How delightful are the snow covers!
Jan. 13th, 2005 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI was walking yesterday in Yanaka and Ueno Park, the 'old Edo' part of Tokyo where you still see a lot of wooden houses. You also see the blue tarpaulin village of the homeless people camped out between the trees. In self-service restaurants they're playing marbled, melancholy 80s ballads and, with the 80s decor, it all feels a bit sad, with the bare branches stirring outside in the wind.
But if you go into a temple grounds or a flower garden there's a seasonal delight of a particularly Japanese kind; the trees, flowers and shrubs have snow covers, yuki gakkoi. These are typically shinto artefacts made of straw, rope and twine. They're beautiful, delicate, artisanal; practical yet sacred, natural yet cultural.
The snow covers keep the plants protected from snow, of course, but they're also something to go and view, to marvel at; something seasonal and ephemeral whose regular appearance each year is familiar yet delightful. Let's go and see the snow covers today!
Flipping through the January edition of women's magazine Frau I found a page of 'calendar delights' mapping out the whole year as a series of seasonal pleasures of this sort. In April, of course, there's blossom-viewing. In June, for one week only, there are fireflies. Let's watch them with delight! And in September, of course, we view the moon.
I tried to imagine a British women's magazine telling its readers about ephemeral natural delights like this. It was difficult. I suppose a gardening magazine would mention them, or a rather old-fashioned country column in a newspaper. I doubt they would mingle delight and melancholy in quite this way, though. The blossom and the fireflies are an intense pleasure. We praise them with attention and a kind of formulaic poetry of the seasons, a poetry of deep yet stereotypical emotion which draws its strength from the precarious yet utterly regular transience of these seasonal occurrences. They're here, they're gone, but they'll be back next year. Perhaps we'll be here to view and celebrate them with identical, gentle, deeply-felt exclamations of pleasure. How delightful are the snow covers!
But if you go into a temple grounds or a flower garden there's a seasonal delight of a particularly Japanese kind; the trees, flowers and shrubs have snow covers, yuki gakkoi. These are typically shinto artefacts made of straw, rope and twine. They're beautiful, delicate, artisanal; practical yet sacred, natural yet cultural.
The snow covers keep the plants protected from snow, of course, but they're also something to go and view, to marvel at; something seasonal and ephemeral whose regular appearance each year is familiar yet delightful. Let's go and see the snow covers today!
Flipping through the January edition of women's magazine Frau I found a page of 'calendar delights' mapping out the whole year as a series of seasonal pleasures of this sort. In April, of course, there's blossom-viewing. In June, for one week only, there are fireflies. Let's watch them with delight! And in September, of course, we view the moon.
I tried to imagine a British women's magazine telling its readers about ephemeral natural delights like this. It was difficult. I suppose a gardening magazine would mention them, or a rather old-fashioned country column in a newspaper. I doubt they would mingle delight and melancholy in quite this way, though. The blossom and the fireflies are an intense pleasure. We praise them with attention and a kind of formulaic poetry of the seasons, a poetry of deep yet stereotypical emotion which draws its strength from the precarious yet utterly regular transience of these seasonal occurrences. They're here, they're gone, but they'll be back next year. Perhaps we'll be here to view and celebrate them with identical, gentle, deeply-felt exclamations of pleasure. How delightful are the snow covers!
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 02:43 am (UTC)Delight is good.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 03:09 am (UTC)I don't know a thing about British women's magazines. An American one would still have to cover twelve temperate zones; I think perhaps that's part of the point of focusing on hairstyles and man-pleasing and suchsense.
*sigh*
Date: 2005-01-13 03:22 am (UTC)They only bloom for a short time and I will go out and buy unbloomed bunches so that when I wake up in the morning they will have bloomed just for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 03:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 04:17 am (UTC)This sort of view filled me with joy when I was a child.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 04:20 am (UTC)You might enjoy Lafcadio Hearn's book Exotics and Retrospectives, especially the essay on the Insect Musicians of Old Edo.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 04:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 03:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-13 05:48 pm (UTC)After you live here long enough though the question starts to make sense. There is a rhythm in Japan that has been lost in places like the US or Britain, where free-trade agreements and religion have thwarted nature.
Things currently in season in Japan: strawberries and Yon-sama. Last month is was and kaki and Yon-sama.
Have fun in Hakodate, Nick. If you get tired of Hakodate, go north to Sapporo.
- M