In the Shadow of Mount Fuji
- sloaneliz
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
In the early 2000s, a film called Shall We Dance was released in the US. In it, Richard Gere plays a buttoned-up Chicago lawyer who rediscovers joy in is life through ballroom dancing. Susan Sarandon, in a marvelous performance, plays his wife, who tries to understand this metamorphosis. In one scene she delivers a powerful monologue about what it means to bear witness to your partner’s life.
A decade earlier, a Japanese version of this film was released. It was one installment of our Japanese film festival, staged in the run-up to our trip. The festival ran from high art (The Seven Samurai; Memoirs of a Geisha) to cultural kitsch (Godzilla). In my quest to understand Japanese culture, these two films—differing versions of the same story—helped me understand a lot before I ever set foot in the country.
As the narrator in the Japanese version explains, people do not touch each other in Japan. Husbands and wives do not walk arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand. There are no public displays of affection. The idea that men and women would
put their arms around each other—even in a dance studio—is unseemly. So while a buttoned-up Chicago lawyer taking up ballroom dancing is unusual, a buttoned-up Tokyo accountant doing the same is way beyond that. In the Japanese version, the accountant’s wife is relegated to a role of confusion as her husband comes alive. Her longest lines consist of her saying, in a hurt voice, I do not understand.
Our first day in Tokyo, standing on Shibuya Crossing, I think about the rules that guide Japanese life. Thirty-seven million people live here, making it the biggest metro area in the world. Up to 2.4 million people cross this intersection every day—3000 each signal change. I have seen photos and film clips of this. They do not do it justice. The lights change, the cars stop, and the pedestrians take off, flowing by the thousands like rivers of fish. The sheer kinetic energy is overwhelming. But there are no collisions or conflicts; walkers stay in their lanes, efficiently getting where they are going.
In this teeming mass of humanity, living in close quarters, the rules make it work. And there are a lot of rules. You don’t eat or drink while you walk—if you buy something from a street vendor, you stay put until you finish it. Then you take out your own plastic bag and carry your trash away, as there are no public bins. You don’t blow your nose in public. You walk on the left side of the sidewalk. You do not speak or laugh loudly. You are careful about personal space. You don’t use cell phones on public transit. And of course, you are always, always, exceedingly polite. If Westerners learn one word before they come here, it should be sumimasen, an invaluable all-purpose phrase that means “excuse me, so sorry, my fault, thank you, forgive me.” I use sumimasen a lot, and the Japanese people—surprisingly few of whom spoke much English—seemed to appreciate my feeble efforts.
Population explains some of these norms, but so does religion. Buddhism teaches an abdication of ego and judgement. Shintoism—Japan’s other major religion --- honors natural spirits that call for us to live in harmony with the world.
Our first morning in Kyoto, on a bike ride through this exquisite cultural capital, we get schooled in these nuances. Our guide is Naoki, a delightful man who runs a bike and coffee shop called Good Day Velo. Naoki is a refugee from the Japanese business world. He used to work 16 hours a day as a marketing consultant. Because he spent eight years in London and speaks good English, he was a hot property. “But,” he says wryly, “how is that good if your days are not good?” Now he makes delicious coffee and just closes up the shop whenever anybody wants to take a ride. Good Day’s motto is Slow Bike, Slow Coffee, Sweet Life.
Naoki considers himself both Buddhist and Shinto, and this is common. “They are more like philosophies than religions, and they overlap quite a bit,” he says. Marriages are almost always in Shinto Shrines, where death rites are almost always in Buddhist Temples. Buddhism has no gods—just its prophet, Buddha, and concerns itself with the afterlife. Shinto has many gods--and seems to provide more of a practical guide for daily living. We saw this at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo (Shinto), where prayer plaques say things like “May my boyfriend propose to me” and “May I do well on my test.”
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One of our stops with Naoki is Shimogama-jinja, a Shinto Shrine that is popular for weddings. We pass through the beautiful gardens and the large Torii gates, painted bright orange—an auspicious color for happiness. The shrine’s entrance has three openings, Naoki explains. “The left opening is for empty mind. The middle opening is for no ego. The right opening is for no judgment. You choose which to go through.” I go left, figuring: if your mind is empty, that kind of covers the other two, doesn’t it?
Thanks to the marvelous bullet train, we make it to Hiroshima. It is an impactful day. I have long been interested in this chapter of US history; I wrote a thesis in college on the decision to drop the bomb. While living in Santa Fe, we frequently visited the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos, which illuminates the Manhattan Project. Hiroshima Memorial and Peace Park is a tough, exacting look at the human impacts. There’s a gut-wrenching set of exhibits; very graphic pictures of what happened to more than 100,000 people in the blink of an eye. I am left wondering why the Japanese don’t resent us Americans more. They seem more embarrassed about Pearl Harbor than angry about Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Perhaps it is that innate national politeness.
This Japan trip was a pilgrimage in another way. We finally got Carson to a place he always wanted to go. We left some of his ashes in spots we knew he would love: Arashiyama bamboo forest, Arashiyama monkey park, a neighborhood shrine on our tranquil street in Kyoto, at the base of Mt. Fuji in Hakone. This was not strictly legal, and I got good at doing it surreptitiously. The prayer plaque I hung at Meiji read: “Look Carson! You made it to Japan!”
We do some touristy things, but we also have some authentic Japanese moments. We take a Kintsugi class from a master ceramicist. His English is limited but he has pictures and videos to instruct us in this ancient art of making broken things more beautiful with gold repair. Our Tokyo guesthouse is on the grounds of the Anzen-ji, or "safety temple." Noting that it is possible to meditate at Anzen-ji, I message our AirBnB host and ask how. Taikai, chief monk, messages back that we are to meet him at 5 pm. This is not the quiet meditation I expected. We are treated to an hour-long service of
drumming and sutra chanting, with rituals designed to find peace, harmony and forgiveness in a fractured world. Then, Taikai invites us to his home for tea, and another hour of conversation ensues. We discuss history, culture, our families, and the differences between our two worlds. It is an incredibly rich and rewarding exchange. The most amazing thing about it? Taikai speaks almost no English. The entire two hours is facilitated by Google Translate.
In my research before the trip, I learned that the Japanese are mad for dressing up and playacting. Cosplay is a big thing here—wearing costumes and doing performance art in places other than the stage. There are whole streets in Tokyo where people are engaging in cosplay—dressed up, acting out narratives, never breaking character.
We engage in some of this ourselves. At the Samurai-Ninja Museum, we don samurai armor, wield swords (plastic ones) and learn about Japanese feudal culture. To become ninja --- those stealthy figures who were farmers and fishermen by day but spies and assassins by night -- we practice throwing shuriken, or Ninja throwing stars (again, plastic). Turns out, Ashley, a former water polo player, is really good at this. Our guide delightedly yells “Gold medal! Gold medal!” and holds up her arms like she’s on a podium. Ashley is mortified.
We attend a Japanese tea ceremony, dressed in full kimono. With pantomimes and an English word or two, I am told by my dresser that my kimono is particularly auspicious, replete with lucky red and gold and images of cranes, signifying love and happiness. It is a beautiful garment, and she does something awesome with my hair that I will
never be able to repeat. I am assured, by people who know, that our dressing up in this way is not cultural appropriation.
On our own, Cal and I head into the mountains for a stay in a traditional Japanese ryokan. It is a magical 24 hours. We check in, don our kurata (the cotton pajamas we’ll wear our entire time there), wander the gorgeous gardens, and soak in the onsen—hot baths. We eat a six-course Japanese dinner, placing at least 500 things in our mouths we could not begin to identify. Tofu? Eel? Wasabi? Who knows? Every dish is an exquisite work of art.
We happened to land at Tokyo Disney two days before Halloween. For cross-cultural experience, this is perhaps the granddaddy of them all. You have not lived until you’ve done the Jungle Cruise in Japanese. This country is mad for Disneyland, and mad for Halloween. It is the biggest holiday of the year, and the one time that Disney allows its guests to come to the park in costume. Why? Because the Japanese, lovers of dress up and playacting, go so all-out that you can’t tell the guests from the official characters. You see costume after over-the-top costume. Huge packs of school kids roam the park in their British-boarding-school type uniforms. Are these official school trips? I wonder aloud. “No,” says Ashley who naturally has researched this. “It’s just that the schools are liberal about attendance this week.” Really? The notoriously studious, achievement-minded Japanese let their kids play hooky to go to Disneyland? Because it’s Halloween???
Once again, I leave a country with more questions than answers. This is the most foreign place I have ever been; the only one I have visited that does not have European roots. It was in many ways the most challenging. But I am so glad we did this. For us. For our family. For a little boy who dreamed of being a Japanese pirate, and now sleeps peacefully, I hope, in the shadow of Mt. Fuji.
