Inkstone

Passings

2011-08-13T14:58:00.011+02:00

Around this time each year the General Council of the Department of the Alpes-Maritimes organizes free concerts for its people. Last night we went to one of them which was held in a little village about a half-hour drive from Nice. The last time I had attended such a concert was two years ago. The same band had played in that concert. But there had still been Michel, accordionist and band leader, and Christian, singer. Then, Michel passed away last year at the age of 60 and Christian at 68 last month. Last night's concert, which had been originally programmed by Christian, became a sad occasion to pay homage to him. My wife knew both well, in particular, Michel, who played his accordion for my welcome party when I arrived in Nice. But I can't say I knew them as well as she.

I wonder if it's because of my age but it seems I hear, much more often than before, of deaths of people such as film stars, musicians, Japanese or non-Japanese, that were intimately connected with my youth. I think the others must have the same feeling as I have. There was an Japanese film actor who has died recently. I didn't think he was a good actor. I didn't like his voice which was too throaty. But he was an exceedingly handsome man with a tough yakuza glare. I remember having bought similar kinds of clothes that he wore in his films to try to look like him. How foolish I was! Then, a greater part of my youth was spent and lost like this. Now it's as if I had outlived it completely. I wonder what will come next...

N.F. 22

2011-06-07T16:19:00.005+02:00

Graffiti and a stain on the wall in Vieux Nice

Thank you Life by Violeta Parra

2011-03-05T11:14:00.012+01:00

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You gave me a pair of eyes
When I open them, I can perfectly distinguish black from white
And see through the depth of the starry sky above
And find in a crowd the one I love.

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You gave me ears with widest reach
Day and night I can hear crickets, canaries,
Hammers, turbines, barking
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You gave me sounds and the alphabet
With them I form words and pronounce
"mother", "friend", "brother" and "light" which illuminates
The way of the soul by which my beloved comes to me.

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You gave me my feet which have tirelessly carried me
Through cities, puddles
Beaches, deserts, mountains, plains
And to his house, to his street, to his patio.

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You gave me a heart that races
When I look at great achievements of man
When I see good prevail over evil
When I look into the depth of his bright eyes.

Thank you Life, you have given me so much
You made me laugh, you made me cry
So that I can distinguish happiness from suffering
Two materials that make up my song
And your song, too, which I now sing
And everyone's song which I now sing.

(Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me dio dos luceros que, cuando los abro,
perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco,
y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado el oído que, en todo su ancho,
graba noche y día grillos y canarios;
martillos, turbinas, ladridos, chubascos,
y la voz tan tierna de mi bien amado.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado el sonido y el abecedario,
con él las palabras que pienso y declaro:
madre, amigo, hermano, y luz alumbrando
la ruta del alma del que estoy amando.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados;
con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos,
playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos,
y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me dio el corazón que agita su marco
cuando miro el fruto del cerebro humano;
cuando miro el bueno tan lejos del malo,
cuando miro el fondo de tus ojos claros.

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto.
Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto,
los dos materiales que forman mi canto,
y el canto de ustedes que es el mismo canto
y el canto de todos, que es mi propio canto.)

Mercedes Sosa

The North Ship by Philip Larkin

2011-01-19T23:05:00.004+01:00

I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.

The first ship turned towards the west,
Over the sea, the running sea,
And by the wind was all possessed
And carried to a rich country.

The second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.

The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.

The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:

But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
And it was rigged for a long journey.

N.F. 21

2010-08-08T18:28:00.002+02:00

N.F. 20

2010-06-28T18:06:00.004+02:00

N.F. 19

2010-05-22T19:43:00.003+02:00

N.F. 18

2010-05-18T19:37:00.003+02:00

Blue

2010-03-31T16:32:00.014+02:00

I went to the prefectural office today to pick up my new French ID card. Things went smoothly without problems unlike when we had applied for it two months earlier in the same building. As soon as I got my card, I left and took a bus to return home.
The bus, leaving the administrative center, entered an immigrants' neighborhood dominated by dreary apartment blocks and dusty boulevards where it became quickly filled up with Arab and African passengers. As there is nothing to see or do in this isolated corner of Nice, its inhabitants take crowded buses everyday to go to work, to do shopping or to find some entertainment in the city center.
From a baby to burkha-clad grandmothers, they were of all ages and numerous, talking in their own tribal tongues. A group of black youths sneaked in through the rear door without paying the fares. An old Arab man in a shabby, second-hand suit looked at them disapprovingly. Kids preoccupied with their mobile phones and the baby burst into a shrill cry. Who are these people? Why are they here? I wondered. Then, a depressing thought came to me: Am I not, in fact, one of them?
The bus turned a corner onto a busy boulevard lined with palm trees, shops, restaurants and condos. The air inside the bus became stiflingly hot even with the windows opened. It was a gorgeous spring day. I took off my jacket and looked out the window. Between the receeding buildings, I glimpsed the brilliant blue of the Mediterranean Sea. The kind of blue which would make you think you are near heaven.

N.F. 17

2010-03-28T13:03:00.003+02:00

N.F. 16

2010-03-27T17:23:00.005+01:00

N.F. 15

2010-03-27T00:09:00.003+01:00

N.F. 14

2010-03-03T18:25:00.005+01:00

N.F. 13

2010-02-28T17:58:00.003+01:00

Les Jonquilles

2010-02-23T17:30:00.006+01:00

My wife has bought them again this year just like last year - probably from the same woman at Saleya Market. I thought about the picture I had taken of them in the winter of 2009 just after I had arrived in Nice. They are like a clock whick ticks each February. One tick and one year is gone. And the ticking even seems to accelerate as I grow older. I may have accomplished so many things in one year which has just gone or very little or nothing at all. I just take things as they come and go each day.

N.F. 11

2010-01-25T13:25:00.001+01:00

N.F. 10

2010-01-24T14:13:00.003+01:00

Passing Away

2010-01-23T18:08:00.010+01:00

A dear friend of ours passed away today after a long battle with bone cancer. I had known him only for a few years. He was one of the first people who had accepted me - without any reservation - as a friend here in Nice. He must have suffered greatly from his illness but he never showed it in front of us. He was a decent man with a lot of goodness in his heart. Our ways crossed briefly and we had pleasant moments together. And now he has parted. May his soul rest in peace.

N.F. 9

2010-01-22T20:55:00.003+01:00

N.F. 8

2010-01-20T12:47:00.004+01:00

Nice Fragments 7

2010-01-19T18:09:00.003+01:00

Nice Fragments 6

2010-01-18T16:15:00.006+01:00

Nice Fragments 5

2010-01-17T17:10:00.003+01:00

Nice Fragments 4

2010-01-15T19:11:00.000+01:00

Nice Fragments 3

2010-01-13T16:59:00.005+01:00

Nice Fragments 2

2010-01-11T08:25:00.000+01:00

Nice Fragments 1

2010-01-10T12:33:00.005+01:00

Heaven nor Paradise

2009-10-30T12:12:00.012+01:00

"This may not be heaven nor paradise/But you fill my heart with happiness which I have never known/And I become a wind/The sun sets over the town which knew only sorrows/And I fly to the burning horizon..."

Kazeni Naritai

by The Boom

Persistence of Things

2009-09-06T10:19:00.014+02:00

The other day we cleaned the flat of my wife's eighty-eight-year-old mother who is now hospitalized from exhaustion. She has been living alone in the flat since her masseur husband died and recently, because of her old age and illnesses, she has been incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her flat even with the help of a domestic service. It needed to be thoroughly cleaned up before she returns from the hospital.
In the course of our cleaning, my wife found little souvenirs from her childhood: a tiny lace chemise she had worn when she was a few years old and a can of throat drops she had played with. For some reason her mother had kept them over these years. I touched them with my fingers and felt deeply moved. I could see in my imagination the little girl who my wife once had been in that chemise playing with the can. It was as though my fingers were touching her childhood which I had thought I would never know. Then, I thought about my own childhood and the childhoods of other people, and about life, about how it transforms us and carries us far into the future seemingly au hasard.
The empty can of drops now sits on my wife's desk. After all, it is only a thing, a metal thing. Things are strange. I never understand them. They belong to us. They are objects to be made, sold, used and owned by us, human beings. But once they come into existence in this world, they are on their own and they never really need nor belong to us: possession is an illusion. Looking at those childhood souvenirs of my wife, I remembered a wrist watch of my father. I remember seeing it continue to tick time for more than a year after his death. The watch was made of stainless steel and covered with scratch-free crystal glass. I could see no rust on it. It looked as brand-new as on the day my father had bought it. He had worn it for years. Yet, it had survived him and it will survive him years and even centuries to come, keeping its cold integrity. I have never liked things.

Summer Wind

2009-08-14T16:51:00.016+02:00

About a month ago, when we were crossing a busy street in front of Galeries Lafayette, I noticed a little pile of wreaths placed around a pillar of an old building and asked my wife what they were. She told me that they were for a French resistance soldier who had been hanged by the Nazis in the war. I walked around the pillar and read an inscription on it: "...Was Hanged Here...Left For Public Display..." When I looked left across Jean Médecin Avenue, I could see another pile of flowers on the other side. There must have been two of them. All around me, people were busy going about their own business. Perhaps, they were going to the Promenade or to Saleya Market. I didn't know. No one stopped before the pillars. They walked past as if they hadn't seen anything unusual. But I saw them. I saw their sunburnt faces in the pains of death; I saw the ropes around thier necks, still tightening even after they were dead; and I saw the two scraggy bodies sway in a silent unison in a hot summer wind. As I moved away and walked down the avenue, the image followed me as if the past had caught up with me.

My Landscape

2009-06-01T20:13:00.044+02:00

Last week we went hiking in Escragnolles about 100 kilometers northwest of Nice. It was a return visit for me as we had hiked there in the fall of 2007. Just as before, we followed the same trail and saw the same mountains and stopped by the same farmhouse for lunch. What was different now was that we were in spring. The desolate wasteland of limestones of two years ago had turned into an earthly paradise with green meadows and colourful wild flowers. Warm rays of sunshine rained on us as we walked. The honey-sweetened air vibrated with cheerful songs of wild birds. We stopped frequently to admire breathtaking panoramic views of the underlying village and the surrounding mountains. We discovered new pleasures nearly every step of our way. And all these abundant riches of nature, colors, scents and sounds belonged to us alone, two lone hikers, on that day.
As I walked, familiar landmarks gave me a sense of nostalgia and I often found myself fondly recalling our previous outing. It was a little surprising to me because it was only the second time I visited the place and I hadn't found its strange, harsh landscape very attractive the first time. Perhaps, my initial impression had lost its hard edges in the course of two years. Perhaps, since my arrival in this country in January, I had been gradully acclimatised to its landscapes to the degree that I was now ready to accept them as my own. On that day in Escragnolles, I felt as if I had been in the welcoming arms of an old friend and I found comfort in them.

Birthday

2009-03-06T12:18:00.010+01:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I received little presents from my wife in the morning and we had lunch together at a couscous restaurant in our quartier; we saw a romantic movie in the afternoon; and there was a small surprise party with my friends in the evening. I don't remember if I had anything like this before on my birthday. It was a day not with extravagant luxuries but with simple pleasures, with little things such as going out together, taking a walk together, smiling to each other in the street, etc. In fact, it was a great day, a day made of gold. At the close of the day, my heart was full. That's happiness, I said to myself.

Good Morning to You

2009-01-27T09:01:00.004+01:00

I left Japan in a hurry. I didn't have enough time to take care of everything I should have, to tie up my life there neatly in a little package and put it away in a drawer of my old desk and forget. But life is, perhaps, like that as long as we live. So, I was not worried.

It still amazes me to think that a certain woman with little hands of a child has become so important to me that I would even give up my life for her. But life is, perhaps, like that and I am not perturbed.

I saw her from the balcony of our flat as she was coming back from her morning errands. She saw me, too. She stopped at the crossing, looked up and smiled to me. Life should be like this and I am in peace.

Merci

2008-08-30T12:46:00.003+02:00

Merci pour les sourires

Merci pour le bonheur

Merci pour l'amour

Merci pour l'été merveilleux

Merci à toi, ma femme

Merci à toi, Léa

Whisper

2008-05-21T13:36:00.015+02:00

I was out in a flower field on a glorious day of spring. It was full of heavenly colors and sweet scents, and like a happy butterfly I flitted across the field, moving from this rose to that, from that iris to this, and drew hundreds of sketches and took thousands of pictures. My bag swelled with treasures of the day, and I left the field with great satisfaction. On the twilit trail back to my home, I saw dandelion seeds soar to the sky. Then, one swept down to me and spoke in a sad whisper: "Sir, you must be the most stone-deaf of all men on earth! Didn't you hear what the flowers said? While you were busy with your drawings and pictures, they sang so loudy of great secrets of life and death which all humans have long sought to discover. Alas, you never listened! You never listened!"

What I Knew

2007-11-26T07:35:00.000+01:00

Of course, I knew exactly where I was. Yet, I didn't know where I was. It didn't matter to me where I was. It could have been Oran or Murmansk or Montevideo. It wouldn't have mattered. I didn't know what day of the week it was. It didn't matter, either. The only thing I knew for certain was her hand in mine as I looked out at the sea. It was small, a mere child's hand, and warm. And it did matter.

A Stranger in Me

2007-08-30T09:57:00.001+02:00

I was a quite restless child. No one could make me sit still even for a few minutes. I would get up for no reason and wander around, sometimes near, sometimes very far. I ran away from home countless times. I could still hear clearly my parents' voices calling out my name from far as they looked for me.
At school, my teacher had enough of me. During the lessons, I would leave my desk and roam around the classroom to talk to my friends or play games by myself. I was a nuisance to my teacher, disturbing the order of the whole class. He would order me to go out of the classroom and stand in the hallway as a punishment. I stood in the long, cavernous hallway all alone for a long, long time. I may well have been crying. I don't remember now. The voices of my classmates reciting something or other came from inside the classroom. Other voices came from the other classrooms. I listened to them all. Alone.
I moved up the grades but my behaviour didn't mend itself. I kept standing in the hallway. I must have been nine or ten years old. As I found myself at my usual post one day, I heard awkward footsteps on the wood floor of the hallway. I looked up and saw a boy walking toward me. I had known him. He was one year older than I was. He was different. He had a deformed leg - some kind of congenital disease, no doubt. His left leg was dreadfully thin compared to his right. It looked like a dried-up white cucumber. I had felt strangely attracted to his deformity. I used to stare at it when he played with his classmates in the school playground. He must have been painfully aware of curious gazes from me and other pupils.
He was limping closer and closer to me. I kept staring at his horrible leg. Then, I looked up and saw his face, then, his eyes which were glaring with hatred. Out of a mixture of fear and shame, I averted my eyes and looked straight ahead, pretending I was no more aware of his presence, let alone, his deformed leg. Just as he was about to pass me by, he suddenly turned on me and hit me hard in the stomach. I couldn't breathe. I fell slowly on the floor, holding my stomach with my both hands. I was terribly frightened. So frightened in fact that I forgot the pain from the blow. Nobody had ever hit me like this. It was totally unexpected. I could not think. Then, I knew for the very first time in my life that there was somebody in the world who hated me so much that he would willingly hurt me.
The boy limped on without saying a word, without even looking back, as if nothing had happened, and he was gone. I remained on the floor for a long time, groaning quietly and helplessly. For how long? I don't remember.
More than forty years later, I still occasionally recall this incident. It may or may not have had some influence on my personality. It's impossible to say.

A Story 5/5

2007-05-10T11:24:00.000+02:00

The scar loosened its grip on Reiko. Her eyes became disengaged from Junichi's face and turned back to the lorry in front. "Kenji, hand me the bag, will you?" she called out to one of the boys in the back seat. "Which one, Mom?" "The one with green tea in it. I'm thirsty." The boy passed the bag to her over her shoulder. "Thank you," she said to him, to which came no reply. He was already too busy playing the video game with his brother. Reiko took out a tea bottle and drank from it. Tea coursed down her throat again and again. It refreshed and calmed her. "Do you want some?" she asked Junichi, holding out the bottle. He shook his head to say no.

The scar will fade away. It will be gone in a month and you will regain your handsome looks as if there is nothing that could destroy them. Your face will continue to defy the passage of time and remain as youthful as on the day when I set my eyes on it for the first time at the art school. Then, your face was as solid as a lump of white marble. But now it's only a hollow mask of bronze. There is no one behind it.

All the girls at school were in love with him. 'I wasn't!' Emiko would deny, of course, just as vehemently as twenty years ago. Strange, she was the only one who mistrusted Junichi. Hearing professors praising his work would turn her stomach. 'He isn't an artist. He is false,' she used to tell me. She didn't come to our wedding. She left for Italy without a word.

Was he false? Failure in his art, failure in his business, failure in his marriage. Now reduced to a lowly office clerk bossed around by an idiot manager.

And me? What will that make me? All those years? All those moments? I always believed in him. Perhaps, he never really believed in himself all that time while I was trying to resurrect him? Is that it?

"You, two, quit fighting or I will throw you out of the car!" Reiko shouted at the boys as they became noisy.

They are just bored. That's why they fight... Painting doesn't interest them. It's so strange. Because they practically grew up in my atelier, toying with my paint brushes. I expected them to show at least certain facility not so much as talent in drawing. Yet they never went beyond cartoonish figures. Have no sense of proportion. They now seldom come to my atelier for lessons. The smell of paints makes them sick. They stay in their room playing video games instead. Their school records are abysmal. Is it possible that there is nothing remarkable in my children? What went wrong?

Reiko turned to her husband. "Something must have happened. Don't you think so?" she said with apprehension in her voice.

"Don't worry. We will get going soon."

"Why don't you turn on the radio? We might hear something."

Junichi grunted. He lifted his body off the steering wheel, turned off the cassette player which had been playing old pop songs and switched on the radio. He pushed several buttons to search for traffic programs but could find none.

"There isn't any traffic info."

"Wait, Junichi. There. He is reading news now. Perhaps, they will put in traffic info after the news. Leave it there," Reiko urged him.

A man's monotonous voice was reading news on the radio. It went through items of the day from a company bankruptcy to a headless female body found in Osaka Bay.

Emiko... She proposed again. 'So, what are you going to do? Are you going to be stuck with Junichi for the rest of your life? This is the last time I would give my truest words to you. It's for your sake and for your art's sake. Come with me, Reiko. You will have no worry. My business is going well. And I have enough money to take care of you and your kids. I will divorce my stupid Italian husband. If you like, we will go to Bali and live there for good. I know some people there. I will start a new business. You will paint as much as you like. You will live for your art. I will live for you!'

She hasn't changed a bit. Only this time she didn't say the word love because she didn't want to scare me off again. After all these years she still keeps the same futile hope. She is mad. And I may be mad as well. After all, what is so unusual about two mad women living together in Bali?

"And lastly," the voice said from the radio, "our correspondent Mr. Sasaki in Rangoon, Burma files a pecial report on anti-government activist Aung Sun Su Kyi on her fifth day of captivity in her car at the military road block outside the capital." Then another voice took over. "The daytime temperature is expected to climb into the high thirties today, and the ordeal of Aung Sun Su Kyi continues..."

Reiko remembered seeing on television the slim figure of the Burmese activist making a speech to a crowd of squatting supporters outside her house. She was standing over the top of the iron gate, her back straight in pride and defiance, with a microphone in her hand. From behind her back someone was holding a parasol over her head to shield her from the sun. Her hair was made into a bun and a bunch of delicate white flowers were pinned to it, making her appear virginal.

After the news report followed a weather forecast. But no traffic information came. A chat show started. She changed stations herself in vain. "Damn! We are stuck here and we don't know what is happening!" she cursed loudly and slumped back in her seat. She wanted to cry. Her husband switched back to his pop music. His fingers resumed tapping like before.

Poor woman! She's still stuck in her car. It must be boiling in Rangoon. Her flowers must have withered now. Oh, I feel so hot. My head feels like burning. Food and water have run out and she is sick, even dying. The soldiers won't let her out of the car even for a pee. Oh, poor woman. Let her go! Free her in the name of justice!

She turned around and looked out the window again. The potato farmer with the pony tail was laughing, which made him even uglier. She looked at Junichi who was staring ahead in silence with his chin on the steering wheel. She looked at the wall of the lorry in front. It's now or never, she said to herself.

Reiko opened the door and got out of the car. "What are you doing?" Junichi cried.

"I can't sit here and wait. I just can't. Junichi, I feel very sorry for you. I have to go alone with my kids from here."

"What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?"

"Don't worry about me. I'm doing fine."

Reiko looked up past the lorry truck at a long line of vehicles on the road. She squinted her eyes, trying to see the end of the line in the distance. "Kenji, Koji, get out of the car! Both of you! We are going to walk. Don't forget your backpacks." The harsh tone of her voice frightened the boys, who came rolling out of the car in a hurry. They didn't know what was happening. Once outside, they stood in bewilderment while their father shouted at them from inside the car. They had never seen him so angry.

It was a strange sight to watch: a petite woman and two small boys, weaving through the stranded cars and trucks, marching slowly along the expressway on foot. The woman in sunglasses and slung with enormous travelling bags, leading at the front with her dishevelled head held up, looking quite oblivious of her surroundings; and from a little distance behind the boys with backpacks following, hand in hand, occasionally whispering something to each other. The little caravan marched on and on, gradually disappearing into the shimmering summer haze beyond.

A Story 4/5

2007-05-08T13:45:00.000+02:00

At night on that day, after putting her boys to bed, she dragged herself up the stairs to the master bedroom. She felt so exhausted that she went straight to the bed and lay herself down without bothering to change her clothes. She tried to think if there was anything she had forgotten to do for the following morning. But she couldn't remember anything. She felt empty inside without a scrap of thought. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
A profound sorrow filled her heart. She was so sad; she was crying. Then, she woke. The glaring ceiling light of the bedroom stung her eyes. She had forgotten to turn it off. She lifted her hand and shielded her eyes. Her face was wet from tears. She wiped them away quietly. She got up and went to the window. The night had advanced considerably during her sleep. She looked down at the shadowy garden, at the deserted street, at the dark windows of houses, at the bright night sky over Tokyo in the distance. She stood by the window, looking, questioning and searching. As her eyes gradually became used to the delicate shades of black, the darkness seemed to glow and objects began to separate from each other. After some moments, she picked out a dab of black, darker than the night itself, nestling against the front gate. She noticed it because it had slightly moved. She stared at it. She seemed to be able to distinguish a head and limbs. She knew it was the vagrant whom she had seen that afternoon. He was lurking there, waiting for a chance to sneak in. She had known that he would come back.
As Reiko looked on, the man slowly stood up and after opening the gate noiselessly, slipped into the garden. Once inside, he stood still. She was sure that he was looking up at her. No one could miss her because the second floor bedroom was ablaze with light and her feminine shadow was distinctly seen in the window. It was the only room which was illuminated in the house and in the neighborhood at this late hour. She felt the heat of his intense gaze through the cool night air. Then he started toward the house. His gait was unsteady. His body swayed from side to side as he made his way. He must have been drunk. She heard a growl. She was surprised at his boldness. But she felt no fear. On the contrary, she felt a strange sort of exhilaration. It intensified as he neared the front door of the house which was left unlocked as she had expected him to return. "Come! I'm here. I'm waiting," she whispered to him, feeling dizzy. "Come and destroy me!" She was almost ecstatic.
When the staggering figure reached the front door and entered the bright circle of light cast by the wall light, she was astonished to see a different man there. He was not the vagrant she had expected so eagerly. The man looked up and grimaced at her. His face was a little strange because it was smeared with some paint. Afterward, he opened the door and disappeared inside. Reiko suddenly felt weak in her knees. She collapsed on the floor.
Later - how much later she couldn't remember - she went down stairs and found Junichi sitting in the foyer. He was in a pitiful state. His hair was dishevelled; his suits were muddy and torn; his white shirt front was spattered with blood. He was holding a handkerchief to his bloodied face and groaning from pain. Junichi told Reiko that he had been attacked by a man on his way home from the railway station. She helped him get up and lead him to the bathroom where she tended the cuts and bruises on his face. "He jumped out of nowhere and hit me for no reason," he said. "He smelled like piss. Perhaps, a hobo or something." While she listened to his story, tears welled up in her eyes and she began to sob. Junichi was moved. He thought she still cared for him like before.
Junichi called 110, afterward. Police officers showed up immediately at the house and drove him to the police station to take a deposition. Junichi couldn't give a good description of the man as the attack took place in an unlit alley. It also became clear that he hadn't been robbed, which puzzled the officers. They searched all night for the assailant. They took in numerous homeless men from around the town for questioning. But they couldn't find him. He seemed to have disappeared without a trace except a grimy woolen cap which they retrieved from the crime scene. The believed that it belonged to the man.

Will I Remember?

2007-05-05T15:01:00.000+02:00

Will I remember that once in May a bright light fell on the leaves? Will I remember when I become deaf and blind from old age? Will I remember when I'm finally freed from this life that the leaves danced with the wind?

A Story 3/5

2007-03-04T11:12:00.000+01:00

As usual, after she sent off her boys to school and her husband to work, Reiko sat in the kitchen and drank coffee alone. She flipped through the morning paper; she checked flyers for discount sales; and she thought about what to cook for dinner. She looked up at the calendar on the wall and read hand-written entries for the remainder of the week: dental checkup, teaching (at the community center), dinner with Emiko, work-out at the gym, town meeting, trip to Izu, etc. She tried to think of some dramatic phrases to use at the town meeting. She wanted to wake up the town councilmen from their slumber and get them doing something about vagrants whom she had seen urinate in the streets and drink beer in the park. She was deeply worried that sooner or later they would cause serious troubles in her neighborhood. Reiko saw the clock on the kitchen counter. She got up, cleaned the table and went to the bathroom to do the laundry.

An hour later she came out of the house with a wireless phone in her hand. The sun was already high in the hazy sky and heat was oppressive. She walked on the hot lawn to her atelier, a little prefab hut which had been built at a corner of the garden. At the door of the atelier she realized she had forgotten the keys. She cursed loudly and went back to the house to get them. When she finally got into the atelier, she opened the windows and turned on an electric fan to drive out the hot, stale air trapped inside. The room was small and crowded with tables and chairs and other pieces of furniture and at the center stood a sturdy easel with a cloth-covered canvas on it. She sat on a rattan divan which she had bought in Bali in the previous year. As was her daily routine to heighten her concentration before work, she turned on a small cassette player on the floor. Dreamy Gamelan music started to flow like an endless string of black perls and slowly encircled the room. She covered her face with her hands and listened to it quietly. With a slight bend forward of her upper body, she looked as if she was crying.

That morning, like the previous morning, music didn't help Reiko. She reached down and searched inside herself. But she found not even a flicker of enthusiam for work. She felt empty, dull and stale. She thought of a long day ahead, of her hard struggle which would most certainly end up nothing in the end. She saw the futility of her endeavor, the absurdity of her life.

A sort of mental blockage had developed in Reiko when she had started on her last paintings for the exhibition. Whatever she tried, she couldn't regain her former facility with her paintbrushes. In fact, until then, it had been plain sailing for her. Images and colors had come to her so easily, so powerfully that she had worked like in a trance. She had never painted so many paintings on a single theme. But such a degree of sustained concentration was now impossible for her to achieve. She was now easily distracted and unable to focus her attention. However, she stubbornly stuck to her daily routine and kept painting whether she had the desire to do so or not, and at the end of each day she would close the atelier and trudge back to the house, exhaused and beaten.

While music was playing, she got up from the divan to make preparations for her work. She moved about the room ponderously as if she was carrying the weight of another person on her shoulders. She slowly arranged things on the table which was covered with a tangled pile of paintbrushes, paint tubes and other numerous objects. After putting on a work apron, she stepped in front of the canvas. She hesitated for a moment and then lifted the cloth cover from it. The painting showed several figures which were only half done. The background was violently crisscrossed by traces of paints and charcoal. She stared at the canvas for a long time. She felt something was very wrong with it. But she couldn't see what it was with her eyes. She sighed and held up a brush.

Reiko worked without a break until noon. After lunch in the kitchen she stepped out of the house again this time in a broad-rimmed hat with a pair of garden scissors in her hand. She went to a flowery patch of the garden to pick lilies with which she was going to decorate the atelier. Then, she saw the man. He was leaning lazily against the iron gate by the street, pushing his greasy, sunburnt face to it and looking in. She noticed the filthy woollen cap and shabby black suits he wore. He was one of the vagrants who had been camping out in the park. He smiled at her like an imbecile and waved his fat hand up and down through the latticework of the gate to attract her attention. He was a big man. He could easily break open the gate and get inside at any second if he wanted.

Reiko was frightened. She didn't know what the man wanted. She thought it best to ignore him. She hoped he would go away if he saw he could get nothing from her. She conducted herself as calmly as she could. She felt his eyes behind her back, following her every move, which made her extremely nervous. "Hey! Hey!" The man whispered to her in an ardent, insistent way. She pretended she heard nothing. He raised his voice and repeated. She tried to look busy with her scissors. Then, after moments of silence, he suddenly exploded into a violent howl like some rabid animal and began to scream at the top of his voice. He seemed to have gone completely mad. She froze. When she heard a clanking sound as if he was turning the latch key of the gate, she thought he was coming into the garden to attack her. She panicked and turned around in terror. In the split second while she was making the turn, she saw clearly in her mind the man's bull-like figure charging straight at her with his cold, pitiless eyes firmly fixed on her and his powerful fist raised aloft. With nothing to stop his advance, with nobody to protect her from him, she saw that what was going to happen to her was inevitable, that she had to surrender to her fate.

However, what she saw in reality when she had completed the turn was different. It was something small and shiny and floating through the air. It grew rapidly in size as it approached her. When she realized it was going to hit her, she closed her eyes instinctively. She felt a warm rain over her face. The object narrowly missed her and landed at her feet with a dry sound. She opened her eyes again and saw a beer can, squashed savagely at the middle, foam and fizzle angrily at her. When she looked up, the man was gone...

For a long time she stood still with white lilies in her hand, looking over in the direction of the gate. The man's disappearance was totally unexpected. She didn't know what to make of it. The images that her terror had created kept recurring in her mind like a looped film. It was difficult for her to reconcile them with the sight of the unmanned and closed gate which she now was watching in bewilderment. She wondered that it all might have been a daydream, that there had been nobody at the gate from the beginning, that she had heard only a stray dog barking in the street. She didn't know what to believe. She doubted her own sanity. Then she saw the beer can lying on the lawn. She picked it up and shook it. A faint hissing sound came from the inside. She put her nose to it and smelled it. Then, slowly and tentatively at first, she began to drink it. She drank it to the last drop. Then she walked back to her atelier to resume her work.

A Story 2/5

2007-02-27T13:46:00.000+01:00

Junichi was quiet. He kept looking straight ahead in silence. He had a long, ugly cut across his left cheek which ran diagonally up to his nose. It's still got a painfully raw appearance with its dark red coloring. His finger was tapping the steering wheel to the pop music from the car stereo. The taps irritated Reiko. What is he thinking? She wondered. Isn't he going to do something about this? In the back seat two small boys, their sons, began to fret from boredom.
"WE DELIVER HAPPINESS TO YOUR DOORSTEP - UNIVERSAL SHIPPING AND MOVING" Reiko read the large red letters painted on the back of the lorry as she had done a hundred times before since they had got on the expressway. As she read now, however, the letters seemed to peel off from the lorry and start to float away in the air. She felt dizzy. She turned away and looked out the side window. Held up next to their Volvo was a high-waisted four-wheel-drive truck with a pair of surf boards mounted on the roof. Meticulously waxed and polished, it gleamed in the sun and blinded her eyes. At the window of the truck she could see a muscular man with a pony tail talking to a young girl next to him. The pony tail flicked busily as he talked. The girl was wearing narrow sunglasses and her short spiky hair was dyed yellow. As Reiko watched, the man turned around and their eyes met briefly. He appeared middle-aged - too old for the girl - and had a broad, flat face like that of a peasant. Who would want to go out with a potato face like that? she thought. She tried to look at the girl more closely, but the man's body got in the way. The man said something to the girl. They both laughed. Are you laughing at me? You, idiots! She looked away in anger. Her eyes returned to the lorry and saw those inevitable words again: "WE DELIVER..."
"What's happening? Accident?" Reiko asked her husband, becoming impatient. "I don't know," he replied in a bored voice. "I see nothing. I hear no ambulance siren, either. Don't worry. It will get moving again soon."
'Don't worry', you say. And you just sit around and do nothing. You don't get mad. You don't scream. What are you waiting for? Mickey Mouse with the magic wand? You would say the same thing even if our house is on fire. There are things that we should worry about. What about us, for example? Don't you see that our marriage is falling apart in front of your eyes? Do you care? If we are fated to go separate ways, it will be the saddest thing in my life and I will go on crying until I die. Perhaps, you are afraid. Perhaps, you are ashamed. I told you so, but you pretended you didn't understand. 'What are you talking about?'
You have changed since our galley-shop went under. Your pride, self-confidence and generosity seem to have gone with it. You have changed. You have been strangely quiet lately. You are holding back something inside. I know. Speak! Your silence frightens me.
Reiko caught sight of the scar on his cheek. She felt disgust and tried to look away immediately as she had done before. But on this occasion she was drawn to it by a strong force. The scar seemed to fascinate her eyes independently of her will. She examined its shape and colors closely. As she looked, the scar grew larger and larger and gradually spread to the rest of his face, swallowing up his eyes, nose and mouth one by one. Then out of the hideous scar which opened like a strange tropical flower another face emerged. The new face had a pair of cold, pitiless eyes, which stared back at her. What until then had been a dull sensation in her breasts became sharply focused like a knife and pierced her heart. She gave out a faint gasp. Then, a moment later, a very different feeling, a kind of euphoria suddenly swept over her. Her blood veins expanded and her eyes lit up. An expression of ecstasy spread over her face. She felt as if a great excitement of life was about to happen to her, as if she was about to embark on a glorious journey into the vast, open seas, leaving every entanglement of her life behind. She saw a clear, blue horizon ahead. Freedom!
Then a horn blared right behind her ears and startled her out of her reverie. It came from the four-by-four truck. No, no. It is impossible! It isn't just possible!

A Story 1/5

2007-02-26T15:11:00.000+01:00

I used to write short stories many years ago. It was for my own pleasure and not for publication. Here is the first installment of one of them. I may put on line the rest of the story from time to time. My English may sound unnatural at times. My apology in advance. It has no title.

"God, we are stuck!" Reiko said to herself with alarm. Indeed, the car had come to a complete halt with a soft recoil as if it had crashed into an invisible wall in slow-motion. She had known it would end up like this. She waited. But the car wouldn't move. She began to pray.
Everything was at a standstill like in a photograph. All around her, hundreds of cars and trucks stood motionless; and chained together one after another, they carpeted the expressway which snaked through wooded hills. High above, suspended in a hazy summer sky, the sun blazed away. Trees on the hills looked transfixed in the hot, still air. Nothing moved. Birds stayed in the tree shades and gasped silently. Heat was tremendous and the asphalt steamed. Unknown to the stranded drivers in the hills, the gigantic gridlock extended to the surrounding lowland. It stretched through the great green plain in an unbroken line all the way to the distant horizon.
Junichi, Reiko's husband, who sat next to her, groaned in despair and after slowly unbuckling his seat belt, slumped over the steering wheel of his old Volvo in resignation. He looked already exhausted, though they still had a long way to go before reaching Western Izu where they were spending a rare weekend together. Junichi had slept very little the night before. It was past midnight that he had come home from work.
Junichi was silent. With his unshaven chin perched on the steering wheel, he was staring ahead. There was a lorry truck in front of them. Reiko glanced at him, wondering what he was thinking. She saw a strange, glassy look on his face. He was obviously in a deep thought. She could not tell what it was. Reiko had noticed the same dazed look before. It's his new habit, she thought.
The lorry truck was huge. Its tall, silver-glazed body towered over the tiny Volvo. Its massive presence filled the entire windshield and made Reiko nervous. She felt it was quietly suffocating her. She tried not to look at it. To distract her mind, she thought about her upcoming exhibition which was to open in September. The exhibition was to focus on a collection of paintings which she had done from her frequent trips to the island of Bali. It was Emiko, a gallery owner and close friend from the art school, who had first suggested it to her. Emiko liked her paintings and wanted her to paint more for the exhibition. She said they would sell at good prices. She went over her sketchbooks and suggested what she might work on. Though Emiko always acted out of concern for her business interest, she had been always fair to Reiko. Reiko trusted her.
An absurd thought floated into Reiko's mind. She wondered what if she could never get out of the traffic congestion for a long, long time. She imagined that she would starve to death in the car and become mummified sitting-up like a seven-hundred-year-old Buddhist monk she had seen in a temple in Kyoto. She thought that the car would be stuck on the highway for many more years after she died, and that rust would eat it away, that thieves would gut it out, that it would forever sit on the highway with her in it, her, mummified and yet conscious of everything around her, feeling herself slowly crumbling to dust. She was going to laugh at her silly thought but she couldn't. Because just then she felt a dull pressure in her breasts and her heart began to palpitate. She had been suffereing from strange palpitations lately. She had seen the doctor about them. He had only said that it's due to mental stress and recommended a time-off from her work, which she couldn't afford until September. She sat upright and took deep breaths repeatedly to calm herself.
"Is the air-conditioning too strong for you?" Junichi asked Reiko. But she didn't answer. Seeing her impassive face, he turned away to resume his pensive watch.
A few minutes later, the palpitation went away. Reiko was relieved as she listened to her now normal heartbeat.

Ashigara Road

2007-02-17T12:45:00.000+01:00

Mt. Ashigara, as the villagers call it, had loomed dark and fearsome in the distance for several days as we made our way. When we finally reached its foot and began to climb, I could barely see the sky because of the thick foliage. I felt indescribable fear in my heart.

- Sarashina Diary

In the late summer of 1020 a thirteen-year-old girl set out on a long journey with her family from a small back country in the east of Tokyo to Kyoto, the then capital of Japan. Her father had been a provincial governor. As the term of his posting had ended, he was taking his family back to the capital to receive a new appointment. The journey was to cover six hundred kilometers and take three months.
They had already ferried across two rivers; they had crossed vast plains thick with reeds which were so tall that the tip of a horse-mounted guardsman's bow could not be seen; and they had walked on white sands by the sea until they reached the mountains of Ashigara which stood like a wall before them. It was the most arduous part of their journey. Behind these mountains spread the foothills of Mt. Fuji and from there it was a easy passage down to Suruga Bay.
The girl is known to us only by the name of Daughter of Sugawara Takasue. She was a child with lively imagination and liked to read stories. Once she learned from her elder sister or nursemaid both of whom must have been well-educated that there was the most beautiful story of all which was called The Tale of Genji, she wanted to read it herself. Unfortunately, living in such a remote country, she could not procure the book. As her desire mounted, she made herself a statue of Buddha; and when nobody was looking, she would perform ablutions and sneak into the prayer room of the house and pray in front of the statue: "Please, Buddha, let me go to Kyoto soon. I have heard there are many, many books in Kyoto. Please, let me read them all;" and she would bow as deeply as she could so that her forehead touched the floor.
On the other side of the Ashigara mountains a new life waits for her. In the spring of the following year she is given the entire volumes of The Tale of Genji by her aunt. More books and stories come and she becomes increasingly lost in the fantasy world of improbable romances and adventures. Only gradually her half-closed dreamy eyes opens and begins to see pettiness, disappointments and sorrows of the real world. The early death of her sister; the divorce of her parents; the care of her aging father; a brief and unsuccessful attempt at service in the court; her late marriage (at the age of 33) to a man without a promising future; the death of her husband; and her lonely widowhood. In her fifties she finds herself all alone in Kyoto.

Months and years have passed. When I recall my past, everything seems like a dream. And as I recall, I feel great agitations in my heart. So much so that I nearly feel sick.

All this awaits the little girl of thirteen on the other side. She has no way of knowing it. She simply treads on the mountain path toward an extraordinary world filled with excitements and pleasures.
A few days ago I walked the same road in Ashigara the woman who wrote Sarashina Diary might have walked. I never felt the immense stretch of time that separates us. It was no more than a moment for a dreamer.

Voices From the Past

2007-02-12T11:45:00.000+01:00

A woman makes a turn from one narrow commercial street into another in the warm sunny afternoon in Yokohama. She walks briskly as if she is pressed for time with her eyes set straight ahead. As she turns the corner, she passes by stone monuments of some sort. Probably she doesn't know what they are, even though she may have walked past them countless times. Probably she doesn't care. Anyway, they don't look attractive. They look old and dirty. They are just a part of everyday life here like electric poles. You don't look at an electric pole like it is something interesting, do you?
Each of these three monuments has an inscription on it. Although the inscription is written in the archaic lettering, it is not difficult to read. The one in the middle is the easiest; even an elementary school pupil could read it. It says, "Kamakura-Kanazawa Road". You realize it's a guiding post. How old is it? Another inscription on the back of this particular post would tell you that it was erected in 1682. In fact the sunlit street she leaves behind is the old Tokaido - the ancient trunk road which used to stretch from Kyoto to Tokyo.
The Tokaido had its heyday in the Edo period (1603-1867). Shoguns, samurai and merchants used it to make long-distance journeys. There was an incessant flow of people, men and women of various social ranks, animals and colorful palanquins all day long. Hundreds of restaurants and inns lined along the road at every major town. You might have seen some woodblock prints from "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido" by Hiroshige Ando. The artist himself walked on this road. He even might have cast a cursory glance at these stone pillars.
Not only buildings but also roads disappear in time. In the Kanto area less than one percent of the original Tokaido is traceable. And almost nothing from that glorious era has survived. This country was and still is quite good at demolishing its own history in the name of progress and neglecting what is left of it. Could I hear in my imagination the lively commotions that people would have made hundreds of years ago as I walked along the road, dodging cars and bicycles and looking at nondescript concrete buildings all around me? No. I couldn't. It's not here.
When I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, I often went to the Castle and walked down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace. There, as my footsteps rang high on the narrow cobblestone road on cold, dark mornings, I heard voices from the past.

Photographers

2006-11-16T10:46:00.000+01:00

They are everywhere, men and women, young and old, with cameras. Slicing off moments from time, cutting off fragments from reality at a casual click of a button and, they assume, possessing them. How many images, either electronical or chemical, will each one produce in one's lifetime? And how many image-producers are there in the world? Reproduced images of reality are brought back into reality again and become another pieces of reality, cluttering it further.
I have seen many photos. More than thousands. Perhaps, a few tens of thousands, mine and others' included. At first I could differentiate them: I could tell bad ones from good ones, pretty ones from dull ones. I felt excited when I saw beautifully taken and well crafted images in bright colors and pleasing compositions. Now I sometimes look at those images like a bored passenger on a train gazing without much emotions at strange landscapes speeding away outside the window.

"Stare"

2006-10-04T13:11:00.000+02:00

There is an interesting article on the NPR homepage about a current photo exhibition in New York. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6169849)

Looking at some of the street photos of New York from the exhibition, I felt like taking those myself as well. The words of Walker Evans, an American photographer, were quoted at the end of the program: "Stare. It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, ply, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." In these words is evident his (youthful?) passion about street photography which he invented. Everyone in his photos seems to have a fascinating face. It may be more satisfying for me to take pictures of human beings.

Going Home

2006-08-15T14:36:00.000+02:00

The lantern floating - a sending off ceremony for the souls of our ancestors who have made a brief return visit to this world during the Bon period - took place this evening on the river. It is organized every year by a Buddhist temple to which my family belongs. My sister went with a lantern as usual. And this time I went as well with my camera. A few hundred people gathered by the river with their lit lanterns and started to float them away in a quiet and orderly manner. Our lantern is for our dead parents. Other lanterns are for others, perhaps, for their grandparents, parents, wives, husbands, children or babies. They are all going back to the world of the dead again until next Bon arrives. I'm not a religious man. Spiritual, yes, perhaps; but not religious.
My father died more than ten years ago from cancer. I was alone at his bedside in the hospital when he died. I felt nothing religious about his death. I did feel sorry for him. However, my eyes stayed dry. Perhaps, the saddest thing about it was that I had never understood him as a man while he was still alive.
My sister is very different. She is religious like my father. She prays every morning in front of our family alter. So, she goes to the lantern floating every year. I went once or twice with her after my father died. But since then I have stopped going.

Tiger Lilies

2006-07-23T09:44:00.000+02:00

As I was taking pictures of tiger lilies by an irrigation canal along the rice field near my home this afternoon, two little girls with a beach ball came by and asked me how special these flowers were. I told them their name and said they were not special flowers at all. I then told the girls to come down and stand by the flowers for some pictures. They appeared delighted by the idea. Unfortunately they became rather nervous as I made too many demands about their poses. As I struggled with my camera, I slipped on the wet grass and fell into the canal. My little models looked alarmed. I tried to reassure them by saying that I always fell into a canal when photographing tiger lilies.
Then an elderly farmer joined us. He plucked some of the lilies and told the girls to bring them home if they liked. He said these were the ones which he had planted when he had been as small as they were. The girls thanked the farmer and went away with the flowers. As I chatted with him, we found he knew not only my father but my mother and the whole of my relatives. It wasn't entirely surprising as my father had been from this area. It was well before my time. I sensed he was reminiscing his past during our conversation as we sat by his rice field, his own past which I had no part in. I became a little bored. His rice plants were in healthy green but he wasn't sure how this prolonged rainy season would affect his crop in autumn. I wished him good luck. He thanked me and went to work with his grass cutter. I walked back home in my soggy shoes.
It's a mad world we live in. Laser guided missiles, horwitzers and collateral damages. In times like this tiger lilies which are just common flowers look special.

One of those days

2006-06-18T14:02:00.000+02:00

I hiked in the mountains of Hakone today despite the foul weather. Those mountains were very densely wooded and provided almost no open views to my great disappointment. Moreover, the rain made the trail extremely muddy and slippery and I lost my way a few times in the heavy fog. I met there a group of about a hundred hikers - even in this wretched condition - all of them middle-aged. It appeared that their hiking had been organized by a TV presenter on his popular "Hiking for the Middle-Aged" program with support from a local railway company. As the mountain trail was very narrow, we had to form a long queue to the top. All of us were grimly silent in our rained and muddied misery. No one was smiling. Far behind the main body of the hikers, I had passed an old couple on their way down. They had given up because the climbing was too hard for them. They had been moaning from muscle pains in their legs. I was angry at the thoughtlessness of this TV presenter and the stupidity of people who followed his words. I said to myself "I will never come here again". Ah...
After a long day of sweating and cursing in the mountains, I finally rode a train back to my town. A young American couple boarded on the way and sat next to me. The girl, not knowing that I understand English, said to her boyfriend rather loudly that I smelled like piss in the typical American artless way. Ah...
Back at home, I found a message from a friend on my PC. She said that my last message hurt her feeling. I wrote back saying sorry, even though I had no idea how my message could hurt anyone's feeling. Then I found that it was only a silly misunderstanding. Ah...
Then, there was a phone call from another friend. He had married a few years before with no child. He said that he and his Filipino wife decided to adopt a boy from the Philipines in an illegal scheme and asked me to sign one of the documents to be submitted to the Japanese government. Ah...
So far four "Ah"s. But they are small, everyday things not to be taken seriously. I laughed about them. The photo shows the iron cables of aerial cable cars I rode this morning in Hakone. It would be nice to disappear like them into the white light.

Rainy Day Outing

2006-06-11T12:48:00.000+02:00

It was raining this morning when I woke up. But I went out to the Tanzawa mountains, nonetheless. Contrary to the weather forecast, the rain continued through the day and a thick fog didn't lift except for brief moments. I met a few hikers on the muddy trail. We exchanged consoling words as a formality about the awful weather and fog. However, I saw in their faces that they were secretly enjoying the day. And they might have seen the same in my face. On my way down from the mountains, I found myself whistling a song. Japanese nightingales answered with their own from wet treetops.

Le Chemin

2006-06-04T11:52:00.000+02:00

I see butterflies. Glinting in the sunlight, they dance from flowers to flowers. The sweet smell of their nectors fills the air and each time I breathe, I feel dizzy as if I were drunk. I could take a short rest here on the grassy roadside which looks so inviting. I could lie down and enjoy peace and silence all around me for a while. And only for a while. I wish very hard that it could last for eternity like an unawakened dream. But it is only for a moment. It's a rule, a law of nature which I could not change. I have a rule, too, that is, Don't look beyond the grassy roadside which looks always so inviting to me. Why bother to look ahead? There is only this path continuing on and on. And I know exactly where it leads to. Because I walked this path once before I was born.

Question & Answer

2006-05-19T09:20:00.000+02:00

Is this world a dream or reality?
I don't know which
Because it exists and it doesn't.

Anonymous
From Collection of Poems from Ancient and Modern Times (905 A.D.)

"enraciné"

2006-05-14T10:50:00.000+02:00

A middle-aged woman sitting in front of me in the train this morning was holding a bag with the word "enraciné" on it. It's a French word for "deep-rooted". It is unlikely that she understands French. Probably, she bought the bag at some discount store. This word called up to my mind another word: "déraciné", its antonym. Then, I remembered a poem by Onono Komachi:

My wandering life;
My sad existence;
A duckweed with no roots,
I lay myself down to the flow of a river;
If there is a water which calls me,
I will drift toward it.

Onono Komachi is a poetess who lived in the ninth-centry Japan. Some say that she was a great beauty with many lovers. But nothing certain is known about her. It is said that this poem was written when she was contemplating about leaving Kyoto, then capital of Japan, for a provincial town where her lover waits. My translation is not entirely faithful to the original.

Veratrum stamineum

2006-05-10T09:55:00.000+02:00

I went mountain climbing in Tanzawa, western, mountainous region of Kanagawa Prefecture, yesterday. My idea was to take pictures of the beech woods there. After three hours of hiking, I reached the top of Mt. Nabewari (1,300 meters above sea level). But it was still too early for a good beech foliage. Naturally, I was a little disappointed. Yet, despite the misty weather, views from that height were spectacular, truly breathtaking. I spent delicious moments there looking down and around alone, feeling a pleasant wind. I found a patch of broad-leafed plants in the woods. I couldn't find their name until this afternoon. Their Latin name is veratrum stamineum if that means anything to you. They belong to the lily family. They seem to put on clusters of small white flowers when they bloom in June. You can imagine my huge comedown when I found myself in a neon-lit city noisy with cars and people on my way back home.

Tea picking

2006-05-08T12:33:00.000+02:00

Young tea leaves are waiting to be picked in the town of Matsuda in this photo which was taken this afternoon. When I was small, we used to grow tea bushes in our gardens. We never thought of buying tea at supermarkets as we do now - we had no supermarket in our town at the time. Tea picking was a communal undertaking. Neighbors would get together, including their children, with bamboo baskets of various sizes and they would go round their houses one by one, picking clean their bushes. Adults taught us children which leaves to pick. Picked leaves from each neighborhood were then brought to the town's coorporative to be steamed. If I remember correctly, we picked from morning till dusk for some days. We loved the tea picking season because each house gave out sweets to us as a token of their thanks. It was a great fun.

"Hearing Autumn" Pavilion

2006-05-06T12:08:00.000+02:00

Its Japanese name is Choshukaku which translates to Hearing Autumn Pavilion. This charming little house is one of the buildings in the Sankeien Garden in Yokohama. It was originally built in Kyoto in 1623. Then, in 1906, Sankei Hara, a wealthy silk merchant, moved the whole house to a wooded secluded corner of his private garden in Yokohama which is now a public park. It is hard to see in the photo but there is a brook flowing around the house. I went there today to see maple trees. Their spring leaves were in gorgeous light green. Ah, what blissful moments I spent watching them! It is my dream to live in a house like this in the woods, separated only by a thin paper screen from the surrounding nature, hearing birds cry and feeling the wind. I would bring my favorites books there and spend the whole day just reading and watching and hearing and feeling each moment pass in delicious tranquility.

Spring Mountains

2006-05-04T00:17:00.000+02:00

For hiking I often go to the western part of Kanagawa Prefecture which have national parks with deep forests and mountains eight to more than a thousand meters high above the sea level. Yesterday I went to the town of Hadano - its central part is seen as the densely built-up area in the middle of the picture - which has the population of about seventeen hundred thousands, small by the Japanese standard. (A little village where I started walking from is seen in the lower right. In the far distance, though difficult to see because of mist, lies the Sagami Bay.) At this time of year the mountains appear motley-colored with various shades of light green (deciduous trees) and deep green (mostly cedars). As we are now on a week long national holiday, scenic places are rather crowded with hikers and sightseers from large cities - Tokyo is only one hour away and a tiny fraction of its population (twelve million) is enough to clog hiking trails.

Sweepers

2006-05-03T14:16:00.001+02:00

On my way to a hiking this morning I saw a woman and her daught-in-law sweeping fallen flower petals from under their cherry tree in this mountain village. "What a nuisance! We do this every year!" she said to me. On my way back from the hiking I passed again in front of their house. There was no sight of the woman or her daughter-in-law. I saw over the fence a little garbage bag lying in the garden which was stuffed to the full with pink petals. And the street was covered with more petals than it was in the morning.

Admiring

2006-04-16T14:04:00.000+02:00

Rain started to fall in the morning. Nontheless, I went out for hiking with my camera and umbrella. As I got off the train and made for a little mountain village on foot, the rain was falling harder and I was beginning to regret my foolish decision. Worse still, the mountains in the distance were covered completely with heavy fog and I couldn't make out anything at all. "What on earth am I doing on a miserable day like this?"

As I made a turn onto a deserted mountain path and started to climb, stillness of the surroundings which was only occasionally broken by cries of wild birds quickly took an effect and I forgot about the rain and my worries. I was feeling even cheerful. I was all by myself there as if I had owned the whole world. Yet, somehow I didn't feel alone.

The fog had turned the mountain into a magic place. From time to time I stopped to look around and hear birds cry and the faint gurgling sound of a distant river. "Wow!" I kept saying wow. That was the only word I used throughout my walk.

In a little clearing I saw wild cherry trees still in bloom. I took their pictures, of course. I spent a long time there roaming among them, admiring them, admiring other trees and the fog and the rain. As I looked up tall cedar trees at their tops which were disappearing into the milky whiteness, I saw huge water drops falling down straight at me. I closed my eyes and let them hit my face.

Morning walk

2006-04-02T07:24:00.000+02:00

This morning I woke up early and walked down to the river with my camera. Cherry trees planted on the embankment were nearing the peak bloom - the weather has been a little cool for two weeks, which has slowed down the blooming process. The embankment is a popular picnicking site of the town. This morning it was littered with garbage from yesterday's parties. The Japanese, as they have grown rich, have acquired a habit of throwing away things anywhere they please. The wooded hill where I often take a walk is also littered with various garbages from household electric appliances to industrial wastes and the town officials have done almost nothing about it. Ordinary Japanese are quite ignorant and unconcerned about the environmental degradation. Public awareness education about the environmental issues is almost nonexistent. Contrary to the cherished image abroad of their love of nature, they continue to destroy this country with their own hands. The same thing has been said by many people since half a century ago.

Morning greeting

2006-03-16T00:54:00.000+01:00

Daffodils in my garden may need a few more days to flower fully. I see a clear blue sky this morning. But a thunderstorm is forecasted for tonight.

Spring spectacle

2006-03-13T02:23:00.000+01:00

As the weather warms up, I go out quite often to hike or visit scenic sites in the countryside. At this moment Japanese apricot trees and some cherry trees - an early flowering kind - are in full bloom in the Kanto area. Last Saturday I went to a popular cherry park which is about one hour from my home. The park sits on a hill which looks down on the town of Matsuda and on the steep hillside some three hundred cherry trees are planted. The town officials and local merchants have decorated the main street with little pink banners, lanterns and even Christmas illuminations to add to the festive mood. The park was full of people: families drinking and eating, kids running about screaming and old people in full hiking gears. And Japanese pop music blared from the sound system. Still, the cherry blossoms were dazzlingly beautiful. When I looked at them, I heard no noise nor saw the crowd.

A little joy

2006-02-23T05:21:00.000+01:00

It is a warm, bright spring day today. I went out to my garden to take some pictures of daffodil buds. There, as I crouched on the ground, I noticed tiny white flowers the size of the pinhead. Since I took up photography, my eyes seem to have become more attentive to such small detail of the nature than before. The sight of these flowers filled my heart with joy. They are the first real sign of spring. I was smiling like a fool.

Paradise on earth

2006-02-16T07:21:00.000+01:00

Reading about recent clamors around the world caused by a cartoon in a Danish newspaper is depressing. I heard that some even died in public demonstrations in Pakistan and Lybia. The European press has largely stuck to the thesis of state censorship versus freedom of expression, while in the (Islamic) East where completely different cultural norms reign people saw it as an affront on their religion which they regard as their way of life. Optimists may believe that as the economic and political situation of Arab people gradually improves with globalization and as a result secularism spreads beyond a small circle of rich Arabs, problems such as this will simply disappear, that "backward" Arab countries will eventually be aligned with Europe and America. I wonder how long it will take. A hundred years? Two hundred years?
The view of non-European nations catching up with Europe seems too simplistic and now outdated. With the limited world resources, we won't be able to see the day when the word "poverty" disappears from our dictionary and there will always be haves and have-nots. The fact that even at this moment hundreds and thousands of Africans are dying from starvation is a disgrace and an indication enough of our inability and indifference.
News feeding another news; imams and Arab governments using the cartoon issue for their own political ends; the European press reprinting the cartoon one after another to show their support for the freedom of speech; a Pakistani boy killed by a stray bullet in a demonstration; and the rest of the world sitting quiet and pretending indifference. It's a chaos over which nobody has control.
I have a newspaper clip about a fire in a New Delhi slum in 1999 in which twenty-eight people died. The fire spread quickly through the slum, burning piles of scrap, plastic and paper and wood pieces which the residents collected. Firefighters arrived and they "had to bulldoze shacks along the slum's narrow lanes to make way for their trucks. Some angry residents, saying the fire department was slow to react, pelted fire trucks with rocks in a chaotic scene." I laughed when I first read this news. But I don't now.
I don't know if it is because I am getting old but I feel that our future won't be as bright as I thought when I was young. I am in a little depressive mood these days.

Hikers

2006-02-07T11:16:00.000+01:00

It's Sunday morning and as it is repeated every weekend, trains from Tokyo are crowded with hikers heading for mountains in the countryside. They are mostly middle-aged and older and typically in small groups of five or six. They are all properly dressed from head to toe for the occasion, including telescoping walking sticks as if they want no mistake about the wholesome nature of their gatherings. They are retired pensioners, old friends from the university, widowers and widows and so forth. They talk and laugh excitedly like pupils on a school excursion. With their sunburnt faces, they appear much healthier than young passengers with comic books in their hands who look up at them annoyingly.
"Walking keeps you healthy". Walking is a rage now. Breathtaking views from mountain tops are only a bonus. Old people walk everywhere on their walking sticks, believing that it strengthens their knees and legs and delays their eventual failure. They are afraid that one day they won't be able to walk even an inch with their own legs. Walking a long distance must not be comfortable for them. Yet no pain, no gain.
I met this woman in the photo on a local mountain. She was all alone, which was unusual. She waited for me to walk through a narrow path at the other end. I said thank you to her. But she said nothing. She had a strange vacant look in her eyes. She must be in her mid-sixties. I passed her and moved on. I turned around after a while and saw in a distance her lonely figure, looking ever so vulnerable, walking in silence on a hiker's stick. I followed her with my eyes until she disappeared behind the curve.

Morito

2006-01-29T11:37:00.000+01:00

Was it only five minutes or an hour? It doesn't matter how long I sat on a small secluded beach of Morito, listening to the sound of waves and watching a yacht slowly sailing by in the offing. I felt in tune with the rythm of nature around me and at peace with myself. Was it a dream or reality? I keep asking questions, even though I know very well that they are not important.

Mt. Fuji and a bamboo cutter

2006-01-24T06:19:00.000+01:00

I sometimes hear people say that whenever they see Mt. Fuji, they are so overwhelmed by its beauty that they just put their hands together and say a prayer.
There is an ancient children's story written in the ninth century called "The Tale of a Bamboo Cutter". In it an old bamboo cutter finds a tiny baby inside a bamboo. He takes her home and brings her up with his wife. The baby grows up to be a great beauty. Men from the neighboring villages begin to court her but she refuses them all. In time her rumor reaches the imperial court. The mikado visits the bamboo cutter's house and sees the girl and falls in love. Then, one day, strange people in shining white robes descend from heaven. They say that the girl is really a princess of the moon world and they come to take her home. The mikado sends his samurai to fight the princess's vassals from the moon but they are defeated. The princess has to go with her own people. Before flying away, she leaves a pot of elixir for the mikado. The mikado, so saddened by her departure, orders his samurai to climb the tallest mountain in Japan, therefore, the nearest spot to the moon, to burn the pot to signal to the princess his sentiment that he sees no use of eternal life which the elixir would give him because she is gone. His samurai duly execute his order. The name "fuji", as the story goes, comes from "fu"(non) and "ji"(death). It ends with the line "Even now the smoke from the burning pot rises to the sky". The scientists believe that Mt. Fuji was active at the time the story was written.
The photo was taken yesterday from Zushi which is near Kamakura. I saw no smoke. The pot seems to have burned itself out.

Childhood trees

2006-01-10T23:56:00.000+01:00

There are three trees - I don't know their name - standing on the bank of a river near my house. I know them very well. I have known them since my childhood. I must have been five or six years old at the time. I, together with my neighborhood playmates, used to picnic here, eating lunch - rice and salty plum pickles - which we (boys) made by ourselves. It seems that it was always in the summer time that we came here. The grass was green and the thick foliage of the trees along the river bank gave us cool shades from the sun as there were many more trees then. We would swim in the river, play games all day long until dusk set in. Sometimes, our parents came looking for us because we forgot time and overstayed. Although this place is less than a kilometer from my house, I always thought that I was much farther away as if I had gone to a different town, another world. I felt a sense of adventure. These trees are witnesses of my excitement of nearly half a centry ago. Whenever I see them, I think of my happy childhood and smile.

Frosty morning

2006-01-03T15:30:00.000+01:00

It finally rained yesterday after a long dry spell. As I went outside this morning, everything was white with frost. This azalea tree in my neighbor's garden looked enjoying the new winter coat.

Prayers on New Year's Day

2006-01-01T09:29:00.000+01:00

It was overcast and chilly here on New Year's Day. The Shinto shrine of my home town, a small wooden structure on top of a tree-covered hill appeared a little more crowded with worshippers than last year when I visited this morning. But it was a small crowd, nonetheless, around fifty or sixty people. You can still pray in a relative calm here. I heard that more people are coming from out of town, shying away from congested shrines in metropolitan areas. Indeed, the road to the front gate of the shrine was lined with many cars as I guess the authorized parking area was already full.
As you pass the gate and take a short uphill walk, you come to the base of a very steep stair with stone steps, some of which are perilously dislodged from overuse. If you look up, you see people almost directly above your head. This is Men's Slope. It is not for the old and families with babies in carts. There is another one called Women's Slope just on your left which is a paved road winding gently up the side of the hill. Both ways take you up at the end to a shady clearing surrounded by tall ceder trees. There is a washing basin there at a corner where you wash your hands as a part of the Shinto purification rituals. After washing, you proceed forward by climbing up another, this time shorter, stair. Then you finally reach the main hall of the shrine.
The main hall is a one-story wooden structure which looks like a warehouse. You see in front a donation box and a long red-and-white rope and on your left shrine caretakers (old neighbors) selling lucky charms. Inside the hall a special room is set up with a candle-lit alter so that if you wish, you can sit there and receive a private blessing from the priest - with a fee, of course. If you don't, you directly go before the donation box; you throw in small change; you shake vigorously the red-and-white rope which is tied to a huge bell on the ceiling and make a loud ring - the louder, the better because the sound is supposed to wake up the Shinto God and make Him listen to your wish; then you clap your hands twice - another wake-up call for good measure - and start to pray.
The shrine is about seven hundred years old. The place is very familiar to me. My father used to take me there on New Year's Day every year when I was small. My father died ten years ago. Now I go there alone.

Thank you

2005-12-24T10:25:00.000+01:00

To all, visible or invisible, who have visited my blog this year: I thank you and hope that you all will have safe holidays, and that next year will be the best year that you have ever had.
- luciole

Rice field

2005-12-23T05:15:00.000+01:00

Snow has started to fall in the mountains in the north. But in Tokyo we have only a cold, dry wind. The other day we went to a restaurant which looks over a Japanese garden with a pond. Looking at this thatched roof of a resting hut in the garden, I thought of wintry rice fields in the countryside.

A little Japanese lady

2005-12-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

"Daddy! Wait!" A little girl in kimono hurries into the Kawasaki-Daishi Shrine after her father. She has come with her little sister who equally is in a beautiful kimono. I know that she is seven years old and her sister three because both are here for the Celebration of Seven, Five and Three, an old Japanese custom where children of those ages visit local shrines to celebrate their childhood and pray for their happy future as adults. Today, in gorgeous and expensive kimono, girls are not just silly creatures but chic ladies, although this one in the photo forgets all about it for a monent and makes a furious dash through bewildered tourists, swinging wildly the long sleeves of her kimono, to be with her father, which is not ladylike.

Gate of Komyoji Temple

2005-11-14T04:14:00.000+01:00

When you visit a temple in Japan, you first go through its ornate main gate. The dimension of the gate is roughly proportional to the fame and size of the temple. The main gate usually consists of thick wooden pillars with a tiled superstructure. In the photo you see part of the superstructure of the main gate of the Komyoji Temple in Kamakura, reputed to be one of the largest in the Kanto area. In the ancient times when standing on the verandha, one must have seen a vast woodland spreading in the north and an unpolluted blue ocean in the south. Alas, in our sorry times, such spectacular views are no more.
The temple gate has a religious significance: you are supposed to leave your wayward, worldly mind behind, as you walk through it. It stands between two worlds, secular and spiritual. You may recall that the film Rashomon begins with a scene at a dilapidated temple gate.

Chrysanthemums

2005-11-06T04:24:00.000+01:00

Around this time of year one comes across chrysanthemum shows in parks and town halls all across Japan. Every Japanese town has its own chrysanthemum enthusiasts; and they bring their flowers of love and labor to the annual beauty competitions. The growers are typically elderly men in their sixties and seventies who spend their otherwise dull retired life looking after these jewels from dawn to dusk.

L'Invitation au voyage

2005-10-29T00:20:00.000+02:00

Là、tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté; Luxe, calme et volupté...

Baudelaire dans Les fleurs du mal.

There, all is order, beauty; Abundance, peace and pleasure...

However far you may travel, you will never find such a place in this world. It exists only in the poet's and my imagination. The farthest I travelled in search of "there" is a dusty oasis town called Ghardaia in Algeria which squats on the northern edge of the Saharan desert. I was to go further south to El Goléa and then from there to Tamanrasset. But at Ghardaia I fell very ill. Running a high fever, I stayed in a hotel bed for several days, waking up only to drink water and eat bits of fruits. Everyday mournful Moslem prayers entered through a half-open window of my room and mingled with my fever-induced hallucinations. I didn't know whether I had gone mad or not. In the end I realized I had no physical strength to continue the journey. So, when I felt a little better, I turned around and hurried back home to Paris as if escaping from a great danger. Years later, I came to realize that I had made that journey to meet my own death symbolically. Tamanrasset had had a strange appeal to me for a very long time. Its name had meant to me the end of this world. I don't know what I would have done to myself, had I actually reached there.

Cockscombs

2005-10-23T16:30:00.000+02:00

These are cockscombs I have found on a river bank near my house. They originally came from India around the sixth century. Indeed, when I went to India, I saw them in the garden of the Tomb of Itimad-ud-Daulah in Agra. That was the only place where I saw cockscombs during my short stay. Their strange shape and radiant color must have raised the curiosity of the ancient Japanese. They were widely planted in private gardens and used as a medicine and a dye at the time. One poem from that period goes: I thought of you day after day for long; Now cockscombs are blooming in my garden; My love for you have colored them with bright red. Nothing is known about the person who wrote the poem nor the circumstance in which he or she wrote it.

On love

2005-10-18T00:35:00.000+02:00

A man and a woman are sleeping in a seaside park. It's mid-September and it's still quite hot. They have found a cool shade by a tall tree in the middle of the lawn. "It's nice here with a wind blowing from the sea," the man says. "Yes, love. Gosh, I feel so sleepy!" replies the woman. They are soon fast asleep. Bicycles pass by with bells ringing; children run around, screaming; and dogs bark. But these external noises don't disturb their deep sleep. The man's abdomen contentedly rises and falls, without which movement they might well be two corpses lying on the ground.

I used to believe that love is something very special, even spiritual. Now I have a completely different view. I can only write from a man's perspective. When a man talks about love, he means sex. "Love at first sight" is nothing more than an animal instinct. And there is nothing spiritual about sex. It's a simple physiology on a par with dogs and cats.

As I have lost interest in women in the sexual way, I have begun to see them more like us, men, with as many defects and complexes. I regard all great love stories as pure fantasies written by frauds; I see no more mysteries about women. Love is a folly.

The wind scatters my words and they become another meaningless noise to the lovers in the park who keep sleeping peacefully.

Glowing colors

2005-10-16T15:31:00.000+02:00

It rained all day today. It's a prolonged drizzle we call "an interminable rain of autumn". We have two rainy seasons, one before and the other after the summer. Of the spring drizzle, a Japanese poet in the Heian period, Arihara-no-Narihira, once wrote to his lover: Unable to sleep; I stayed up all night, looking at the spring rain; My heart was full of longing for you.

But I didn't want to stay at home just looking at the rain. So, I went to a fishing port called Misaki on the tip of Miura Peninsula which is about two hours from my house. This port is famous for tuna fish. Indeed, I saw numerous tuna restaurants along the pier. But my impression was that things were not going well for the fishermen. Customers were few and there was a general run-down look about the port. As I walked around, the feeling of depression began to set in.

What lifted my gloomy heart was bright colors painted on the ships. Under the sombre grey sky, those colors appeared to glow.

False images

2005-10-09T14:40:00.000+02:00

This is me taking a photograph as reflected on a half-mirror window of a hotel in Yokohama. I first became interested in photography when I was a teenager. I took pictures for a few years. Then my interest turned to painting and I gave up photography entirely. I never believed that photography is an art form.
When I passed the age of forty, my life suddenly began to accelerate. Months and years started flying by. I was always very busy with my work, household chores, engagements, meetings and etc. Christmas would come when I felt I had just put away the tree a month before. I sometimes forgot what I had done and where I had been the day before. Premature senility? I hope not. I lived each day indeed but nothing seemed to remain from those days I lived: my life felt empty, devoid of substance.
Two years ago, I took up photography again to record what I saw and did each day so that I would know what kind of life I was leading. It should serve as a diary, providing my life with its content, I thought.
So, I bought a digital SLR, lenses, a photoprinter, a PC and other peripherals, and now I have even started a blog to put up my pictures. And what do I find photography now? I still don't think it's an art form. I think that it's an imperfect recording tool which does not reflect with enough accuracy what I see with my own mind's eyes. Then, there is another matter. Once you start editing your photos with a sophisticated and easy-to-use software, you soon realize that they can transform themselves in infinite and arbitrary degrees. You will never know which is the "real" photo. In truth, there is no "real" photo. Depending on the make of your camera or printer or lens or monitor, you see different images: they are all false images. What a mess I am getting into! I am even thinking about going back to painting these days.

Free yourself

2005-10-01T13:02:00.000+02:00

Break it down and free yourself!

Pilgrims

2005-09-30T13:13:00.000+02:00

In the late afternoon yesterday in Kamakura, as I was walking back to the railway station, I saw a group of elderly people praying in a temple. They were all clad in white robes with the names of their favorite gods written on their back. I also saw some who were in ordinary clothes. They might have been passers-by who had spontaneously joined the prayer. I could hear the monotone voice of an monk from inside, punctuated occasionally by the sound of a bell. They were pilgrims, going from one temple to another, giving prayers at each stop. I don't know their life stories. I don't know why they are making a pilgrimage. I don't know what they were praying for. Are they just poor souls lost in this world and finding comfort in believing something? I don't know.
I don't subscribe to any religion. I don't go to church. I don't go to Buddhist temples nor Shinto shrines to pray. I work, read books, see films and take photos. But there is a strongly religious side in me. You might say, a desire to believe in something out of this world. When I was young full of ideas with no experience, I dreamed of being a pilgrim of a sort and travelling around the world to eventually reach a sacred place where I would find Truth and eternal comfort. I have already lived more than a half of life allotted to me and have been to many places and seen many things. I know, now as a man, that there is no "Truth" nor eternal comfort in this world. I live with the fact like many others. But when I read about wars, senseless killings, despicable exploitations, all evils that are being repreated everyday in this world, I feel very depressed and want to escape from all this by believing in something flawless and permanent that would give me security and comfort. Is there such a thing? I doubt it. So, I keep working, reading books, seeing films and taking photos. I am just an ordinary man.

Zuisenji Temple

2005-09-29T14:43:00.000+02:00

I went to Kamakura today with my camera (a Pentax *istDS). I often go there as there are pretty things to shoot. Kamakura was the capital of Japan from 1192 to 1333 and there are still hundreds of old temples from that period. Some are well-tended and quite beautiful. They attract many tourists. And there are some which are neglected by their monks and left to gradual disintegration. There is a temple called Zuisenji which is found a little distance away from the center of Kamakura. It is one of the prettiest. There is a moss-covered stone basin at the entrance of the temple. Water steams into it through a bamboo pipe. Worshippers drink from it after a long walk from the nearest bus stop to here. This is a photo of the basin.

Concrete

2005-09-28T14:36:00.000+02:00

We, the Japanese, love concrete. So much so that we have completely covered Tokyo with it. Yokohama is almost the same except that there is a sea. We don't have enough concrete to cover it, fortunately. But I have no doubt that if we have, we would do it. Concrete paints cities in a sombre grey color. Exhaust fumes from cars stick to it. It's brittle. It has no warmth of wood, no solidity of rocks. People flock to seaside parks to escape from concrete. There they watch the sea. They watch ships slowly sailing in and out with the grace of an albatross.

Kamakura-Gu Shrine

2005-09-24T13:15:00.000+02:00

The Kamakura-Gu Shrine was built by the Emperor of Meiji in 1869 to honor Prince Daito-No-Miya who was imprisoned in a small cave here and eventually beheaded by a samurai warlord in 1335. On the afternoon I visited the shrine, chairs were arranged inside and a maiden in traditional red and white Shinto clothes was moving about busily. It appeared that a marriage ceremony was to take place shortly.

Harmony restored

2005-09-23T15:21:00.000+02:00

An empty teahouse.
The sound of dripping water.
A sudden gust of wind.
Leaves rustle in agitation.
The bamboo shades sway and creak.
Then, the wind dies.
Silence.
The sound of water dripping.
Harmony restored.

A Venice of the Orient

2005-09-21T16:11:00.000+02:00

The other day I walked from Ryogoku (where there is the National Sumo Arena) to Tsukiji (famed for its fish market said to be the largest in the world) along the Sumida River which runs through the heart of Tokyo. These are old towns which date back to the Edo period. Their names alone evoke the floating world of Hokusai and geishas. During the Edo period, the Sumida was filled with boats to transport goods all over the capital. There was an extensive network of canals. Some historians say that it was a Venice of the Orient.
Now as you walk along the concrete covered promenade, all you see are ugly modern office buildings and high-rise apartments. There is no trace of the past. Sadly, it's gone for ever. One can understand that because the area was completely rebuilt after it was burned down in the WW II. If you have been to Berlin, you know what I mean. It was a disappointing walk.

Moon over the mountain top

2005-09-16T16:31:00.000+02:00

There is a poem attributed to Izumi-Shikibu who lived around the year 1000. She was a contemporary of another great writer Murasaki-Shikibu who wrote The Tale of Genji. The poem goes like: I am stepping into a path which is darker than the darkness of the night; O, moon over the mountain top, shine on and show me the way.
At the imperial court where Izumi-Shikibu served a princess, she was well known for her talent for poetry and her beauty. She never lacked suitors and was said to have great many lovers. Murasaki-Shikibu, who was jealous of her, wrote in her diary that Izumi-Shikibu was a woman of ill repute and that even though she had a talent, her poems lacked discipline.
Izumi-Shikibu, a married woman, had a affair with a prince while she was attending the court. The prince died young and she was greatly distraught. The dead prince's young brother then began to court her and she accept his love within a year of the death of the prince. (Their affair was chronicled in The Journal of Izumi-Shikibu which contains her passionate love poems.) But he also died young.
Her life appears to be a whirlwind of love affairs which always, it seems, ended in sorrows. Her later poems seem to suggest that she sought to find salvation in Buddhism, salvation from her own passions which she couldn't contain.
The poem above was said to be written to a Buddhist monk who lived in the mountains of Kyoto. Izumi-Shikibu may have been travelling to his mountain retreat to ask for his advice. The general consensus among the scholars is that the "path" means her own life and the "moon over the mountain top" means Buddha. The poem is cleverly written. On the surface, it appears a simple sketch of an ordinary scene in the nature. But, as is typical in Japanese poems, a more abstract, deeper meaning is suggested in that sketch.
It will be a full moon in a few days. You may be watching the same moon as I will be from here.

Cicadas

2005-09-13T11:14:00.000+02:00

The summer heat was turned on again today. The temperature went well over 30 degrees C. Cicadas were out in force, filling the sultry air around with their shrill cries and raising the temperature even higher. It's their last hurrahs. Because some of them will not see daylight again: they will die tonight. Hundreds of thousands of them will rain down from trees all over Japan during the night and die quietly on the cold ground below. They have no way of knowing what is happening to them, of course. Some will lie motionless, belly up, still alive for a few more hours, perhaps, and their lidless eyes seeing a bright moon slowly traversing the dark sky. Then, they will be dead completely. All of them. And by tomorrow afternoon, they will have been dismembered and devoured by strong-jawed ants and gone as if they had never existed. This morning I found one dead cicada in my garden. Then another in a nearby park. I will find more and more each day until one day I hear no cicada cry.

Summer Holiday

2005-09-12T11:23:00.000+02:00

I take my summer holiday in September. It's better this way because now the beaches are empty and quiet. You, lucky people in the West, could never imagine how they look like in August. The beaches, that is, the Katase Beaches on the Sagami Bay, are less than one hour by train from the central Tokyo. They are not pretty nor clean. However, their easy access makes them very popular with people who can't afford trips to exotic beaches abroad. People with a little more money would go further west to the Izu Peninsula (two-hour train ride from Tokyo) where water is much cleaner and beaches are covered with real white sands. But, what can I say? I am stuck on the Katase Beaches.
I started to come here several years ago. It was the time when my life here was a little difficult and I always felt nervous and couldn't unwind. Then I discovered swimming. It's like a therapy for me. It not only relaxes my tensed-up muscles but also heal my toasted brain cells. I feel like I was born again, exhausted yet refreshed, after a good swim in the sea. It never fails.

Election Day

2005-09-11T14:44:00.000+02:00

I didn't go to vote today because I knew exactly what would happen. People as well as the media were completely taken in by Koizumi. In the end, he successfully set the agenda for the election. His autocratic style disgusts me. He has no ears for what others say. So much for the Japanese democracy.

I went to Kamakura yesterday to try my newly acquired camera lens. Although it was quite hot, it was cool and pleasant in the shade. Autumn is approaching.