by Leslie Buck
I spied Masahiro’s hands trembling while both of us stood back and watched the older men demonstrate the use of their uchigama. Shugakuin gardeners had used this tool for more than three hundred years to shear the hedges here. I wondered, Why not improve this project by using electric hedge shears? Maybe the power cords wouldn’t stretch far enough? I watched the men, deducing that if anyone let go of their scythe while swinging it like a baseball bat, the spinning blade would propel across the garden like a Frisbee, literally slicing open anyone in its path. Now I understood why Shugakuin security hesitated to let a visiting foreigner work in one of Japan’s high-profile gardens, with tourists walking about. I pondered my new responsibility.
Nakaji, much to my relief, took me far away from the others. He swung my scythe a few times, then handed the blade back to me. He positioned himself right in front of me, just ten feet away, and motioned for me to give it a go. I hesitated and gave him a questioning look, allowing him time to move off to the side. But he held his ground and waved his hand impatiently for me to begin. So I took a deep breath and began my practice swings. Swish. Nakaji stared. I got in a few good swings out of a dozen. Nakaji’s unflinching gaze showed confidence in me, and I transferred that confidence into my hand, holding the scythe tight, keeping him safe.
Nakaji, the he-man, taught me how to swing the scythe to prune shrubs at Shugakuin. Babe Ruth toured Japan in 1936. I calculated that Nakaji would have been around nine that year. His swing did look similar to a baseball player’s. When he swung, the blade would slice a hundred leaves at once, smooth as butter. You could hear the wind resist his blade. When I did it, the air sat stagnant, or I’d accidentally dip too low, creating a huge crater on the shrub’s surface. Or I’d swing so weakly that my blade could only scratch the leaves, tickling them. In essence, I was massaging the shrubs. Admittedly, in grade school, when the kids played baseball, I remember often being picked last for teams.
Nakaji demonstrated specific techniques for pruning hedges. If he was standing above a shrub and wanted to prune the top, he’d swing the scythe as though he were hitting a ball with a bat, from right to left. If standing next to a tall shrub, some of them more than twelve feet tall and requiring a ladder, he’d swing the stick up and down. After an hour of practicing, I went over to look at the men’s work. They had already sheared an area the size of three swimming pools! I trudged despondently back to my kiddie-sized pool. A few hours later, I was still making miserable progress. Sweat poured down my arms. I sighed. Here I am, working alone again in a garden, with my boyfriend thousands of miles away.
I felt tired and out of breath as I looked up and spotted a slender man of medium height, wearing an expensive, well-cut business suit, walking briskly toward me. There were no garden tours at that time of day, so I wondered what he was up to. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him move closer, and hesitated in my swing as he came perilously close. Kei had wrapped an extra rubber band around the base of my scythe to secure my grasp, what he called “the beginner’s scythe.” But instinctively I held on to it with a death grip. The businessman stopped right in front of me and signaled for me to hand him the scythe. No introduction. I figured he could not have been one of Shugakuin’s gardeners, given his attire. And no one from outside the company ever instructed us. In fact, it would be a downright insult for a stranger to step over Nakaji’s authority. But I felt drawn to obey him. I handed him my scythe. I looked around and prayed my boss wouldn’t come walking around the corner, or we’d both end up sliced butter on toast.
Putting both of his hands around the uchigama’s long wooden stick, he moved the left end of the scythe up while pulling the right down, as with a kayak paddle. He repeated the movement up and down, getting progressively faster to show me how quickly it could be swung this way. He sheared the side of a hedge in seconds. He spoke to me in fluent Japanese sentences during his demonstration, just like Nakaji did, and I nodded my head obediently, understanding none of his words but all of his meaning. He handed the scythe back. On my first try, the blade cut through the leaves beautifully. Whoosh. Surprised, I looked up at him with a smile. With a frown, he waved his hands for me to continue. He had no time for appreciation. Again I was able to slice the leaves with more power and control. I cleanly finished off a small area in a few seconds as the strange man stood watching. Then, as mysteriously as my knight in Armani had arrived, he strode off around a corner and disappeared.
At lunchtime I spied the same businessman walking around on the other side of the lake. I pointed toward him and asked Kei who he was. “He is the head gardener of Shugakuin.” For once words eluded me. I went over the secret lesson I’d been given, and remembered the words of my American mentor, Dennis: “When I teach you something, Leslie, I am teaching you what I was taught by my teacher, and what that person was taught by his teacher, and on, and on. You now become a part of this lineage. We are all connected.” Shugakuin garden’s leader had taught me more than a clever trick; he’d handed me a tiny glimpse into the history of Shugakuin gardeners. By learning from him, I’d had a conversation with one of the first gardeners of Shugakuin, who’d pruned shrubs the same way almost three hundred and fifty years ago. This is why Japanese craftsmen pride themselves on doing as they are told by their teachers rather than jumping to electric hedge trimmers.
All day I tried to ignore the image of my scythe slipping out of my hand, flying into a group of unsuspecting tourists. The next morning I discovered that my hand had become so sore that I couldn’t hold a pencil to write in my journal. But I still managed to grip the scythe. Only at lunch was I able to relax. The cool air hovered under the cryptomeria, forcing me to don a fleece hat by midafternoon, but the scene still felt enchanting. Mountains and woods surrounded me. Sunlight filtered its way through the leaves and sparkled softly on the dirt road. From several directions came the sound of trickling water. Birds, oblivious to the coming winter chill, chirped with lively spirit. They liked my spot. I sat, exhausted, against a fallen old tree trunk while the men retreated to the car for lunch, listening to noisy talk-radio shows. Their appetite for commercial intrusion in this green paradise annoyed me.
I thought about my boyfriend’s visit the week before, replaying our scenes together, trying to determine whether things would have been easier for us if I had chosen an organic rather than a strictly traditional restaurant, a less tour-driven garden to visit. The songbirds called out to me from all directions in the little forest echo chamber. They distracted me from worries about Taylor. The wind blew hard, and branches swayed overhead. A pine needle whorl plopped onto my head. I looked up. Perhaps the ghosts of the garden wanted me to focus more on their trees. I listened awhile, resting against my mossy log, and looked up at golden maple leaves, dark green conifers, and bits of blue sky peeking in overhead. The high dome of branches held a certain elegance that reminded me of the magnificent War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. From my season-ticket balcony-side seat, one could see the beautiful hand-carved ceiling of the opera house, with lights that look like embedded stars. Trees fill me with comfort and awe. They inspire me, as do the opera singers, who devote their lives to their craft.
I began to relax a little under the shadow of the pines at Shugakuin, and repositioned myself against the scratchy, stubby old fallen trunk, my pants damp from the moist ground. It was rather an unlikely spot to sit in an emperor’s garden. Nevertheless, I felt my chest lighten, my worries about Taylor drop away. I breathed in deeply and breathed out the air flowing down the mountain, into my spirit. Looking around, savoring the sounds, sights, and textures of a beautiful garden, I finally relished a few minutes of peace. Nature held me close. I felt her singing her dramas to me inside the shimmering emerald opera house, known to others as Shugakuin Rikyu Imperial Villa.
Tanuki Discovers Garden Spirits
It rained so hard while we worked at Shugakuin three days later, I took a break from the men and found a hot lunch on a street near the entrance to the garden. No
one blinked an eye when I walked into an udon shop, a fair-skinned girl in a dirty gardener’s uniform. I wrote in my journal as I sipped steaming broth, my damp sleeves smearing the words I’d just written. It was November, and I came home wet and tired. Cold air pushed through the cracks of my bedroom walls at night. I would wake up with throbbing pain in my arms from days of repetitive swinging. I silently wept, How will I hold my tools tomorrow? I coughed, my cold progressing, and then drifted back to sleep. The next morning, when Nakaji handed me my scythe, I stared hard at my hand, willing it. You will hold! Fear helped, for I needed to avoid killing Nakaji, who continued his habit of standing within a few feet of me as my blade whipped its wide circle at about the same level as his heart.
The maples around the emperor’s lake began to turn color in patches as the week progressed. They looked as though they sported English tweed coats with a smattering of bright red, faded green, and dried brown leaves. The color spread up into the mountains. Still, I felt a little disappointed at my first real glimpse of autumn in Japan. Only pinches of leaves turned color at a time. I’d yet to spot a shocking red velvet cloak of leaves that dazzle a garden, as I’d seen in many Japanese calendar photos. I felt tricked. Fooled by Kyoto’s minimalist fall, perhaps by my whole experience with the craftsmen. Working as an apprentice in Japan had sounded thrilling. Yet the reality proved tiresome, mundane, and repetitive, and no matter what people had warned me, it was more difficult than I could have imagined.
The challenge of using the scythe became not just how to swing it quickly but how to swing it while standing on a bamboo pole that had been tied into the crotches of two spindly hedge branches, ten feet up in the air. The men regularly tied strong two-inch bamboo poles to tree branches, creating instant scaffolds inside a tree or between two trees where ladders wouldn’t fit. Sometimes a pole would be placed so that a ladder could lean up against it in a spot where no branch existed. Certain shrubs at Shugakuin looked short from afar, but many rose twenty feet high, as tall as a two-story house. Nakaji showed me how to tie the pole close to the crotches of branches where the branch is strongest. But trunks and branches of thick hedges, where sun rarely penetrates, tend to be less strong than trees out in the open. So not only did our poles wobble a little when we balanced on them, but I was not entirely confident that the branches supporting them wouldn’t snap. We’d have to place the pole high enough that our waists were above the canopy, where we could swing wide well above the hedge.
Regardless of the narrow pole beneath our feet, it was possible to keep from falling because the hedge was so thick. When pruning on a ladder or in a tree, I always make sure I have three points of my lower body supported, such as two feet and one hip, or a foot, hip, and thigh. With three points secure, I can move my upper body as much as I want. So with both feet on the bamboo pole, and dozens of branches below the waist to lean against, the men and I swung for hours. Still, my spindly perch wobbled with unpredictable support, and Masahiro and I sweated considerably, being the least experienced. The advanced craftsmen worked away flexibly, like birds cleaning their feathers at odd angles while balancing on electric wires.
Because of my cold, I had to take frequent breaks, hoping no one saw or heard me submit to coughing fits. Occasionally, my arm muscles would simply give out. Nevertheless, I managed to complete a few areas. There was just one problem. My sheared hedges weren’t quite as smooth as the others. The guys’ hedges looked formal and clean, all thick and flat on top. My areas looked as though they’d been gashed by a child. I’d tried. When swinging, I’d hit a coarse branch sticking up higher than others, and my scythe would dive in. Or I’d swing too high in midair, alarmingly fast. Thankfully, tour groups roamed far from me.
But when I watched Masahiro, I couldn’t complain. He worked on the tallest and most dangerous jobs. The bamboo poles he balanced on were tied into branches fifteen feet off the ground. He worked on a long hedge stretching forty feet. He could barely keep from slipping off his pole as he wielded his sharp instrument, working as fast as he could. He walked around with a permanent anxious look, his clothes drenched with sweat. Yet he continued on, determined.
Inside the hedges, I found fascinating twisted conglomerations of plant species. Every hedge I’ve worked on in California is created from one plant, usually pittosporum or azalea. California hedges might be fifteen to thirty years old. Inside the ancient hedges at Shugakuin, I discovered dozens of plants making up one hedge: juniper, maple, dogwood, holly, boxwood, pieris, camellia, rhaphiolepsis, and bamboo. Who knows how old these plants were. Centuries? Standing over the hedges with a dangerous tool in hand felt less fascinating. I’d hang on to a leaf or two with one hand, fearful of falling into the dark, leafless pit below, and concentrate on shearing one small area at a time.
It eventually occurred to me that I had unlimited access to one of the most astounding gardens in the world. I felt I must stop conversing with my sitting log during every break and take some action. Without mentioning anything to Bossman, hoping he wouldn’t be held responsible should I be reprimanded, at lunchtime I wandered the property with my camera, unable to resist the urge to capture all I saw. I began by circling the lake, walking right past imperial gardeners who pruned mountain trees from forty-foot extension ladders. They glanced over at me, then continued their work. Certainly this meant it was okay for me to keep going, right?
I eventually came upon a wooden sign that said in English do not enter. It’s probably okay to go in there, I reasoned; after all, we worked in that area yesterday. The wild maples in the forbidden area leaned heavily over the lake. I stood under them, inside the canopy looking up, and took photos of the light penetrating the frail cover. Standing inside the leaf tent, I felt safe. The maple held me inside a world of greens and browns, light and dark. I felt like an animal in the forest, undiscovered. I was fascinated by the vulnerability of the trees, about to lose their leaves and expose their bones, their inner realm.
I exited the hidden forest onto a wide-open path along the lake. But just before I stepped out from the trees, I spotted a tourist group approaching. I had grown shy of the Japanese tourists’ curious reaction to me. With my back turned, I looked like a Japanese gardener boy, with my short stature, khaki outfit, white towel on my head, and traditional scythe in hand. When I turned around, visitors would spot either my pale skin or my feminine look, and they’d cry out, “Gaijin!” (Foreigner!) Everyone would run toward me at once and ask dozens of inquisitive, encouraging questions, none of which I could understood. I worried they might think, Gee, this American doesn’t understand any Japanese! She sure didn’t do her homework! Why would this company ever let her work in our gardens? even while they smiled politely. Western-looking tourists completely ignored me.
The Japanese women, on the other hand, were fascinated. Some who could speak English told me that they appreciated my study of Japanese cultural arts, admired my boldness in working in a man’s field, and wished to one day run their own businesses, as I did in California. But one young Japanese woman told me she felt pressured by her peers to buy department store outfits, and that she spent too much money on clothes to afford going to architecture school in Italy, which was her dream. Another said executive positions in companies for women were rare. I found Japanese women in the winter of the year 2000 educated, smart, and ready to hold more positions of power in Japan, if only society would allow it.
I eyed the tour group walking around the lake in the far distance, and knew from past experience that it would reach me in about ten minutes. I made a split-second decision and slipped behind a long, thick shrub that circled the outer perimeter of the lake before anybody could spot me. I waited. As the tour group approached, I became more still. The group passed right by me, their slender, stocking-covered legs and high heels at eye height, their shoes grating against the gritty white gravel path. Ahhhh. For once I felt a sense of peaceful distance from a tour group, like watching a movie in a dark theater. I could hear every word they spok
e, their eyes gazing right over my location, never suspecting that I lurked behind the shrub. Completely camouflaged, with my khaki outfit and dirt-smudged cheeks, I relaxed. Just for the fun of it, I looked straight into a woman’s eyes.
“Yiiieeee, tanuki!” she screamed, pointing toward me. Tanuki are little creatures that look a bit like raccoons, but they carry a certain mythical status. In folklore, they can shape-shift into many things, including human beings, and might account for mysterious singing or drumming coming from the forest. Little tanuki statues proliferate in Kyoto gardens, as ceramic gnomes do in other parts of the world, including California. The whole tour group rushed toward me. I had no choice but to stand up and reveal myself. Surrounded within seconds, I turned bright red while I hastily tried to remove the leaves from my hair. I looked down at the dirt on my uniform and attempted to step back a little so as not to sully the adorable purses and color-coordinated skirts worn by the gushing women. I was even better than a tanuki. “Gaijin!” they all said, and then upon closer inspection, “Onna no hito!” (A girl!) They swarmed me. I bowed sheepishly. Enthralled, they all spoke at once, asking me indecipherable questions. How I envied their gentle stroll in such lovely attire. We couldn’t speak each other’s language, but we had a meeting that likely none of us would forget.