JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 234 из 270Now a tea master has to consult a reference book to tell him which flower to place in thetokonoma alcove during the rainy season. But in early Edo, Kobori Enshu, when his guests entered the tearoom after an afternoon shower, simply took a bucket of water and splashed it in the tokonoma. Students of ikebana diligently calculating the exact angle of each flowering branch may think they are studying «tradition,» but the angles and triangles come from another planet from the mystical world of Ikenobo Senno.
When Nakano Kiyotsugu confessed himself baffled at the new rules that seem to have sprung up in daily life, he was telling us that the rigidly conventional lifestyle of today is in fact something new Nothing like the strict adherence to rules we see today ever existed in Japan before. For all the shoguns' attempts at control, the Edo period was a riot of variety and eccentricity. Saikaku and his freewheeling townsmen friends would find today's incessant announcement of aisatsu greetings, the rules telling everyone what to do at every moment, very much at odds with their experience.
Even at the height of mid-twentieth-century militaristic fanaticism, there was more room in Japan for characterful individuality than there is today, as one discovers when one meets older Japanese. People who were educated before the war (now in their seventies and eighties) seem to have kept more of their humanity than students of recent years. Among this older generation, one constantly meets cultured, questioning people, often with a sly sparkle in the eye and a wicked tongue. And, of course, in the confused years immediately after World War II, education was especially relaxed. This relative openness in education bore fruit in the 1960s and 1970s in a cultural rebirth similar to theTaisho Renaissance of the 1920s. In business, this was the era when upstart entrepreneurs at Honda and Sony created giant international corporations not linked to the large keiretsu groupings. In the cultural sphere, the cinema directors Kurosawa and Ozu, the fashion designer Miyake Issey, the writer MishimaYukio, the architect Ando Tadao, the Kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo – names that symbolize Japan's modern cultural achievement – all of whom were educated before the war or in the two decades after it, did their finest work.
The window of opportunity stayed open only for one generation, about twenty years. Behind the scenes, opposing forces were at work as the bureaucrats solidified their grip on power and the cement began to set on the teaching system.
When Nakano Kiyotsugu confessed himself baffled at the new rules that seem to have sprung up in daily life, he was telling us that the rigidly conventional lifestyle of today is in fact something new Nothing like the strict adherence to rules we see today ever existed in Japan before. For all the shoguns' attempts at control, the Edo period was a riot of variety and eccentricity. Saikaku and his freewheeling townsmen friends would find today's incessant announcement of aisatsu greetings, the rules telling everyone what to do at every moment, very much at odds with their experience.
Even at the height of mid-twentieth-century militaristic fanaticism, there was more room in Japan for characterful individuality than there is today, as one discovers when one meets older Japanese. People who were educated before the war (now in their seventies and eighties) seem to have kept more of their humanity than students of recent years. Among this older generation, one constantly meets cultured, questioning people, often with a sly sparkle in the eye and a wicked tongue. And, of course, in the confused years immediately after World War II, education was especially relaxed. This relative openness in education bore fruit in the 1960s and 1970s in a cultural rebirth similar to theTaisho Renaissance of the 1920s. In business, this was the era when upstart entrepreneurs at Honda and Sony created giant international corporations not linked to the large keiretsu groupings. In the cultural sphere, the cinema directors Kurosawa and Ozu, the fashion designer Miyake Issey, the writer MishimaYukio, the architect Ando Tadao, the Kabuki actor Bando Tamasaburo – names that symbolize Japan's modern cultural achievement – all of whom were educated before the war or in the two decades after it, did their finest work.
The window of opportunity stayed open only for one generation, about twenty years. Behind the scenes, opposing forces were at work as the bureaucrats solidified their grip on power and the cement began to set on the teaching system.