affected or concerned me at the time, briefly into focus. As is often the case in situations like this, there are many stories that cannot be told for a variety of reasons, not least because they involve the lives of others from whom I do not have the permission to recount them, or they fall outside the territory covered by this book. There is no mention, for example, of the Hanshin Earthquake or the capture of the Aum Shinrikyō "doomsday" cult members, both events we were well aware of at the time—the earthquake having been felt in the village, three members of the cult discovered hiding in a house not far from where we lived, and we, ourselves, having been stopped and questioned during the search. While one or two of the stories extend beyond, and in a couple of cases far beyond, the boundaries of Sora, it was Sora that remained the home base, both from a physical as well as an emotional and psychological orientation.
When you pass a large, old Japanese house, often all you can see of it are glimpses above its walls, between the bamboo slats of a fence, or behind the wooden grill of a gate—sections of roof, brief views of garden, the hump of an ornamental rock, the carved window of a stone lantern, or maple leaves against the sky. Like Japanese haiku or Zen ink painting, it is in that which is not seen or stated but only suggested that evokes a profound resonance within us, that ignites the imagination.
Whilst I can in no way approach or claim that kind of depth in either effect or meaning in this collection of anecdotes and writings, I should like to use the analogy to explain the form and texture of this book. What I have attempted to do is to suggest something of the experience of living in Sora, without covering every aspect of Japanese village life or necessarily providing a linear continuity of narrative to make a complete story. I have always preferred the diary or journal form to that of the novel or short story, as it seems to present a greater fidelity or authenticity to the way in which everyday life actually feels in retrospect.
Originally, my intention was to write quite a different sort of book. I had the idea to write a kind of "calendar" of the cycle of Shinto and Buddhist festivals and events and of how they are woven into the agricultural and domestic rhythms of rural village life. The more involved I became in the everyday lives and concerns of our neighbors, however, the more I realized the material for a very different kind of book. This presented a problem in that I had to be careful not to treat my daily life and experiences merely as material for a book per se. If I had kept this intention to the fore, so that it simply became my reason for being in the village, then it would have intruded upon my relationships with my neighbors and my life there. At times, of course, it was necessary to make specific inquiries and interviews with the self-appointed historians of Sora and one or two neighboring villages. At other times I encountered a different stratum of information in the memories of the unselfconscious custodians of the village's past, like Old Man Gonsaku and the women of the village.
Coupled with the above difficulty, which lies along that border that exists between living each day as integrated as is possible for a foreigner in what is usually a very closed community and the inevitable objectifying of it which results from making "use" of it, was the difficulty of using a camera. I have always had an ambivalence toward, and what I suppose is a primitive suspicion of, the camera. Somehow, I have always felt that there is some kind of theft analogous to a "stealing of the soul." Perhaps this damage is in the way it violates the moment. Maybe it is because we are incapable of truly living in the moment that we feel we have to try to "steal" it in some way. And it seemed significant to me that on my first photographic trip with my new expensive Japanese camera I should have dropped it on a rock, damaging it.
I am neither a natural cameraman nor a comfortable photographic subject myself. It is my shyness with the camera, and the feeling of intrusion it creates, that is the reason for the absence of photographs of people in their unguarded moments, in their homes or fields, at their domestic and workaday lives. Although I did obviously use the camera, I still have not resolved this dilemma for myself.
As the material began to collect on tapes and scraps of paper around the house, so it began to suggest a form, albeit amorphous, of an elegiac nature, with the realization that a whole way of life and natural wisdom was vanishing with the demise of the present, aged generation of these villages. Not only what was still a rural peasant life for most of our neighbors but, I believe, still lived at the very birth-ground of Japanese culture itself. And what was to become an increasingly uncomfortable but obvious fact was the realization that it is the industrial-technological materialism of the West, the West's cultural carcinogens, that the Japanese so eagerly embrace, which has destroyed the fabric and spirit of a once great culture, and is even now consuming the remaining cultures of Asia.
Before commencing further, it is necessary to locate Sora more precisely and to sketch out some of the main features of life and culture in a rural Japanese village so that what follows in the stones will make sense.
♦ Acknowledgments ♦
It goes without saying that the writing of this book would have proved impossible without the presence of my wife, Masako, on so many of the journeys I made, and who so patiently untangled and explained many of the complexities of Japanese language and customs. Thanks must also go to Mr. and Mrs. Yoko, for without our having met them, and their generous suggestion that we should visit them in their native land of Noto, we would never have had the opportunity of living in Sora. And most importantly, gratitude goes to Mr. and Mrs. Sawada for allowing us to rent what had been Mr. Sawada's mother's house in Sora.
The fact that this book is published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company is due to the guidance of our good friend Shinji Takagi, a fine architect and custodian of the "old ways."
Finally, thanks goes to Graham Chappell and Andrew Grazier at Arran Graphics & Computers for their invaluable help in times of need.
PART ONE
♦ Introduction ♦
♦ Northern Noto
The Noto Peninsula resembles a dorsal fin sticking out from the middle of the back of the main island of Honshū into the Japan Sea. The peninsula is part of Ishikawa prefecture, and its northern part curves eastward at an almost forty-five degree angle to its southern part. This means that one side of the peninsula faces the Japan Sea, while the other curves in toward the direction of the mainland. Due to this, these two coasts are known as the "outer coast" and the "inner coast," respectively. The outer is wild and rugged, while the inner is mild and sheltering. Hence, these very different environments are sometimes referred to as "Father" and "Mother," and the character of the villages along these coasts is, accordingly, quite different. It is on the "inner coast," in the bay created by the crook of the curve of the peninsula, which contains Noto Island (Notojima), where the village of Sora is situated. This inner coastline looks toward the Tateyama Mountains across the expanse of Nanao Bay, which is formed between the curve in the peninsula and the mainland.
The northern area of Noto is often referred to as "Far Noto," and the nature and energy of the place is best expressed in the words of an old peddler's song: "Noto is a gentle place; even the earth is so."
A slangy term that describes another aspect of the energy on this peninsula is totoraku (literally, "father's ease"), because traditionally the women do most of the work! Not only do they care for home and family but they also farm, and often hold a job either within the village itself or somewhere nearby. Their days begin very early and end long after everyone else has gone to bed. And when the men are socializing at home, the wife is very often excluded from the table, while being expected to cater to every whim of her husband and his guests. This extraordinary feminine energy and forbearance was one of the first things that impressed me when we arrived. It permeates the entire fabric of life in the villages and the surrounding fields.
