"... when he heard that I’d spent 26 years in the same anonymous suburb in western Japan, most of that time traveling no farther than my size 8 feet can carry me.... I never dreamed that I’d come to find delight in everything that is everyday and seemingly without interest in my faraway neighborhood, nothing special.... It’s the end of things, Japan has taught me, that gives them their savor and their beauty. And it’s the fact that my wife — and I — are always changing, even as we’re shedding leaves and hair, that confers an urgency on my feelings toward her.... Every year, autumn sings the same tune, but to a different audience. My first year in Japan, I wrote a book about my enraptured discovery of a love, a life and a culture that I hoped would be mine forever. My publishers brought out my celebration of springtime romance in autumn. Now, 28 years on, I’m more enamored of the fall, if only because it has spring inside it, and memories, and the acute awareness that almost nothing lasts forever. Every day in autumn — a cyclical sense of things reminds us — brings us a little bit closer to the spring."
From
"The Beauty of the Ordinary/We treasure autumn days as reminders of everything we must not take for granted" by Pico Iyer (in the NYT). If you hesitate to click through, know that there's a fantastic gently animated illustration of a fallen leaf (by Angie Wang). Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, England and is of Indian ancestry. He's written novels and books about his extensive travels. But since 1992, he's lived in Nara, Japan. From
his Wikipedia page:
Having grown up a part of — and apart from — English, American and Indian cultures, he became one of the first writers to take the international airport itself as his subject, along with the associated jet lag, displacement and cultural minglings.... Most of his books have been about trying to see from within some society or way of life — revolutionary Cuba, Sufism, Buddhist Kyoto, even global disorientation — but from the larger perspective an outsider can sometimes bring....
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10 comments:
I think you oversold the animation. I don’t mind, I have a subscription, but just sayin'
did he know Robert Frost ?
I'm a big believer in the value of re-walking the same walks.
I was so interested in Iyer's story that I went to Nara in Google Maps Street View and "walked" around.
This description of a European in Japan reminds me of my reflections on early American history. I've been trying to carefully reconsider American history and one of my thoughts is that the American Indian "religion" and way of life was more akin to the Japanese Shinto "religion" than to Christianity or to any culture category fitting into the categories of Western anthropology. In other words, we might understand the American Indians better if we thought of the Japanese after losing World War II than if we think of those Indians as Germans after World War I, as group bent on revenge. Simply because one Asiatic culture (the Japanese) might have more analogies to another (The American Indian) than to a European culture.
The question I ask is: why did Squanto help the Pilgrims? If the Pilgrims had failed there would have been no Puritan migration for the Puritan migration modeled itself on the Pilgrims in terms of adapting to living in America. Then no New England, then no Northwest Territories, then no dispute over slavery. So Squanto matters.
Squanto was kidnapped into slavery in 1614 and taken to Spain, then released by Spanish friars and sent to England, to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Gorges was interested in Newfoundland and he thought Squanto would make a great interpreter. So Squanto was taught English and sent to Newfoundland. Naturally no one there, a thousand miles north of his home, had any way of knowing who he was and where he came from - but as it happens someone did. A ship captain there in Newfoundland had been in the group of ships when Squanto was snatched and, as a captain, a navigator, he knew exactly where Squanto came from. Almost like Providence. So Squanto was returned to Patuxent. But in his absence his entire village had been wiped out by disease. He went to live elsewhere in the vicinity and that winter the Pilgrims lost in blinding storm found Patuxent harbor by accident and moved in there, calling it Plymouth. That spring Squanto heard of their arrival and came and showed the Pilgrims how his village, Patuxent, had lived on that site. The Pilgrims used the village fields to raise the village crops and caught fish in the brooks where the village had caught them before. That is why the Pilgrims survived and what they learned the Puritans who came after learned and that's why New England came into being.
So we ought to do justice to Squanto but the record is entirely silent on his motivations and feelings. I think this means they weren't European motivations and so were opaque. But perhaps a Japanese person could guess better at it all because the Patuxents were more analogous to his own folk history than to European folk history. If we are going to understand American history outside of Marxist intersectional victimology we need a better understanding of what a Patuxent like Squanto was.
I too am a great believer in re-walking the same paths, as I have mentioned before. Some Japanese Buddhist said something like, "The road to enlightenment is between the two pine trees." There are many pine trees here, so I hope to find my way by and by.
Fall does not necessarily make me think of spring. I am happy to accept fall for itself. I do like it especially because of how the light is changing, and the smell of fallen leaves. It is a nice time to be here.
When I visited Nara, I went to see a great Buddha figure at a well-known temple. I was about to photograph it, and no one watched me or tried to stop me, but I thought, no, I will not. So instead I just looked at it and moved on. And that was OK.
Thanks for this insight. I walk my dog every morning for an hour or an hour-and-a-half. And each day, I find myself reviewing - "no, we walked that trail yesterday, we haven't done this other one for a while -- or maybe we should drive to a different part of town?" I'm going to re-read this post tomorrow and for a while, and reconsider what I can learn from the old familiar trails.
"Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."
~Abba Moses, Sayings of the Desert Fathers
That excerpt is very Japanese- suspiciously so, I think- in its use of seasonal words.
I studied Japanese once, from Sei Shonagon to Murakami. Seasons are prominently featured throughout, but they are not always this on the nose. Shonagon will in some cases just mention deer to indicate fall.
Japanese people I've known have often told me, rather breathlessly, "We have four seasons in Japan." Shimagunikonjou, right?
This seems to try rather hard at Japaneseness.
"Go, sit on your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” - My kids
Wow - can't remember the last time I was so glad to click through to the NYT. Wonderful article. My partner of nearly 26 years is half Japanese; having gone to Japan frequently as a child, we often discuss the differences in Western/Japanese culture. Like you I am not much of a traveler, but the more I learn about Japan's love of nature and gardens the more I realize I must go there some day. I mean, just LOOK at this wisteria garden - I must experience this wisteria tunnel some day:
https://kawachi-fujien.com/
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