Welcome to the fourth journey inspired by my desk calendar—first described en route to Copenhagen, then London and Havana.
Just this random spark, my curiosity, and my library card: everything I needed to expand my horizons, to counter the inclination to withdraw when the news seemed menacing.
But April’s #HereandElsewhere was necessarily narrowed, with my mid-March library holds perpeturally “in transit” since the public system closed to “flatten the curve”. By the time those books and films arrive, my calendar will display some other picture. (The duedates on my borrowed items now read July and August.)
Meanwhile (or, Quarantinewhile, as Stephen Colbert would say), my Kyoto choices are limited. How I wish I still had my Mishima and Yawabata volumes; I think there’s one in each writer’s oeuvre which would have suited this month’s theme perfectly.
Instead, I began with a favourite book from childhood, Katherine Paterson’s The Sign of the Chrysanthemum (1973): one of the first books I encountered as a young reader which introduced me to a culture different from my own. It stood out—as much for my initial resistance as for the story itself.
Her Bridge to Teribithia (1975), I just loved; eventually I’d discover The Great Gilly Hopkins and Jacob Have I Loved (1980) too; but I didn’t expect to enjoy The Sign of the Chysanthemum.
Why? It was about a boy; I was haunted by the mask on the cover of its companion volume, The Master Puppeteer (1975); and, the main character was named Muji, servant to the swordsmith Fukuji.
The characters in my favourite books were named Anne and Emily, Harriet and George (Famous Five!). There was a single Asian family in the village I lived in, with younger children. In that community, I didn’t fit in either, and if they felt as ill-at-ease as I did, hopefully they’ve been able to leave it behind too. Even recent (2016) census data shows that only 0.03% of the population there is a visible minority.
In the fifth grade, we studied the animals of Africa (I’m not very good at drawing and it was a group project), and in the seventh grade, there was a story in my reader about Sadako and her Paper Cranes (not assigned, but I read it). In between, everything I knew about other places, I learned from books and television; everything I knew about Japan, I learned from Katherine Paterson (and, soon afterwards, the TV mini-series, Shogun).
Kyoto seemed fantastical:
“He could make out at once the long complex of roofs that were the Imperial Palace, though as a commoner he had never been closer to the actual buildings than the stables. The glistening waters of the Kamo River flowed to the east. Across Gojo Bridge, antlike processions were moving to and from Rokuhara on the east bank. Sails of fishing boats and merchant vessels dotted the river.”
She created characters whose lives were adventuresome enough to keep me turning pages, characters who were wholly believable for a young girl whose limited experience of the world was that it was 99.7% white. (Paterson was born in 1932 to American parents who worked in China as Christian missionaries; Katherine’s first language was Chinese and she came of age in China, moved back to America during WWII, and travelled to Japan in 1954, also for religious work. Not a whiff of her theism in this novel, though.) No doubt, the illustrations, by Peter Landa, were inviting to younger-reading-me too.
Next, I watched Makiko’s New World (1999), an educational film based on a young bride’s 1910 diary, chronicling her life in a busy merchant household in Kyoto. (I watched on Kanopy, via my public library: they also have several good films screening for free now, including Ex Libris, the film about the New York Public Library. Looking for a movie date?)
With her blessing, a descendant arranged for this volume to be published in 1995 (Stanford University Press) certain it’d make good reading because Makiko doesn’t fit the stereotype of a confined “old Kyoto” bride; her husband ensured she enjoyed an unusual amount of freedom and she includes private information in her records (information about festivals and family members, for instance), whereas the men in the family who kept diaries recorded only concrete details.
At twenty years old when this diary begins, she married into the Nakano Pharmacy family three years earlier. With footage of contemporary Kyoto and an abundance of archival images (diarist included!), we learn of her fascination with western food and culture. In one instance, she records their having enjoyed beer from Munich in an evening, served with bananas. (They do dramatize portions of the diary, but Makiko’s character shines through; this makes up for the dramatizations.)
In other Kyoto viewing, I’ve started watching the Violet Evergarden series (2018), produced by the Kyoto Animation Studio.
(In a particular mood, anime suits me brilliantly.)
This story is based on a 2014 light novel series about a young girl who has experienced some trauma, now working as an Auto Memory Doll, at the post office, where she is a ghostwriter, who prepares letters for those who need to send them but who cannot write or, for some other reason, cannot express themselves.
What a great way to explore questions about memory and longing, love and regret. (There are two longer features to follow, and two other series on my watchlist from this studio: Love, Chunibyo! and other Delusions and K-On! Admittedly, I’d not heard of KAS until this was in the news last year. What a tragedy.)
You got me thinking about the extent of my education on Asia and other countries as a child… and I have to say I don’t remember much. But then I thought, maybe that’s a good thing… It’s likely if we were taught anything at all it was probably stereotypical or just plain wrong. An image of farmers in their sunhats working in the rice fields comes into my head – I’ve always thought they were such great hats and why don’t we have them here?
In my most recent books, I’ve been to Philadelphia and New York (in The Dutch House), very briefly in the Arctic (in Born to Walk), and all over Nova Scotia (Around the Province in 88 Days). Nothing very exotic, but I didn’t realize I had been doing so much traveling!
Reading is amazing–you’re nearly always expanding your horizons literally and metaphorically! Now that you mention it, I think we did study terraced farming and the like, so there was a glimpse of other cultures from that perspective. (And why were we taught that–was it because it was a rural/village school and it was assumed that we’d need to know about farm practices, internationally? So strange!) Have you finished The Dutch House, or are you still reading? That one’s definitely on my list.
Yes, finished! And very good. You will like it. 🙂
Yay: thank you!
I’m doing a lot of “traveling “ in England lately… Regency England in both Adam Bede and Mary Anne and 1950’s England in A Far Cry From Kensington. When air travel is safe again, whenever that may be, I do hope to finally travel there in real life. Way to be resourceful in your reading plans despite the challenges of a closed library!
Hoopla and Kanopy get used regularly here in an average month, but not exhaustively, as they have been lately. I can’t recall just when Mary Anne is set, but it seems like you just need one more book in there to have a little mini-course in English history!
Your calendar is so pretty. I have not travelled to Japan lately but most recently was in England. Oh how I wish it wasn’t just through the pages of books.
It brightens my day and I hope I’ll be able to cut the pages tidily when I’m finished (there’s a proper cutter at the library) so that I can re-use the pages as bookmarks.
I remember reading Bridge to Teribithia as a child. I didn’t know about Paterson’s upbringing — quite similar to Pearl Buck’s. I read a disappointing Murakami earlier this year but otherwise have not ventured to Japan recently in my reading.
I’ve got a small collection of Buck’s novels to read: she really intrigues me as well. Until now, however, I hadn’t realized how many similarities there are between these two authors!
One thing we most certainly had in common as children-reading books that weren’t specifically assigned, just because we wanted to! haha
Along with our both having grown up in dime-sized towns, you mean? 😀
Yes! i keep forgetting that. Also, did you know that Alex Good, the book reviewer for the Star (among other publications) lives in Puslinch? I wonder if I ever saw him (or her?) around and never knew it LOL
The implication being that nobody would ever move to Puslinch?! 😀
It’s just such a random little place, I’m always surprised when people don’t just say ‘Guelph” or ‘Cambridge” or something bigger that’s just around it
Sounds like a very good job of visiting Kyoto with all the restrictions. That’s interesting about Katherine Paterson–I didn’t know anything about her background.
With the other months, I really enjoyed the gathering and perusing of multiple books and films, even travel guides. But needs must. She has a non-fiction volume about writing (available at TPL) which I’d like to read too.
I have been to Kyoto – three times in fact. And I thought I could add some books but no, Junichiro Tanazaki’s The Makioka sisters is set mainly (or mostly) in Osaka, and Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a geisha (which by rights should be Kyoto given is has, I think, the most famous geisha district!) was set in Tokyo. I have read many Japanese novels but I think most have been set in Tokyo or in country areas. Darn it!
One book I’ve wanted to read for a long time is by another non-Japanese (like Golden), Pico Iyer’s The lady and the monk.
I’m sorry I’ve been slack – the fact that I can really only comment on your blog from my laptop and significant elder care issues particularly over the last couple of months in particular have kept me away, but I do see your emails come through, if that’s any help!! I hope you are going OK.
At some point, I think I did know that you’d travelled there, but I’d forgotten. And, as it turns out you were as stumped as I. (When Golden’s book was new, I read it in 24 hours. Gobbled it!)
Ah, that Pico Iyer book would have been a good choice. And interestingly enough, for a 1991 book, there are 8 holds on it at the library now (they have 4 copies, if you’re burning to know). Of course maybe that’s partly because people are stuck at home and adding items to their hold lists, but I suspect he has a loyal following anyhow.
No worries. My time online is a bit erratic as noise levels around me surge and recede; what I can do, and when, requires a whimsical approach to planning. So I am often late and irregular with my commenting in Gums-land.