After putting in a couple of hours of carving on one of my woodblocks this morning, I took a short break and stepped out onto my balcony to stretch my back and legs a bit. I like to get outside to do this, because during the carving, my face is held so close to the wood that my eyes never get a chance to focus on anything more than a few centimeters away. But once outdoors, of course they are free to focus far and wide.

As I stood there today, leaning on the railing and idly watching the world go by, I noticed a man busy with what seemed to be a most unusual activity. He was raised above the ground in one of those hydraulic hoists that people working on power lines use, but he was nowhere near the wires. He was positioned right against the tree nearest my window, one of the hundreds of ginkgo trees that line the main roads of Hamura. I stared in some disbelief at what he was doing. He wore heavy work gloves, reached out to each branch of the tree, and quickly stripped it of all the leaves. He worked very rapidly indeed, and a veritable shower of greenery cascaded to the ground, where another man raked it together and threw it all into the back of their truck.

It didn't even take him a minute to strip the tree completely bare, after which he lowered his hoist, helped his friend clean up the sidewalk, and then drove forward a few meters to the next tree, where the sequence started over again.

This all seemed completely insane to me, but after a few moments reflection, I understood why they were doing this. It is now late October, and although the leaves are all yet green, they will soon be turning bright yellow, and then falling ... and falling ... and falling. It will take about a month until they are all down, and during that time, the sidewalks and streets will be constantly covered with the yellow carpet. If the weather remains good, that is. If however, it rains a lot during this time, the fallen leaves will turn into a slippery dirty muck coating the sidewalk. A dangerous coating that must be labouriously scraped off and hauled away. And of course, as the trees only release their leaves a few at a time, keeping the sidewalk safe is a labour-intensive and quite expensive job.

In past years, we here in this 'mansion' and the people living in the house next door, have usually been pretty good about sweeping up our section of the sidewalk, but as most of the remainder of the street is a commercial zone, nobody feels particularly responsible for those trees, and the muck stays on the sidewalk.

So the people in City Hall whose job it is to maintain the streets, have come up with this 'preventive medicine'. Strip off all the leaves before they fall. Each work crew then has to cover each street only once, and there is never a mess on the sidewalk. It is, I am sure, quite efficient and cost-effective.

Except for one thing. What happens to our autumn? The long rows of gingko trees in bright yellow livery are beautiful! Kicking through piles of leaves we have raked up is fun! An autumn without falling leaves? That's no autumn at all. I feel now as though we've skipped over and gone straight into winter. The sight of those rows of bare tree limbs stretching forlornly down the long street ...

I suppose this is just one more example of how life in our modern cities is becoming ever-more distanced from 'natural' ('with nature') ways of living. What's next? Plastic cherry blossoms tied to the lamp posts in spring? But of course, we already have those too, down many of our shopping streets ...

I guess this autumn clean-up is thus inevitable. Our city is truly a large machine, and must be kept well cleaned and 'oiled', or it will cease to function properly. Later on in the month, after it is time for the leaves to turn yellow, I will stroll over to one of our large parks, and enjoy the colours there. But I wonder. Do you think they might have stripped those trees too? If they have, I'm going to make some noise!

(October 1994)

Posted by Dave Bull at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

The other day, when I was at some office or another, I had to fill in a form asking for basic personal information; name, address, etc. I got past the first section without too much trouble, but when I came to the blank space labelled 'Nationality', I found myself pausing a bit. Of course, I wasn't really in doubt about what to write, and I went ahead and filled in the space to match all my other legal documentation, with the word 'Canadian'. But I have to wonder if that was the correct answer to the question. For you see, I do not really feel 'Canadian', and I am certainly not only 'Canadian'.

I was born in England, to British parents, and thus have British nationality. When I was still just a small child, our family emigrated to Canada, and a few years later, my parents obtained Canadian citizenship for themselves and their children. I am not familiar with current regulations concerning these matters, but it seems that at that time anyway, this could be done without jeopardizing our original British nationality. I thus found myself in the position of having two nationalities, British and Canadian, and indeed, have two passports.

So this explains why I am not 'only' Canadian, but why did I say 'not really' Canadian? Well, a passport is one thing, but after all, it's just a piece of paper. One's feelings about nationality surely must be based on something more fundamental than that. If I think back to school days in Canada, we sometimes sang the national anthem:

Oh Canada, our home and native land True patriot's love, in all our hearts command ...

'True patriot's love'? Well, excuse me, but I simply can't say that's the way I felt about Canada, neither then nor now. Yes, I lived there for a long time (29 years), but it was basically just a place to live ... a location, nothing deeper than that. Perhaps part of this was due to the fact that our family was very mobile, and during those 29 years I lived in at least eleven different homes. I am sure that this habit of being constantly uprooted every few years went a long way to suppressing any developing feelings of 'homeness', either for a particular town or area, or for the country as a whole. And now, after more than eight years of living here in Japan, any such left-over feelings for Canada as a 'home' are quite weak. So when I said 'not really' Canadian, what I meant is that I just don't feel much connection with the place any more.

When people now ask me questions like "How do they do such-and-such in your country?", I'm really at a loss how to answer them. My knowledge of current Canadian society is very poor indeed. As any long-term resident of Japan well knows, social patterns in a country can change enormously in eight years. While I suspect that Canadian society isn't subject to changes quite as rapid as the astonishing transformations currently under way here, I am sure that contemporary ways of thinking in Canada must differ from those I am familiar with. I simply cannot answer their question. Not honestly, anyway.

So back to that application form I was filling in. Nationality? Well it sure doesn't seem British. I left England when I was five years old, and the only things I know about Britain are what I read in the newspapers. Canada? In this case I know even less, as the newspapers only mention Canada when the Quebec separation problem bubbles up every few years. Actually, I'd kind of like to leave that space on the form blank. I suppose a truly stateless person would get very angry at me for saying such a thing, and indeed, millions of people around the world would give up everything they own in order to obtain Canadian or British citizenship. But such people I think, are mostly those whose original country has failed them; failed to provide a stable social order in which they could live peacefully and productively. Of course such people see Canadian nationality as a 'ticket to freedom' and an escape from persecution or totalitarianism.

So don't misunderstand my comment about leaving that space blank. I recognize that I was very fortunate indeed to have grown up in two such well-ordered and stable societies. But, presumably due to that rather extreme mobility during my formative years, any 'nationalistic' feelings I may have had are very weak.

Can I guess the next question in your mind? "What about Japanese nationality?" Now that I seem to be settling down quite comfortably here, am I starting to feel Japanese? This is a tough question. We read recently in the newspapers about various foreigners who have taken this step, so the idea of a 'hakujin' gaining Japanese nationality is no longer such a weird idea as it seemed just a few years back. (Although such a thing was possible even a hundred years ago - Lafcadio Hearn being perhaps the best-known example ...) I am sure that if I took such a step (and assuming that it was granted), my friends and neighbours would accept it ... on the surface. But in their minds of course, I would always be 'different'. For better or worse, rightly or wrongly, the people living in these islands do have an image of themselves as a very homogenous group, and this self-image is very strongly embedded indeed. Possession of a piece of paper proclaiming Japanese nationality would in reality be little more than possession of a piece of paper. Although it would symbolize full entry into this society, real practical acceptance could only come from one's actions: from living among Japanese people in a Japanese way ... from understanding the language at an advanced level ... from total immersion in Japanese culture over a long period of time ... indeed, by actually 'becoming' Japanese.

Am I doing this? Well, although when I came to Japan I had no such long-term calculation in mind, it does seem that this may be the way things turn out. In actual practice, I am somewhere along that road. I share the same living environment as my Japanese neighbours, and follow similar daily routines. I sometimes go for weeks on end without speaking English, and my 'nihongo' is gradually getting better. (But, oh so gradually ...!) I truly enjoy living here, in this fascinating country, and feel myself to be a productive member of society. So who knows? Maybe one day I'll find myself taking that big step ...

But ... I just remembered something! There's no way that I can ever become Japanese. There is one thing that must forever separate the Japanese from the rest of the world. A barrier that cannot be crossed. A gulf that cannot be bridged. Dare I even mention the word ... Yes, that ultimate test for those who wish to understand what it means to be truly Japanese ... a bowl of steaming white rice topped with natto!

(October 1994)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

One afternoon last week, I had some visitors in my workshop, a couple who had dropped by to see my prints, and while we were chatting, my two daughters came home from school. Coming in the door with a loud We're home!, they dropped their school satchels on the floor, raided the fridge for a quick snack, called up a friend on the phone, and then disappeared again ... See you later!, chattering and bantering with each other at the top of their voices continuously during the few minutes they were here. After the door had slammed behind them, one of my guests said to me, with a bit of wonder in her voice, "Well, those two are certainly cheerful, aren't they? Are they always like that?"

I had to admit that they usually were, and apologized for the fact that they were not a bit more polite to guests ... My visitors brushed this off, and we returned to our conversation, but they had indeed been visibly surprised by the 'genkiness' of the girls. I think I know why. Although divorce is gradually becoming more common in Japan, it is still rare enough that most people have not had much direct contact with a family like mine - a single parent with two young children. As a consequence, the general impression in this country of such an arrangement is that life for children in this type of family is something of a dark and difficult struggle. People quite frequently commiserate with me about our situation, and I hear a lot of "Taihen desu ne ..." sort of comments. But as these two guests saw, it doesn't have to be like that!

Of course, I'm not trying to pretend that this kind of a family arrangement, with only one parent, is to be recommended. It would indeed be better for the girls to be growing up with a 'normal' set of parents, but since that is not the case, we make the best out of what we have. And over the three years since their mother left to live in Canada (temporarily at first, and then permanently as of a year ago), they have shown an amazing ability to adapt to their new situation.

In the most common 'traditional' family set-up, the mother is the person dictated to be the 'homemaker', with the remaining members of the family responsible for other areas: father for income-producing work, children for school work and just generally 'growing up'. With a family like mine though, as none of us can take on the homemaker role full time due to those commitments, that job must be shared among all of us. We keep a list of housework chores stuck up on the wall, covering a full week of cooking, cleaning, and other jobs; and every Sunday evening we sit down together and choose what work we will each do during the coming week. The girls don't particularly like doing all these things (neither do I!), but we all realize that there is no other way. Nobody is going to take care of us - we have to do it ourselves.

So the housework 'problem' is basically settled. But of course, in a typical family the mother does have other functions above and beyond the mundane chores, and it is about some of these things that friends have shown concern. The most frequent one mentioned to me is the question of a 'feminine model' for my daughters. If they were boys, then perhaps growing up with only a father would not be so bad, but if two girls grow up without a mother present, will they be disadvantaged in some way?

I have to admit that at the time our family broke up, this was a major concern for me too, but more recently I have come to think that it is not such a problem. Although there is no woman living in this house with us, the girls do have contact with any number of women in the community at large, and are proving adept at 'picking up' many things from these women that they could never get from me. I realized this for the first time the other day, when I went to use our toilet, and found that the room had been transformed. A bunch of flowers sat on top of the water tank, a cover was on the seat, and the torn end of the paper roll had been folded into a neat, trim triangle, ready for easy use by the next person. When I asked around, I found that Himi, my eleven year old daughter, had seen these ideas in a friend's house. She had thought that we should do the same, so our scruffy little room is now quite cheerful! A short while later, a little 'pump' bottle of fragrant hand soap appeared magically by the side of our sink, to replace the cake of soap that I always leave covered with sumi streaks ... Our genkan is now generally swept out, and she has made a nice little framed picture for it. And once again, just like it was years ago, our balcony is cluttered with little pots of flowers, some blooming healthily, some less so ... I had asked her to do none of these things. She saw or heard about them somewhere, and decided that our home needed these 'feminine' touches.

In a way, I think it is perhaps better that she is learning these things from 'outside'. If Himi was growing up in a house where a mother was doing all this, then she would never give any thought to them, but because she notices the contrast between our home and those she visits, she has come to understand that if nobody does them, then they just don't get done. And now, every time we return from visiting somebody, I wait eagerly to see what else will change in our own home ...

What about other, more private, aspects of a mother/daughter relationship? Aren't there some rather personal things that a young developing girl just can't learn from her father, or the neighbours? Well actually, no, I don't think so. I have a pretty good system for things like this, which seems to be working very well so far. Simply make sure that you talk to kids about 'difficult' topics while they are still too young to really understand what you're talking about, and thus unable to become embarrassed about it. Although a lot of what you say and explain to them goes over their heads, they get the general gist of what you're talking about, and usually find it uproariously funny rather than embarrassing. Enough repetitions of such conversations, combined with access to well-chosen illustrated books that cover human development and teenage 'problems', has put my two daughters in the position of being far better educated in these matters than I ever was. The idea of a parent waiting until the child is a developed teenager (of either sex), and then sitting down together ... "Umm, I think it's about time we had a little talk about some things ..." strikes me as being somewhat ludicrous, almost certain to result in very little productive communication taking place. No, I must say that I don't think they are being handicapped in this department either.

The girls are now nine and eleven years old, and I am quite sure that at bath time one evening very soon, they will kick me out, from that day on taking their bath together, leaving me no option but to have mine alone. "Otoko wa iyada!" they will say. "No men in the bath with us!" They'll still have lots of fun, splashing and playing, and it will be me who is left with nobody to scrub my back. But that's a different story, isn't it ...

(October 1994)

Posted by Dave Bull at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

Back when my first daughter was about to be born (over in Vancouver, Canada), her mother and I went through a period where we were quite worried about what this child would look like. As neither of us could be considered particularly handsome, we imagined some nightmarish situations: say, her Japanese mother's fairly flat face, with my somewhat impressive English nose stuck in the middle of it ... things of that sort. We were thus quite relieved when the baby turned out to have what seemed to be fairly 'standard' features (as did the sister who came along a couple of years later).

To my eyes, I was happy to see that this new little child turned out to have an almost completely Japanese appearance. Her mother in turn, was happy to see that this new little child looked almost completely Western! Were we seeing the same baby? Of course we were. It was our own eyes that were different. As the years passed, I came to realize that it was just not her mother and I who saw things this way. Canadians who met my daughter commented on her Japaneseness, and after we came to Japan, everybody here instantly recognized her as a foreigner.

The reason for this seemingly paradoxical behaviour is actually very simple, but has very wide ramifications. Whenever we see something new to us, we only notice the differences, never the similarities. My daughter's very Japanese nose and facial shape were invisible to her Japanese mother, who noticed only the Western eyes. This feature was unnoticed by me, who saw only those points that seemed particularly Japanese.

This same sort of behaviour is also apparent on wider scales. A traveller visiting a foreign country for the first time looks about him in amazement ... the buildings, the people, clothing, the food ... he sees all those things that differ from his home environment. "How very different these people are from us." he thinks. When he returns home, he is full of stories about all the new things he has seen. His friends hear these stories, and their image of that country as "... different from us ..." is thus reinforced.

I can easily understand how, back in the days before airplanes made travel a common part of our lives, and before TV brought foreign images into our homes, this 'selective blindness' of travellers created the general image that foreign lands were indeed all strange places inhabited by strange people. What is less readily understood is why, given these modern aids to contact and communication, nothing seems to have changed.

In the case with which I am most familiar, that of Japan seen by Western eyes, and vice versa, I simply have to think back over my own experiences to see that this is true. Before I had any actual contact with Japan, my knowledge of this country came from books (mostly), the media (somewhat), and travellers to Japan or actual Japanese people (rarely). The 'only see differences' phenomenon came into play in a doubled form. The authors of those books (mostly Westerners) of course emphasized differences, and then I too, as I read, was mostly interested in differences, skimming past anything that seemed too familiar. So when finally, after years of this kind of advance 'preparation', I arrived on these shores, I was quite convinced that I was about to enter a truly new world, where nothing would be familiar, and where all the rules would be different. How would I survive?

Well, of course I did. That was many years ago, and I can now just laugh at those concerns and fears. I had no trouble whatsoever integrating into life here, and becoming a 'normal' productive member of this society. This was possible because although the books were right in basic fact - yes there were differences - they had ignored the other 99% of the story ... people are people. The Japanese were in all essentials, just like me. They got up in the morning, went to the toilet, ate breakfast ... and so on through the day. They had the same desires, the same needs, and the same problems. They felt the same emotions, and the same bonds to the people around them. Maybe that 99% figure I mentioned is indeed a bit exaggerated. On further reflection, I think it should be revised upward!

After all these years of living among the Japanese people, I am now totally convinced that those presumed 'deep' differences are in actual fact, nearly irrelevant. Shoes off/shoes on. Pull tools/push tools. Eat rice/eat potatoes. 'Honne~Tatemae'/'straight talking'. Such differences count for nothing when compared to the reality - two people standing side by side, pretty much identical in biology, and pretty much identical in real 'homo sapiens' culture.

My friend Emiko went to Egypt last year, not as part of a tour package, but as an independent traveller. We asked her before she went if she had been 'reading up' on the country in preparation, but she told us that no, she didn't want to go with her mind full of preconceptions. When she returned, after a couple of weeks in that 'exotic' country, a group of us waited eagerly to hear her tales ... but we were to be disappointed. She didn't have much to tell us. Her host family had been completely 'normal', the father a school teacher, the daughter a college student, etc. She said it was like visiting her own family! Of course, she had a good time visiting famous sights, and eating interesting food, but far and away the most valuable thing she brought home was that even in an apparently very exotic country such as Egypt, where the religion is different, the food is different, and the climate is different - there is one thing that is not different - the people. She learned in just a couple of weeks what took me years to learn, and what many people never learn. People are people. They are you and me.

I know we can't change human nature. We will always tend to see foreign countries in this lop-sided way. It's just the way we are. But it would be nice to think that we can also learn to see other cultures as more like us, and less strange, less threatening. I am waiting for that big day when the astronomers will announce the news that they have finally discovered evidence of other civilizations out there in space somewhere. Perhaps then we will finally start to really understand how much alike we humans all are, when seen in comparison with someone (something?) really different.

But there I go too, falling into the same trap. Who knows, but that those aliens will probably turn out to be pretty much just like us. Father a school-teacher ... Daughter a college student ... Just neighbours in the Milky Way ...

(October 1994)

Posted by Dave Bull at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

There was no mistaking it. He must have been one of the cooks - the white uniform, apron and headgear gave that away. But what on earth was he doing up there on the roof of the restaurant? It wasn't very steep, and he didn't seem to be in much danger. He was simply walking back and forth among the tree branches overhanging the building, carrying a small, flat basket. I wasn't able to watch long enough to figure out what he was doing, as my companions were too eager to get inside, and see if we could get seats. It was 'high season', this was a very popular restaurant, and it was obviously going to be very crowded.

A small group of former English students of mine had suggested we do a bit of 'maple viewing', over on the Tama River in the Okutama area. I've been up there walking any number of times, but had never managed to make it during the season for seeing the fall foliage. Part of this had been my desire to avoid the crowds at that season, but the general 'busy-ness' of autumn had really been the main reason. Over the years though, I'd heard so much about the fabulous scenery up there, that when the suggestion was made for this trip, I didn't hesitate to accept.

Things hadn't gone according to plan. One of the members had cancelled, another was late, and we then found out at the station that the trains were all off schedule, due to some kind of problem down the line somewhere. We were thus arriving at the restaurant nearly an hour behind our planned time, and didn't really expect to find a place. But there must have been some cancellations (perhaps because of the train problem), because to our surprise we were not only given seats, but given the best seats in the house - a corner table overlooking the river. Huge wide windows, with the warm sun streaming across the table. And outside, spreading all the way up the mountainside opposite, were the colours we had come to see.

My companions were duly appreciative. "Wonderful!" "We're here just at the right time ..." "The colours are so beautiful this year!", etc. etc. And it was a very pleasant scene - the sunlight reflecting off the water surface upstream providing a sparkling highlight to the green, yellow and brown panorama. They turned to me, "You don't have anything like this in your country, do you?"

"We...ll, no. Not exactly ..." I tried to keep my voice neutral. But these women know me well, and the hesitation gave me away. "What's wrong? Don't you think our Japanese 'momiji' are beautiful?" Now I was in the soup. They were very proud of their beautiful scenery, and happy to be showing it to a foreigner. I shouldn't criticize it ... But what to say about the autumn colours in Canada? What to say about those Quebec mountainsides clothed in fire ... the absolutely brilliant reds, oranges and yellows? What to say about driving down a rural highway surrounded by displays of vivid colour that completely defy description? What to say about the crispness of the air, the unbelievable depth of the blueness of the sky ...? How to tell them about these things without seeming to criticize their autumn scenery? As I said though, we know each other well, so I told them of these things, albeit a little apprehensively.

As it happens, I needn't have been so worried. They listened attentively to my description of the glories of autumn in Eastern Canada, but were not impressed. It wasn't that my description was inadequate; perhaps I even overdid things. It was simply that to their minds, such concepts as 'brightness', 'boldness', 'vividness' and 'clarity', were not particularly positive points. To them, the image I presented was simply too strong ... too 'noisy'. They didn't want to be 'hit in the face' with their autumn, they rather seemed to want delicate shadings ... sublety ... gentleness ...

It was at this point in our discussion that one of them directed my attention to the plate in front of me (if I can use that rather bald word 'plate' to describe such a beautiful ceramic creation ...). Our meal consisted of a dozen or so small courses, brought in turn by a kimono-clad waitress. The current dish was made up of a selection of five morsels, some meat, some vegetable. My friend pointed in turn to each one of the five, and then out the window. At first, I didn't understand what she was trying to indicate. One of the other women had to spell it out for me. Each of the five items was an autumn colour - and matched exactly a colour that we could see from our window. Our dish was a tasteful (in two ways!) representation of the mountain scenery in front of us. I nodded my understanding. She was too polite to ask me if we had anything like this in my country ...

The rest of our meal became a kind of game; what was the 'significance' of each serving? Many were fairly straightforward - being simply seasonal vegetables. Some were more complicated - the name of the dish had a poetic allusion to the season. And a few of them defeated us (I should say - defeated them) completely. But at one point during the meal, a light went on over my head. Placed ever-so-carefully next to the food on one of the plates was ... a curled-up orange-brown maple leaf. Of course! This was what the cook had been doing up on the roof ... collecting ingredients for our lunch from the overhanging tree branches!

This time my companions were not so polite. Laughing, they started to ask me, "In your country ..." I couldn't even let them finish the question. The idea of a restaurant cook prowling across the roof picking brown leaves to decorate the lunch ... No, I had to admit that I didn't think this would happen in Canada.

So we came to a sort of draw. In their minds, the Canadian autumn is a rather brash affair; 'beautiful' yes, but somewhat unsophisticated. And to me, the Japanese autumn is a basically unimpressive show, for which the Japanese compensate by playing these poetic 'games'. To each his own. And is it really a coincidence that each of these two countries has the climate that creates an autumn suited so exactly to the character of its people? Or is it that the character of the people has been shaped by such things as the colour of their autumn leaves? An interesting question indeed ...

(October 1994)

Posted by Dave Bull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)