r3reiko.com/thoughts from japan

The shape of the path has brought me here. It is not a random path, but a mindless one. I read somewhere
that the brain moves thought from A to B by choosing the deepest groove at any junction, and I am showing,
late in life, a new distaste for the well-worn and an affinity for leaping. I set out this morning, on a whim, for
the temple complex in the foothills below me. When I reached it, I followed the path instead, the one that
curved away from the entrance with its great, painted treasures, past a woman settling down with her sketch
pad, under a brick archway, and to, then past, the small shrine with the poem in front of it, in English, about
the heart of the cedar and the poet carving noh masks. I followed it out the side of the courtyard, detouring
next to the fruit tree laden with what looked like green limes and around the back – the drift, the runoff,
diverting me from that sanctuary also.

Notes from Nazen-ji, Kyoto, 2001

Bugaku

There are four dancers on the small, raised
platform. They are surrounded by a low, orange
railing, flanked by the copper lanterns, backed by
the smaller lantern and the torii. They are older,
stern-looking men – not lithe or beautiful, not
breathtaking in their movements. What they are is
a perfect fit in their setting. Their costumes are
principally green and gold and orange – in
traditional Japanese fashion, they are multi-
layered, thick and cozy, the prints overlap and do
not quite match, the final drape is diagonal so that
their sleeves, when they bring them together, are
different colors. Their robes have long trains and
their shoes are odd and elven; their hats are
helmets of brocade and gold with knobs and points
and curls and feathers. The shoes are simple,
fabric creations in white with a center seam and a
silhouette that suggests leprechauns, or maybe
the comb of a rooster. The music, of course, is
eerie and sad and somewhat screeching and
clashing, and it doesn’t follow the dance, which is
very simple and repetitive. The dance circles;
arms sweep back and forth and hold; there is some
stomping and heel work – it looks like a cross
between hula and mime and clogging.

It is otherworldly, and exactly what we came for.

Miyajima, Shogatsu 2002

August 6

This late, only a thin parade of lanterns meanders
down the center of the river. From this distance,
they are principally red and green and yellow,
though I saw many different shades of blue being
painted earlier; there is one group, all red,
nestled together in a float. The water is still now,
so the soft lights serve mostly as a setting for the
sampans, which putter by, dark and full of
unlighted lanterns that have been scooped up in
the cleaning sweep. One cluster has begun to
burn.

long lines along black water – a mirror, and maybe
the inspiration for the flying ties overhead. The
street car running across the T-bridge – a piece of
the real world where people still need to get
somewhere, a reminder of the trams and the
people on them that turned into perfect charcoal
statues on “that day”. If I walked toward the
bridge and out of the shelter of cellophane
feathers that are hanging in the stillness above
me, I would emerge from the darkness by the A-
bomb Dome, which sits like a half forgotten
nightmare across from the Peace Park. Once a
great Czech-design Industrial Hall, its brick walls
are now staggered as if the builder suddenly lost
his train of thought. It is the dome itself – the
skeleton of the dome, a helmet, spiked and
dangerous, that make it an icon. Tonight, with
the lighting from the ground, it will be a beacon.
In the morning, it will shrink – after all, much of
the building is missing – and sink into its embrace
of enormous trees.

At this moment, the tide is beginning to turn.

Hiroshima, Peace Park, 2001

In 2001, I lived in Hiroshima and spent eight months interviewing the survivors of the atomic bombings as research
for my next two novels. During that time, my world exploded, as did the worlds, and the lives, of many other
people across the globe as the September 11th attacks changed much of what we understood about ourselves,
most of what we thought we could count on, and even quite a bit of what we remembered of our histories. For
me, those acts of war echoed in every aspect of my identity, and fueled a new way of thinking about memory and
truth and narrative. The book that I have just finished, Hiroshima in the Morning, is my response to this
experience.

In 2005, I returned to Japan for a month to revisit the place and my memories of it. Although much of my first stay
was focused on Japan's history and traditional culture, this time I sought out a more synthesized and
future-looking element. Again, my journeys inspired new ideas for my writing.

What will follow is a brief scrapbook of thoughts, experiences and images from Japan in no particular order.

Runoff

It is shape of things that moves me. The twists and contours; the
scented valleys; the lost peaks; the runoff. It is the shape of the day,
of time, that has brought me to this forest, and the shape of the hills
and the path, and the understanding that there is always, always a
path beneath my feet in Japan, that has brought me to this place. I
am in a forest. I am fairly deep in the forest, at a point where four
paths have suddenly sprung from one in the saddle of a valley. Two go
up, two down, all four are marked with a kanji for “tree” or “two
trees” or “three trees,” names that indicate how big the forest is in
that direction, how full of foliage I do not know.

This is where I stop. This place, as good as any. There is no view
here; no shrine; it is the exact opposite of arrival – not departure, but
mid-journey. I am in a place that no one would seek, and therefore, I
am nowhere. To describe it, I would have to speak only of
relationships and connections, and not of the place itself.

Occasionally, the sun breaks through at the top of the hill in front of
me; occasionally it seems to rain. I can hear the drops on the leaves
but they never touch me. The trees here are thin, straight
evergreens; near the stream that I walked up, they were different,
those trunks twisted and covered in bright blankets of green moss.
Occasionally, I hear bird calls, but not so many that they press on me.

The birds, the brook I left behind, my breath; the ache that is
beginning in my Achilles tendons because I am squatting – no reason
needed: these are what I have. This is what I know: you can squat if
you are a foreigner in Japan. You can eat while walking down the
streets. You can spend your days in the temples or in the forest. You
can step out of the stream of time and society and rules, which is not
just where I am now, but where I have been since I got to Japan.
There are no other people here, and no one knows where I am,
including me. Anything could harm me – a rock, a snake, a bad sense
of direction – but I not lonely, or frightened. I am not, I realize, even
though I may appear to be, lost.