Believing the Season

Last week, the principal of one of my schools invited me to go to a concert of Christmas choirs performing Japanese songs as well as the works of John Rutter. It was a nice time and he also gave me a ticket to Toji, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, and I used it yesterday.

This was my second visit to Toji so I concentrated on trying to take interesting photos. It was afternoon on a cloudy day so there was some dramatic light.

The Japanese maples still had their beautiful autumn leaves.

The Japanese heron enjoys his new fame, courtesy of Miyazaki Hayao.

A few days ago, I learned my two year old nephew, River, is very sick and in the hospital. So I bought some charms for him at Toji, one for health and one for the protection of children. I suppose it'll take about two weeks for them to get to him, though.

I ate lunch at a nearby mall in a crowded foodcourt. I just got some KFC, I suppose because the Christmas season has started (KFC is a traditional Christmas food in Japan). On the long train ride to and from Kyoto, I read Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy (1579) and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1592 or 93) . Yes, I carried the Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume 1, in my bag for the whole time. Not the slimmer volumes they make now but the big cinder block that contains material from the fifth century to the 18th. Lately I've been reading Saint Augustine again, City of God, as a refresher for my comic and Augustine's hatred for art and poetry was getting me down. Sidney cheered me up, even if Defence of Poesy is kind of a sloppy work.

In a way, I can sympathise with people who dislike fiction because they believe it consists entirely of lies. I don't generally like even polite lies myself, I think they're a waste of time. But having found myself arguing in recent years with people who basically dislike fiction for that reason, my counterargument is given by Sidney in this famous quote:

Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false: so as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirmeth many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies: but the poet, as I said before, never affirmeth; the poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writeth: he citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention; in troth, not labouring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be.

This is why the increasing preference for non-fiction over fiction worries me. I say that as someone who certainly enjoys reading and viewing forms of non-fiction. Fiction exercises the brain in a way that non-fiction is deficient.

Ninna-ji

Last month, I visited Ninna-ji Temple (仁和寺) in Kyoto.

It was originally built in 888 but most of the current buildings date from the 17th century.

The interior of the main building is sort of interwoven with meticulously maintained gardens.

This heron was so still at first I thought it was a statue:

There are a number of modern art pieces on the extensive grounds:

I was more interested in the ancient parts, though.

There were many beautiful rooms inside the main hall:

It's a lovely place.

Twitter Sonnet #1463

The deadly sea adopts an arrow shape.
Another portal opens briefly now.
A snazzy tie can smarten up the ape.
Between the buns he put a piece of cow.
A water ball awaits the planet rock.
We're counting sheep to fill the empty pen.
A sleep surprised the cat, removed a sock.
Excessive feathers dried the yellow fin.
The eyes of truth were framed by slender bones.
Reliance rests upon a platter primed.
The planet's foreign flute has extra tones.
Clairvoyance tests a darker, brittle time.
Remembrance dims the morning back to night.
Forgotten years return to conscious light.

Rocks at the Temple

A couple weeks ago, I visited Ryoan-ji, a Zen temple in Kyoto. I had a feeling of deja-vu around the ponds on the temple grounds, I think I must have visited a place that looked similar when I was younger.

There were several birds about. Three geese:

And a heron:

It was another intensely hot day. Everyone took off their shoes and went inside to sit and look at the temple's famous Zen rock garden.

The temple was originally built in the 15th century but after several fires the current rock garden dates from the late 18th century. And it's just rocks, arranged in a rectangular enclosure with raked pebbles.

I sat contemplating it for some time. There are different interpretations for what the garden symbolises. I found myself at first thinking of islands and then of planets. There's something Lynchian about them and I was reminded of Twin Peaks season three.

The meaning of "Ryoan-ji", "Temple of the Dragon at Peace", also makes me think of the rocks as the curling back of a partially submerged dragon.

The temple itself is also beautiful.

Twitter Sonnet #1460

Ironic magnet metal turns about.
The streets were choked with precious stones and hay.
The pirates plunder sources, re and out.
An island sinks a planet any day.
The softest gloves were hard against the beef.
For cheaper shorts the fighters traded blood.
A keel would scratch a message 'long the reef.
A hand has dropped the anchor deep in mud.
The fingers folded back creating toes.
The purchase yields a branch before a tree.
A nodding sparked consent along the rows.
A word evokes the need to search the sea.
Renewal kicks the show beyond another year.
And so we count the thousandth bottled beer.

The Place of Gold

Death is pure, it removes the complexities and ambiguities of life like nothing else can, and so perhaps any pursuit of purity is like a pursuit of death or destruction. It was certainly the case for the young man depicted in Enjo (炎上, "Conflagration"), a 1958 film by Kon Ichikawa based on a book by Yukio Mishima. That book, in turn, was based on a real life event, the 1950 burning of Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto, the "Golden Pavilion", so named for the gold leaf that covers its exterior. The temple that had stood for centuries undisturbed had survived World War II only to be destroyed by arson. The arsonist was a 22 year old novice monk who attempted suicide after the burning. He survived and went to prison--he was released due to his mental illnesses, persecution complex and schizophrenia. To his story, Mishima added his own aesthetic philosophy about sex and beauty. Ichikawa made a film lighter on sex but with a very simple narrative and a clear psychological framework.

Mishima changed the novice monk's name to Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa VIII) and we meet him in Ichikawa's film just as he's arriving at the temple. The abbot, played by Ganjiro Nakamura II, hastily applies makeup he keeps hidden in a drawer before Goichi arrives. Later we learn the abbot regularly goes into town to visit a favourite geisha.

Again and again, we're shown the pieces of impurity and hypocrisy that Goichi can't deal with. He obsesses over a memory of catching his mother having sex with someone who's not his father--and his father calmly leading the boy away from the scene. When a woman pregnant with an American soldier's child tries to enter Kinkaku-ji, Goichi violently prevents her from violating the place with her presence.

He befriends a crippled man played by Tatsuya Nakadai and, despite his scruples, watches as Nakadai uses his injury to manipulate women into sleeping with him.

The cause and effect between Goichi and his actions are crystal clear, clear enough that Ichikawa avoids any explanations at the end and simply lets events unfold.

It's not so much a black and white movie as it is a black and murky green movie. This seems to be normal for Ichikawa's films before he switched to colour. In this case, it helps convey the narrow psychological space of Goichi's mind.

Enjo is available on The Criterion Channel under the title of Conflagration. Also available on The Criterion Channel is Mishima, a movie directed by Paul Schrader about the author's life--I reviewed that movie back in 2013 and was very impressed.

So, on Friday last week, I was pleased to have the opportunity to visit Kinkaku-ji with my friend and her boss.

Reconstruction was finished in 1955 and the gold leaf covering it, I hear, is much denser than the original. It's beautiful in any case, and just as beautiful are the surrounding gardens, carefully maintained to aesthetically complement the structure.

The trees look like clouds, giving the impression of being in the sky.

Fittingly, a golden phoenix sits atop the building.