From a sculptured flock of sheep to giant cedar pines, columnist HUGH SELBY shares Japan’s ability to constantly surprise the adventurous visitor who wanders from the main path.
Travel broadens the mind, especially when the traveller is confronted with the unexpected.
Family takes me to Japan, but once there it is the contrasts, the differences from Canberra suburbia, that adds so much value to the trip.
Let me share some examples.
There are some sheep sculptures in Civic, quite appropriate given our history. But a sculptured flock of sheep and a shepherd on a lake foreshore in Japan is another matter.
Why was it there in a country where sheep are so few?
Easier to fathom was the contrast between the daily reality of childhood in today’s Japan and its earlier representation by artists. In several galleries, all in rural towns, we saw art that celebrated childhood as we like to recall it.
The painting styles ranged from Bruegel realism to naïve to fantastical.
Children playing outside a shop, in a rice field, along a river bank, or on a bridge while adults were busy tilling, loading or unloading carts or trucks (depending on when the scene was painted), punting boats, or engaging in a trade.
That early playfulness was such a contrast to the lines of children and teenagers coming and going from trains and buses to get to their first school of the day, the second being the cram school where so many would spend several more hours in late afternoon and early evening being prepped to pass this or that entrance examination.
It’s the contrasts that make it worthwhile
Unexpected contrast makes visiting Japan exciting.
Wake up in a bustling city, join jostling queues, stand in the train clinging to a handle, one tourist surrounded by an army of workers reading comics and listening to music on their phones. There’s so little room that back packs must be worn as stomach packs.
Then exchange that anomie for the quiet comfort of an uncrowded train heading into areas where the rice fields, the orchards, the vegetable plots, and the fixed arrays of solar panels are right next to the train windows.
The station to set off to a famous temple, shrine, art gallery, museum, forest or garden may have no staff, or several. The building may be an architectural delight or just a whisker better than a shed. Whatever its size there is probably local produce for sale, with buyers asked to leave the payment in a trust box.
Beyond the ticket barrier there may be lively cafes, buses, souvenirs and information, or the vista may be one of decay.
Readers who have seen the Japanese anime film Spirited Away (written and directed by Miyazaki, 2001) will remember that most of the action takes place in a busy, large, traditional bath house.
The inspiration for that bath house is, so some claim and others dispute, an inspiring pre-war, timber, multi-storey bath house in a once very popular hot spring area.
Now that area has lost its allure. Once busy hotels are closed. Those that are open need repairs and renovation – neither of which will happen because the clientele is too few.
One of the delights of a hot spring area is a public hot water foot bath.
Users remove their footwear, sit on timber slats or a rock shelf, and put feet and legs (sometimes as far up as a little below the knees) into the hot water which is bubbling up from underground. It’s very refreshing.
There is such a hot water foot bath close to the Spirited Away hotel. Alas, the water was cool. Some five or six locals were spending the afternoon weeding the bank around it. They were all women, all in their 70s and 80s. Work a little, laugh and talk a lot, work a little again. They remember the better times, years ago.
That’s so different to the local businesses in a nearby town which has a gallery celebrating the artist Hokusai, and some well-known confectioners.
The small railway station opens on to flower gardens. There are thriving flowerpots along the streets and new, clear signs to this and that attraction.
The area is famous for chestnuts: a sweet speciality being chestnut puree put through a pipe sieve to give threads that cover a small mountain of flavoured whipped cream on a biscuit base. Served with smooth coffee in an elegant dining space it defines a half hour or so of decadence.
Concrete and wood
If pre-war Japan was a nation of timber structures its post-war destiny has been concrete, concrete everywhere. Famous castles and public buildings of all kinds were replaced with concrete reincarnations: functional, fire and earthquake proof, but without a soul.
To better control rushing water and landslides there are hillsides of concrete, riversides bordered with concrete, and the water in the rice fields is in concrete box drains.
For concrete beauty one looks at the new bridges between islands and the road improvements in mountainous areas. A two-lane, sinewy, switchback, mounted on towering concrete pylons, getting traffic up and down a steep, narrow valley is an engineering feat. The views from the bus as it goes one way, and then in the opposite direction, and then back to the first direction are memorable.
But timber too can rise to awesome heights, as it does in the mountains, beside the broad paths and thigh testing staircases that lead to temples and shrines. The Japanese cedar trees reach to heaven and do it for hundreds of years.
Much more accessible are the small gardens found any place, often by accident, that are quiet and encourage contemplation. The trees put a canopy above the path. There will be a rock feature, a running rivulet, and seasonal flowers and foliage.
It’s another world, often much less than the size of a squash court, but far from the madding crowds.
We have nothing like it.
When not on holiday, Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal affairs columnist.
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