CHAPTER FOUR
Allan Stem's alarm about Japan's semiconductor challenge reflected onlypart of the picture. There was also plenty going on with Japaneseresearch in addition to information processing. Superconductivity wasgetting a big push, as was biotechnology, optoelectronics, advancedmaterials. Although we in the West think of Japan as a newcomer in thehigh-tech sweepstakes, it actually has a long tradition of innovation.A typical for-instance: in the area of advanced materials those of ushooked on swords know the Japanese were already creating "newmaterials" hundreds of years ago that still haven't been bettered. Backthen it was flawless steel for _katana _blades; today it's, say,gallium arsenide crystals for laser-driven semiconductors. How, onemight inquire, did all this expertise come about?
To stick to materials research, if you think a moment you realize it'sa discipline that actually must have begun in the latter days of theStone Age. "High technology" in those times meant figuring new ways touse fire and clay to create something nature had neglected to provide.Not integrated circuits, but a decent water pot.
And the Japanese have been making terrific pots for a thousand years.As it happens, some historians claim the very first Japanese potterywas made in the province of Tamba, near Kyoto. Why mention this?Because, then as now, technology and politics had a way of gettingmixed together in Japan, and Tamba was a perfect example. Tamba'sartisans made great use of a special oven known as a climbing-chamberedkiln. Whereas ceramics kilns elsewhere in the country were narrow andhigh, Tamba's climbing-hill chambers were wide and low, therebyallowing the fire to touch the clay directly. The result was a rugged,flame-seared stoneware that pleased the manly eye--powerful earthygrays, burnt reds, greenish-browns, all with a hard metallic luster.Thus Tamba was a locale much frequented by the warrior shoguns.
Which may be why Tamba province has another claim to history as well.It is the location of the one-time warrior castle- fortress ofSasayama, once a regional command post of the Tokugawa strongmen inTokyo. You won't find overly much about Sasayama in the usualguidebooks, since it has the kind of history that's more interesting toJapanese than to tourists. The place has no gaudy vermilion temples, nobronze Buddhas ten stories high. Fact is, very little remains of thefortress itself these days except for a wide moat, green with lotuses,and a few stone walls lined with cherry trees that blossom an exquisitewhite for a few breathtaking moments each spring.
Although the castle is now burned down, a few homes of the samurairetainers of its various warlords remain. If you stand on the rockyedge of the moat at its southwest corner and look down through thecherry trees, you'll see an old-style house built some two hundredyears ago by the twelfth _daimyo_ of Sasayama for his most loyalretainer. Its walls of white plaster are interspersed with beams ofdark wood, its thatch roof supported by the traditional ridgepole.Think of it as the home of the samurai most trusted, the guardian ofthe gates, the warrior nearest the fount of power.
Perhaps it will not seem surprising, therefore, that this ancientsamurai residence, in the shogun stronghold closest to ancient Kyoto,was now home base for a powerful warrior of modern Japan. Matsuo Noda.
Samurai had once battled in Sasayama's streets; many's the time itscastle had been stormed by raging armies; much blood had been shed andmuch honor lost. But the event that occurred in Sasayama precisely twoweeks after Tamara Richardson's dinner in New York was a historicalmoment more important than any in its thousand years prior.
It began shortly after dawn, a cool September gray just ripening topink over the mountains. The early sounds of morning--birdsong, thefaint bell of the tofu seller, the steam whistle of the autumn sweet-potato vendor--were only beginning to intrude on the quiet. Noda waswhere he always was at this moment: on the veranda overlooking hispersonal garden, a classic Zen-style landscape whose central pond wascircled by natural-appearing rocks, trees, bushes, paths. It was, ofcourse, about as "natural" as those sculptured hedges at Versailles. Inorder to create the illusion of perspective and depth, the stones alongthe foreshore of the pond were bold, rugged, massively detailed, whilethose on the opposite side were dark, small, smooth--a little trick tomake them seem farther away than they were.
It's a game heavy with nuance. For example, the stone footpath on theleft side of the pond may look as if it goes on forever, but that'sjust part of the art: the stones get smaller toward the back, curvingin and out among the azalea bushes till they make one last twist anddisappear among the red pines and maples at the rear. Which trees,incidentally, have themselves been slightly dwarfed, again enhancingthe illusion of distance, just as the back is deliberately shaggy anddark, like the beginnings of a forest that goes on for miles.
Noda's Zen garden, which deludes rational judgment by manipulating allthe signposts we use to gauge distance and space, appeared to belimitless. The secret was that nothing actually ends: everything simplyfades out and gets lost. It was a closed space that seemed for all theworld as if it went on and on if you could only somehow see the rest ofit. Yet peek only a few yards away, and you've got the mundane streetsof sleepy Sasayama.
This special dawn, as a few frogs along the edge of the
pond croaked into the brisk air, he knelt on the viewing veranda in afine cotton morning robe, a _yukata_ emblazoned with his family crest(an archaic Chinese ideogram meaning "courage") and began to center hismind. He'd left his Kyoto headquarters early Friday evening, skippingthe usual after-hours-drinking obligation of Japanese executives andgrabbing the eight-thirty San-in Express to Sonobe, where his limowaited to bring him the rest of the way home. Now he was up beforedaybreak and readying his usual morning ritual. As he sat there, gazingacross the placid water dotted with lotuses at the foreshore and framedwith willows at the far horizon, his silver hair contrasted with themarine blue of the robe to create a presence easily as striking as thegarden itself.
For a time he merely knelt, silently contemplating the view andlistening to the metrical drip of water from a bamboo spout situatedjust at the edge of the steps. Finally he turned and picked up his_sumi _stick, a block of dried ink made from soot, and carefully beganto rub it against the concave face of an ancient inkstone, till itscupped water darkened to just the proper shade. When the fresh ink wasready, he wet a brush in a separate water vessel, dried it by strokingit against a scrap of old paper, dipped it into the dark liquid, andlooked down.
This was the moment that demanded perfect composure, absolute control.Before him was a single sheet of rice paper, purest white, and now hishand held the brush poised. He was waiting for that instant when hissenses clicked into alignment, when the feel of the brush merged withhis mind, much the way a samurai's _katana _blade must become anextension of his own reflexes.
Although he would stroke only a few kanji characters, scarcely enoughfor a telex or a memo, the moment required discipline acquired throughdecades of practice. His Zen-style calligraphy allowed for nohesitation, no retouching. It must be dashed off with a spontaneitythat was, in itself, part of the art. As with the swordsman, therecould be no time for conscious thought, merely the powerful strokeguided by intuition. No decision that confronted him throughout abusiness day would demand half so much mental control, inner resolve.
Just then, at the far end of the pond, the first sun flickered throughthe wisteria. Suddenly, without his consciously knowing the exactmoment had arrived, as a Zen archer's arrow must release itself of itsown will, his hand struck. The dark tip of
the brush pirouetted down the paper, starting at the left and layingdown a mere five lines, twenty-two syllables.
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