Cutting Back

by Leslie Buck

  Before entering the restaurant, we’d run past a tiny Japanese garden scene, enclosed by a brick-layered raised bed. We’d look into the pond, which held plants and a hollow bamboo pole through which water trickled out into a stone basin. I didn’t know it then, but the scene mimicked a traditional tsukubai, the spot in the tea garden where one washes one’s hands clean of the stresses of the outside world before entering the tea house.

  Once inside the restaurant, we’d head immediately for a side room—the genkan, the shoe-removal room—with a huge compartmentalized shoe shelf covering the whole wall, floor to ceiling—or so it looked to my eight-year-old eyes. Dad encouraged us to climb the wooden structure, an act that I am now sure was a faux pas, in order to shove our shoes into the highest box. After neatly tucking away our shoes, we’d enter the main room of the restaurant, the floors lined with tatami, golden reed-covered mats. I’d sit on a small, flat pillow and cross my little legs underneath the chabudai, a short table about a foot and a half high. Of course I didn’t know any of these traditional Japanese words yet, or that I would eventually embark on a life-changing journey into the gardens of Japan. I only understood that the restaurant was as fascinating as our newly discovered father.

  My dad often allowed us to order one of the biggest items on the menu, the sukiyaki bento dinner, which was served on a black lacquered wooden tray filled with fresh grilled meat, rice, salad, and Japanese pickles. Only upon dining in Kyoto thirty years later did I remember the delicious flavors I’d tasted at this restaurant and the scenes I had witnessed. I still crave Japanese pickles as much as I do fried okra. I once found a postcard filled with images of Tokyo Gardens—to my amazement, it looked as elegant as I remembered. This restaurant helped me develop both a curiosity about and a fondness for refined Japanese culture.

  A neat and fussy child, I wouldn’t eat any item on my plate that touched another, so the separated compartmental organization of the bento tray delighted and calmed me. Practicing on torn pieces of Wonder Bread back home, my sister and I quickly mastered chopsticks. This served me well later in Kyoto, as it’s helpful to have good hand–eye coordination and attention to detail in order to work with the garden craftsmen.

  Midway through the meal, hidden speakers would fill the room with traditional Japanese folk music. The waitresses, wearing stiff kimonos covered with patterns of leaves and flowers, would slowly walk down the aisles, waving fans in front of them in time to plucked instrumental melodies. My sister and I followed them with big eyes, mouths open, chopsticks poised midair. I suspect that many of these women came from Japan. They shared their culture with us generously, despite the hardships they may have endured living far away from home.

  I remember a certain waitress passing our table and smiling at us on the sly—the two little girls with their handsome bachelor father. This woman’s face, and her subdued beauty, still finds its way into my dreams. I wish she could have known that she inspired the younger girl, the one who hardly talked but watched her with wide hazel eyes. This shy little girl would grow up to eventually work in one of the emperor’s gardens of Kyoto, swinging a razor-sharp scythe instead of waving a fan.

  No one can predict what events might lead a child to her destiny—just as I cannot predict exactly how a tree will grow after my first styling. When I work on a tree for the first time, I take many factors into consideration before setting the initial pruning goal. I pull branches aside to look inside the plant’s structure. I think about how that tree looks in nature when it reaches its most mature, poetic state. I rely on years of muscle memory at my fingertips, with horticulture and artistic studies in my thoughts. I refer back to an art form I call “aesthetic pruning.” I’d already studied this type of pruning before going to Japan. It’s based on traditional Japanese garden pruning, yet it applies well to native garden scenes and almost any style of gardening in which one desires to create the atmosphere and beauty found in nature.

  As soon as I begin snipping away at the branches of any tree, the singsong of nearby birds, my endless thoughts, and the afternoon heat or morning chill slowly fade away. My mind and body focus on the tree. The plant and I dance. I have already decided on a styling goal, although the plan may take me years to fully accomplish. I remain open to new ideas as I go along. While pruning, I notice unique characteristics of the plant. These features guide me as much as my original goal. Upon finishing, I’ll think, I had no idea you could look so beautiful! My hands tend to know more than my head can predict.

  My bumpy path toward finding a garden apprenticeship in Kyoto followed much the same unpredictable route. I set goals and moved forward. I kept my eyes open so I could learn or make detours if necessary. The gentle waitresses at Tokyo Gardens watered a little seed, planted in my love of nature and beauty. Under the warm embrace of my father, the seed sprouted and began to grow. Only then could I take my few first steps down a personal path to a destination still hidden from me—toward the uekiya, the gardeners of Japan.

  Flying into the Gardens

  More than three decades after watching the mesmerizing waitresses, I stepped onto a plane bound for Kyoto. While I sat on my thick-cushioned seat, I chatted to the man next to me. Fear squeezed my chest during the whole surreal conversation. I asked myself, as I smiled at him, What am I thinking, going to a country where I barely speak the language, looking for work? Above the lanes of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, packed with speeding cars, there are signs that say “no u-turns!” I used to think to myself, Who would be that stupid? On the plane I thought, If only.

  I often wondered why I felt I had to study gardening in Japan. If one waters a dry spot of earth, dormant seeds in the soil may spring to life, their tender leaves pushing their way up through the soil before they rise daringly into the open air. My interest in Japanese gardens spread over time like these wildflowers.

  I moved from Oklahoma to California in my early teens. I eventually studied painting at the University of California at Berkeley and discovered Japanese films from the fifties at the Pacific Film Archive. I loved watching Japanese nature scenes, with scary ghosts weaving among bamboo or old women putting out their laundry on their home’s engawa, long wooden porches that looked out onto nature. I spent a year studying at the École des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. Even in France I found myself researching Japanese artists.

  I took horticulture classes at a California community college, and one afternoon I noticed a group pruning a large Monterey pine outside of the Merritt College bonsai class. “Would you like to join us?” someone from the group asked me. I tried scaling the pine tree, but my legs shook as ants crawled up my shins. I hadn’t climbed a tree in a while.

  A strange excitement enveloped me. I crushed some pine needles, holding onto them too firmly for safety, and released their scent. Something is about to happen, I thought. I tucked a small branch I’d pruned into my pocket. I still have that branch. The man who was both the teacher of the bonsai class and the leader of the pine pruning group was Dennis Makishima, my future mentor.

  A few years later, while attending an Oregon conference at the Portland Japanese Garden, I skipped out on a claustrophobic lecture to explore outside. I heard the sound—snip, snip, rustle, snip—before I saw them: the first Japanese garden craftsmen I’d ever seen in person, styling half a dozen pines with concentration. Typically, when I prune with other American gardeners, we talk nonstop, compare notes, and generally make fun of each other. Apart from the noise of the pruning shears, these men worked in silence. In contrast to the stained T-shirt that served as the American gardener’s uniform, they wore stylish clothing: dark boots, pressed shirts, and brightly printed cotton headbands. Their clothes and movements hinted to me of a certain aesthetic, a particular pride I’d never witnessed. I watched them, entranced.

  After about twenty minutes, one of the gardeners looked at me and beckoned me forward. I had been learning pine pruning for a few years at that point, but when the gardener handed me his shears, my mind went
blank. I took the tool and pruned a few branches with stumbling effort. I realized I had much more to learn. The other conference members began to show up, and I stepped back, getting lost in the crowd. Yet I’ll never forget the moment the handsome young gardener placed his shears in my hand.

  After the garden conference, I began toying with the idea of apprenticing in Japan. There was no set program for finding a Japanese garden apprenticeship. Regardless, I delved into my self-propelled horticulture studies in earnest. Of the rare individuals I met who had apprenticed in Japan, most discouraged me. I asked my mentor one day, “Why don’t you encourage your students to study in Japan?” After all, I thought, he had apprenticed in a Tokyo bonsai company. He answered accusingly, “Why do you want to go to Japan? Do you want to be famous?” To a thirty-year-old, the idea actually sounded thrilling! But I suspected his words warned me of something I couldn’t yet understand.

  Learning a foreign language did not come easily to me, nor did almost any academic subject. Hence, over the years, I’d developed quite a determined spirit. I called myself a type-A wannabe. So I gritted my teeth and studied Japanese conversation at night for two years, just in case.

  Luckily, I love to be still and watch nature, for a little bird brought me my biggest message yet.

  It happened while I was sitting on my boyfriend’s couch, watching the rustling purple leaves of a Berkeley wild plum outside the window. My thoughts wandered around lazily, like a bird I watched hopping in the plum’s shade. I daydreamed about the moment I’d first seen Taylor, along the windy coastline of Point Reyes, an hour north of Berkeley. I was busy sketching a pine on a hill when Taylor walked by, smiling at me, and I felt an instant trust in him. He asked to see some of my drawings. We ended up hiking together.

  He took photos of the parched amber grass while I sketched fire-scorched pines. Walking underneath windswept Monterey cypresses, we enjoyed each other’s calming presence.

  After two years of dating, I felt my heart entwining with his. But I knew Taylor felt cautious. I had an active social life, hosting dinners with friends and sailing dinghies on the windy Berkeley Bay. Taylor practically lived in his darkroom and enjoyed hiking with a few friends, or alone. I admired his passion for creating beauty but did not share his reserved nature.

  The bird under the plum began to poke at the soil with its beak. My thoughts strayed to thinking about Taylor and me in the future. We could get married; we could have children. Then another thought arrived: If I have children soon, I’ll regret never having gone to Japan.

  I spoke impulsively. “I’m thinking of going to Japan to search for an apprenticeship.” Decision made, based on potential regret. After four years of thinking about it, I’d said it out loud. “Great idea!” Taylor mumbled from his darkroom.

  When I glanced out the window again, the little bird was gone, having noiselessly taken flight. A week later, Taylor came up to me with a phone in his hand. “Hey, a friend of mine is on the phone. He lives in Kyoto and says his girlfriend is going away to school next fall. You could rent her spare bedroom.” I took the phone hesitantly, saying, “Well, okay,” already wanting to give it back.

  The summer of 1999, as I headed for Japan in the swift airplane, a suitcase was stored far down in the plane’s belly beneath my seat, packed with enough work clothes for several seasons. A second bag was completely filled with thank-you presents. I’d read in Japanese culture books about the importance of gifts: wrap everything, and do not make too big a deal about your present when handing it over, or you will obligate the receiver to return the favor equally. I’d wrapped each gift with care, taking hours, as though this act alone would ensure my trip’s success. My mother taught me how to wrap with the perfectionist spirit of an origami artist. In the fifties, she’d wrapped wedding gifts for the first Neiman Marcus department store in Dallas.

  I packed garden clothes that would last three seasons: late summer, fall, and early winter. I had to bring everything—my size- nine pants, enormous compared to typical Japanese women’s sizes, meant I couldn’t shop in Japan. I left behind a solid pruning business with nearly fifty pruning clients, many of whom anticipated my return. I tried not to think about disappointing them. I might not find an apprenticeship at all.

  Most important, I held in my pocket three letters of reference. I was told by those who’d already studied in Japan that I could not approach any garden firm without a recommendation, nor without going to Japan to request the position in person.

  One letter was from a client of mine, a Silicon Valley tech innovator who lived in Palo Alto. It was addressed to a Xerox executive he knew in Kyoto who might refer me to a landscaping company that worked at his home. Rather farfetched, I thought, but worth a try. The next note was from a Canadian landscaper I’d briefly met at a Japanese garden conference, addressed to a company he’d worked with years before. I’d thought the company was based in Tokyo, so at first I hadn’t even contacted him. But the editor of the American Japanese garden journal Sukiya Living mentioned that the company was actually based in Kyoto. The letter from the Canadian man said simply: “Would it be possible for Leslie to look around the company property?” A bit more promising! Last, I held an email from my future Kyoto landlord telling me he would introduce me to his “landscaper neighbor who used to be a monk and knew the poet Gary Snyder.” Most interesting, certainly. Enough hope in one pocket to buy a plane ticket for halfway around the world.

  Settling into my seat, I looked forward to the airline’s neatly organized bento box. I worried, and tried not to worry. I dreamt about men in stylish garden clothing working furiously on the pines. I imagined what it might feel like to step onto Japanese soil—fertile and dark—where my adventures could grow.

  “Senteishi Desu”

  Taking long strides down a path tightly packed with visitors to the public garden, I tried to keep a steady eye on the pruners working on the pines. Visitors to popular Kyoto gardens must often follow a one-way route, pushed along at a brisk pace by the crowd. Only my second week in Japan, I still watched gardeners from afar. I spotted a small bench ahead, off the pedestrian runway, and with all my courage, I stopped moving with the crowd and sat down. I tried to appear relaxed, even though I felt everyone’s gaze on me. Reddening a little, I forced myself to be even more conspicuous by attempting a few crude drawings in my journal, a sure crowd-pleaser. Visitors leaned over my pages to see what the noticeably pale-skinned gaijin, foreigner, was drawing.

  I sketched the dry garden area before me, which was made up of patterns raked into the coarse sand. The picture reminded me of a desert scene, with ribbons of sand blown by the wind. To my right stood a six-foot-tall pile of sand in the shape of an upside-down cone. The strict geometric pile contrasted with the wild-looking plants surrounding it, making it look modern and cool. I also sketched an outline of a temple hovering nearby, with distant trees filling the outer edges of my page. No need to get every detail, just the essence. The Japanese garden, after all, is the archetype of nature, just as an opera is a simplified version of a much more nuanced story.

  Self-consciously, as I prefer blending in, I scraped my pencil against the paper. I’d decided to follow the advice of David Slawson, a talented and soft-spoken American landscaper and author. Slawson studied garden construction in Japan, and encouraged me to go to Kyoto. Before I’d left, he’d told me, “Draw gardens that inspire you. They will help you understand nature and recognize design patterns.” You have to sit here and sketch if you are not working in the gardens! I lectured myself as I sweated into the armpits of my linen shirt. The only people ignoring me were the gardeners.

  My bench resided in a garden named Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion, six blocks from the little wooden Kyoto home I planned to live in through winter. My new home felt much like the ones I had seen in old Japanese films of countryside villages, with a wide engawa, a deck, that looked out onto a garden. Our building, resting side by side with other wooden homes, formed a row of connected house
s, one of a series on a rare Kyoto hillside. With multiple rows of houses on a hill, and a spattering of green trees throughout, from a distance the historic neighborhood looked like a well-tended row garden. Looking out from my bedroom window, I could see tall mountain ranges on the outskirts of the city. A serrated-leaf cherry branch hung close to my window. I’d stare at its mass of leaves while lying on my floor futon. Nothing relaxes me like a view of trees, so the cherry felt like a familiar friend at my window.

  I never, ever wore my shoes in the house—that is, beyond the genkan, the house’s entryway room. I loved this idea of cleanliness! When I put my bare foot on the floors, I knew for sure that no dog droppings or old chewing gum had transferred onto the floor from a shoe worn outside. I had allowed my workbag to touch the floor of the bus, so I kept it out of the main house and inside the genkan. Unfortunately, my laid-back landlord, raised in America, did not totally conform to certain Japanese standards. His tatami looked stained, his genkan was in complete disorder, and his garden held upturned pots, a barbecue, and overgrown grass. Basically, he lived in a Kyoto bachelor pad. I spent my first two full days cleaning our house in a jet-lagged daze. I used the slimy walk-in shower once, and then for the rest of my stay slipped into a spotless female-only bathhouse, a ten-minute walk away, where I’d cleanse my body of soil, anxiety, and male determination.

  The familiar rooms of Tokyo Gardens, and the spirit of my dad, followed me to Kyoto. I valued my stable community back home, but my father always encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone when journeying. One time, when I was a timid young girl, climbing down one particularly steep cliff path with him, he reassured me, “If you get scared, just get on your butt and slide.” That summed up my dad’s spirit. Years after Kyoto, my dad lay in a hospital bed, confused from a massive dose of chemo, while I stood watching over him. He yelled out to a nurse, “My daughter Leslie—she worked in an emperor’s garden in Japan!” The nurse smiled sweetly, indulging his fantasy, but I teared up. “It’s true.” Even lost in hallucinations, my dad continued to support me.