Cutting Back

by Leslie Buck

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever hired a woman?”

  “Yes. A young Japanese woman.” This response surprised me. It was easier for foreign women to break into the traditional male-dominated occupations than for Japanese women, who were expected to adhere to cultural traditions. If the company had hired a Japanese woman, then I figured they must be prepared for an American one.

  Asher asked, “Have you hired anyone for a short-term period?”

  “Yes, we hired someone for two weeks, and another for eleven months.” I had an itch to look at Asher and give him a wide-eyed “Is that so?” look. But he never looked my way, keeping up his momentum. Couldn’t they slow down? I sat restlessly in my seat, hardly able to keep up as the men moved forward, craftsman speed.

  Down the list of questions we moved. “Hai, hai, hai.” It felt like rain after a long drought. Asher asked, “Who is the oldest and the youngest person working in the company?” I thought I heard Shinichi Sano respond, “The oldest person in the company is eighteen years old.” That’s crazy, I thought! They only hire teenagers? I’m way too old. I interrupted Asher and asked again, “What age is the youngest and the oldest?”

  Shinichi Sano repeated, with Asher translating, “The youngest person working in the company is sixteen, and the oldest is eighty.” My mistake.

  All our preliminary questions had been answered. Asher looked to me intently, our secret signal to find out if I wanted him to continue with more specific questions, the ones we had categorized as “very serious.” I nodded yes, very calmly. Inwardly I went back to the odd sense I’d felt at the bus stop. I realized it was not sleepiness, but a premonition. I saw this now. Something is about to change. The simple words had entered my head at the bus stop. But I’d ignored them, still focused on the idea of working with Sogyu. Rarely did I have such premonitions, except for that time I’d slipped the pine branch into my pocket. I didn’t feel ready for the opportunity opening up before me. But it beckoned.

  I once worked for a California client whose avocado tree died almost down to the ground in a frost. I wanted to chop the rest of the blackened trunk down, but she made me leave it just in case the roots were still alive. Indeed, the avocado tree came back. We waited for it to grow and produce fruit. Four years went by, six, then eight. It continued growing into a lovely tree, but never would an avocado appear. The client grew older and became ill. Both of us hoped for fruit each year, laughing about it, until my sweet client passed away. When I talked to her daughter over the phone about long-term garden plans, I noted, “We had a strong frost last month.” I asked, “Did the avocado die down again?” “No!” she said. “It’s covered with avocados.” I thought of all the rich avocados, and then I thought of Eleanor and her lively, hopeful spirit. One never knows when a hope will bear fruit.

  “What type of work could one expect in Uetoh Zoen?” Asher continued.

  “We work in an assortment of gardens: private homes, temples, and public gardens.” The answer proved modest, considering I found out later that the company worked all over the world, in one of Kyoto’s imperial gardens, and that half the company currently lived in Tokyo, constructing a multimillion-dollar public garden.

  “Would there be much opportunity to do pruning?”

  “The company runs a pruning-only crew.” That answer got my attention. I’d never imagined the possibility of a pruning-only crew. All my California advisors told me that I should expect to do weeding and raking but very little pruning, depending on what project the company worked on at the time. Because the company was so large, it had several separate crews with rotating members. A pruning-only crew was certainly appealing.

  I mentioned to Sogyu the week before that I might look into other companies. “Make sure the companies do not work only on street trees, low-quality work in Kyoto,” he’d advised me. I remembered his words, so I mentioned to Asher, “Can you ask what specific types of pruning projects the pruning crew does?”

  Shinichi retreated to a back room and returned with a tall stack of Japanese garden coffee table books, which he opened up. Oh, my. I looked over photos of some of the most pristine Japanese garden landscapes I’d ever seen, Uetoh Zoen gardens. Subtle flowing streams, fine gravel paths, and huge moss-covered rocks looked back at me from the pages. The gardens surrounded handcrafted wooden buildings, traditional temples, and stark contemporary buildings. The trees looked so naturally styled that they appeared to have been part of a forest. “The company is made up of master gardeners,” I remembered my Canadian reference telling me. I suppose I hadn’t believed him.

  The books made quite an impression on Asher and me. We began to stumble. Neither of us had expected the meeting to go so well. I asked Asher several times, “Should we show him the portfolio now?”

  “No, later.” I noticed that his hands had begun trembling a little. “Should I bring out my photos?” I asked him again a few questions later. “Not yet,” he brushed me off.

  “Make sure to ask every question you have, until you’re satisfied that you have enough information to make a decision, Leslie,” Asher had warned me at the bus stop. I tried to think of any other question I could ask the man, as apparently he had decided to hand me everything I wanted: a traditional company that hired foreigners, that was okay with non-Japanese speakers and women; a company that worked in a wide range of gardens and had a pruning-only crew that would allow me to study the art form I felt passionate about.

  I finally said to Asher, “Let’s go to plan B.” Asher’s idea was that if either of us felt Shinichi was on the verge of offering me an apprenticeship position in the company, we’d have to hold him back. I’d told Asher that no matter what Shinichi offered, I couldn’t say yes until I’d talked to Sogyu. Asher had explained, “If Shinichi did offer you an apprenticeship, any answer other than yes, even hesitation, would be considered an insult.” So we’d devised a plan to alert Shinichi not to ask me yet. At the time, the idea sounded crazy and indirect. Saying one thing, meaning another, expecting the other person to get it appeared passive-aggressive by my Californian standards. But all of a sudden, Asher’s plan not only made sense, it became necessary.

  So Asher cleverly asked, “If there were another company across town, near Leslie’s home, do you think that would be a better situation for her?” Shinichi responded ever so briefly, “That is a decision for her to make.” Our message was successfully delivered.

  Shinichi then spoke up and, for the first time, asked Asher a question. Asher translated, “He asked if you have any photos of your work.” I felt pleased that we’d waited so humbly. Finally I had the opportunity to show off! I reached in my bag, conscious that my hands were noticeably shaking, and pulled out my small album, a plastic-coated book with around twenty photos slipped into clear sleeves. I’d spent weeks putting the album together.

  Shinichi leafed through the photos in a few minutes, viewing the gardens and individual plants I’d pruned over the previous seven years. My gardens looked Japanese, European, and eclectic, and included both private estates and public gardens. I included native California gardens and Oakland artist Bruce Beasley’s sculpture garden, with trees standing alongside twenty-foot metal sculptures. Only in the last three photos did Shinichi hesitate. One photo showed me teaching a youngster bonsai techniques at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The next displayed my mentor, Dennis, pruning a gnarled pine with his students gathered behind him. The last portrayed a small white-haired Japanese man, my bonsai teacher, Mas Imazumi, standing in front of his famous plant collection. Without my mentors, none of the other photos would have existed.

  We had no more questions. I realized that seven years of work, six months of preparation, and countless kind gestures had guided me toward that very moment, the end of a brief thirty-minute interview. I reached again into my bag, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Shinichi in the traditional way, as I’d learned from my culture books: I held it on both sides with two hands, saying, “Dōzo” (please),
and bowing slightly as the exchange took place. My card displayed a hand-sketched maple leaf, with its tiny seed, a samara, dangling from its branch. A former chef of Berkeley’s most famous restaurant, Chez Panisse, had hand-printed the richly textured card. Shinichi handed me his card. “Dōzo.” Conventional and probably factory printed, it looked dull. Yet, as I was instructed in both of my culture books, I pondered it awhile as though it were printed in gold leaf, with lots of admiring noises, and slipped it carefully into my business card holder. Absolutely no tucking the card into the pocket near my bum, much less an old wallet.

  I handed Shinichi my thank-you gift, a brown paper bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies I’d baked the day before. I hoped this would let him know I appreciated his time, and that I had come as myself: a sincere, hardworking American with few frills. When it seemed that at last it was time to stand up and leave, Shinichi looked at me directly for the first time and said, in perfect English, “When you want to call, I will be waiting.”

  Well, I thought, astonished, no man has ever said those words to me before! We exited the office in a trance, as it occurred to me that Shinichi, even wiser than Asher and me, had understood that he shouldn’t ask me yet if I’d like to work for him. He’d even thought ahead to suggest my next step if I were interested. He seemed to understand English.

  I felt exultant. Asher had forgotten his backpack, but I had grabbed it without a word. Twenty feet beyond the building, I handed it to him. “Can you believe that?” I exclaimed. “No,” he mustered. Each of us burst into laughter. Asher had only a few free hours left in his precious Sunday off. So, like a craftsman familiar with a tight schedule and long work hours, he spent yet another hour with me, weighing the pros and cons of working with Sogyu’s company versus Uetoh Zoen. We both felt jittery and jubilant about the amazing opportunity that had opened up. Asher headed home, and I thought the best place for me to think might be in a garden.

  I ventured over to the world-renowned rock garden, Ryoanji. With its austere bed of raked sand and rocks, I thought it would allow me the space to think. I made it to the northern tip of Kyoto by bus. Most signs in Kyoto were printed in beautifully drawn Japanese script, which made them completely unintelligible to me. When I took the bus or train in Japan, I felt blind, unable to translate the signs fast enough. I memorized the number of bus stops on my map until I reached my stop. I proceeded on foot, but as I neared the garden, I began to see signs in English, directing tourists: rock garden this way and usual route. For once I felt certain I was on the right track.

  Despite having seen so many photos of Ryoanji, I still felt my skin tingle when I first set eyes on the dry rock garden, a bed of raked sand, fifteen naturally placed rocks, and a low earthen-wall enclosure. Sadly, droves of garden visitors had arrived before me; there must have been four dozen of us jostling for a garden view.

  I stood my ground, trying to examine the composition, when an excitable group of schoolchildren, around six to eight years old, all in adorable identical uniforms, piled in. The decibel level increased. The children wove themselves smartly among forty or so adults until most of them had prime viewing positions. They’d occasionally burst into uncontrollable giggles, which helped me relax after my intense morning. “Ichi, ni, san, shi.” (one, two, three, four). The children counted the stones repeatedly and melodically in high-pitched unison. They’d tilt their heads this way and that, looking like tiny philosophers.

  The brochure said that no matter from which vantage point you viewed the rocks, one was always hidden from view. “One, two, three.” I counted the rocks myself, softly, from different viewpoints. Which rock is hidden from me now? I asked myself, thinking about Sogyu and Shinichi. No matter how I felt about each company, could an additional point remain hidden? Regardless of where I stood, one rock would indeed be hidden from view, even though the scene as a whole appeared natural.

  I called my mentor back home, who said he felt a pruning-only crew looked preferable but that the decision was up to me. Although I already knew which company I’d choose, his words were reassuring.

  Sogyu ended up calling me later that night. I told him about the interview with Uetoh and tried to explain as gently as I could manage about my feeling that I had an amazing opportunity to work with a company that had a specialized pruning crew. I had found the company of my dreams. And I never could have guessed that I could feel as terrible as I did right then.

  I didn’t quite know how to explain to Sogyu that I admired him while leaving him and his crew, my first heartfelt teachers in Japan. I’d been specifically warned not to approach two Japanese companies at once. I should have listened! I reprimanded myself. Why am I so impatient? At the end of our conversation, Sogyu said, “Do not worry, Leslie. We will work together again, in another situation.”

  Asher sent a note to Uetoh, asking the company formally if I could work with them. A few days later, a fax arrived from Uetoh Zoen instructing me to show up for work the following Monday with “jikatabi and a white towel,” neither of which I understood. That evening, though I was on a tight budget, I decided to splurge and made an expensive call to Taylor for the first time since arriving in Kyoto. “Hello there, love!” I heard his clear, buoyant voice and felt at once at ease. I tried to talk but instead began to cry. It was such a relief to talk to the person closest to my heart after weeks of meeting strangers. All my years of planning had led to something, to an unexpected opportunity. “I did it,” I finally said, “I got the apprenticeship.” It was all I really had to say for him to understand.

  Curling up later in bed under my musky comforter, I fell into a deep, comforting sleep for the first time in weeks. I no longer had to search. I needed to rest and prepare for my first day of work with Uetoh Zoen.

  Stepping into Jikatabi

  With a shaky hand, I pulled the cord to alert the bus driver to stop at the same corner I’d gotten off a week earlier for my interview at Uetoh Zoen. The new driver kept an eye on me, particularly after we had passed an international guest hostel a few miles back. To put his mind at rest, I stepped off the bus with a confident smile, then promptly walked down the wrong street and got lost. Just as I was about to venture into a stranger’s driveway, I spotted a slender man in a conservative business suit waving at me from halfway up the street. He turned out to be Nishimoto, one of Uetoh’s numerous administrative workers. He was so genuinely friendly that I felt I just might survive my first day with a big Kyoto landscaping company.

  Nishimoto led me to the company property, where we walked past shiny compressed trucks, piles of bamboo rakes and brooms, stacks of metal and wooden ladders, coiled ropes, and more rock-setting equipment than I’d ever seen. I wanted to pull out a camera, but we walked briskly toward the building where I’d had the interview. Only this time, it was filled with men of all ages, some in khaki gardener’s uniforms, others in pressed suits. I noticed the big, burly gray-haired man who would become my boss for the next three months.

  At exactly seven-thirty, two lovely young women entered the room in cute pressed cotton knee-length skirts. They were the only other women I’d ever see working for Uetoh. Everyone turned to face the father of the man who’d interviewed me. Toemon Sano, somewhere in his eighties, stood as the top leader of the company, while Shinichi Sano, Toemon’s son, acted as head boss. The craftsmen waited silently, wearing pressed uniforms and traditional cotton boots, with their feet spread apart and strong hands clasped. The atmosphere felt a little like a military. Toemon gave a short speech in Japanese in the tone of a pep talk; I understood nothing. He turned to me and paused. I realized he wanted me to make a speech! I raced through my memory, searching for key sentences I’d learned in class. “Hi. I like sushi,” and “Where is the train station, please?” came to mind. In a last-ditch attempt to satisfy the group’s expectant glances, I put my hands together in prayer, bowed, and said, “Hajimemashite!” Everyone paused a second to see if I had anything else to say, chuckled, and clapped, showing their friendly apprec
iation of my elaborate lecture. Much later I learned that the boss had told the workers that “an American would be joining the company on Monday.” Everyone had assumed I’d be a man. So I was told later that when the young woman with long, wavy brown hair walked into the office, the workers had almost fainted. I guessed nothing at the time. I never could discern the men’s thoughts.

  Someone directed me to a shiny, clean red-and-white truck, and as I neared it everyone began yelling at me in unintelligible rapid Japanese, pointing here and there while I stood by. Once it was loaded, I was directed to the backseat of the truck, and then it went on its way, carrying four Japanese craftsmen—and one California girl.

  That first day, I met several of the men who would become my familiar crew during my three-month apprenticeship with Uetoh Zoen, spanning from late summer to early winter. I call my period studying with the craftsmen a short-term apprenticeship, as normally a Japanese gardener’s apprenticeship lasts up to fifteen years. Many start from scratch in the company, so they might spend the first few years raking and learning fundamental gardening duties. I had attended horticulture school, taken design classes, and started my own pruning business. Plus I’d trained with a mentor who specialized in Japanese garden pruning. So when I worked with the Uetoh crew, I had previous gardening experience that allowed me an unusual perspective on all I witnessed. I would learn much more.

  I had no idea how much my coworkers were paid, but I’d heard that young gardeners in Japan received a minimal hourly wage, with food and housing benefits. Their pay may have been low, but a Japanese apprentice is paid to learn, rather than paying for classes. The longer the gardener stays in the company, the higher the pay. I noticed that some of the senior workers at Uetoh showed up in new, expensive-looking SUVs.