Lost Japan (23 page)

Our first stop is Akishino Temple. Its statue of Gigeiten (the god of art) is one of the finest masterpieces of Japanese sculpture. In the delicacy of the face and slightly turned neck, the S-curve to the body and the gracefully bent fingers, the figure of Gigeiten seems to condense all the pure beauty conjured up by Tamasaburo's dance into a single sculpture. It almost seems that the statue is swaying slightly as you watch it. As is to be expected from a truly Esoteric work, it is easy to believe that the soul of the god of art actually resides within this sculpture. In Nara, you often feel that you have not seen a statue, but that you have
met
a statue.

After leaving Akishino Temple we head southwards, keeping to our left the Yamanobe no Michi (the Path at the Foot of the Mountains), a historic road running along the foothills. I often make detours to explore the little farming villages at the base of the hills. To the right is the Yamato plain. Birthplace of Japan's religion and culture, it is now a vast web of power lines, lit up by the imposing glass and neon palaces of
pachinko
parlors.

Pachinko
is a mild form of gambling. The player sits in front of a vertical pinball machine, in which a stream of ball bearings descend through circles of pins. When a ball falls into the correct slot, the player gets a jackpot of hundreds of ball bearings. If the player has any ball bearings left over when he has finished, he takes them to the counter and receives cigarettes or candy in exchange. These are then taken to a booth outside the premises, where they are traded in for money.

There being no such thing as sign control or zoning in most of Japan's neighborhoods,
pachinko
parlors have developed a uniquely garish style: enormous rows of neon lights, several meters high, flashing every color of the rainbow, and roofs capped by dramatic floodlit towers in the shape of the Statue of Liberty, spacecraft or dinosaurs. I recently took a European
architect to visit Shikoku and Nara. I had intended to show him temples, houses and natural scenery, but the only things to catch his eye were the
pachinko
parlors. He explained, ‘The old temples and shrines are just dead ruins. Looking at what is happening to Kyoto, it's clear that these things have no relation to today's Japanese. On the other hand, they don't seem to have mastered true modernism. The layout of new office buildings and apartments is very out of date from the point of view of the rest of the world. Only the
pachinko
parlors are luxurious in their own way, creatively and fantastically built. Of course they're tasteless, but isn't it exactly this poor taste which defines modern Japan? Because
pachinko
parlors have perfected this taste, they are the most consistent and interesting examples of contemporary Japanese design.'

Though depressing, I realized that this was a very keen observation. When you look at the cultural remains of a historical period, you are able to perceive its dominant ideology. In the Nara and Heian periods there were Esoteric temples; from Kamakura through to the end of Edo there were Zen temples and teahouses; and in Meiji the great monuments of the time were train stations. What about the present? When you travel through the countryside of Europe or Southeast Asia, you notice that the highest point of any village is always a church steeple, a mosque or the soaring eaves of a Buddhist temple. In the Japanese countryside, however, the tallest and most ostentatious building is invariably a
pachinko
parlor.

Sitting in front of a
pachinko
machine is the modern form of meditation. The circular arrangement of the pins inside the machine is today's version of the mandala, and the old model of thoughts flowing from the circumference of the mandala towards its center has become the flow of balls from top to bottom of the machine. The overwhelming hold of
pachinko
can hardly be exaggerated. In some rural districts, it accounts for up to twenty per cent of disposable household income.
Pachinko
is now the single
largest industry, outpacing cars and computers, and Japan's richest man by some calculations is a man whose company produces most of the machines.
Pachinko
has developed its own style, consisting of brightly colored rooms laced with constructions of chrome and neon, and oversize plastic statues of animals or gods of good luck. It has become the preferred style of Japanese entertainment: you find it everywhere, from restaurants and bars to the sets of most popular TV programs. It influences architecture, and is the inspiration behind many a glitzy hotel lobby. Kyoto Tower is very much in this
pachinko
mode.

Pachinko
style has even colored industrial design. Recently I spoke to an official of the Japan Design Association. ‘A decade ago, Japan was a leader in world industrial design, producing simple classics like the Walkman,' he lamented. ‘But today the mainstream in modern design is pink toasters in the shape of pigs. What happened?' The answer, of course, is
pachinko
. With all the energies of the economy and culture flowing into
pachinko
parlors, they have become Japan's modern Konpon Daito.

Back to showing my visitors around. After driving south for about twenty minutes from Nara, we arrive at two large burial mounds: the tomb of Emperor Sujin and the Kushiyama mound. Many old tombs can be found in the Osaka, Nara and Asuka regions, some of them hundreds of meters in circumference. The tomb of Emperor Nintoku, on the outskirts of Osaka, is said to be the world's largest. Typically, these tombs are built in a keyhole shape, with a raised hill in the center surrounded by a moat. Imperial mounds are under the supervision of the Imperial Household Agency, and so it is forbidden to excavate or even walk on them; thus, little patches of virgin forest have been preserved in suburbia.

The tombs are not far from the road, but they nestle in the eastern foothills and have national parkland as their backdrop. The nearer of the two is the grave of Emperor Sujin, surrounded by a wide moat of still water, before which stands a majestic
torii
gate. To either side are rice paddies, and farther back rises the Kushiyama mound. Visitors are rare here, so it is always quiet. In summer, the paddies are awash with green, the leafy boughs of the trees on the mounds reach far over the water in the moat and high up into the sky, while the air pulsates with the droning of cicadas. It is not known who is buried in the Kushiyama mound, and I have no idea who Emperor Sujin was, but walking around the moats I feel as though I have been transported back to Shinto's legendary ‘Age of the Gods'. Accompanied by the throbbing sound of the cicadas, my heart roams in the distant past. Breaking out of my reverie with a start, I realize we have been standing in front of the graves for over an hour.

Tearing ourselves away from the ‘Age of the Gods', we drive further south. As part of the spirit of Nara's secrecy, lovers of this region frequent hideaways unknown or preferably not open to the general public; the writer Yukio Mishima's occasional visits to the aristocratic abbess of Ensho-ji Nunnery were rooted in this cult of secrets. I too have a secret temple, situated in the mountains to the east of Yoshino and Mt Koya. My temple is called Seisen-an. The drive there is very pleasant, and the road winds past famous temples such as Hase-dera and Muro-ji. Deep in the mountains between these temples lies the town of Ouda. There's nothing special to see in this region, so travelers are scarce. Around 1978, Abbot Daiki of Daitoku-ji found and remodeled an old village headman's estate near Ouda. He slowly built up a complex of sub-temples and worship halls, one of which is Seisen-an – a farmhouse from deeper in the hills that was dismantled, moved to Ouda and restored.

The abbot of Seisen-an is an American disciple of Daiki Roshi named John Toler. In 1973 while I was staying at David Kidd's house, a man with a completely shaved head came to visit. This man was John Toler. He had been working as a writer for the Dentsu advertising agency, but had quit to become a Zen monk. I sat listening to John until late at night, as he explained all about
Zen catechism and life as a monk in Daitoku-ji, including the misunderstandings that arose between him and his family in Lubbock, Texas. His mother once came to visit, and after a few days of touring the Zen gardens of Kyoto, she turned to John and said, ‘I'm sorry, John, I'm a little confused. Would you please explain again? You say you
worship
these gardens?'

John spent four years in meditation at Daitoku-ji as a layman, and then entered its special practice hall for four more years as a monk. In 1980, his master, Abbot Daiki, sent him to Ouda. I recently discovered that John had first shaved his head only the day before I met him! As a result, I missed seeing him with hair by just one day. The five-hundred-year
hibutsu
missed by thirty minutes, John's hair by a single day – I seem to have bad karma with Buddhism. Perhaps it is punishment for the years I have spent working for Oomoto, a Shinto sect.

When I take friends to Seisen-an, John comes out to greet us dressed in monk's robes. He shows us around the meditation hall, and then when dusk falls we sit around the living room talking to the other guests. Seisen-an, while remote, is a gathering place for artists, dancers, writers and other monks, so you are always bound to meet somebody interesting there. Just like when I first met John twenty years ago, we talk of Zen, art and life until late at night. Once I got John very drunk and tried to wheedle out of him the answer to the first Zen
koan
: ‘You know the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?' John refused to tell me, saying that the answer was not worth knowing, and the whole value of the
koan
lay in the process of figuring it out. But I insisted, plying him with more cups of saké. And finally he told me. The answer was clear as a thunderclap, before which all other reasoning is useless. But John was right: just knowing the answer did me no good whatsoever. It would seem that the entire point of secrets lies in not knowing them. At Seisen-an I sleep at the foot of a folding screen on which is written Su Tung-p'o's ‘Red Cliff Ode'. My favorite line is right by my pillow: ‘I gaze at
my loved one in a corner of the sky'. It seems the perfect theme for the mountains of Nara, filled with distant and unobtainable things.

The best time at Seisen-an is morning. Generally, I am a night person and mornings are hard to face, but at Seisen-an I always get up early. The other residents are up at the crack of dawn ringing the temple bell or reciting
sutras
, so I feel guilty to be the only one sleeping in. I sit in a rattan chair on the temple verandah, and look out at the garden while drinking a cup of coffee. The neatly raked gravel stretches before me like a sheet of pure white paper. Around the gravel are trees, and beyond them, blue mountains trail off into the distance, range after range. There is no sign reading, ‘Seisen-an HITACHI', nor any taped explanation. Just me, alone, with time to think.

While staying at Seisen-an, I enjoy taking drives to the surrounding mountains. Japan's ancient faiths sprang from the mountains. A well-known example of this is Omiwa Shrine, a few kilometers south of the tomb of Emperor Sujin. Here, there is nothing hidden inside the shrine as the object of worship – the mountain behind the shrine is the sacred object. The hills behind many shrines and temples are sacred, and so special sanctuaries, called
oku no in
(inner sanctuary), were built on the slopes behind the main halls. A particular favorite of mine is the inner sanctuary at Muro-ji, and if there is time I always try to take friends there. I was once talking to the curator of a museum in Nara, who said, ‘Muro-ji is a litmus test. If you ask someone, “What are your favorite spots in Nara?” and they answer “Yoshino” or “The Yamanobe Road”, that is fine. But if they say “Muro-ji', then you can tell they truly know Nara.'

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Muro-ji is a litmus test of familiarity with Nara, it certainly is a singular place. Located in the mountains to the east of Ouda, Muro-ji is not far from the border with Mie Prefecture, on the very outer edge of the Nara region. Until the 1880s Mt Koya was completely closed to women,
but Muro-ji welcomed them. It became known as ‘Mt Koya of Women', and is the center of its own mandala, balancing Koya's yang with Muro-ji's yin.

As you follow the road to Muro-ji along the edge of a gorge, a fifteen-meter-high stone Buddha carved into the cliff face springs into view. This is a
magai-butsu
(cliff Buddha), a common sight in China but rare in Japan. The
magai-butsu
near Muro-ji is of Bodhisattva Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future, and was carved in the thirteenth century by a sculptor from China. But why a Maitreya Buddha out here in the middle of nowhere? There must have been some symbolic necessity for carving it. Maybe a Maitreya was required to fill this position in the larger mandala of the region; or perhaps the carver sensed geomantic power in this particular cliff face. In any case, the retired Emperor Go-Toba came all the way from Kyoto to attend the ceremony of opening the Buddha's eyes, from which we can see that the carving of this Buddha was a national undertaking.

Muro-ji's grounds form a natural mandala. First, you enter the temple precincts by a bridge over a river. This is a pattern often seen in ancient shrines and temples, but the bridge to Muro-ji is particularly effective in conveying the message: from here on is sacred ground. A sign saying ‘Mt Koya of Women' reminds you that this experience will be one of yin rather than yang. Then, passing through the gate, you climb the Armor Slope, so-called because from below you can only see wide rows of steps capped by the roof of the main hall above, looking like a helmet over a ribbed suit of armor. This stairway leads you upwards through the woods to halls of increasing mystical importance, culminating in the main hall, where you visit the Buddha of the Future enshrined within. Then you stroll over to the charming five-tiered pagoda, so small it seems almost doll-like. This tower, which is very feminine in atmosphere, is Muro-ji's Konpon Daito. Finally, you climb up a narrow stairway of four hundred stone steps, rising through clumps of ferns and thousand-year-old cedar trees.
When you clamber up the last step and see the inner sanctuary ahead of you, it is with the sense that you have arrived at the very end of the earth.