Kyoto

Kyoto is amazing.  Traditionally, Kyoto, not Tokyo, was the capital of Japan, and each emperor and shogun built his own palace.   Fortunately, Kyoto was not bombed in WWII, so it has survived intact ... sorta.  Since the buildings are made primarily of wood, several have been destroyed or burned down over the centuries so we frequently visit a thirteenth century site that was rebuilt in the 1960's.  But they stuck to the original design so it's okay, right?  Kyoto has over 400 Shinto shrines and 1,650 Buddhist temples scattered around its regions.

Our first stop in Kyoto was the Golden Pavilion, a beautiful (and fairly recently reconstructed) building covered in gold leaf, and surrounded by a beautiful garden.  Unfortunately, you cannot go inside, but it was worth seeing the outside.

Next we visited the Nijo Castle
, which was built in 1603.  While the emperor had a primarily ceremonial role during most of Japan's history, the real power was held by the shogun.  Nijo Castle was the home of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a family that ruled for fifteen generations from 1603 to 1867, a rare period of peace and prosperity in Japan.  This so-called Edo period was also isolationist, with Japan closed off to most of the world.  In this Castle in 1867, the last Tokugawa shogun  "retired," ceding power back to the Meiji Emperor and thus beginning the Meiji restoration when Japan opened itself back up to the world (with a little help from an American incursion.)  

A unique design makes the floors of the castle make a sound like nightingales singing.  Also, the beautiful painted wall screens include scenes of tigers although there were none in Japan.  The artists created them from imported furs and sketches from China.

The next day we visited the Sanjusangendo Temple which is renowned for its 1000 life size statues of Kannon, the goddess of mercy and one gigantic one of him in the middle.  This Temple was first built in 1164, and although the original building was lost in a fire, it was reconstructed in 1266, and that is the building that we saw.  Each statue, which has a unique face, has 11 heads and 42 arms.  In front of the 1000 statues are more statues of various Buddhist gods and beings.  

In the afternoon, we visited the Miho Museum which contains Western antiquities (Egyptian, Greek, and Roman) as well as Japanese treasures.  The building itself is a work of art.  Designed by I.M. Pei, it is primarily underground so as not to destroy the view of the mountains where it is located.  But there is no sense of darkness in the building.  Unfortunately, I spent too much time in the Western wing and ran out of time to fully appreciate the Japanese art.  I should have started there.

We topped the day off with an incredible chicken yakitori dinner.  Of course they first served soup and then a salad.  Then, as I expected, a skewer of chicken.  Then they brought out another skewer with a different sauce.  Then wings on a skewer.  Then another skewer with a different sauce.  Every time I thought I could not eat another bite, they brought out another skewer.  How many different ways can you skewer chicken?  Well, then a skewer of chicken liver.  Then a skewer of grilled chicken skin.  I think there was a dessert but I was rolling on the floor by then.

Today we visited Nara, Japan's capital from 710 to 784, to see Daibutsu, the world's largest bronze Buddha statue in the Todaiji Temple.  The temple is located on the side of the mountain and the property is inhabited by hundreds of deer who coexist peacefully with the Buddha and the tourists (although the males do not always coexist peacefully with each other.)

We had one last half day in Osaka where we toured the Osaka Castle.  First built in 1583, it was the seat of a shogun who united Japan in the sixteenth century.  Over the centuries, the original castle was destroyed and rebuilt several times although the moat and moat walls are original.  The castle held ammunition supplies during WWII and was completely destroyed by American bombing raids.  So we toured the 1997 reconstruction.  But it looked pretty.  And a great view from the eighth floor.  We were rushed for time and the lines were long, so I even hiked up all eight floors.

And finally ... one last okonomiyako lunch.  That is the pancake/omelet with seafood in it that is cooked on a grill at our table.  After an appetizer and grilled vegetables (I might have skipped that course), we were each served a huge okonomiyako.  But before we finished it, they brought out noodles with more seafood!  We have certainly eaten well on this trip.

One Lunch in Kyoto

I really have not been able to describe the incredible and incredibly varied meals we have been served.  Since we see no menu, we have no idea if there is one course, five, or ten.  Each course is small and elegantly presented, and I cannot identify what a lot of the foods are.  Today we ate in a private dining room in a home built in the sixteenth century by a billionaire merchant.  The home is now a restaurant with its large garden intact.  And this was our lunch in the order that it was served.

Appetizer.  The skewer has sweet potato and radish.  Under the sweet potato was some kind of pate (liver?).  The three things that look like shrimp I think were mushrooms.  The round thing in front was hard boiled quail egg.  There was a piece of sushi tucked in one of the leaves. I have forgotten what the other things were.

Some kind of soup, I think.  I never quite figured it out.

Finally something recognizable.  Sashimi.  Although the white one with the red dot was something weird that I have not had before.

Three slices of duck with roasted scallions.  Excellent.

Not quite sure.  Some kind of concoction of bean curd, persimmon (I think), and something else.

Persimmon with some kind of cream.  We thought it might be dessert but ...

Another soupy thing with some kind of sweet potato thing in it.

A box on a tray.  Open it and ...

Sushi!  Fish, shrimp, cooked eel, and cucumber maki with plum sauce.

Miso soup.

This was finally dessert.  It was kind of like jello in an almond flavored liquid.

And this was our private room overlooking the garden.

Dying Arts, Part Deux

Pun intended this time.  We visited the home and workshop of the Matsueda family, where Takahiro Matsuda is the fifth generation in his family to carry on the art of Kurume ikat.  Both Takahiro's grandfather and father (shown here) were named Important Cultural Assets.  Like Suzanne Ross (who is singlehandedly keeping lacquer work alive) the title of Important Intangible Cultural Asset or National Treasure is bestowed by the government and is very prestigious.  Unfortunately, unlike the MacArthur Genius awards in the United States, the titles carry a great deal of prestige but no money grants.  Takahiro Matsueda is known as the Son of a National Treasure.

The Matsueda family makes hand woven cotton fabric with indigo, and devised a technique for dying each thread, warp and weft, before weaving.  In a painstakingly slow process, a design is created, essentially on graph paper (no computers when this technique was created.)  Then, every individual thread is marked for where it should be white, and that sections (well, hundreds of sections on each thread) and each mark is covered with a piece of "araso," the bark of hemp,  that is tied on with a one inch tail of the araso hanging.  The threads are then dyed in huge vats of indigo.  Of course, the Matsuedas make the liquid indigo dye themselves by processing indigo plants.  After the threads are dry, the tails of the araso are pulled and the thread where the araso was is white while the rest is deep blue.  The material is woven with these threads, creating an identical design on both sides.  I watched the demonstrations and videos and still don't quite get it.  There are literally hundreds of threads going in each direction.  How do they manage to keep them all in the right order?  I watched an artisan doing just that and I still couldn't understand it.

We had arrived in Fukuoka by train the previous day and went right to the Tatsumi Sushi Main Brand for an outstanding sushi lunch.  Then a visit to (another) Shinto shrine and the beautiful and interesting Kyushu National Museum.  Japanese families take their daughters at age three and seven, and their sons at age five to the shrine for a ceremony.  The children are dressed in traditional kimonos.  We were lucky to be there to watch the ceremony for one little girl and her family.

We had a little time to walk around Fukuoka and now we are off to Kyoto.

Yes, but is it art ?

I admit:  I lifted this title from a book about modern art that I read several years ago.

It took four train rides to get from Kanazawa to Takamatsu on the island of Kagawa.  Then today, we took a ferry to the smaller island of Naoshima which has been reborn as an art haven and is home to several museums of modern art as well as outdoor installations.  The most famous:  the red pumpkin and the yellow pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama.

First we visited the Chichu Art Museum which is built completely of concrete with narrow passageways.  It feels more like a prison than an art museum.  Chichu means "underground" which is where we were, with openings in the ceiling or walls to let in light.  There are only three rooms that exhibit art.  One has six large Monets including water lilies.  Incredible.  One had a rather odd installation, and the third was bare except for a pink light.  (Yes, I know it looks blue, but it was pink when I saw it.)

Okay.  Next, the world famous Benesse House Museum which opened in 1992 as a facility integrating a museum with a hotel, based on the concept of "coexistence of nature, art, and architecture. " Yes, that circle on the ground is made of pieces of wood.  The circles on the wall are finger (hand) painted with mud brought from the artist's home in Italy.

Finally, after lunch, the New Museum of Art.  There were some incredible (and incredibly bizarre) murals here, and this installation of "ninety nine lifelike wolves charging forward with fierce determination, colliding headlong in a glass wall without hesitation.  The wall, which is the same height as the Berlin Wall was, symbolizes the intangible yet deeply felt ideological and cultural divisions between people and communities.  The work reflects on the human condition:  our dangerous loyalty to dominant ideologies and our seeming fated cycle of error."

Yesterday we visited the Isama Noguchi Garden Museum.  Isama Noguchi is one the 20th century's most renowned sculptors, working primarily with granite.  He left specific instructions that after he died, all of the works in his house and garden should be left exactly where he had placed them.  Thus, a garden of granite pieces.

The day before, I created my own art.  We visited a paper factory and each of us made a postcard.

And perhaps the finest work of art that I saw:  Ritsurin Koen, a vast 185 acre Japanese garden dating back to the 17th century.  It is not on the list of the top three Japanese gardens, perhaps because its location is so remote, but it was truly spectacular.

They do not call it bonsai unless the tree is in a pot, but it is amazing how they can shape a full grown tree.  The rocks at the bottom make this look like a tree on a turtle.

Our trip is called "A Taste of Japan," so besides art, we are eating interesting and different foods.  Yesterday we had lunch at the Nakano Udon School where we cooked our own udon (in the bowl on the left) in the little stove on the right.  We did finally have tempura.  I wasn't sure what was in the middle on the bottom.  The right side had teeny raw shrimp that were meant to be eaten raw.

Today we were served a bento box and had to guess what was in each little box.  Three scoops of rice on the diagonal.  Center right looked like fruit but the consensus was sweet potato.  Fried chicken thigh top center, and some kind of cooked fish bottom center.  Bottom right was string beans, and dessert, on the top left, was a macaron and a piece of green tea cake.

Tomorrow we are having lunch at a renowned sushi restaurant.  At least I'll be able to recognize what I am eating.

Dying arts, gardens and zen

The theme of our visit to Kanazawa was dying arts (no pun intended).  At our first stop, the Gold Museum, the docent explained the entire process of making and applying gold leaf.   Gold bars are pressed into thin sheets about a millimeter thick.  Each gold sheet is placed between two sheets of a special paper made out of rice straw and mulberry fibers.  A stack of a thousand sheets is then continuously compressed until the gold is less than .0001 millimeters thick.  This is the gold leaf that is then used in various arts such as painting and pottery, and even sprinkled over food.  Why is this a dying art since there is a fair amount of gold in the world?  The process for making the paper takes a month and the supply of artisans who know how to make the paper is disappearing.  They have tried using carbon paper and something like onionskin, but the result is inferior.  So the world is running out of gold leaf.

In the afternoon, we visited National Treasure Suzanne Ross.  That is how she has listed but I don't know who decides that you are a National Treasure.   Suzanne is singlehandedly trying to keep the art of lacquering alive.  I learned last week at the museum in Shanghai that lacquer comes from the sap of the lacquer tree.  I had trouble believing that, but it is true.  Lacquer comes from the urushi tree which only grows in Japan and China (slightly different varieties.)  The process of gathering the sap is very slow as it takes twelve years for each tree to mature and then each tree produces about a cup of sap that must then be processed producing an even smaller amount.  Despite Susan's efforts, urushi forests are disappearing since no one can make enough money growing and taking care of the trees.  By the way, Susan moved to her current location outside Kanazawa after a large earthquake (followed by flooding and fire) in 2023 destroyed her previous home and studio where she had been for over thirty years.

We had another ten course banquet in the evening.  Every few minutes they bring us a small plate with three or four bites of something that is often completely unrecognizable.  We take a guess, then we take a bite, and we are still not sure what we are eating.  The variety of food beyond the sushi that Americans know is staggering.  And I don't think I have seen tempura at all.

The next day we visited a (restored) samurai house.  The samurai period lasted for centuries, and the samurai were not just fighters, and certainly were not ninjas.  Rather, there was a hierarchy of samurai from the shogun (leader) to low level functionaries.  The size and height of each person's house reflected the level of the samurai within that hierarchy.

The floor of each room is comprised of tatami mats, each about three by six feet.  To this day, the Japanese do not measure room size by square feet but rather the number of tatamis, such as a six tatami room or a ten tatami room (very large).  In such small houses and rooms, there is little furniture (thus sitting on the floor), and everything must serve several purposes.  No need for a dresser; a kimono is folded and stored in a box.

In the afternoon, we visited Kenroku-en which is officially one of the three greatest traditional gardens in Japan.  It is a beautiful and peaceful Japanese garden.  We happened to be there when the workers were installing these tent-like frames (along with reporters and cameramen from several stations who were covering the installation).  Why?  These tents protect the trees from the heavy snow that falls in the winter.

We made a quick visit to another restored house, this time a Geisha House, and learned a bit about the music and other talents of the Geisha girls.  The main attraction in the afternoon was the workshop of Toshioka Kosen at his Kutani Kosen Kiln.  Toshioka is a fifth generation pottery maker, one of the few remaining traditional pottery makers in the area.  He walked us through the several stages of making pottery, a process that takes several months and at least five firings.  At his workshop, they still use wood burning ovens.  He thought about switching to gas, but decided that the old way was still the best way.  

One of the most interesting things I learned at the museum in Tokyo last week ... when Japan opened to the West in the late nineteenth century, the Europeans were totally unimpressed with the beautiful pottery and lacquered bowls (it's just decorative art), and the painted screens and lacquered chests (it's just furniture.)  So Japan sent artists to study Western art.  The first artists used watercolors, creating images similar to painted screens.  Water color?  Western experts turned up their noses again.  Apparently, unless it is oil painting on canvas, it is not "fine art."

Today we drove from Kanazawa to Fukui where we visited the Eihei-ji Temple which was described as "a Soto-zen monastery built in 1244 for austere meditation."  Monks live here for a year, meditating and praying for world peace, apparently undaunted that their prayers have not (yet) been answered.  After a year's training, they return to their home temples where the practice of monking is quite profitable.  Our guide insisted that they all drive BMW's.  Monks in Japan also marry and have families.  Not quite the same as Christian or even Laotian Buddhist monks.

Next, the Ichijodani Asakura Clan Ruins are one of the few ancient ruins and reconstructions that we have seen, although these ruins are only from the sixteenth century.  There is a lot of destruction in Japan - from wars, earthquakes, and tsunamis - but the Japanese just keep rebuilding.  Also, buildings were traditionally made out of wood and are easily destroyed in an earthquake or war.  So there are surprisingly few ancient sites for such an ancient people.  For the most part, the only shrines are Shinto, not relics of times past.

And finally, we visited another lovely garden with a "mansion" on a lake.  But the original mansion burned to the ground in an air raid during WWII, so we were in a lovely reconstruction.

A few observations about Japan ...

We had parked directly across the street from the Gold Museum but had to walk to the light at the corner to cross the street.  The guide told us that no one jaywalks in Japan.  Imagine a country where you can say that no one jaywalks.  

Also, there are no garbage cans anywhere.  I don't want to litter, but when I finish my Coke Zero, there is no place to throw away the bottle.  When I asked the guide, she said that some people carry a garbage bag with them and throw it away when they get home.  The lack of garbage cans even extends to public bathrooms where there are no paper towels for drying your hands.  You have to carry a small hand towel with you.

  

Tokyo in 2 days

 Tokyo is a HUGE modern city, mostly upscale from the parts I have seen although I am sure there is more.  Significantly destroyed by US firebombing in 1945, and mostly built from wood in the first place, we have seen disappointingly few "historical" areas.  Nonetheless ...

We started with a visit to a foundation that is maintaining the ancient art of woodblock art.  The artisan applies each color individually from the blocks that the carver has carved.  We watched her create four copies of the Great Wave at Kanazawa.

Of course, after the demonstration there were plenty of pieces to buy.  I would have bought a copy of the Great Wave that I had just seen her create, but that was for demonstration purposes only and would be destroyed.  Nothing so imperfect could leave the studio.  What a shame.

For lunch we went to a restaurant to have authentic Japanese pancakes with meat, fish, and vegetables.  I pictured something like a crepe with the fillings of our choice.  Instead, we were each given a bowl of ingredients including a raw egg.  We mixed it all together and cooked it on the grill at our table.  Seemed like more of an omelet than a pancake.  No complaints.  It was very good.

A visit to the National Museum and a walking tour completed our first day.

On the second day, we walked through the fish market, sampling goodies and buying sushi and sashimi for a picnic lunch.  We started with a breakfast of unrecognizable fish.  I think they were marinated but tasted nothing like ceviche.  Maybe they were smoked?  I'm trying everything (as long as it doesn't have potatoes in it.)  We watched the Sushi Princess slice the tuna for us that she had bought at the wholesale market earlier.  I mean earlier.  She gets up at 2:30 every morning to buy a single tuna which she sells over the course of the day.  And then does the same thing the next day.  Needless to say, the fresh sushi and sashimi lunch was REALLY good.  And as you can tell from the life-size picture ... I am smaller than a tuna.

In the afternoon, we visited the Meiji Shrine.  I have been studying Japanese history, so I now know that the "most important" shrine in Tokyo is dedicated to the Meiji Emperor from the late nineteenth century.  People come to pray, not to Buddha or Allah or God, but to an emperor?  Clearly I am missing something.  Maybe in a hundred years or so we will have a MAGA shrine in America where people can pray.  Makes sense, no?

Finally we finished our Tokyo trip with a short visit to the Ginza.

Quick factoid about Japan:  it has roughly one third the population of the US in an area the size of California.

Off today to Kanazawa.