In Japan one often hears about the reverence for nature among the Japanese, their love and respect for it, while in actual life observing all manner of assault on the natural environment.  The latter is by no means unique to Japan, of course, but the dissonance here between what one is told by others and by one’s own eyes can seem especially striking.  The respectfulness and attentiveness to nature is historical and indeed remains embedded in the culture at some level, especially in various arts (e.g., haiku, with references to nature embedded in the form) and refined cuisine such as kaiseki.  Practicalities have changed, however.  Traditional Japanese houses were made of wood and largely open to the outside, suggesting a kind of harmony with their surroundings.  Nowadays, people live in concrete apartment blocks that are largely eyesores. 

What is still admired, I think, is a well-organized and controlled nature.  Wild, uncontrolled nature, which in certain other parts of the world may be thought of as most “natural”, is more something to be feared.  Thus much of the coastline (with its ubiquitous Tetrapods), as well as river beds, are covered in concrete.  In a far more appealing way, the sensibility of controlled wildness is reflected in Japanese gardens, perhaps the ultimate tamed and idealized nature.

During the last century, a revolution of sorts was conducted by Shigemori Mirei, a scholar of arts and Japanese culture who had first published a major study of ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) and later turned to gardens.  He produced a massive 26-volume encyclopedia cataloguing Japanese gardens and their history.  After completing the first volume, he began his own career as a landscape designer.  Mirei felt that since about the middle of the Edo Era, garden designers had stopped innovating and were merely copying their predecessors.  He thus took it upon himself to modernize garden design.  He is quoted in Christian Tschumi’s excellent book, “Mirei Shigemori : Modernizing the Japanese garden,” as follows:

“Historically speaking, Japan’s past was very good, but Japan’s present largely comes up empty.  In 100 years, in 1000 years, they will be wondering what people in the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa Periods were up to.  That’s how dull these times are!  That’s why I thought I had to at least leave something good behind, so I switched to being a maker of things.  Whether I was good or not will be judged by the future, I guess.”

His very first major commission, the gardens at Tofuku-ji (a Zen temple of the Rinzai school) in Kyoto’s Higashiyama area, is probably sufficient to answer his question about how the future would judge him.  Though revolutionary and controversial at the time, elements of these gardens now look to me both new and ancient, modern and traditional.  Perhaps most famous is the gradient checkerboard pattern of moss and paving stones in the north garden, which now looks so “right” but probably shocked some at the time.  While the use of paving stones in a garden was an innovation, Tschumi’s book reveals that this was the result of the temple priest’s request to re-use materials in line with the precepts of Rinzai Zen.  A good example of how imposing constraints can lead to creative solutions. 

In general, Shigemori Mirei’s designs are highly dynamic, featuring strong lines including curves and waves, and large stones that are more often vertically oriented than what we see in more traditional gardens.  This gives them the impression of being grounded while simultaneously reaching upward toward the sky. 

Several gardens by Shigemori can be found in Kyoto.  I have visited most of the accessible ones, some multiple times.  One I hadn’t yet been able to enjoy until the latest trip, though, is the one he built at the home where he lived from the early 1940s until his death in 1975.  This home (in a slightly out-of-the-way part of Kyoto) is now operated as the Mirei Shigemori Garden Museum, and can be visited by appointment only.  Upon finally seeing it, I was fascinated by the thought of it representing what he freely designed for his own home, without the constraints of other locations where, even though he had wide creative freedom, there was still a “customer”.  Not surprisingly, here we see plenty of the vertically thrusting stones which have sometimes been criticized as excessive in his work.  The garden itself was completed around 1953, along with an adjacent teahouse.  But Mirei continued to tinker with the stones until reaching the “final” version in 1970.  It is said that this is the only garden in which he ever made changes to his original stone placements.  It’s also the only one in which he planted cherry blossom trees, giving in to the wishes of his wife (Ref:  “Shigemori Mirei, Creator of Spiritual Spaces”, Kyoto Tsushinsha Press).

Over a history of some 1300 years, of course, there has been ample variation on this theme.  One style is the dry landscape garden, karesansui in Japanese.  Particularly distinctive are the gardens composed primarily of rocks, gravel, and sand (sometimes inaccurately referred to as, “Zen gardens”, though they have often been constructed as aids to meditation at Zen temples), meticulously composed to represent certain natural features (mountains, seas, rivers).  I consider them works of art – specific, suggestive representations of nature, like ink paintings extended to three dimensions.  While Japanese gardens have been dated back to the 700s, the so-called Zen gardens first appeared in Kyoto from the 14^th and 15^th Centuries.  The spare, enigmatic garden at Ryoan-ji, most likely from the Muromachi era (1333 – 1568) is the most well-known example. 

During a recent visit to Kyoto I photographed several temple gardens.  Some were repeat visits.  It has been said that these rock based gardens are unphotographable, meaning that their essence can’t be captured by a camera and they must be seen in person.  I have had this same feeling.  The humble photo from Ryoan-ji that I have posted here, the only one not from this latest trip, shows only about half of the garden.  But in spite of this problem, or perhaps because of it, I keep going again and again to find out what I might be able to capture and learn.

Living here, one certainly becomes accustomed - especially on sweltering days like we're having now - to having a cold drink close at hand just about anywhere in the city, thanks to these machines.  And in fact, they also deliver hot drinks that are welcome in winter.  When we see them far from cities, though, we may feel differently.  Even at the summit of the sacred Mt. Fuji, such machines can be found.

The photographs are without people, so the machines are simultaneously oasis-like (in fact, Ohashi has said the idea of photographing vending machines came after he was caught in a heavy snowstorm and it was only by their lights that he was able to find his way home) and evidence of humanity's impact on the natural landscape.  Looking at these photos, I feel a tension between seeing them as beacons of rescue and human convenience - what led them to be put there in the first place - and as stains on the earth. 

I'll definitely be looking for more of Ohashi san's work.

You can buy a ticket to watch this spectacle from a yakatabune covered boat.  A beer at one of the rustic establishments that line the river provides a refreshing prelude on a sultry summer evening.  Because it was so dark and flash was forbidden, I only pulled out my camera as something of a, "what the heck" afterthought.  They were just about the least photo friendly conditions I could imagine - night, no flash, no light but that basket of fire, a moving subject, and shooting from a boat that's also moving.  Oh, and the birds are black.  I just set the camera to high ISO and ended up taking quite a few shots.  Our usho, a woman, was clearly very skilled at controlling her team.  It was thrilling to watch, and the atmosphere on the water around that basket of fire on a hot night was in some way magical.  My expectations for the photos were low, however, and I had many other photos to process from that Kyoto trip, so the ukai shots sat for ages with me just occasionally wondering if perhaps I could do something with them one day.  Now I've finally taken some time to go through them.  They are obviously flawed, yet there was a certain mystery I remember from that evening on the river, and I wonder if some of these photographs perhaps capture at least a hint of that.

About the photographs, one thing that struck me was how Leiter took what I would have seen as troublesome impediments (posts, awnings, other people, etc.) and used these as structural elements in his photos.  I am continually lamenting how hard it is to get a clear shot of anything in the street here - with the sheer density there's always something in the way - but his work made me feel like a whiner.  No excuses; whatever is there, use it!  This reminded me somewhat of the way the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu often used frames within frames, relying on whatever was available in tight Japanese interior and exterior spaces, except Leiter's compositions often partially obscure subjects rather than just frame them.  At times he took this to the extreme - there was one shot, called, "Boy, 1952", which showed a small boy sitting on a wall.  A car antenna in the foreground occupies only about 1% of the horizontal frame, yet he's composed the photo so this antenna is in front of the boy's face.  It would have been easy to get a "clear" shot but he chose the opposite.

I also appreciate his keen eye for style and the interaction of fashion with the surrounding environment, reflected in the photos of a time when more people made more effort to dress well.

He said, "Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the picture as judgment that the photograph is good."  

So many times I've felt something was beautiful, the light was perfect, and so on, only to find the resulting shot fell far short of what I thought I'd seen.  I've always felt this gap was a measure of my shortcomings as a photographer, and closing it would mean getting the actual photograph closer to how I imagined it should look when I took it.  So it's a bit heartening to find that someone as accomplished as Winogrand was at least aware of this tendency.

By the way, Winogrand also famously said he photographs to see what a thing looks like photographed.  This underscores how the photograph is something distinct from its subject.  I've found it can be good to just photograph things I feel like shooting in the moment, even when I don't know why.  Just do it without thinking too much.  I can go back to those photos later and look for patterns, perhaps finding out what it was that interested me even if I didn't realize it at the time of shooting.  And maybe even go back to that same place or thing later.  There is no need to think too much.  In fact, thoughts can become impediments in the moment.

“The bell of the Gion Temple tolls into every man’s house to warn him that all is vanity and evanescence.  The faded flowers of the sala trees by the Buddha’s deathbed bear witness to the truth that all who flourish are destined to decay.”

Looking into this further, I became sidetracked by the astonishing variety of the few different translations I found.  Here is Helen Craig McCullough:

“The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.  The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.”

And here is Royall Tyler:

“ The Jetavana Temple bells

ring the passage of all things.

Twinned sal trees, white in full flower,

declare the great man’s certain fall.

The arrogant do not long endure.

They are like a dream one night in spring.

The bold and brave perish in the end:

They are as dust before the wind.”

And then Patrick O’Neill:

“The knell of the bells at the Gion temple

Echoes the impermanence of all things.

The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree

Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.

He who is proud is not so for long,

Like a passing dream on a night in spring.

He who is brave is finally destroyed,

To be no more than dust before the wind.”

This highlights the difficulties in translating Japanese to English, and they’re evidently magnified in the case of classical Japanese (on which I make no claim to any authority whatsoever; I know just enough to spot dodgy translations in subtitles of popular films). 

In any case, whichever translation one chooses, this sense of transience seems to me one key entry point into art and culture here. 

" I would say don't rush, because if you are young, it's very rare that you have already established your own philosophy or your own eyes.  Everybody has their own philosophy, but we need time to identify its nature.  It's nobody's but yours.  The world thinks it needs to be in a hurry, so education is based on speed.  Society wants people who are easy to handle.  So you start to rush things, even if you don't intend to, and start moving toward the 'yang' part, even if you were looking for 'yin.'  You use a flash, because you want to see 'invisible' things.  You show it to people, and say, "Look, this is the invisible part!"  But is it really still the invisible part?  So from this point of view, my work is very fragile.  Speed can be a very dangerous thing." 

"If you're young and want to become a photographer, it's good to experience many things.  The important thing is that you can't learn the things that you want to see from anybody else.  In the same way you listen to your body, asking, "What do you want to eat today?" you need to listen to your nature.  If you don't, you will be stuck in true darkness and lose the ability to realize the darkness."

"There are many lost people in the world.  They like chaotic work, because they feel the same thing inside of them.  If you want to be a part of that chaos, to be disconnected from your nature, and if you want to be surrounded by lost people, and you are happy with that, then you should do so.  Become a refugee from yourself.  But if you want to find your truth, you need to find your own unique place.  Sometimes it's not a very prestigious place, and you may have to arrive there alone.  But once you find it, your life will be more peaceful."

This is primarily the humble home for a few of my photos, but I might occasionally write an entry or two here as well. 

Posting a lot about myself is not my style.  Rants and complaints are not my style.  In any case, those can be found in abundance elsewhere on the web.  I may occasionally try to bring attention to some things - writing, art, and so on - that I've come to admire.  If a reader inadvertently learns something about me through that, or through the photos, so be it.

The site is still under construction, but I hope to grow it gradually in scraps of available time.

Welcome.