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My
freelance work in Japan taught me by example
that man is inherently flexible, intellectually
and physically. We can understand any point
of view, any value system. We can take on
any way of life. From the beginning, almost
all of my friends were Japanese, and--in
their language--I asked them to elucidate
their values, their habits, their emotions.
Japanese is a good language for this kind
of talk. In 1990, I married a Japanese,
an artist from a family that for generations
had held a Shinto shrine on the southern
island of Shikoku. We moved into a thatched
farmhouse in the mountains north of Kyoto.
We began a family. Sheer immersion in the
same rural life my neighbors lived, with
their centuries-old festivals and their
easy belief in animism, made their concerns
mine, and their values mine.
A
tutor at St. John's once told a class pursuing
Pascal, "translation is impossible." After
so many years in a foreign culture that
became my own, I still long to prove him
wrong, if only slightly.
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Here is Japan |
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My Life in
Japan |
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In Japan
I learned how to be an adult. In the countryside
of Japan, two hours north of Kyoto City, I learned
how to be a wife and mother. These were my neighbors
and my visual environment.
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Related Writings |
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YMD |
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| Renowned
designer Takenobu Igarashi asked me to write
the story of his work with some of Japan's
oldest local industrial workshops in 1990.
I was interviewing him for a Graphis profile,
and felt I ought to decline, since I was pregnant
with my first child. Months later, when I
was in the US, just a short while after giving
birth to Hannah Jane, he called me and asked
me once again if I would travel around Japan
meeting and interviewing the CEOs of small
but hopeful companies whose traditional markets-for
lacquerware, cast iron, stainless steel and
ceramics--had dried up in Japan's continuing
Westernization. And so Hannah and I discovered
the countryside of Japan, and the great time-warp
between it and the cities. More... |
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A
Winter Retreat |
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was my first attempt to describe the 'telescoping
of time' that occurred in Japan as the cities
began to modernize and urbanites to base their
lives on commerce, while life in the countryside
remained much as it had for centuries. As
the snow got deeper, we left the village less
and less frequently, and tourists from the
cities thinned out to almost nothing. Our
little village of Miyama, with its thatched
roofs and open hearths, seemed to recede into
the past. More... |
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Foreigner
Loves Thatched Roof for Natural Beauty |
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can't remember which Japanese magazine covered
me here, as a 'foreigner' who inexplicably
loves thatched roofs. The Japanese have a
long history of being told by Westerners that
their indigenous culture, especially the crafts
of daily life, deserve their respect. It was
for a good cause that I posed for photos like
these and eventually for a documentary
about thatching as part of a global culture.
More... |
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