Lost Japan - Tradition & Transience

Kyoto, 2004.

Japan is a country of continuity and change. Think of the Shinto Shrines at Ise. They comprise a national monument which is essentially an architectural expression of the Japanese soul, a special and sacred place which has been rebuilt exactly alike every thirty years over many, many centuries (the complex of shrines is said to have been founded more than 1,500 years ago). Some might contend that there are perfectly good practical reasons for this – the shrines are built from perishable materials, such as wood and thatch, which, in the humid forest climate of their local setting, are liable to rot and decay in a relatively short time span. And, of course, buildings made of flexible, lightweight and easily renewable materials are eminently practical in a region which is prone to frequent earthquakes and tremors. But the cultural aspect to these buildings is also clearly key, they are symbolic of the core concepts of regeneration and renewal as commonly reflected in various systems of Eastern philosophy. The importance of this should not be overlooked. It is that distinctly Asian idea of tradition overcoming transience by embracing and incorporating it – utilising it perhaps? – establishing continuity through impermanence, which has always fascinated me.

Pilgrims climbing the steps to the Main Shrine at Ise Jingu, 2007.

Ise Jingu, 2007.

In many respects nostalgia is opposed to this idea of continuity through change. But, in order to survive traditions often need to adapt. It’s only when those changes or adaptations are too radical or happen too suddenly that nostalgia becomes a standard reaction, lamenting the loss of what went before and what perhaps seemed immutable over supposedly vast stretches of time. In that respect, I wonder if we were able to see those thirty year renewals of the sacred buildings at Ise Jingu speeded up, as if recorded on film from a fixed point by a time-lapse camera, how might they have very subtly changed over the many generations since they were first built? – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there wasn’t some sort of organic evolution or adaptation in their forms and configurations over the many intervening centuries which no single generation alone might have been readily able to perceive.

The Main Shrine (left) and its empty mirror site (right)

Every thirty years each shrine building is renewed, alternating its site between these two parallel spaces.

Nostalgia is an odd phenomenon in my opinion. It manages to indulge its own biases whilst simultaneously overlooking the limitations they prescribe. Self-selecting memories never create a clear record of what went before. It strikes me as even more bizarre when it is imposed from the outside by an external observer. It has the tendency to over-simplify. Yet I wouldn’t claim to be immune to nostalgia myself, as the hidden antiquarian in me often laments when a much loved place changes in some way or an old building gets demolished to make way for another new, soullessly modern, marble-lined identikit glass cube – but sometimes the historian in me does attempt to curb my instincts by trying to imagine what it must have felt like to see such venerable, old landmarks as they once were, when first emerging from their original construction sites; for surely they too would once have been seen by some as new and needlessly excessive edifices, perhaps even eyesores?

Benten-do, 2003.

I found myself pondering something along these lines when I was travelling in Japan last month. As I always do when in Tokyo, I paid a visit to a small Buddhist temple called Benten-do, set on a little island in the centre of a large pond, called Shinobazu-ike, in Ueno. I’ve been visiting this place regularly since 2003, this though was my first visit there since the year of the big earthquake which happened in March 2011. Benten-do had been damaged during that terrible natural disaster. I remember seeing large cracks in its concrete base just above the foundations. When I left Japan in the September of that year metal scaffolding was already in place and restoration works were underway. Now though, as I walked down the path and over the little humpbacked bridge towards it, I could see these works had evidently long been completed. The temple was still decked out with all its decorations celebrating the start of the New Year. But something else was different. The first thing I noticed was that many of the nearby trees had been drastically cut back and dead lotus plants were being dredged from the waters of the pond, yet as I drew closer I began to realise that the building itself was different. The platform in front of the hall had been enlarged and substantially reinforced. The water fountain, for ritually purifying hands and mouth, nearby had been moved. It looked the same but seemed newer, and sure enough when I peered up inside at the wooden ceiling I noticed that the wonderful, old painting by Tani Buncho of a dragon writhing through the clouds was no longer there (I very much hope it’s been preserved and is now stored somewhere safe). It felt odd wandering around such a familiar place which no longer seemed quite the same. But then I suddenly remembered many years before, the time when I visited an exhibition of early photographs of Japan at an art gallery somewhere in Tokyo, where I’d come across a hand coloured photograph of Benten-do taken in the late nineteenth century. And I remembered how I stood before it, transfixed for a very long time, fascinated by this familiar place, studying how different it once was – even though it was still essentially just the same. And I realised: there it was once again, that same feeling. Continuity in change.

Benten-do, 2018.

It was during this recent trip that I read Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan (Penguin, 2015). Entertaining, evocative, erudite, and effusively enthusiastic, this is an outsider's profoundly personal view of an ideal Japan that’s presently waning. Billed as a love letter to Japan the book is comprised of a set of autobiographical sketches by an American Japanophile who has immersed himself deeply within aspects of the culture which he has personally found most appealing (especially Kabuki). It is not a comprehensive history of Japan. It's not an ethnography. It is a personal memoir. The culmination of a lifetime of reflection upon the traditions of his adoptive country. Having first spent a period of his childhood growing up there, and later returning as a student, eventually building a career there as an art dealer – all the while devoting himself to the hobbies of preserving old buildings and studying Japanese arts and crafts, it is a book steeped with anecdote and observation. But it is also a lament for a lost idyllic view of Japan which fits into a strong tradition of mostly American ex-pat writers (par excellence perhaps being Donald Richie's The Inland Sea), who have given witness to interesting periods of change, yet ultimately these laments can at times seem somewhat self-indulgent and overplayed to my mind. 

Traditional wooden building in Ise

Unlike Kerr, who has spent most of his life since the 1970s living there, I have been visiting Japan regularly for only the last fifteen years (as well as living there on and off), and yet I too have seen places change irrevocably. And I've felt sad about that, but I think – ultimately – that is the nature of Japan; for all its ancient traditions, all its long-standing continuities, ultimately change is the only constant. Kerr does get somewhere close to acknowledging this in the book's final chapter, but it's ironic that he doesn't perceive certain self-parallels more clearly; to give one example, that his restoration projects always begin by modernising his traditional wooden Japanese houses (adding plumbing, electricity, modern sewage systems, etc.), making them more comfortable for a modern day Westerner, much like his lament that many Western imports to Japan (e.g. Italian restaurants) are always "modified to better suit Japanese tastes" thereby, in his opinion, rendering them bland and void of their original virtues, which he lauds. Our worlds are never what we want them to be, but there will always be a strong tradition of lamenting what we can see and wish they could or should be – demo, shikata ga nai, ne (translation: but, such is life, it can't be helped). 

Traditional interior, with sliding shoji screen and tatami mat floor.

That said though, this is an interesting, insightful, and entertaining read, particularly for anyone who already knows Japan well – it provides a good yardstick against which to measure and reflect upon your own personal impressions of the country and its culture. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on China versus Japan, as Kerr's experiences and opinions here reach a confluence of sorts with my own. He writes: “I will surely be criticized for making broad generalizations about the nature of Japanologists and Sinologists – but I can’t resist. Lovers of China are thinkers; lovers of Japan, sensuous. People drawn to China are restless, adventurous types, with critical minds. They have to be, because Chinese society is capricious, changing from one instant to the next, and Chinese conversation is fast moving and pointed. You can hardly relax for an instant: no matter how fascinating it is, China will never allow you to sit back and think, ‘All is perfect.’ Japan, on the other hand, with its social patterns designed to cocoon everyone and everything from harsh reality, is a much more comfortable country to live in. Well established rhythms and politenesses shield you from most unpleasantness. Japan can be a kind of ‘lotus land’, where one floats blissfully away on the placid surface of things. […] In general, Chinese Studies tends to be a little dry, keeping a discreet distance from the subject; Japanese Studies, in contrast, takes almost too reverent an attitude towards traditional culture.” This may well be a generalisation, but I have to admit I feel there is some truth to this assertion. Many of the Westerners I’ve encountered in Japan, particularly the younger ones, seem to exhibit a strong tendency to bracket Japan (and themselves within it) off from the rest of the world. Frequently when encountered while travelling on the subway or the Yamanote Line in Tokyo they are often at pains to avoid all eye contact with other foreigners, desperate that nothing should burst their personal “Japan bubble.”

Senso-ji, Asakusa, 2003

Kerr is sympathetic to many of the changes in Japanese culture, perceiving the 'hows' and 'whys' behind many of these adaptations because of his deep affinity for Japan and the cultural undercurrents which have prompted and steered the unconscious collective which perennially seems to seek to define "Japaneseness" – the uniqueness or exceptionalism that sets Japan apart from the rest of Asia – but I was most impressed by his speculations as to how much of this is rooted further afield than simply in the neighbouring cultures of China and Korea in other parts of Southeast Asia. However, I felt he missed a trick when thinking about the regimentation behind the creeping ugliness of the urbanisation he decries. I've always admired the practicality behind this, for, as already noted, Japan is a country that experiences regular seismic disturbances – hence it seems logical that living spaces would be kept small and built of composite and easily renewable materials (as with many of the small, older wooden buildings with their shoji and fusuma sliding screen doors which preceded them), and why hillsides would be reinforced with concrete and power lines kept above ground. What's most interesting to me is the cleanliness and order behind all of this which I think has its roots in the very traditions and practical 'know-how' which Kerr so enthusiastically eulogises. 

Tokyo Tower, 2003.

The modernisation of Japan, particularly urban Japan, may well be garish (especially re: neon interior lighting) and unsympathetic to the more naturalistic emphases of Japanese traditional culture, but all cities of the world are guilty of this to varying degrees – losing aspects of the past through a process of renewal. What's interesting though is how pockets of the old do still manage to survive. For example, think of the many smaller, wayside Shinto shrines dotted throughout Japan's urban spaces – there are many instances of these being built around or moved to the tops of tall buildings rather than simply being bulldozed. Plus, I always marvel at how many places in Japan manage to turn the smallest corners into miniature gardens, areas which in any other country would undoubtedly remain neglected or be allowed to accumulate rubbish.

Shinto shrine on the rooftop of a tall building

If Kerr laments the loss of a certain aesthetic view of Japan's past he perhaps overlooks the resilient, if somewhat muted, adaptation of a Japanese aesthetic to a modern functionality that is contending practically and pragmatically with a sudden rapid expansion of population in a finite and fragile landscape. Undoubtedly Japan's urbanisation over the course of the last 50 or 100 years could well have been a lot worse, and it may well yet improve – and as Kerr's book was originally published (and was well received) in Japanese it could well help in this respect by prompting further reflection and discussion upon the quintessential aspects of what is meant by this concept of "Japaneseness." Hence the value of this book to anyone interested in contemporary Japan, whether insider or outsider, Japanese and foreigner alike – it's well worth reading.

Benten-do & Shinobazu Ike, Ueno, 2018.

Below are a series of short films and stills which I shot in 2007 of a new lintel for a shrine building being ceremonially dragged to Ise as part of the 30 year renewal cycle. 

India - 5000 Years of Science

“India has a long and dynamic tradition of scientific thinking and technological innovation.” – A tradition that stretches back 5000 years, in fact, from today’s scientific space exploration missions to Mars to the first known use of the numeral zero. Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation, at the Science Museum in London (until 31 March 2018, free entrance), is an ambitious little exhibition which neatly distils a flavour of the great breadth and depth of an amazing human story. Divided into three themed sections: observation, calculation, and innovation, it takes us from the early city-building civilisation of the Indus Valley (c.3300-1300 BC), through the classical and medieval eras (c.1500 BC-c.1500 AD), the Mughal (1526-1857) and British (1757-1947) Empires, to the modern day Republic of India. Showing how over millennia the cultures and peoples of the Indian subcontinent have traded goods and knowledge – commodities, artworks, technology, ideas – with other civilisations, the ripples of which have spread across the globe and continue to reverberate today. In many ways, India has always been at the very forefront of science.

The roots of Indian cosmology begin in its many religious traditions, as symbolised by the ‘earth witness’ pose of the Buddha statue at the start of the exhibition. Modern science is so often divorced from its origins in people’s minds these days that it is interesting to see here the linking of modern science to systems of knowledge which were first developed in the traditions of folk culture as they became embodied and codified in religious and philosophical thinking. Restoring this link is probably no bad thing and is perhaps something which should be given far greater prominence and focus, particularly given the remarkable resurgence of creationist thinking and ‘flat-earthers’ in only the last few years. 

19th century photographs of solar flares and sunspots on the surface of the Sun

To my mind the early modern “Age of Enlightenment” in the 18^th century as a pivotal period of transition in the West, along with the richly deep traditions of cosmology underpinning scientific concepts first found in the East, are more than simply bridges from the eminent thinkers of the past to those of the present – they are a means towards a more holistic understanding of our worldview and more importantly the continuity of the enquiring mind which is endemic to all cultures. That drive to understand the world around us, from microcosm to macrocosm, is something shared by all peoples. Examining and thinking about the environment in which we live (indeed with which we are interdependent, despite the exponential impact which we are currently effecting upon it), and contemplating the vast wonders of the wider universe itself in all its enormity and our infinitesimally small existence within it, is the common thread running through all human cultures across time.

Jambūdvīpa, or ‘Jain Map of the World’, c.1817

Two very different but not dissimilar maps at the start of this exhibition put me in mind of two books which I bought while I was in Delhi last year: A History of Science in World Cultures: Voices of Knowledge by Scott L. Montgomery and Alok Kumar (Routledge, 2016), and Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Maps by Dr Vivek Nanda and Dr Alexander Johnson (National Museum, 2015). The first of the two maps, the ‘Jambūdvīpa’, or ‘Jain Map of the World’ (c.1817), which shows the Jain concept of the universe – with the notional continent of Jambūdvīpa at its centre – but which also explains how to calculate vast numbers, including different types of infinity, is neatly contrasted by the ‘Index Chart to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India’ (1860) on the opposite wall. The GTS chart illustrates the prodigious efforts of British colonial officials to physically survey the subcontinent. Each triangle on the chart represents the sum of hundreds of distance and angle measurements made using heavy theodolites, cumbersome 100-feet measuring chains, and compensation bars – like those displayed alongside – which produced a map that at the time was unrivalled in both scale and accuracy. 

Index Chart to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, 1860

Cary-Lambton Theodolite, c.1802

Ramsden's 100-feet chain, c.1793

George Everest's compensation bar, c.1830 & Surveying 10-feet standard, c.1830

Having read Matthew Edney’s excellent Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (University of Chicago Press, 1997) I was particularly interested to see these items, as well as the colonial-era botanical sketches made by unnamed Indian artists for Nathaniel Wallich (a Danish surgeon and botanist employed by the British East India Company) shown nearby, which are contrasted nicely by similar Mughal-era artworks commissioned by the Emperor Janhangir (1569-1627).

Linking these artistic as well as scientific exhibits is a fascinating machine – an oscillating plate phytograph (early 1900s). Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), often referred to as the father of modern science in India, was fascinated by how plants respond to stimuli. He developed this machine in order to measure the influence of light, temperature and gravity on plant growth, thereby inventing a device which, through enhanced magnification, speeded up the time it usually took to conduct such studies. Arguably it’s only by marrying these supposedly opposites – of art and ideas, faith and facts – that we can properly comprehend the natural evolution of our current understanding of a scientific cosmology as it was first seeded and how it has since grown in the collective human mind.

Nathaniel Wallich's botanical wattercolours, early 1800s

Oscillating plate phytograph, early 1900s

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)

Painting of a Himalayan goat, 1807 & Painting of Akbar crossing the Ganges by elephant, c.1586-1589

As a centrpiece to the exhibition, there is an example of the cleanest and most pristine auto-rickshaw, or tuk-tuk, which you are ever likely to see! – But this iconic mode of transportation (both amusing and scary by equal measures to outsiders visiting India) makes a serious point about the practical applications of science and engineering to the day-to-day lives of ordinary Indians. India has always been a site of technological innovation – as is illustrated by a fascinating set of objects and images relating to the Tata steelworks.

Advanced metalworking has always been a key industry in India, exported to other countries long before the developments of mechanised mass-production in the colonial and modern eras. From the ‘lost wax’ technique used to cast bronze statues of religious deities to the advanced chemistry which refined India’s steelworks, producing personal arms and armour to tanks, battleships, and steam engines, such innovations in engineering have helped to advance globalisation in the modern era through industrialisation. 

Photograph of steelworkers in Jamshedpur by Sunil Janah, 1940s-1950s - opened in 1907 Jamshedpur was the first modern steelworks to open in India

Tata Steel advert from the Times of India, 1934-1935

Commemorative stamps for the 50th anniversary of India's steel industry, 1958

The railways – one of the characteristic modes of transportation for which India is best known – were key to developing networks of trade, communication, and control; regulating the routines of life and work for millions of Indians from the 19^th into the 21^st centuries. But these prodigious, practical applications of science to the everyday first originated in the innovations of the theoretical. To return to the Jain Jambūdvīpa map of the world, we see it juxtaposed again by perhaps the most remarkable pairing of theoretical works of pure mathematics – the ancient Bakhshali manuscript (c. 300-800), found in 1881, which contains the earliest example of the use of the numeral and the concept of zero, sits alongside the modern handwritten calculations of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), and a handwritten letter from Satyendra Nath Bose sent to Albert Einstein in 1924. The digital revolution – based on a system of zeros and ones – has facilitated the development of computer technologies which have enabled India to advance and perfect its remarkable space exploration programme, reaching Mars on its first attempt – amazingly the only country in the world (so far) to do so.

The Bakhshali manuscript, c. 300-800

Selected papers from Ramanujan's work, 1914-1920

A second exhibition, Illuminating India: Photography 1857-2017, very ably charts the history of photography in India from the so-called Mutiny or Uprising of 1857, which resulted in the full colonisation of the subcontinent by the British, to the seventieth anniversary of India’s independence this year (visitors are not allowed to take photos in this exhibition, but you can click here to view a wide selection of the images on display). Here again the exhibition is grouped into three themes: performance and power, art and independence, and, modern and contemporary. The first two sections contain a wealth of historical treasures which I found truly fascinating – there are almost too many images presented here, such that I could very easily have spent several hours taking it all in had I had more time. The first section neatly contrasts the power of photography in terms of commemoration and demonstration through colonial propaganda images (from souvenir postcards to the early photojournalism of Felice Beato), and the contrived courtly projections of princely power by Indian royal families who embraced this new medium to show themselves off in all their regal finery. 

There are some remarkable examples of the pseudo-scientific anthropological studies of colonial photographers, such as Maurice Vidal Portman (1860-1935) who made a set of images of ethnographic “types” for the British Museum in 1890 of Andaman Islanders, expressly documenting the disappearing “primitive cultures” of such “noble savages,” noting their supposedly significant anthropometric distinctions. Another example is William Johnson, who set up a photographic studio in Mumbai around 1852, and later, working between 1868-1875, he compiled and published an ethnographic study entitled, The Oriental Races and Tribes and the People of India. A neat juxtaposition to these images are those of the Indian photographer, the Maharaja Sawai Rum II (1834-1880), who made a number of self-portraits of himself dressed up in the different garbs of various Indian castes and classes. It is interesting to contrast these indigenous “types” with those presented in the images of James Waterhouse (1842-1922), which were published in his study, The People of India, in which it seems clearly apparent that one of his subjects, the Begum of Bhopal, was directing the proceedings – ensuring she was photographed in a number of guises which variously showed her as a royal personage, a stateswoman, as well as a proud mother and grandmother. These sets of images thereby invite us to rethink the agency at work behind such photographic forms of representation and classification as commonly practiced during this particular period of time.

Miniature charkha, or spinning wheel, 2017

There are also equally fascinating and arguably more moving and emotive images from the end of the colonial era on display in the second section of the exhibition – particularly those of Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson – which document the last days in the life of Mahatma Gandhi, his funeral and the immediate aftermath of his assassination in January 1948. These images made me think back to a small charkha, a hand-operated spinning wheel, representing the kind of technology of personal empowerment and of resistance through national self-sufficiency, the use of which Gandhi promoted in the cause for Indian independence, which is included in the 5000 Years of Science and Innovation exhibition next door. This was also a nice parallel for me, linking these two exhibitions to the India and the World: A History in Nine Stories exhibition which I worked on last month at the CSMVS in Mumbai – which also includes a much larger charkha, one which Gandhi himself may even have used.

Six Defining Moments from India and Photography

The charkha spinning wheel which was key to Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle is more than simply a piece of technology to be utilised; its functionality has a deeper conceptualisation if we think of it as a physical representation of the Ashoka chakra, the ‘eternal wheel of the law.’ That conceptual link and the continuity of such systems of thought and knowledge, of knowledge and power, of self-determination and justice, of balance and harmony, lives on in perpetuity – symbolised by the wheel at the centre of the national flag of India. Like the cosmological wheel at the heart of the Indian religious world view, the Ashoka chakra, the infinite mandala, or the wheel of the dharma, sacred to Jains, Buddhists and Hindus alike, is perhaps also a representation of the scientific soul of India and all its peoples.

National flag of the Republic of India, with the Ashoka chakra at its centre, 2017

If, like me, you are interested in the history of science, colonialism, and photography, then these are certainly two very excellent exhibitions not to be missed.

Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation & Photography, 1857-2017

at

The Science Museum, London – until 31 March 2018