness. I needed Vidia as a friend, because he saw something in me I did not see. He said I was a writer.”

When Naipaul left Uganda and returned to the U.K., Theroux soon visited him during the Christmas holidays, staying with Naipaul and his wife Pat. And when Theroux moved on to a University job in Singapore, he kept up a frequent correspondence with Naipaul, what he himself calls a "correspondence course in writing."

In 1972 Theroux settled down in the U.K., where he would remain for the next decades - in 1967 he had married an English woman whom he had met in Uganda; they had two children. This gave Theroux the chance to meet with Naipaul again, although not very frequently as both writers were also busy world travelers and on top of that, Naipaul lived in rather remote English countryside. After Theroux himself became famous thanks to the publication of The Great Railway Bazaar, which was published in 1975, the relation started to change subtly as both men had become more like equals - they also started drifting somewhat apart and in Theroux's opinion, Naipaul became more moody and self-important. Theroux also became more financially successful than Naipaul, although according to general critical opinion Naipaul is in a higher class - he not for nothing received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

The end came in 1996, when Naipaul snubbed Theroux in the street, apparently angered by Theroux's attitude towards his second wife, a Pakistani journalist he had unexpectedly married. Theroux felt deeply hurt (something which shows in the last two chapters, which are a bit venomenous and self-pitying), but was also free to write Sir Vidia's Shadow.

Is it a good book? In general, opinions are sharply divided, but I would say yes, it is a fascinating Johnson-Boswell account, difficult to put down. On the whole, I think Theroux writes truthfully - this is not a tale of sour grapes or dirty laundry. Theroux greatly admires Naipaul as an artist and that shows through on every page. Theroux does in this book what he does best: he is not a superb stylist or deep thinker, but he excels in sharp observations (the African scenery!) and memorable characterizations, here in the first place of his subject, V.S. Naipaul.

By the way, all bitterness is now out of the air again, as both authors have shaken hands in 2011 at the instigation of Ian McEwan.

[This is a revision of a post written some years ago]

Non-Fiction Index

"Japanese Pilgrimage" by Oliver Statler (Best Non-Fiction)

This is where one begins. On this mountaintop, at the holiest spot of this sprawling complex of temples, in the shadow of these towering cedars, one stands before the tomb of the saint whose life and legacy inspire the pilgrimage. Here one asks his blessing, his guidance and protection, his company, on the pilgrimage to come. (Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler, describing a visit to Koyasan before embarking on the Shikoku Pilgrimage)

One of the things still squarely on my ToDo list, is the Shikoku Pilgrimage of 88 Temples. A few times, I have dipped in a toe, so to speak, by visiting No. 1, Ryozenji, in Tokushima; No. 31, Chikurinji in Kochi; No. 51, Ishiteji, in Matsuyama; and No. 84, Yashimaji near Takamatsu. But these were random visits and not part of a pilgrimage. While this big but pleasant task is still glittering in my future, I am thinking about the book that first aroused my interest in the Shikoku Pilgrimage: Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler. It was Statler's fascinating account that made me fantasize about threading in the footsteps of Kobo Daishi. In this expertly written book, the author combines a personal account of the Pilgrimage with substantial cultural information on the topic. I first read Japanese Pilgrimage in the mid-1980s and that book now is so brown and broken that I have to be careful when turning the brittle pages. I think I have read it at least three times.

[Ishiteji Temple in Dogo Spa, Matsuyama]

Oliver Statler (1915-2002) graduated from the University of Chicago and came to Japan with the American army in 1947. He was gripped by the beauty of wood block prints of which he became an internationally known expert. His interest in the Pilgrimage dated from a first visit to Shikoku, in 1961; he first performed the whole 1000-mile circular pilgrimage in 1968. From 1969-1971 he lived in Matsuyama on Shikoku in order to further study the pilgrimage, and in 1971 he made the entire pilgrimage again (with a Japanese friend - this is the biographical account we find in the book). It was a Guggenheim Fellowship which permitted him in 1973 to finally write the book, which was first published in 1983.

As Japanese Pilgrimage shows, Statler was a beautiful stylist of the English language. His account is a lyrical, impressionistic portrait of the Shikoku Pilgrimage, anecdotal and episodic and yet securely built on an underlying narrative plan. It is well-researched and highly evocative of Japanese religiosity as it functions in daily life. It also contains biographical information about the priests and pilgrims prominent in the long history of the pilgrimage, starting with Kobo Daishi (774-835), saint, miracle worker, flamboyant evangelist, scholar, poet and even (later) a deity. He struggled to find the "right way" here in the mountains of Shikoku; and he sought it in China where he inherited the mantle of a great esoteric Buddhist master. He finally reached the understanding that all human beings possess the seed of Buddha and can, with hard effort, nurture that seed and reach enlightenment during this present life.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first one ("Master"), Statler gives an outline of the historical personage of Kukai (later known honorifically as Kobo Daishi), the 8th/9th-century monk and founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism in Japan upon whom the pilgrimage is focused. In the second part ("Savior"), Statler attempts to portray how layers of legend and belief enlarged Kobo Daishi and how faith in him as a divine savior was spread among the populace by wandering, itinerant holy men (hijiri). Finally, in the third section ("Pilgrims"), the pilgrimage itself comes into sharper focus, both through discussions with current pilgrims and priests and accounts of past pilgrims such as the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danzo VIII and haiku poet Masaoka Shiki.

And while telling these three stories Statler shares with the reader his own experiences of the thousand-mile journey, a demanding route through deep mountings and along rugged coasts, taking almost two months to walk. All three sections are full of legends, folk stories, anecdotes and miracle tales that perfectly capture the mood and feel of the pilgrimage.

Perhaps to cut back on Japanese names for those not used to the language, Statler calls the 88 temples by number ("Number One," etc.) , but at the back of the book he provides a concordance with the temple names. The author also skips back and forth (without discussing all 88 temples) and doesn't give any practical information - in other words, this is not a guidebook. It is a book about the spirit of the pilgrimage, its history and its culture. You don't even actually have to perform it to enjoy this fine account. But that is a dangerous thought for me - it could make me lazy, for the Pilgrimage is still waiting, on my very doorstep as I now live in Kobe instead of Tokyo...

Remember, the Pilgrimage is circular, and like a circle, it has neither a beginning nor an end; like the quest for Enlightenment, it is unending...

Biography at University of Hawaii website. Bibliography of books on the Shikoku Pilgrimage. For a guide in English, see A Henro Pilgrimage Guide to the Eighty-eight Temples on Shikoku, Japan, by Taisen Miyata. A scholarly account is Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku, by Ian Reader. More scholarly articles on the Pilgrimage can be found in No 24:3-4 (Fall 1997) of The Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (available online).

Non-Fiction Index

The Empty Mirror; by Janwillem van de Wetering

This small memoir, that ends on a tone of disillusion, is one of the best accounts of a Westerner coming to terms with Zen and meditation. The Empty Mirror, Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, written by the Dutch adventurer, businessman and author Janwillem van de Wetering, is not perfect (the end is a bit abrupt), but it is an honest and factual account, larded with interesting Zen stories, and on top of that, it is full of humor.

"The empty mirror," he said. "If you could really understand that, there would be nothing left here for you to look for." (The Empty Mirror, by Janwillem van de Wetering)

In the past, my own interest in Zen was one of the motivators to study Chinese and Japanese in Leiden (coupled with my fascination for the philosophical Daoists, Laozi and Zhuangzi). At that time I did not yet know Van de Wetering's book - although it had just been published -, but in retrospect, when I read it in the late '80s, I found some truths here I had also sensed myself.

In other words, I realized why, despite my interest in Zen, I have never seriously considered entering a Zen monastery. In the first place a spiritual reason. By nature I am an academic rather than a practitioner. I approach Zen on an intellectual, or philosophical level. Objectively, this may not be the best way, but it is the approach that fits my personality.

The second reason is physical: I was never able to sit in the lotus position, not even the half lotus. I am just too large and too stiff. Janwillem van de Wetering had the same problem, and I feel his pain when he writes about his attempts to fold his legs!

The third reason is that I am too individualistic to fit in the groupist and hierarchic society of a Zen monastery. Van de Wetering had the luck to get his own room as a foreigner - the Japanese monks all slept in the same big dormitory. I don't like to do things at fixed times when others do them. I don't like to lie in awe on the floor in front of a Master, but as an egalitarian Dutchman would rather openly and freely discuss things with him.

The fourth reason is that there is too much beauty (next to the obvious pain) in the ordinary world. I can very much understand Janwillem's escapades from his restricted temple life to have a delicious beer! In my view, it should be possible to find the truth without giving up beauty... I am sure the irreverent and iconoclastic Van de Wetering must in the end have felt the same.

"Try!" the head monk said, "what a word! You mustn't try, you must do it." (The Empty Mirror, by Janwillem van de Wetering)

But back to the book. In 1958, Janwillem van de Wetering (1931-2008), appeared at the gate of the Daitokuji Zen Temple in Kyoto, asking to be admitted as a novice monk. The young Dutchman, son of a merchant, had already led an adventurous life, as trader in Cape Town, as member of a motorcycle gang, and next as a student of philosophy in London. Although he was originally interested in existentialism, his professor there suggested that he consider Zen Buddhism. So Van de Wetering was off to Japan, a country of which he neither knew the language nor the culture, and where he had no contacts. He just vaguely knew he wanted to practice Zen. He was one of the first, many would follow...

"Nothing matters, nothing is important, but it does matter and it is important to do whatever you are doing as well as possible." (The Empty Mirror, by Janwillem van de Wetering)

After promising to stay for at least eight months, Janwillem van de Wetering was miraculously accepted in Daitokuji, where he received guidance from Peter, an American studying there already for a longer time, who was also fluent in Japanese. Van de Wetering would stay for almost two years, struggling to find the meaning of life via Zen, until his money ran out.

The book provides a basic introduction to Zen, often via interesting stories. But more than that, it shows us the daily routine in a Zen monastery, not only the peaceful meditation, but also the arguments, the jokes the monks make, the cigarettes they secretly smoke, and the Master who likes to watch baseball on TV. Human life, in fact, is the same on the inside of Daitokuji's walls, as on the outside. We also see Janwillem struggling with his physical inability to sit for a long time in the lotus position, and with the Japanese language - there are times, he completely misunderstands the Master when Peter is not present to interpret.

Van de Wetering now and then escapes to Kobe to stay with the well-heeled Dutch businessman Leo, where he can drink beer and smoke cigars. Here he also reads his first Judge Dee novels by Van Gulik - much later, in the '80s, Van de Wetering would be active in promoting a rediscovery of these novels in The Netherlands; he also would write a biography about Van Gulik.

When it all ends, Janwillen van de Wetering has not found any big truths. But he has learned the notion of Zen-like acceptance, and how to be detached, even when striving hard. Perhaps that small bit of insight is more important than any broad and sweeping conclusion.

"By leaving here nothing is broken. Your training continues. The world is a school where the sleeping are woken up. You are now a little awake, so awake that you can never fall asleep again." (The Empty Mirror, by Janwillem van de Wetering)

After moving away from Japan, Van de Wetering worked in Columbia, Peru and Australia. In Bogota he also married. From 1966 to 1975 Van de Wetering would be active in the textile business in Amsterdam. At the same time he served as a reserve police officer, an experience that gave him the materials for his most famous novels, the fifteen volume crime series about police officers Grijpstra and De Gier. De Gier is modeled on the author and is interested in Zen and jazz. These were the times that hippie culture reigned in Amsterdam, even among the police force - a very different situation from today's more grim climate.

One of the novels, The Japanese Corpse, is situated in Japan. Van de Wetering also wrote a novel about a Japanese detective, Inspector Saito, but this book was less succesful. The early "Grijsptra and De Gier" novels convince because of their authentic atmosphere of the Amsterdam of the non-conformist sixties.

In 1971 Van de Wetering published The Empty Mirror as his first book (in Dutch, the English version followed two years later). In 1975, he wrote a sort of sequel, A Glimpse of Nothingness, about his sojourn at the Moon Springs Hermitage in Maine. Although he left the Hermitage after four years, he stayed on in Maine - the part of the world where he finally found his home. He also died there - in the summer of 2008, just when I had started reading The Empty Mirror for a second time.

The Empty Mirror, Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, by Janwillem van de Wetering (St. Martin's Griffin, reprint 1999)

Other recommended Zen books by the same author: A Glimpse of Nothingness, AfterZen. Published by St. Martin's Griffin. I you want to try his crime novels, have a look at Hard Rain, The Blond Baboon, The Corpse on the Dike, or The Japanese Corpse.

Update of a post originally written in 2008.

The photos in the article were taken by me at Daitokuji.

Non-Fiction Index

"Daodejing, The Classic Book of the Way and its Power" (Best Non-Fiction)

One of the reasons I decided to study Chinese (a decision that shocked both my parents and my teachers at the Grammar School in the small town where I lived) was my discovery of philosophical Daoism. Not satisfied with what the protestant church my family officially was a member of, was teaching, already from a young age I had started looking for wisdom elsewhere. That was not easy in the pre-internet age (something now inconceivable!) – I only had the local library to rely on and that was not much in a conservative municipality.

Happily, at some time I discovered that a certain publisher at that time was bringing out so-called "esoteric" books, among them small-sized hardcover books with translations of the Daodejing, Zhuangzi and Liezi - the three central books of philosophical Daoism.

These translations were not by professional Sinologists, but they served well as a first introduction. I remember I also bought a Dutch version of Wilhelm's The Book of Changes (Yijing) and a direct Dutch translation of the earliest book of Chinese poetry, The Book of Songs (Shijing). Unfortunately, I don't have those books anymore; they have fallen by the wayside during my frequent international removals, after I had acquired better and more reliable English translations. But I still can vividly remember the pleasure those small books afforded me... especially the short Daodejing was very intriguing...

The way (Dao) that can be spoken of
is not the constant way;

The name that can be named
is not the constant name.

The Daodejing is a small book (about 5,000 characters in Chinese) of 81 aphorisms. I have re-read it in the version by D.C. Lau (Penguin Classics), which also contains an excellent introduction and other materials. The Daodejing is the principal classic in the Daoist tradition. Traditionally, it has been ascribed to one Laozi, or "Old Master," a so-called contemporary of Confucius, but as the name already indicates, Laozi is most probably a fictional figure - he is also not mentioned in the Daodejing itself. There were probably many "old masters" and their wise, guru-like sayings were compiled into one book somewhere in the 3th c. BCE (around 270 BCE the text became very influential).

This was an age in which many schools of philosophy competed with ideas about the ideal government. As D.C. Lau, the translator, indicates, that is probably also how the Daodejing was originally meant - a treatise on government and personal conduct rather than a mystical treatise (or both, the one doesn't preclude the other). It advances a philosophy of naturalness and meekness as the way to survival in chaotic and disordered times.

"In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it."

Although beautiful poetry, the work in fact is quite disordered itself: many of the 81 chapters hang together as loose sand and Lau again subdivides them by numbering certain passages, so coming to a total of 196 aphorisms. The title "Classic of the Way and the Virtue ("The Way and its Power" in the rendering of the famous Sinologist Arthur Waley) has been simply taken from the starting words of the two books into which it has been (arbitrarily) divided.

"One who knows does not speak;
One who speaks does not know."

The Dao precedes and informs all other beings in the universe and is basically indescribable. You can only be in harmony with it by an attitude of naturalness, of passivity and of yielding. This quietistic attitude can also be applied to the ruling of the state: no do-goodism or hyper-active planning, but a certain amount of laissez faire is what is necessary. Or in the words of Michael Puett:

"The Daodejing argues that the universe changes spontaneously, without a conscious will driving it. The goals of the sage should be to act in accordance with these spontaneous changes. [...] In the Daodejing the universe operates through a constant process of generation and decay: things are naturally born and then they naturally die. Everything emerges from oneness and ultimately returns to it. The act of differentiation is a movement away from oneness, from stillness, from emptiness. The goal of the true sage is to become still and empty and thus achieve a state of returning to this oneness. This is called attaining the Dao. A true sage acts without conscious deliberation [...] Moreover he is amoral, for the Dao itself is amoral - morality is an artificial human construct and should thus be opposed." (from The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, Columbia UP, 2001, pp. 76-78).

It is the mystic, rhapsodic tone that makes this book so attractive and has ensured its survival long after its political message lost its relevance. It is subtle, elusive and suggestive and can therefore also be read on a "higher level" as a book of mystical wisdom. It is not for nothing the most translated book from the Chinese, every new translator can find new meanings in it, like an ancient Rorschach test.

"Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful."

But thanks to its transcendental attitude, there are many things in the Daodejing that still can interest us personally. It can very well for the basis for a personal philosophy of life. Although I can not claim I have always followed it, to me personally it is a very inspiring book.

Here are some things we can learn from the Daodejing:

• Force begets force.
• Material wealth does not enrich the spirit.
• Self-absorption and self-importance are vain and self-destructive.
• Victory in war is not glorious and not to be celebrated, but stems from devastation, and is to be mourned.
• The harder one tries, the more resistance one creates for oneself.
• The more one acts in harmony with the universe (the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things), the more one will achieve, with less effort.
• The qualities of flexibility and suppleness, especially as exemplified by water, are superior to rigidity and strength.
• Humility is the highest virtue.
• Know when it's time to stop.

By the way, Daoism as a religion (with a different take on the Daodejing) is discussed by Kristofer Schipper in his interesting The Taoist Body.

This post quotes from / is based on: 

Tao Te Ching, translated by D.C. Lau (Penguin Books, 1976) 

Early Chinese Literature, Burton Watson (Columbia UP, 1962) 

The Columbia History of Chinese Literature (Columbia UP, 2001) 

Also see the page on Laozi in the excellent online "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy."

 This a revision of a post I published years ago on a different site.

Non-Fiction Index

"Deep Kyoto: Walks" (Book review)

When you visit Kyoto for the first time, you simply can't avoid visiting famous spots like Ryoanji's Stone Garden, the Silver Pavilion and Nijo Castle. And some unseen force (convention?) compels you to make a selfie with the Golden Pavilion as background. But once these and other touristy preliminaries are out of the way, you can take a deep breath, for now you are free to really start exploring and enjoying Kyoto as a city. Of course, you don't do that by tourist bus, but by using your own legs. Kyoto happens to be one of the world's cultural cities that is most suitable to explore on foot. Kyoto in fact begs you to start walking... walking is the only way to see Kyoto properly.

That was also the experience of the authors of Deep Kyoto: Walks, a wonderful new book containing the records of 18 residents of Kyoto who introduce their favorite walks in and around the city. The book has been carefully edited and contains clear maps to help you find your way. It is, as editor Michael Lambe writes, "an anthology of meditative walks that express each writer's deeper relationship to the area in which they live." Most of the writers are foreign residents and all have put down their roots in the Ancient Capital. They have lived here for something between 10 and 40 years and are all "old-Kyoto hands." This book is therefore an excellent guide for those who have had enough of touristy sights and finally want to see the real Kyoto. The authors are all well-versed in Japanese culture and history and prove to be thought-provoking and reliable guides.

The charm of this anthology is that the authors - whose profiles are given at the back of the book - all have quite varied interests. John Ashburne, for example, is a writer on Japanese food culture and a dashi specialist who takes the reader to his favorite shops in Nishiki, "Kyoto's Kitchen," in an article spiced up with delicious musings on food. In contrast, poet Stephen Henry Gill has embellished the walk he guides through Sagano and Arashiyama with interesting poems - no doubt stimulated by the fact that in the early 13th c. Fujiwara Teika compiled here the classical anthology Hyakunin Isshu and Basho's haiku disciple Mukai Kyorai owned a cottage, called Rakushisha ("The House of Fallen Persimmons"), where the master stayed when he visited Sagano.

Travel writer Perrin Lindelauf engages in his hobby of mountain walking by following the Kyoto Trail, that runs through the eastern, northern and western hills that encircle the city. He cuts up the 75km long trail in bite-sized bits, starting with Higashiyama and its temples and shrines; then a climb up Mt Hiei and descent into Kyoto's northern villages; a quiet stroll through Kitayama's forests; and finally a walk through the river valley of Takao and Arashiyama.

There are two more mountain walks in the collection. Shiatsu specialist Miki Matsumoto observes the "Ki," the vital essence, of Daimonji - famous for the huge bonfires lighted here in the evening of August 16 - on a climb of that mountain to enjoy the view over Kyoto. Sanborn Brown is not only a teacher at Osaka Kyoiku University, but also an avid cyclist, so he proceeds on two wheels to Kiyotaki - but from there he has to rely on just his legs for the arduous climb up Mt Atago. He makes this climb on the night of July 31, the annual Sennichi Tsuyusai Festival, when people come to the shrine to receive amulets preventing fires - a festival that was once so popular that there was even a funicular railway line up the mountain.

Travel writer and tour guide Chris Rowthorn delves into his own past by retracing the spots connected with his first visit to Kyoto in 1992, such as his lodgings, language schools and favorite bars. "Intending to stay a year, I stayed 18. I came with a suitcase and left with a wife, two children, and more stuff than you can cram into a shipping container." I guess others who have fallen in love with Kyoto have had a similar experience.

Michael Lambe, the chief editor of the present book, takes us on two walks: one is a tour along various music bars in Kiyamachi, the other a tour of monuments of Japan's modernization in the Meiji period. This last walk starts at the Incline in Keage, part of a hydroelectric power generation project undertaken in 1891 by the young engineer Tanabe Sakuro. Water was brought via a canal from Lake Biwa to supply the city's industries and an aqueduct of red brick was built in the grounds of Nanzenji (which blends so perfectly with the wooden temples that it now looks as if it has always been there).

Other writers take a stroll in the neighborhood of their Kyoto residence. Bridget Scott, who has studied Butoh and traditional Japanese dance and is a shiatsu therapist, lives near Shisendo and takes us to that magical temple (in fact the villa of a 17th century recluse), as well as to nearby Enkoji, and finally Manshuin and the Sagi no Mori shrine (all personal favorites of mine, as my first Kyoto home was also in this area). I also enjoyed reading how American artist Joel Stewart "wanders aimlessly" (uro uro as he calls it himself) from Daitokuji north to beautiful Shodenji. Shodenji is far off the beaten path and has a wonderful garden looking out towards Mt. Hiei. Travel writer Ted Taylor takes his little daughter on a promenade of his neighborhood, Murasakino (near Daitokuji). He visits no temples or gardens, but just saunters through a mundane section of Kyoto, showing us how interesting the real face of the city is.

Kyoto University lecturer Jennifer Louise Teeter, who lives near Gojodori, takes us on a long excursion that starts with the Gojozaka Pottery Festival (held on August 7) and the magical house and studio of mingei potter Kawai Kanjiro, and then north to Rokuharamitsuji Temple with its marvelous statues... and a shop selling "child raising ghost candy."

Japanese ceramics specialist Robert Yellin guides us along the Philosopher's Path, where he has his Yakimono Gallery (which alone is reason enough to come here). John Dougill, author of Kyoto: A Cultural History, one of the best books I know about Kyoto, takes us on a walk he frequently makes to Ryukoku University, where he is professor: from Demachi Yanagi along the Kamo River to Gojo, observing the different faces of the Kamo River which can be rightfully called the "heart of Kyoto."

Izumi Texidor Hirai guides us through one of her favorite Kyoto spots, the Botanical Gardens, again a very attractive destination that is blissfully free from tourists. The gardens afford a magnificent view of Mt Hiei and preserve part of the original vegetation of the area, besides being a great spot for hanami. On the other hand, Pico Iyer, the internationally famous writer of The Lady and the Monk, walks from Sannenzaka to Pontocho, showing us the contrast between the quiet path stretching along the temples at the foot of the Higashiyama hills and the noisy city bustle that engulfs you as soon as you step out of the Yasaka Shrine unto Shijodori.

Judith Clancy, known from various guidebooks such as Exploring Kyoto: On Foot in the Ancient Capital, which years ago already introduced us to the "Way of Walking" in Kyoto, wraps up with an epilogue in which she muses on the joys of experiencing the Ancient Capital on foot.

Two artists have contributed in kind, rather than recording walks: washi artist Sarah Brayer has made the beautiful cover and woodblock artist Richard Keith Steiner has contributed a wonderful mokuhanga of Daimonji.

It cannot be stressed enough: to really get a sense of Kyoto, to feel the pulsing heart of the city, you must walk. Kyoto is not only interesting for its temples, craft shops, restaurants, museums and gardens, but also as a city in its own right: it is great fun to observe the residents whose lives are partly lived on the streets, and to enjoy the city's ever changing expression. That is why Deep Kyoto: Walks is also a great read for those who are familiar with Kyoto and already have made many similar walks. I particularly enjoyed the different perspectives the various writers bring to Kyoto, the personal way in which they express their relation to the city. It in fact made me feel that I want to live in Kyoto again myself.

Deep Kyoto: Walks is a wonderful tribute to the city we all love.

Deep Kyoto: Walks is available from Amazon. 

Deep Kyoto, the website of Michael Lambe. 

I would like to thank Michael Lambe for providing a review copy.