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A Year In Japan (Nihon no Ichi Nen)

2009-01-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

By Kate T. Williamson (Author's Name)
Princeton Architectural Press
2006

Rare, it seems comes a book simply celebrating culture. It is all too common in the literature or memoirs of Americans returning from abroad to portray their host culture through an often unfavorable screen of comparison or judgment. However, culture, as many know who make it their passion, is not definable within the constructs of another culture. When subject to comparison, all cultures suffer from apparent absurdity or, worse, irrelevance within foreign constructs. It is this unintentional but naïve perspective that I despair of when reading most “foreigner in Japan” accounts.

And that is precisely why “A Year in Japan” is so refreshing. The author, or more aptly illustrator, of the memoir is Kate Williamson. Like thousands of other young Americans, Williamson spent a year teaching English in a rural prefecture in Japan. Through the course of her trip she kept a journal and sketchbook, sketching various images of her new life, along with a few sentences to sum up her observations. The sketches illustrate whatever caught her attention that day, or perhaps even that moment. She draws everything – from the most mundane, an electric blanket or 2 pages of socks, to elaborate color illustrations of Geisha, street scenes, or images of nature. Each drawing emphasizes something that Williamson found enduring, surprising, or even irritating about her foster culture and her relationship to it.

In the book she neither sings the praises of Japan nor dismisses it’s irrelevancy. She merely observes as unjudgmentally as possible. The subjects of her drawings will be familiar to most who’ve spent some time in Japan, but she never draws to mock or diminish her mundane subjects, nor to glorify those subjects for which she has an appreciation.

I don’t mean to say she is writing without opinion or purpose. Indeed she has a clear purpose in sharing with us her vision. She wishes for us the same sort of discovery she experienced upon her first encounter with each subject. She does not necessarily intend to write free of all cultural bias either, and, on occasion it is inevitable, but the pureness and genuine wish to share her fascination and curiosity with the not yet understood makes this book almost like visiting Japan again for the first time.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book of this nature on the subject of Japan. It seems that most of us like to outdo each other with our own astute understanding and interpretations of the culture. Yet cultures are indefinable even by anthropologists, and our ability to see into foreign cultures is hampered by an interpretation of our own. This book does nothing lofty, offers no solutions for business interaction or theories of behavior. However, after spending a few minutes in Kate T. Williamson’s world you may learn a little something you never knew about Japan, or about yourself.

Taiko: Traditional Japanese Art? Maybe not...

2008-04-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Taiko, as we think of it, is not a traditional Japanese art form. This statement may surprise you as, in the minds of many, it is quintessentially that. For many Japanese Americans it has been a path to connecting with the culture of their ancestors, yet their ancestors would not recognize groups of drummers on a stage as something Japanese.

That is not to say that the use of the Taiko drum has not been prevalent in Japanese culture since its prehistory. The drum has played a central role in at Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, battlefields and village festivals since recorded history began; probably centuries before. For centuries the drum has scared away or attracted spirits, inspired emotion and drive in armies, accompanied actors in noh and kabuki drama, accompanied solemn Buddhist sutras or Shinto prayer, or been the centerpiece behind which to show off at the village dance. But the Taiko was most often accompaniment, and the player, usually solo.

However, ancient Taiko did occasionally break free from its “accompaniment” status. Like the Lion Dance from China, Gojinjyo Taiko became a festival performance of its own. Gojinjyo Taiko is Taiko with masks. The players would don masks of local gods or demons, foxes, damsels in distress, dimwitted locals, or whatever and perform a story centering around a drum. The stories were simple – influenced by folk tales or legends – but often improvised by the locals behind the masks. This was festival play – not serious performance – so the idea was to be larger than life, comical, and exaggerated.

Perhaps Gojinjyo was a predecessor of Kumi (Group) Daiko. It did indeed involve a group of performers working together in rhythm and centering around a drum. But Kumi Daiko would be centuries away still; the product of a culture in distress, and a war to end all wars.

It was after World War II that a defeated Japan began its earnest search to redefine itself. It had been a nation rudely awakened one hundred years prior, by black warships anchored outside the capitol city of Edo. The American Captain insisted the island nation open its doors to trade, to progress, and to modernization. Realizing its weakness the nation reluctantly agreed. Civil insurgency marked the nation for decades before the Meiji emperor regained control and demanded rapid modernization. Watching the occupation of China, Vietnam and Korea, he could see the writing on the wall. Japan had to get strong fast.

The latter half of the 19th and 1st half of the 20th centuries were strictly dedicated with westernization. Old traditions were tossed away, old laws broken and ethical codes trashed in favor of the ways, knowledge and strength of Europe. Finally all of this preparation led to war, and the Japanese fought with the spirit of their Gods and ancestors. But the war ended in devastating ruin and loss. It was from that loss that Kumi Daiko was born.

Why drums? It wasn’t only drums, it was Kabuki, farmer’s co-ops, and the tea ceremony. It was time for a nation that had for so long devalued their culture, to re-access it. They needed it. Without that dusty old culture they could not be Japanese. But it didn’t quite fir anymore. That old culture was a bit tight around the waste now for these new international, sophisticated Japanese. They needed to make their own size.

Kumi Taiko
Daihachi Oguchi is often credited with making the first Taiko group in Japan in about 1951. Oguchi was a jazz drummer, and he saw the potential of different players playing different drums to create one rhythm – like feet and hands on a jazz drum kit. The group was called Osuwa Taiko and it played for the glory of Osuwa shrine in the northern Hokuriku region of Japan.

Following Oguchi’s lead Taiko exploded in the Hokuriku region of Japan, an area of Japan that remains well known for it’s Taiko even today. The form spread East across Japan to Tokyo. In 1959 Tokyo’s Sukeroku Taiko was founded by four young musicians. The name came from founder Seido Kobayashi’s brother’s noodle shop, Sukeroku Siemen. The group added choreography and flashy to the art form. Sukeroku was designed to show off, but their style was far from loose. They incorporated aspects of martial arts training into their practices and routines. They viewed their style as at once modern and ancient.

The group disbanded in the early 60’s but regrouped under the name Oedo Sukeroku Taiko, with the original members, shortly thereafter. After regrouping they “went pro” making Oedo Sukeroku Taiko the first professional taiko group in Japan. The group went on to notoriety in Japan and introduced Taiko to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, their success was not enough to keep the members together and rifts broke out among them. Eventually this led to the disbanding of the professional group. Seido Kobayashi still maintains the name, a touring group, and a school in Tokyo. Founder Yoshihisa Ishikura formed Kanto Abare Daiko shortly after the split. Several years later Kiyonari Tosha, another founding member, formed Nihon Taiko Dojo in conjunction with Taiko maker Miyamoto Taiko. The fourth and final member, Saburo Mochiziki, continued to perform in Japanese classical music.

In the late 1960’s, as Taiko gained popularity in Japan, one student of Oedo Sukeroku Taiko, Seiji Tanaka, visited San Francisco, California, only to discover that Taiko was no longer a part of the Japanese American festival. Forty years prior a taiko drum was commonplace in Buddhist temples or community centers where Japanese Americans gathered. But the war and slowing immigration had caused the Japanese American community to increasingly disassociate themselves with their ancestral heritage. Much of what the Japanese community owned had been lost during internment. What taikos did remain in the basements of Buddhist temples mostly gathered dust.

Tanaka believed this condition needed a remedy. He returned to Japan and studied under Osuwa Taiko’s Oguchi Sensei. He returned to San Francisco in 1968 - this time for good - this time with a mission.

Part 2 Next month: Taiko crosses the water and gets a kick in the pants.

Thoughts on LA's Nisei Week

2008-03-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

It's like going back in time. Or, even more like warping and twisting time and space - where pieces of modern and pre-war Japanese culture mix with American and even Latin American culture to come up with this weird cross-culture cross-time mix. It's like eating ceviche at Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills. Tastes every bit as good, and feels every bit as natural.

Why is it like time travel? Simple. Current immigration figures for Japanese in the U.S. are almost nonexistent. Many who come from Japan today only intend to stay the length of their assignment from Toyota or Sony. Very few of these short timers associate with the Japanese American communities. And so J-towns along the West coast have become populated with primarily third, forth and even fifth generation Americans. Many have never been to Japan, and most have no contact with their Japanese relatives. Many families can trace their American roots back 100 or more years - further even than many Irish American and Italian American groups that immigrated to New York in the early 1900's. As a result the Japan in the collective memory more closely resembles the nation of pre -World War II or the impoverished years immediately following the war. They remember the songs, the dances and the arts that their grandparents remember. The ones handed down to them as pieces of the culture from which they descended.

Same with the people back home, right? Of course, back in Japan all the Japanese kids learned the same songs that their parent and grandparents learned. They did Kendo in
school and dressed in kimono for festivals. So what's the difference? Everything else. Culture constantly changes and mutates. Back home the culture of Japan has undergone drastic changes. As in any culture the great-grandparents hardly recognize the culture of their great grandchildren. Yet it is the same culture adjusted by time. What's missing in immigrant communities is that progression. The grandchildren's culture is not modern Japan - it the U.S. - or Brazil, or Peru, or Mexico. That's their everyday culture. As a result that Japanese culture of the previous generations does not mutate or adjust to the times. It freezes as a collective memory.

Many of the Japanese cultural arts performed in the United States are no longer done of the motivation to hold onto one's culture in a foreign land. Now most cultural Arts are practiced as an attempt o reconnect with a culture of a parent or grandparent. It is a form of identifying oneself through one's heritage. It's not about being Japanese, of course - it is about being Japanese American. It is not about connecting with the Japanese culture of today, it is about connecting to a Japan that no longer exists, but that was real when the family was separated from it. Like Leiderhosen clad dancers at Midwest Oktoberfests, Japanese Americans play Taiko drums and dance Odori not out of an attempt to remember home, but as an attempt to re-identify themselves to a home they have never actually known first hand. (Does anyone wear Leiderhosen in Germany anymore?)

So Nisei week might look a little silly and old fashioned to a Japanese just coming over to the U.S. But, it really it's not intended for them anyway.

Still it's not just about history. Nisei week, is also an attempt to identify the current JA's as well. For me that is the most interesting. It can be fun to look at traditional arts and watch cultural shows. I can appreciate the skill of a good odori dance troop or marvel at a well cared for Bonsai. That is culture in a jar - vacuum packed and preserved - but it's no more day to day than the opera or Shakespeare. The modern culture is where everything gets twisted and warped. Amine, cosplay otaku, gearheads and Nisei week queens who dream of broadcasting careers and changing the world someday. That's Nisei week. That's where the culture is going - farther and farther from Modern Japan and veering off the mainstream American culture. It's picking up a little Latin and PanAsian in the mix. It's something all it's own. You might not see it in the Ikebana galleries or in the tea ceremony demonstrations. You'll see it in the faces of the people standing next to you and looking with you. You might see it in your own face. Ironically you don't even have to be Japanese, American or Japanese-American!