Book Synopsis!

Well, the press has written up a tremendous "blurb" or overview of what the book "is," and I couldn't be happier. In the process, we've come up with a new subtitle, and they've put together a really powerful front cover image that I think really captures what the book is trying to say, and is very appealing visually. Oh, and I should mention, I finished the manuscript! It's now in the editor's hands, and I'll get it back soon.

The book is also (exciting!) now available for pre-order on Amazon. It helps a lot if you pre-order it, because that shows the publishing world that people are interested in this book: Here's the Amazon link:

Here's the blurb:

A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance

11 portraits from rural Japan to inspire choices in meaningful work, art, and sustainable living

Raised in the tumult of Japan’s industrial powerhouse, the 11 men and women profiled in this book have all made the transition to sustainable, fulfilling lives. They are today artists, philosophers, and farmers who reside deep in the mountains of rural Japan. Their lives may be simple, yet they are surrounded by the luxuries of nature, art, contemplation, delicious food, and an abundance of time. For example:

• Atsuko Watanabe is an environmentalist and home-schooler who explores Christian mysticism while raising her two daughters in an old farmhouse

• Akira Ito is an ex–petroleum engineer who has become a painter and children's book illustrator and explores the role of chi (life energy) in the universe through art and traditional Chinese music

• Kogan Murata grows rice and crafts elegant bamboo flutes that he plays for alms in the surrounding villages

• Jinko Kaneko is a fine artist and fabric dyer who runs a Himalayan-style curry restaurant in the Japan Alps

By presenting the journeys of these ordinary—yet exceptional—people, Andy Couturier shows how we too can travel a meaningful path of living simply, with respect for our communities and our natural resources. When we leave behind the tremendous burdens of wage labor, debt, stress, and daily busy-ness, we grow rich in a whole new way. These Japanese are pioneers in a sense; drawing on traditional Eastern spiritual wisdom they have forged a new style of modernity, and in their success is a lesson for us all: live a life that matters.

“ Andy Couturier has written some very articulate pieces on the counterculture
in Japan.” —GARY SNYDER

Available at booksellers worldwide and online.
Distributed to the trade by Consortium, 1-800-283-3572

A Different Kind of Cultural Preservation

This is from page 2 of a chapter about a remarkable man named Ito who not only is a children's book illustrator and an archivist, but who also has developed a theory of the workings of energy in the universe based on the Chinese I Ching, theoretical astrophysics and yoga philosophy.


But of all the quite different works at Akira Ito's exhibition, the most moving for me was the smallest: a hand-sewn volume that fit into a box about the size of two packs of cards. The book, a loving documentation of traditional Nepali paper making processes, not only displays Ito's affection for the ways of life of traditional rural peoples, but, as he explained, the project of making it was a way to keep those ways alive in the onrush of industrially-produced products into Nepal from the urbanized world.

It grew out of his research in the late 1970s when he traveled throughout the Himalayan region. Skilled as both an illustrator, a writer and a book designer, and being the son of a traditional paper hanger in Japan, Ito made this book to introduce Nepali methods to Japanese craftspeople and artists. Using funds collected from "subscribers" in Japan, he hired artisans to carve the woodblocks (often Tibetan monks), make the paper, produce the prints page by page, and sew the pages together to produce a boxed edition of several hundred copies.

The paper itself is baby soft, and so pleasing to touch that I could feel myself relaxing just holding it in my hands. The tactile qualities of art are something I hadn't really noticed before.

In the gentle images on each page, I find women walking mountain pathways with straw baskets on their backs with the trees and yaks and clouds, and even the rocks of the mountain themselves vibrating with energy. Nepali men in conical hats harvest branches from saplings which, on another page, are soaked in a rushing river, and beaten against rocks. The river, the trees and even the humans in these high Himalayan valleys all shiver and pulse with Ito's energetic line. Like the meshed fibers of the supple paper itself, the people seem completely woven into the vibrating energy of the landscape. One page I remember particularly shows three men in a small shop, folding and stacking the large sheets of paper, sitting on the floor, relaxing against a wall, as a friendly and cute rat looks on from the side.

In this book I can feel what Ito-san loves and the way that he loves it. The entire process of boiling and pounding the fibers, sieving the pulp in screens under a thatched roof, drying the individual sheets in the sun or by the fire are rendered in such an intimate and inviting style, yet the book has enough information such that paper makers in Japan could use it to replicate all of the techniques, and perhaps even feel a connection with others doing similar work far away.

And although the pictures treat the peasant life of the Nepal, the influence of Japanese folk art on Ito's drawings is evident as well. The book itself "says" (without saying) that culture and artisinal craftswork and daily life and the entire life world are intricately woven. And you know this without even thinking it by holding this beautiful book in your hands.

It's such a creative and nourishing way to do cultural preservation, to save traditions from extinction, I think: introducing a Japanese audience to an Asian handicraft while simultaneously financially supporting the craftspeople themselves so that they might continue to be able to do their work. It revitalizes both parties. [And it feels so much more authentically organic, as well as artful of course, than any random mountain of position papers, non profits devoted to indigenous revival or all the earnest philanthropy in the world.

I remember something he told me about his focus in life. "It's the good things of the past, that's what we must preserve. They have passed through the hardships of history to become a tradition, and we who are alive today must treasure them, and take care of them for the future."

Graduating from Drinking Tea

This is a piece from about the middle of the Murata chapter, the turning point for him. Maybe one of the best ways to get at the core of this book. (One of.)


After more than a decade of this life, things began to change for him inside.

"At first, I thought I would just keep traveling, all the way 'till the end. But then," laughing at himself, "I got tired of it. I just got tired. It was fun of course, trekking in Himalaya, absolutely so. But the last two years I started to think, 'If I just continued doing this…what is there for me?' You know what I mean? Repeating the exact same thing, again and again. And I began to suspect," he adds with a contemplative tone, 'Maybe there wasn't anything.' And that's the point where it all changed for me."



At about the same time, he says, he started asking, "What is the most important thing?' And I came to the answer, 'It is eating.' " Then, as many of us do at some point, he started to read about all the chemicals used growing our food. "I thought, 'Shouldn't I grow it myself?' and 'Could I really do it?' and I decided that, yes, I could make it a reality in my life."

Also, he says, he had always dreamed of living in the mountains. "It's actually an ancient Japanese ideal. We all read about these famous people in school in the Chinese and Japanese classics: go off to the mountains and live by yourself in a hut like a hermit; spend your day singing and reading poems.

"This image entered into my head and I was really able to imagine that kind of life. But Japanese people all have this longing. It comes originally from Lao Tsu." Then he adds with his typical dramatic flair, "Hiding! Everyone yearns for this."

"So," I ask him, "You wanted to be a literati?"

"There's all kinds of forms: you can be a farmer, or do pottery, or be a woodcutter or a painter."

I picture Murata as a little boy, wearing his regulation uniform, sitting at his schoolboy desk in conservative, economically-aspiring, early 1960s Japan reading about such poet hermits in some digest-version textbook approved by the Ministry of Education, intended to give children a few basic facts about their nation's cultural history. But Murata stops on one particular sentence, written by someone in the thirteenth century, escaping "the dust of the world" and Murata looking up at the ceiling, dreaming. Perhaps many other children had that dream, but somehow it stuck for him, and …

The magic of words...coming off a page… from another century...to inspire an actual life right now.


Sometimes, during the years of writing this book, I've found myself on a crowded train in Tokyo or Osaka, on my way to meet one of the people who live in the mountains, and I'll look at the businessmen all around me, their suits and ties perfect, but exhaustion hanging over their faces, pallid and overdrawn like a bank account, and I wonder, if like Murata says, they also dream this dream. If so, do they lack the courage? Or have they made choices earlier on about family and house buying so that it's much less easy to move? Or is Murata right, that it's much more simple than that? They aren't doing it because they simply don't want it enough?

This ideal, I mention, might come from ancient India, where the texts talk about it as something one does as the fourth and last stage of life.

"Yes," Murata says "for after you finish your working life, in your fifties or sixties…"

"But you wanted to do it sooner?" I ask

Laughing he says, "Yes!" And then he adds, solemn as if he's quoting something, "Whatever you can do, it's best to do it soon."

And he's right: you could die tomorrow. In all our years of talking, this might be the message he wants me to understand the most.

And then he adds, "Living in 'the world' is a pain in the neck. You have to work a job. You have to do this, that and the other thing. So if you want to be free of that, it's best to head into the mountains."


"So you left India in 1988?"

" Yes, I graduated!"

I smile. While all of Japan is racking up credentials and certificates, Murata has graduated from drinking tea all day in India. Although you could see Murata's years in India as a complete waste of time, for him that kind of a life was, as he says, a foundation for how he lives now. And in the decades to come as our oil runs out, I think the skills he has will prove to be crucial.

So when he needs to spend hours out in the rice paddies in the blazing sun on a humid day, he's got that patience. When he collects firewood in the fall for the coming mountain winters, and has to cut a big log with a hand saw, and walk it all the way home, he's not cursing the time it takes, or wishing he had a chain saw to speed up the process. He's enjoying himself entirely. I am certain of it. For myself, I know it would be hard. I'm missing his background. How did he entertain himself in India? By walking, by talking, by not even "entertaining" himself, but just looking out at people. When he spends eight solid hours practicing the flute, he's able to do it. And whenever I happen to visit, Murata always has time to talk and talk and talk. (I sigh, thinking of some friendships in the US, us fitting in lunch together once every three months.) There's no rush inside of him, no conflict in his soul between talking all day and some other thing he might have to do.

As I listen to him, espousing the gospel of taking it easy, the absolute belief in doing only what he loves, and doing it slow, I all of a sudden notice the muscles in his forearms! No rush, no push, yet he is full of life and energy. Fifty five years old and as strong as a twenty year old. Stronger, perhaps.

Flute Pilgrim

Here's a section from a new chapter, on Kogan Murata, a rice farmer, and follower of the Zen tradition of shakuhachi flute pilgrimage. From the middle of the chapter.





Legend has it that in China, in the eighth century, there lived a Ch'an (Zen) monk whose bell would ring a sound so pure that those hearing it would be led on the path to enlightenment. One of his disciples decided that he would try to make a flute that would imitate the sound of this bell. Soon after the teacher would ring the bell, the monk would blow one note on the flute, as if echoing the sound of the metal ringing, you could call it a "ringing" in the wood.


The link between Buddhist meditation and the bamboo flute continued as the culture crossed over from China to Japan. And in this so called "blowing Zen" two of the most important aspects of Buddhist practice—the chanting of sutras and awareness of breathing--were brought together in the tradition of flute playing as a form of meditation. This form of self training was then joined to two even older traditions of spiritual practice, the walking pilgrimage and the practice of alms begging, both of which have been fundaments of Eastern spiritual practice for centuries before the birth of the Buddha. [From earliest times, both walking and alms begging have been fundaments of Eastern spiritual practice.] All of these came together in the tradition of the komuso, or itinerant begging monk.

Though the figure of the man wearing a woven straw basket-like hat covering his face and head and a wooden box around his neck with the words "Without existence, Without extinction" has almost completely disappeared from the Japanese landscape, there are still those among the very aged who recognize him as a komuso. Most people however, have no idea what he is doing.

When I asked him if he explains to younger people what a komuso is, Murata replied. "I don't explain. When I'm playing, I don't talk to people at all. I only play. "  

Whether the people there welcome him, shoo him away or slam the door in his face, his reaction is the same. "I play one sutra, and I finish it. If they give money, I receive it. If they do not, I simply finish and move on."

According to Murata, "The reason to play the flute is to advance your ability to better perceive emptiness. You are playing for yourself, not to entertain another person, or to have them pity you. You certainly don't do it with the object of making money. That's why it doesn't matter at all how people react. As my sensei says, 'To play is good. That's all.' "



For many years Murata put himself in the position of relying on it as his sole source of income.

When Murata does go out, he cuts a striking figure. The kimono is grey, silken looking and spotless. I smile at the transformation from the usual plaid work shirts and jeans he often has on. He wears a wooden box around his neck with the characters "Without Birth, Without Extinction" elegantly brushstroked upon it. Over his head he wears a rattan hat which obscures his face entirely. Murata explains that this head covering was, in the period when many komuso acted as spies for the Shogun, a way to maintain secrecy--to see and not be seen. Perhaps it is also part of the anonymity that helps a monk with his own tendency toward ego identification. And with it's heavy club end, the flute was, at times, even used as a weapon.

He stands in front of a house or a shop, and blows one sutra on the bamboo. He stops. He dramatically pulls out a pure white fan, his movements as precise as a Noh dancer, simultaneously graceful and stark. If you choose to place a coin or bill on the fan, this is the time that you do that, and then he places the fan inside of the box, bows, and moves on, leaving you in the swirling wake of the fragrant incense sutra he has played in your presence.




Murata spent six years with his Nishimura. Near the end of this period he received a license from his him, which I have seen. Its elegantly calligraphy, with the teacher's red seal on it, admonishes him to comport himself properly, and to observe his manners with strict adherence. He carries this license always with him, along with a folding, hand-bound book of "sheet music" which is more like a vertically written list of syllables, a sort of mix of musical notation and sutras to be 'sung.' He was also given a new first name, "Kogan" which means to inspect deeply, to comprehend illusion and emptiness. The practice of granting of new names is common in many traditional disciplines. It functions, I believe, as a talisman and a reminder, and the granting of this name indicates a rite of passage, a connection between teacher and disciple. The name, the license, the folding book of sutras, along with the rattan hat, the kimono, the box, the fan, and of course the flute are what indicate to the outside world that he is a komusou. But deeper than these things, being a komusou is an inner way of holding oneself, a particular kind of presence in the world. Nonetheless these items, I speculate, promote a certain kind of way of being for a person on a pilgrimage through the practice.

I know that Murata would think such kinds of theoretical discussions pointless, so I allow myself to just hold them in my mind, and enjoy their presence there, which, when I think about it, is perhaps part of his point.

Polishing the beginning of a chapter

I've been posting fragments, glimpses. I continue to translate long interviews, and work them together. Here I'm working towards a real beginning of a chapter. This I put together last summer, August, in southern Sri Lanka, at an old Portuguese fort/ enclosed village on the Indian Ocean.

Tonight, I've been scraping off barnacles, honing sentence rhythms. It'll still need more, but it's what I've been doing that's fit to show. I am going back and forth for the title for the chapter. Either, "The Inside Joke" or "The Inside Joker." Votes welcome. This is intended to the beginning of a chapter. Here you go:

The Inside Joke

Gufu Watanabe

Botanist, Potter, Collector, Cook

"This one is a Tibetan Monk, though he's in Bali here."

Gufu Watanabe, seeker of curiosities, is pointing to a little statuette of black clay that he has made recently. "And he's offering tea." Indeed, in the little man's hand is a miniature cup. "I call it 'Drink tea, then go.' " Well, actually, what Gufu said in Japanese is "I call it 'kissako'." It's a word I don't understand the meaning of, until I ask and he explains. "Few Japanese today would understand the term 'kissako.' " he says. "It's a Zen proverb, from a long time ago."

On the floor in front of us, arrayed around the little man, is a whole phantasmagorical statuary of vaguely smirking, blank-faced animals with wide circular eyes--all made from black clay--gathered as if in some hypnotized tropical consortium. A tiger, a hedgehog, a long triangular fish, a lizard, a bull, a turtle: the lot. Each piece has a little removable lid on its top, "In order to put peanuts--or something--in," he explains.

"Over them are some palm fronds," he says, gesturing with his fingers in the air above the animals. "Of course they aren't 'there,' here, but they're there. You know, because it's the tropics. Kind of strange that he's a Tibetan in Bali."

I smile to myself on his comment that this scene as an odd one, as though he had chanced upon it in a forest instead of having made it up entirely from his deeply-mulched imagination.

"Most Japanese people today don't know about 'kissako,' " he explains graciously, having become accustomed after many years to my endless reservoir (river) of questions. "It has two meanings. One, 'Don't be in such a rush.' Yes you can go on your way, but first, drink tea. And then you can go. "Also it means, whoever you are, you can drink here some tea, with other people, together, high or low caste. I offer you tea. In ancient Japan, this was, of course, not common. That's why it's a Zen proverb."

He then tells me about the lettering on the small platform (which also is a box) that the monk is standing upon. The words are in the script used to write Hindi, but the language is in Nepali on one side, and—phonetically--in Japanese on another.

None of this would I have found out from this elfin man with the very short goatee if I had not persisted in my questions, one after another. I rather doubt anybody else has kept at it long enough to get this whole story, either. But, like the invisible palm fronds around this potlatch of mythical creatures, it is definitely all "there." He has made the entire story up--and just for himself. He's not unwilling to share the story of this imaginary bestiary with any other person, it just that doing so isn't important to him, one way or the other. He enjoys his own mind and imagination: the pleasure is his own. And unlike me, he doesn't seem to need even a splinter of recognition.

By now, I am pretty well certain of this because I've known Gufu for fifteen years. He's interested in the interesting. Period. And that's a fascinating way to live.

Values, laughter, insects, connoisseurship

As the long luxuriant hours of one of our interviews progresses, tea time often comes around, and the discussions with Atsuko and Gufu veer into dialectics about this or that kind of tea, the grade of the tea, the size of the cut, and the proper kind of tea cup to use when drinking this particular variety, or how the glaze on the cup does or doesn't fit this kind of tea. "Well, let's drink the first cup in the proper fashion… Huh? It's jammed up in the pot! … Oh, it's powdered tea! It's a good quality, but it's cheaper because it's powdered!"

I admit to loving this minutiae of connoisseurship, even as I know they are both half-parodying it, laughing at the rarified world of Tea in Japan which they, simultaneously, just happen to know a hell of a lot about.

Now Gufu is wincing as he drinks the tea. "Yaaa! It's too bitter!" Atsuko lets out another gale of laughter, then takes aim at me, "Hey that's like when Andy made the mulled apple cider, with too many spices in it! I remember, you just sucked it up and drank it down like it was supposed to have that much spice in it!"

Interview continued:

Andy:" But Atsuko, when did your life start to diverge from that of others?"

Atsuko: "Oh, OK, that was in 1976-before I went traveling. It was the time when everyone around me, the students, were starting to talk about getting jobs. It occurred to me that once I did find a job, and took it, and began working…most likely it would be hard to quit that kind of life later. For once I started making money, and living the moneyed life, it would be very difficult to shift back to a life without later on. At that time, I thought, if I get old and have no money, and end up poor, well, I'd be alright with that; it wouldn't matter"

As we talk--the bird sounds, their lyrical calls, and the crescendoing insects, who then fade back into the silence of the afternoon are always placing itself in my earshot, reminding me of the place Atsuko and Gufu have chosen to live. From outside, I can also feel the moisture of the air and the scents of the plants that live on the wealth and fertility of the soil, making me aware too of the permeability of the house itself--Japanese architecture not walling off the outside world--and each of these things keeps up its gentle reminder of what it is that is valuable to these people, and, I recognize, to me.

Interview with Atsuko: "Something out there..."

Here's the raw material for a chapter. This took about four hours to transcribe, translate, and then turn into proper English. The intermediate project:

In the late 70s Atsuko spent years traveling in India and Nepal.

Andy: What was changing inside of you during this time?

Atsuko: Hmmm…that was the period in which I started reading the Bible, and I started reading books on Buddhism that they had at Shantikuti (house of peace, run by Zen Abbot Takaoka in Katmandu.) Well, more than before, I got interested in Buddhism, somehow, there was something, indefinable, in there for me. I allowed Buddhism in. And along the way, I became a vegetarian.

Andy: You said last year that you weren't interested in traveling more, that you felt that you had "gotten" what traveling was. What did you mean by that?

Atsuko: As I was traveling--and I did a lot of kinds of traveling—I realized that if you just keep, keep traveling, you--at some point--aren't able to calm down, and feel at ease. You eventually start to feel that want to settle down. You board a train at night, and it's daaaaark out, and you can see little dottings of lights here and there. Then you think to yourself, 'I'll be in the train station soon, then when I get there, I have to go out and find a place to stay, to spend the night, to sleep.' Thinking about this, seeing the little lights, I got envious of the people in their houses. They have a proper place to sleep, and food to eat. Seems good! (Laughing) What I got was that, wherever you go, every single person, in order to eat, they have to work, even Buddhist monks. They need a place to sleep. No matter what, in the future, I won't be able to escape that.

But also, I could see in Nepal and India, the people's way of life--their lives are very poor--and inside of their houses, there isn't much of anything, almost nothing. And if they go shopping, they don't even put things in bags, sometimes. They just hold on to the vegetables with their hands, or put them in a basket. Whatever things a person has, you can really see it.

You can see their lives. They are very, very simple, but it all seemed incredibly beautiful to me. There don't have many things, and the things they have aren't hidden. If it's vegetables; it's just vegetables, it's not shrink-wrapped vegetable side dishes from the supermarket.

Even now I can remember looking down from the roof of the Shantikuthi lodge, in the early evening onto the street in front, and people were coming and going … going back to their houses. The sky had just a little bit of light, and the crows were crying 'Kaaa, kaaa!' and the street was full of trees, and cows were going through the street in both directions and –what was it?—people were carrying cauliflower--it was that season--and there was someone carrying it on bamboo poles over his shoulders, with two baskets hanging down from each end, and some man who was working in an office somewhere, was putting some cauliflower in his net bag.

I thought to myself, 'Ahh… I can see people are finishing their work, going back to their houses' So that kind of scene had very much the atmosphere and the feeling of a single day's ending. And now they were going home to their family and were beginning to make food--you could really see it.

So even though there was no way to run away from the need for getting food for yourself, and a place to sleep, but this can also be a really wonderful thing. And that is what I felt at that time.

Andy: Before that time, when you were younger, you didn't feel that?

Atsuko: No. Earlier on I had a stronger feeling of 'Maybe there is something else--isn't there?' So before I went traveling, the feeling I had of 'there's something out there, isn't there' was much more of frivolous feeling, you know like a ditzy young girl going 'heee hee!'—when you don't really have your feet on the ground, like in a dream. And I realized I had to change that in myself.

Back from Research Trip in Japan, Working on Atsuko Chapter

Back from Japan, tons of research. Here are a few excerpts from the chapter I'm revising on Atsuko Watanabe.

PART ONE:""The office worker in Japan is always being used by someone or another: they have no freedom at all. I knew from when I was eleven or twelve years old that I didn't want to live that kind of life." Such blunt-edged statements are not uncommon when speaking with Atsuko Watanabe. The two of us are sitting up late sipping plum wine from small glasses at her dinner table next to the woodstove in an old farmhouse deep in the mountains of Shikoku island. The soft ticking of an antique wooden clock and the warble of night insects fade in and out of my mind during our conversation in the warmly-lit room.

We've just finished a sumptuous seven-course Indian vegetarian meal served on the Watanabes' own handmade pottery. This is not uncommon here, where the time to prepare elaborate delicacies from the sub-continent, or linger over a discussion of culture or philosophy is clearly valued more highly than getting a bit more work done.

A single light bulb hangs over the wooden table where we speak, and enigmatic line drawings of animals by Indian villagers stare at us from the wood-paneled walls. Upstairs, Atsuko's two daughters are, as usual, engrossed in their drawing, and we can hear the sounds of her husband doing the dishes in the adjacent room.

In the rice fields outside, freshly-harvested rice plants hang upside down from bamboo poles to dry. In the house, there is no television, very few electronic appliances, and almost no items made of plastic.

When I first met her, I thought the unadorned rural life that Atsuko lived was a return to the past. It was almost a magical feeling when I arrived at her house for the first time, like stepping out of a time machine. All around me I could see what I thought were living examples of a way of life long gone in Japan. Atsuko and her partner Gufu cook their meals on a wood-fired stove made of mud-and-brick, they grow much of their family's food in terraced vegetable gardens that descend from their house on the ridge top into the misty valley below, and Atsuko hand-paints flowers, birds, fruits and mythical animals onto the ceramics by which she and Gufu earn their modest income. At night they bathe in a hand-made wooden bath tub.

But when I tell her that I respect her traditional way of living, she corrects me immediately. "I am not a traditional person. I am a just a woman living a simple life in the mountains. That's all."

In fact, she says, many of the decisions she has made about her life path were in direct reaction to the negative aspects of her grandparents' ways.

"My father's parents raised him with an extremely old way of thinking. In Japan eighty years ago, it was only the eldest son who was valued at all. He was forced to study every second of his boyhood, never allowed to play or develop who he was. In a sense, he was never really completed as a human being. If you think about it, it's really quite tragic."

It is I who was being romantic and idealistic about tradition. So when I ask her about aspects of her way of living, she explains that each choice she has made was an individual one, with a particular purpose in mind, often environmental or spiritual.

PART TWO:
In college, she studied painting in Kyoto, emphasizing the luminous, mineral-based pigments of the traditional Japanese palette. For the most part she drew botanicals and landscapes, "I would just go out to any abandoned field and sketch pictures of flowering weeds for hours at a time."

After college she traveled in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, after being asked to join an all-female group of college students who were part of an "explorer's club." I imagine the kind of person who would just up and go to Afghanistan in 1976 simply because the party needed a fourth member.

"So you didn't have any other reason to go? You were just invited and you went?" I ask.

"Well, I had an interest in Hindu and Buddhist art, having studied it in college and this seemed like a good opportunity. "

"But was there anything else behind that?"

"Well…" she begins, and lets a long pause rest in the air. "At that time, I was utterly an atheist. I had no religion, and God … or any of that? I didn't believe in it. Then I became friends with a woman named Jinko in college. So you know how priests chant sutras? Well, I thought that kind of thing had no meaning at all. But Jinko's father was a priest, and she said that the chanting did give him some powers--depending on the prayer--some extraordinary powers to … for example change things. I started to think about that … hmmm … well, does Buddhism have some powers to it? And this extended to religion in general. Basically it was a lot of doubt for me, and I kept wondering, 'Is that really true?' "

I infer from the story that this wondering had some part in her journey to the subcontinet, though she doesn't draw the parallel directly.

Eventually the other women from the club returned to Japan, but Atsuko stayed on. For them, perhaps, the explorers club was a college-age adventure, but , it seems, something else happened with Atsuko. "In India, traveling alone, I had a lot of time to just sit and think, and to wonder about the reasons that I am here on this earth. What is it that I should do and be?

Quote to Start the Book With?

Below is a quote from last year, that Nakamura said. I'm thinking to start the book with it. Hmmm...

"In this life, the question of "Why have we come to be born? Why are we here?" Is such a huge question for every person. Of course we don't think about it all day, every day: that would be exhausting. We mostly are out looking for something delicious to eat! But everyone has one instant or another of wondering 'What does it mean to be alive?'

"Some people think about this all the time, and write thick books on the subject. Others only think about it for an instant, here or there. And of course, the very instant before death, everyone thinks about it, "Why did I come here?" But then they die and we can't ask them! [smiles] 'What does it mean to be alive?'

"So what is the correct answer? I have been trying to find this.

"You know, we learned in school about Pythagoras, and his trying to prove a theorem about a triangle. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn't get it, until, once he drew a single line through the triangle, and using that line, he was able to quickly understand the problem. In Japanese we call that line a "hojosen." So for me, for this question, I was looking for a "hojosen," and the hojosen, I think, is daily life. From daily life, I would be able to get an answer to this question. That's why I live in this way.

"Recently, I have begun to think that maybe there is no 'right answer.' For, after all, if six billion people have thought about this, by now, you might think that someone would have come up with a right answer, and the rest of us could just go and read it in a book. So even if there is no 'right answer,' I think the very most important thing is to try to find what that answer might be."

How "Scraps" Appear

Doing just scraps here from a 1999 interview. Listening really closely to the recording, rewinding, listening again. Sometimes getting words, sometimes getting a feeling, and trying to render it into English. Nothing cohesive yet. Just fragments. Look up a word in the dictionary—is 'utsusu' meaning reflecting or copying or duplicating here? Then going to the English thesaurus, finding words for 'wanting'. I fall into the spell of how I love to hunt around and start to work sentences. Here are unprocessed scraps. A couple of hours work this morning. I yearn to do more.
~~~~
"So with absolutely nothing there (on the paper)… it's not about, 'what do I want to draw?'—though of course, inside of one there is something that wants to drawn, I don't know what it is—but just about making oneself completely empty" …. pause, breathy, listening carefully, breath held, as if on the edge of something … "A! at the instant the feeling becomes…just so… then, holding the brush, in one instant…draw it, utterly…can't turn back.
"Then, looking at it, huh? What is this thing? Even myself, I don't know, looking at it … being in that kind of world. She renders that very moment of discovery, her voice like a string being pulled…more and more taught…the pause…What is it?

~~~~~

"And then, recently I've been going to (osawattari) sit at the feet of my mother in law and learn to carve puppet heads. But not just only in the formal bunraku puppet style, I start to think…huh, but this is an interesting face, I'll carve something like this. Then I'll bring it into this veranda area, and just arrange things around. I want to make a 'space' here for art making, for painting, but I keep collecting vines and plants from the mountains, and as the seasons change, I put them here and there…I never finish!" She laughs again at herself.

~~~~~

"It's not like I am, myself, building or creating pictures/paintings, it's more like there comes upon me a feeling, like I just want to draw, sketch. The feeling as if the yearning to draw appears/becomes … dancing is the same."

~~~~~~

Recently, she says, she's been working with the juice of the persimmon, the astringent variety, green. She tells me that as time passes, the color displays itself. I think of hours, perhaps days. She continues, "for the first year, there's no color… then, gradually…"

~~~~~~

I just translated this poem/calligraphy. I tried to describe it, but my consciousness isn't there yet. I'll wait for later. Something about the color of handmade paper, and the different thicknesses of India ink, something about the patterns and the white spaces, about the shape of the circle.

Here's (one of) the translation(s):

a person
and a circle
just one meter round
if you have it
you can sit
you can pray
you can sing

Non doing?

I translated this piece this morning. Had an insight about how Wakako behaves in the world. Is this what the Taoists mean by non doing, and all will be done?

"I did an exhibition in Tokyo, then another gallery owner came by and saw it and then said, 'Hey, why not do an exhibit at our gallery?' Then 'Why not at our gallery?' Then here, then there…"

She's laughing almost flushed and embarrassed, and it occurs to me that she's being carried along with the people around her, kind of like an empty center, without that much will. It's not "I want to exhibit," not "I am an artist," just events and situations naturally emerging, coming together.

Also Matt, my interpreter friend, told me a few nights ago that actually "kokucho" isn't just "black swan" but "national bird." Now Wakako's story makes sense. It's about the crested ibis being reimported back into Japan from China. They've destroyed nature so much that the very national bird had died out!

No subsitute for actually having native Japanese speakers consult with you. (Yes, Matt is a native speaker.)

Keep blog posts short Andy!

Re-entering the territory

Today I have re-started the process by which many of these articles were made: listening to the recording, rewinding, listening, typing mixed notes in Japanese and English, and adding occasional reflections. It is SLOW. So different than freewriting in the workshops I lead. Yet as I extol slowness and non-efficiency-driven processes, it is right that I should practice them.

Today was work on Wakako Oe. She is a philosopher. Yes, gardener, woodcarver, maker of botanical sculptures, translator of the writings of Indian saints, with her husband Masanori, but below that, a philosopher. Today I translated, her words " 'To disconnect from the flow of time,' what is that?"

She lets her conversation roll out contemplatively, recreating the experience of thought, the slow turning over of ideas.

"Just recently, I thought, hmm, the flow of time is the flow of consciousness. You see in your everyday life, all different kinds of consciousness is flowing, isn't it? So when that consciousness suddenly changes, and you become aware of something else, it's like going to another place. So when you think you are in the middle of the flow of time, actually you are in the middle of the flow of your own consciousness."


Also I found an old document that gives an overview of what the project is about. Some things there I discovered: "choosing of restraint in consumption of resources, but not for moral reason, but because the act of limiting actually enriches each moment of life."