Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan (37 page)

I schlepped my bag into the front foyer and signed in. The interior of the farmhouse was feathered in dust. The walls were adorned with framed jigsaw puzzles of the Rocky Mountains, and the living room was stuffed with sagging furniture. The woman took my money and then vanished into the various Escher-inspired hallways. A small child trailed after her and I was alone.

2

T
HE EARLY MORNING
revealed a landscape of mist, muted in faded green and gold, the wisps of steam hanging low like dragon’s breath across the fields. I hiked back into town, down to Ogi Port. The only business open was an agricultural co-op, but they had a coffee shop upstairs, so I sat, sipping sludge, and watched the sun break across the bay. I had arrived one step ahead of the tour buses. The town was apparently overrun at the peak season, but here in early spring, without so much as a whisper of cherry blossoms on the wind, I was the only visitor in sight.

“Next week, very busy,” said the man behind the counter. “This week—nothing.”

“Well,
I’m
here,” I said brightly, but it didn’t seem to console him.

Ogi Port is famous for the washtub
tarai-bune
boats of folk legend. These large wooden tubs, steered as they are by shifting your weight and churning the water with a single oar, are almost impossible to manage, yet the elderly ladies in their bright-sashed peasant kimonos and bonnet-like hats were having no trouble at all. The washtub boats, meant for gathering seaweed and shells, are still in use farther along the cape, but here in Ogi the tradition is kept alive primarily as a folk attraction—a sort of living theatre staged for spectators. By making a small donation, you can even try your hand at it, which I did, with the tub tilted over ridiculously to my side and the sweet little lady—her smile decidedly strained—giving me doomed advice on how to shift my weight and wield the oar. We ended up (here’s a surprise) turning in circles. My shoulder was soon aching and I was feeling vaguely dizzy. The lady, her face hidden by her wide-brimmed straw hat, giggled and giggled. What I failed to achieve by sheer will
and muscle, she deftly did with rhythm, taking over control and skimming us back to shore (we had spun dangerously far out to sea under my tutelage). It was a dance form, really, a swaying of semicircles acting against each other, motion through misdirection.

When we got back, another lady came bumping up to the dock and called over to me, laughingly, “She is a terrible teacher! I can teach you much better.” And so off I went again, around and around and around and around and around and around.
“Jōzu desu ne!”
she cried. My arm socket was throbbing by now, and my knees were drunk on the motion, so once again I handed over control to a lady three times my age and half my height. A dozen other washtubs were waiting at the pier when we returned, and everyone agreed I was the best rower they had had all day. This buoyed my spirits slightly until I realized, as I walked wobbly away, that I was—so far—the
only
rower that day.

I was heading north on the road out of Ogi, past an automobile graveyard, when—flying around the corner—came a bright white car. As soon as the driver saw me, the vehicle came to a skidding, spontaneous stop. I didn’t even have my thumb out.

“Hey, man!” a voice called out to me in what can only be described as California-cool “I remember you from the ferry boat!”

It was the same carload of energy I had seen the night before, the one that had raced the ferry and won. The driver was a tanned young Japanese man. He was wearing an earring, mirrored sunglasses, and a fluorescent orange T-shirt. Beside him was his girlfriend, an American, with tumble-brown hair and beautiful features. In the backseat, even more youthful good looks: a Japanese woman they called Abo, and beside her, sprawled out in heavy slumber, an athletic and drowsy young man named Say Ya. (At least, that was how it sounded.) I wedged into the backseat, disturbing Say Ya, who woke up, eyed me with foggy resentment, and immediately lolled back to sleep.

“My name is Atsushi,” said the driver and obvious leader of the group. He turned around to shake my hand and insisted that everyone in the car do likewise. Say Ya was less than enthusiastic, waking long enough to offer a limp palm before rolling over, knees and arms forming a rubbery tangle, face into the backseat.

“He likes you,” said Atsushi. “As for me,
atsui
—that means ‘hot.’ So you can call me Hot Sushi, if you like. All my friends do.”

I was flattered that he had automatically included me in their circle, but his girlfriend Michelle was obviously not so immediately inclined. It would take her a long time to warm to me, which puzzled Hot Sushi because he had assumed—since Michelle and I were both North Americans—that there would be some kind of instant rapport between us. There wasn’t. Ironically, Westerners are far more suspicious of other Westerners than the Japanese ever are. For all his exuberance and surprisingly good English, Hot Sushi was still Japanese—which is to say, trusting, innocent, and a little naive.

Michelle was from Delaware, which is apparently a city or a state or something somewhere in the United States, but I wasn’t exactly sure. (Later, I learned that most Americans can’t find Delaware on a map either, which made me feel better.)

Hot Sushi and the gang were ski instructors from the mainland, which explained their healthy tans and almost sexual vigour. Next to them, I looked like—well, like
not
a ski instructor. As we drove out of Ogi, Hot Sushi chatted enthusiastically about skiing, a sport that has always seemed slightly Sisyphian to me. Go up a hill. Ski down. Go back up again. So why not just stay at the bottom in the first place? No matter, I had once skied in the interior of British Columbia, which gave me much-needed credentials.

“Skiing is a rush,” said Hot Sushi, and on this they agreed.

The hedonism of ski instructors seems universal. I have no doubt that this foursome would get along just fine with any other ski instructors from any other country. Hot Sushi went one better: during the winter he was a ski instructor; in the summer he flew to the island of Guam, the American protectorate in Micronesia, and taught Japanese tourists how to scuba dive. That was how he met Michelle. They both worked in Guam at the Pacific Island Club, a high-end resort with its own “swim-through” aquarium.

“Ever been to Guam?” asked Hot Sushi. “You’d like it. Lots of sun, lots of surf.”

“It’s like Hawaii,” said Michelle, “but without the culture.” Michelle had studied at a university in Hawaii and had come to Guam not long after. “Guam is a gaijin zoo,” she said. “Japanese tourists go to Guam so that they can feel they went to a foreign
country, but everything is geared so they don’t have to speak to foreigners and don’t have to eat anything but Japanese food. Even the karaoke is in Japanese. They go to Guam to look at the gaijins.”

Hot Sushi sighed, but had to agree. “It’s true,” he said. “Japanese want to
see
gaijins in their natural habitat. But they don’t want to have to actually deal with them directly.”

“You could get a job easily in Guam,” Michelle said to me. “You speak Japanese. You’re like a tame gaijin.”

It stung, but her observation was true. Many foreigners had made entire careers out of being a tame gaijin. Japanese television was littered with them.

Hot Sushi and the gang were touring Sado Island to mark the end of the ski season.

“Sado Island is dying,” said Hot Sushi. “It’s beautiful. But it’s dying. The young people are leaving. No one is staying. It’s an island of old people.”

Just then, as luck would have it, we passed a young boy running beside the road, which Michelle quickly—and maliciously—pointed out. “There’s a young person right there. Look.”

But Hot Sushi was not fazed in the least. “Sure,” he said. “But he’s running to catch the last ferry off the island. It just proves my point.”

The road twisted along the coast, through clustered villages where the sea and wind had leached colour from the wooden buildings, leaving them washed-out and grey.

“This car has no radio,” said Hot Sushi. “But that’s okay, because I will sing for you.” Michelle rolled her eyes, but Hot Sushi was undeterred.
“Do you know—where you’re going to—do you like the things that life has shown you—”

This woke up Say Ya. In spite of being a robust young man, he looked an awful lot like a grumpy child. “He’s singing,” he muttered. “He’s always singing.”

And so it was, we cruised through the rolling hills and slow curves of Sado accompanied by an off-key but spirited rendition of “Mahogany.”

Where are you going to—do you know?

3

O
NE OF
S
ADO’S
most illustrious exiles was a man named Zeami who lived from 1363 to 1443. Zeami was the Shakespeare of Japan. As an actor and a playwright, he codified the art of Noh theatre, fusing traditional dance with the sublime austerity of Zen philosophy. Central to his aesthetic was
yōgen
, “that which lies below the surface, that which is hidden but always present,” a concept that is as difficult as it is vague. Yōgen, the world beyond words, lies in the resonance and beauty of pure experience. It was a theory of art that was remarkably advanced for its age, especially when lined up against the literally minded morality plays that were standard fare in European courts at about the same time. (“Oh, no! Scratch the Devil is eating Lazy Child! Only Virtuous Son and Loyal Daughter can save him.”)

Zeami was heralded as a genius during his lifetime, a legend of truly theatrical proportions. Mind you, it helped that Zeami—as well as being an artistic genius—was also the homosexual lover of the reigning Shōgun. In a very real sense, Zeami slept his way to the top. Alas, when the Shōgun died, Zeami lost his patron, and the next ruler was—ahem—less enamoured of the artistry of Zeami than was his predecessor. On the pretext that the upstart Noh master was hoarding artistic secrets for himself, the new Shōgun sent Zeami into exile, to the island at the edge of the world. Zeami spent his last years in obscurity, chilled to the bone and bitterly lonely. Zeami died on Sado, a broken man. His art lived on. And on and on and on and on … If you have ever tried to sit through an evening of Noh theatre, you will understand what I’m speaking about.

Noh has been described as “total theatre,” combining as it does music, mime, dance, poetic recitals, masked costumes, and tonal
chants. It is also a theatre of restraint. The tension comes not from plot but from atmosphere, much of it supernatural. The performers are usually masked, they walk with a gliding, hesitant step, and the scenes unfold like slowly transforming tableaus—all to the accompaniment of shrill flutes, sudden yelps, arbitrary drumbeats, and slow, boiling moans. Noh
is
haunting and disturbing and deep—for about ten minutes. After that, the hours slow down to a glacial pace and the movements appear to be made under deep water. It is beyond somnolent. It is boring. Profoundly, exquisitely, existentially
boring
.

Zeami’s texts on Noh, once groundbreaking and avant garde, have fossilized. It is a theatre of ghosts. A museum piece. The plays revolve around the cycle of karma, of death and rebirth, and the longings that tie us to this world of illusions. Certainly, the performances proceed at about the speed one expects eternity to move.

A friend of mine was studying theatre in Japan and he was constantly trying to convince me that I did in fact love Noh. This friend—who was English, naturally (the English have an almost heroic capacity for boredom)—would drag me to touring performances and gasp and gush over the way the lead player would hold his fan. “Do you see that!” he’d say. “The lead actor is holding his fan
upside down.”
My friend was, like most hardened fans, disdainful of the competition. “Noh is far deeper than the type of cheap catharsis you get from melodrama or kitchen-sink realism. And it is not simply spectacle, either. Kabuki, with its blood-and-thunder excess and extravagant costumes, is crass. But Noh … Noh is meditative.”

“And seditative,” I said.

“And yet,” he would insist, all empirical evidence to the contrary, “it is very exciting. Noh operates on many levels. Underneath it is tension—this tension that is almost unbearable.”

“Tell me about it.”

My friend was getting exasperated. “I don’t know why I even try to enlighten you. Listen,” he’d say. “Ezra Pound helped translate Noh plays into English. Brecht was greatly influenced by Noh. W. B. Yeats felt that it reached new levels of suggestive art.”

“Name drop all you want,” I said. “It makes no difference. Noh is still Noh. It’s like attending the opera or going to the dentist. You don’t enjoy it, you
endure
it.”

I will concede one point. The masks of Noh are sublime. The female masks in particular. (Like Kabuki, Noh is still a primarily male domain.) Poised
between
expressions, they are capable of all expressions. During performances of Noh, I have seen—though I would never admit this to my Noh-loving friend—how the masks seem to change moods onstage, so effective are the postures and gestures of the performers.

Perhaps my English friend was right. Perhaps Noh truly
is
the essence of Japanese society. Masks that have incredible depth, feelings that are restrained, emotions turned inward, silences that fester, sudden bursts, violent emotion, lifetimes of regret. Or maybe it is simply a very old and dated art form. Either way, I would not attend another evening of Noh at gunpoint.

Instead, I spent my time on Sado Island admiring masks and seething in envy over the sensual, hedonistic lifestyles of ski instructors and sun-browned scuba divers.

4

S
ADO
I
SLAND
, if not lost in time, was certainly adrift in it. The villages were like fallen stacks of wooden crates surrounded by seascapes and embraced by rolling hills.

We stopped for coffee at a viewing spot along the way, and Say Ya, stretching and yawning, wandered into the tourist shop. Say Ya had to try everything, squeezing horns in the toy section, trying on hats, spinning tops, playing plastic flutes. Then, as soon as we were back into the car, he dropped into sleep as suddenly as someone under a hypnotist’s command. A torrent of energy, then a nap.