I. The man in the moon and the rabbit in the sky
It was Mariko who first alerted me to the fact. I didn’t know a word of Japanese when I first traveled to Japan seven years ago, and so I could hardly have known that the sign in Narita airport did not simply greet travelers with the usual, “Welcome” but rather O-kuni-nasai, “Welcome Home.” But I noticed it this time.
Mariko was one of those people who appear in upon the stage of one’s life for a brief moment, deliver a few important soliloquies, then departs, never to appear in subsequent acts. She was a research assistant in a psychology laboratory at Kyoto University. She was half Japanese and half German, but married to the very idea and notion of Japan. For her, Japan was home. For me, Japan was simply an apartment that I learned to love and regretted giving up the lease once the year was up.
But there we were, thrown together, and spent many an evening talking along the Kamo river that divides Kyoto in half, sitting on stone turtles that span the river near Dematchiyanagi station. There, we sat, and talked in English, a language she hated.
But in one of those moments, she told me an interesting fact. We in the West we look at the night sky and see a man on the moon. In Japan, they see a rabbit on the moon making mochi (a type of Japanese candy). The rabbit's name is tsuki no usagi. And in one of those nights, when the moon was full and hordes of Japanese teenagers set fireworks into the night sky, I tried to see the rabbit, but to no avail. It is difficult to divorce oneself from 25 years of seeing a man on the moon, and suddenly see a rabbit.
But perhaps this is the nature of the work I was doing at the time: to show that in different cultures, we see the world in different ways. On one of those nights, I told Mariko about the fact that different cultures look at the sky and see different constellations. While most of us look at the sky and see the big dipper, the Ancient Egyptians saw a man laying down being pulled by a bull, and a Hippopotamus with a crocodile on its back. The same stimulus, and wildly divergent interpretations. At that time, I had been reading Jerome Bruner’s work from the 1950s on perceptual readiness, the idea that perception is a dynamic and active process, that we construct our percepts by imposing our desires, needs, wants, expectations, and so on, upon the sensory information that we receive. Different people, in different cultures, in different economic conditions, in different historical periods, in different geographic locations, may have a plethora of divergent wants, needs, desires, goals, and expectations, and thus perceive the world in vastly different ways. But I imagine there are some universalities. For instance, I imagine two people are at this very moment sitting on the Turtles of the Kamo River in Kyoto, sharing their dreams. Some things never change. Some things truly are universal.
II. The secret of lost things
There are others who appear for their soliloquies, never to be seen or hear from again. Like Matsuda-san.
I was naked in the sento, sitting in a bath next to a seventy year old Japanese man named Matsuda. I spoke enough Japanese and he enough English that we could get by simply through hobbling together words from both our languages.
“You must be marry, right?”
“No, not married.” I replied.
“But you handsome guy. Girls fall over you.”
“I wish, Matsuda-san! No, I recently broke up with a woman I dated for several years. I thought it would last but life took us in different directions.”
“Ah. Love. Muzukashi, Ne?” (Difficult, isn’t it?)
“Hontoni!” (True!)
“But you have, how do I say, memories are good?”
“Good memories? Of course. Many of them.”
“That’s good to have good memories. When I was child, I had a toy, uh, how do you say…fire truck. I played with many times. But we moved from Tokyo to Kansai region, and somehow during moving it was lost. I still think of this toy, I am a seventy year old man. But it is to me, object of my childhood times when I was very happy. I don’t think I was ever so happy again as in childhood, playing with that toy. But I think the most valuable thing we own in life are the things we lost. I lost fire truck, but I remember many happy times. Same is true for woman. You lose pretty woman, but you gain good memories. Don’t worry about losing things. In losing things, you gain more important things: good memory things. There is nothing more important than good memories. The things you lose in life are the most valuable things you own in life. This is what I believe.”
I remember thinking then that I would never forget this moment on earth, when two naked guys in a bath house in a small neighborhood in Kyoto from vastly divergent worlds spoke. The most important things we own in our lives, on this earth, are the things we have lost. The very beauty of the appreciation of the beauty in things that pass by, rather than stand still, is uniquely Asian. In America, we tend to collect things. Jay Leno has something like 100 classic cars.
Years later I sat at a table in Tokyo with some of my own students who I brought to Japan. They were saddened by the fact that they would soon be leaving the country, with no plans to return. I told them this story. But I reminded them that they can never truly lose Japan, for it is always here as a place to return. You can only miss being home, you can never truly lose it. And I told them that there is nothing more important in life than good memories.
III. Behind closed doors.
There is something special about revealing secrets. Kyoto was my secret. In my time in Kyoto, I walked its streets, ate at its restaurants, danced in its nightclubs, sung karaoke in its bars, hiked its mountains, saw its temples, meditated in its shrines. But Kyoto was always mine, secret memories locked up that I could reveal and no one really ever could understand.
Like the time I stayed at a capsule hotel.
Like the time I ate a live shrimp.
Like the time I met that old man on the train from Hakkodate to Sapporo, we shared about ten words of each other’s language but managed to entertain each other for an hour.
Like the old women of Kyoto, who each morning go outside with their watering cans and water the pavement in front of their houses and sweep the water into the gutter to reduce the dust.
Like the couple who owned the tofu factory down the street, who would marvel at this foreigner buying bricks of tofu.
Like the time I was on a train in Tokyo, and saw a woman whom I felt I must have known in another life. I exited the train when she did, and followed her down the confusing labyrinth of streets until she got to her house. I watched the lights go on and smiled, knowing that in this universe we are not alone. I walked back and continued my journey.
Like the time I walked over fire.
Like the time I stood and watched Chinese characters burning on the mountainside, guiding the ancestors back to the land of the spirits.
All of these things, and more, are part of my secret world. And it is wonderful to have the chance to share my secret world again and again.
