Lost Japan (11 page)

In my early days at the Kyoto
kai
, it seemed strange to me that old artworks sold far more cheaply than new ones. Garish late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century paintings easily outsold classic Muromachi ink paintings. This phenomenon exists everywhere in the modern art world, where, for example, Monet and Van Gogh sell for stratospheric prices many times higher than most Old Masters. But in Japan the situation is extreme.
Muromachi ink paintings and Edo literati calligraphy were being auctioned off at ridiculously low prices. Thanks to this, over the course of about fifteen years, I was able to acquire paintings, ceramics, furniture and hundreds of pieces of calligraphy.

In the process of collecting and dealing, I found that collectors belong to several distinct breeds. Perhaps the most common is the ‘stamp collector' type. These people seek out large numbers of small objects that resemble one another – a sort of magpie mentality. Collectors of old coins, sword guards, woodblock prints and Chinese snuff bottles tend to fall into the stamp-collector category.

Then we have the ‘Sunflower' type: people or corporations who buy artworks only to impress others. Hence the worldwide popularity of easily recognizable big-name artists such as Picasso and Van Gogh. I call this type ‘Sunflower' after the museum in the Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance building in Tokyo, which essentially exists to house only one painting: Van Gogh's
Sunflowers
, which was purchased at vast expense in the 1980s. Yasuda Fire & Marine is not, properly speaking, a collector at all; its only reason for owning
Sunflowers
is to impress the Japanese public.

I cannot deny having inclinations towards both these types. For instance, my
shikishi
and
tanzaku
, a collection of hundreds of little bits of paper, clearly fit the stamp-collection mode. When I was buying
shikishi
, I tried to assemble complete sets of certain categories, such as calligraphy by every head of the Reizei family from 1500 until 1900. I suppose this is not far from compiling a full set of baseball cards. As for big names, I must admit that it brings me satisfaction to own works by well-known artists, and I am not above displaying these just to impress my friends.

But for me the highest pleasure of art collecting lies elsewhere. I use my collection to create a world. For example, in the
tokonoma
I will hang a scroll of rubbings from Mt Tai in China, with three strong characters reading, ‘The virtuous man is not alone'.
Below this I will set a Ming-dynasty table on which rests a copy of the
Analects
, opened to the passage reading, ‘The Master said, “The virtuous man is not alone, he will always have neighbors”.' Next to the book is a Ruyi scepter, thought to enshrine magical powers – evoking the world of the sage. A flower from the garden floats in a celadon bowl; in other parts of the room stand unusually shaped ‘spirit stones' (in whose ins and outs the Chinese saw workings of the Tao). Before the stones are fans inscribed by Edo literati. Everything fits together into a single, interrelated theme. This is a world which one cannot find in a museum. Spirit stones standing by themselves in a case are nothing special; a scroll saying ‘The virtuous man is not alone', by itself, is of little interest to anyone but a calligraphy master. Yet by gathering together a number of such objects and arranging them with their essential meaning and artistry in mind, the world of the literati or Kyoto court nobles comes to life.

Today's young Japanese are unaware of their country's cultural history. There are many who yearn after a lost world of art and beauty, but wherever they go, concrete and fluorescent lighting confronts them; the problem is even more severe in other Asian countries, such as China or Tibet, where ancient cultures have sustained near-mortal damage. In Japan there are only a handful of houses where a breath of this ancient beauty lives on, and ironically, many of them belong to foreigners like myself or David. When young students visit my house and come away deeply moved, it leaves me feeling elated. I feel that my mission as an art collector has been fulfilled.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, the art-collecting world stands at a major turning point. There is a shift from private ownership to public institutions, a trend which can be seen throughout the world. The objects in my collection were passed down from individual to individual, or treasured in families, for centuries. I imagine that their former owners studied and enjoyed them just as I do; as they lived with these artworks, they slowly
unraveled the secrets hidden within them, and in the process honed their own understanding of art and life. However, the age when individuals can own such things is drawing to a close. One way or another, I expect that most of my pieces will eventually end up in museums. A private collector from the next generation would need to be very wealthy to create a similar collection. It is likely that my current lifestyle may not survive this century.

In recent years, antiques have become scarce in Japan. For fifty years after World War II, artworks from the
kura
kept flowing into the market like a bubbling spring. But after fifty years of destruction, there are few
kura
left to demolish, and
ubu
objects are gradually disappearing from the Kyoto auctions. Folding screens, in particular, have declined drastically in quantity and quality, and ink paintings have only a few more years before they vanish as well. The spring is running dry. My ability to keep collecting depends on just one thing: the lack of interest in Asian art displayed by the Japanese. As long as this continues, I will be able to keep adding to my collection. So, although it's a self-centered wish, I pray they will stay asleep a little while longer.

A. F. Wright, my professor of Chinese history at Yale, used to begin his lectures like this: ‘When gazing over the vast historical sweep of China, I hardly know where to begin. Shall I begin with the efflorescence of the Tang dynasty in the eighth century? Or a thousand years before that with the First Emperor and his burial of the scholars? Or a thousand years before that with the Duke of Zhou, sage and statesman? No!' Here he would rap on the podium and there would be a pregnant pause. ‘I shall begin with the rise of the Himalayas!'

On the other hand, Roy Miller, my professor of Japanese, began his term by inviting the students over to his house for sushi and Japanese dance. Here lies the difference between Japanese and Chinese studies: superficially similar, they are actually worlds apart. As someone who is drawn to both, I have found the differences intriguing, and nowhere are they so pronounced as in the field of academic study.

Although I started with Chinese language classes in elementary school, the two years I spent in Yokohama in the mid-1960s set me firmly on the path of Japanese Studies. When we returned to the US, I listened avidly to the folk songs and Kabuki music which I had taped from the radio. We had brought back several cases of instant noodles, and what with the noodles, the music and the artworks my mother had collected, my love of Japan remained fresh. By the time I entered high school I already knew that I wanted to major in Japanese Studies at college. Universities offering Japanese Studies were scarce back then, and Yale happened to be one of them. So I set my sights on Yale, and in the fall of 1969 matriculated there.

The first step in Japanese Studies is of course to learn the language. Now there are dozens of Japanese textbooks on the market, but until the mid-70s most American universities used a textbook called
Jordan.
The book was originally written for diplomats, and it taught Japanese with a step-by-step approach grounded in linguistic analysis, which at the time was revolutionary.
Jordan
has since become known as the ‘Mother of Japanese language textbooks'. Its teaching method consisted of repeating speech patterns again and again and again; compared to the average language textbook,
Jordan's
use of repetition is almost unbelievable. Having lived in Japan, I expected the textbook to be pure tedium. Mrs Hamako Chaplin, who had coauthored the book, happened to be teaching at Yale, so I went to see her to explain that I already spoke Japanese. But she would have none of that, saying, ‘Certainly you can speak Japanese, but it is the typical foreigner's Japanese picked up in the international schools – a kind of child's speech. Unless you correct this, you'll never be able to speak in a way widely acceptable to Japanese society. You will have to start over again from zero.'

Attending the beginners' class not only meant using
Jordan
, but also arriving every day for class at eight o'clock. This was the cruelest blow of all for a night person like myself, and the class
was boring to the point of paralysis, as I had foreseen. But thanks to
Jordan
, I mastered fundamental grammar and the system of honorifics, which is critically important, as I discovered in my very first oral exam. Mrs Chaplin began by asking me, ‘What is your name?', and I responded, ‘My name is Alex-san.' There was a pained silence. She said, ‘This interview is over.' I remembered, as I slunk out of the room, that the particle
san
is not a neutral ‘Mr': it always implies honor, and therefore must never be used for oneself.

Although Yale offered an excellent Japanese Studies program, almost all the classes were available only to postgraduates. This was well before the Japan boom hit American education, and there were still very few undergraduate students majoring in this field. When I graduated in 1974, only one other student received a bachelor's degree in Japanese Studies; today, Yale alone has numerous students in this field, and the number of colleges offering Japanese Studies has mushroomed to well over a hundred (compared to about twenty when I was a student).

Japanese Studies encompasses literature, art, social studies, economics and more, but overwhelming weight is given to the study of social and economic structures. It would seem obvious that there is a need to study Japan's economy, but perhaps more has been written and taught about its social structures than any other aspect of the country. Experts in Japan and abroad have developed numerous theories to explain social behavior here. Lafcadio Hearn, the American journalist who became a naturalized citizen of Japan in the early 1900s, had a theory that Japanese society was fundamentally similar to that of the Ancient Greeks. Ruth Benedict, in her groundbreaking book
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
, put forth the idea that while Westerners internalize their ‘guilt', the Japanese regret an action only when it results in externally imposed ‘shame'. In addition to these theories, we hear about ‘the vertical society',
amae
(reliance on others or the system for support),
tatemae
and
honne
(an officially expressed
view versus an actually held opinion), and so on. Such theories have mounted up into a vast bibliography which the student must read.

My own theory (to add one more to the pile) is that the regimentation of society that began with the Kamakura Shogunate at the end of the twelfth century did indeed succeed in repressing individualism. As Japan is an island country, rules could be imposed with a thoroughness impossible in a large continental nation like China. As a result, Japan's pyramidal structures, which you can find everywhere from companies to tea ceremony, really do determine patterns of behavior. In my experience, a Japanese is much less likely to say or do the unexpected than a Chinese; whatever he may think, he is more likely to do what the rules tell him to do. The muffled scream of the individual being strangled by society is psychologically what the tragic Kabuki loyalty plays are all about. Since social rules do play such a pivotal role, it is very important to study them.

Another reason for the emphasis on social theories is the profusion of books on
Nihonjinron
(theories of Japaneseness), written by Japanese authors for domestic consumption. For students of Japanese Studies who expect to spend their lives interacting with the Japanese, failure to read this literature can lead to major problems. The books on Japaneseness cover a wide spectrum, including titles such as
The Japanese and the Jews, The Japanese and the Koreans, The Japanese Brain
, and so forth. In general, the tenor of the argument is somewhat aggressive, the majority of these theories being designed to prove that the Japanese are better than everybody else in some way. We hear, for example, that the Japanese process language with the right side of the brain, which therefore means that their brains are unique and superior. Surely no other country in the world has such an extensive literature in praise of itself.

Foreign scholars in the field of Japanese Studies must be very careful where they step. Ezra Vogel of Harvard was lionized
when he wrote
Japan as Number One
. But when Roy Miller wrote a book entitled
Japan's Modern Myth
, confronting the linguists who are trying to prove that the Japanese language is unique and superior to all others, he was ostracized as a ‘Japan basher'. When I was a student in the early 1970s, this debate was already raging. Despite my fondness for Japan, the rhetoric of the ‘theories of Japaneseness' made me feel a distinct foreboding for the country's global future.

From the fall of 1972 I spent a year studying at the International Center of Keio University in Tokyo as an exchange student. Keio is Japan's oldest university, founded in 1867 by Fukuzawa Yukichi, who was one of the first Japanese to travel abroad in the nineteenth century. I lived in Shirogane-dai, not far from the old Keio campus in Mita, where I attended classes in Japanese language and audited courses on architecture.

However, I can remember almost nothing of interest regarding the time I spent at Keio. That was partly a result of Japan's university system. High-school students must study relentlessly to pass college entrance examinations, giving up all extracurricular activities and commuting to cram schools, in what is called ‘examination hell'. But once they get into college, the pressure suddenly relaxes and the next four years are spent almost completely at play. Companies place little stress on what new employees know before they are hired; the real education begins on the job. The result is that college classes do not matter much, and academic rigor lags far behind Europe or the States. The lectures I attended on architecture were deathly boring and almost inevitably put me to sleep. After about two months I simply gave up and stopped going.

Classes at Japanese universities tend to be very large, and because students do not live in dorms, there were few opportunities to meet people. Perhaps also due to the set-up of the International Center at the time, foreign exchange students at Keio were relatively isolated. In any case, I did not make a single
friend at the university – though I ate daily in the student dining hall, not once did any Japanese student strike up a conversation with me.

Meanwhile, outside of Keio, I was having a great year. I became close friends with people I met in the public bath in the Shirogane-dai area. After the bath I would go to a coffee shop, and there I met more people. I traveled constantly to Iya Valley, and on the way I would spend days or even a week at a stretch at David Kidd's house in Ashiya. The year was a very rich one, but this was thanks to what I learned in Tokyo, Ashiya and Iya, and had very little to do with Keio.

When the exchange program came to an end, I returned to Yale. For my senior thesis I chose to write about Iya Valley, but meanwhile, my childhood interest in China had been rekindled by David Kidd. I realized that I could never understand Japan if I did not know something about China, so I made plans to travel to China or Taiwan after graduation. However, around this time I was urged to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. Not taking it very seriously, I applied to study Chinese at Oxford, and before several months were out, the unexpected had happened: I was designated a Rhodes Scholar. I realized with horror that I would have to study at Oxford, in England, the opposite direction from where I wanted to be! But I could hardly refuse, so in the fall of 1974, I boarded a plane for England.

One night, soon after my arrival in Oxford, a friend took me to the Merton College dining hall. I happened to glance at the beer mug in my hand and noticed a number: 1572. This, my friend explained, was the year the mug had been donated to the college – I was drinking from a mug which had been in continual use at Merton for the last four hundred years. It struck me then that the scale by which Oxford measures history is graduated by centuries, not years.

This ‘scale of historical memory' is a fascinating thing. In Japan, the events of the pre-World War II decades have been all
but erased from the nation's textbooks, and there have been drastic changes in the written language as well. The language suffered two major revolutions: one in 1868, the other in 1945. Hundreds of
kanji
characters that were common before the war have fallen out of use, and the spelling of
kana
alphabetical endings has also changed. It is difficult for most younger people to read prewar prose, and almost impossible, even for older, educated Japanese, to read anything written before 1868. As a result, Japan's ‘scale of memory' is about fifty years for historical events, and one hundred and thirty years at most for literature.

The years at Oxford gave me a different perspective on Japan. On hearing that a tea-ceremony bowl dates from the Muromachi period, people in Japan are always deeply awed and impressed. In Oxford, however, old objects surround you, living on as a normal part of everyday life. I am no longer impressed by the mere fact that a tea bowl is Muromachi: even the beer mugs at Merton College were Muromachi. What is important is that old things continue to be used.

The thrust of Chinese Studies at Oxford, as could have been expected, was on the classics; China was regarded as a dead culture. In the Oriental Studies Department, to which Chinese Studies belonged, Ancient Egyptian, Chaldean and Coptic were being taught in the neighboring classrooms. As a result of the Oxford attitude, I was given very little opportunity to learn conversational Chinese, and I can hardly speak it today. On the other hand, I read Mencius, Confucius and Zhuangzi to my heart's content. One of my tutors was a Dutchman named Van der Loon, and his explications of how sounds and meanings of characters changed over the centuries color my appreciation of Chinese writing to this day.

There are some characters, like the
chi
of Chiiori, which occur only once in ancient literature and never again; such a character is called a
hapax legomenon
. In the case of
chi
, a bamboo
chi
flute was actually found a few years ago in a Zhou-dynasty tomb, so
now we know what the character represents. But usually we are confronted with a sentence which reads something like, ‘The vessel shone with the color X', and although we can guess at X from its sound or structure, or what later commentators had to say, we cannot be sure since X is a
hapax
and never appears elsewhere. ‘Hah!' Van der Loon would pounce, when one turned up in our readings of Zhuangzi. ‘A
hapax legomenon
. Watson translates it as such-and-such, but actually we will never know what it means.'