Bamboo, Buildings and More – A Fantastic Tour of Japan

 

I am not a tour person, preferring instead to travel with a friend(s) or by myself rather than having a guide lead me by the nose.  But the Tai Gallery in Santa Fe (www.taigallery.com) offered an irresistible opportunity to meet with contemporary Japanese bamboo artists, meet new people, and see Japan through others’ eyes. 

Tour Leader Andy Bender

In mid-October, I joined nine other Americans for two weeks of bamboo, architecture, food, and sights across Japan.  It was a fabulous trip – we were a diverse, interesting, and congenial bunch who made it a point to never be late and to try anything.  Our tour leader, Andy Bender, was fantastic.  He had spent years in Japan; explained much about the country’s history, culture and values; and showed us all sorts of interesting things.  He’s also a journalist who, in addition to his own blog (www.wheres-andy-now.com) frequently writes for Forbes.  The places we saw, the hotels and ryokans where we stayed, and the food we ate were all terrific.  I couldn’t possibly describe everything, but here is a taste of the range of what we saw.

Fujitsuka Shosei, bamboo artist

 Bamboo.  What amazes me about Japanese craft art is the artists’ ability to combine incredible technique with energy and innovation. To me it is what makes Japanese art distinctive, whether ceramics, lacquer ware, wood, or bamboo.  On the tour, it was such a thrill to meet several of Japan’s finest bamboo artists, look at their work up close, talk with them about what inspired them and how a piece is made, and then to watch them at work.

Shono Tokuzo

Basket by Shono Toku

 The people we met were generally in their fifties or sixties, lively, humorous, interesting men who lit up when they talked about their art.  One spoke of being inspired to use the shape of a Jomon pot, the earliest Japanese pottery made between 10,000 and 300 BC.  Another focused on structure, building off a hexagonal base.  A third liked to create unusual bamboo forms, sometimes starting with bulbous piece he had found in the woods, another time leaving a bit of bamboo in its round form as a “face”, then splitting the rest into fine strips and plaiting them to create the shape of a tall, sensuous woman.

Nagakura Kenichi basket

Beppu Occupatinal School Student

Becoming a skilled bamboo artist takes decades.  All the artists we talked to spoke of learning to split bamboo over a period of 3-5 years; they didn’t make their first simple basket until late in their first decade of apprenticeship.  The difference was stark when we watched young students in a yearlong program at the Beppu Occupational School, laboriously splitting and trimming bamboo, often with carefully taped fingers.  In contrast, Shouchiku Tanabe, the fourth generation in his family of bamboo artists (known as the Chikuunsai), chatted with us as he sat cross-legged, splitting bamboo into increasingly narrow strips without looking.  While the Beppu students used calipers and miters to carefully measure and trim their strips, Tanabe casually tapped two metal triangles into his sawed-off log table, then quickly pulled the bamboo through to trim it off, knowing by eye it was the correct width.

Kawano Shoku basket

Basket by Yuju Shohaku

Tanabe demonstrated the impact of being the latest of several generations of bamboo artists, something I’d also seen with ceramicists.  He used tools his great-grandfather had made, simple and effective.  (Another artist modified his father’s studio to prevent getting a bad back.)  More important, Tanabe started playing with bamboo, even splitting it, when he was three or four and watching his father and grandfather at work.  The young Beppu students do not have that advantage.  The Chikuunsai family is the only one of the leading bamboo families in his area where there is someone to succeed the current artist:  Tanabe has two daughters and a newborn son, and at least one will undoubtedly go into the business.

Mr. Mori

Indigo dye vats

Indigo.  I keep being reminded that in Japan, traditionally one’s occupation passed from father to son for generations.  For example, for the past 140 years the Mori family has dyed silk and cotton yarns as well as paper using natural indigo. In fact, the Moris made the paper blue and white screen Betsy and I saw at Katsura Imperial Villa.  Mr. Mori, a lively, active man in his early 60’s, showed us the process with the aid of his son, who will eventually succeed him.

The Moris showed us the indigo plants, whose leaves are the basis for the dye and flowers form the seeds for next year’s crop.  The leaves are dyed, piled high, and then fermented to turn into dark clumps of dye that will keep for years.   Dissolved in water in deep pottery vats, the dye is ready for yarn to be dyed.  A light blue will be dyed three times to set the color, while the traditional dark blue will be dyed as many as twelve times.  It was fascinating.

I also continue to be amazed by Japan’s contemporary design.  We visited Nuno Textile Studio, a company based in Tokyo headed by Sudo Reiko, a delightful, creative fabric designer.  She wants to provide beauty for all, using today’s industrial manufacturing techniques to produce fabric in quantity.  Her fabric is used in curtains, upholstery, and in scarves and other clothing that you can find at MOMA, among others.  She focuses on design, and then works with the technical people to get it mass-produced.  For example, she has sandwiched thin strands of paper between two gauzy pieces of fabric (the bottom piece in the picture) and made fabric using plastic-coated copper telephone wire (the top two samples). 

Omotesando Buildings

Architecture is another place where you see both the traditional and the modern. Our tour guide Andy loves architecture (so do I), and he pointed out a number of interesting buildings as we traveled.  We saw the shopping/hotel/office complexes of Tokyo Midtown and Roppongi Hills, both of which transformed a rather grungy area of Tokyo, and Omotesando, a high-end shopping avenue with little side streets catering to the younger, hip Japanese.  We ate lunch in Omotesando Hills, a Tadao Ando building with a series of ramps leading to various shops and restaurants. 

Later in the tour he walked us through the Ando museums at Naoshima, which look to me like an art installation, where building and art come together.  We also went to the Miho Museum outside of Kyoto, where IM Pei designed a stunning stone and glass museum set into a mountain, with its roof resembling a traditional Japanese farmhouse.

Fujiya Hotel

Shrine in Hakone

We also saw traditional architecture.  We saw the first western-style hotel in Japan, the Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita, Hakone.  Later that same day we visited a small shrine in the misty rain, surrounded by tall cedars.  There is nothing more lovely.

Food.  To say we ate well would be an understatement.  At a formal dinner at a traditional Japanese ryokan, the only sounds you could hear were the amazed “ooohs” and savoring “mmmms” as we ate.  We had a number of delicious meals of little dishes, the food always fresh, natural, and beautifully prepared.  Andy would explain what we were eating and how to do it, making even the wary willing to try.  He also pointed out foods as we wandered in Tokyo’s Tsukiji market and Kyoto’s Nishiji Food Market.  He made us all converts, to the point that on our last day, we asked him to have our bus stop so we could have some black sesame ice cream.  Ah, the foods I will miss when I get back home!