three days of Naikan, then vivid memories begin to well up and flood the consciousness. By the time one has itemized the expenses parents have incurred from a diaper count through college tuition, the notion of a self-made man or woman seems a convenient but absurd fiction. For everything in one’s existence is necessarily “okage de” to someone or some thing.
Visitors to Japan will justifiably continue to be dazzled as I was by the multiplicity of cultural forms. The juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern and the secular and the religious is so compelling that it is tempting to view Japanese culture in terms of rupture and discontinuity. At least that would be one way of explaining what appear to be simultaneous yet mutually exclusive worlds. However, underlying this apparent discontinuity lies a continuity of values that gives body to the many distinct forms whether they be old or new. Japan’s cultural reservoir is deep and rich, and has proven its resilience and creativity historically through the ability to reinvent itself according to the demands and spirit of the times. This reinvention is never arbitrary but draws from a repertoire of values among which gratitude has long held a preeminent position in Japan. As gratitude affirms not only the complex web of human relations, but also those with the environment, it is as relevant to ancient Yamato as to postmodern Japan. My own debt to Japan for having taught me this precious lesson in gratitude is something that I will never be able to fully repay. But at least I can begin by acknowledging the debt.
Practical Information
Naikan Center
227 Gakuen Daiwa-cho, 3-chome
Nara-shi 631-0041
TEL 0742-48-2968
http://www4.ocn.ne.jp/~naikan/eng-06.html
CHAPTER 2
The Ways of Water
Kyoto’s Water Culture
Kyoto—one of the world’s richest cultural cities—is usually associated with famous temples and shrines, not to mention great works of art, but it is above all a “water city” for those who live here. The presence and abundance of clear and flowing water, always within view, has profoundly influenced both the material and spiritual lives of the people. Though physical environment certainly shapes human culture, it never determines the outcome in any strict sense. Offering suggestions and possible directions, human ingenuity takes over from there. In the case of Kyoto, surrounded on three sides by hills that feed water into the city, the dynamism and gracefulness that collectively characterize these many rivers, streams, brooks, and canals that traverse the city at every turn have left heir imprint through the creation of a strong yet fluid culture.
The cultural dimensions inspired by the nature of water include the culinary, religious, aesthetic, industrial and moral. In terms of food, tofu, rice, sake, tea and sweets are all intimately related to the purity and abundance of the city’s water. To the touch, much of Kyoto’s water feels almost silky, and to the taste it can be earthy, woodsy, or have a kind of transparent flavor. The last type allows the water to bring out the natural flavors in other ingredients. Thus, the delicate Kyoto cuisine developed as a water-based diet with vegetables and tofu (composed largely of water), at its core. The traditional tea ceremony with its minimalist components is almost unthinkable without water of a quality able to stand on its own merit.
Exciting and excitable, water is always going somewhere. The perpetually changing surface of running waters gave to Buddhist ideas of impermanence a positive and creative charge (in contrast to the negative ephemera of falling cherry blossoms). Ponds and waterfalls became not only integral features of temple gardens, but were designed so that their wind-rippled surfaces would cast a fascinating play of shadows on paper windowpanes of nearby temples and villas as they do at Ginkakuji temple. The austerity of dry rock gardens conjures the presence of water abstractly through the skillful placement of sand and stones to suggest the waves and whirlpools of distance oceans. The Shinto, Buddhist, and Shugendo practice of misogi or spiritual cleansing through standing under a waterfall, or dousing oneself with buckets of bracingly cold water, derives from the deep desire to be united with the clarity and purity of water. Water by its very nature changes form according to the container in which it is placed. This quality suggested the Buddhist wisdom of the emptiness of form, and the social value of flexibility and a situational ethic over an unchanging stance for all occasions.
Aside from taste, sight, and touch, the sound of water is also important in Kyoto’s water culture. Several inventions are used to capture its sound. The sui-kin-kutsu is a musical instrument played by water as it drips into an overturned perforated bottle buried underground such as found at Eikando temple. As droplets fall languorously through the hole, the bottle resonates like music from a dragon’s chamber. The sozu, a miniature bamboo seesaw poised above a basin in a balancing act played by water alternately spilling from each end, is Kyoto’s version of a scarecrow. Its loud rhythmical, and never-ending clacking characterizes the sound of summertime in the city.
Kyoto has flourished for 1,200 years nurtured by a series of underground streams that drain from the hillsides and bubble up from the subterranean depths of the earth. In fact, the city sits on top of a buried treasure—an enormous underground water reservoir 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) east-west and 33 kilometers (about 20.5 miles) north-south that holds 27.5 billion cubic meters of water. The mother lode of this vast water network forms an area in the heart of the city with Shimogamo Shrine, the Imperial Palace and Shinsen-en defining its boundaries.
Located at the confluence of Takano and Kamo rivers, Shimogawa Shrine has long served as the guardian of Kyoto’s waters. In fact, the protection and management of water is usually associated with Shinto shrines where water is often plentiful, so that even today many residents (including myself) get their drinking water from wells at shrines famous for their water alone. The water at Nashi-no-ki Shrine, located near the Imperial Palace, is so popular that sometimes people need to wait in queue to draw the water. But countless lesser-known yet fully potable waters are cherished in their neighborhoods alone.
In the 19th century, when the capital of Japan moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, the ancient city responded to this desertion through the idiom of water. It reinvented itself as modern by forging a major new waterway—the Lake Biwa Canal that now links Kyoto to the largest lake in Japan and is the current source of the city’s tap water. The city’s next large-scale project—the construction of the underground subway system in the 1950s—severed some of these vital water veins that led to the drying up of some of the city’s venerable water resources to the chagrin of local tofu makers who depended on it.
Kyoto’s development continues to have a profound effect on the underground water system, the source of the city’s cultural identity. The public protests in 2010-2011 to the building of a massive aquarium in Umekoji Park drove home just how sensitive the subject of tampering with the ancient water system can get. In some cases, water may be rejuvenated. Parts of the Horikawa river, buried for fifty-five years under tons of concrete, are now flowing again above ground along certain stretches. This river was and still remains the center of yuzen dyeing, a process now prohibited that once required placing long bolts of silk fabric on the surface of the flowing water to remove excess dye in order to achieve the vibrant colors for which it is known.
Kyoto actively struggles to reconcile its desire for development with the need for historical preservation, and water is crucial part of its cultural memory. Of all the pleasures of living in a city as ancient as Kyoto, the constant sight and sound of water is perhaps the greatest. From the larger river bodies of the Kamo, Takano, Katsura, or Shirakawa (including the more distant Hozu and Uji) to the major streams such as Takase, Misosogi and the various Biwa branch canals, water flows ceaselessly. Even cemeteries memorialize it in the tiered stone stupas that represent the five phases of the universe with various geometrical shapes. Coming after the cube for the earth is a sphere that stands for water. A single
