Japanese antique markets

Sakuranomiya, August 22

The dominant motif of this year’s trip is Heat. Every morning we assure each other that this is the day it breaks, and every day it isn’t. The best part of a month with no sign of rain is a new record for western Japan, and things aren’t helped by the humidity. As I type, however, the night sky is being lit up by some fine lightning, and hopes are rising that this might signal some rain. It’s been over 34 both day and night since we arrived, and in a treeless city of solid concrete this can get a bit wearing.

To a people accustomed to commenting on the weather at some length – the British are mute stoics by comparison – this has all of course been a boon. Despite the subtlety for which oriental languages are renowned there are only so many ways you can say ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ It’s not what you say, however, but the head-cocked, eyes-screwed-up expression of brave suffering with which you say it. The usual American response – ‘you call this hot?’ – isn’t considered good manners.

The TV is on, and it’s the usual mix of idiotic quiz shows, sports and lurid murders. The current one features a boy whose grandfather told him to study harder and paid for such insolence with his life. ‘You kill him, then?’ asked the cops, when they turned up to see what the fuss was. ‘Yup, no mistake there’ he chirped, blessedly unaware of the hideous breach of filial piety this constituted. A long line of TV commentators have endeavored to reassure the population that he will be brought to realize the error of his ways. He used a bat, by the way, guns being illegal here.

We were at a temple market yesterday. The attitude of the Japanese to evidence of their own past is an interesting aspect of their society. Confucianism dictates respect for ancestors, and most people make an effort to manifest it at home. Portraits of parents and grandparents decorate many living rooms, staring down in stern monochrome from their perches directly under the ceiling. Hillsides are covered with forests of finely maintained tombs of polished granite, and most people are still fairly conscientious about visiting them. Simple mathematics, however, suggests that if all ancestors were worshipped equally Japan would by now be almost entirely covered with tombs. That it is not reflects a special aspect of Japanese Confucianism, a kind of statute of limitations on piety under which you are not required to honor anyone you can’t actually remember. In practice, this means the oldest portrait in the house will be of the grandparents of the oldest person there. In a country where people routinely make it to 100 and beyond this can still take things back close to the dawn of photography, but in most cases you aren’t talking about anyone who was around before the 20^th century.

The Japanese are not ones to dwell on the recent past, and with their past it’s perhaps not surprising. Traditional crafts and tales of yore are very popular, but of course none of that concerns one personally. When an ancestral house comes up empty, on the other hand, it’s usual for the family to strip it to the walls if not demolish it entirely. The odd trinket might be kept for sentimental reasons, but it’s rare for anything more substantial to stay on in the homes of the descendents. Furniture, clothes and most other stuff heads straight to the landfill.

This means that Japanese antiques are relatively cheap, and especially those more personal things like clothes, which appear in huge mounds at temple markets. Ten bucks will get you a perfectly serviceable summer kimono, and if you’re prepared to fork out fifty or so you can get a spectacular formal job in heavily-embroidered silk, complete with sash. A bit of cleaning and it’s good as new. Japanese ladies would rather walk down the street buck-naked then be seen in a second-hand kimono, however, so apart from visiting foreigners business should on the face of it be somewhat slow. The flocks of muttering old grannies who nevertheless descend on the kimono piles are not buying them to wear. Quilt making is a kind of mania in Japan these days, and not surprisingly when so much fine material is to be had so cheap. The combination of Pennsylvania Dutch techniques and silk kimono cloth can be a bit odd – the sartorial equivalent of the Curry Doughnut, one of those wacky but effective Japanese combinations of foreign idioms that no foreigner could have conceived – but I have seen some very fine work indeed, and hats off to the ladies.