OE KENZABURO: 'DEATH BY WATER'

Death by Water is a book by the 74 year old Japanese writer Oe Kenzaburo. Like all his novels it is a meditation on his personal life so, apart from the protatognist Kogii Choko a 74 year old writer, there is Akari, his mentally handicapped son, and a character named Goro based on his brother-in-law, the film director, Itami Juzo. Oe is haunted by Goro's death as he is by his verbal abuse of Akari which has severely damaged his relationship with his son Akari. Most of all he is haunted by the death of his fatther in a boating accident on a river in Shikoku many years before. Kogii has long planned to write about this event which took place during his childhood but his plans were thwarted by his mother who refused to let him see the contents of an old red trunk that contained his father's papers. Ten years after her death, now in his 70s, He is finally allowed access to the trunk only to find that much of is contents have been destroyed over the years. Kogii is not alone in his search for meaning a theatre troop has been given access to the family house in the forest in Shikoku while they dramatise Kogii's writings. His sister Asa encourages Kogii to work together with the treatre troop in the hoe that they can all benefit from their mutual interests. Having discovered that they contents of the red trunk have largely disappeared Kpgii retreats to Tokyo where he verbally abuses Akari. It is his wife Chisakai who sends him back to Shikoku with Akari while she undergoes treatment for cancer.

Oe is a writer who writes from within the canon. As well as references to the great composers in terms of their influence on his son Akari who is a composer there are many references to the world of literature. There are descriptions of his library in Tokyo and the boxes of books he sends down to read in Shikoku. There are references to the books that he read in childhood such as is Hucklebury Finn and the The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. There are many references to the writers that have influenced his own writing such as William Blake in his novel  O Rise up Young Men of the New Age and T.S.Eliot whose poem 'Death by Water' from the Four Quartets is central to this this novel as are his meditations about the character 'sensei' in Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro. And then there are references to Kogii's friend Edward Said, the literary critic, who once gave Kogii a manuscript of three Beethoven piano sonatas. Kogii's row with Akari starts when Akari is given a pen to use by a stranger to make notes on the score in a hospital waiting room. Kogii calls his mentally handicapped son an "idiot" which he later repeats later at night at home. This is unforgivable and becomes as much a preoccupation in the novel as are the circumstances of his father's death by drowning.

Kogii's failings drive the novel forward. There is the failure to write the 'drowning' novel. There is the failure to repair the damage down to his relationship with Akari. Then there is the failure in his writing to capture an audience. There are multiple references in the novel to poor sales despite his having won the Nobel Prize. The fact that he continues to write and that the theatre troop continue to wrestle with the meaning of his work demonstrates, however, that the work grows on. The failure of Kogii to write his novel becomes the stuff of Oe's own novel. And as the avant garde theatre troop stage performances for students and later a wider audience it can be seen that audiences can be aroused by questions about the past and our interpretations of the past.

MOJOMIREI LIVE AT THE GREEN MANGO

The movement of the Chiba train was violent in places as the commuters crushed against each other found relief on their smart phones. Rows of posters flapped and swayed in the breeze. They were advertising a fragrance called 'Moisty Diane'. Most of the passengers were already moist wiping their faces and necks with towels when they had an opportunity. The crush hour reached its peak and then the commuters were offloaded to find the next train. The castle in Disneyland flashed by the window as a schoolboy read manga on his smart phone. The girl standing next to him flicked through images of other girls pouting and scowling and pursing their lips as the poster on the wall advertised waxing and hair removal with the slogan 'Enjoy Girls'. 

Outside the central station the wave of commuters came to a halt at the crossing until the lights changed and then they spilled out across the tarmac in the brief break in the traffic. It was a sub-panic rush that slurped and gurgled its way past construction workers and a lone male with a megaphone talking about the economy. Up above the Yamamote train glided half empty on its way to Ueno station. On the train channel news there was talk of the resignation of the Tokyo governor for corruption. In the book store the staff gave the books a final flick with their feather dusters before opening time.

News was coming in from new Zealand of an avocado shortage. This had led to panic buying and an increase in the theft of fruit from the trees. The public were warned not to buy stolen avocados as they would not ripen properly. An Australian journalist exhorted the Kiwis to be strong in the face of calamity. Down south past the dormitory towns of Kawasaki and Yokohama the train ran towards Totsuka and Fujisawa where the apartments gave way finally to more conventional housing. 

I first met Yukio (aka Mojo Rising) at the Tokyo English Centre in 1988. It was a Gaijin House located in an old dormitory for journalists and run by a Japanese guy named Ken who ran a  bar downstairs. Yukio played guitar and took me to visit his old university where we played 'Dock of the Bay' and a few other old favourites. Later, after spending a year on a work holiday visa in Cairns he returned to Tokyo to import ethnic musical instruments from around the Asia Pacific region. In Australia he had learned how to play the didgeridoo. He got involved in the alternative music and healing scene. He has been to South Korea to play and regularly plays around Tokyo as well as doing massage.

Mojo Rising met me at Fujisawa and together we took the train back to his apartment in Chigasaki. There were boxes everywhere and pots and pans piled up on the stove and. Outside there was a bicycle with a flat tyre. "I don't ride it much" he said. Some old women watched as we made our way back towards the station with his didgeridoo, guitar and amplifier. His washing would have to stay on the line for another day. 

The Green Mango is a small restaurant that looks like a wooden hut. There were henna drawings on the walls and decorations made from drift wood around the windows. It was a short walk from the station but we needed a cold drink when we got there due to the humidity. Mojo Rising got out his instruments and his bag of tricks and sat there sorting out various leads setting up loops for his performance one by one. The leads were all tangled up or else stored away in old plastic bags. With the arrival of his friends they started experimenting with the mixer. There were some angry squeals as the microphone for the didgeridoo was too close to one of the speakers. The owners closed the windows and turned on the air conditioner. Some school children walked past on their way home. Despite the problem with feedback they needed the speakers where they were for the right balance. Finally they got the right settings, Rei the sitar player did his warm up and tuned his instrument with all its strings and then they jammed, getting into a groove complete with drones and Mojo Rising providing some percussion on one of his loops.

It was time to get ready. Mojo Rising had to be convinced but he finally changed his old t-shirt and put on some more suitable clothes with some bells strapped to his leg. It was a small venue with an even smaller audience. "Maybe ten people will be coming but it would be better if there were twenty" he explained. Omi raised his didgeridoo into the air to begin and then pointed it towards the corners of the room letting the instrument fill the niches and crevices with its ancient sounds. Unfortunately I had another appointment and when I left I had just enough time to get back in time if I hurried. 

SURVIVING THE KUMAMOTO EARTH QUAKE

I met Ken san nearly thirty-five years ago on a raspberry farm in the Yarra Valley. He was a young Japanese tourist on a mission, he wanted to experience everything Australia had to offer whilst he had his twelve month work holiday visa. He rode a bicycle from Perth to Sydney and then he bought a 90 cc Honda motorcycle and did it all over again. By the time he came to the berry farm he was a survivor able to sleep out under the stars in the Nullarbor desert living off rice and roadkill that was fresh enough to eat. 

After we worked together on the berry farm I went to stay with Ken san in Tokyo in the mid 1980s. At that time he was driving trucks and delivering pickles in Tokyo. Everyday we drove around the back streets and pulled up for lunch in some quiet street somewhere. One day we drove down a street and there was Mt Fuji in the distance.

The next time I say Ken san he had married and was living back in Fukuoka and working for a construction company. Unfortunately his marriage didn't work out and he was now a single father looking after three kids. He got a job in an old people's home. Fast forward thirty five years and Ken san's children have all moved out of home the youngest moving to Nagoya to become  policeman. 

Earlier this year there was an earthquake that devastated the region where Ken san lives. When I finally spoke to Ken san on his mobile phone nearly two months had passed since the quake. The shinkansen tracks had finally reopened and  made plans to visit.

Riding the shinkansen I looked out the window and noticed that in every rice field the train went past past had boards advertising 727 COSMETICS. The closer the train got to Kumamoto the thicker the clouds got... Kurume looked like a ghost town. There were cars in the car parks but mo people in the streets. Maybe they had been driven underground by the rain. The rice fields that hadn't been planted yet looked like enormous glass mirrors reflecting the thick grey heavy clouds above. They looked like the organic equivalents of the solar panel farms that had appeared everywhere.

Closer to Kumamoto the announcements in the train were made in Korean and Chinese as well as Japanese and English. Arriving at the station I set out to find a public phone. I had seen the blue sheets on the rooves of houses that indicated earthquake damage. The rain, however, had stopped. Ken san picked up the phone and told me to come to Higo Ozu. I would need to find platform zero. I thought he had misheard the instruction at first but when I asked at the gate, sure enough, there was not a only a Platform Zero A but also a Platform Zero B around the corner. I had missed the train leaving from Zero A but another one was leaving from Zero B shortly.

On the news I had seen how foreigners had been among the many people volunteering to clean up after the Kumamoto earthquake. They had all been welcome to help. That was several months ago now and despite the continuous after shocks there was more concern about the impact of the heavy rains with the arrival of the rainy season. The rivers were all swollen and there were numerous land slides that added to the misery. The trip by train was short but the train as full of high school students on their way home. Ken san was waiting at the terminus at the other end in the truck he had lived in after the earthquake. In the village where he lived a number of people had died when their homes collapsed on top of them. He stopped to show me the houses that had collapsed on themselves. All that was left were the rooves sitting on the ground. The volunteers had cleaned up the rubbish but the houses had been left where they were.

Ken san's house was very close to the worst of the damage. The earthquake had traveled in a straight line destroying houses and roads in a hundred metre width. Boulders had been thrown on to the road and in some places the roads had sank up to two metres. Ken san's roof had lost some tiles and the contents of his house had been thrown around and much of it was unusable. After two months he was able to move back in after the water and electricity had been reconnected but the roof still needed fixing. The blue sheet didn't offer much protection against the rain. There were still people living in their cars at the local junior high school where a temporary bath house had been set up by the self-defence forces.

Next ,morning when I woke up Ken had already gone to work. I woke up when an after shock shook the house. After some procrastination I decided it would be better to move down to the bus stop where Ken san had told me to wait. A temporary bus stop had been set up in front of a road block. Ken san told me that the bus would do a u-turn and then come back and pick me up, These days Ken san left his truck at home, he preferred to ride to work. There were lots of people out walking their dogs. One woman came up to me and said I had just missed the bus but I explained that I was waiting for the later bus. She said she hoped that it didn't rain. Ken san had some time off on the weekend so he was planning to follow me back to Osaka a day later. 

'KYOTO MY MOTHER'S PLACE' OSHIMA NAGISA

 

'Kyoto My Mother's Place' is a documentary by the director of 'Realm of the Senses' and 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence' Oshima Nagisa.  It is a personal film and starts with Oshima's favourite photograph of his mother. She died at the age of eighty.

Kyoto is surrounded by mountains. It is hot in summer and cold in winter. Every year friends gather for hanami, She never enjoyed hanami with friends. The relationship between a husband and wife is very struct in Kyoto

Classmates of his mother still live in the style of house known as machya, or city house. At the front of the house is a reception room for customers and the living quarters are at the back. The houses are very narrow and long. This style of building is called the 'bedroom of eels'. The building pretends to be poor by being narrow. Traditionally this put off any marauding samurai and saved money on taxes which were determined by the width of the house.

The interior of the machiya is dark with a small garden at the back. The garden is a miniature cosmos with stones representing water and mountains. It lets in light. The husband is called shujin (master) and he spends his time upstairs on his hobbies and his interests in lighter, airier and bigger rooms. The wife spent her time in the kitchen which is terribly cold in winter. The cold came up through the soil. The women had to clean every day. His mother's hands were swollen by frost bite in winter. She also had to watch the fire. There were warning about fire all throughout the houses. Fire and flight was the common practice in Edo. In Edo people lived off their skills but in Kyoto they lived off their wealth. Fires could destroy lives. People needed to control fire. If they didn't the punishment was severe.

There are many festivals in Kyoto such as the festival at the Imamiya shrine. The faithful want to be under the big red umbrella and escape disease. Families give money to the passing parade. Disease and disaster caused fear in Kyoto. The design of the houses made disease and fire a big problem.

His mother was hard working at school but there was no alternative to marriage. At that time 20% of girls went to high school. They then did a two year course and maybe got a teachers licence before getting married. Women were taught to obey parents, then their husband and finally their children. 

Marriages were often arranged and the process started with a photo. Nagisa'a mother married and went to live in Seto Naikai 1932, Nagisa was born. His name means beach. He was happy living there like a prince. They often moved for his fathers work. His fate changed however when his father suddenly died. Nagisa had just finished grade one. He went back to Kyoto to live with his mother and his baby sister. His mother was thirty three years old, a bad year traditionally for Japanese women.

They returned to her father's machiya. Nagisa hated the darkness of the machiya and the fish smelt bad.  After a year his grandfather died and his mother put the six year old Nagisa's name on the name plate at the front of the house. Nagisa was now the man of the house and he cursed his fate.

Kyoto is dominated by the Emperor's palace. The town is designed like a castle with roads running north to south and east to west. The palace is in the north surrounded by markets and temples. Nagisa observes that Kyoto is obsessed by the sense of going up and down. Central power was established in Kyoto and court culture blossomed. This is the world of the 'Tale of Genji'.

There were two main temples in Heian kyo, Toji in the east and Saiji in the west. The temple at Saiji has been rebuilt and still has a market once a month. It was forbidden to build other temples in the city. The Emperor wanted to reduce the influence of the priests which had dominated the capital of Nara. If the people wanted temples they were built outside the city. The shrine of Inari Jinja was a major shrine built for the god of rice crops and later commerce.

Nagisa's primary school was in the south on 7th street. The war against China had started. Boys with physical strength were dominant. Nagisa wore glasses and was at a disadvantage. The war against America started the next year. At this time Nagisa loved history, especially samurai history as the Oshima family were originally a samurai family.

The Heian period lasted for 400 years then the samurai took power from the nobles. This was after the Heike Genji wars.. Victory went to the Genji. This was when started the shogun moved the government to Kamakura. The emperor remained in Kyoto.

Kyotro started to change from being the centre of power to being a city built on commerce. It took a long time to change. Kyoto was reconstructed during this time. Nagisa's high school faced the Toji temple. The US air force was destroying Japanese cities one by one. Kyoto however was spared. When defeat came it shocked the people. They had no energy but after Nagisa listened to the Emperor's voice on the radio be dug up his books that he had buried in the the garden. Unfortunately they were all water damaged. He and his mother ate the leaves of sweet potatoes that grew in the tiny garden. Because they had no food his mother sold her kimonos to the farmers for rice. The kimonos from her marriage were meant to last for her whole life.

The Tokugawa government to Tokyo. This period lasted for 300 years. The Emperor was  still in Kyoto. Kyoto prospered and the culture developed with prosperity. There was lots of theatre that was designed to teach wisdom and morality to the townspeople. It was often laced with satire. The theatre taught practical life lessons about how to deal with theft and drunkenness. The plays were performed in silence with masks. Kinri (patience) was a key philosophy of the heart; values like looking after one's neighbours, respecting authority, not causing friction and being careful with fire were stressed in the formation of a 'beautiful Kyoto'.

Nagisa, however, couldn't be patient. He wanted Kyoto to be burned down. The samurai warrior Oda Nobunaga burned down temples but was murdered before he could have burn down Kyoto. Kyoto is a symbol of the old Japan. Nagisa's mother started working in an office after the war. He didn't want her to work outside the home. Why must she work? He spent four years at Kyoto university. He got involved in the student movement and the student theatre. He was not a good actor and only had one chance to direct. At that time the communists dominated the student movement and no-one listened to him. He got a job as an assistant director and moved to Tokyo. He never though about what his mother thought

After his father died his mother become a nun. She never remarried. She even had a posthumous name. Her buddhism was that of her husband's sect. His mother became a hard woman. But she was not a born Kyoto woman. She was a stranger in at first in Kyoto. She was different to her friends. Her brother doesn't like Kyoto. He thinks people there act like 'big shots'. His sister had to be perfect to be respected in Kyoto.

Nagisa became a director and got married..He asked his mother to come and live with him. She came and said nothing. She devoted the rest of her life to bringing up his two sons while his wife worked as an actress. Towards the end of her life she became bad tempered and left home a couple of times but came back at the end of the day each time. Nagisa'a wife apologised to his mother on her death bed but she said she did as she wanted. She didn't live freely and she didn't live for herself. Nagisa wants to know why did wanted to be a perfect Kyoto woman when she wasn't born in Kyoto?

Nagisa believes that Kyoto has shaped him. He joins a festival crowd at the end of the film at the Matsuo Taisha shrine. This shrine is devoted to the God of sake making. There are six mikoshi for each of the six districts. A lot of technique and strength is required to carry the mikoshi. Nagisa has never carried one. The mikoshi is taken by boat across the river where lunch is prepared for the men on the riverbank. Then the mikoshi is left in one of the districts for twenty-one days. Nagisa is encouraged to help carry the mikoshi along the way by his friends. It is finally taken back to Matsuo Taisha until next year. Everyone celebrates and drinks alcohol. Nagisa's final comment is that his mother never drank alcohol...

DONALD KEENE: THE INLAND SEA

Having recently been to Naoshima to see the pumpkin sculptures by Kusama Yayoi, I came home and watched Donald Keene's film 'The Island Sea' for the first time in years. He wrote the book first and then made the film thirty years with music by the late Takemitsu Toru. It is a lament for a disappearing Japan and Keene makes no bones about his preference for  diversity over oneness.

Keene first visits a temple which is in disrepair and will cost a lot to rebuild. The priest is in a dilemma should he repair the temple at great cost or destroy it and build a new one? To preserve things costs a lot of money hes says. He loves the music of Sinatra as his sister loved the movies of Audrey Hepburn..  

Keene then visits a shrine at the shrine at the top of a hill which is appropriate says Keene as to arrive out of breathe is to arrive as if you are new born. Shinto, he explains, is the only animist religion left in the world. Its essence is unknown and unknowable just like us!

Keene reflects on various truths that he has come to know about Japan and the Japanese. In Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku Keene visits a plaza which is an unusual space for Japan... Rarely do they acknowledge their love of aimless wandering he says. From his boat he observes a shrine on a hill and says the greatest beauty is always accidental... Beauty, he says, depends on a context. And once the context is seen it becomes inevitable. Keene describes himself as being suddenly very happy. Compared to when he is in Tokyo, he knows who he is. He is a man in a boat looking at a landscape...

One island he visits is the site of the Heike and the Genji wars, massacres that were held according to pre-determined rules. Elaborate etiquette and formality was necessary for the killing if women and children as it is for the drinking of a simple cup of tea. He also visits Oshima where there was a leprosorium. Music was piped around the island for the blind so they could find their way. It is a beautiful but inaccessible place. At night they can see the lights of Takamastu.

Keene then then visits the man harvesting seaweed. He enjoys his freedom. He says he doesn't have to answer to anyone in a big company. They truly are a sea people, says Keene, an island people. It is hard to imagine them in big cities; ancient castles and modern cities are not their true homes. But they have been changed by history, they became suspicious under the long lasting rule of the Tokugawa family. In reality they are more Mediterranean than Asian... They must have all been like that throughout the islands

Over time the inhabitants of the Inland Sea eave been called backward... Being restricted to their villages they knew their own island but nothing about the nest... A good catch of fish and a local festival was what they could relate to... The rest of the country was irrelevant. The crew visited a local school where there classroom with only one student in them.

On the island of Ikuchi a new temple at Satoda by a wealthy businessman in memory of his mother. He built copies of famous sites around Japan in a new temple so that people didn't have to travel too far. For example, he built a replica of the Nikko Gate, In this way argues Keene, kitsch becomes art like the Albert memorial in London. The old man wanted to make something beautiful. In the process he created his own world. He forced the world to recognise his vision like a true artist

Keene's commentary turned inward after this point. He looked at the concepts of loneliness and being lonesome. He argues that there is a distinction between the two that Japan fosters and observes. One often feels like a foreigner in Japan. Silent, Keene decides to give way to his emotions and be unhappy, Japan teaches us, however, he observes, to distrust the emotions, You can change your mood like you can change your mind.

When travelling Keene observes there is never enough to do. Travellers inevitably need to fill up the emptiness. Sex is one way to take home some attractive memories. Keene suggests that there is no better  way to take the temperature of the land... Sex is the ideal souvenir...

He next looks at Japanese women and how a fifteen year old girl can never again be the person she is now. She will forget what it was like to be fifteen. The girl he is talking to has been promised in marriage by her father to another man. She says the conversation took fifteen minutes. Asked about the young man she is to marry she says he is a hard worker.

Next Keene talks to an old woman who lost her husband during the war. She had to work hard to support her children. She did this by selling papers for over thirty years and by selling fish in the mountains. To do this this she had to carry a baby on her back.

Keene talks about the postcard views on the Inland Sea. He observes that foreign visitors either love or loathe Japan. He looks at the examples of Lafcadio Hearne and Bernard Shaw. Hearne fell in love with the country. Bernard Shaw loathed it and refused to take his shoes off on the tatami floors. Keene observes that only in appearances lies the true reality...

On some of the islands there are now no people living there. Some of these were used as submarine bases during the war. They are not much visited. There are only ruins. There are warrens of tunnels that once had a purpose. There are bunkers that housed machine guns. The tunnels once led somewhere filled with running troops. Now they lie open. There are names scratched on the walls. The names of school girls and soldiers...

Visiting Hiroshima, he says that the city, the largest in southern Honshu is too important to become a museum.. Despite the atom bomb life goes on... One forgets death... Life is too strong except on one occasion for each individual. Keene says that Hearne died having written 'Japan an Interpretation'. Rather than being about Japan this book was about himself. He was interpreting himself. Keene is not going to find the Japanese because they are all around him and real. He thought that he could find himself. In Japan there are no demands on outsiders.. A foreigner will always belong to a one member society. A foreigner will always be different. A foreigner is tolerated but is only responsible to himself. There is a respite with the weather. It will be an Indian summer, all the more lovely because it is false.

The beautiful shrine of Itsukushima is. designed to to be experienced not viewed. One is meant to wander... There are no walls in the shrine so one looks through the shrine like through a forest. It is truly a sea country with many of its most beautiful shrines facing the sea. When considering the qualities of the Japanese Keene sees that because of globalisation the reality of one world is coming. In the meantime he wants to celebrate our differences for as long as possible...