Cruising the waves of Japan’s culture
First published in The Japan Times on 16 May, 2015
As the great ship surges into Tokyo Bay I’m on the prow, hair streaming in the wind, like Kate Winslet in “Titanic.” Wooded crags come into view, dotted with buildings and the odd factory chimney. The buildings are modern, not wooden houses, but the crags are still much the same as Commodore Matthew Perry must have seen when he sailed with his “Black Ships” toward what was then Edo Bay in 1853.
Three hours later I’m sailing under Rainbow Bridge and glimpsing the high rises of Tokyo. As the ship sweeps in to dock at Harumi Pier, sirens blast and a brass band on the quay strikes up a melody to greet us.
Crossing the Himalayas through memory to Ladakh
First published in The Japan Times in September 2013
I’m in a small van careering along a rough and narrow road beside a rushing river with brightly painted temples along its banks and craggy peaks towering overhead. We’re traveling in the prescribed Indian fashion — drive as fast as you can and hope for the best or, better still, pray.
One of our group jokes that the driver risks developing RSI (repetitive strain injury) from pressing his horn. Swerving around a hairpin bend directly above a ravine, we overtake at high speed, the wheels skidding along the fatal edge. Rain slicks the road and cloud hangs low in the valleys. I shut my eyes. It’s better not to look.
Mountains of Magic in Ladakh
First published in The Independent on 3 May, 2014
Crossing the Himalayas from the Indian plains to the mountain region of Ladakh is a bone-shaking 22-hour minibus ride, through snow and blizzards, over four of the world’s highest passes. The last and highest, Taglang la, is a breathtaking 5,328m above sea level and the second-highest pass in the world that you can drive over (after Khardung la, 5,602m, in northern Ladakh). From there, I hope to see Ladakh’s other-worldly pink deserts. But when we get there there’s dense cloud and freezing winds and it’s all I can do to hop out, shivering, and take a couple of photos of the cairns, prayer flags and Buddhist stupas marking the top. […]
Shunga: more sex please, we’re Japanese
First published in The Telegraph on 21 September, 2013
The Japanese erotic art called shunga is so explicit that the British Museum, where the pictures are on show from October 3, has imposed an age limit of 16 on viewers. Shunga means “spring pictures”, “spring” being a Japanese euphemism for sex, and these woodblock prints, created using the same techniques as in Hokusai’s Great Wave and other leading woodblock artworks, depict every possible combination of carnal couplings, featuring unfeasibly large sexual organs in impossible-looking positions. Occasionally, onlookers are involved, and there’s an encounter with an octopus. Sometimes humorous and leaving nothing to the imagination, they are a Japanese Kama Sutra. […]
Delving into Ethiopia’s ancient past and present
First published in The Japan Times on 30 June, 2013
I’m edging my way through a long tunnel in pitch darkness, feeling for the roof so I don’t hit my head, waving my trusty flashlight around to scan the walls and sandy floor and check for any unwelcome wildlife. I feel like Indiana Jones but a lot less brave.
Then, after rounding a bend, I see a dot of light and emerge into a small cave. Through two large holes in the wall, I glimpse a splendidly carved building — one of the famous rock-hewn Lalibela churches. But when I peek through the holes, I see that they are halfway up a cliff face with no visible way down — no steps, no handholds … and it’s way too far to jump. So, behind me is the pitch-black tunnel I’ve just come out of; ahead a vertiginous drop.
Just for a moment I find myself wondering what on Earth I’m doing here. The answer is simple: I’ve been intrigued by Ethiopia ever since I heard stories about the Ark of the Covenant — a chest said to hold the biblical Ten Commandments inscribed on stone tablets — being here. […]
A world of flowers and willows in Kyoto’s geisha districts
First published in The Japan Times on 9 June, 2013
I arrive at the inn where I am to stay in Kyoto and lug my bag up the steep stairs to my room. The inn was once a geisha house and the room is barely furnished, though it does have a tiny lacquered dressing table with a long narrow mirror. A balcony offers a view over the street, and the houses on the other side are nearly close enough to reach out and touch. The ghostly notes of a shamisen float up from nearby. Someone is practicing.
I’m in the Sawai ryōkan (traditional inn) in Miyagawa-cho, a backstreet in the maze of lanes behind the Minami-za kabuki theater, in the shadow of the Higashiyama hills. I lived in this very room for six months in 1999 when I was researching a book I wrote on geisha.
It’s thrilling to be back. I walk down the road, swept up once again in the magic of the place. It really is still old Japan — the dark wooden houses, none more than two stories high, with bamboo blinds shading the upper floors, round red lanterns outside each door and tiny lanes beetling off around dark corners. […]
Winter Journey to Aizu
First published in The Japan Times on 17 February, 2013
My journey to Aizu Wakamatsu, the tragic city at the heart of Across a Bridge of Dreams.
It starts to snow soon after the train leaves Koriyama, and further inland at Aizu Wakamatsu the snow is knee deep. My hosts, Nobuyuki and Mikiko, are waiting at the station. I’m relieved to see they’ve brought boots for me.
Aizu has been part of my life for years. A good part of my new novel, “Across a Bridge of Dreams,” is set there. I’ve read everything I can find about it: Shiba Goro’s moving memoir, “Remembering Aizu”; “Okei,” Saotome Mitsugu’s novel based around the city’s calamitous fall; and academic papers about the domain and its warriors. I’ve studied pictures, too, and have imagined myself walking the streets of samurai houses beneath the towering white walls of Tsuruga-jo — Crane Castle — with the River Yukawa running alongside, lined with willows.
But I’ve never actually been there. […]
National Geographic Traveller – Author Series: Lesley Downer
First published in National Geographic Traveller (UK) in Jan/Feb 2013
I arrive at the inn where I always stay in Miyagawa-cho, one of Kyoto’s five geisha districts, around midday. My hosts, Mr and Mrs Sawai, both in their nineties, are here to greet me. I take my luggage upstairs to the small room with its balcony and tatami mats and view over the street, then set out to see what’s changed.
Every time I arrive I’m enchanted all over again, by the narrow streets lined with dark wooden houses, their bamboo blinds hanging outside the upper floors and red lanterns glowing in front. It’s been a year since I was here last and new houses have sprung up. There’s a scent of fresh wood and bamboo. Business is good.
Kyoto is utterly magical, full of hidden places and chance discoveries. When I was first in Japan, more than 30 years ago, I lived not far from Kyoto and used to stay with friends here most weekends. They had a small house in the lee of the hills, close to Kinkakuji, the Golden Temple, immortalised in Yukio Mishima’s novel of the same name. We’d take bicycles and go to the fragile pavilion with its golden phoenix perched on the crest of the roof, its reflection shimmering in the waters of the lake it’s perched upon. […]
In search of the last samurai
First published in The Japan Times on 11 November, 2012
To Kagoshima in search of a great samurai unbowed
Flying into Kagoshima from Tokyo across the volcanic landscape of Kirishima and Ebino Kogen, I feel as if I’m arriving in another country. The air is moist and warm, the light sharper, the sky bluer and the foliage intensely green, sprawling exuberantly over the rugged hills.
Less than 150 years ago, this really was another country — Satsuma, the domain of some of the fiercest warriors in the land.
I’m here in search of the last samurai, Saigo Takamori, whose statue, with swirling robe, sword and faithful little dog, stands at the entrance to Ueno Park in central Tokyo. […]
Japan still finding its feet, one year on
First published in The Telegraph on 9 March, 2012
At Senso-ji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo’s most well-loved tourist spot, people clap their hands, throw coins in the offering box, waft incense over themselves and stare up at the city’s latest landmark, the Sky Tree, a soaring television tower, currently the tallest of its kind in the world. When I was here last year, right after the earthquake of March 11, there were no tourists and the bankers had fled. It was dark and sad, much of the neon turned off. Everyone was subdued, conscious of how compatriots up north were suffering. Now it’s pretty much business as usual. The subways are a little chilly (electricity-saving measures), but the neon is blazing again. And tourists are making their way back.
After each disaster Japan rebuilds bigger and better
First published in The Telegraph on 14 March, 2011
In Japan, you are constantly made aware of the power of nature. Summer is hot and steamy; in September there are typhoons; and during the rainy season in June it feels as if someone has tipped a bath of water over your head. But the most powerful force of all is the seismic activity.
Earthquakes and tremors are part of life in Japan and part of the forces that shape the landscape. The country is said to be geologically young, still in the process of forming. One of the results is the spectacular volcanoes, among them Mount Fuji, eternally smoking, and Mount Sakurajima, which belches black ash over the southern city of Kagoshima; when the ash is really bad, the inhabitants put up their umbrellas.
All over the country, hot water bubbles out of the earth, full of health-giving minerals. For the Japanese, taking the waters is the equivalent of our going to the seaside. There are also sand baths where you can be buried in hot volcanic earth. At Mount Osore, in the north of the main island, sulphur oozes out, staining the rocks yellow. It’s all part of the geological volatility, the opposite of our unchanging British landscape. Unlike the Japanese, we don’t expect geological upheaval; and living in these very different landscapes creates different attitudes to life. […]
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Waiting for disaster is a way of life in Japan
First published in The Telegraph on 11 March, 2011
In Japan, you live with the possibility of earthquakes. When I first arrived, in 1978, I was woken one night by the bed in my seventh-floor hotel room thudding against the wall. I was terrified, but soon discovered that tremors happen regularly; eventually, I came to take them almost for granted.
As people there say, Japan has two sorts of earthquakes – the ones when everything sways and lights swing from side to side, and the really lethal ones, when things bounce up and down. If the earthquake’s one of the second type, there’s little you can do and nowhere you can go. A friend of mine was in a field near the Izu peninsula, notorious for its quakes, as the ground rippled like waves. The only way she could stop herself from falling over was by holding on to a tree.
Living in one of the least geologically stable parts of the planet, with the possibility that sudden disaster might strike at any time, colours one’s outlook on life. It gives people an awareness of the transience of things. It’s a bit like the Japanese love of cherry blossoms: the whole point is that they only bloom for a few days. The tsunami that struck yesterday is only the latest chapter of horror and misery. […]
Two lovingly preserved Japanese villages
First published in The Financial Times in August 2010
We step off the bus at Magome and look in disbelief at the steep cobbled slope winding up the hill in front of us. In the past there would have been scrawny porters elbowing each other out of the way, vying to cart our bags. Had we been great lords we would have been carried up by palanquin, with thousands of retainers and guards barking at the peasants to get down on their knees. But in 21st-century Japan there’s nothing for it but to walk.
We sigh, pick up our bags and set off up the hill. Behind us Mount Ena rises spectacularly. A huge waterwheel slowly turns, creaking and splashing, and a narrow stream trickles noisily alongside the road. There are no electric wires overhead and no cars and every now and then we catch a whiff of wood smoke.
I’m here to immerse myself in 19th-century Japan. The novel I’m working on begins here on the Inner Mountain Road, where it cuts through the forests and villages of the Kiso Valley, in the Nagano prefecture. The rule of the shoguns ended only 140 years ago, but in most of Japan the flavour of that era is utterly lost. But here in Magome and its neighbouring post town, Tsumago, it has been lovingly preserved, along with the five-miles of cobbled pathway between the two.
Living among the hill tribes of Laos
First published in The Financial Times in July 2009
We arrive by turbo prop from Bangkok, juddering slowly across a corrugated expanse of jungle-encrusted hills with mist floating in the hollows. As we touch down at Luang Prabang’s sleepy airport I remember my father talking about how he had to hold the door of the aircraft shut when he flew across Laos almost 50 years earlier.
In the 1960s my father was one of two people in the world – other than the native people themselves – who spoke the languages of the Yao and Hmong hill tribes. He lived in their villages in Vietnam and later in Laos for months at a time and came home with stories of sleeping snuggled up against the horse in winter to keep warm, trekking in the mountains, keeping an eye out for tigers, and hiding under a table in Saigon with his Vietnamese mistress, Madame Ving. He brought us back bamboo pan pipes and beautiful Yao embroidered fabrics.
I hoped to go to Laos with him but he died before I could, so this is quite a special journey for me. Will it still be possible to get a glimpse of the magical places he knew? Might I even be able to track down Madame Ving? […]
Hakodate, where west met east
First published in The Financial Times on 2 February, 2008
Hakodate BayOne bitter December day in 1868, 3000 Japanese warriors sailed into Hakodate Bay, on the tip of the northern island of Ezo (now Hokkaido), close to the Japanese mainland. Their ambition was to defeat the imperial forces and set up a republic loyal to the deposed shogun. But when spring came the imperial government sent an army of 10,000 men with a ship far more modern and formidable than those the rebels had. Huge battles were fought on sea and land but eventually the rebels were defeated. Even among Japanese their story is largely forgotten.
One hundred and forty years later, I arrive in Hakodate to see if anything remains of their last desperate attempt to stem the tide of history. Hakodate is famous for its wild weather but I am not prepared for the blizzard that coats me in snow in the minutes it takes to walk from the tram stop to my hotel. […]
Secrets of the Shogun’s Harem
First published in the Sunday Times Magazine under the title The Caged Concubines on 17 February, 2008
Cherry-blossom viewing as depicted by Chikanobu, (1838-1912, painted around 1895.)November 1861. Sunlight glitters on the lances and pikes of hundreds of attendants and guards, as a procession winds slowly along a mountain road in central Japan. In all, there are 20,000 people – lords and ladies in palanquins, warriors on horseback and on foot, officials, ladies-in-waiting, maids and maids of maids. Then come shoe bearers, parasol bearers, bearers of imperial bathwater and the imperial bath, chefs, bearers of food and tea-making equipment, porters humping boxes and dragging huge, wheeled trunks, and grooms leading pack horses laden with luggage – so many that it takes four days for the multitude to pass through each village along the way. In the Victorian west, the railway has been invented, but in Japan, under the rule of the shoguns, there is no wheeled transport other than for goods. […]
Discover Your Inner Geisha
First published in The Daily Telegraph in January 2006
Every woman has wondered what it must be like to be able to stop a man in his tracks with a single glance. Among the geisha the art of alluring men is not a matter of innate sexuality but a skill they learn. Geisha are not high class courtesans, despite what people think. They are far more mysterious than that. Officially they are entertainers. The word ‘gei-sha’ means ‘arts person’ or ‘artiste’ and their arts include singing, dancing and witty conversation. But their real work of art is themselves. Their secret is to transform themselves into a man’s daydream of what a woman ought to be – the ultimate woman, femininity embodied. They have no need to sell their bodies but many choose to become the mistress of a man rich enough to be able to support their expensive lifestyle. Even then he can never own them. As one man put it, ‘they are like cats. You have to take care of them and feed them, but you can’t get them to jump on your lap if they don’t want to.’