Japan; one of those other countries beyond the shores of America
Donna Williams
March 15, 2006
Adventures in Japan
Got back from Japan last week, yes, one of those other countries beyond the shores of America.
Somewhere in a mosaic of tepanyaki, a duck billed bullet train on Tokyo station, lecture theatres with black curtains and backstage bento boxes, I delivered seminars to around 800 people, my English words translated into melodious Japanese by a translator with the style and personality of Bette Midler (putting to rest the idea that folks like her are only found in America).
I sign around a hundred books and bow a hundred times. My body is filled with the mapped feel of each person I meet in this personal space, their bodies, their faces, their voices, within my wide and solitary boundaries of 'body space'. At home I spend the week in solitude, every week. I barely shop. Now I get more contact than I would in a year.
Some I sign for are confident, others anxious, many gentle. Finally I leave with writer's cramp hurriedly for the safety and quiet refuge of the backstage only to be pounced on by the Japanese equivallent of a fur coated New Yorker, arms flung wide, cats eye glasses, Hollywood postures. It's like I'm caught up in a 1930s Marx Bros movie with this woman who has jumped out of the TV because she wants to tell (and show) me how much she admires me. My heart races and I smile quietly and back to the wall being as non-challant as possible. She burbles at me in exhurberant, heart felt Japanese with large movements and a face that's doing a ballet and my head is swimming. I slip into the backstage area like Cherie escaping Pepi and hoping she won't follow.
We were taxied about by our wonderful suit-clad, ever bowing, smiling hosts armed with business cards at the ready. I felt these must surely be two of the most friendly people in Japan. Hospitality here is with a capital H, hold the cheese, and they know how to allow you your own wonder and space and the importance of subtlety.
We went to a special event by a wonderful singer and dancer, Tai-chan, who is well established in musical theatre and did wonderful performances for us at her rehearsal room with her tutors present. Tai-chan is, of course, gorgeous and the fact she's diagnosed with Autism and has a quite marked receptive processing problem only reminded me how much one needs no interpretive processing to be a master rote learner with mimicry skills. We forget this about the arts and expect people to prove understanding before we give them the right to merely practice the accumulation of ability, to sculpt it.
Our hosts took us on to an awesome hotel, Ga Jo En, in Tokyo which has the most wonderful bounce tatami mats underfoot with the rising scent of straw. The walls were lickable black and burgundy laquer (I resisted but felt them with my hungry hands), full of mother of pearl designs till I was in a sensory heaven and geisha images twisted, turned and hid among the rainbows in long flowing gowns etched into the laquer. Even the ceilings and walls of the toilets were like gallery exhibitions.
As a visiting artist, our hosts managed to gain an invitation to the special ceremonial rooms and I was so honoured to be able to get right near to wall murals of Japanese pines and golden full moons, blossom and birds, their bodies twisting and turning and my body mapped them as did my hands.
Outside in the gardens of the hotel, a gold and black carp sang silently with an open mouth of an opera singer from a stage of water around our feet.
We ate lunch in a room of sliding doors, paper windows and a table with no legs but our own legs into a hole in the floor. Each morsel plays hard to get in a Japanese meal so you eat everything as though it is an honour not an obligation. That the food is odd to foreigners is no surprise but here odd becomes the norm, if one allows it- and odd is relative.
In our own hotel the carpet pile did a dance as I moved, following us like shadows on the floor creating ever new carpets with each turn.
The taxis were adorned with white lace like doilies and cottage windows and the taxi drivers wore white gloves and caps like glitzy doormen.
We visit the cemetary. On our way in we walk under a large cane arch. Our host tells us this will give us wisdom. The graves like pictures from a book on Feng Shui crossed with Zen. Gravel beds are laid with marbe stepping stones to mini temples in the distant corners of the plot as though the visiting relatives are welcomed to cross the grave itself to these miniature shrines. This is a world of granite, sandy gravel and marble where conifer branches adorn vases, leaving the place uncluttered with the frivolity of western cemetaries. Here cemetaries are visually peaceful not to mention highly aesthetic. On the way out I ask whether if we walk back under the cane arch will we then undo our recently acquired wisdom and become more stupid?
At the car park our host parked his car on a rotating circle which was quickly whisked away and raised into the air in an automated stacked column of cars. The conductor of this car park performance was a man who if he smiled any more broadly may have been in danger of swallowing his own head. On arrival back, his eager boyant, beaming efficiency was so contagious I couldn't help but break into applause.
The wife of our host was taking gift wrapping classes and her wrapping was visually edible (the Peter Rabbit plates were very cool too, great tapping sound and so shiny with the familiar form of Mr PRs mother). I felt I was committing a blasphemy to open the package, as if I might at least frame the packaging.
A homeless lady grimaces outside a train station from her concrete seat capturing me like a sister, older, a world away. I consider what I might give her for the smile she's given me but my hosts have already left and I'm lagging. I catch them up.
Young women dye their hair a light orange and stride in a well known fashion street like supermodels waiting to be discovered. One comes past me at the station and I’m scared a moment. It was Japanese Barbie in tall vinyl boots lost in some other world as if the world was a stage and maybe it was but I was busy wondering how the machine ate my train ticket and then she was gone.
We were on the plane so soon, taking home the contents of Japanese dreams to come.
Bamboo blinds sat in a corner at home, broken but usable. I get yearning for gold and burgundy paint and can still hear Tai-chan's singing from some echo in my mind. Japan, like all cultures, can be a place within us.
Donna Williams *)
Got back from Japan last week, yes, one of those other countries beyond the shores of America.
Somewhere in a mosaic of tepanyaki, a duck billed bullet train on Tokyo station, lecture theatres with black curtains and backstage bento boxes, I delivered seminars to around 800 people, my English words translated into melodious Japanese by a translator with the style and personality of Bette Midler (putting to rest the idea that folks like her are only found in America).
I sign around a hundred books and bow a hundred times. My body is filled with the mapped feel of each person I meet in this personal space, their bodies, their faces, their voices, within my wide and solitary boundaries of 'body space'. At home I spend the week in solitude, every week. I barely shop. Now I get more contact than I would in a year.
Some I sign for are confident, others anxious, many gentle. Finally I leave with writer's cramp hurriedly for the safety and quiet refuge of the backstage only to be pounced on by the Japanese equivallent of a fur coated New Yorker, arms flung wide, cats eye glasses, Hollywood postures. It's like I'm caught up in a 1930s Marx Bros movie with this woman who has jumped out of the TV because she wants to tell (and show) me how much she admires me. My heart races and I smile quietly and back to the wall being as non-challant as possible. She burbles at me in exhurberant, heart felt Japanese with large movements and a face that's doing a ballet and my head is swimming. I slip into the backstage area like Cherie escaping Pepi and hoping she won't follow.
We were taxied about by our wonderful suit-clad, ever bowing, smiling hosts armed with business cards at the ready. I felt these must surely be two of the most friendly people in Japan. Hospitality here is with a capital H, hold the cheese, and they know how to allow you your own wonder and space and the importance of subtlety.
We went to a special event by a wonderful singer and dancer, Tai-chan, who is well established in musical theatre and did wonderful performances for us at her rehearsal room with her tutors present. Tai-chan is, of course, gorgeous and the fact she's diagnosed with Autism and has a quite marked receptive processing problem only reminded me how much one needs no interpretive processing to be a master rote learner with mimicry skills. We forget this about the arts and expect people to prove understanding before we give them the right to merely practice the accumulation of ability, to sculpt it.
Our hosts took us on to an awesome hotel, Ga Jo En, in Tokyo which has the most wonderful bounce tatami mats underfoot with the rising scent of straw. The walls were lickable black and burgundy laquer (I resisted but felt them with my hungry hands), full of mother of pearl designs till I was in a sensory heaven and geisha images twisted, turned and hid among the rainbows in long flowing gowns etched into the laquer. Even the ceilings and walls of the toilets were like gallery exhibitions.
As a visiting artist, our hosts managed to gain an invitation to the special ceremonial rooms and I was so honoured to be able to get right near to wall murals of Japanese pines and golden full moons, blossom and birds, their bodies twisting and turning and my body mapped them as did my hands.
Outside in the gardens of the hotel, a gold and black carp sang silently with an open mouth of an opera singer from a stage of water around our feet.
We ate lunch in a room of sliding doors, paper windows and a table with no legs but our own legs into a hole in the floor. Each morsel plays hard to get in a Japanese meal so you eat everything as though it is an honour not an obligation. That the food is odd to foreigners is no surprise but here odd becomes the norm, if one allows it- and odd is relative.
In our own hotel the carpet pile did a dance as I moved, following us like shadows on the floor creating ever new carpets with each turn.
The taxis were adorned with white lace like doilies and cottage windows and the taxi drivers wore white gloves and caps like glitzy doormen.
We visit the cemetary. On our way in we walk under a large cane arch. Our host tells us this will give us wisdom. The graves like pictures from a book on Feng Shui crossed with Zen. Gravel beds are laid with marbe stepping stones to mini temples in the distant corners of the plot as though the visiting relatives are welcomed to cross the grave itself to these miniature shrines. This is a world of granite, sandy gravel and marble where conifer branches adorn vases, leaving the place uncluttered with the frivolity of western cemetaries. Here cemetaries are visually peaceful not to mention highly aesthetic. On the way out I ask whether if we walk back under the cane arch will we then undo our recently acquired wisdom and become more stupid?
At the car park our host parked his car on a rotating circle which was quickly whisked away and raised into the air in an automated stacked column of cars. The conductor of this car park performance was a man who if he smiled any more broadly may have been in danger of swallowing his own head. On arrival back, his eager boyant, beaming efficiency was so contagious I couldn't help but break into applause.
The wife of our host was taking gift wrapping classes and her wrapping was visually edible (the Peter Rabbit plates were very cool too, great tapping sound and so shiny with the familiar form of Mr PRs mother). I felt I was committing a blasphemy to open the package, as if I might at least frame the packaging.
A homeless lady grimaces outside a train station from her concrete seat capturing me like a sister, older, a world away. I consider what I might give her for the smile she's given me but my hosts have already left and I'm lagging. I catch them up.
Young women dye their hair a light orange and stride in a well known fashion street like supermodels waiting to be discovered. One comes past me at the station and I’m scared a moment. It was Japanese Barbie in tall vinyl boots lost in some other world as if the world was a stage and maybe it was but I was busy wondering how the machine ate my train ticket and then she was gone.
We were on the plane so soon, taking home the contents of Japanese dreams to come.
Bamboo blinds sat in a corner at home, broken but usable. I get yearning for gold and burgundy paint and can still hear Tai-chan's singing from some echo in my mind. Japan, like all cultures, can be a place within us.
Donna Williams *)
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