Cutting Back

by Leslie Buck

  Japanese gardeners learn the equivalent of five American professions: landscape design and installation, rock setting, bamboo design, aesthetic pruning, and refined maintenance. Each art form could take a minimum of three years to learn, so it makes sense that a garden craftsman in Japan might train for fifteen years in a company before starting his own business. If someone considers himself a “master gardener” in Japan, someone thoroughly acquainted with and experienced in all aspects of his craft, he could well have trained 25,000 hours. The master craftsman receives the same training, but has the added experience of working as a teacher: no one can become a master craftsman without the latter.

  Highest in the hierarchy of our pruning crew was Nakaji, whom we called Nakaji-san (and whom I privately thought of as “Bossman”). When addressing my boss, coworkers, and even close friends in Kyoto, I’d always attach “san” to the end of their name, a Japanese version of “Mr.” or “Ms.” Although I drop this formality in my writing, I’d sooner curse in front of my grandma than not add the “san” while in Japan. Even in Oklahoma I still address my former childhood next-door neighbors as Mr. and Mrs. Hartman, as I did growing up. I enjoy certain formalities that remain in the South. Formality represents my respect for elders and teachers. The effort formality takes, just a little bit of extra effort, can subtly express my love for these individuals. But if I had addressed my Oklahoma neighbor’s children as Miss Louise or Mr. John, that would have sounded weird. In Japan, this would seem normal.

  On this, my first morning, Nakaji, the intensely macho leader of our pruning crew, drove the truck with passionate spirit to the historic restaurant garden with the flowing canal. In the States he’d be called an aggressive driver. In Japan, he made time. I wondered about his age. Perhaps early to midfifties? He looked big and strong. He had an endless supply of freshly ironed clothes without any hint of soil stains. He wore a floppy European cotton hat and sometimes the traditional hachimaki, a folded cloth wrapped around his forehead, and had a preference for European black tea. He worked as long and hard as workers in their twenties, and maintained our schedule of ten- to twelve-hour days, six days a week. He ordered everyone around in the gruff, effective manner of an excellent mentor. He never spoke English, or cared to try. Our clients praised Nakaji as one of Kyoto’s most talented pruners. Certain female clients practically trembled next to him. Nakaji had the power to ruin my stay in the company, and I obeyed him implicitly. He treated me thoughtfully, and although he never once gave me verbal appreciation, he challenged me day after day as though he thought I could handle the pressure—a far greater compliment. He pushed me when I had energy, eased up when he thought I might break, then continued pushing, eventually teaching me some of my most important lessons. My coworkers guarded a secret about Nakaji I would only discover later.

  On the way to our first job, we stopped at a professional gardener’s supply store, since Nakaji insisted I wear jikatabi. These were dark cloth booties, with the big toe separated from the other toes, which made me look like the cute girlfriend of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. With their soft rubber soles, jikatabi felt like wearing socks in the garden, so gentle on moss and spring maple bark. For standing in sharp-angled tree crotches, I prefer hard-soled shoes. But the men made it clear I could not set foot into any garden, as a member of the Uetoh crew, without wearing them. Gardeners and construction workers wear them throughout Japan. Jikatabi connected us intimately to the gardens. They allowed us to run on the moss without tearing it up. But mostly, jikatabi represented tradition. One of my coworkers, Kei, who spoke perfect English, helped me negotiate with the merchant to find a pair big enough for my “huge” feet—American size seven and a half. There were few in stock.

  The coworker I came to know best, Kei, was a bit shorter than I, with considerably more arm muscle. He was a senior worker who wore a traditional headscarf tied near the base of his scalp, and although he could be very social and chatty, he was also comfortable with prolonged silence. Kei began pruning in his midtwenties after feeling dissatisfied with studying landscape architecture at a university. He liked the movie Hair and Beatles songs because they helped him learn English. Like me, Kei loved pruning more than any other garden art form. He helped me navigate traditional Japanese company social life and introduced me to my Kyoto American girlfriends. Kei, my saving grace, would more than a decade later become the talented owner of a landscape design and building company of his own in Japan, and also a father. I’m sure he conducted both in the same firm and gentle way he nurtured plants.

  As the Uetoh truck moved toward the historic restaurant garden, I still had no idea where we were actually headed. The company property was on the western edge of Kyoto city, so I knew we were going toward the center of town along a major river channel I had biked along a week earlier. I figured we’d mostly work at the gardens of private residences, so it confused me when we made a quick left onto a concrete path normally reserved for pedestrians. There wasn’t a garden in sight for blocks, as far as I could tell. All I could see was an impressively neat and clean homeless person’s encampment under a bridge nearby. I thought, Okay, we’ll start out slow today. Kei saw me looking under the bridge at a homeless person’s sizable bonsai collection, and explained, “In Japan it is not shameful to be homeless.” He said homeless people in Japan had free access to decent government housing and healthcare, but they chose to live independently, with pride. I didn’t know a single gardener back in the States who didn’t struggle with the cost of housing and healthcare. Most simply couldn’t afford the latter. I wondered if the Japanese homeless were an urban version of mountain hermits. I admired the men under the bridge, their ability to enjoy seclusion, and their independence.

  Just when I had decided we’d be working in a concrete jungle, one of the guys jumped out to open a tall metal gate. As we entered the lush garden property of Ganko Takasegawa Nijoen, I felt as though I had entered the magical estate of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

  Sixteen-year-old Masahiro closed the gate behind us, and soon handed me my first pair of karikomi, the shearing tool that I could hardly manipulate but he handled with ease. Always sporting a baseball cap and large square-frame glasses, Masahiro looked shy and awkward, slumping his shoulders as though he’d just finished a growth spurt. No one could get lower in the hierarchy than Masahiro, save myself. As the youngest apprentice, he had to come in before the first worker was scheduled to arrive. This meant every morning, he showed up at the company property, sometimes at dark in winter, to wash down the work trucks with bare hands, occasionally with buckets of icy water. He could not leave until the last office worker departed. I’d heard he most often arrived before six in the morning and rarely left for home until nine or ten.

  Even though I officially sat below Masahiro in the hierarchy, I was American. So between the two of us, I left first. Everyone ordered Masahiro around. The men often ignored me. To make matters worse, he grew up in the countryside, so others made fun of his traditional manners. The men were often curious about my American habits. Yet along with Masahiro’s youthful naïveté came an almost spiritual devotion to his craft that only someone so young, with no distractions, could hold. He stood taller than most of the men, with high cheekbones, and I’m sure he eventually grew into a handsome man. Full of maternal instincts at thirty-five, I felt protective of picked-on Masahiro. I sometimes pitied him. Eventually I’d hope to emulate him.

  The pine I examined at lunch, which led to my pine-pruning assignments on that first day, had been pruned by Daisuke, the crew’s most advanced worker. Daisuke held a certain authority, the self-assured swagger of a natural leader. His headband, displaying a modern print, made him all the more fascinating. He and Nakaji worked steadily on pines the whole day while lower-level workers cleaned up after them. He slept with a white towel folded neatly over his eyes during each break, leading me to wonder if he had an active nightlife. Soon he disappeared from our pruning crew; I believe he went to work for Uet
oh in Tokyo on a high-profile public garden installation.

  That first morning, I’d decided to leave my raincoat at home, thinking, It’s so clear this morning, it’ll never rain! Considering how drenched I was by the end of the day, I never tried to predict the weather again. Mother Nature held more surprises for me in Japan. At the end of my first day, we returned to the office—Japanese gardeners return to their company property before heading home, even if that means crisscrossing the city several times in one day. As soon as I jumped out of the truck, the company leader called me into his office. He asked in English, “Do you work rain days, or do you want rain days off?” I weighed my options: Should I act all macho and work like the guys, six days a week, rain or shine? Or should I be sane and take an extra day off here and there, precious time I could use to visit Kyoto’s gardens or just get to rest? I responded in English so he’d understand: “Yes, I work in the rain.”

  After all, the last person added to the crew was born in Oklahoma, raised in California, the granddaughter of a dirt-poor, landless tenant farmer grandmother, and the daughter of a feminist. Because of my American birth, I was addressed in the company as “Leslie,” never “Leslie-san.” At the end of the day, I’d throw my full body on the debris pile to punch it down, but mostly to prove my enthusiasm to the men who had more muscles than me and carried larger loads. I worried constantly about holding back the crew and about what they thought of me. But I worked boldly and with determination. As the youngest sibling to three bossy older sisters and daughter of a strong Southern mom, I could handle the obedience required when working inside a strict hierarchy. I knew how to quietly observe their successes and my mistakes, but also how to occasionally step out and take my own risks.

  I felt I might survive these intense craftsmen using my feisty spirit, clever strategies, and a penchant for humor in the face of defeat. I was used to being a slow learner, an anxious adventurer. My worries never stopped me from pursuing goals close to my heart. Upon setting foot in Japan that humid summer, I’d hoped to meet the gardeners who, like me, felt devoted to nature. My first day working with the Uetoh Zoen craftsmen, I felt like a lighthearted California gardener, but the men saw in me a craftswoman in training.

  Garden Bling Keeps the Garden Clean

  As if in response to my pledge to work “rain or shine,” the rain fell like a mountain waterfall outside my window all night. I wondered if I’d still go to work in the morning, given that Asher had told me his company didn’t work in heavy rain. I snuggled under my down comforter, feeling as though I were sleeping on a warm beach. I really didn’t want to get out of bed. Around six, I departed my cocoon, gathered my workbag, and headed out. An office worker named Tanaka had offered to pick me up, and I didn’t know how to call him to cancel. I layered my outfit with plastic rain gear, the only thing that lasts hours in pounding rain, and stepped outside just as the rain finally slowed to a drizzle. I shuffled to my designated pick-up spot on the street corner. A thin sheet of water on the pavement reflected the image of a person suited up in camouflaged gear with just a bit of sun highlighting my navy blue fleece hat. “I really look like a dork,” I mumbled, standing next to a man waiting for the bus in a business suit. He’d retained his dignity, refusing hat, denying coat. The Kyoto crowd proved resilient. Just before Tanaka drove up, a woman came rushing down the street toward us with a floral apron wrapped around her skirt, looking toward the man next to me intently as though she had some emergency to report. She bowed to the man in the suit and pulled a folded white handkerchief out of her apron pocket. He placed the handkerchief in his left shirt pocket with a little corner exposed. They smiled at each other and she left. Not a scene I would ever expect to see at a California bus stop, but it made me feel once again keenly self-conscious of my bulky outfit.

  Tanaka pulled up in an expensive-looking car. Getting a ride with him meant that I could sleep in forty-five minutes, so I felt lucky. But when we arrived to the company property fifteen minutes after my normal arrival time, I saw Nakaji and my whole crew standing at attention next to the fully loaded truck. I’d arrived a bit later than when I took the bus the day before. Nakaji’s stare followed our car until we stopped. All at once, the crew jumped in the truck; I ran into a side door left open for me, and we sped off. I decided to go back to taking the bus.

  I resumed shearing azaleas in the historic garden, blanketed by a misty drizzle. Fine droplets came from hundreds of feet up in the sky and shook the river, spanked the camellia leaves, and bent the ferns, which looked like weary backpackers, yet did not disturb the turtle on his rock. I tried to relax my arms, sore from using the karikomi the day before. I had already written several pages of new garden terms on a damp red pad in my knee pocket, right next to my dictionary. My garden bling included a dictionary, shears, a saw, and a floppy sun hat. I had a distaste for my bulgy pants and the pressed cotton shirt that was bubbly when tucked in. It was not just because of my outfit. I’d inherited a small stature, tiny waist, and curvy hips from my beautiful Aunt Mimi. Still, as a ballet dancer in my teenage years, I was chagrined at not having my mom’s stunning tall, model-thin look. When I arrived in Kyoto, I found myself glancing at waiflike young Japanese women on the streets, and I began to feel overweight. While in her thirties my mom became an Oklahoma delegate for George McGovern and chauffeured Warren Beatty in the backseat of our family station wagon. She wore beautiful outfits. In my thirties as a gardener, I wore khaki pants and sported an oversized duffle bag I’d found on sale at Berkeley’s REI outdoor store. My work outfit did have its pluses; it meant I could pump the handles of the karikomi for hours with the wide stance my loose pants allowed. The plants and birds remained nonjudgmental.

  Before leaving for Kyoto, I’d asked Yuki, a pruning friend raised in Japan, if it would be interesting for my Japanese crew to see a typical American gardener’s outfit. She looked at me in my stained jeans, torn Berkeley Bicycle Coalition T-shirt, and Cal Sailing Club baseball cap, and responded, “There is a saying in Japan: You stub your toe on the nail that sticks out of the floor.” So I left my American outfit at home.

  Uetoh Zoen intriguingly mentioned in my acceptance letter to bring “a white towel” with me. My first day on the job, I noticed that some of the craftsmen wore a thin white terry cloth towel, about the size of a hand towel, wrapped around their heads. I debated wearing one myself. That night, I tried one on at home, looking in the mirror. Trying to re-create what I’d seen the men do, I folded the thin towel in half into a triangle and tied the ends into a knot at the back of my head. I thought about conferring with Kei first: “Do you think this towel on my head looks stupid?” But I decided against it. Not only was the question insulting, but he was a guy; he just wouldn’t understand. Working on pines my second day, I finally took a chance and tied on my bright white turban top. No one said a word. Whether they thought She’s a serious worker! or Duh, she doesn’t know how to tie the gardener’s knot, I’ll never know. The towel protected my hair completely from pine sap, which had gotten terribly stuck on my ponytail the day before, and it kept raindrops from sliding down my face—a great idea overall. Still, I prayed an American tourist wouldn’t walk into the historic Kyoto garden and discover the California gardener with a shower towel on her head.

  After several days of work, I discovered many brilliantly designed Japanese garden tools. I’d rake up thousands of azalea snippets with a kumade, a light rake made of bamboo. We’d also use a tekumade, a two-foot-long rake used in tighter areas. Although we never worked on miniature gardens, the tool reminded me of playing miniature golf with my sister on an Arkansas course that integrated native rock and plants. I loved the dings and scratches on Uetoh’s tools. The men would regularly repair their tools, and the scratches meant that other craftsmen had used the tools before me. What artist wouldn’t want to paint with Mary Cassatt’s original brush or take a photo with Imogen Cunningham’s vintage camera? It wasn’t as though tools were sacred to the craftsmen, at least as far as I co
uld tell. I suspected that concern for tool longevity was based more on economic sensibility than on tradition. In contrast, running to Target for a not-so-cheap plastic rake, having it break, throwing it into a publicly maintained landfill, then buying another isn’t very cost effective or environmentally friendly. Each nick in the bamboo or scratch on metal reminded me that another had toiled before me. I felt inspired by my predecessors. One late workday, Nakaji threw an old pair of pine-pruning cuffs—a thick material covered in cotton, used to protect his wrists from needle pricks—into a bonfire. I snatched them out to reuse them, resulting in a laughing fit from Bossman.

  At the end of the day, we swept large swaths of moss with a bundle of fine bamboo twigs, gathered into a hōki, or broom. Hōki, handcrafted by bamboo artisans, can cost more than one hundred dollars. Japanese garden bling look as though they’d last forever. To sweep the smaller piles, we grabbed what turned out to be my most treasured Japanese tool item: the tebōki, a hand broom. This small broom sweeps every last grain of dust off a jagged small stone without disturbing moss or lichen. It is handy for furniture, sculptures, stones, steps, or even cobwebs around the edges of fences—garden-loving Californians would go crazy over this tool. I can’t find it anywhere in the States.

  We’d sweep small piles of leaves into a mi, a dustpan, but this wasn’t just any pan. The mi was a two-foot square, flat on one side and deep on the other, with no handle. Perfect for picking up a tiny pile of dust or a bucket full of leaves, the pan was super light and coveted by high-caliber California landscaping friends. The mi was made of thick plastic, like a Frisbee, which made sense for a much-used and abused tool. I’ve seen some made of woven bamboo, but that kind would last about a week with these guys. In California I’d brush up the last bit of dust with my hand, scraping and tearing my gloves prematurely. I’d toss the debris into a tarp, where it would trickle out on my way to the truck.