On The Move

Almost three months have passed, I arrived in Kyoto when it was wonderful weather and could even wear a t-shirt, now the colours of the leaves have changed and they have fallen down. By now they are covered with the first layer of snow.
On Friday I went to the national museum and saw a wide variety of Japanese art. One of the interesting aspects of Japanese art is that you can see by what it is influenced. The major cultural influence is off course China but you can also see traces of Indian influences and even Greek which where transmitted through China. It’s remarkable how far some of those influences were able to travel. Equally remarkable is to me how small the world sometimes seems and how easy everything and everybody moves around.
I met loads of new people from all over the globe, ranging from Mongolia to Brazil and from Finland to Israel. I had encounters with Dutch people who I had not seen in years.
And if you want you can drink Russian tea, have Italian pasta, Indian curry, German cookies and so on. During the winter vacation I am also on the move I will leave Kyoto for the big metropolis Tokyo, to experience what life is in that ever pulsating city. And then I will go to Fukuoka to celebrate New Year with my host family. So you won’t be bothered by me until we are living in 2006 so I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
And especially Janske who is going to join the stream of people on the move, enjoy the ride and have a wonderful time in Italy!

Sint Nicolaas Surprise

On Saturday the 3th we had an excursion to Korean town in Oosaka, where the so called Zainichi 在日, people of Korean descend live. Earlier I already wrote something on the legal status of being a foreigner in Japan. One of the rules is that as long as you don’t have any Japanese blood in your veins you are not able to become Japanese. And this exactly the point where the problems for the Zainichi start. They are of Korean descend, but most of them are the second of third generation, and are brought up in Japan, and also speak better Japanese than Korean. And only because they don't have Japanese blood so they are regarded as foreingers. This not only means that they have to carry a alien registration with them allmost all their life, but it also causes a lot of questions about their identity. On the one hand they are foreigners in Japan, but on the other hand they are not Koreans either. When they visit Korea they are seen as tourist. The only form of identity that is left for them is that of Zainichi, descendants of Koreans living in Japan. According to the Japanese teacher, many of the Zainichi still suffer from discrimination, partly because of their status as Zainichi but also partly because of their status as being a foreigner. One specific form of discrimination is that Japanese parents don’t want their son or daughter to marry with a Zainichi, which results in the fact that they Japanese and Zainich do not intermingle and thus the Koreans intermarry and their children stay foreigners.
I was also going to change of identity and I was going to become the representation of a foreigner in the Netherlands: I was going to be Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) on Sunday. I was asked to become him, for the Dutch Japan Association of the Kansai Area. I met the guy who was Sint Nicolaas before he changed his identity into Sint Nicolaas when I was going to change into Zwarte Piet,and once more the fact that the world is extremely small was underlined. I had met this Sint Nicolaas before, to be more exactly he had lived in the village next to Asten, the village where I have spend my youth. I came in contact with him and his Japanese wife because I was featured in one of the local newspapers and they gave me a lot of useful information before I went for the first time to Japan.
As tradition requires Sint Nicolaas and his companions arrived in the harbour by ship, greeted by the children singing Sint Nicolaas songs. Zwarte Piet was generous in throwing candy in to the crowd, but they also could not resist the temptation to try what kind of effect it had on the Japanese. Some thought we were Santa Claus who lost the way and arrived to early in Japan and others just stared at us in amazement, but all were grateful to receive some candy. Here as well as in the Netherlands, children were afraid of Sint Nicolaas and Zwarte Piet, but they had to face them anyway in order to receive a small present. This Zwarte Piet was glowing to see such a familiar scene at such a strange setting, but still it had something completely Dutch. And I realized that I was more Dutch than I had ever though, and that it was strange that one had come all the way to Japan to realise it.
And I hope that the Zainichi also have a kind of proud of being in Japan as a Korean descendant as long as they are not incorporated in Japanese society.

Noh

Although not as abundantly as temples and shrines there are still a lot of Noh theatres scattered around in Kyoto, an indication for it’s continuing importance as an art form.
Noh is a chanted drama that evolved in the 14th century out of various popular and aristocratic art forms. The subject of a Noh play is usually taken from a famous historical story or classical Japanese literature. Somewhere in November the Noh-club of Kyoto University organized a play, which attracted a lot of foreigners who seized the opportunity to see Noh for free. The performance of the Noh club can faithfully be described as “contemporary” Noh because besides the male Japanese actors, who are the only actors in traditional Noh, there were also actresses and a foreign student. The fact that the women roles were now really performed by women and not by men gave a different flavour to the Noh-play. The responses of the audience on the play differed, some left the theatre early, some felt asleep during the whole play, some fought their sleep and there were people who tried to get as much out it as possible.
Although I was one of those slackers who bravely fought against the comfortable feeling of dozing off I was still impressed of their performance and thus wanted to go with some friends to a professional play. The choice was a joint performance by the Kanze and Kongou schools, 2 of the 5 major Noh schools. The total performance consisted out of 6 dances, 2 Noh plays and a Kyogen play. The dance is one of the important elements in a Noh-play, and the dances are the main dances of certain plays which are performed solely derived from their context. The actors don't wear their costumes and masks and their performance is not accompanied by a choir, only by instruments.. The 2 Noh plays are the major plays while the Kyogen is a comic interlude inbetween. This time we were one of the few foreigners and we were definitely young in a audience which mostly consisted out of people in the autumn of their years.
Again seated in a too comfortable chair, my attention was this time whole heartily drawn towards the stage where people in beautiful costumes pronounced in a slowed down speed pre-modern Japanese, making it fairly impossible to follow what they are saying if you do not have it written down in modern Japanese. But because of this somehow twisted way of speaking and singing in one, they are able to do give their language a deeper layer, one with emotion. I was marvelled by the ability these actors have to express emotion with their emotionless masks. With a lack of attributes the actors still fill whole the stage with their presence and take you with them to the stories that they are representing, although not in a real realistic sense. The actors are accompanied by traditional Japanese instrument and by a choir, that not only follows the actors movements but is also an indicator for the events that are going to happy. They are really important in creating a special kind of atmosphere in the theatre.
From the beginning being in a Noh-theatre feels different from being in a normal theatre, because of it’s stage, that looks like a temple under a starry night. And as public you are part of the environment in which the play takes part. The Kyogen is a humorous play that is based on the power of exaggeration and repeating. The physical part of the jokes I could understand but unfortunately a number of playful jokes with the language didn’t get through. Te dances were in the student play one of the most uninterested parts, in which the majority of the people indulged in other businesses, they made the strongest impression on me this time. The actors this time being without mask still hold their head in such a way that it looks like a mask and still they were able to transmit emotions, at least to me. While normally seldom stirred by a dance, two of the six dances made a real impression on me in the sense that I can still see parts of them if I think of them and close my eyes.
And thus in some strange way Noh and especially it’s dances have captured a part of my heart.