22 posts tagged “kyotoclass”

Throughout this class, we keep coming back to historicality… what should be preserved, what shouldn’t, how should it be done, etc. In many ways, it seems like a double-edged sword: preserving evidence of the past is something that humans always want to do, but at the same time, it’s a difficult balance between keeping old things and recognizing that sometimes, it’s just too much effort to keep something that is defective.  Perhaps defective is a strong word, but in some sense, it is correct.   After all, if these places still served the same function that they used to, and served it as well as contemporary buildings and styles, then there would be no need to change.  But, unfortunately, things do change, and the people who insist on preserving Kyoto as a living museum are eventually going to end up with something that they didn’t want: a historic district that becomes commercial, merely an amusement park with no significance at all.  When that happens, then the very people who fought so valiantly to make the place “historic” and have it protected are going to denounce it, say that it has become a sham, and that the very feeling of place that they were trying to protect is gone, and the only people who come there anymore are tourists.  You can’t please everyone.  As someone who grew up in a “historical” city, I’ve seen it happen. 

In reading the Nitschke article about the strictures that the government has set in place for the preservation of Kyoto, I have to wonder if such things are going to work, in the long run.  They seem to do well so far.  But it also struck me, how very arbitrary some of the rules that they have in place seem.  How do you judge one place’s aesthetic or historic value over another’s?  Their guidelines seem rather… subjective, I suppose.  Which leads me to think that eventually, preservation will become less a matter of aesthetics and historicity as politics and money.  This has already become apparent, I’m sure, in the inability of some owners to afford the upkeep for their buildings.  As I learned somewhere, people who specialize in traditional carpentry have become fewer, their services more expensive, and so owners have become unable to continue to repair their properties, making it more economically feasible to just tear down old buildings and put new ones in their places.  Preservation is all well and good, but it’s important to remember that money will always be involved, and much of the time, that is the deciding factor, irrespective of any idealistic ideas of preservation. 

It seems to me that the city of Kyoto could be roughly divided in half in terms of economics, the part of the city that uses the Takasegawa canal, and the other which utilizes the Biwako Canal and the Incline for shipping products.  Or perhaps it has to do with the destination of the products – when we went to the Shimadzu museum, they mentioned that the Takasegawa was used for sending things down to Osaka, which is to the south, while the Biwako Canal would send things to the east of Kyoto.  If I remember my geography correctly, Biwako is not far from the sea, which is partly why Kammu chose this spot to build his capital.  Thus, between these two canals, Kyoto was effectively connected to the economic centers of Japan. 

One of the things that we mentioned in class, and also heard about at the Shimadzu museum, was the economic diversification of the city that occurred when the Emperor moved to Tokyo, and away from the ancient capital.  The economy of Kyoto had essentially been built around the Emperor and his court, and when those were gone, the people were forced to find new things to do – new products to produce, ways to keep Kyoto famous.  As happened with Shimadzu, companies and artisans began developing new ideas and technologies; the city officials looked in other directions, building on Kyoto’s already famous temples and historical sites to develop a tourist industry, and using projects such as the building of the Biwako Canal to draw attention to the city.

I also went to Nanzenji, to see the way the Canal went through the temple precincts.  It was interesting, and slightly odd to see a Roman-style aqueduct in the middle of a Buddhist temple, and I wondered what the motivation had been for having it there.  Nanzneji is a huge temple – how did the city officials get the temple to agree to it? Or was it the other way around?  I think that sounds like an interesting story… Which ties into the idea of the Canal’s present use – like much of Kyoto, it seems to have become a relic, mostly for tourism.  Is the Canal still in use?  The Incline is grown over with weeds, a park where obaa-chan and lovers walk. 

When I first saw this assignment, and began looking around at the buildings in Kyoto, thought to myself – what architecture?  That’s not to say that Kyoto isn’t full of buildings – just that the well-designed ones also happen to be well hidden.  Kyoto architecture is an odd mix; machiya and imitation-machiya crouch between insipid mansion and somber salaryman bire. 

If there’s one thing to be said about the architecture in Kyoto (and perhaps Japanese architecture in general), it’s that it definitely takes advantage of small spaces.  I thought that some of the buildings in Tom Daniell’s portfolio were intensely interesting for that reason – they made so much use of a small space that they had, that it seemed like it wasn’t a small space at all.  When I was in high school I took architecture classes, and I remember that my teacher always had that problem with my drawings – they were so small, compared to American standards of building.  I designed a museum that was about 3,000 square feet once – for those of you who aren’t aware, that’s the size of a suburban house in America.  Perhaps I should have continued my studies, and come to Japan…

As I ride through the city on my bike, I am always struck by the creativity of some of the buildings – they’re very modest, not flashy and drawing attention to themselves like most Western architecture with huge facades and such.  Even though you can miss them if you go by too fast, if you pay attention, the details are fascinating.  There’s a building on Oike that reminds me of 1920s Art Deco architecture, with a huge glass front and metalwork depicting the sun and moon; mansion that are stepped like South American temples; an apartment building that has what look like London phone booths, red with glass panes, attached to the front of it.  So, I think after considering, I have to revise my original thoughts on the subject of Kyoto’s architecture – it’s alive and well.

            I first read Tanizaki’s essay a few years ago in a class about Japanese “visual culture”, and to be honest, I thought the man was crazy and not a little snobbish.  I had read his novels before, and his condemnation of Western technology in In Praise of Shadows surprised me, especially considering the views espoused in the novel Naomi.  It was a relief to hear that the essay was written in sort of a tongue-in-cheek manner – could someone actually think that way?  It surprised me, and made me a bit indignant – after all, why hadn’t the Japanese developed their own technology, if people really felt that way.  It seemed to me to be looking a gift-horse in the mouth, but perhaps that’s because I’m Western, and seeing things from the other side. 

            It seems that since coming to Kyoto, all I have heard from critics and scholars is complaints.  Complaints about everything: from the lack of greenery to the destruction of the “historical landscape” to that unforgettable onerous sin of the city government: the building of Kyoto Station and Kyoto Tower.  Personally, I don’t think either of them is really that bad.  Granted, Kyoto Tower is not the most attractive building around, but I actually like the Eki.  And, if everyone had such a problem with it, why didn’t they say something before it was built, instead of complaining after the fact?  I’m sure if the people of Kyoto actively hated Kyoto Tower as much as critics claim they do, the construction site would have been stormed by an angry mob.

            So, to all the people who complain about Kyoto: Lay off. It’s an awesome city, whether or not it fits your ideas of what it should be.  If it really bothers you that much, go live in the little Dutch village with Alex Kerr.  Although, I’ll tell you a secret – that place isn’t “real” either…

I’m writing this on the train as I stare out at the building s and foggy mountains , wondering what to say about Kpip… it’s definitely been an experience – a good one.

I’m not normally one for tourist spots, raised in a historical city as I was, so if not for this class, I wouldn’t have visited as many places as I did.   I learned a lot about Kyoto, not in terms of facts and figures (although I learned some of those), but in just experiencing the city.  If left up to my own explorations, I would have learned much less, especially since most of the things we learned, and places we visited, the residents of the city either don’t know about or don’t think about.

Use of the internet was definitely helpful.  Having maps available, even if they were in Japanese, made finding things less difficult.  As usual, Wikipedia helped immensely with defining random Japanese terms that we talked about in class but were never really explained.  And even though there were times when I wanted to throttle Courseworks for deleting a page and a half of writing seemingly at whim, reading the other students’ comments was insightful.  We all had different experiences, and their observations often shed light on places I hadn’t visited or clarified points that I had missed. 

I’m not sure how the internet is changing Kyoto itself, so much as the image of Kyoto.   I think the internet has made Kyoto more accessible, in a way – so much information is available for distribution.  Not only information about the city itself, but the net is also an important marketing tool – travel agencies, hotels, even the city website which makes it easy for tourists to plan a trip here; I’m pretty sure that it’s done the same for everywhere though; the first thing I did when I wanted to go to Kobe was look it up on Google.
 
I enjoyed keeping the journal, and I think it’s better than papers.  For one, it allows you to see the way observations have changed over time.  Papers – I’m not sure what I would write about, and they have less time continuity, since I’m not one of those good students who starts on a paper weeks in advance.  I enjoyed both the readings and the expeditions – I felt that both were necessary.  But I would like to see a bit more organization, especially in terms of the expeditions.  There were a few times when an expedition was just thrown at us at a really inopportune time, and I felt rushed to go do it when I had already made other plans for that time.  Some of the assignments I thought could have been more interesting and/or relevant – I’m still not sure what we were supposed to learn from visiting the Shimadzu factory.  

When I had finished putting all these posts together, I looked at it and realized – this begins rather abruptly; perhaps I should write and introduction of sorts, which, like all good introductions, will have been written after everything else and thus contain a (hopefully) more enlightened perspective than something written when I began this journal.

            Considering this class as a whole, one thing stood out in my mind, and that was the idea of balance.  As someone who generally takes the middleground in a discussion, balance is something that is very important to me.  Extremes of any kind don’t tend to work out well, in my experience.  Perhaps this is why I enjoy Kyoto so much.  I can’t claim to have seen all of it, or even most; but from what I have experienced, Kyoto is a city concerned with the idea of balance.  Of course, there’s the typical, oft-mentioned division of old and new that is inherently Kyoto: the futuristic Eki and the traditional street plan; the McDonald’s down the street from the ramen shop run by a single ojiisan; the concrete mansion and wooden machiya that together on the back streets – the list goes on.  Everywhere in Kyoto there are mixtures, sycretisms, juxtapositions.  At times, they can be so obvious as to be almost invisible to the unobservant – or they  can surprise you as you round a corner or glance down a side street. 

            And Kyoto itself is not unaware of this balance that it has achieved.  In fact, it seems to have become a point of pride, that Kyoto is known for as much as for relics of ancient Japan as it is for progressive building projects such as the Biwako Canal and diverse industrial powers such as Shimadzu.  Throughout the centuries the city has been flexible, changed and adapted to fit the Japan and the world around it.  Because of this, Kyoto has remained a place that is relevant – it has not been left behind, stuck in a past that no longer exists, but has continued to move forward, despite the complaints of critics who, for some reason, want Kyoto to continue to be a place that never was: some kind of anachronistic distillation of Japan; of samurai and geisha, tea and poetry, kimono and wooden houses with bathrooms that are places of quiet repose.  I for one am grateful that this is an impossibility. 

            This balance is a tenuous thing, reached only with no small bit of compromise on the sides of both modernity and antiquity.  Kyoto as a city of the “past in the present” is not alone; all human things are influenced by the past to some degree, and must deal with it as they change, cities most especially.  More than most, however, Kyoto has ties that are strong, and it is careful in its attempts to preserve them.  Kyoto, like the rest of us, will continue to maneuver through times that seem about as navigable as the Kamogawa.  Hopefully, her canal building skills will serve her well.

The concept of Kyo-yasai, of vegetables from Kyoto, sounds like a simple one to me… but then, why the special name? Is it just a catchy phrase, developed by the locals to coerce those wanting to get a literal taste of the city’s history into paying exorbitant amounts of money for vegetables? Or is there more to it than that?

After wandering around Kyoto attempting to find Kyo-yasai, I’m really not sure of the answers. It seems rather similar to the time when we looked for Genji – everywhere, but not really anywhere, which is more of a feat for a corporeal object than for a literary figure.

Before I actually looked for the physical manifestations of this movement, I asked my okaasan about them; she’s amazingly obsessed with organic food. Sure enough, she knew exactly what I was talking about, but was slightly confused as to why I was asking. When I explained, she nodded (Kpip has been the source of many conversations beginning in this manner) and told me that all we eat at my homestay are Kyo-yasai. I was surprised – I hadn’t been aware that the vegetables were in any manner special. According to Okaasan, Kyo-yasai are cheaper than other vegetables, since they don’t come from very far away, and they’re healthy. She was less knowledgeable about whether or not they were different from non-Kyo-yasai. Kyo-yasai are cheap here, she said, but people in Tokyo pay lots of money for them. As for taste – she didn’t know, and asked me what I thought, since I have eaten lots of kinds of vegetables. Maybe I’m not picky enough about my vegetables, but I really didn’t notice a difference in taste.

When I actually went looking for Kyo-yasai, they were a bit harder to find. In fact, I didn’t find any, which considering my Okaasan’s claims of their ubiquity, was surprising. I didn’t visit Nishiki, but instead went looking in other places – the grocery store near my house, and Porta at Kyoto Eki. At the regular grocery store I didn’t see much – none of the vegetables looked special, there weren’t any signs proclaiming the wonders of Kyo-yasai, just rows of what looked to be normal produce. Next I checked out Porta – which might seem like a strange place to look for vegetables, but actually seemed pretty reasonable to me. After all, Porta is little more than a glorified omiyage mall, so it occurred to me that they might have Kyo-yasai. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any there either – or at least, there weren’t any signs for Kyo-yasai, which I thought there should have been, if what my host mother had said about people from other cities buying Kyo-yasai was correct. There were all kinds of food products, including lots of utsukemono (maybe they were made from Kyo-yasai?), but no veggies. Strange, I thought.

I think this is the one exploration I have done where I feel I know as little about the subject as when I first started, although not for lack of trying. So, really, what are Kyo-yasai? What makes them special? Are they just part of some local-eating movement, like Adam Gopnik’s article discusses, or are they actually different from other vegetables? And when did they become special? I’m assuming the Kyotoites have always grown vegetables, to some extent… so why the hype?

For this assignment, I tried to find a tomb close to my house, and my host mother suggested that I visit Momoyama, which is not too far from where I live in Uji. With another of her semi-famous hand-drawn maps in hand, I set off for Momoyama to find the tomb of Emperor Meiji and his wife.

I checked the Imperial Household Agency’s website in an attempt to find another tomb close to me, but the lack of street names on the maps made that difficult… I checked Professor Smith’s map, and found Emperor Kammu was also in Momoyama, and apparently not far from Meiji. Neither I, nor Nick, who went with me, were sure where, exactly Kammu was, but I wrote down the address and glanced at the Google Map, confident we could find it once we got there.

The complex itself was rather unassuming. A long gravel road through woods, with quiet joggers and signs with friendly dogs announcing that this is not a place for pets. When you finally reach the Meiji grave, it’s a bit more impressive. It looks almost like a shrine, with a few small differences. At the top of a huge staircase built into the hill (200 steps, according to my host mother), is an open plaza with a white torii and gates that separate you from the actual grave. And one gate and torii is not enough – there are three. You can see a mound, a bit grown over and surrounded by trees. Nothing else. No fancy decorations, save for some medallions of metal on the gate closest to the mound – there’s not even a sign to state that this is the Emperor’s grave, only one reminding you that no smoking is allowed at the top of the steps. The view alone, though, is worth the walk. Situated up on the mountain, it looks down into Fushimi-ku and the mountains the surround the city and extend southward.

The Meiji Empress’ tomb is similar, on its own hill, about half the height of her husband’s, with its own set of steps, but no amazing view, only the tops of trees. Again, there’s no sign here marking her grave – at the top of the Emperor’s hill, a sign points down to her tomb, and likewise, at the bottom a sign points back upward, but were those to be destroyed it’s quite possible that no one would remember who was here.

Things I noted about the tombs: At first glance, they might almost appear to be torii. Except, they are not red, but white (the Shinto color of death, I believe), and stand right in front of the grave, as opposed to the torii which usually stand away from the actual shrine to announce to the visitors that they are entering sacred ground. There are no decorations of any kind, and the mounds themselves are not amazingly impressive. Aside from Nick and myself, the joggers were the only people around, which I thought was strange. My host-mother seemed surprised when I mentioned this over dinner. “Of course,” she said. “People only go there on holidays, such as New Year or during Obon.” She rattled off a list of about 5 days, when people traditionally visit the Emperors. The rest of the time, they are left to themselves, to watch over the city and twiddle their royal thumbs, or whatever it is they do on their off days.

Kammu was a little bit harder to find. Meiji’s complex was huge and hard to miss – the main road coming up the mountain from Fushimi curves so as to miss it, but if you kept driving your car through the small gates, you could drive right up to the tomb itself. Kammu’s tomb, on the other hand, requires walking through a dark forest path, with the only sign being at the entrance to the actual tomb. Yay for Japanese directions. I didn’t have the kanji for the Emperor’s name written down, but the address was written on the sign post, and it matched up. It was the same as Meiji’s, except smaller (the tomb, I mean). Through the tops of the trees that surrounded the open plaza, you can see a tall pagoda-like structure that seemed to be richly decorated. The gates were closed, however, and according to my host mother, that is where the Emperor is interred and you can only go in on holidays. I’m not sure whether or not to believe her, because she told me that that was not, in fact, Kammu’s grave. I’m just going to assume she wasn’t sure of where I was talking about.

I didn’t really have many questions regarding the tombs, although I must say that the similarities between the tombs and Shinto shrines are were intriguing to me, although I imagine they make sense, considering the Emperor’s position as head of the Shinto religion. Still, considering Professor Walters’ comments on the move towards more Buddhist funerary practices, I found it interesting.

It’s always an interesting thing, to ask “where” something is in Kyoto today.  After all, we’ve looked for Genji, for Hideyoshi, for the Emperors, and although the physical manifestations of these people are in different locales: museums, shrines, places they died; it seems that the answer that always works is, they’re not really here, except in the minds of the people who remember them.  Which is no small thing, actually; no one really wants to be forgotten, and the only sure way to have that is to make sure that people remember you.  Granted, memories fade and change, things that were there are lost, and fictions are added that never existed, but all in all, it’s the memory that is important.  

            The same can be said, I imagine, for Sakamoto Ryōma and the Bakumatsu.  Despite all the time that has passed, and the huge number of artifacts that remain to commemorate Ryōma and his times, as Professor Smith pointed out in his article, it is clear that the place where the ideas of Bakumatsu Kyoto are most prevalent is in the minds of the people who remember.  Not that these physical manifestations are unimportant; quite the contrary, actually.  It is my opinion that, in addition to the idea of memory in a cycle from national to local levels, perhaps more important is the interaction between devotees of a memory and the physical manifestations of the memory.  The physical is a necessary reminder, and without it, the memory itself fades and eventually disappears.  These tangible representations of the Bakumatsu – not only in monuments, graves and museums, but also in the form of media representations, give members of a fandom a way to remember things – it’s a continual process of remembering the old and creating new memories, new ways of relating to a person or phenomenon that was long ago lost to the “real” world.  

            So where is Bakumatsu Kyoto? The same place as everything else about Kyoto – in the minds of the people who remember it.

Well, not that much more, actually.  This is a modified version of a post submitted for my Kyoto class describing my weekend.

This would have had to been my third public bathing experience since coming to Japan, and like the rest of my host family, I really enjoy sentou/onsen. I have been once before with my family, but the other day (Saturday) I went with Fabian and Ken to 力の湯 (Chikara no Yu) near Takeda station. It was interesting, and different from the other sentou I have visited.

The very first time I went to a sentou, I was a little bit shy, but once I was actually there, it was fine. It's outside of Kyoto, into the mountains, and I went with my host family: my mother and sister that I live with, and my other sister, her husband, and two kids. My okaasan told me that her last ryugakusei had hated sentou - he was hazukashii, she said, at undressing in front of people he didn't know. I informed her that in America, people generally don't bathe together, even among families, and much less with strangers. She just looked at me rather quizzically. "But we're family, so you don't have to be embarrassed." I sighed and smiled.

This sentou, 力の湯、wasn't too different from the ones I have visited before, but there were some things I hadn't seen before. Like the other sentou, it had a restaurant and other amenities - an ice cream stand, a barber shop, and of course, the requisite ubiquitous vending machines. Some things about it seemed odd - for one, it didn't look like it was in a residential area, but more of a shopping/industry are. Also, contrary to what Professor Smith told us, there were quite a few young people, in addition to the obaasan and parents with their children. I got the feeling that this sentou, like the other one that I visited, strived to create a family atmosphere.

Since I was by myself, I didn't have anyone there that I knew to talk to once we split up to actually bathe, but the other women were friendly enough. They mostly kept to themselves, looking at me and wondering what this tall, red-headed gaijin was doing here alone, but a few of them gave me tips, and I had a conversation with an obaasan and her daughter who had come from Nagano while we were exclaiming over something neither of us had every seen before: a "Wine Cocktail Bath" - the water was a bright fuschia color. I couldn't read all of the sign, but I'm pretty sure it said the bath was made of sparkling wine, orange juice, and mimosa, among other things. It seemed pretty unique, because as the other women informed me, there are lots of baths in Nagano, and none of them had a wine bath. It smelled wonderful, and thankfully enough didn't make me sticky, although Azuki, my family's dog, kept licking me when I got home.

Between the noise of the bathroom and the my limited Japanese, I couldn't make out much of what the other women told me, but I did manage to ask them why they had come to this sentou, in an effort to understand why people still come to them, especially as tourists. As neighborhood meeting places, I understand, but why if you're a tourist? She said that she was visiting her family, and their bathroom was tiny, and it was much more fun and relaxing to come to a sentou after a day or touring temples and shrines (her reason for coming to Kyoto). Apparently, this sentou was somewhat famous in Kyoto.

I rushed to get out to the lobby area, remembering that I was supposed to meet Ken-chan, Fabian, and Hiroki, and late because of talking to the women from Nagano.  It didn't matter - they were late, Ken having been filling Fabian in on the gossip that he had missed in the past month - he was curious, and had no idea of all the stuff going on.  We grabbed the train back to Kyoto Eki, taking the wrong one in our haste (you know, this happened when we went to Sagawa too - maybe the combined influence of the three of us? or just them? I was only following).  Ken had something to do, and even though I had told Okaasan I was going to be home for dinner, I hadn't actually eaten all day, so I went and had dinner with Fabian at his favorite restaurant... some place in the mall under the Eki that served tsukemen, a ramen-like noodle apparently made from fruit of some kind? I don't know. Fabian tried explaining it to Ken, but then they switched to Chinese and I had no idea what they were saying. I had a toro (tuna) and sake (salmon) donburi, and it was yummy, and Fabian and I had good conversation, so it was a good experience, all in all.

As I went to my platform to go home, I saw an awesome hat in front of me, and couldn't help exclaiming.  It was a youngish guy who looked about my age (and was rather cute, too), and the hat was black velvet, with multicolored sparkles on it.  "Sugoi! Kirameki boushi desu ne!" (Wow, a sparkly hat!)  The guy turned around and smiled at me, and said "Like space."  When he realized we were going to the same train, he continued talking to me, asking the usual: Where are you from, why are you here, etc.  He was a student at Ritsumeikan studying law, and the bits of English he spoke were intelligible. He had lived in Australia when he was younger, but never been out of Japan other than that.   He  asked me how old I thought he was, and I said he looked like he was in his 20s,  but he was only 18.  "Sugoi!  Koukou kara hyaku sotsugyoushimashita desu kara?" He shook his head - "No, my birthday is in January." I nodded, explaining that my friend was like that - poor Shawn, always the youngest.  He got off at Toufukuji - I wonder if I'll see him again?

The rest of my trip was pretty uneventful - train to Shinden, walked home, ate gyoza with Naomi while watching TV.  I'm still not really pleased at how she went behind my back the other day, but I know she was just trying to help me fix things with Okaasan.  She asked me what I had done, and I told her, and all was well.  For my part, I finished dinner, went upstairs, and ensconced myself in my bed with my computer and Inuyasha.

I should probably try to talk to more people, when I get the chance, even if they are strangers.  They might think I'm strange, but it will help me practice, and I like meeting new people - you never know who you'll come across...  And now - to do Japanese homework and go to bed...