Kyoto

When John Lafarge visited Japan in 1886, he and Henry Adams didn’t make it to Kyoto until the end of their trip. In An Artist’s Letters From Japan, his account of the trip, Lafarge wrote that he and Henry Adams were now ‘mere sightseers’ – no longer studying and learning, just looking. I’m not sure whether that was because of exhaustion at the end of the trip, or that the experience overwhelmed them. Or perhaps it was the oppressive heat of the summer.

I’m here for a few months, with an AHRC International Placement Scheme fellowship. I have had an ambivalent relationship with Kyoto in the past – I’ve only ever visited for a couple of days or so, and the lack of the time to explore as well as being on a fairly limited budget on some of those times has led to some frustrating experiences. That said, it also has, in Nanzenji, a spot which I have now visited on at least 3 occasions, and would be tempted to call one of my favourite places in the world. It’s a temple complex, but in addition to the formal subtemples (some open for tourists, some not), the compound spills out into the surrounding streets, centred around the main gates. In the early evening, you can walk around the outer precinct, under the maples and the temple gates, almost alone. I’m sure that I’ll make my way over there in the next few weeks.

Nanzenji is at the base of the hills to the east of the city. John Lafarge painted this picture from the same side, but further up: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/view-over-kyoto-from-ya-ami-5058 I’m staying over in Nishikyo, to the west, but also a little removed and raised up from the city. Lafarge wrote:

Early on most mornings I have sat out on our wide veranda and drawn or painted from the great panorama before me—the distant mountains making a great wall lighted up clearly, with patches of burning yellow and white and green, against the western sky. The city lies in fog, sometimes cool and gray; sometimes golden and smoky. The tops of pagodas and heavy roofs of temples lift out of this sea, and through it shine innumerable little white spots of the plastered sides of houses. Great avenues, which divide the city in parallel lines, run off into haze; far away always shines the white wall of the city castle; near us, trees and houses and temples drop out occasionally from the great violet shadows cast by the mountain behind us. Before the city wakes and the air clears, the crows fly from near the temples toward us, as the great bell of the temple sounds, and we hear the call of the gongs and indefinite waves of prayer.

(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43160/43160-h/43160-h.htm p.231)

This morning, I was awake from about 2 with jet lag; it was raining incredibly hard. I convinced myself to go for a run at about 6, but in minutes I was wringing my shirt out as I went. The rain ended by the late afternoon, and as evening was turning into night I took a stroll. It’s not easy to find a spot with a view over the city, but I did find one eventually. There were lights twinkling in the haze and, there were as for Lafarge, mountains in the background. There were a few bats coming out, and as I worked my way back, the clouds parted to reveal what Google Sky Maps tells me was Jupiter and Venus in conjunction.