Lost Japan

by Alex Kerr

  Following the war, all ‘feudalistic’ customs were banned by the US Occupation, and Kabuki, with its subject matter of samurai loyalty, was banned as well. However, Faubion managed to get himself appointed as censor of the theater, and so was able to revive Kabuki. He later received an award from the Emperor in recognition of his historic role. Having seen Kabuki’s prewar greats, and having been close to postwar leaders Baiko, Shoroku and Utaemon when they were still young, Faubion has an unparalleled knowledge of Kabuki.

  During our lifetimes, Kabuki has undergone a critical transformation. The art form will of course continue, but we will never see the likes of actors such as Utaemon and Tamasaburo again. As foreigners, Faubion and I both had access to Kabuki in a way that is unlikely to be repeated. We hope to put our knowledge together in a book some day for future generations.

  However, Faubion and I disagree about everything. For instance, I am not partial to Kabuki’s historical plays such as Chushingura (The Forty-Seven Samurai); most of them involve tales of giri-ninjo, and for me there are more interesting themes. For an earlier audience, trained fanatically to obey their superiors, these plays about sacrificing oneself for one’s lord were truly heart-rending; it was what all Japanese did every day of their lives, at the office or in the army. There is a moment in Chushingura when the lord has committed hara-kiri and is dying, but his favorite retainer, Yuranosuke, is late. Finally, Yuranosuke arrives, only to see his master expire with the words, ‘You were late, Yuranosuke.’ Yuranosuke looks into his master’s eyes and silently understands that he is to wreak vengeance for his lord’s martyrdom. I have seen older audiences weeping uncontrollably at this scene. But for people who have grown up in soft, affluent, modern Japan – including myself – resonances of personal sacrifice are growing faint. Faubion, however, insists that these historical plays embody the essence of Kabuki. He also contends that the ugly old ladies I remember from my youth epitomize the true onnagata art, and that the beauty of Tamasaburo and Jakuemon is far too striking, even ‘heretical’.

  On no point do Faubion and I disagree so much as on the subject of onnagata, which brings me to the difficult question of what onnagata really are. Obviously, they have something in common with a drag show. From English pantomime to traveling performers in India, the desire to see male actors dressed up as women seems to be universal. In China and Japan the primeval drag show developed into art. The dan (Chinese onnagata) have largely disappeared (although they may be making something of a comeback), not because the public gradually lost interest, but because the Cultural Revolution dealt such a blow to traditional theater; once a tradition like dan is weakened, it is difficult to reconstruct. Japan, however, escaped the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and so it is only here that the tradition survives in healthy form.

  Development into high art meant that onnagata concentrated on the romantic rather than the comic, the essential feminine rather than the physical body. This is why Faubion values older onnagata: the fact that they are old and unattractive allows their art to shine unadulterated by common sensual appeal. According to him, ‘The art of old Kabuki actors is like sea water which has been sitting in the sun. As actors get older, more and more water evaporates, and it gets more and more salty. In the end, only essential salt remains.’

  Due to their exact preservation of details of the old lifestyle, Kabuki plays may be seen as a ‘living museum’. How to light an andon (paper floor lantern), open a fubako (lacquered letter case), arrange hair with kanzashi (hairpins), handle a scroll – these and countless other techniques live on in Kabuki’s use of stage properties. Kimono fashions, shops and houses, prescribed movements of hands and feet, the ways to bow, the ways to laugh, samurai etiquette and many other aspects of Japan that existed prior to the arrival of Western culture are all reflected in Kabuki’s mirror. Kabuki is one giant nostalgia for the past; I cannot think of any other theatrical art form that preserves ancient daily life so thoroughly.

  Especially in the light of the modernization that has swept over Japan in recent years, the world of Kabuki seems particularly poignant. There are, of course, no longer any fubako or kanzashi (except as souvenirs in tourist shops in Kyoto), but the disappearance of these things is no more significant than the disappearance in the West of the bustle and fringed parasol. In the West, modernization, while drastic, did not wipe away every single reminder of what life once was. But in Japan, cities and countryside alike have been bulldozed. Even the trees and rice paddies painted on backdrops are fast vanishing from day-to-day surroundings. Only in Kabuki does the dream world of the past live on.

  Over eighteen years have passed since I first went to meet Jakuemon, and since then I have entered the backstage door countless times. Yet even now I get butterflies in my stomach every time I approach it. I live in fear of the doorman, I wonder if I am neglecting some bit of backstage punctilio. Kabuki’s window into Japan’s traditional lifestyle does not end on the stage.

  Lesser actors make the rounds of greater actors’ rooms, entering on their knees to make official greetings and to ask for good wishes before they go onstage. Actors are addressed by titles that sound strange to modern ears, such as ‘Wakadanna’ (‘Young Master’) for an onnagata like Tamasaburo. (‘Danna’, or ‘Master’, is the title for an important male-role player, but an onnagata, no matter how old he gets, remains ‘Young Master’.) Each backstage room is decorated with banners carrying the distinctive emblems of the actors, just like aristocratic heraldry. There is a constant exchange of gifts: fans, hand towels or rolls of fabric, all of which carry symbolic significance. It is a truly feudalistic world, far removed from that of ordinary mortals. Once, when I told Tamasaburo about my trepidation on going backstage, I was surprised when he answered, ‘I feel exactly the same way!’

  I sometimes think that what bewitched me about Kabuki was not the plays themselves, but the life behind them. What is so remarkable is the tenuous line between illusion and reality which exists backstage. At the opera, the performance does not continue backstage; the actors don’t sing arias at you, and on removing their costumes they become just ordinary people, no matter how famous they are as artists. Backstage at Kabuki, however, the illusion continues. Most people wear kimono, which is rare enough in Japan today, and the kimono – all black for kuroko attendants, printed yukata (a cotton kimono) for other attendants and gowns for major actors – clearly indicate social status; the backstage kimono are sometimes as striking as anything you might see onstage.

  Occasionally, an actual play may even continue behind the scenes. For instance, during a performance of Chushingura, which is considered Kabuki’s supreme play, the actors and attendants maintain a particularly serious demeanor backstage. Another example is Kagamiyama. In this play, the court lady Onoe is humiliated by Iwafuji, who is trying to bring ruin to Onoe’s house. Onoe exits slowly down the hanamichi deep in thought. When Jakuemon played this part, he remained seated alone, in silence, in the small room behind the curtain at the end of the hanamichi, until it came time for Onoe’s next entrance; although not onstage, he was still in character. Later, when I asked Jakuemon about this, he replied that it was a Kagamiyama tradition, which allows the depths of Onoe’s emotional concentration to remain unbroken until she reappears the second time.

  Faubion once pointed out that Kabuki actors spend a greater percentage of their life onstage than almost any other actors. First put on the stage at age five or six, they appear in two performances a day, twenty-five days a month, month after month, year after year. In essence, the Kabuki actor spends his entire life onstage. As a result, says Faubion, older actors sometimes find it difficult to differentiate between their stage personas and their real selves.

  The actor Utaemon’s normal movements, the distinctive turn of hands or neck, bear striking resemblances to his body language onstage. After performing as the character Onoe, Jakuemon remarked to me that he felt very tired; when I asked why, he replied, ‘Onoe bears a great responsibility. I was very
worried about Ohatsu.’ Ohatsu is Onoe’s protégé in the drama, and Ohatsu also happened to be played by Tamasaburo in that performance. In Jakuemon’s concern for Ohatsu/Tamasaburo (it was not clear which), the onstage and offstage worlds were so intertwined as to be inseparable.

  Kabuki’s themes provide much insight into Japanese society. For instance, many plays are about the relationship between a lord and his retainers, or that between lovers, but there are none about friends. Friendship has been a key theme of Chinese culture since ancient times. The second sentence of Confucius’s Analects – ‘When a friend comes from afar, is this not a joy?’ – demonstrates the Chinese attitude towards the subject. But in Japan such examples are rare. True friendship is not easy here. Long-term foreign residents complain that after ten or twenty years in the country they are lucky to know one Japanese they consider to be a true friend. Yet the problem goes deeper than the culture gap between foreigners and Japanese. The Japanese often tell me that they can’t make friends with each other; they say, ‘There are the people you knew in high school who remain bosom buddies for life. Everyone you meet after that cannot be trusted.’

  One reason for this could be that the educational system traditionally discourages the Japanese from speaking their mind. They never quite trust each other, making friendship difficult. Another reason might be that hierarchical structures of society get in the way. In the old society the master–retainer relationship was a familiar one; relationships between equals were not. This is a question for sociologists to ponder, but in any case, the culture of friendship is strikingly absent from Kabuki.

  And yet it was through Kabuki that I eventually made my best friends. Over the years, I became close to a number of Kabuki actors; I am still mystified how this came to pass. The world of Kabuki, with its nebulous border between illusion and reality, is at once very Japanese, and not of Japan at all. As Domo Geshe had predicted, it’s a world which is not of this earth, nor of the moon – a ‘world beyond reach’. That’s why when I pass through the scary barrier to the backstage, though it is a world of illusion, I feel at home. My good friends are here.

  CHAPTER 4

  Art Collecting

  The Moment before Glory

  I spent the fall of 1972 commuting between Iya Valley and Tokyo, where I was supposedly attending Keio University as an exchange student. Actually, I spent most of my time sitting beside a Chinese table in Linda Beech’s house drinking gin and listening to her talk hilariously about the old times, when she arrived in Japan just after the Occupation. One night, conversation turned to the Chinese table. ‘It’s Ming,’ she remarked casually. ‘I bought it from a man in Ashiya, near Kobe, whom I think you should meet. His name is David Kidd, and he lives in a palace. Next time you go to Iya, you should drop by.’

  So, in January 1973, less than a week after finding Chiiori, I visited David Kidd’s house on the way home from Iya. Linda had told me a bit about him in advance. David lived in Beijing before the war and married into a wealthy Chinese family. He resided in the family mansion, one of the great houses of old Beijing, but when the Communists took over in 1949 the family lost everything, and David and his wife fled to America. After a short period in New York they went their separate ways, and soon afterwards David came to Japan. He started all over again from nothing, became an art dealer and built up a collection by buying Chinese treasures discarded by the Japanese after the war.

  David’s house really was a palace. Standing in the entrance, I could see a Chinese statue of Ida-ten, guardian of Buddhist temples, to my right; to the left was a flower arrangement set on a Ming table like Linda’s; and before me were wide sliding doors papered with silver leaf. The doors flew open and David appeared. He led me into a huge living room, easily sixty tatami mats in size, with blue-and-yellow Chinese-dragon rugs covering the floor. Tables, couches and stands glowing softly with the tan, brown, orange and purple-black hues of various rare woods were aligned with several grand tokonoma. Inside the alcoves, gilt Tibetan statues stood in front of mandala paintings three meters high. In every nook there were mysterious objects, such as a table bearing a collection of what looked like pieces of driftwood, each piece labeled with calligraphy on gold paper. I had no idea what most of these objects were, but I could see instantly that everything was beautiful, everything was precious and everything was there for a reason. The day I walked into that room was the day I realized that the impossible was possible. I meant to stop by for afternoon tea; I left the house three days later. Those three days were filled with long and intense conversations with David. It was the beginning of my artistic apprenticeship.

  The foundations for my love of Asian art were laid in early childhood. My grandfather and father were both naval officers, and they brought back many souvenirs from their travels to Japan and China. The result was that I grew up with Asian art as part of my daily life: scrolls hung from our walls, and the dining table would be set with Imari porcelain for the occasional dinner party.

  One day, not long after we arrived in Yokohama, my mother took me to Motomachi, a popular shopping district. Unlike the Motomachi of brand-name boutiques today, the street at that time was more homely and practical, with small shops selling cakes, office supplies and crockery. We entered a china shop and my mother asked the shopkeeper in her rudimentary Japanese, ‘Do you have any Imari ware?’ Naturally, she thought every china shop in Japan would stock Imari, but she had just done the equivalent of walking into Woolworths and asking for Limoges porcelain. The shopkeeper looked completely baffled, but suddenly he remembered something and rushed into the back of the shop. He came back with a wooden box, and explained, ‘This has been around since before the war, but because no one would buy it, it’s just been sitting here …’

  He opened the box for us. Inside were ten Imari plates, wrapped in the straw rope in which they had come from the kiln. I still have one of those plates, and judging by its age, it is possible that the box had sat in storage since the nineteenth century. Aged only twelve at the time, I untied the rope, touched the plates and was overcome with awe. I felt just like the people who opened up King Tutankhamen’s tomb for the first time in three thousand years. So strong was the impression that even now the image of those plates and straw rope remains fresh in my memory.

  My mother began to frequent the antique stores of Yokohama and Tokyo, and we returned to America two years later laden with folding screens, lacquerware, ceramics and tansu chests.

  My first purchase of an antique came years later when I was an exchange student at Keio. I like old books, and used to frequent the Kanda booksellers’ district of Tokyo. On one occasion I noticed a pile of antique Japanese books set out on the sidewalk. They were being sold for 100 yen apiece. Although I was majoring in Japanese Studies, until that day I had never laid eyes on a genuine old block-printed Japanese book; I picked one up out of curiosity and opened its navy blue cover. It happened to be The Great Learning, one of the Confucian classics, dated about 1750. I was surprised that this 100-yen throwaway was an eighteenth-century edition. The hand-engraved block-printed characters were strikingly beautiful, and so large that a single line of text filled a whole page. Although I was ignorant of Chinese, my familiarity with Japanese made it possible for me to roughly grasp the meaning. On the page I had happened to open was written: ‘If you wish to rule the state, first pacify your family. If you wish to pacify your family, first discipline yourself. If you wish to discipline yourself, first make right your heart’. This single line struck me forcibly, and for the first time I sensed the appeal of Chinese philosophy. That 100-yen volume of The Great Learning became my introduction to classical Chinese literature.

  After that, I set about looking for old Japanese books in earnest. It was simply incredible what you could find. These books were so little valued that they were being sold as scrap for mounters, who used them as backing for screens and sliding doors. I started with Chinese classics such as the Analects, the I Ching, the Chuang-tzu, and so on, but I gra
dually formed an interest in Japanese-style books. Unlike the Chinese classics, printed in blockish standard type, the Japanese texts featured pages of flowing cursive script. As I leafed through them I realized that Japan’s traditional calligraphy is fundamentally different from China’s, and my interest in Japanese calligraphy steadily grew.

  Meanwhile, I was traveling to Iya and slowly accumulating folk craft and old kimono. I once passed through the city of Tokushima on my way, and in an antique shop there I found four large baskets filled with puppet costumes. They were the entire wardrobe of Otome-za, one of the lost puppet theaters of Awaji Island. The boxes had been set aside during the war, and then apparently forgotten. I brought the costumes back to Tokyo, carried them with me to Yale and then to Oxford, and I have them still today.

  Then I met David Kidd. He is one of the world’s great conversationalists, and like me he is a creature of the night. Following that first encounter, I visited David’s house constantly. We would sit out on the moon-viewing platform while David read aloud Ouyang Xiu’s ‘Ode to Autumn’, only going to bed at dawn and waking in early evening. During the first three days I spent at David’s house, I never actually saw sunlight. Sometimes we would sit on the kang (Chinese sofa) in the living room, discussing the finer points of landscape painting, while David amused his guests with his great wit. ‘Humor is one of the four pillars of the universe,’ he once said, adding, ‘I forget what the other three are.’ At other times, we lounged on the rugs and drank endless cups of tea while David divulged the secrets of a Tibetan mandala.