(My path on a recent walk through the forest Schönbuch north of Tübingen.)

I feel like I’m going through a second adolescence. The views I took for granted most of my life contort as I stare them down. The process is unnerving, but it’s also liberating. One issue that has particularly fascinated me of late is this seemingly omnipresence of struggle in my life-view, but also throughout the world in the form of civil and human rights movements and political rebellion. There seems to be and always has been a struggle to do away with controlling powers and with barriers to opportunity.

Struggle has in no way ended in the US, where civil rights were won for blacks in the 20th century, but the LBGT community still struggles to gain civil recognition. US pop culture thrives on the rebellions of each generation of adolescents. It seems like the struggle for opportunity is the holy grail. But what happens once opportunities fought for are opened? Is it possible then to live happily ever after or do we need to find a new cause to fight for?

So often, it seems we define ourselves by our struggles, but when the struggle is over, what happens to our self-identification with the cause? Considering the privileged background I come from, I have never had to fight for my human, political, or civil rights. I went to a women’s college, where the mantra drilled into us was that we could have it all. And yet I find it fascinating how I repeatedly sought out challenges for myself.

I repeatedly tried to prove the possibility of goals that I had heard were impossible. In my undergraduate studies in linguistics, I began to question if languages were harder for adults to learn than for children. Children reach “adult” proficiency in a language at the age of four, but they are immersed in that language and spend almost all their time and concentration on learning the language as a way of understanding the world around them. Adults, with their familiarity with language and their personal habits, set aside language learning to focus on “more important things,” but I was certain that if an adults set their minds to it, they could learn language like children, and I set out to try my best with Japanese. Considering I entered the University of Tokyo eight years after I began studying the Japanese language, I at least am satisfied, imagining an eight year old Japaense child probably has linguistic strengths I don’t have, but would not be able to communicate ideas I have to communicate for my studies.

A few years before entering university again, I similarly threw myself into the deep end when I decided to study noh performance and for a while chose the naive goal of becoming a professional in a conservative art form performed almost exclusively by Japanese men. As a white woman there was little chance I would be taken seriously, but the confidence instilled in me during my undergraduate studies gave me little room for doubt. It was not until a few years later (once I had chosen my next challenge, to go to graduate school in Japan) that I saw the scars that same struggle had left on the white women who had come before me and who I respect with my whole heart, and yet I think that path is not one I wish to follow.

Instead, I have chosen the challenge of finishing a degree in Japanese and in noh cultural studies, a challenge with a limited time-span that is coming to an end. I shall have to see what will come of my work this time, but with yet another challenge almost completed, is it time to find another obstacle to hurl myself and all my capabilities against?

The appeal of plunging head-first into a challenge inspired by external stimuli has dwindled. I do not need to tear open a new opportunity for myself. I would rather reconsider the opportunity I have made for myself as the door to the path ahead of me. I want to consider the path ahead of me down to the very bedrock it is laid upon. I want to know the opportunities open before me down to the very finest details, and then I want to develop my abilities to take the fullest possible advantage of them. That is where the hard work begins. The grand pursuit to prove oneself in a unique struggle is hard work, but somehow in retrospect it seems like the gain might have been achieved with less aggression. Instead of continuing that method, I want to work on developing the fine unique details of that which is possible for me now. I want to set struggle aside and let practice takes its place. It takes practice to live well, but a fullness of being is at the heart of that practice.

(Fireworks as seen from our balcony in Tübingen.)

On my way to Germany in December, I flew through Shanghai, and a Chinese woman about my age sat next to me on the first leg of the journey from Tokyo. We found we had a lot of things in common. She has lived in Japan now a little longer than I have, she is a student in Tokyo like myself, and we were both on our way to spend the holidays with our families.

A more random commonality she and I shared was the cultural heritage of setting off fireworks at New Year’s. I remember the first night of a trip I once took to Shanghai years ago was the last night of the lunar Chinese New Year celebrations, and private citizens were setting off fireworks in the streets as I watched from our high rise hotel window. The same, my seat mate said, happens in China on the western calendrical New Year. And so, said I, at New Year’s in Germany, and she looked at me surprised.

So, here is a photo of some private fireworks I saw at midnight on January 1, 2012 from our balcony, which overlooks part of Tübingen, Germany. If it hadn’t been for the vigorously chiming bells throughout the city or the colorful stars bursting in the sky, the incessant explosions, shouts, and billowing gunpowder smoke throughout the city might have lead one to believe there were a war underway. Perhaps for the people setting of the fireworks, it was a moment of cathartic ecstasy. But I was so tired from staying up past midnight that I somehow fell asleep despite the ongoing blasts, hearing sirens through the haze of my encroaching dreams.

I wish you all a happy 2012!

(The memorial to Saigyo and the courtesan’s encounter at Eguchi, now in present-day Osaka.)

This morning, from the window in the living room, the rising sun could be seen just above the mountains in the distance. Above the sun, dark clouds, their undersides faintly lined in gold. Then suddenly snow started falling in sheets like rain, lightning flashed, and thunder followed. Today is not a day I want to be outside, walking through the changeable weather.

In the Kokinwakashū, a pair of poems exchanged by Saigyo and a courtesan (yūjo in Japanese) on a rainy evening comes to mind. Or rather, these poems, as incorporated in the nō Eguchi, have been on my mind for the last few months, since they comprise a core component of my thesis, but for now I’ll set the thesis aside, because I really just want to tell you the story of these poems as I see it.

Saigyo gave the first poem to a courtesan who had refused him lodging on a rainy evening.

世の中を厭ふまでこそ難からめ仮の宿りを惜しむ君かな

Yo no naka wo itou made koso katakarame kari no yadori wo oshimu kimi kana

To hate the world is hard, but you deny me a moment’s shelter?

Her reply:

世を厭ふ人とし聞けば仮の宿りに心を留むなと思ふばかりぞ

Yo wo itou hito to shi kikeba kari no yadori ni kokoro wo tomu na to omou bakari zo

Hearing you hate the world, I simply thought you should not set your heart on a moment’s shelter.

Within the context of the scene, these poems may be easily interpreted. A monk being a monk lives off the generosity of the communities he visits and sees the courtesan’s refusal as stinginess on her part. He believes the reason for her refusal is that she would not be able to make money off of him, a penniless monk who lives off of the goodwill of others. She, however, says she refused to give him shelter because a monk should not spend time in a house of pleasure, thereby taking higher moral ground. But it seems to me that there is more to this exchange than may be gained from a strictly socio-historical interpretation. These poems appear to be interpretable in many, many ways and the following is the most comprehensive possibility as I currently see it.

“A moment’s shelter” alludes to a story in the Lotus Sutra in which a teacher guides his disciples along a long and difficult road. The disciples grow weary, so the teacher leads them to a marvelous city with gardens, beautiful men and women, delicious food, anything they might desire. Once fully rested, the teacher leads the disciples further along the road, but not before explaining that the city was an illusion he created for them. Saigyo’s poem, by alluding to this story, seems to say he is aware of the nature of the activities at the courtesan’s house, but wishes to rest there nonetheless. The courtesan’s response points out the futility and danger of bending to such temporary distractions.

Things are not as they at first appear. Since the courtesan is the one to point out the danger of Saigyo’s desire to rest from his ascetic practice, she seems to be demonstrating a deeper insight into the nature of what it means to “hate the world.” Although as a courtesan, she is representative of a particularly artificial form of lust and passionate love, she herself seems well aware of her position and warns Saigyo against a lack of such awareness on his part. It seems as though her art as a courtesan has exposed her to all the evils of attachment to the transient world. She has learned not to place any value or expectations on the appearances she creates for her customers.

Here, therefore, it seems like the courtesan has gone a step beyond the expected. She is not a woman who places value on worldly possession and emotional attachment. Behind her artistically created facade of beauty, her own self-presentation, there lies a deeper sadness about the futility of the kinds of relationships her art engenders. No doubt she has seen men fall in love with and obsess over her and her fellow courtesans, and yet she does not give her beauty to the person who loves her the most or the person she loves, but to the person who is her customer on any given night.

And yet, it does not seem like she has grown cold as a result of this situation. Her concern for Saigyo demonstrates her respect for him and his specific goals as a monk. As she says in her poetic reply, her decision to refuse him shelter is not because she cannot make money off of his stay with her, but because she sees through his eyes the possible attachment to the pleasures of her house and her art, an attachment that she has seen arise in the eyes of so many men before him.

Does she similarly respect the customers she usually entertains, those who take pleasure in the superficial charms of her art? I think in all likelihood she does not. Thus it seems she is turning away the person she most respects, because he is closest to understanding her insight into the transience of the world she represents, the world she helps create for her customers. I can only imagine a deep loneliness resides beneath her respect.

I also have yet to read The Poetics of Space, but a quote I found while helping translate the catalogue to the exhibit fascinates me.

Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. . . Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts—serious, sad thoughts—and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Another connection I had to the exhibit was through a friend of mine, Hara Rurihiko, who made music for the exhibit and who asked my friend Eleonore to read some French poetry and I to read a poem by Rilke, all quotations from Bachelard’s text. He then mixed the recordings of our voices into the two songs “forêtphilie​” and “ma forêt ancestrale” that were played at the exhibition, which, because it took place during the summer break, I was sadly unable to attend. What I do have, however, is the music.

(The only picture I got of this fall’s ginko trees at Komaba campus.)

It has been far too long since I wrote here. The last few months, I have been focused solely on my Master’s thesis. I have not left my computer for more than a quick trip to the supermarket or to get a book off a shelf. I have not attended my noh lessons, which inspired me to follow this path of noh scholarship. I even missed most of the fall foliage as it appeared, because I had cooped myself up in my apartment, surrounded by suburban sprawl with few trees, and wa too internally focused on my thoughts to see what few indications there were around me.

But this blog has been in the back of my mind as I struggled to express myself in academic terms. Although I started this blog to work on my writing, it has been mostly about ideas that catch my fancy, freer thoughts than the academically researched, carefully constructed, and well supported interpretation I wrote about in my thesis. I miss that freedom. That is not to say, of course, that I dislike the reassurance of having a well-supported argument. (Oh that last sentence was really academic! Haha!)

Of course, there are some things that can’t be written about academically, like the atmospheric observations of mood during these months holed up writing, reconstructing a world in words. It is lonely living among ideas that have yet to be communicated. And also after having finished a text with the discovery that the text doesn’t express all the ideas initially intended to be expressed.

I’m reminded of Saigyo’s poem again.

もろともにかげをならぶる人もあれや月のもりくるささのいおに

Moro tomo ni kage wo naraburu hito mo areya tsuki no morikuru sasa no io ni

For a friend, if only there were someone who would line up their shadow next to mine in this grass hut that the moon has filled with light.

(My translation)

The double image of actually being alone in the moonlight and of wishing for someone with whom to share that spot in the moonlight is to the point. Even if I’m ever able to satisfactorily express my ideas to someone, they will still be sitting beside me and not where I sit, experiencing the moonlight from their own perspective.

So, enough for now of locking myself in my own little world. I need to begin reading again and interacting with people.