Lost Japan (9 page)

When the Fates were planning my introduction into the world of Kabuki, they arranged not only the Kaika teahouse and my meeting with Tamasaburo, but also that I should become friends with a man named Faubion Bowers. Faubion traveled to Japan as a student before World War II, and had become enamored of Kabuki, sitting up in the rafters night after night learning from the
omuko.
He was especially a fan of the prewar actor Uzaemon.

During the war he was a translator and ended up as General Douglas MacArthur's aide-de-camp, and at war's end MacArthur dispatched Faubion a few days in advance of his arrival to make arrangements. So, when Faubion and his group arrived at Atsugi air base, they were the first enemy soldiers to set foot in Japan. A contingent of Japanese officials and press nervously awaited them, fearful of what the Americans' first move would be. But Faubion approached the press and asked, ‘Is Uzaemon still alive?' The tension instantly relaxed.

Following the war, all ‘feudalistic' customs were banned by the US Occupation, and Kabuki, with its subject matter of samurai loyalty, was banned as well. However, Faubion managed to get himself appointed as censor of the theater, and so was able to revive Kabuki. He later received an award from the Emperor in recognition of his historic role. Having seen Kabuki's prewar greats, and having been close to postwar leaders Baiko, Shoroku and Utaemon when they were still young, Faubion has an unparalleled knowledge of Kabuki.

During our lifetimes, Kabuki has undergone a critical transformation. The art form will of course continue, but we will never see the likes of actors such as Utaemon and Tamasaburo again. As foreigners, Faubion and I both had access to Kabuki in a way that is unlikely to be repeated. We hope to put our knowledge together in a book some day for future generations.

However, Faubion and I disagree about everything. For instance, I am not partial to Kabuki's historical plays such as
Chushingura
(
The Forty-Seven Samurai
); most of them involve tales of
giri-ninjo
, and for me there are more interesting themes. For an earlier audience, trained fanatically to obey their superiors, these plays about sacrificing oneself for one's lord were truly heart-rending; it was what all Japanese did every day of their lives, at the office or in the army. There is a moment in
Chushingura
when the lord has committed hara-kiri and is dying, but his favorite retainer, Yuranosuke, is late. Finally, Yuranosuke arrives, only to see his master expire with the words, ‘You were late, Yuranosuke.' Yuranosuke looks into his master's eyes and silently understands that he is to wreak vengeance for his lord's martyrdom. I have seen older audiences weeping uncontrollably at this scene. But for people who have grown up in soft, affluent, modern Japan – including myself – resonances of personal sacrifice are growing faint. Faubion, however, insists that these historical plays embody the essence of Kabuki. He also contends that the ugly old ladies I remember from my youth epitomize the true
onnagata
art, and that the beauty of Tamasaburo and Jakuemon is far too striking, even ‘heretical'.

On no point do Faubion and I disagree so much as on the subject of
onnagata
, which brings me to the difficult question of what
onnagata
really are. Obviously, they have something in common with a drag show. From English pantomime to traveling performers in India, the desire to see male actors dressed up as women seems to be universal. In China and Japan the primeval drag show developed into art. The
dan
(Chinese
onnagata
) have largely disappeared (although they may be making something of a comeback), not because the public gradually lost interest, but because the Cultural Revolution dealt such a blow to traditional theater; once a tradition like
dan
is weakened, it is difficult to reconstruct. Japan, however, escaped the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and so it is only here that the tradition survives in healthy form.

Development into high art meant that
onnagata
concentrated on the romantic rather than the comic, the essential feminine rather than the physical body. This is why Faubion values older
onnagata
: the fact that they are old and unattractive allows their art to shine unadulterated by common sensual appeal. According to him, ‘The art of old Kabuki actors is like sea water which has been sitting in the sun. As actors get older, more and more water evaporates, and it gets more and more salty. In the end, only essential salt remains.'

Due to their exact preservation of details of the old lifestyle, Kabuki plays may be seen as a ‘living museum'. How to light an
andon
(paper floor lantern), open a
fubako
(lacquered letter case), arrange hair with
kanzashi
(hairpins), handle a scroll – these and countless other techniques live on in Kabuki's use of stage properties. Kimono fashions, shops and houses, prescribed movements of hands and feet, the ways to bow, the ways to laugh, samurai etiquette and many other aspects of Japan that existed prior to the arrival of Western culture are all reflected in Kabuki's mirror. Kabuki is one giant nostalgia for the past; I cannot think of
any other theatrical art form that preserves ancient daily life so thoroughly.

Especially in the light of the modernization that has swept over Japan in recent years, the world of Kabuki seems particularly poignant. There are, of course, no longer any
fubako
or
kanzashi
(except as souvenirs in tourist shops in Kyoto), but the disappearance of these things is no more significant than the disappearance in the West of the bustle and fringed parasol. In the West, modernization, while drastic, did not wipe away every single reminder of what life once was. But in Japan, cities and countryside alike have been bulldozed. Even the trees and rice paddies painted on backdrops are fast vanishing from day-to-day surroundings. Only in Kabuki does the dream world of the past live on.

Over eighteen years have passed since I first went to meet Jakuemon, and since then I have entered the backstage door countless times. Yet even now I get butterflies in my stomach every time I approach it. I live in fear of the doorman, I wonder if I am neglecting some bit of backstage punctilio. Kabuki's window into Japan's traditional lifestyle does not end on the stage.

Lesser actors make the rounds of greater actors' rooms, entering on their knees to make official greetings and to ask for good wishes before they go onstage. Actors are addressed by titles that sound strange to modern ears, such as ‘Wakadanna' (‘Young Master') for an
onnagata
like Tamasaburo. (‘Danna', or ‘Master', is the title for an important male-role player, but an
onnagata
, no matter how old he gets, remains ‘Young Master'.) Each backstage room is decorated with banners carrying the distinctive emblems of the actors, just like aristocratic heraldry. There is a constant exchange of gifts: fans, hand towels or rolls of fabric, all of which carry symbolic significance. It is a truly feudalistic world, far removed from that of ordinary mortals. Once, when I told Tamasaburo about my trepidation on going backstage, I was surprised when he answered, ‘I feel exactly the same way!'

I sometimes think that what bewitched me about Kabuki was
not the plays themselves, but the life behind them. What is so remarkable is the tenuous line between illusion and reality which exists backstage. At the opera, the performance does not continue backstage; the actors don't sing arias at you, and on removing their costumes they become just ordinary people, no matter how famous they are as artists. Backstage at Kabuki, however, the illusion continues. Most people wear kimono, which is rare enough in Japan today, and the kimono – all black for
kuroko
attendants, printed
yukata
(a cotton kimono) for other attendants and gowns for major actors – clearly indicate social status; the backstage kimono are sometimes as striking as anything you might see onstage.

Occasionally, an actual play may even continue behind the scenes. For instance, during a performance of
Chushingura
, which is considered Kabuki's supreme play, the actors and attendants maintain a particularly serious demeanor backstage. Another example is
Kagamiyama.
In this play, the court lady Onoe is humiliated by Iwafuji, who is trying to bring ruin to Onoe's house. Onoe exits slowly down the
hanamichi
deep in thought. When Jakuemon played this part, he remained seated alone, in silence, in the small room behind the curtain at the end of the
hanamichi
, until it came time for Onoe's next entrance; although not onstage, he was still in character. Later, when I asked Jakuemon about this, he replied that it was a
Kagamiyama
tradition, which allows the depths of Onoe's emotional concentration to remain unbroken until she reappears the second time.

Faubion once pointed out that Kabuki actors spend a greater percentage of their life onstage than almost any other actors. First put on the stage at age five or six, they appear in two performances a day, twenty-five days a month, month after month, year after year. In essence, the Kabuki actor spends his entire life onstage. As a result, says Faubion, older actors sometimes find it difficult to differentiate between their stage personas and their real selves.

The actor Utaemon's normal movements, the distinctive turn of hands or neck, bear striking resemblances to his body language onstage. After performing as the character Onoe, Jakuemon remarked to me that he felt very tired; when I asked why, he replied, ‘Onoe bears a great responsibility. I was very worried about Ohatsu.' Ohatsu is Onoe's protégé in the drama, and Ohatsu also happened to be played by Tamasaburo in that performance. In Jakuemon's concern for Ohatsu/Tamasaburo (it was not clear which), the onstage and offstage worlds were so intertwined as to be inseparable.

Kabuki's themes provide much insight into Japanese society. For instance, many plays are about the relationship between a lord and his retainers, or that between lovers, but there are none about friends. Friendship has been a key theme of Chinese culture since ancient times. The second sentence of Confucius's
Analects
– ‘When a friend comes from afar, is this not a joy?' – demonstrates the Chinese attitude towards the subject. But in Japan such examples are rare. True friendship is not easy here. Long-term foreign residents complain that after ten or twenty years in the country they are lucky to know one Japanese they consider to be a true friend. Yet the problem goes deeper than the culture gap between foreigners and Japanese. The Japanese often tell me that they can't make friends with each other; they say, ‘There are the people you knew in high school who remain bosom buddies for life. Everyone you meet after that cannot be trusted.'

One reason for this could be that the educational system traditionally discourages the Japanese from speaking their mind. They never quite trust each other, making friendship difficult. Another reason might be that hierarchical structures of society get in the way. In the old society the master–retainer relationship was a familiar one; relationships between equals were not. This is a question for sociologists to ponder, but in any case, the culture of friendship is strikingly absent from Kabuki.

And yet it was through Kabuki that I eventually made my best friends. Over the years, I became close to a number of Kabuki actors; I am still mystified how this came to pass. The world of Kabuki, with its nebulous border between illusion and reality, is at once very Japanese, and not of Japan at all. As Domo Geshe had predicted, it's a world which is not of this earth, nor of the moon – a ‘world beyond reach'. That's why when I pass through the scary barrier to the backstage, though it is a world of illusion, I feel at home. My good friends are here.

I spent the fall of 1972 commuting between Iya Valley and Tokyo, where I was supposedly attending Keio University as an exchange student. Actually, I spent most of my time sitting beside a Chinese table in Linda Beech's house drinking gin and listening to her talk hilariously about the old times, when she arrived in Japan just after the Occupation. One night, conversation turned to the Chinese table. ‘It's Ming,' she remarked casually. ‘I bought it from a man in Ashiya, near Kobe, whom I think you should meet. His name is David Kidd, and he lives in a palace. Next time you go to Iya, you should drop by.'

So, in January 1973, less than a week after finding Chiiori, I visited David Kidd's house on the way home from Iya. Linda had told me a bit about him in advance. David lived in Beijing before the war and married into a wealthy Chinese family. He resided in the family mansion, one of the great houses of old Beijing, but when the Communists took over in 1949 the family lost
everything, and David and his wife fled to America. After a short period in New York they went their separate ways, and soon afterwards David came to Japan. He started all over again from nothing, became an art dealer and built up a collection by buying Chinese treasures discarded by the Japanese after the war.

David's house really was a palace. Standing in the entrance, I could see a Chinese statue of Ida-ten, guardian of Buddhist temples, to my right; to the left was a flower arrangement set on a Ming table like Linda's; and before me were wide sliding doors papered with silver leaf. The doors flew open and David appeared. He led me into a huge living room, easily sixty tatami mats in size, with blue-and-yellow Chinese-dragon rugs covering the floor. Tables, couches and stands glowing softly with the tan, brown, orange and purple-black hues of various rare woods were aligned with several grand
tokonoma.
Inside the alcoves, gilt Tibetan statues stood in front of mandala paintings three meters high. In every nook there were mysterious objects, such as a table bearing a collection of what looked like pieces of driftwood, each piece labeled with calligraphy on gold paper. I had no idea what most of these objects were, but I could see instantly that everything was beautiful, everything was precious and everything was there for a reason. The day I walked into that room was the day I realized that the impossible was possible. I meant to stop by for afternoon tea; I left the house three days later. Those three days were filled with long and intense conversations with David. It was the beginning of my artistic apprenticeship.

The foundations for my love of Asian art were laid in early childhood. My grandfather and father were both naval officers, and they brought back many souvenirs from their travels to Japan and China. The result was that I grew up with Asian art as part of my daily life: scrolls hung from our walls, and the dining table would be set with Imari porcelain for the occasional dinner party.

One day, not long after we arrived in Yokohama, my mother took me to Motomachi, a popular shopping district. Unlike the
Motomachi of brand-name boutiques today, the street at that time was more homely and practical, with small shops selling cakes, office supplies and crockery. We entered a china shop and my mother asked the shopkeeper in her rudimentary Japanese, ‘Do you have any Imari ware?' Naturally, she thought every china shop in Japan would stock Imari, but she had just done the equivalent of walking into Woolworths and asking for Limoges porcelain. The shopkeeper looked completely baffled, but suddenly he remembered something and rushed into the back of the shop. He came back with a wooden box, and explained, ‘This has been around since before the war, but because no one would buy it, it's just been sitting here …'

He opened the box for us. Inside were ten Imari plates, wrapped in the straw rope in which they had come from the kiln. I still have one of those plates, and judging by its age, it is possible that the box had sat in storage since the nineteenth century. Aged only twelve at the time, I untied the rope, touched the plates and was overcome with awe. I felt just like the people who opened up King Tutankhamen's tomb for the first time in three thousand years. So strong was the impression that even now the image of those plates and straw rope remains fresh in my memory.

My mother began to frequent the antique stores of Yokohama and Tokyo, and we returned to America two years later laden with folding screens, lacquerware, ceramics and
tansu
chests.

My first purchase of an antique came years later when I was an exchange student at Keio. I like old books, and used to frequent the Kanda booksellers' district of Tokyo. On one occasion I noticed a pile of antique Japanese books set out on the sidewalk. They were being sold for 100 yen apiece. Although I was majoring in Japanese Studies, until that day I had never laid eyes on a genuine old block-printed Japanese book; I picked one up out of curiosity and opened its navy blue cover. It happened to be
The Great Learning
, one of the Confucian classics, dated about 1750. I was surprised that this 100-yen throwaway was an
eighteenth-century edition. The hand-engraved block-printed characters were strikingly beautiful, and so large that a single line of text filled a whole page. Although I was ignorant of Chinese, my familiarity with Japanese made it possible for me to roughly grasp the meaning. On the page I had happened to open was written: ‘If you wish to rule the state, first pacify your family. If you wish to pacify your family, first discipline yourself. If you wish to discipline yourself, first make right your heart'. This single line struck me forcibly, and for the first time I sensed the appeal of Chinese philosophy. That 100-yen volume of
The Great Learning
became my introduction to classical Chinese literature.

After that, I set about looking for old Japanese books in earnest. It was simply incredible what you could find. These books were so little valued that they were being sold as scrap for mounters, who used them as backing for screens and sliding doors. I started with Chinese classics such as the
Analects
, the
I Ching
, the
Chuang-tzu
, and so on, but I gradually formed an interest in Japanese-style books. Unlike the Chinese classics, printed in blockish standard type, the Japanese texts featured pages of flowing cursive script. As I leafed through them I realized that Japan's traditional calligraphy is fundamentally different from China's, and my interest in Japanese calligraphy steadily grew.

Meanwhile, I was traveling to Iya and slowly accumulating folk craft and old kimono. I once passed through the city of Tokushima on my way, and in an antique shop there I found four large baskets filled with puppet costumes. They were the entire wardrobe of Otome-za, one of the lost puppet theaters of Awaji Island. The boxes had been set aside during the war, and then apparently forgotten. I brought the costumes back to Tokyo, carried them with me to Yale and then to Oxford, and I have them still today.

Then I met David Kidd. He is one of the world's great conversationalists, and like me he is a creature of the night. Following that first encounter, I visited David's house constantly. We would
sit out on the moon-viewing platform while David read aloud Ouyang Xiu's ‘Ode to Autumn', only going to bed at dawn and waking in early evening. During the first three days I spent at David's house, I never actually saw sunlight. Sometimes we would sit on the
kang
(Chinese sofa) in the living room, discussing the finer points of landscape painting, while David amused his guests with his great wit. ‘Humor is one of the four pillars of the universe,' he once said, adding, ‘I forget what the other three are.' At other times, we lounged on the rugs and drank endless cups of tea while David divulged the secrets of a Tibetan mandala.

That is when I learned that artworks have secrets. In the case of a Tibetan mandala, there is a universe of esoteric symbolism: colors, directions, the names of Buddhas and their attributes. But even the most simple painting of trees or grasses might also conceal secrets. One night, David opened a pair of six-paneled gold screens in the living room. They made up a willow-bridge painting, a conventional theme in which weeping willows stand beside a curving wooden bridge. These screens, however, were particularly old, and seemed to have an expressive power lacking in later versions. We began to discuss what made them so different. As we talked, we noticed that the willow branches to the left hung straight, while those on the right swayed, as if a breeze were blowing though them. To the left was the moon; on the right, no moon. We realized that the screens were depicting the transition from night to day, the breeze being the first breath of dawn. Then someone pointed out that the branches on the trees to the left were bare; the branches on the right were sprouting young leaves. So the screen was also depicting the moment when winter passes into spring. In the river under the bridge, waterwheels were turning, and the bridge itself, which in Japan symbolizes the arrival of messengers from the other world, was a great arc curving towards the viewer. Everything in these screens was turning and transforming from old to new and from dark to light. ‘And so,'
concluded David, ‘these screens are a painting of the moment before glory.'

Unlocking the secrets of things has much to do with observation. One night, David sat me down in front of a set of Chinese snuff bottles, and said, ‘Tell me what you see.' I saw ceramics, lapis lazuli, iron, gold, silver, ivory, glass, lacquer, copper, jade and amber. It was a lesson in looking at materials. The main thing I learned from David, however, was the interrelation of all his pieces, the way in which they were all links in a single worldview. I have since met other collectors of Chinese art whose pieces are more important from an art-history point of view. But not a single one of them understood and manifested the relationship between things as David did. This came from having lived in an old mansion in Beijing's declining days. While Japan has lost much in the twentieth century, China lost infinitely more during the turmoil of the Maoist years. There are only a handful of people alive who have any idea of the lifestyle of the Chinese literati in the old days. In that sense, David's knowledge is a unique resource, as fragile and mysterious as Iya Valley.

For example, Chinese furniture is not something you arrange by setting here and there to taste. Those
kangs
and tables demand to be arranged along symmetrical axes, which David aligned with the center of the living room and the
tokonoma
alcoves. Each ceramic vessel or statue needs to rest on a stand, and that ensemble in turn relates to the painting behind it. The books, jade scepters, brushes and whisks displayed on tables symbolize the pleasures and amusements of a gentleman. For example, what I had taken to be driftwood were pieces of rare aloes incense wood, and nearby could be found the silver cutting knife, the bronze chopsticks and the celadon burner that were needed for burning incense.

David taught me an important lesson that I would never have heard from art historians and curators: beauty comes first. ‘It should be old, it should be valuable,' he said. ‘But first ask yourself, “Is it beautiful?” '

‘How can I know if a new thing I have bought is beautiful, or if I have simply become carried away?' I asked.

He answered, ‘There are two ways. One is to have a beautiful house. The other is to surround the new thing with beautiful things. If it's not right, they will reject it.'

After that, whenever I bought an antique, I would put it in David's living room to see how it looked. Most of the time my purchase would be revealed as an eyesore. But one time I bought an old Chinese table in Kyoto, brought it back to David's and set it in a
tokonoma
without telling anyone. We got through the whole evening without David noticing it, and so I knew that the table was good.

Fascinated as I was by David's collection, I was in no position to start collecting jades and Chinese ceramics. Instead, I continued with old books and calligraphy. By 1977 I had moved to Kameoka, so I had ample time to explore the antique shops of Kyoto. One day, the master of an old bookstore showed me a set of ten
shikishi
(square plaques) and
tanzaku
(rectangular plaques) – small pieces of paper with calligraphy in an archaic and refined style. They were decorated very delicately with gold, silver and mica, on papers dyed red and blue. He was offering them to me for 5000 yen each, roughly $20 at the time. I turned them over and was shocked to read ‘Prince Konoe', ‘Regent Nijo', ‘Minister of the Left Karasumaru', and so on. These were genuine pieces of calligraphy by court nobles of the seventeenth century! I could not believe that they could be bought so cheaply, but at the time there was simply no interest in Japan in such things. So I began collecting
shikishi
and
tanzaku.
After I had acquired several dozen of them and the general style became clear, my curiosity was aroused. The hair-thin lines of elegant calligraphy on these plaques were different from anything I had ever seen in Japan. I began to inquire into the history of these princes and ministers, and was thus introduced to the world of the
kuge
, the court nobles.