Reflections on Reflections

In Takamatsu we went to the famous Ritsurin Garden. It strikes you straight away that Japanese gardens are not like British gardens. There is very little in the way of flowering plants, and almost no 'flower beds'. It's all about the trees (see previous post) and the water. It is what is called a 'strolling garden', you walk around and admire the views. It is created to look like beautiful scenery, and the pools are integral to the plan as the reflections of the surrounding trees are all part of the view. Build for the wealthy it was opened to the public in 1875.

The Kikugestu-Tei tea house dates back to the early Edo period. 

The purpose of the tea house is that you sit in the open sided building and take tea and look out at the beautiful scene that has been created for you.

(and here on the Window Research Institute website is a fascinating film about the wonderful ingeniously designed shutters that surround the building and how they open to allow a view in any direction)

It was a complete delight, one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Go to Japan, take tea in the tea house.

Reflections on Mountains

 

Japan is an entire country of mountains. I think the thing that makes Mount Fuji so iconic is that it stands alone, not in amongst loads of other mountains. Everywhere we went on Shikoku we were surrounded by mountains. We drove up them, down them and through them. We stopped and admired them. We gazed in awe.

This was our view from the restaurant the first full day when we stopped for lunch:

So many mountains ... so we just had to climb the biggest one.

Mount Ishizuchi is the tallest mountain in western Japan, just short of 2,000 metres.

A seven minute cable car ride takes you probably about half way.

then you hike up to a shrine, and back down into the dip. This chart shows that point at 1300m, from where you go almost straight up:

This friendly sign give the 'rules for hikers', stuff like taking your litter home and being careful on the mountain:

In places there are these climbing chains that allow you to cut off some of the meandering route (if you're up to the climb):

It was very early April. We did not anticipate how much snow might remain on the mountain. The wooden steps were buried in places:

... until the path disappeared altogether. This is the point at which we admitted defeat and turned back. We were not well equipped, the last cable car was at 5 and we were not going to reach the top:

It was an exhilarating adventure just to look down from what felt like the top of the world.

View from the castle across the city of Matsuyama:

Go for the food ... stay for the mountains.

Reflections on Art

My first day in Japan we took the train to Tokyo and went to the Ueno Park to the National Museum and the Metropolitan Art Museum. The Joan Miro exhibition was so extensive that we didn't have time to look at anything else, but it was ok as it was fascinating and we learned a lot about him.

The island of Naoshima was my inspiration for our trip to Shikoku, so at the other end of our holiday we took the ferry from Takamatsu to see the extensive collection of modern art. Much of it is very large and site specific. First up Narcissus Garden by Yayoi Kusama, hundreds of metal spheres, floating in a huge pond, filling the garden and inside the rooms of a concrete bunker, reflecting the viewer, each other and their surroundings:

We moved on to the Benesse House Museum,

Fish and Bread by Jennifer Bartlett

Inland Sea Driftwood Circle by Richard Long, which I photographed for my dad, who has made driftwood art himself, and the lovely muddy circles on the wall that are made with River Avon mud, transported all the way to Japan.

100 live and Die by Bruce Nauman

The Secret of the Sky by Kan Yasuda (who has a very cool website), 

and I thought the little sign said no climbing on the stones, but on second glance realised it meant 'take your shoes off the climb on the stones' and look at the sky.

Seen/Unseen Known/Unknown by Walter De Maria, reflecting the view across the sea.

Don't know what/who this was: a circular structure of mirrors that you can enter, creating a surreal illusion ... here we are actually facing each other on either side of the central divider:

Is this a sculpture that is also a bike park ... or a bike park that is also a sculpture?

(What's more fun is the little sign that says 'no 

bikes' and 'no parking')

We took the bus to Honmura to the Art House Project, where seven abandoned houses have been repurposed as art. This is the Go'o Shrine, the glass steps continue down into an underground cavern beneath the huge stone.

One of the transformed houses. 

The Yellow Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama. It was this image that I saw online, never imagining that we would actually end up here. The queue of Instagrammers is just out of shot.

So much art, so little time, we had to catch the boat back at 3 to stay on schedule for the mountain ... 

Reflections on Trees (part 2)

I spent a lot of time thinking about, noticing, the ways in which Japan and Britain are different. Japanese cities are very grey, not much in the way of green spaces, and domestic gardens (certainly in urban areas) were very minimal, often just some pots outside on the doorstep. It made me feel that my tiny yard was quite generous after all. But the Japanese take their trees very seriously. The cherry blossom forecasts on the telly tell people where the best blooms are and autumn leaf displays are treated with the same enthusiasm. 

On my second day in Japan I took the train while Monkey was at school to Omiya to the Bonsai Museum. I assumed it was 'just' a bonsai museum, but it turns out it is 'the' bonsai museum. It was created as part of the Bonsai Village, established 100 years ago for bonsai growers who came to live together (who's gardens you can also apparently visit) and be a centre of bonsai growing.

Some of them have names: this one is Juun and is an 800 year old Japanese Juniper.

There are words for all the different styles of bonsai and for things like the whitened dead wood that is created as a decorative feature. 

It would be lovely to come again in the autumn to see the maples change colour, as of course many were not yet in leaf, but there was this beautiful bonsai cherry.

First morning on Shikoku we are driving up into the mountain when Monkey spots a sign that says 'Big Tree', so what else could we do but stop off. Many trees are sacred in Japan (and not necessarily just the ones in shrines like this) indicated by the rope, which was frustrating as I assumed it meant no touching. Though split at the trunk I believe it was one tree:

and you can see here panels of copper that had been used to protect the hollow parts from rotting away. 

This is the camphor tree at the Oyamazumi Shrine on Omishima. 

It is 3,000 years old.

We visited it for breakfast when we stayed nearby:

I didn't seem to take as many photos of cherry blossom as I imagined. There were random blossom trees in amongst the evergreens on mountain sides everywhere but they were not quite in full bloom and I kept waiting for one that stood out. The magnolias on the other hand were almost over, and Monkey kept referring to them as 'poor man's cherry blossom' but we did try to appreciate them too.

This is Neagari Goyo-Matsu Pine Tree, in the Ritsurin Garden, originally a bonsai, then planted out and allowed to grow (more of the garden to come):

Definitely go to Japan for the trees ... and not just the blossom.

Reflections on Trees (part 1)

I read 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers several months ago now, but pre-holiday stress left it languishing by the bed, unreviewed. I wanted to love this book so much, but it depressed me, because the tale is one of such wanton destruction. It's a book about trees, whats not to love, and the people who love them. We follow the lives of some of these people and watch them struggle to save the trees they love. There are triumphs ... and there are devastating losses. It was a hard read.

One of the characters in the book writes a book, it's about how trees communicate with each other and other amazing skills. Over the course of the story she is first ostracised by academia then after years doing other tree-ish stuff the book is rediscovered and it's truth discussed widely, it becomes a talisman for the story. I remember wondering, while I was in the Bonsai museum, whether the tiny trees in pots miss their companions. Struggling with having lost my list of quotes and want to get on and post other Japan pictures, so here is a quote about two other characters reading the book:

"They read The Secret Forest again. It's like a yew: more revealing on a second look. They read how a branch knows when to branch. How a root finds water, even water in a sealed pipe. How an oak may have five hundred million root tips that turn away from competition. How crown-shy leaves leave a gap between themselves and their neighbors. How trees see color. They read about the wild stock marker trading in handicrafts, aboveground and below. About the couples limited partnerships with other kids of life. The ingenious design that loft seeds in the air for hundreds of miles. The tricks of propagation worked upon unsuspecting mobile things tens of millions of years younger than the trees. The bribes for animals who think they're getting a free lunch.

They read about myrrh-tree transplanting expeditions depicted in the reliefs at Karnak, three thousand five hundred years ago. They read about trees that migrate. Trees that remember the past and predict the future. Trees that harmonise their fruiting and nutting into sprawling choruses. Trees that bomb the ground so only their own young can grow. Trees that summon air forces of insects to come save them. Trees with hollowed trunks wide enough to hold the population of small hamlets. Leaves with fur on the undersides. Thinned petioles that solve the wind. The rim of life around a pillar of dead history, each new coat as thick as the maker season is generous." (p.367-8)

This is a writer who loves trees.

I love trees too.

More to come.