Interview—Two Manga Artists Tell You How to Draw Manga

December 19, 2022

Books on Asia interviews Danica Davidson and Rena Saiya about the two manga books they’ve created together

author photoDanica Davidson lives in the USA. Her articles on manga have been published in CNN, MTV, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Otaku USA, and Anime News Network. She has also edited English adaptations of Japanese manga. She has co-authored with Rena Saiya Manga Art for Everyone: A Step-by-Step Guide to Create Amazing Drawings; and Chalk Art Manga: A Step-By-Step Guide.

Author photo Rena Saiya lives in Tokyo. She is a manga author who has worked on 12 books with the Japanese publisher Shogakukan.She is co-author, with Danica Davidson, of Manga Art for Everyone: A Step-by-Step Guide to Create Amazing Drawings; and Chalk Art Manga: A Step-By-Step Guide.

Books On Asia: Danica and Rena, you have made it your mission to share your love for manga: reading, writing, drawing and experiencing it. Could you help your audience differentiate between a manga artist, a manga author, a manga illustrator and a manga creator? What should we be calling you?

Danica Davidson: I just do writing, so I’m a manga author, but Rena writes and draws so she could be called a manga-ka, a manga creator, a manga illustrator and a manga author. In American comics, you often have one person doing the writing and another person doing the art.

Rena Saiya: And in Japan, usually one manga creator does both writing and drawing.

BOA: So, when Japanese manga is translated into English, do they translate just the text and keep the same drawings?

Danica: Basically. I got involved in manga adaptation, in which they would have someone translate the Japanese words into English but it would come across very literal, so they would have me come in and write it more like how teenagers talk in English, because the books I was working on were aimed at teenagers.

BOA: Were those original scripts you worked on? Or adaptations of classic literature and novels, for example.

Danica: They were all original stories. I did one called Millenium Prime Minister, about a girl getting engaged with the Japanese Prime Minister.

BOA: How did you two hook up for Manga Art for Everyone and Chalk Art Manga?

Rena: Danica contacted me over LinkedIn.

Danica: I had been writing about manga and anime for quite a few places, and Skyhorse Publishing approached me about doing a manga art book. They told me to find an artist, so I was trying to find someone in Japan. I eventually found Rena on LinkedIn and saw that she was a professional manga-ka, she spoke English, and she was interested in publishing abroad.

Rena: I was interested in her proposal, but of course, I had a lot of questions. We’ve never met in person but we talk through Skype and email.

BOA: How did Chalk Art Manga come about?

Danica: One of the editors at Skyhorse asked me what I thought about doing a book on chalk art, but in the manga style. I thought, “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” Lots of American kids grew up doing chalk art, and they love manga, so it’s a great combination. I’ve seen people doing manga style chalk art at anime conventions, but not beyond that. One of the cool things about chalk art is that it is so colorful. Manga tends to be in black and white so I thought that color would get these manga style characters to really pop.

BOA: It seems like most students in Japan can draw manga. If you walk into a junior high or high school classroom in the morning, for example, the entire chalkboard will be covered in manga drawings. The students doodle all day long and it seems like something everyone can do. Enter the Chalk Art Manga book. It shows that manga is something anyone can do because you explain it step by step, starting out with really simple stuff, like a heart, how to color it in, and how to smear the the chalk with your fingers. What is your market with Chalk Art Manga?

Smudging chalk and adding dimension

Danica: I figured it was something that would interest kids through adults. I wanted to introduce simple things that kids and beginning artists can do. But then you can get more complex or, if you’re already an artist, you can just follow the steps to learn how to make all these characters.

BOA: Can you tell us about the original journey of the book, from Manga Art for Beginners to Manga Art for Intermediates, to Manga Art for Everyone?

Danica: Manga Art for Beginners was the very first book. It starts with a step-by-step guide to drawing eyes and anatomy and then the characters themselves. Manga Art for Intermediates became Manga Art for Everyone. It’s basically the sequel to Manga Art for Beginners. Manga Art for Everyone shows step-by-step but we don’t show the eyes and anatomy.

Thanks to Rena’s input, it includes information on how Japanese creators put on screen tone, how to make the hair shine, what software to use, what pens they use, etc. As far as I know, there is no other book in English that tells you those things.

putting on shine
Adding shine to hair in chalk art

BOA: That brings up some interesting points about the differences between manga in the US and manga in Japan. Light, sound, suggestions of color. How do you get across feelings, emotions or the general atmosphere?

Rena: Sometimes in Japan we use background to show feelings. So there is no landscape then. Via the background, you can sense complex feelings, for example, that the person is angry, sad, anxious, pleased, etc. Any kind of feelings can be expressed or emphasized by such backgrounds. It’s not easy to explain what they look like, but you can see the indicators in the background when there is no landscape or other objects in them. For example, they could be cloud-like abstract patterns or saturated lineworks.

BOA: How much has Japanese manga influenced American comics?

Danica: American comics is a really big industry. The superhero comics of DC and Marvel are best known but there are a lot of indie comics. Kids comics are becoming really popular. There is definitely influence from manga. I think it’s a combination of people who really love manga and they want to use that style, and there are people who see that manga is selling really well and they see dollar signs and want to copy it and get in on the popularity of manga. I definitely see a lot of stuff that looks like it’s American comics and Japanese manga mixed together. And I think especially with some of our How-to-Draw books in America, that’s what they look like. So that’s something I thought about a lot and worked on to make sure our books really did look like Japanese manga.

book cover

BOA: Are most people aware of manga now in the US?

Danica: I think it’s generational. People who grew up in the 90’s and after all grew up with it. Astro Boy and Mighty Atom came to America. We had Robotech in the 80’s and it’s been building over time. It seems like everyone is getting into it now with the younger kids in schools. Professional athletes have grown up with manga now and celebrities say they love anime and manga.

BOA: About ten years ago there started an influx of tourists who had come to Japan for the sole reason that they were familiar with Japan via manga and wanted to see the locations of anime films. Especially French tourists were very familiar with manga.

Danica: France is a huge market for manga and they have a long history of comics, which are more mainstream in France. You’ll see the French president tweeting about manga, so I think that’s pretty cool.

BOA: Rena, as a Japanese person, what stands out to you as a major difference between publishing manga in Japan and manga abroad?

Rena: As for the word manga, strictly speaking, when people use the word “manga” in a foreign country, usually it would refer to Japanese manga which are translated into the country’s language. So the counterpart of manga in a foreign country should be called comics except when the creators of the comics really try to follow Japanese manga style.

Though I don’t know so much about publishing comics abroad, in the case of America and France, they already have traditional comics. In America, it seems that in general, comics are created by a team in a division of labor using story creators, storyboard creators, sketch drawers, people who do inking, people who do coloring, etc. They work together to make comics while in many cases, a Japanese manga creator does everything by himself or herself except when he or she needs to meet deadlines, in which case assistants are hired just to help finishing the illustrations in the panels. So, usually Japanese manga is very personal work.

In France, traditional comics are called bande dessinée and they are regarded as a kind of art, while in Japan manga is thought to be entertainment. Therefore, I’ve heard that finishing bande dessinée books takes much longer than Japanese manga books even when the number of pages is the same. I think it’s because they are  trying to create perfect art books to the best of their ability.

BOA: Lastly, please share with our readers your three favorite manga books on Japan.

Danica: Only three? If I had to break it down, I’d say Descendants of Darkness, Death Note, and Phoenix, the latter of which is, unfortunately, out of print in America.

Rena: I’d have to say Glass Mask, a series which has been running for over 40 years, Phoenix, and Black Jack, the latter two by Osamu Tezuka, the father of the modern manga Industry in Japan.

 

Visit Rena Saiya online:

Website: www.japanese-manga-artist.com

LinkedIn: Rena Saiya

Visit Danica Davidson Online:

Website: www.danicadavidson.com

LinkedIn: Danica Davidson

Twitter: @danicadavidson

 

 

 

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 27 Sarah Coomber: The Female Experience Teaching in Japan

December 9, 2022


Sarah Coomber is the author of The Same Moon (Camphor Press, 2020), a memoir about what happened when she traded out her wrecked Minnesota life for two years in rural Japan. The Same Moon is possibly the only book about the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) experience written from a woman’s point of view. Sarah joined JET in 1994, when the government-sponsored program was in it’s infancy.

In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, she talks about being a single woman in Japan at that time, expectations at work and gives advice on what women should consider before moving to Japan to teach English.

At the very end of the podcast, Sarah shares with us her top three books on Japan, and why:

1. Shogun, by James Clavell

2. The Accidental Office Lady: An American Woman in Corporate Japan by Laura Kriska

3. A Half-Step Behind: Japanese Women Today, by Jane Condon

(Note: Affiliate links are for Amazon US and may not direct you to the appropriate book for Amazon stores in other countries)

author photo

About the Author: Sarah Coomber has since worked in public relations, journalism, science writing and advocacy, and has taught English at the college level. She has an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, a master’s in mass communication from the University of Minnesota and level four certification in the Seiha School of koto. In Minnesota she writes, manages communications projects, coaches other writers and teaches yoga.

 

 

 

Find her online at her website or sign up for her newsletter. You’ll also find her at the following social media links:

Twitter: @CoomberSarah
Instagram: @sarahcoomberwriter
Facebook: @sarahcoomberwriter
LinkedIn: @sarahcoomber

Correction: In the podcast, we incorrectly identified John Ross as a guest on the Formosa Files podcast. He is a co-host, with Eryk Michael Smith. Apologies!

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press. Check out their books on Japan at the publisher’s website. Amy Chavez, podcast host, is author of Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan and The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.

Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast.

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 26: Azby Brown on Sustainability and his Book “Just Enough”

October 27, 2022


In this episode of the BOA podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with Azby Brown, author of Just Enough: Lessons from Japan for Sustainable Living, Architecture, and Design. Brown is an expert on Japanese architecture, design and environment. He has lived in Japan since 1985. His previous books include The Genius of Japanese Carpentry, Small Spaces, The Japanese Dream House, and The Very Small Home.

Some topics discussed in this episode are Edo Period sustainability measures, SDG’s, architecture of old Japanese houses, the Kamikatsu Zero Waste town, and future measures Japan is taking to become more sustainable.

book cover

The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press. Check out their books on Japan at the publisher’s website. Amy Chavez, podcast host, is author of Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan and The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.

Subscribe to the Books on Asia podcast.

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 25: Traveling Japan as a Blind Person, with Maud Rowell

September 21, 2022


In this episode of the BOA podcast, host Amy Chavez talks with Maud Rowell about her new book Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness (404 Ink, 2021). Maud is a freelance journalist and writer from London. She went blind at 19 while traveling in South Korea. Two months later, she went on to begin a four-year degree in Japanese Studies at University of Cambridge including one year at Doshisha University in Kyoto. She trained in journalism at City, University of London, and over the course of the pandemic, wrote her first book Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness. In the summer of 2021, she won the Holman Prize run by San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and received a grant to travel around Japan and write about her experiences.

On this episode of the BOA Podcast, Maud talks about traveling around Japan, and what makes Japan’s big cities so user-friendly for the visually impaired.

Review—Life Ceremony, by Sayaka Murata (transl. Takemori)

September 13, 2022

Review by Tina deBellegarde

Sayaka Murata’s Life Ceremony, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is a wildly imaginative and chilling short story collection about loners and outcasts. Once again, Murata writes about non-conformity and once again she does it in her unique subversive style. She presents us with a world turned on its head, where what we accept today, is outlandish tomorrow.

These stories present an alternate reality. From stories about recycling human remains, to funerals where the celebrants are expected to pair off and procreate, this book forces us to question our norms.

Murata is one of several emerging Japanese authors who are challenging gender roles, marriage, motherhood and sexuality, as well as the complicity of women in adhering to these constraints. Murata does it deftly with dark humor and absurd scenarios. She confronts the outsider narrative in the same straightforward and unflinching manner that Mieko Kawakami does in Heaven.

The subject of conformity brings to mind Japan’s submission to the Academy Awards this year. Chie Hayakawa’s movie Plan 75 is about senior citizens who are encouraged and incentivized to be euthanized. Hayakawa, Murata, Kawakami and the others call our attention to the alarming consequences of conformity.

Murata’s stories aren’t all even or equally good, but they are all straightforward. There is no need to guess what Murata thinks about society. As the stranger says to Maho at the end of the titular story:

“…normal is a type of madness isn’t it? I think it’s just that the only madness society allows is called normal.”

For true Murata fans, this collection is a must, but where Convenience Store Woman handled the themes with a light touch, Life Ceremony and Earthlings have a much bolder, in some cases repulsive, approach. Readers of Convenience Store Woman should be warned, as I also mentioned in my review of Murata’s Earthlings, that this book is not for everyone. It is thought-provoking, unique and unpredictable, but it is also disturbing at times. Murata is evolving into an author with a clear message and will stop at nothing to get it across.

The Granta edition of Life Ceremony includes “A Clean Marriage,” previously published in Granta issue 127 on April 24, 2014. The absence of this story in the Grove Press edition is a great loss since it is a precursor to recurring themes in Murata’s novels.

Ginny Tapley Takemori delivers another beautiful crisp translation. Isn’t the sign of a great translation one that is transparent and allows the author’s prose to come through while respecting the complexities and subtleties of the two languages? Takemori does a superb job of allowing Murata’s elegant lean prose to shine through.

Life Ceremony is an addictive read. It is disruptive, haunting and thought-provoking. Murata deals in extremes and it is here where her point comes across most clearly. Through her absurd scenarios, it is impossible not to recognize that accepted morals are random constructs and may need to be questioned regularly.

These stories entertained me and made me think. They were also unsettling. But what’s a little discomfort in exchange for an important lesson?

Review—3 Memoirs: Ian Buruma, John Nathan and Mayumi Oda

August 25, 2022

A Tale of Three Memoirs: A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere by John Nathan and Sarasvati’s Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda–Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary, by Mayumi Oda

By Leanne Ogasawara

It was Japan before the Bubble. And yet, despite the lack of economic miracles, 1960s Tokyo was a city bubbling with excitement. The deposed (WWII) god-man, Hirohito, was still on the throne, albeit with a quieter presence. A time of change brought a divided nation, with the communist league of students putting pressure on the US-Japan Security Alliance, and amidst the fervent protest campaigns that mark the era, artists rose up to bring in a new aesthetic.

Ian Buruma was late to the party, arriving in the mid-1970s from Holland. Buruma has been more recently in the news—not for his memoir A Tokyo Romance but because of his fall from grace from The New York Review of Books. This occurred shortly after becoming the third editor since its founding, when he was forced-out amid outrage over an editorial decision deemed unsympathetic to the contemporary mood of the #metoo movement.

Buruma’s memoir came out by Penguin just prior to this scandal in 2018.

The book roughly covers his time living in Japan from 1975 to 1981. Six years is not long when it comes to language-learning or becoming at home in a megacity like Tokyo, but Buruma is no ordinary person. Half-Dutch (Protestant) and half-British (German, Jewish), he arrived in Japan already fluent in two languages and cultures. And it would not take long before he had become friends with some of the greatest artists of the time, participating in cutting-edge, avant-garde theater performances to boot.

A Tokyo Romance opens with a wonderful scene of the young Buruma, still in Holland, leaving a party telling someone of his plans to move to Japan, only to be told in no uncertain terms that he should, “Stay away from Donald Richie’s crowd.”

But what is a young man with a passion for film off to Japan to do but seek out Donald Richie?

This was the heyday of the “three greats” of Japanese cinema – Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa. And before long, Buruma is participating in the avant-garde world of Butoh dance, including acting in Juro Kara’s “Red Tent” performances around the country. In one of the highlights of the book, he accompanies Kara to New York City where they stay in the rundown Chelsea Hotel, with slugs and worms climbing up the wallpaper. While in New York, Buruma unpacks some of the complicated issues revolving around intercultural experiences and the cultural divide between Japan and the West describing the famous 19th century experience of the novelist Sōseki Natsume when he was in London. Kara, like Sōseki before him, was uncomfortable and hardly left his hotel. Buruma wonders at this, given Kara’s boldness and exuberance back home.

He also connects the famous incident of Sōseki catching a glimpse of himself in a shop window in London and being horrified at his diminutive appearance, to an incident in 1981, when the Japanese exchange student Sagawa Issei, lured a German woman back to his apartment in France and killed her. The French did not keep Sagawa long after questioning and ipon his release he made the rounds of Japanese TV shows in the early 1990s. Apparently, before committing the crime, Sagawa wrote of sitting in a café one day: “Suddenly I looked at the glass front door of the café and reflected there were the five of us. A small Oriental in a charcoal blazer was submerged amid large white-skinned men and women. Instinctively, I looked away.”

Investigating the experience of alienation, Buruma spends many words describing his sex life vis-à-vis Japan. Unlike Donald Richie, who was a sexual refugee in more tolerant Japan, Buruma arrived with his Japanese girlfriend. He was no refugee. And he writes of his many affairs and romances with men and women, before he eventually marries for a time—in the end, moving to London, the home of his mother.

Toward the end of the book, Buruma makes mention of translator and scholar John Nathan, whose life trajectory had some similarity with Buruma’s and whose memoir, Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere came out in 2008.

John Nathan might be best known as translator and biographer of Yukio Mishima. But he also translated Oe Kenzaburo, and many people consider him to be one of the great critics and translators of Japanese literature.

He arrived in the early 1960s after earning a BA in Japanese literature from Harvard, where he studied under Edwin O. Reischauer. In Tokyo, he hit the ground running, accepted into Tokyo University as one of the first foreign nationals to pass the ordinary entrance exam. Then, meeting Mishima, he quickly became involved in translation, starting with Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Mishima, who was hell-bent on getting the Nobel Prize, tried to get Nathan to sign on as his official translator, but surprisingly, Nathan had already become enamored with Kenzaburo Oe. I say surprisingly because for a long time, Nathan’s biography of Mishima was required reading in literature departments. By the time that book came out, however, Nathan had become much more interested in Oe’s work, going on to produce the English translations that would earn Oe the Nobel Prize in 1994.

Like Buruma, Nathan hobnobs with the crème de la crème of the Japanese art world. Similarly becoming almost obsessed with Japanese cinema, Nathan worked for years on a script for Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film “Summer Soldiers” about U.S. Army deserters seeking refuge in Japan. He would leave Princeton, where he was teaching Japanese literature, in the late 1970s to pursue this desire to become a filmmaker.

His memoir—much like Buruma’s—is also concerned with his romantic life. In Nathan’s case, he fell in love and married artist Mayumi Oda in 1962.
Mayumi Oda is sometimes called the “Matisse of Japan.” She is best known for her paintings, prints and silk screen works of colorful and gorgeous goddesses and female bodhisattvas playfully depicted in a garden world–filled with luscious vegetables and plants. She is a great painter of goddesses.

And yes, she also came out with a memoir—though she prefers to call it an autobiography—Sarasvati’s Gift: The Autobiography of Mayumi Oda–Artist, Activist, and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary. It is interesting to read about Oda and Nathan’s romance and eventual divorce from both perspectives: his and hers. An extraordinary woman and artist, Oda’s story is uniquely about “coming home,” which is to say coming to America, where she has devoted her life to political activism, spirituality, and art.

Born in 1941, Oda writes movingly about her recollections as a small child and seeing footage of the devastation brought by WWII, of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the wounded soldiers begging on the streets of Tokyo. From her earliest years, she dedicated her life to the pursuit of peace—and eventually traveling to America with her then-husband John Nathan, she would find her place amidst the faithful at the Zen Center in San Francisco as well as in her Bay Area art studio.

Unlike Oda, who perhaps could find home wherever she landed, both Nathan and Buruma struggled with insecurity when abroad in the way reminiscent of Sōseki in London.

In Living Carelessly in Tokyo and Elsewhere, Nathan describes the insecurities that led him to leave Japan, recalling something the avant-garde playwright Kara Juro said to him as the two sat in a hotel bar in Kyoto.

“You understand us, and when you speak you sound just like we do,” he rumbled, and then, switching to English, “But, John, in Japan you cannot win!”

Nathan says, “How right he was, I remember thinking that night, but for a different reason than he supposed. I took his words to mean that victory in Japan would never be a victory I had truly earned. For years I had been troubled by the possibility that I possessed the wherewithal to distinguish myself only as an exotic foreigner in an insular island country. I was determined to prove myself on home ground.”

This is the quote that Buruma references toward the end of his memoir. Buruma, who was also a friend of Kara’s remarked that, in the end, he did not want to be the eternal explainer of Japan. “The constant explainer runs the risk of no longer learning, and becoming a bore. And I didn’t feel the same need to escape that which shaped the life of my great American mentor. I had no reason to fear the customs and norms of my own culture. What I did fear was to catch a dose of gaijin-itis, and become obsessed with the often imaginary slights that go with being pegged to one’s ethnicity. And so I said goodbye to Japan.”

Buruma would go on to write one of the most important Japan books of the 1990s, The Wages of Guilt: MEMORIES OF WAR IN GERMANY AND JAPAN, while Nathan after pursuing film for many years on both coasts, ended up a tenured professor of Japanese literature at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Each of the three memoirs is a great read in its own right. But when read together, the triumvirate provides a profound gloss on lives lived bridging Western and Japanese culture, revealing the surprising contradictions and resonances that can be discovered navigating two disparate worlds.

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 24—Moving to Japan’s Countryside

July 30, 2022

In this episode of the Books on Asia podcast, podcast host and island-dweller Amy Chavez and Gifu countryside village-dweller Iain Maloney discuss their experiences living in Japan’s countryside. Iain’s book The Only Gaijin in the Village: A Year Living in Rural Japan is dedicated to the subject of himself moving to the the countryside with his Japanese wife, while Amy in her latest book The Widow, the Priest and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island documents the countryside living experience with an emphasis on the Japanese people she lives among. See what similarities and differences these authors reveal in this “shared experience” of moving to, and living in, Japan’s countryside.

book cover

Ep. 24 Show Notes:

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Review—Spirit of Shizen: Japan’s Nature Through its 72 Seasons

June 29, 2022

Review by Tina deBellegarde

Spirit of Shizen: Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons, edited by Robert Weis, is a profound and sensitive collection which captures the impermanence and wonder of the micro-seasons. Spirit of Shizen was prepared in conjunction with the exhibit of the same name at the National Museum of Natural History in Luxembourg. Running from July 1 to August 28, 2022, it is an interdisciplinary multi-media experience with accompanying virtual and in-person workshops. Considered an exhibition catalogue, this book is closer to an anthology that easily stands alone, yet is a perfect companion to the exhibition.

Traditional Japanese culture has always honored and respected the paradox of the destructive and nurturing power of the seasons. But the Japanese relationship to the natural world outpaces that of the West’s four seasons. The Japanese include seventy-two micro-seasons that mark the almost daily transmutations of their surroundings. For example, the micro-season of June 21 to June 25 acknowledges the withering of the utsubogusa (prunella spike). It blooms at the winter solstice, but in this particular week, its death announces the summer solstice, ushering in the shortening of the days as we once again head toward winter.

This collection, with essays by over 17 Japan experts, guides us towards a more profound and enriching understanding of our world. Pico Iyer, renowned for his travel writing, keen eye and spiritual insight, opens each section with an inspirational essay which orients us into the spirit and mood of each of the four seasons.

Iyer tells us that autumn is “the secret heart of Japan” and so we begin there. In this section you will find a meditation on momiji-gari (autumn leaf viewing) written by Rebecca Otowa which, she explains, is more contemplative than the celebratory cherry blossom viewing. “The reminiscence of the autumn light fills” Robert Weis as he shares an appreciation of the concept of nagori – nostalgia of a season that has just left us. Edward Levinson encourages us to use our five senses to live in tune with the rhythm of nature, and Mark Hovane examines the cultural and artistic impact of the 72 micro-seasons.

The next section includes an essay by Patrick Colgan describing his first winter in Japan. He speaks to “…the peculiar music of snow, an added softness, a sheet of silence.” Jann Williams shares her experiences on pilgrimages to Mount Ontake and expresses how “…a part of my soul is now one with the sacred mountain.”  Kawaharada Mayumi explains how the seasonality of haiku sharpens her senses “to observe the slightest changes in nature…that are so easily taken for granted.”

Sébastien Raizer closes the winter section with his essay “Nature is Culture” which could easily be the title of this anthology. He quotes the 18th century scholar Motoori Norinaga’s description of the Japanese spirit as “the fragrance of a mountain cherry tree on a frosty morning”. Doesn’t this definition capture the essence of the Japanese culture in tune with nature?

Amanda Huggins opens the third part with her moving insights on the spring rains:

“This acceptance of the nature of things, our embracing of impermanence…defines the philosophy behind hanami (flower viewing) celebrations. Every single one of us is a petal on a wet black bough.”

Naoko Abe follows with a look at the famous cherry blossoms and introduces Collingwood Ingram, the man responsible for bringing Japanese cherry trees to the United Kingdom in the early 20th century.

Amy Chavez ushers us through the seasons of the Seto Inland Sea. Her piece is a meditation on the villagers’ interactions with the seasonal cycle. She begins when the fragrance of plum blossoms entices the residents out their doors, and she ends after the New Year bonfires when the “elderly amble home in the evening, step onto their wooden verandas and into their homes, not to emerge again until the fragrance of plum blossoms mingles with the smell of the sea.”

Yuri Ugaya explains how Japanese gardens require the viewer to approach them with an active imagination, to fill in the negative spaces for a heightened and personal experience. She reminds us that “the history of Japanese gardens is the history of people who have revered nature.”

The book ends in summer. Marc Peter Keane starts us off with an essay on Zen rock gardens “…a meditative reflection on nature that pares down the complexity of the natural world to certain elemental parts.” Bruce Hamana discusses how slow food and slow eating focus awareness of the seasons in the tea ceremony and the kaiseki meal. Karen Lee Tawarayama reflects on moss and how it represents “…timelessness and harmony with nature.” Ikebana, the art of flower arranging, Mark Hovane tell us, is a moving meditation that is meant to facilitate an inner transformation. Edward Taylor closes the section showcasing the paradox of the rainy season, how on one hand it is claustrophobic, and on the other hand produces an incomparable green lushness.

The photography of John Einarsen is the perfect visual accompaniment to this reading experience. His contemplative images capture more than the surface of every season, but something deeper, more elusive, much as the essays do not speak to just the details of the cultural manifestation of the seasons but to the sense, the tone, the intense relationship between the Japanese and their acute understanding of the seasons. His photographs invite the viewer to see our world in a new way just as the narrative pieces and the exhibit do.

Spirit of Shizen benefits from being read one small narrative at a time, stopping to reflect and internalize each glimpse of wisdom and inspiration. This collection is concise yet profound. It captures the ephemeral nature of the micro-seasons. It also provides a warning to those of us who live before a computer, that while we may situate ourselves by a picture window as we work, the window is still a barrier between us and the natural world. The window merely provides a beautiful view.

This anthology begs the question, what is nature?” As Keane points out, it is a moving target. Bruce Hamana sums it up for us here:

In spring, hanafubuki (blizzard of flower (petals)) describes the falling cherry blossoms. In summer, kunpu (fragrant breeze) conveys the feeling of the refreshing wind. In late autumn, kogarashi (tree-drying (wind)) denotes the first winter wind that blows all the leaves from the trees. In winter, botan yuki (peony snow) describes the heavy, wet snow that falls not in flakes, but in large, fluffy puffs. The phrase Ichigo, Ichie (a singular unrepeatable moment in time) reminds us that the seasons are beautiful because of the uniqueness of each fleeting experience. (p.125)

Micro-seasons, in their reduction, expand our connection to the natural world. Committing to living by the 72 seasons is an exercise in mindfulness and an invitation to see the world with deepened awareness. Robert Weis has composed a brief but profound book, much like a micro-season, and I now find myself suffering from a form of literary nagori – a nostalgia of the book that has just closed.

Note: The catalogue can be bought onsite from the museum store in Luxembourg or online. Read an excerpt here.

Podcasts

BOA Podcast 22—Cody Poulton Introduces Japan’s Performing Arts

June 10, 2022


Podcast host Amy Chavez talks with author Cody Poulton about Japanese theater, in particular Noh theater. Poulton recently retired from University of Victoria in Canada, where he taught Japanese literature, theater and culture for over 30 years. He is also a translator of Japanese fiction and drama. He is author of Spirits of Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyōka (2001), A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japan, 1900-1930 (2010), and he is co-editor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (Columbia University Press, 2017) with Thomas Rimer, Mitsuya Mori, et al.

Cody Poulton

Ep. 22 Show Notes:

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