Lost Along the Way

Once more thoughts today have drifted east, curling backward through maze-like tracks of memory to faces and experiences of almost thirty years ago. No idea what it is that brings Junichi Mori to mind, but suddenly there he is, tall, gawky and ink-stained, writing in elegant swirls of jet black sumi-ink the old proverb or tidbit of poetry that was our assignment.

Soon after arriving in Tokyo all those years ago, I began looking around for someone to teach me Japanese brushwriting, shodô—in English, ‘the way of the brush.’ It was one of the first enchantments in my fascination with Japan and once settled there the hope was to jump right under the wing of a teacher. The practice of writing with brush and ink has always been taught in Japanese schools and teachers are about as rare as acorns under an oak tree, with every neighborhood boasting one, two, sometimes three teachers. I found Mrs Motohashi down at the end of my street, showed up at her door one day and sputtered out in broken bits of Japanese my desire to learn brushwriting. She told me to come back on Saturday morning at 10:00.

And there I was, sitting painfully on my heels, back straight before a low table laid out with felt pad, white rice paper, paperweight, a well of ink and a fat horsehair brush. To my left sat a college boy, and I noticed right off that he had the hands of a pianist, well-shaped and strong, not too big. It would have been obvious to anyone that the Chinese characters gliding off the end of his brush were hardly the work of a dilettante.

His name was Junichi, he lived a few houses down, was in his junior year at university studying English literature and had been a student of Mrs Motohashi since old enough to hold a brush. We became good friends and soon I was spending an hour or more at his home several times a week, his mother stuffing me with cakes and cookies, the occasional lunch or dinner and endless questions about America. Junichi’s family was the second to take me into their lives and show me the depth and breadth of Japanese kindness and heart. Conversation with Junichi—half English, half Japanese—was always easy, but curiously enough he never asked questions about English, about his reading assignments, and in the same vein, I never asked him to reinforce Mrs Motohashi’s teaching or to correct my faltering brush.

In another year he graduated from university and completely unrelated to his study, accepted a job in one of the big department stores. I soon learned that Junichi’s path was not at all uncommon among university graduates, that very few indeed ended up in a job related to university study. But he seemed happy, continued to live at home and continued to visit Mrs Motohashi once a week for calligraphy lessons.

A year passed and though Junichi was still shy of the average age when Japanese men marry, his parents began to get ideas of ‘arranging’ something. The traditional arranged marriages once common in Japan still have small presence in modern times, though it is becoming more rare, especially in the big cities.

It worked out badly for Junichi. Through both sets of parents arrangements were made for Junichi to marry the daughter of a Buddhist priest, for him to be adopted into the bride’s family with the assurance that Junichi would one day take over as the head priest at the temple in Kyoto. Yeah, I know…from English literature to a department store and then to a Buddhist temple on a mountainside in Kyoto. I attended the wedding, and I offered my best wishes to bride and groom, and to both families (my Japanese somewhat better at this point). But then for reasons I was not party to, it all came apart after several months of marriage. From the little I heard, things did not work out as the bride’s father expected.

These days, many years after the broken marriage Junichi is an English teacher in a public junior high school in Tokyo. We lost touch after the marriage failed and he returned to Tokyo from Kyoto. It was almost twenty-three years later that I got a phone call from his mother. She gave me Junichi’s number, I called, we talked but then never did manage to meet again. Feels like I lost a friend.

Walking Under Oaks

The long drive yesterday from Florida’s east coast to Baton Rouge, ark of my childhood, took a lot out of me. But eleven hours behind the wheel will do that, and arriving car-tired was little surprise. A hot shower washed a good bit of the tiredness away, and seeing again my two oldest friends, sitting together, talking, laughing, remembering—It was like an adrenaline shot straight to the heart. How much better can the hours and days ahead get?

Things are different here in the land of Tabasco, oyster po-boys and pecan pralines. Sort of figured I would sit in Raymond’s house and be granted instant Internet access on this MacBook Pro, with WI-FI snaking invisible from inside the house walls and embracing the laptop. As it turns out the Bluetooth and WI-FI are dead in the water at 1051. Looking into the why of that today, but for now the nearby Starbucks offers an easy solution.

Walked early this morning for a long distance on Sevenoaks Avenue. Of course, I remember it all from the years of growing up here, but once again the droop and swag of huge old oak trees captured my heart and gave a lightness to my step. This area is one called Old Goodwood, and is a place where building was conceived as non-invasive residential architecture, and where ground plans were laid out around and between tall moss-draped oak sentinels. There is a feeling almost of breathing green. Walked past Goodwood Elementary and recalled the afternoon basketball games, halcyon days when twelve year-old boys in blue and red challenged the boys in maroon and gold, and pert, red-haired Nannette cheered us from the bleachers.

Been my hope for awhile that friend Raymond might be willing to add some native thoughts to my Louisiana impressions, a perspective of his own. Let’s call it lagniappe—a Cajun word for a little something extra.

‘Nights with a breeze blowing in from across the Amite River, no glow from Baton Rouge in the distance, pull a mattress out on the porch of the camp and sleep with sounds of crickets and frogs near, and when waking during the night to turn over, opening eyes like a camera lens and seeing the lightning bugs flickering among the dark trees. Wishing it could be but knowing the impossibility of truly capturing for memory this fresh everydayness.’ — excerpt from Southern Snapshots

There For You

In a post last week I introduced several very brief letters on the theme of hometowns, something taken from a collection called Japan’s Best “Short Letters to My Hometown.” I also mentioned that the hometown book is one in a series, and that the same publisher has put out several other collections of short letters. This time the subject is friends, and the project began with the question, ‘What is a friend? Is a friend someone we can talk to with an open heart about anything?’ Like many of the examples in the hometown letters, those focusing on friendship have that same quality of unvarnished candor and simple heartfelt expression. The book is called, Japan’s Best “Short Letters to My Friend,” and like the earlier collection, reveals what is possible in even the briefest of lines. And so, I want to share once again some messages from the heart.

The telephone is not currently

in service.

Please meet and talk in person.

Tomomi Kanamaru (F. 14)

My eyes are dried out from nothing

but email from you these days.

A letter in your haphazard handwriting

sure would go easy on my eyes.

Takeshi Harada (M. 21)

My son sends his friends email,

my daughter sends her friends faxes,

my wife uses the handy phone,

and I still write letters.

Kenichi Machida (M. 57)

Once again, the contest was open to non-Japanese living in Japan, and the last examples are from two of them.

To write to you is to drop in,

unexpected:

You dry your hands on the towel

by the sink

and sit down, smiling, to listen.

David Abel (M. 43)

Do you remember

when we laughed down the moon?

Sitting with it between us,

we ate it like a watermelon.

Seth Nehil (M. 25)

With the exception of the last two, the letters were translated from the Japanese by Patricia J. Wetzel and Shunichi Mitani.

I had hoped to add a hyperlink that would allow those outside of Japan to order this book, or any others in the series, but from the ten or more sites I looked at, none of them offer a viable way for people outside of Japan to purchase the small bilingual editions I found in Tokyo.