Wisteria across the river, behind our house.
Azaleas are in bloom, everywhere.
The tree outside my office window.
More azaleas.
Archive for the ‘Many More’ Category
Today’s Colors in Kyoto
Sunday, May 10th, 2009“Behind Paper Doors–a series about remarkable people in Kyoto.” Meet Yasui Yuji-san. A man of conviction and passion.
Monday, April 27th, 2009In Collaboration with Photographer, Helen Hasenfeld
© Photos by Helen Hasenfeld
There are places of beauty that touch me, but the garden at out-of-the-way Rengeji Temple in northeastern Kyoto is one of my favorites. The shady courtyard entry was planted in wildflowers by resident priest Yasui Yuji-san, a passionate environmentalist. By impeccably maintaining the 400-year old Tendai Buddhist site, he provides us with a richly contemplative atmosphere. Rengeji a very special place for those who find their way to its gate.
Yasui-san was born in 1941, the son and grandson of Tendai priests at Rengeji. When he was nine years old, he received tokudo initiatory rites of the priesthood. On weekends and school vacations, he was sent to a relative’s temple in Fukui prefecture on the Sea of Japan, to assist at funerals and memorial services for temple members. Then, when in high school, after considerable thought, he decided to break with this kind of life. He walked out of that temple, returned home to Rengeji.
After finishing high school in 1959, Yasui-san left for Tokyo to attend a college preparatory school. He had no money and needed to support himself. Japan was still a poor country recovering from the war. For three years, he went to classes in the morning and worked after school. He had a number of interesting jobs, including that of a “sandwich man,” wearing signs like a sandwich and advertising a cabaret in the Ginza district.
My neighbor, Ando Yasushi-san–Kimono artist
Friday, April 17th, 2009
Ando Yasushi-san is my neighbor and friend. We sometimes go for coffee at a salon-like cafe, where people from various backgrounds come to chat. Ando-san’s hobby is country western line dancing. He is a renowned yuzen kimono painter in Kyoto. Yuzen painting is typically a craft that is cooperatively done by a combination of about 15 different specialists, including a designer, an outline painter, a person who applies resist to the fabric, a broad stroke background dyer, a person who removes the resist from the fabric, a person who paints intricate pictures on the fabric, etc. Ando-san is very unusual in Kyoto, since he does all of the jobs himself, except embroidery.
“Never discard a piece cloth that is at least large enough to wrap 3 beans.”l
Monday, April 13th, 2009Yesterday, I visited my friend Kawasaki Kei-san, proprietor of Kyoto’s upper Teramachi textile gallery, Gallery Kei. The gallery had just finished an exhibition of 100 year-old offertory bags. The old adage about saving patches of cloth large enough to wrap 3 beans came from a time when all textiles were precious. Kei-san explained, “People in pre-industrial Japan would patch together various bits of cloth in long rolls.
“They would then cut off pieces in order to create special bags which would be filled with azuki beans or rice, and placed on the altars of Buddist Temples.”
Gallery Kei specializes in museum-quality folk textiles. Until the modern era, cotton was difficult to come by in rural areas, especially in northern Japan. Clothes were made from hand-spinning such things as linden bark, wisteria vines and kudzu vines. Also used washi paper was cut into strips, hand-
spun and woven with cotton to create shifu, an excellent light, beathing textile.
Update: My Life in Kyoto, Winter 2009
Friday, March 6th, 2009
I woke up to a rumbling sound this morning. In the moment between sleeping and waking, I imagined a troupe of insolent monkeys playing on our roof.
I finally managed to get up and pull aside the curtains. I looked out the window and saw, yes, a troupe of insolent monkeys climbing on the railings of our neighbors’ houses. Because we live at the foot of a mountain range on the northern edge of Kyoto, the monkeys know that they were here first.
Though Kyoto winters are considered to be cold, by Japan standards, red camelias continuously bloom throughout the city, from the end of December through mid-spring. They are especially photogenic in the snow, but this winter has been too warm for much snowfall.
The annual Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten) was held at the Meiji-era (late 1800’s) Kyoto Museum of Art. I walked from room to room to room of huge paintings, contemporary ceramics, woven and dyed works, a huge room of large sculpture and even some lacquer ware.
There were a considerable number of paintings that expressed nature in a way that reminded me of the Rimpa school of the 1700’s which later gave birth to art nouveau. I found these new paintings to be enchanting visions of nature—secret glimpses into devic kingdoms or the lands of the Shinto gods.
Painting by Seki Tomomichi (2008)
Azai-san, master knife maker from Takefu
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
There were three degrees of separation between myself and a master culinary knife maker, from the Japan Sea city of Takefu. Despite that, however, we finally met a few years ago. First, a friend of mine, a Tendai Buddhist priest, introduced me to a German man who had become a master Japanese-style carpenter. The carpenter, then, introduced me to the remarkable Azai-san, master maker of culinary knives of extraordinary quality. Over the years I have been learning about how knives are made. For instance, by sandwiching a hard steel into a softer steel, the hard metal allows for a very sharp cutting edge, whereas the soft metal adds resilience to the blade as a whole. Also, where common wooden handles last only a few years when used constantly in a wet professional kitchen, Azai-san makes his finest handles from extremely hard, red sandalwood (see top knife in photo below), so his knives can last the life of the chef. Azai-san works in his own workshop, as well as in a fascinating place called Knife Bridge, which is operated by the knife makers guild of Takefu. Knife Bridge consists of a large, two story room with about a dozen work stations, each with its own fire furnace for working with steel. High above the working craftsmen is a long runway-like bridge, upon which guests and the general public can walk while looking down, clearly and directly watching the knife making process.
I am not especially skilled with tools, nor do I work with my hands much. However, I must really thank Azai-san for the pleasureful experience of quality and precision when I prepare food with one of his very special knives.
Pilgrimage to 1500-year old Ise Grand Shinto Shrine
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
The Wedded Rocks, due east of Ise–a sacred site for the Japanese.
It was a sunny Sunday morning, today, at Ise Grand Shinto Shrine, located two hours by train from Kyoto. Unseasonal winter temperatures in the upper 60’s brought many pilgrims out today to stroll past aesthetically pruned red pines, trimmed as if they were weathered by winds in canyons or rock sea coasts, making this transition area are feel far more remote. A number of people gathered by the traditional ablutions area to wash their hands in the gentle and pristine Isuzu River before approaching the diety in prayer. Inside the nearly white, flawless hinoki cypress paneled Kagura-den hall, handsome young priests in purple robes and tall black lacquered washi hats played gagaku music dating back to the Silk Road of the 7th century with shichiriki flutes, representing the earth, sho, 17-pipe mouth organs representing the heavens, and ryuteki flutes which is the “dragon” moving up and down between the two. Sparkling young shrine maidens dressed in white kimono and vermillion hakama skirts performed kagura, an offertory dance to Amaterasu Omikami, the Shinto Goddess of the Sun, the enshrined diety of Ise and the mythological ancestor of the Emperor.
After purification rites, I proceeded though a forest of 1000-year old cedars to the steps leading to the main shrine. In the spirit of renewal, the shrine has been re-built once every twenty years for nearly 1500 years. I stood silently with many pilgrims on this spring-like February day, waiting my turn to pay my respects and express my gratitude for life.