I love coming to stay at HMiL's in Meguro and one of my greatest pleasures is in keeping and maintaining the pot garden I have built for her. For some time she did have objections to this activity because she felt that I shouldn't have to work so hard whilst I was supposed to be on holiday.She also expressed a concern that I should not be doing tasks which, in her opinion, were beneath my station in life (She thinks I am a lot more Russel Square and not so much Hackney Wick). I managed to talk her around to my way of thinking over time and she has accepted the fundamental truth of the situation and that is my love for the task of doing her garden.
We began by putting in a solar powered irrigation system so that as the garden grew it didn't place the burden of watering the pots on HMiL. This has allowed the veranda and stairwell to now host about 70 pots or containers.
Such a resource allows us to provide fruit; strawberries, blueberries, grapes, apricots, oranges and we have now successfully started growing custard apples. There are also a small selection of seasonal vegetables but the mainstay of the whole operation are the flowers and an aim to bring colour and joy into her visual experience of home.
My wife obviously loves her mother and I have come to treasure her as well. She is quite remarkable. In polite society a gentleman never mentions a lady's age and let's keep that convention here. Besides there is no point in mentioning the numbers because you simply would not be able to relate them to people who hold similar numerical seniority in the U.K.HMiL loves to dance, she goes social dancing at least three times a week (we would know that as ballroom dancing) and takes lessons once a week. Her favourite dance is the tango. Obviously she cycles to her dance class and this is her main form of transportation about the neighborhood. We joined her this week to take some photos.
After her dance class she changed, got on her bike and went out to do one of her community work jobs (I believe she has three). Off she went to look after a disabled boy whom she takes care of between the hours when he finishes school and his mum arrives home from work. Of an evening she likes to gather with her friends, play cards (small stakes just gives it that edge), have a few beers (pints naturally) and catch up on the news.
HMiL is an independent woman and in Japan that means that she runs her own small business, which of course is not any of our concern, and is a member of several local business clubs. These bring local business people together so they can discuss matters of mutual benefit and then, of course, have lunch together.
You may well feel that I have drifted into personal matters here but there is a very clear agenda in this, my last series of articles for this trip. The story of HMiL is not an exceptional case, there are many Japanese people like her. The streets in the local area are full of octogenarians, considered mere striplings here, riding around on bicycles.
"The estimated number of elderly aged 80 or older has topped the 8 million mark for the first time in Japan, the internal affairs ministry said in a report released Sunday."
This report also goes on to say that 5.5 million people over 65 are working. 3.19 million of these were employees, a figure which includes 1.58 million part-timers which means, if my maths serve, that means 4.01 million people over the age of 65 are in full time employment of one sort or another. Indeed I have seen a report last January of a doctor still working as a G.P. at the age of 100. His patients expressed confidence in him on the grounds that he was not only still alive but working as well!
The Japan Times report also notes that where the head of the household was over 65 family savings were approximately double those of families with a younger head of household. We have to bear in mind that one of the reasons Japan has stayed economically strong not just over the recent economic collapse but also over the last ten years of their own particular economic downturn is because as a nation Japan has more savings per head than any other nation. The Japanese have never really bought into the boom of the credit card in the same way we did in the west; they never saw the provision of credit as a reason either to borrow excessively or to stop saving!
All of this news from the ministry was released on Sunday as Monday was the Respect-for-the Aged Day national holiday. This is added onto the weekend which covers the harvest festival as part of the Happy Monday holiday system.
The lives these elders live are essential to Japanese society and to the identity of being Japanese and this is the subject I am going to look at with this set of articles. I want to try and show you how Japanese society as a mono-culture reinforces its own sense of itself and its standards through its social rituals. In order to do this I am going to start by following HMiL last Friday as she goes out on that most essential of all Japanese pursuits, hunting for a bargain.
HMiL wanted to buy a new clock for her living room and there is an area in Tokyo famed for its wholesale discount shops, Asakusa, which also just happens to have one of the most famous Buddhist Shrines in Japan, Sensō-ji. These two facts are clearly related as HMiL later explained.
On arriving in Asakusa HMiL could not find the wholesale discount shop she was looking for. She phoned friends, she searched hither and thither, but to no avail so she did the ovious thing, well obvious in Japan; she asked a policeman.
The local police station, a koban, can be seen in the photo above. These are dotted all over the communities of Tokyo and look more or less the identical. The kind policeman was able to help and guide the bargain hunter to her shopping serengeti.
As she passed the gateway to the shrine she mentioned to the honourable Akane that it was thanks to the Bodhisattva that the shops did so well and business was so good. All around the shrine specialist shops and trading outlets, a sort of cash and carry super park, thrive and prosper.
Whatever your requirement, from a sharp knife (a Japanese classic) to a living room clock, you will find it in the streets and alleyways around the temple. This is not strange or unique to Japan. Our own cathedrals functioned in the same way in building economies and indeed, in the middle ages sales of goods actually went on inside the great churches which were not used as they are today but separated off internally into different areas for different uses social and spiritual.
But for HMiL there is no separation between the worldly and the spiritual, it is all the same thing seen from different angles depending on your need at any one time. I have mentioned before the quality of pragmatism which I perceive to be the fundamental characteristic of the Japanese people, and it is only pragmatic that where there is a massively popular temple so too should there be crowds and so too should there be business opportunity.
Spot the American: the clue is the jeans!Yet it is still the will and presence of the Bodhisattva which generates the business and it is a sign of his blessings that people prosper. You cannot divide this spiritual Japan from secular Japan and in many ways the word secular is culturally inappropriate to use in connection with Japan.
Everyone buys into the whole and indivisible way of being Japanese, even the rebellious rebel in the Japanese style; fashionably! The presence of plastic toys alongside sacred statues is nothing but the way of the world and spirituality can be found in crafted old wood or moulded modern synthetics, the only sin is an inability to make a profit, the only grace is to be able to pay your way in life. Social security is a safety net of very thin strands meant only as a temporary support.
Of course I am providing a very wide sweeping generalisation here but I believe at the heart of what I am saying there is a fundamental truth. The temples and the shrines of Japan are at the heart of what it is to be Japanese. But for that to function and provide a stable identity then you need to ensure absolute inclusivity from birth in this special social model.
The journey around the religious sites as a tourist doesn't open the individual traveller to the wider social experience. This can only be seen when you are fortunate enough to live within a Japanese home as part of a Japanese family. The obligations, duties and celebrations are then shared with you as a matter of course. Naturally, as a foreigner you are not expected to either understand much or take up the duties too seriously, you are always involved as a courtesy not as an obligation.
Over the next few articles I will hope to show you what I have seen recently and support my opinions with pictures taken on a journey around the harvest festival. But it all really began with HMiL and her certainty of the Bodhisattva's role in enriching the Asakusa area of Tokyo.
When HMiL stands before the large donations chest (large in size and able to take any amount of hard cash) she makes her prayer and casts her coins into the box. There is no doubt that she asks the Bodhisattva to keep her and her family healthy, she certainly asks for blessings on the family finances and the rest is her own personal business. All year around people pour money into the temples and shrines and the temples and shrines guard the Japanese nation and its wealth by reminding the Japanese who they are.
That is the Bodhisattva's Business.
In the next article I will look at how this is all actually achieved with the presence of a powerful mythic form driving a clearly identified mono-culture. I may even consider this in the light of our own powerful mythic disassociation within a widely fragmented multi-culture. Hmmm, maybe!
Understanding Japan: The Business of Festival.
The image above is of Izanami-no-Mikoto and Izanagi-no-Mikoto who are on the bridge across the sea of all being from whence, with the aid of a spear, they stir forth the sacred islands of Japan. This is the Shinto creation myth which accounts for the existence of Japan and all its people. So now you know who the Japanese believe themselves to be!
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