Oct 24 2008
Recalling Rural Japan and Pachelbel’s Canon in D
Continuing my stream of consciousness. Listening to Depapepe’s version of Pachelbel’s Canon in D. In a silent autumn night.
Visited Colin and Carrie at Susami (周参见), a small fishing town near the south-most tip of 本州岛 (Honshu).
Rural Japan may be declining but is nevertheless clean, well maintained. Compared to rural China, rural Japan is a place to escape to, not from.
After visiting some parts of rural China, it is hard for me to imagine a poet will find any spark there–I just can’t see 白居易, sitting amongst the trash, dust, non-stop construction, walls and buildings painted with bold slogans (mostly family planning related), would have the stomach to invite a friend to join him for a drink while waiting for the snow to fall (refering to the poem quoted in the last entry).
Had coffee and cake in a village cafe. The owner used to be a “salary man” in a agrichemical company in Tokyo. One day he had an epiphany and decided to get out of Tokyo and its crazy life. After he settled down in the village we visited, he built his own house, cultivated a garden and had two dogs. He recently built a canoe and invited Colin to join him in a race.
This is not a Starbuck-ish cafe. I believe we were sitting in this gentleman’s living room, with one wall lined with books from floor to ceiling. Outside of the window, a local flower (bell-shaped bright yellow) has just peaked. He opens this “cafe” only during the peak season so neighbors can come in, enjoy the flowers in the garden and taste the organic pastries and coffee. This is where Zen meets PoMo.
Carrie once wrote a very nice piece of the midsummer night’s frog croak in their backyard. To her, it is a total annoyance (particularly when they invade your apartment en mass). But to me, that is the setting (adding some rain drops maybe) for ancient Chinese poems. I never thought I could relive the pastoral life portrayed in those poems. But I did in Susami.
Susami is a small town. The size of 3×3 city blocks maybe? When I walked in, it was already dark and very quiet. There were so few street lights, the town seemed to be lit by the vending machines. Streets are narrow and the houses are nicely laid out.
There was a lovely, strong smell of cedar. Timber is another industry that still sustains the community and the surrounding mountains is full of cedar trees.
Had a beer with Colin and chatted late into morning. Next day, we rode bikes on mountain roads to visit towns deep in the forest.
The roads are really narrow. On steep slopes it is down to just one lane. Still, there is no potholes on the road. None. Broken guard rails all have warning flags planted nearby. Most of the hill side are covered by retaining walls made of solid concrete.
You don’t see a lot of Japanese flags anywhere. But I guess the Japanese version of “patriotism” is in how good they take care of their own communities.
The tunnels: perhaps a legacy of Japanese government’s public spending, we passed quite a few tunnels. In late afternoon, when the setting sun shining through a short tunnel, I felt I was riding into a portal to another world. Reminded me of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し), when Chihiro wandered pass the abandoned temple entrance.
Abandonment: Susami is “shrinking”. Population is declining, due to both continued urbanization and aging. The elementary school Colin taught is closing. An middle school next door has been closed for years. When I first saw the middle school building, a chill ran through my back. It was somewhat ghostly even under the mid-day sun: everything inside out is in perfect order. The library, the chemistry lab, the window doors and the clock: everything is in read-to-use mode. It is as if the students suddenly disappeared right before we arrived. I guess I wouldn’t have been this touched had I not been so used to the urban sprawl in the States and in China.
Colin and I walked along a logging road deep into the woods. The cedar trees are tall and dense, only rarely did we see native plants. Again the hill side of the road is marked by endless retaining walls (made of stones this time), some of which, according to Colin, may be hundreds of years old. Occasionally, we saw abandoned houses buried under heavy foliage. Once, even an abandoned car.