I
mentioned recently that connections between Mexico and Japan go back
to the late 16th
century. A visitor familiar with Mexico is struck by certain
superficial similarities between the two cultures in terms of the
formal politeness of daily life and the forms of deference to people
of higher social status (which automatically includes foreigners). In
Japan the behaviours and forms of address are multiple and difficult
for foreigners to understand in full. They clearly reflect ancient
traditions and systems of status and power. This set me thinking
about the theme of tradition and modernity in Japan.
Our
plane reading was Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (the master of the short
story) and, in Jan’s case, Natsume Sōseki, an early 20th
century novelist whose writing career lasted only eleven years, but
won him enduring popularity. His first novel, I
Am a Cat, was an instant success. We
visited the Sōseki museum, built on the site of his home, and only a
few yards from our son’s apartment. He published more than 20
novels, a book about the theory of literature and translations of
works from English and French. Much of his literary production was
for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The Japanese government sent Sōseki to London for two years (he
recalled them as the two most awful years of his life) to study
English literature. His home was of traditional wooden construction
and design, with a garden dominated by a Japanese banana tree. His
study, recreated in the museum, contained a large library, a low
Japanese writing desk and implements. Sōseki’s interest in foreign
literature and languages marked him out as modern. Perhaps still more
remarkable was his taste for bread and sandwiches.
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| Sōseki’s
study |
Akutagawa
was an admirer of Sōseki and attended his weekly salons in his home.
Like his mentor, Akutagawa drew on Japanese tradition and western
modernity. He re-worked medieval Japanese stories in modern language
of great power and concision. Two such stories, Rashōmon
and In a Bamboo Grove,
deal with good and evil and the slippery nature of truth. Akira
Kurosawa combined the two quite different tales into a brilliant
film, Rashōmon.
On the other hand, Akutagawa was an avid reader of western
literature. In Spinning Wheels,
he refers to himself as a modern Monsieur Bovary and writes of his
admiration for Strindberg and Dostoyevsky. In Death
Register he draws on his own
experiences, informing us that his mother was a madwoman. Like
Sōseki, he wrote to deadlines for a newspaper. And like his master
his career was brief: only thirteen years.
 |
| Akutagawa |
It
is hard to escape modernity in contemporary Tokyo’s neon-signed
avenues, its skyscrapers, the boutiques of self-consciously
fashionable districts such as Daikanyama and Naka-Meguro, or the
obsession with gadgetry on show in Akihabara Electric Town. Yet, the
drive for modernity is little more than century and a half old. The
man credited with dragging Japan into the modern, international, era
is emperor Meiji (reigned 1867-1912). The need to modernize Japan had
been made clear in 1853 when Commodore Perry’s American naval
squadron sailed into Tokyo Bay to give the Japanese a message: they
were to open their economy on American terms or else. The humiliated
and impotent Japanese had no choice but to agree.
Meiji’s
remedy was to import skills of all kinds from overseas. European
artists were hired to teach western style oil painting with linear
perspective (known as yōga)
as opposed to Japanese painting using traditional materials and
techniques (nihonga).
Graphic designers taught drafting skills, useful for designing
postage stamps, but also for blueprints of war ships and armaments.
Architects were brought to Japan to design western-style buildings.
The success of Meiji’s programme was demonstrated by triumph in the
Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese war ten years
later, in which the Japanese navy destroyed the Russian fleet.
The
father of modern Japanese architecture is said to be Josiah Conder, a
Briton hired by the government in 1877. Conder designed the Naval
Ministry, the Ueno Imperial Museum, churches and university
buildings, and villas for wealthy Japanese eager to adopt western
tastes. One such was designed for Baron Furukawa Toranosuke, an owner
of copper mines. The baron also had a garden designed by a Japanese,
Ogawa Jihei. The garden combines a formal rose garden with a Japanese
landscape garden. We visited the garden, accompanied by vast crowds
of Japanese rose enthusiasts.
 |
| Conder’s
Furakawa villa, brick clad in stone |
Conder
also trained a number of eminent Japanese architects. However, the
modernization process was not entirely completed, at least in
architectural terms, by the time of Meiji’s death in 1912. We
joined a tour of the Japanese Diet building, the seat of the House of
Representatives (roughly MPs) and the House of Councillors (roughly
senators), designed by Japanese architects, after designs by German
and American architects had failed to receive approval. The building
was constructed in the 1930s using Japanese materials, but exceptions
had to be made for technologies that the Japanese had not mastered.
These included stained glass (from Britain), mail chutes and a system
of door locks with a master key (both American).
 |
| The
Diet Building |
While
Baron Furukawa opted for an entirely western-style building, the
mansions of other wealthy Japanese combined traditional style with
imported modern features. One such was built in 1919 for Kyu-Asakura,
Chairman of the Tokyo City Government, who married into an
aristocratic family of landowners. The family added to their fortune
through rice milling in the 19th
century. Asakura adopted his wife’s last name, which no doubt
helped his political career. The residential and business areas of
the house are of traditional wood construction, with a tiled roof.
Screens, some exquisitely painted with motifs of flowers, birds, fans
and other designs, divide the rooms. The flooring of the rooms is
traditional tatami
mats. Rooms are measured in terms of tatami
(a small room might be four tatami,
a large room twelve or more). In some rooms the cedar wood, obtained
at great expense, was cut to display the grain. However, there are
innovations. The external screen doors, traditionally of light wood
and paper moving on a wooden sill, here are glazed with glass and
move on rollers because of the weight. There are western-style toilet
fittings. The reception room is wood-panelled, carpeted and has
decidedly un-traditional sash windows. In terms of materials the
storehouse is a radical departure: it is of concrete construction.
The exterior walls have rows of hooks from which mats of wet straw
were hung as a measure against fire – fire was a frequent cause of
destruction in a city constructed mostly of wood. Asakura also had a
garage – and therefore a car at a very early date – constructed,
again, of modern materials: concrete blocks and corrugated iron. It
would not be out of place in a modest British home, but in 1919 Tokyo
signalled wealth.
 |
| Asakura
house |
 |
| Asakura house garden |
The
Kyu-Asakura house is a rare survival (only about three homes of that
period survive) on account of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and
following fires, of 1923, and the fire-bombing of World War II. This
accounts for the architectural modernity of Tokyo, much of it on a
scale of ordinary to awful, but a surprising amount truly striking.
On a stroll through Harajuku, a district popular with teenagers, some
in school uniform, others in outlandish attire, we saw a small
spectacular cantilevered office building designed by Klein Dytham.
The same partnership designed the Tsutsaya bookshop and other
buildings under the train tracks at nearby Naka-Meguro, close to the
cafés and boutiques along the Meguro river.
 |
| Klein
Dytham office building |
 |
| Tsutsuya bookshop |
Despite
the neon and the skyscrapers, it is not hard to find ancient temples
and shrines in Tokyo – ancient that is in terms of foundation
rather than construction, since few survived fire and earthquake. The
columns that sustain Senso-Ji temple at Asakusa, for example, are of
steel and the roof of titanium. Legend tells us that in 628 two
fishermen caught a statue of the bodhisattva Kannon in the Sumida
River. They took it to the ruler of their village, who converted his
home into a temple to house it. Today, Senso-ji is a vast temple
approached along an avenue of shops (religion and trade go well
together in Japan). In contrast, we were pleased to find at Shibamata
in the eastern suburbs of Tokyo, the Taishakuten Daikyo Buddhist
temple, founded in 1629. Unlike Senso-ji, this temple is an entirely
wooden structure that has survived earthquakes and wars. It is
dedicated to Taishakuten, originally a Hindu god of thunder, adopted
by Buddhism as a subduer of evil.
 |
| Taishakuten Daikyo Temple |
The
glory of this temple is the high relief carvings on the exterior, but
especially in the interior, of scenes of worship, travelling monks
and animals.
 |
| Taishakuten Daikyo wood carving |
Aspects of the theme of tradition came up in
conversations with friends. One told us that when she was young it
was usual for girls to be taught ikebana
(flower arranging) and tea ceremony as a preparation for marriage,
but that few young women now devote much time to them. Over dinner in
Kanazawa we commented that we had seen many young women in kimonos in
the famous Kenroku-en garden. Our friends disabused us of the
impression that tradition was stronger in Kanazawa than in Tokyo: the
girls hire the kimonos, and are dressed by shop staff, since many do
not know how to put on the kimono. In short, here tradition is a
tourist experience.
We
had eaten lunch that day opposite a wedding planning business and
watched young couples being sold expensive packages. We asked our
Kanazawa friends about their wedding forty years ago. They were
married in a Shinto shrine, which was conveniently located within a
wedding chapel. Their son had been married in a shrine, but his
parents explained that the choice between shrine and wedding chapel
(these are ubiquitous in Japan) does not usually express any deeply
held faith.
When
I travelled to Japan for business in the 1990s I met a Buddhist monk,
dressed in yellow robes, at a private view in an art gallery in
fashionable Omotesandō. He was drinking beer and told me that he was
married to the artist. I asked him how he spent his time. He
responded that he walked in mountains, bathed in streams and relied
on donations for his meals. Drinking beer, wandering in mountains
while enjoying beer and art world society in central Tokyo seemed an
agreeable lifestyle. The Japanese are generally eclectic and
practical. They choose elements of tradition that hold society
together and help to make it work, and see no contradiction with
simultaneously pursuing modernity in its many guises, superficial or
profound.
