Lost Japan Read Online Free Page B

why the residents of these historical areas still treat them with care and respect.
    In contrast to Europe, however, change came to China, Japan and Southeast Asia in a truly precipitous fashion. What’s more, these changes were introduced from a completely alien culture. Consequently, modern clothing and architecture in China and Japan have nothing to do with traditional Asian culture. Although the Japanese may admire the ancient cities of Kyoto and Nara, and consider them beautiful, deep in their hearts they know that
these places have no connection to their own modern lives. To put it bluntly, these places have become cities of illusion, historical theme parks. In East Asia, there are no equivalents of Paris or Rome – Kyoto, Beijing and Bangkok have been turned into concrete jungles. Meanwhile, the countryside has been filled to overflowing with billboards, power lines and aluminum houses. The egg in the dungeon has cracked.
    The municipal library where children study in the town of Kameoka, where I now live, is not so different from Oxford’s Merton College library, the world’s oldest working library. On my first visit to Merton, it struck me that while this library was built nearly seven hundred years ago, the books, shelves, chairs and even the very concept of a ‘library’ have remained virtually unchanged over the intervening centuries. The children of Kameoka could visit Merton library and feel at home there. But if they visited the
sutra
(Buddhist scripture) storage rooms of a Japanese temple, with shelves filled with folding albums wrapped in silk, or the studios of the literati, lined with hanging scrolls and handscrolls, they would have no idea what they were looking at. These things are so far removed from what the Japanese use today, that they could almost come from a different planet.
    The wholesale collapse of the natural environment and cultural tradition in East Asia will one day be seen as one of the major events of this century. Japan, with its vast wealth and thorough way of doing things, has a head start over the other nations of East Asia. But the changes are by no means limited to Japan alone, and viewed from a historical perspective they were probably unavoidable. It was fated for Asia to go this way.
    When the native culture of a country has been lost, a ‘new traditional culture’ is created. This develops as a mix of ancient forms and modern tastes, and ends up a cultural Frankenstein’s monster. The most shocking example of this is China. Attempts to repair Chinese temples cheaply have led to buildings and statues drastically different from the originals. The garish colors
and grotesque compositions are a wholesale denial of the spirit of Chinese sculpture. Unfortunately, since this is all that tourists get to see, these tacky creations are now regarded as Chinese culture.
    While Japan’s case is not so extreme, its traditional culture is also being remade. This is especially true of its houses. The ‘new’ tradition has its myths, one of them being the case of tatami. Most people believe that Japanese interiors cannot exist without tatami, but this is not so. Until the Heian period, palace floors were made of wooden planks, as can be seen in old paintings and handscrolls. A nobleman would sit on a single tatami mat, upon a raised platform set in the middle of the floor. This arrangement can still be seen in certain Zen temples in Kyoto. In commoners’ houses, thin reed mats were used when it was necessary to cover the floor with something. In Iya, these mats were laid only around the open hearth, and the rest of the floor was left bare. It was customary to wipe this wooden floor with a wet cloth twice a day, in the morning and evening. As a result, the floors were burnished a shiny black, very much like the surface of a Noh stage.
    Noh stages, Shinto shrines, Zen temples and the houses of Iya all date from a pre-tatami age. The psychological difference between the wooden floors and