>[!INFO]+ Meta >Area:: [[Neverland - The Lost Continent of Australia]] >Date:: 2013 >Tags:: #text #Japan #Australia *\[In 1942\] Professor Komaki Tsunekichi of Kyoto moots the idea of representing Africa and Europe as the western part of the Asian continent, America becoming the East-Asian continent and Australia the South-Asian continent. The oceans interconnecting them would be called the \'Grand Ocean of Japan\'.* Marc Ferro[^72] Japanese dreaming is an exquisite pastime. It conjures up a world where everything is given due consideration and the merest detail is a work of art. This dreaming is mostly realised in the consumption of Japanese products---sushi bars, Kurasawa films, Ikebana classes, breakfast kimonos and calendars of Zen temples. But there is a dilemma: how do you incorporate a spirit of reverence for the everyday while not being captive to its particular expression in Japanese culture? How to be Japanese without being Japanese? How to be Japanese while also being Australian? It would be easy to fill an entire book, much less a chapter, with Australian figures who were inspired by Japanese culture. Japan offers a purchase on inner nobility that is not dependent on the suburb in which you were born. The rare artists are those who attempt to realise something peculiarly Australian in their Japaneseness. This chapter follows the paths established by wayward figures who needed to find themselves as Australians via the astringent empire of the far east. The road to a Japanese Australia is certainly off the beaten track. But it hosts substantial traffic, carrying dreams of a culture with keen regard for its place, less anxious to win the world race. #### **Tourists attack the Fatal Shore** Robert Hughes' magisterial book of origins, *The Fatal Shore,* gloried in the dystopic realities of a gulag nation. His television sequel, *Beyond the Fatal Shore*, promised to update the story to the present day. After two hundred years of settlement, the penitentiaries of Port Arthur have been superseded by the endless expanse of suburbs along the eastern seaboard. Convicts in chains have evolved into home-owners with lawnmowers. The television series was tinged with bitterness. In the public arena, the Australian people had failed to vote themselves into a proud republic, while on the personal stage Hughes had collided on the highway and in the courts with some dinkum Aussie blokes. The final episode of the series, 'The Long Goodbye', promised a rousing sermon from Hughes in the style of his public lectures, which argued for an Australian republic and urban heritage. Two contrasting scenes established a stark moral dichotomy. The 102-year-old ANZAC veteran Ted Smout evoked the sacrifice unthinkingly made by many young Australians in the name of a mother country they had never seen. At the other end of the moral scale, an Australian priest performed a karaoke style Western wedding for giggling Japanese couples. We were confronted with a clear moral alternative---dignity versus expediency. Reflecting on this tendentious juxtaposition, Hughes worked his voice up into a patrician concern about the postmodern theatre of national identities. Does not this reduction in national identity leave us in the position of impecunious aristocrats selling tours of their family mansions to the hoi polloi? With an almost Bruce Ruxton anxiety about the yellow peril, Hughes warns his audience to resist cutting the cloth of Australian identity to suit our diminutive neighbours. This is a familiar rallying point for Australian identity, from the White Australian Policy inaugurated in the act of federation at the start of the twentieth century, to the Australian Government's White Paper on Defence at the beginning of the twenty first century. This fear surfaces in lurid fantasies of an Australia colonised by its Asian neighbours. In 1997, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party authorised an anonymous book, *The Truth*, which prophesied that by 2050 Australia would have been swallowed up by a United States of Asia: Australia's President then would be Poona Li Hung, a 'lesbian of Indian and Chinese background ... Her neuro-circuits were produced by a joint Korean-Indian-Chinese research team.'[^73] While such burlesque racism did not win serious votes, the more sober government approach followed a similar path. John Howard's term of office included the occupation of East Timor and subsequent confrontation with the Indonesian government. With a focus on the northern threat, Defence Minister John Moore evoked 'regional instability' as the catalyst for increased military strength.[^74] While there was no overt agenda of racism in the White Paper, it does reinforce an enduring xenophobia. The opposition between Australia and Asia takes the shape of a zero-sum game---we become part of Asia only by losing some of our Australianness. This would indeed be the case if we seek to hold a mirror up to Asia and import its culture in order to escape our own. Yet below the surface, there has been a tentative evolution of Australia as a Japanese nation. #### **Please consider** The most obvious presence of Japanese culture is in restaurants. Japanese restaurants began as exotic establishments with waitresses in kimonos serving green tea. They have since developed into sushi bars adorned with screens showing Japanese pop clips. Though, unlike California, there has been no adaptation of Japanese taste to Australian cuisine. Meanwhile, Australians have filled their lives with products of the Japanese manufacturing revolution. Sony, Honda, Sanyo and Toshiba are among the most common brand names in suburban homes. Yet they do not introduce any of the exotic 'Japanese' qualities, such as contemplation and reverence, otherwise absent from the car yards and takeaway franchises that adorn the Australian landscape. An exception to this is Mitsubishi, which in 1993 launched a Magna advertising campaign featuring the catchphrase 'Please Consider'. 'Please Consider' was designed to touch on the formality of Japanese interaction and subtleness of approach.[^75] The associated twelve-page advertising supplement distributed with the *Australian* weekend newspaper featured an antique writing desk on the cover. On parchment were inscribed the words: BEFORE A THING OF BEAUTY CAN BE MADE IN THE MATERIAL WORLD. FIRST IT MUST BE CONCEIVED IN THE HEART AND IN THE MIND Please Consider Japanese crafts were featured throughout the brochure, and related television advertisements starred a Japanese actor accompanied by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Very little factual information about the car was given; it was shown gracefully weaving through the Australian landscape. The strategy of the campaign was to lift the image of the Magna from a standard family car to a quality luxury car in the league of Mercedes and BMW. To this end, the company saw no need for the usual hard sell of 'factory bonuses' and 'crazy deals'. They were looking for quality sales at least five years down the line. Not surprisingly, the Please Consider campaign touched on the *feel* of Japanese aesthetics, rather than its *spirit*. It was designed to flatter the discerning consumer rather than open a path of enlightenment. The more interactive conversations between Australia and Japan occur along the back lanes. Before considering the first Australian traveller along this path, it is worth noting the two-fold nature of this journey. Just as Nordic culture contains an argument between its Christian and Viking past, so Japanese culture can be defined by how it differs from itself. If we are to imagine an Australia colonised by someone else, we need to understand how their own arguments of nationhood might be translated into another hemisphere. Japanese culture readily accommodates paradox. The Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism developed a technique for startling the mind out of its preconceptions. Paradoxes from the Chinese masters are employed to wake the disciple out of his or her self-focus. These are often accompanied by a surprise move, like a slap across the ears. If successful, there is a dialectical evolution from a monological order to a dialogical process. The paradigmatic koan 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' beseeches us to realise that we are only ever a part of things. Yet the dialectical move might be applied to Zen itself. Zen is focussed on individual enlightenment, or *satori*. But is a life only about the acquisition of understanding? Are there not moments of life beyond understanding, such as the identity shifts of birth, rites of passage and marriage? Japanese culture deals with this problem by adopting a bifocal religious system. While the Buddhism that came from China helps the Japanese grasp a cosmic purpose, indigenous Shinto provides a set of beliefs for local identity and social purpose. Though there has been much exchange between the two religions, they still play different roles in a person's life. Shinto religion contains a number of cleansing rituals appropriate to rites of passage. Japanese are married with Shinto rites, but they die with Buddhist ceremony. Shinto is the ornate packaging designed to contain the inner emptiness of a pure Zen *satori*. Shinto was gathered into a cohesive religion in the Tokugawa period, when Japan was isolated from the outside world. In the eighteenth century, scholars such as Motoori Norinaga attempted to define what made Japan quintessentially different from other cultures, especially the Chinese. In his recovery of key texts, Norinaga articulated the *mono no aware* (impermanence of things) aesthetic that focuses on the transient beauty of nature. Fragmentary art practices such as *haiku* serve to heighten appreciation of this fleeting apparition. Framing this poetic is the belief in a pantheistic universe that is animated by the intentions of gods, known as *kami*. *Kami* also means paper---the paradigmatic material of Tokugawa Japan. Lives are separated not by bricks but by paper screens. In Shinto, paper is the bridge to the natural deities. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict describes a typical Shinto rite: 'The priest prayed and each participant in order of rank presented with deep obeisance that omnipresent object in old and new Japan; a twig of their sacred tree with pendant strips of white paper.'[^76] These *heihaku* tags are a transient offering. Like paper packaging of gifts, this material gives itself to the moment---an appropriate medium for *mono no aware.* As a form of nature worship, Shinto contrasts with the more active engagement of Zen. Zen arts include calligraphy, sumi-e painting, archery, swordsmanship, flower arrangement, tea ceremony and No theatre. They emphasise spontaneity and naturalness beyond formal structure and outside forces. These practices are readily abstracted outside medieval Japan to the modern West in business, golf and motorcycle maintenance. While Zen is focussed on inner balance, Shinto looks outside to nature---to mountains, rivers, lakes, insects and trees. *Matsuri* festivals around Shinto shrines involve offerings (*shinshen*) to the Gods, in the form of food, song and paper votives. The focus is on external substance rather than an inner nothingness. While inside Japan, both Buddhism and Shinto might seem integral parts of the spiritual economy, it is possible for outsiders to appropriate individual elements. Typically, a Westerner draws inspiration from Zen practices while leaving behind the regional Shinto component. Is there a means, however, of translating the heightened poetry of place in Shinto to lands outside of Japan? Many Australians looking to Japan have been drawn not to the elite Zen practices but to the more popular Shin Buddhism. But it is Shinto that seems to have best chance of translation into Australian circumstances. #### **Harold Stewart, the long-nosed demon of Kyoto** During the alternative era of the 1960s, a small group of artists and writers decided to leave Australia completely and settle in Japan. For poet Harold Stewart, the appeal of such a radically different culture in Japan was precisely in the distance it placed between him and Australia. Harold Stewart's father was a health inspector in Sydney who had spent much of his life in India and spoke Hindi. From an early age, Stewart resisted modernism and wrote within traditional poetic structures. In 1943, he conspired with James McAuley to create a hoax poet, Ern Malley, who served as a Trojan horse to undermine the reputation of the modernist editor of *Angry Penguins*, Max Harris. They successfully preyed on Harris's desire to find a home-grown modernism and in the process undermined further attempts in artistic experimentation for years to come. From this distance, now that Ern Malley's poems have been promoted from scandal to literary canon, the hoax seems an unwitting Buddhist exercise in the erasure of ego, particularly for its authors. Stewart's eventual Japanese conversion seems a natural evolution. In the years afterward, from 1950 to 1966, Stewart worked at the Norman Robb bookshop in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, where a night study group met on Fridays to discuss eastern religions. Under the influence of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon, they decided that Shin Buddhism would be the most appropriate faith to adopt. So the group went together to Kyoto and studied at a Shin Buddhist temple. Stewart remained in Kyoto and spent his days exploring the ancient city until his death in 1995. Though he never learnt Japanese, he still became familiar enough with the city to be a regular guide for visiting Australian officials. Stewart's subsequent poetry received a cool reception in Australia. With exacting detail and rhyming metre, the works written in Japan paid homage to the sacred land of Buddhism. His strongest ally at home was A. D. Hope, who according to legend described Stewart's major work, *By the Old Walls of Kyoto*, as 'the best long poem in the English language'. Stewart kept up correspondence with a select group back in Australia, including James McAuley and the ceramicist Milton Moon, but he was a dogged exile. Until his deathbed, he did not show an interest in returning to Australia, which he referred to as the 'land of was'. To understand Stewart's later poetry, we need to consider the Shin Buddhism on which it is based. By contrast with Zen Buddhism, which offers disciplines for mastering enlightenment, Shin Buddhism advises a renunciation of self-control. For Stewart, Zen had become a hierarchical religion. > 'official' Zen, whilst faithfully preserving its own traditions to the > present day, has become somewhat desiccated and moribund. This is > mainly because of its rigid monastic structure and the Confucian > moralism that was first introduced by Zen monks returning from China > in the Middle Ages[^77] By contrast, the path of Shin Buddhism was available to anyone and required a simple openness rather than specialised training. > An eminent Roshi of the present day has said that the Zen monk plucks > the persimmon while still unripe and attempts to sweeten it by > assiduous chewing. But no matter how long one chews an unripe > persimmon, it still remains astringent; hence the wry crabbed visage > of the ascetic who tries by self-effort to force the issue of satori. > The Shin devotee, on the contrary, sits patiently under the tree, > waiting for the persimmon to ripen and grow sweet under the mellowing > influence of Amida's Sun. Then, at the opportune moment and not > before, the fruit falls into his mouth with no effort on his > part.[^78] This concept of grace counters a spiritual hierarchy based on individual achievements. It supports a popular religion that grants each individual an equal access to salvation. Enlightenment is easy. Stewart's belief in Shin Buddhism appears to be his main legacy. If you search on the Internet today, you will find more material on Stewart's religious philosophy than his poetry. The Mugeko site provides a focus for Shin Buddhism in the west. One of the contributors, Barry Leckenby, described Stewart's belief in Shin Buddhism as 'the quest to find a less prescriptive spirituality that exiled nobody from the paradisiacal afterlife'.[^79] Though it is possible see this as reflecting his attack of pretension during the Ern Malley hoax, it still doesn't account for Stewart's exotic conversion. As part of his PhD thesis, Leckenby spent fifteen months in Kyoto following the trail of Stewart's city with a camera. When I visited Leckenby at his Northcote home, he had Greek builders in his backyard installing a Japanese garden. I asked if he planned to include any Australian elements. He said no, but noted that he has to be careful about the placement of moss, as the climate here is much dryer than Japan. Stone and moss are integral elements in a Japanese stone garden---stone for wisdom and moss for compassion. I suspect there is something telling in the inhospitable reception to the softness of Japanese aesthetics. I press Leckenby with the judgment that Stewart's exile in Kyoto was an escape into an exotic world. His defence is practical: 'Harold had exhausted all the possibilities in Australia. He was always a poet and found a Swiss benefactor to support him in Kyoto.' Despite the specific references to Japan, Leckenby claims that by contrast with Shinto, Shin Buddhism is a universal religion that works at a psychological level. I remain sceptical. From what I understand, Shin Buddhism is very particular to Japan. According to legend, the religion came to Japan with the Taoist emperor Hsu Shih, who travelled from China on a symbolic journey to the land where the sun rose. Honin's vision of the Pure Land was of a Western paradise with the purple clouds of the setting sun. And the principle spiritual practice is a chant in the Japanese language, *Namu Amida Butsu*, which signifies total reliance on the compassion of Amida Buddha. How can an Australian dedicate their life to a vision of a mythical land seen from Japan looking towards China? Perhaps the answer lies in its very foreignness. In *By the Old Walls of Kyoto*, Stewart is quite candid about the way he doesn't fit into Japanese life. He presents himself in the Japanese context as a mythical demon: > the reader may have noticed in this poem an awkward, shabby, > eccentric, middle-aged foreign intruder whose nasal prominence has > often been compared to that of a tengu, the long-nosed demon of > Japanese folklore. In the old Japan it was common knowledge that, like > the tengu, all Caucasians were possessed of flaming red hair, staring > blue eyes, and noses of almost elephantine elongation: sure signs of > their preternatural outlandishness.[^80] In an otherwise reverential poem, this self-consciousness opens a door back to Australia. Awe at Japanese asceticism reflects back on oneself as a crude Western beast. This is a peculiar *gaijin* enlightenment. The crowning achievement of Stewart's poem is to find a context for his foreignness in the heart of Shin Buddhism. Elsewhere in the poem he writes about the Buddhist phenomenon of *metanoia*, in which a person manages to reverse their drifting state with a fall into compassion. Stewart experiences it while merged with a holiday crowd and lured into the entertainments of a hot summer night. Against the current, he finds a beggar woman who evokes a sense of guilt that stills his movement. > Would it not be best\ > To seek the Buddha's treasure in the West,\ > And with the golden grace that he transfers\ > Return to save a world of sufferers?[^81] Stewart follows a group of monks, who also walk against the crowd towards the setting sun in the West. His is a non-conformist orientalism. Whether or not this was the source of his attraction, or simply a legitimation of his instinctual fascination for Japanese culture, Stewart found a story to accommodate his life as an Australian in Kyoto. After World War 2, it seemed reasonable for a poet like Stewart to search for a way out of the evil world. One of the Buddhist precepts is to 'die while alive', and leaving Australia offered Stewart the opportunity to leave himself behind. Being Australian in Kyoto prevented Stewart lapsing into a comfortable social position. He could remain aloof from the world, closer to the spirit of Buddhism than the Japanese themselves. For Stewart, language was one of the inexorable walls of Kyoto, forever separating Japan and Australia. Material arts promise a more reciprocal arrangement, with technical skill being a lingua franca that brings makers together. Ceramics has been the most direct source of Japanese influence on Australian culture, but it is only recently that an Australian potter has been able to temper its astringency to suit an antipodean lifestyle. #### **Jane Sawyer becomes less Japanese** While Stewart remained in Kyoto until his death in 1995, his Shin Buddhism found an alternative route back to Australia. One of the centres of Shin Buddhism in Japan is a pottery workshop known as Shussai-gama, on the west coast of Japan in the Shimane prefecture. Four hundred years ago, Korean potters had been kidnapped and brought to this region to reveal their techniques. Regarded by the Japanese as simpler people, Koreans were seen to produce the most purely conceived pots. The most revered piece of ceramic in Japan is the Ido tea bowl, made by an anonymous thrower among tens of thousands in a Korean pottery. Shussai-gama was established under the influence of the Japanese folk art movement, led in the early twentieth century by Hamada Shoji with assistance from the Englishman Bernard Leach. It is in this quintessential Japanese pottery that English ceramics comes into its own. In his autobiographical notes, Leach highlights a moment during his 1961 visit to Shussai-gama, where the potters lived a communal life dedicated to Amida. While adherence to Buddhist practice had cleared their minds of self-consciousness, their work lacked direction. Leach offered them some rudimentary criticisms of their pots, which once adopted enabled their work to transform itself. > As Kenji did these two corrections the whole group unanimously > exclaimed with excitement, 'It has come to life!'---before I had even > perceived it myself. I stepped back in wonder... another Power was at > work; not mine; nor Kenji's skill; not even the clay or good wheel, > but the absence of any self-assertive ego to hinder the birth of a > congregate good pot made for its own sake. My only contribution was > what I had learned from medieval English traditions of form.[^82] Leach hoped to marry the best of East and West by adopting the anti-individual asceticism of the Japanese workshop into the traditional forms of Staffordshire slipware. His tireless advocacy for this method, in writings and travels, helped shape the course of ceramics throughout the British Empire after World War 2. Today, Bernard Leach has become synonymous with a conservative image of the craftsman who nobly resists the temptations of the modern world in order to pursue his humble labours. Leach inspired several generations of Australian potters. The best of their work can now be seen at the Shepparton Art Gallery, a collection initiated by art critic Peter Timms when he was director. According to Timms, Leach's practical manual *Potters Book* arrived in Australia just at the right time, in a post-war climate when resources and teaching were developing to support a local ceramic culture. For Timms, the advantage of Leach's influence was its attention to the *genus loci* of the particular potter. He gives the example of potter Col Levy's Blue Mountain studio: > Col Levy can tell you exactly where that clay came from and he can > tell you 'If I make a pot with that clay, which I dug down near the > dam, and I fire the kiln with *that* black wattle and a mixture of > *that* green eucalypt I will get *this* result.' And he knows exactly > what those materials will do and what sort of result he will get from > the different clays and the different timbers and the different > weather conditions ... It's all Japanese in conception, but his pots > look nothing like them.[^83] The Japanese method does not determine which materials should be used; it offers a discipline of authenticity that enables their unique qualities to be evident in the final form. Despite its appeal, the Leach-Hamada movement seems irrelevant now. Timms admits that the wood firings became a macho scene 'for blokes with shorts and hairy legs'. Few have the patience for the intensity of training required to master this technique. Yet there is one young female potter who has been able to assimilate the Leach-Hamada tradition into contemporary Australia. Jane Sawyer is one of Australia's leading potters, with a choreographic attitude to clay: each vessel can be read as a slow dance involving the hand and the wheel. Sawyer professes a calling for clay and unlimited pleasure at the potter's wheel. Despite her un-Japanese fair hair and blue eyes, Sawyer found herself drawn to the dark formality of Japanese pottery. The fascination began when her sister had brought back some ceramic teacups from Japan, where she had been an exchange student. Sawyer was impressed to learn that Japanese ceramics provided a life's vocation, rather than a hobby on the side. Having enrolled in a Melbourne ceramics course, Sawyer was initially taught by the Western method, which emphasised technical problems in making. Students start with simple techniques like hand-building, and gradually work up to throwing. Japanese pedagogy reverses this order: students start with a large piece of clay and are asked immediately to throw a bowl, using the centrifugal force of the wheel as a starting point. Still looking for a way of making pots that she could put her heart into, Sawyer was attracted to this more intuitive approach Sawyer left college to join a workshop with a Japanese-trained ceramicist in Sydney. From there she elected to go to the Shussai-gama workshop, because of all the Japanese workshops, it seemed the most egalitarian and accepting of women: 'I didn't want to sit around making cups of tea for the male masters.' Shussai-gama operated according to *Mingei* ('folk-art') principles elaborated by Yanagi S[o]{.ul}etsu, which include valuing selflessness, functional ware and spontaneity. Sawyer found life in the workshop quite intense. The day began with a communal work prayer---'If you work everyday it's healthy; there's nothing work can't achieve'---and physical exercises for potters. Her teacher, Tatano Hiromitsu, would instruct her 'If there is no pride then a natural, silent, warm feeling will come out of oneself and one's work---like *chickasui* (ground water) naturally coming up---a spring which brings only good things.' The workshop consisted of seven partners and seven apprentices. The potters were amused at Sawyer's determination to be independent of family responsibilities, and treated her as a token male---though she was not exempt from weekly tea duties. She stretched her residency out to two years, and has returned to Japan for two sell-out exhibitions of her work. Sawyer now has a workshop and gallery in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, where she makes fluid forms in terracotta and gives private classes in Japanese ceramics. She admits that her current work would be seen by the masters at Shussai-gama as quite self-indulgent. Parts of her vessels are left unglazed, which reduces their function, particularly with a low-fired clay like terracotta. What Sawyer gained from her experience in Japan is an appreciation of skill. For her, skill is a means to obtain freshness in the work. 'The more skilled you are at something, the easier it becomes and the fresher it is born. It grants you a certain level of spontaneity and playfulness, of being able to let go.' For the Japanese, the main path towards spontaneity is repetition---making the same object over and over until the conscious mind lets go. 'For me to sit down on a wheel and play with a lump of clay is the opposite of that.' By contrast with the revered status of ceramics in Japan, Sawyer sees little place for work like her own in Australia. If she were to return to Japan, she would like to visit Okinawa, which has its own *Mingei* tradition. Because of the Chinese influence, Okinawa pots are more colourful and playful. 'They are more expressive, more happy, more sunny.' To demonstrate her point, Sawyer brings out her prize possession, *Okinawan Pottery*, published by the Ryukyu Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation and beautifully packaged in its own box. In the introduction, Hamada Shoji, who lived in Okinawa for health reasons, praises its ceramics as most true to the ideal of the anonymous maker: 'Almost all Okinawan pottery was made by unknown craftsmen, unsophisticated men who lived close to the soil. It is this, precisely, that gives them their value.'[^84] For Sawyer, the key to finding a place for Japan in Australia lies in its southern islands. In the Ryukyu, she can enjoy the expressive freedom of Japanese ceramics without the rigid hierarchies of Yamato patriarchy. Here is a place where the persimmons fall from the tree ripened by the sun, having lost that astringency of austere selflessness. Sawyer's work stands alone as a personal interpretation of Japanese tradition. In the field of metal, however, Japanese inspiration can be found in the heart of Melbourne, providing its key point of distinction from other colonial cities. #### **Japanese underground in Workshop 3000** On the surface, Melbourne's Japanese elements are like jewels that ornament a grand Victorian city. Set amongst its sandstone architecture and glass-fronted offices are discrete little Japanese sushi bars and lacquerware shops. Until its closure in July 2002, the Japanese-owned department store Daimaru provided an upmarket venue for elegantly wrapped gifts. Akio Makigawa's granite sculptures embellish city's focal points such as the international departure lounge at Tullamarine Airport. And in the lane facing Kuni's restaurant, the shoebox-sized Gallery Funaki provides jewellery with a minimal aesthetic for a small but dedicated clientele. Below the surface, the Japanese aesthetic is at work finding a synthesis with local culture. Workshop 3000 is an underground studio situated at the epicentre of Melbourne minimalism---between Anna Schwartz Gallery and the Denton Corker Marshall designed Adelphi Hotel. The two artists working here---Susan Cohn and Miyuki Nakahara---exhibit a particularly focus Japanese, one by education and the other by upbringing. Susan Cohn has gone further with jewellery than just about any other Australian. Her circular mesh earrings and doughnut bracelets have become key indicators of style in Melbourne. In hollowware, she has developed aluminium bowls with striking moire patterns that are now part of the Alessi range. And through her workshop and extracurricular work, she has helped foster an intellectual life for craft that is unique in the world. Cohn works against the grain of traditional jewellery. While the mainstream imperative of jewellery is to maintain enduring value, Cohn's pieces are often designed to mark a passage of time. Her wedding rings are aluminium with a layer of gold that is gradually worn away in the first five years of marriage, requiring renewal. Dental ornaments make a feature out of the movement of teeth while wearing braces. And a survival kit contains scents that are lost to the twentieth century. Cohn's interest in Japan developed after discovering her own complicated origins. Her great-grandmother was a Rumanian Jew living in China. She had left her son with a sister to see if Rumania was fit for them to return to. While away, her childless sister and husband dressed the boy as a girl and fled to Japan. The boy, Cohn's grandfather, grew up in Nagasaki and fell in love with a local girl. As liaisons with foreigners were forbidden, they eloped to China, where he established a medical practice. Their son, Cohn's father, used his round eyes to deny Japanese background. For Cohn, the Japanese influence is like an arranged marriage: 'It feels like I'm married to Japan---I just don't remember saying "Yes".' Cohn has been to Japan many times, preferring to stay in Tokyo for the stark contrasts between honoured tradition and everyday kitsch. What impresses her particularly is the exquisite detail in Japanese art. Cohn remembers a visit to the Ise Shrine, which is housed on two blocks of land and is re-built every twenty years. This time limitation on buildings is also reflected in the life of bars, which advertise both their opening and closing dates. While admiring this intensity, Cohn admits that the Japanese suffer from tunnel vision, which leads to a lack of responsibility: > I remember being on a train and there was a retarded boy who got on > the train every day. He started to worry that he wasn't on the right > train. He was asking people if this was the train to 'blah blah'. And > he was on the right train. But because he was retarded, he did not > exist. I wanted to tell him that he was on the right train, but it > would have freaked him out, because I was a foreigner.[^85] Cohn takes issue with the Japanese lack of care for the homeless and the environment, and other side effects of their single-mindedness. Despite these differences, Cohn has been able to find a place in the Japanese market for one kind of work: her square mourning rings made from aluminium anodised in black. With use, the black surface suffers scratches and thus wears in a way that reflects the grieving process. These rings are popular at home as well, where they provide Australians with a device for experiencing a passage of time that might otherwise go unmarked. Sharing Cohn's workshop is Miyuki Nakahara, who works part time in several of Melbourne's Japanese restaurants. Nakahara's work is largely concerned with boxes. Her *Asparagus Box* (1992) interprets the readymade craft of restaurant window displays, and reflects the loving care the Japanese devote to presentation. Nakahara recalls quite fondly the importance given to packaging in her childhood. She remembers the pleasure of carefully wrapped confectionary: 'Whatever it is, once you wrap it, it gives it specialness.' More recently, she has been exploring the local culture of packaging. Her Arnott's biscuit tins (1994) delve into the sentimental heart of local material culture. Their distressed surface attempts to reflect the trials that a treasured object undergoes in retaining its contents---an expression of the Japanese *wabi* aesthetic of worn surfaces on a lost Australian icon. More recently, she has distressed tins of MSG to mark the loss of a particular kind of twentieth century condiment. Despite cultural differences, Nakahara feels free to pursue her craft beyond the strictures of Japanese society. She expresses relief to be away from the 'complete cold denial' exercised by the Japanese when faced with something unexpected. Nakahara seems to go further than most other Japanese craft practitioners in extending her practice into Australia culture. In so doing, she works entirely against the grain of this Anglo-Saxon society. Here, she can exercise this aesthetic in radical way, whereas in Japan it would disappear into the woodwork. Cohn and Nakahara share an interest in the way metal deteriorates with use. Japanese culture provides a legitimation of what otherwise would be a failure of craftsmanship. While this runs contrary to the traditional imperative of jewellery as enduring objects, it seems quite at home with Shinto respect for the transience of things. Shinto provides a framework for imagining an art that is integrated with the Australian outback. Despite its intensely regional focus in its Japanese home, its reverence for place is something that even our non-Japanese speaking poets can embrace. #### **Les Murray's Australian Shinto** Les Murray seems an odd poet to recruit into a Japanese Australia. His disdain for cultural elites and celebration of rural battlers would appear to alienate him from Australia's traditional enemy. Yet Murray is an encyclopaedic linguist, who incorporates many eastern forms into his work, such as the Hindu song cycle. What runs throughout his poetry is an attachment to place, which he contrasts with the cosmopolitan restlessness of city dwellers. For Murray, the most important world is the land of his childhood around the northern New South Wales town of Bunyah, where he has returned to live. It is this opposition between world and place that finds its complement in the Japanese dialogue between Buddhism and Shinto. In his essay 'Some religious stuff I know', Murray argues that Christianity in Australia lacks the kind of pantheistic extension that Shinto provides for Buddhism: > Christianity can co-exist with a good deal of Shinto, particularly > perhaps a Shinto tempered by humour, because the two are about > different spiritual concerns. The sort of Shinto that I am talking > about is almost obsessed by style, by manners, but it has nothing to > say about Last Things. On the other hand, it does fit in, in a way > which ought to interest Christians, with the oldest spiritual > traditions existing in Australia in its celebration, now formal, now > casually familiar of special sites and objects and particularised > animals held in emblematic, partially mythologised poses of > contemplation.[^86] Thus while Christian rites administer the entry and departure from life, it has few ceremonies that relate to the specific place in which those lives are located. Apart from some occasional references to sheep, the Bible has little to say about the natural world that Australians find themselves in. In his poem 'Aqualung Shinto', Murray allows himself a more overtly critical defence of the Japanese perspective: > Oh Zen makes colonials of a few\ > But each people has its proper Shinto\ > distinctive as verandah beams > > hard to join as a stranger's childhood.\ > What withers us is that Australia\ > is a land of shamefaced shrines. Paradoxically, Shinto offers a universal attention to place. It provides a set of practices---haiku, gods, shrines, votives and prayers---by which a modern society might recover its unique locality, wherever it is. Murray identifies Aboriginal Australians as the keepers of this Shinto. Their mythologies and ceremonies ascribe unique identities to individual features of landscape and fauna. By contrast, 'Australians of overseas ancestry' neglect the nature at hand for the grand architecture that is placed upon it. > Australians of overseas ancestry have added human monuments of all > sorts to the list of what a Catholic might call the 'sacramentals' of > identity, while still reversing their most serious regard for the > natural features of 'our' fragment of the primordial Gondwanaland > continent. This convergence is suggestive, I think, and may be > enormously productive. We have come to the sense, which the Aborigines > had before us, that after all human frenzies and efforts there remains > the great land. As George Johnson wrote, nothing human has yet > happened in Australia which stands out above the continent > itself.[^87] There is nothing unusual in granting indigenous culture the role of speaking for nature. However, placing this within a foreign context like Shinto makes it more possible for non-indigenous people to partake of a chthonic awareness. Murray's idea of an Australian Shinto guides us to Japanese influence outside the specialist cultural practices and inside mainstream society. Tourism is an obvious location. We can see this chthonic sensibility in the way Japanese tourists have constructed a theatre of transformation out of the sunburnt country. Around the national sacred site of Uluru is a daily gathering of pilgrims, who wait for the previous few minutes when the dying sun casts its pastel rays over the rock. If it were in Japan, you might see it as a natural expression of the Shinto *mono no aware* aesthetic. In Australia, the only other event that matches it is the evening penguin parade at Philip Island, where tourists gather to watch penguins return home to their sand-dune burrows every sunset. Both daily events are popular destinations for Japanese tourists. Though the Uluru sunset and the Philip Island penguin parade are highly commodified and routinised experiences, they do offer a ritual of diurnal transformation that is otherwise missing from everyday life in Australia. Apart from tourism, this Australian Shinto is most directly manifest in Murray's poetry itself. The collection *Translations from a Natural World* is a pantheist evocation of nature's consciousness. In the poem 'Two Dogs', Murray creates lines such as 'hot grass rolling and rabbit-dig but only saliva chickweed' that attempt to imaginatively dwell in a dog's world. Subjects like insects, trees and fish shoals provide a formidable challenge to his poetic craft. In a fully-developed Australian Shinto, such poetic channelling would be taken from the printed page and presented as inscriptions, prayers and performances. A key element in such an Australian Shinto would be water. Water is a naturally precious element in an arid continent like Australia. The hydrological colonisation of water has denied this preciousness by guaranteeing its constant supply. Recovering the implicit experience of water is a distinctly Australian challenge. In Murray's poetry, water provides a canvas for 'bunches' of words like 'hoseless hosings', 'steepening white velocities' and 'braiding uptilts after swoops'. It is such a common element, yet possessed of an infinite variety of shapes and patterns. Murray's personal obsession with water is an attachment to showers. His poem 'The Shower' was written while suffering withdrawal in the shower-less English bathroom. He writes about the 'enveloping passion of Australians': > sleek vertical coruscating ghost of your inner river,\ > reminding all your fluids, streaming off your points, awakening\ > the tacky soap to blossom and ripe autumn, releasing the squeezed > gardens,\ > smoky valet smoothing your impalpable overnight pyjamas off, This is one of the rare moments in Murray's poetry that reflects on an Australian idiom that is shared by city and bush. In celebration of the daily ritual implicit in this bodily tending, the poet from Bunyah touches on what his Australian Shinto might feel like. There is another more circuitous route for taking Australian Shinto into the cities. Murray celebrates the like-minded writer Eric Rolls, whose *A Million Wild Acres* describes the life of the Pilliga forest during colonisation. Murray writes that 'I do not know of one which interrelates the human and non-human dimensions so intimately.'[^88] In 1993 Brisbane-born Ross Gibson directed a film based on Roll's book, *Wild*, which teases out the Buddhist reversal of subject and object performed by those who dwell in the bush. The figure of bush-dweller John Grosser typifies a settler whose violence towards the bush has been gradually reversed, as his life has become shaped by the very environment he attempted to master---'rituals of his life and the forest have grown into each other.'[^89] Grosser lived in a compound far beyond a road and worked the same glade for fifty years. In reflecting on the idea of an Australian Shinto, Gibson offers the following scene: > We came across this shrine at the back of his compound, where he has > placed in seemingly devotional patterns, skeletons of animals that > he's found in the bush. There would be maybe thirty or forty skeletons > that he's arranged in highly precise, highly aesthetic patterns that > can only be some kind of meditative space ... It was a shrine of some > kind.[^90] Unlike Les Murray, Ross Gibson does not see this responsiveness as unique to the bush. In his own critical practice, he extends it to urban sensibilities, such as those of forensic photographers and video artists, which he is profiling in the Screen Gallery at Federation Square, where he was founding Creative Director. For Gibson, colonial violence was tied to a lack of long-term commitment to the land. 'Colonialism is founded on breaking the coherence of the previous existing situation and then profiting from that breakage, and then you install yourself in that broken world.' Gibson's 'slim volume' aesthetic is about recovering that breakage, as might be possible in a haiku consciousness. Murray's pantheism has been hampered by a limiting clause of rural political correctness. The Japanese reference provides a line that enables his rich poetic register to extend beyond his resentment politics. Australian Shinto could apply as much to catching the 5:15pm train to Bankstown as rounding up the cows for milking. This Australian Shinto is about sensibility rather than form. In the field of music, however, there is much more likelihood of direct influence of Japanese culture on the representation of Australian nature. #### **Peter Sculthorpe's sombre Shinto** Tasmanian-born composer Peter Sculthorpe gives Japan a key role in his autobiography. He first heard the Shinto court music Etenraku (music from heaven) when he was twenty years old. He describes being 'both repelled and exhilarated', and compares it to the first bite of an olive. He was in his late thirties when he finally travelled to Japan, where he spent several months in a Zen Buddhist monastery, Tenryuji, but found the regime too harsh and the paradoxical thinking too predictable. Sculthorpe contrasts this with his experience with Shinto, which was more accessible and sensuous--- 'Shinto is about life and living.'[^91] He also drew a link between his major work, Sun Music, and the central place of Amaterasu Omikami, the Goddess of the Sun, in Shinto mythology: 'Shinto, in many ways, holds up a mirror to my own beliefs.' The final scene in Sculthorpe's memoirs is a visit to the Ise Shrine, where he imbibes 'that shining world' of the Naiku shrine and is taken to the beach by a priest. The story concludes at Ago Bay, in Kashikojima, which is like a Mediterranean seaside town with mock Spanish galleons. > The garden behind the hotel was clearly designed for those Japanese > guests who like to stay in Western-style rooms. It has a rose-garden, > very much in the English manner, complete with trellised arbours, > sundial and summerhouse. I couldn't help wishing that my own garden > could be more like it. Still, I do persevere. If I were more sensible, > of course, I'd create an Australian native garden, or even a Japanese > garden ... > > Sitting there, in bright sunlight, I felt very complete in myself. The > shining world of Naiku had affected me in a profound way. Somehow, > too, I'd come to feel like the kind of Australian that could be called > Australian Asian.[^92] Rather than travel the path to authenticity, by stripping away Western culture and embracing the self-denial of Zen discipline, Sculthorpe finds a point of inauthenticity on which to attach himself. This experience made its way into his work *Mangrove*, finished in 1979. The music is notable partly for what is missing. Rather than use literal references, such as woodwind sounds to paint the scene of the salty marshes along the continent's northern coast, Sculthorpe adopts a more primal palette. He bases the main melody on a Japanese court song of the *saibara* genre, which was inspired by the songs of pack-train drivers. The original tune, *Ise-no-Umi*, came from the Heian court of the Pillow Book. His sources are authentically Shinto, yet he eschews the use of Japanese instruments. The result is quite sombre---monumental, but without the optimism of Aaron Copeland. Sculthorpe incorporates this darkness into his vision of Australia: > A lack of common cause and the self-interest of many have drained us > \[Australians\] of much of our energy. A bogus national identity and > its commercialisation have obscured the true breadth of our culture. > Most of the jubilation, I came to feel, awaits us in the future. > Perhaps we now need to attune ourselves to this continent, to listen > to the cry of the earth, as the Aborigines have done for many > thousands of years.[^93] Sculthorpe's career, like that of Percy Grainger, has entailed sounding the continent in a way that reflects its position in the world. In 1995, Sculthorpe spoke about a 'high Pacific culture' which offered a 'richness of musical traditions' that ranged from folk to classical spheres, from Micronesian vocal music to Japanese court music.[^94] However, Sculthorpe is vague about the exact nature of this 'high Pacific culture' other than the play on the ocean's name as a place of tranquillity---'I believe that the greatest art is serene.' For Sculthorpe, Shinto sources provide a way of making a sombre music about his country. It avoids the forced optimism by which Romantic Western music represents the triumph of order over chaos. It is music that is more about listening than serenading. While for most Australians who incorporate a Japanese attitude in their work, they notice the consonant elements in the world around them. It is the Japanese in Australia who are more likely to notice the striking dissonances. #### **Yuri Kawanabe and Naomi Ota go too far south** While many Australians look north for a better understanding of where they live, a few Japanese are heading south. The stories of a jeweller and a fibre artist demonstrate how and where the two cultures might meet. Sydney jeweller Yuri Kawanabe finds it more comfortable to be Japanese outside Japan. Kawanabe began her artistic training as a ceramicist at the National Art School in Tokyo. There she found herself 'in the shadow of the masters', whose instruction Kawanabe was expected to silently follow. At that time, this nineteenth-century style academy was dominated by the movement known as Mono-Ha (the 'substance group'). Consisting mainly of sculptors, they advocated an art that brought to consciousness the material substance of things. The only jeweller included in this group was the late Kazuhiro Ito. Ito 'elevated' jewellery into Mono-Ha and the gallery network. In one of this last works, *I lift up my eyes to the mountains* (1994), Ito submerged a necklace into a box of wax, transcending the functional quality of jewellery and embracing the poetry of substance. Despite appreciating their work, Kawanabe felt that Mono-Ha had no place for a woman like her. The only path was to join a group. 'I had a physical reaction to that kind of society' she says, 'I wanted to let things out, not contain them.' Europe offered a way out. In Munich, she was surprised to find a Japanese jeweller who prefaced her sentences with the words 'I think ...'---no woman in Japan would speak for herself like this. Back in Japan, this licence for self-expression was extended by a visiting teacher from Sydney College of the Arts (Mary Rose Sinn) who offered Kawanabe a means of visiting Australia. Today, Kawanabe's work is easily distinguished by its openness and paper-like qualities. Her aluminium necklaces look as though they have been snipped into shape in a few minutes. These appearances are deceptive on two counts. First, the detailing necessary to give this simple appearance is extremely labour-intensive. Second, when designing her work, Kawanabe often uses clay rather than paper---like other Japanese artists I have spoken with, she admits to great pleasure in manipulating material with her hands. Kawanabe has managed to find an alternative framework to the rarefied aesthetic of Mono-Ha. For her, jewellery fulfils a decorative function that strikes deeper than mere display. During a visit to Bali, she was impressed with the ornate arrangement of flowers and stems on plates. This decorative impulse seems to emerge not from any obligation but from the uncomplicated joy of making. Such modest kitchen craft provides an important reference point in her work. In Yuri Kawanabe's story, her move out of Japan allows her to invest her work with the familiar pleasures of handiwork. Kawanabe finds expression not in pious devotion to art but in Asian *folk* practices of domestic paper decorations. Like Kawanabe, the fibre artist Naomi Ota takes a path that leads to the folk cultures of Southeast Asia, though her route is more direct. At Kyoto University Naomi Ota chose to study craft rather than art or design because 'I like to use my hands.' Since childhood, she had been interested in archaeology, particularly the Jomon period of Japanese history, prior to Chinese influence. She is impressed particularly by their pots, which display patterns made from rope pressed onto the clay. While studying at Kyoto, she envied the sculptors because they were free to choose their materials, whereas she was limited to fibre. In reaction, she extended her medium beyond the loom and back into folk traditions. She was fascinated by an indigenous maritime tradition in which elaborate decorations are applied to retiring boats in order to console their spirit. Her response was to 'weave' an entire boat. In 1986 Ota made her first trip to Okinawa, one of the southern islands of Japan that form an arc towards Taiwan. She was impressed with the way weavers worked 'from the plant up' in producing their textiles. It was here she developed an interest in Ikat, the technique of weaving from dyed fabric that varies regionally throughout Asia. Ikat came to Okinawa from Indonesia. It was considered so beautiful by the Japanese government that they collected it as a form of taxation. The fluidity of Ikat traditions matches Ota's feelings of being 'in-between': 'I was in between Kanto (Tokyo area) and Kansai (Osaka area), Japan and Australia, tradition and contemporary, craft and art.' Since her first boat, Ota has been resolved to 'make everyday life things' and thus overcome the physical restrictions of a loom. Her sculptural work includes a woven cylindrical structure and pieces made entirely of knots. When Naomi speaks about Ryukyu culture, she emphasises its expressiveness. 'Every home had a loom. In one house, the woman there had just finished a weaving. She cut it from the loom and made a little dance with it.' Ota felt attracted to Ryukyu as an 'ocean culture' that was connected to the southern worlds leading eventually to Indonesia. 'They believe that heaven is just over the ocean ... *mira kani*'. When she returned to the Ryukyu island of Taketomi, she felt she was 'going home'. What leads Ota out of Japan is an interest in its primordial connection to the southern Asian peoples. Digging deeper into Japan's past, the authentic religion of Shinto can be seen as the legacy of the Mongoloid peoples---the Jayoi---who colonised Japan in the third century BC. The previous inhabitants, the Jomon, are an Austronesian people related to the Polynesian races of the Pacific. As a fibre artist, Ota is drawn to their distinctive 'cord' built pottery. Jomon culture is most evident today in Japan's Austronesian peoples---the Ainu of Hokkaido and the Ryukyu. Thus Ota came to Australia via Indonesia. While she enjoys the greater freedom in Australia, she feels the absence of Japanese experiences. She talks about the festivals near Kyoto that she would attend each year. Just for one day of the year, a secluded spot is transformed into a lively gathering of people. For Ota, *mono no aware* is associated with the moist climate of Japan, such as a humid evening when friends travel to a mountainside to see the fireflies at midnight. She finds nothing of that in Australia. By contrast, Ota speaks of the shock at seeing the Australian interior. Catching the bus from Darwin to Adelaide, she intones the sense of emptiness---'nothing, absolutely nothing.' She contrasts this with a similar terrain in Tibet where, despite the aridity of the plains, the landscape would be dotted with flags or piles of stones, signifying a human presence. Ota has since read Bruce Chatwin's *Songlines,* which she feels has given her an appreciation of the invisible indigenous habitation of the continent. As with the jeweller Kawanabe, Ota found herself in the shadow of mainstream Japanese sculpture. While her solution is also to draw from the rich folk history of her craft, Ota is more concerned than Kawanabe to produce work that stands on its own as sculpture, beyond the practical constraints of craft.[^95] #### **From Australia to Japan, via Ryukyu** Australia and Japan meet at their point of mutual impossibility. The southern culture is drawn north by its incapacity to honour where and when it is. The northern culture looks south to find a relaxed popular culture with a sense of self. Their gazes intersect in Ryukyu. Okinawa means literally a 'rope in the offing'. Until the Portuguese took control of the Malacca Straits in 1522, the Ryukyu were frequent visitors to these parts, acquiring rare woods and spices as tribute for the Ming Court. Without serious weapons, the Ryukyu had to use trust and diplomacy to survive in the wild seas of South East Asia. In 1816, these qualities prompted Napoleon to conclude that 'no such peace-loving nation could endure.'[^96] Indeed, much of the island culture has been lost in waves of Japanese colonisation and the devastation that ended World War 2. Despite these depredations, the Ryukyu islands remain strong as a speculative place where Japanese intensity meets Western pragmatism. Australian Shinto remains an elusive dream. It promises a shared way of thinking that is free of the packaging that comes with a consumer culture. It offers a means of knowing where and when Australians are. There are already the makings of Australian Shinto in music, poetry and craft. Please consider. #### **Sources** The subject of a Japanese colonisation of Australia was originally discussed at the Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery in South Australia. Special thanks for contributions by Susan Cohn, Ross Gibson, Yuri Kawanabe, Barry Leckenby, Naomi Ota, Jane Sawyer and Peter Timms. Michael Ackland, *Damaged Men*, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001. Tony Barrell and Rick Tanaka, *Okinawa Dreams Ok*, Gestalten Verlag, 1997. George Henry Kerr, *Okinawa: History Of An Island People*, Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1958. Bernard Leach, *A Potter's Book*, London: Faber, 1940. Bernard Leach, *Beyond East and West*, New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1978. Les Murray, *The Quality of Sprawl: Thoughts about Australia*, Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 1999. Eric Rolls, *A Million Wild Acres: 200 Years of Man and an Australian Forest*, Melbourne: Nelson, 1981. Peter Sculthorpe, *Seeking the Great South Land*, Hobart, Tas: University of Tasmania, 1995. Peter Sculthorpe, *Sun Music: Journeys and Reflections from a Composer's Life*, Sydney: ABC Books, 1999. Hamada Shoji, *Okinawan Pottery*, Ryukyu: Ryukyu Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation Harold Stewart, *By the old walls of Kyoto: A Year's Cycle of Landscape Poems with Prose Commentaries*, New York: Weatherhill, 1981. ## **Kyutu at Hashi Mitsuri** Mr Kingston-San, I am a great admirer of your films, particularly the Kyutu series *Shinpuru's Dance with Devils* and *Wako Revenge of the Snake*. The special effects are mind-shattering and the plots are filled with Australian craziness. As you might know, Mr Enbujou, my revered grandfather, used to write for the *Yamakaji* theatre, which provided so many stories for your films. Unfortunately, dear Mr Enbujou passed away earlier this year. As an old-fashioned Aussie, my grandfather was never interested in fame and refused to have his plays sold to film studios. It's a pity he did not ever see your films, as I believe he would have approved your grasp of *Yamakaji* plot rhythms. I've enclosed one of his early Kyutu stories, which features their first encounters with the dreaded wako colonisers. I have a dream that you might be inspired to bring my grandfather's wonderful words to an international audience. If you were so inspired, then I would be more than happy to talk with you about the monetary compensation that this might entail. Yours honourably, Otome Enbujou To honour the kami of night breezes, I tell you this tale. This tale describes in correct detail the truth of what happened at Hashi Mitsuri when the Kyutu saved Jouki-Asa, on their way to make their pledge at the Izanami Shrine. The tale must begin properly at the very start, when the summer light begins to soften far down south in Minamin, as the hashi begin their long journey north. On the cool shores of the green island, hashi gather strength for their epic journey north. They first fly over the whaling stations, passing the Japanese, English, American, Dutch and French camps. They glide over the Kujira Strait and past Ousama Island, haven to the notorious wako. On reaching the southern tip of Australia, they make their first stop at a lake outside the township of Nyu Eikoku, where many English settlers have taken land, sowing fields of wheat and grazing sheep. Their course proceeds along the eastern coast, over a patchwork of seaside Australian villages filled with humble folk who have fled the path of wicked empires. There are Ryukyu from the Malacca Straits, Hindu refugees from the Javanese princedoms, Okinawans from the Satsuma regime, Ainu from Hokaido and Ming Chinese fleeing the new Manchu regime in Peking. All these streams converge into the river of freedom that is Australia. The final port of call for hashi before continuing their journey to Ryukyu is a mangrove swamp next to a lake that lies at the foothills of the Kappu Mountains. Their arrival is heralded by the sound of a lone pipe; its deep notes echo across the mountain slopes. The air trills with excitement. Farmers, fishermen, pearl divers, weavers and priests gather in the legendary village of Jouki-Asa, whose name derives from the steam that rises from the forest in the morning. The folk in Jouki-Asa are mostly Kirishitans who followed Francis Xavier but were forced to hide their beliefs behind a Shinto mask. So successful were they in their secrecy that their religion was invisible even to themselves. Today, their lives are punctuated with rituals whose meaning is shrouded with mystery. In Jouki-Asa you'll find all the usual components of an Australian village---smithy, water mill, weaving workshop, smoke house, temple, inn and a few dozen finely carved wooden cottages. Their special dish is bofura, a local worm that is most delicious when smoked. Visitors are now gathering for the annual Hashi Mitsuri, which celebrates the arrival of these well-travelled birds who connect Australia to the world of their ancestors in the north. At other end of the lake is an elaborate building whose wooden roof slopes down to the water. Facing the water is a long platform at which a few canoes are moored. Cushions are strewn around and braziers emit wafts of incense. At the front of the building is a doorway with elaborate Australian scrollwork on which is engraved the words 'Painappuru Inn' in both Australian and English. The entrance is flanked by stone sculptures each depicting the regal head of Rikou Wombat. A central passageway leads to the restaurant, where patrons squat around low tables. Towards the front of the inn, a screen opens to reveal a platform leading to the water. As the sun sets over the lake, the platform begins to crowd with villagers for the daily yuubay*,* when work stops and villagers mingle to take note of the way in which the sun sets. Many are dressed in traditional style, with topknots slightly askew and held in place by elaborate gold hairpins. Once the sun's rays are extinguished by the horizon, they return inside the dining hall and join the rest of the guests, many of whom are pilgrims here especially for the Hashi Mitsuri. There's a particular buzz around tonight due to the presence of the Kyutu, a legendary guild of warriors formed to protect villages from wako piracy. The Kyutu are on their way to the Izanami Shrine, where they seek the advice of its priestess Sheinisou. Their leader is Wurrpan, a warrior of the Kalkadunu tribe. Kalkadunu were originally from the northeast interior of Australia. They mastered oriental martial arts and introduced their own fighting techniques into the Ryukyu repertoire. In return, Kalkadunu demanded Australian support in their war against the Gandji tribe on the coast. Wurrpan is a tall, handsome man with thick, curly hair. Resting against a nearby wall is his spear, an intricately decorated weapon crowned with a deadly sliver of glass. Wurrpan is in Bardic mode, speaking to his fellow Kyutu with a kind of exaggerated certainty, as though talking to a large crowd. He explains how to wrestle a wani, one of the deadly creatures that live along the waterways of northeastern Australia. Sitting goggle-eyed opposite Wurrpan is Otenba, a petite acrobat, descended from the second wave of Ryukyu migrants. For this evening she is dressed theatrically in loose pink silk trousers and an orange blouse decorated with a dark blue wavy pattern. She wiggles her pigtails in horror at the thought of embracing a huge wani. Sitting beside Otenba is the smallest male member of the Kyutu. Watatsumi is descended from the mayoigo*,* the Japanese sailors who were abandoned in 1635 when Japan prohibited contact with the outside world. Watatsumi has achieved the highest rank in tekichuu, a martial art that combines elements of karate, kung fu and Jolnyu dance. Watatsumi is elegantly tonsured and dressed in a short brown kimono. He laughs to think of Otenba trying out a wani-wrestle. Shinpuru sits stoically, imagining in his own mind how he would go about confronting a wani with his own bare hands. Shinpuru is the Ainu speedster. He wears a one-piece outfit of light brown cotton with short loose sleeves and legs. Quietly sipping his pineapple soup is the ever-watchful Chao Kuo Chiu, a secretive figure descended from the residents of the Chinese temple Shao-lin who fled after the downfall of the Ming dynasty. He is dressed in a black silk outfit that helps him merge invisibly into the background. Chao Kuo Chiu surveys the other diners at the inn, checking for suspicious characters and danger. After the guests have finished eating their smoked rainbow fish, small cakes spiced with lemon pepper are passed around, accompanied by the inevitable cups of awamori liquor to the toast of 'Hail Mary'. A long evening of entertainment begins with a local teishou singer who plays a seductive turn on the Sanshin. Teishou is a sensual whispered kind of singing that demands complete audience silence. She plays the popular favourite, *Bashou Byubyu*: > Hungry boy\ > Butterflies follow you\ > Peel my body\ > Eat my heart As more awamori is passed around, the innkeeper, Jenny Reynolds, emerges from the kitchen to greet the guests. Jenny is the lone survivor of an English vessel that was shipwrecked along the local coast. Nursed back to life by the local Australians, she still grieves over the loss of her husband who was the captain of the ship. Though exiled from home, she prefers the quiet life in the beautiful village to the noisy world of her own people. Mrs Reynolds wears traditional Australian dress of orange-brown bashou skirt split along the sides, and sleeveless cream cotton blouse with wooden buttons in the shape of a crescent moon. Her pale skin, blue eyes and curly red hair make her quite exotic in the eyes of locals. Jenny claps her hands for quiet and announces in her pidgin Australian: > Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Painapuru Inn and to the happy > village of Jouki-Asa. As you know, tomorrow marks the beginning of the > Hashi Mitsuri, a very special time for us. Will the hashi visit us > this year? Their arrival is a time of great joy for us, as is yours. > As usual, we have some activities planned to entertain you this > evening. But first, to help our digestion, what about a little > wrestling? I call on Wurrpan and Shinpuru to demonstrate to us their > legendary skills on the mat. And maybe after that, we can arrange a > little mikaihatsu*.* And just a reminder, you are welcome at any time > to avail yourself of our special platform for moon-viewing. Though Wurrpan is no egoist, he is very proud to demonstrate Kalkudunu strength. Shinpuru goes along reluctantly, fearing the worst. He manages to wriggle out of most of Wurrpan's holds until weariness overtakes him and he decides to submit to Wurrpan's terminal embrace. A less serious form of entertainment follows. In the mikaihatsu, dares are made for guests to mime actions done backwards. Watatsumi dares Otenba to do the tonbo dance in reverse, which she carries off with great theatre, disappearing up into the rafters before gracefully plopping onto Watatsumi's shoulders, creating great merriment in the crowd. While a visiting Jolnyu is attempting to play the didgeridoo backwards, Jenny and Wurrpan wander out to the moon-viewing platform. Wurrpan is keen to learn more about the Izanami shrine and Sheinisou's ideas for preserving Australia values against colonial attacks. Jenny's eyes catch the sweat gleaming on Wurrpan's chest. Wurrpan places his hand on her soft, alabaster belly, but she slowly casts it aside. His pride hurt, Wurrpan calls her 'white ice' and slams the screen shut. After the hara, a graceful dance of belly-rubbing, guests call for Jenny to sing one of her English ballads. But she is nowhere to be found. The merry scene is brutally disrupted by a loud crash as a wild figure comes through the platform screen. Accompanied by the screams of guests, the tall redheaded Dirk Huyssen appears, brandishing his gleaming cutlass. He is backed up by an assortment of men, a mixed crew of Japanese and Dutch wako with a couple of Danji tribesmen. At their rear is Jenny Reynolds, being held from behind by a man with one arm around her breasts and the other holding a knife to her throat. Wurrpan instinctively moves to Jenny's defence, but is restrained by Chao Kuo Chiu, who employs the deadly *inkou* hold on his impulsive leader. Dirk casts his steely eyes across the crowd of terrified villagers: 'Please excuse us spoiling your party, but we've been on the sea for a long time and we're tired and hungry, very hungry.' One of his troops grabs the miller by his top knot. When the miller claims there is no gold in the village, the wako threatens to stab him in the eye. Huyssen asserts his authority. 'Steady on Junji, eh. You tell these people not to worry. We're in no hurry. We're here to protect them, on a regular basis, and keep those demon English at bay. But we need a few resources. Tonight, we'll accept hairpins as tokens of their gratitude. In return, we'll happily entertain some of the young womenfolk on our vessel for a few days, to familiarise them with our style of government. This will give you enough time to gather some real gold together for us when we return.' To the dismay of the diners, wako start to pluck out hair pins and young women from the crowd. But Dirk is not satisfied with the selection. 'Junji, these hags are far too old for our little school. Aren't there any younger, more impressionable pupils around here?' Chao Kuo Chiu approaches Dirk, keeping his head bowed submissively. 'Please, I am a mere Chinaman, very grateful you should help protect us from these Englishman. Please may I offer you my services.' Dirk cocks his cutlass at Chao Kuo Chiu, 'What can you give me slant-eyes?' 'Some tasty meat sir.' Chao points up to the rafters. Sensing a clever trick, Dirk gestures for Junji to take a look. By poking beyond the rafters with his sword, Junji brings down the squealing Otenba, who had been hiding in the ceiling. Chao Kuo Chiu smiles and rubs his stomach. Dirk is much amused, 'Can you cook like a Chinaman too?' The wako stuffs a bag with food and gathers five terrified Australian girls including Otenba, along with Jenny Reynolds and their new cook, Chao Kuo Chiu, into their long boat. The wako and their prisoners make off for their ship, moored in the nearby harbour. As soon as they are out of sight, Shinpuru leaps to his feet and sets off towards the river. Wurrpan and Watatsumi creep onto a canoe and quietly move around the lake. With the speed of a horse, Shinpuru has overtaken the boat and reached the stone bridge that marks the end of the lake and the beginning of the river. He pulls a branch across the water and waits on the bridge. Junji stands up to see what the obstruction is. As he does so, a spear finds its way right through his chest. Immediately Chao Kuo Chiu pushes Jenny overboard with Otenba, who brings the English woman to the safety of the riverbank. Shinpuru jumps aboard and joins Chao Kuo Chiu in a violent struggle with the fifteen wako. At first surprise is on their side and they manage to throw most of the firearms into the water. They are soon joined by Otenba, Wurrpan and Watastumi. Dirk manages to escape the melee and make the shore. Shinpuru sets off towards him but is shot in the leg. As Shinpuru falls to the ground, Dirk runs after Jenny. With nowhere else to go, she has managed to climb up a tree. Unable to see her, he is shooting in the air hoping to make a hit or at least frighten her down. The wako are dispatched one by one with methodical violence. First they are stunned by a blow to the base of the skull, and then drowned. Watastumi has one foot on a drowning man's head while striking another on the skull. When they are done, Wurrpan retrieves his spear and aims it at Dirk shooting up the tree. But Dirk has managed to dislodge Jenny and is now holding a gun to her head. He demands that they remove the log and let him and Jenny onto the boat. Wurrpan makes a great show of accepting his authority. He takes some branches and throws them aside. In the process, he stealthily draws a bent piece of timber from his belt and casts it away. In a few seconds, Dirk collapses dead---a boomerang impaled in the back of his skull. Wurrpan then gathers Jenny and Shinpuru together with the five young Australians and help them back to the Inn. Chao and Watastumi put the bodies back into the boat, and send it adrift along the river current, hoping it will send a message back to the remaining crew on their ship. The Kyutu spend the next few days working with the villagers on defences to give them advance warning of any more raiding wako. Jenny hosts a special dinner where the villagers express their eternal gratitude for the protection of their village and daughters. At one stage, the miller in a slightly drunken state proposes that Jenny and Wurrpan should be married in the village. The idea takes the fancy of the villagers, though it creates considerable embarrassment for the hypothetical couple. Later that evening, on the moon platform, Jenny takes the opportunity of expressing her gratitude to the Kalkadunu warrior. But as she presses her thumb on his fine broad forehead, Wurrpan steps back coldly: 'But there is important business to do.' Jenny curses him, 'Black heart!' Wurrpan gives a brief wry smile before slipping back into the inn. The Kyutu leave in the cool of the morning, climbing a steep ravine, only pausing to say a prayer facing the sun as it rises through the eucalyptus trees. It becomes humid very quickly and they stop to rest at a shrine dedicated to the parrot who gives colour to the desert. #### **Comment** This is certainly a story from the old school. There's some terrific action on the river, but the scenes in the inn are far too slow. The anti-Dutch theme would be popular, and a Kalkadunu hero is always a hit in the cinemas. But the positive depiction of English would not go down easily with today's audiences. Send her a double-pass to *Escape to Minamin* and some signed photographs. Dousa Kingston