Kyoto thoughts

KYOTO -- Everyone I spoke to before my departure said the old imperial city of Kyoto was a beautiful place. They were not wrong. One week into my six-month research fellowship at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, I wished I had applied for a one-year grant when it was still being offered.

Most people I met here sighed while saying I should have arrived earlier to catch the cherry blossoms but with my pollen allergy I think tourist brochures and postcards will suffice for now. The weather is cool compared to Manila, air quality too. Here I can actually take a bicycle to and from my office. The only problem is being used to driving in Manila -- now on a bike instead of a car, I am paranoid about getting run over, or being forced off the curb by an impatient driver. So far, so good.

It's a pity Jose Rizal didn't leave us with any impressions of Kyoto because it would have been fascinating to follow his footsteps, as other historians have done here in Japan, basically in search of the woman he was involved with, O-sei-san or Usui Seiko, depending on the book you are reading. All we have on Rizal's trip to Japan are a short travel diary and some letters to his family. The Japan he describes is quite different from the one where our Japayukis [Filipina entertainers] and Hostos work today.

I live in a part of Kyoto that still has traces of its agricultural past. Small plots of land planted with vegetables would be the Japan Rizal saw in his time. In Yokohama, for example, he said that the Japanese lived, "in odd-looking houses, like the little houses or cages of rabbits, very clean, with paper walls, white mats on the floor, lattices, etc. etc. They make no noise; loud voices are not heard; they sit quietly in their stores." Walking in the side streets of this side of Kyoto, I noticed the same thing. Its so quiet and in residential areas nobody seems to be in the streets.

I notice that many Japanese have their hair dyed blonde -- their fashion sense would make Tessa Prieto-Valdes pale in comparison. The women also have the habit of putting on their makeup in public. Filipinas try to hide under a small compact but here the Japanese have mirrors as large as legal-size bond paper and come complete with a whole "kikay" bag of cosmetics enough for a neighborhood beauty parlor. Rizal described Japanese women as "short, stout, fair, and their cheeks are red. Their hair is stiffer and thicker than ours, and I have seen few with good teeth. There are some who have big eyes." Frankly, the type of Japanese woman Rizal saw is quite rare these days and I would think that the closest we can possibly come to seeing something similar today would be in traditional plays and tea ceremonies. Maybe even the photo studios that rent out costumes and makeup to transform any tourist into a geisha or a samurai complete with sword.

Writing to Blumentritt from Tokyo, Rizal has more to say about Japanese women:

"The old attire of Japanese women was and is very pretty, but now they want to introduce here among themselves the not-too-comfortable European dress, in spite of the fact that Japanese women are even smaller than Filipino women. Thank God, the common women are still dressed in the old style, but the rich ones who are dressed in European style have a sorry look. Certainly, it is fitting that Japanese women wear European shoes instead of the ugly and uncomfortable Japanese footwear. European shoes can harmonize perfectly with the Japanese dress."

One can only wonder why the women are described more than the men. In his letters to his family and Blumentritt from Tokyo in March 1888, Rizal had only one sentence to describe men. He observed that Japanese who wore European outfits resembled people in the town of Biñan in Laguna province, outside Manila. I guess this is a private joke. One would wish that he wrote more. Shortly before he left Japan for the United States en route to London, he wrote another letter to his family, a fragment of which is all that survives. It reads in part:

"I have stayed here longer than I intended, for the country seems to me very interesting and because in the future we shall have much to do and deal with Japan. [How very prophetic indeed]. I'm learning Japanese. I can make myself understood in it, and though badly, I can express what I want in it. I have traveled on foot and by train and also by jinrikisha [rickshaw, their version of our own padyak] until Utsonomiya, Nikko, Kodzu, Odawara, Tonosawa, Mimoto, Miyanoshita, Oshihama, Kamakura, Todsuka, etc. Flowers are blooming on the tree branches, camellias are reddening the green foliage of the gardens, the plum and cherry are beginning to give a white or vaporous rose tint to the landscape shaded by the dark pines and gigantic cryptomeria. The temples are located in these beautiful places and for the believers entrance into such garden must cause a certain impression that ought to predispose them to retirement and meditation..."

National Artist Arturo Luz advised me to walk in a bamboo grove and visit a garden with 2,000 kinds of moss while in Kyoto. This all sounded so silly and esoteric a week ago, but after having explored my first temple and crossed carefully placed stones across a river near my office, I realize why Japan has always charmed artists and writers. One is always inspired into quiet reflection.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu