Today the road through the countryside of Japan is cluttered with telephone poles and wires, an avalanche of signs, posters, plastic flowers, and rusting cars, the neon flash of love hotels and the ubiquitous pachinko parlors. Everywhere there is clutter, visual chaos, the blight of consumerism on the land.
The land is a natural beauty. And the road we seek is a dream-a road that meanders through mountains and country villages of thatched houses, where people still wear indigo work clothes in the fields, with bamboo baskets beside them. The fruits of their fields are on the table in pots from nearby kilns, paper-covered lanterns light the room as they sit around an open hearth mending clothes or weaving straw sandals. Traditional country life was never easy, nor was it the rustic ideal that twentieth-century romantics try to conjure up in reply to the mechanized plastic dream world that has captured favor today. Ironically, the very prosperity that everyone welcomes is destroying the country values of resourcefulness and ingenuity and creativity, which evolved from a life of subsistence without surfeit. Until very recently in this country, life was harsh and survival difficult. The ability to make do with little and stretch possibilities to their limits allowed Japanese farmer and fisherman to endure and are the backbone of Japan's present affluence. Yet, such values seem to have no place or function in the affluent and powerful Japan of today. Something important has been lost. While poverty is hardly desirable, there should be some means of keeping alive the wisdom it engendered.
The ingenuity, vigor, and creativity of rural Japan of the past may still be found. We can dip our buckets into the waters of time, when people were forced to make what they needed to live with, to eat with, to pray and play with. By going to the countryside, by relating to and living with things made by country craftsmen, farmers, fishermen and their wives, one can touch the values that imbued Japan with vitality. Country things were made to be used. Their beauty comes from that utility and earns our admiration just because it is not trying to attract attention or be beautiful. The unassuming nature of country things is what appeals to me.
Before the old could vanish entirely, I put together this book, searching for the road least traveled, taking old paths and new, real and ideal, to create a collage that will give a taste of country Japan. Sometimes essences of the country are found in the city, or in the tiny spaces of public housing developments. Sometimes they exist in the mind. Flashes of country spirit-the unselfconscious genius of country Japan past and present, in houses, food, craft, work, and play-can be found in unexpected places. I have chosen a mixture of traditional and contemporary as well here to represent the honesty, the strength, the charm, the beauty, and the quirkiness of country Japan. Join me on this trip through a Japan little seen and little appreciated. The journey can give meaning, humor, and beauty to our own lives. It is a road once taken never forgotten, a journey that for me will never end.
HERITAGE
COUNTRY HOUSES
Japanese folk houses have their origins in the tropical climate of South-east Asia, and they have changed remarkably little despite the inhospitable climate of Japan. This architecture is effective during Japan's humid summers; it makes little provision for keeping warm in winter, or for privacy. The post and beam construction provides shelter against rains, earthquakes and typhoons. It can accommodate movable walls and thick roofs of thatch and can take the weight of heavy snow. A veranda (engawa) under the wide overhang of the roof provides a natural transition between the rooms within and nature without.
Houses were made of what the land offered, largely wood and straw, earth, bamboo, and paper. Roofs were always covered in the materials available in that area-thatch, shingles, grasses, bark, even stone in certain regions. Floors and walls were usually constructed of earth. In houses in northern Japan, it was not uncommon to find the family animals sheltered along with the rest of the household.
Walking into a Japanese farmhouse, the immediate reaction is visceral rather than cerebral. First impressions are of dark, of clutter, of jumble. Here is something of the earth, organic, alive, an extension of the land. The smells, the sights, the sounds are a meeting point between man and his environment. The Japanese farmhouse does not exclude nature, it is not a fortress. It is part of nature, and embraces it at every juncture.
The beauty of the traditional Japanese house was in the sensitive use of natural materials. Such a house was filled with ingenious ways in which man gave shape to his living environment. Poverty acted as a creative force to strengthen ingenuity and deftness. There was an overall harmony between man, his environment, and his way of living. Piety and respect for materials were evident throughout. Bamboo, wood, earth, paper, and straw were used in the most basic ways to keep the house standing and hold it together, both literally and figuratively. Proportions were easy and natural, based on a human scale. Ceilings were generally high, giving a feeling of space even in smaller rooms. And, too, the ceilings were textural and organic, often made of bound bamboo or of bare boards. Upper floors were used as work or storage areas, sometimes reserved for silkworm cultivation. Windows were few. Generally it was sliding doors and screens that opened to give light and air and access to the outside.
Though the floor plans of farmhouses have many regional variations, individual room arrangement was vague and unspecific. Each room was simple, basic, and nonpersonal; anyone could use a room for nearly any purpose. Private space was not provided or even a consideration.
At the heart of the farmhouse was the fire. Generally this was in an open hearth (irori), a stone-or-clay-lined pit sunk beneath the floor and filled with fine ash, in the middle of which charcoal was constantly kept burning. Over this a long decorative pot-hook Uizai-kagi) was suspended from a beam, and at the end hung a cast-iron pot or tea kettle.
Fire was an important presence in the house. Somewhere, in the irori or in a hibachi, it was kept burning at all times to keep a kettle boiling, things over the fire drying, food cooking. There was always the smell of the fire and of smoke. Smoke pervaded every crevice of the house. Smoke kept taut the straw ropes used to tie together beams, rafters, and thatch. People gathered around the hearth for warmth and to cook food, while overhead the smoke worked to dry foods, implements, and clothes. The irori was the gathering place for all members of the family. Old people rarely left it; their job was to tend the fire and the grandchildren while others worked.