Changing Impressions of Japan

When I was 13 or 14, my mother went through one of those artsy-fartsy fads where people try to get into scrapbooking while their kids are too young or illustration while their kids are too old. My Mom took a wrong turn and ended up in ukiyo-e. One day, she showed me a low-res color Xerox of a woodblock print she'd found on the Internet. It was a night scene of what must have been Old Edo; an empty street, multicolored paper windows lit softly from the inside, old wood-framed buildings advertising warmth enough for you to imagine, but not enough to welcome you in. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Laundry accumulated, my folks split, and Mom's masterpieces via Hewlett-Packard were buried under time and lost, but I never forgot that painting. Gundam, ninja warfare, and Kurosawa held my interest long enough to get me through high school and into the East Asian Department at UAlbany, but I never fell out of love with ukiyo-e and that lonely beauty.

Though I'd like to say that I came to Japan with my head straight, ready to buckle down and send my Nihongo abilities through the roof, the truth is that I wanted to find that aesthetic somewhere and get lost in it. I wanted to walk down that empty street and shiver as I watched the colored lights glow through the walls.

Since coming to Japan, I have caught glimpses of the "floating world" as Hiroshige and his fellows saw it.


Full moon and paper lantern, Daikakuji, Kyoto.

But only glimpses. Mirages, really.


Near the south gate of Kansai Gaidai.

Though the floating world was paved over and modernized long before I was born, I cannot help hoping that I have not felt the last of that same stillness.
That solitude of mind among multitudes.
That nostalgia for that which still is.

I hope yet to see that soft glow behind paper. . .