Japanese Beauty

On my first trip to Japan, I was standing outside the gift shop of an expensive Tokyo hotel, looking at two tea bowls, glazed dark and shiny, one of which was priced ten times higher than the other. To me, they appeared to be of equal value, but given the price difference, they clearly were not. In that moment, I realized that there was another ideal of beauty, another way of measuring the value of an art object than the Greco-Roman aesthetic, which underlies much of Western art. My curiosity was piqued; I wanted not just to understand the price difference (which I now know was most likely based on the potters’ relative fame), but even more to explore the Japanese aesthetic, to see with different eyes.

Beauty is still what lures me to Japan. Beauty in the midst of industrialization, modernization, globalization. Beauty created over time by human beings collaborating with the natural world to celebrate the cycle of the seasons and the transience of life. whether in the form of an indigo garment dyed by hand in a family workshop, a tea bowl embellished with swirling maple leaves, a temple rock garden built 300 years ago, a haiku poem that honors the melancholy of a full moon in autumn. The beauty of an old wooden neighborhood shrine to Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, rebuilt after being fire-bombed during the war.

On that first trip to Japan, I not only didn’t know how to see, I didn’t really know where to look. I was disappointed that the picturesque Japan described in the travelogues and histories that I had read as a girl was nowhere to be found. Small wonder since the ostensible goal of the trip was to attend the World Expo at Tsukuba, where the entire emphasis was on the world of tomorrow. Not until the end of our week in Tokyo did I happen upon a slice of what I had envisioned in Asakusa, a downtown neighborhood centered on the large shrine of the same name, rebuilt after World War II. Here were quaint craft shops and stalls selling traditional items, like imagawa-yaki, a round pancake filled with an, sweetened adzuki beans, and the floral combs worn with kimonos by geishas and Japanese girls on special birthdays.

Nearly ten years passed before I was able to return to Japan and pick up the thread of my earlier fascination. This time, I was in Kyoto with my mother-in-law for a walking tour of gardens, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines. It was late October, but we were lucky enough not to have missed the fall foliage. Everywhere we went, there were golden gingko and scarlet Japanese maple leaves. Not only on the trees, but on the kimonos of the geisha dancers, the handmade wagashi paper used to make wallets and boxes, the cloth handkerchiefs Japanese women carry in their purses, the designs etched and painted on the tea bowls, even the shapes and colors of the confections (also called wagashi) that accompany the tea ceremony.

Like all tour groups, this one had a troublesome member, a person who demanded an inordinate amount of attention. A brusque character who snored so loudly that his two roommates were unable to sleep. I was asked to give him my single room and move in with two older women (who did not seem pleased with the idea) so that his roommates could sleep in peace. A mother and people-pleaser, I at first said yes, but then decided, no, the tour leader would have to find another solution. Looking back, I find it interesting that the day after I stood up for myself, was the day I first encountered the beauty of wagashi, the edible Japanese art form that turns beans, rice flour and sugar into delicate peonies, clouds, and maple leaves.

I had already tried yatsuhashi cookies, a Kyoto specialty, made from rectangles of brown dough laid on metal cylinders of dough so that they curve as they bake. One meaning of the word hashi is bridge and, like many other symbols in Japan, this one has a air of melancholy to it. According to “Must-See in Kyoto,” these crispy cookies with a slight hint of cinnamon represent a bridge made by a mourning mother whose child had drowned. Looking more like the cover over a covered bridge than the bridge itself, today these sweets, both baked and unbaked, are a popular souvenir for tourists from other parts of Japan to take home and are sold at shops lining the avenues leading up to the city’s major temples.

But the pastries I saw that afternoon were different, like the difference between butter cookies and petit fours. In the window of the elegant shop was a plate with a single, exquisite chrysanthemum blossom. Created as a counterpoint for the bitterness of matcha, the powered green tea used in the tea ceremony, the selection of these sweets, shaped and colored to look like flowers and fruits, change with the seasons. I walked in and bought a chrysanthemum namagashi, a fresh, moist cake made from beans and sugar. Like many things of beauty, namagashi do not keep; I ceremoniously consumed mine over a cup of tea in the hotel room.


Returning to Japan in the spring a decade later, this time with my college-age daughter, Tina, in tow, I planned to continue my exploration of Japanese aesthetics in general and wagashi in particular. Arriving the day after the equinox, we were fortunate enough to experience the cherry blossoms in both Tokyo and Kyoto.

Visiting Japan in cherry blossom season requires not only planning but also luck. If the week before you are scheduled to leave is unseasonably warm, the blossoms may open and if the weather turns windy, a white carpet of spent flowers may be all that is left when you arrive. Of course, you can travel further north to catch the blossom wave, but it may be difficult at best to change your reservations, especially if you aren’t fluent in Japanese.

But the risk is worth it, for cherry blossom season is a magical time. Lasting only about 10 days in a given latitude, this season seems to impart a palpable joie de vivre. The magic of this season is much more than a relief from winter, which is fierce only in the far north of the country. Rather, the sakura has become a symbol of the transience of beauty, of youth, and of life itself. In the Samurai period, the cherry blossom’s fall was a metaphor for the goal these warriors had of a glorious death at the height of their prowess. The movie, “The Last Samurai,” makes reference to this in the scenes where the Samurai leader played by Ken Watanabe has first a dream, and then a dying vision of cherry blossoms falling. Cherry blossom season is also a time for special parties, known as sakura-ben, in which families and colleagues gather in parks and gardens to eat and drink under the trees and then stroll along the paths to view the flowers.

One of my students, Anita, a Taiwanese woman who had lived in Japan for more than a decade, invited us for a picnic in Shinjuku Park in a very modern part of Tokyo. While my daughter went off on her own to explore Harajuku, another trendy neighborhood, I met Anita at the Shinjuku station. Anita had made sushi and noodles for lunch, but suggested we stop at a bakery to pick up a couple of slices of cake for dessert. Wandering around the Tokyo Food Hall with its fascinating array of comestibles, I was reminded me of the food department at Harrod’s in London. After checking out all the possibilities, we chose a green tea mousse cake and bottles of cold oolong tea.

The park boasted more than half a dozen types of cherry trees, some with white blossoms, others with pink. Throngs of Japanese walked down the middle aisle, with picnickers crowded beneath the trees. Anita found a suitable spot and spread out the blanket she’d brought along. After the light and delicious lunch, she suggested we go for a stroll. I picked up the blanket and started to shake it out, like I would at home, but she quickly stopped me, a fleeting expression of shock on her face, gently explaining that the grass I was shaking out was likely to end up in our neighbors’ food, so close were we sitting. One of many little reminders that I was far, far from home.

After strolling through the park, we met up with my daughter at the station, then meandered through one of the adjacent department stores. Tina was fascinated by the ballet flats, in bright colors, in silver, with big chunky “jewels,” a style that would hit the U.S. two or three years later. Fortunately for her budget, the largest size was too small. I was fascinated with the idea that an entire 8-story department store, one of half a dozen in the same genre, was entirely geared to women under 25 and that Anita, at 30, felt too old to be shopping there. The bright pink coats in the window, the color of cherry blossoms, only underscored the idea that youth and youthful beauty are transient.

As an older Western woman, this idea makes me uncomfortable, for its corollary is the reminder that life itself is transient, as expressed in one of the four truths of Buddhism, that everyone and everything we love, including our very selves, will age, sicken and die. A passive acceptance, which becomes palatable to me only when I think of the Roman proverb, “Carpe diem,” Seize the day. A reminder that while I look for commonality and seek to understand this other culture, I am still the product of my own culture, still learning to see.