LEAN AND DEEP

A Japanese classic that I carried on my trip throught India's Madhya Pradesh remained both elusive and breathtaking. I will be reading it again intentionally.

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, Thousand Cranes was written by Yasunari Kawabata and published by Penguin in 1958.

I carried Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes on my week’s trip through India’s Madhya Pradesh where the cold air saws through the bones. Clouds hovered thickly on the ground and sometimes we could not see beyond the fender of our rental Toyota. Whenever the fog lifted just enough, we knew we would have to be back in a few years. It was this very same feeling, again and again, with Thousand Cranes. While we are in the thick of this work, we tend to move about uncertainly, in fits and starts. I stopped to reread many passages or look up a detail about a tradition. Then I went back to the beginning of a section to experience it all anew.

Thus I restarted this novella several times during the course of ten days and, quite naturally, I’m late with this post. I’m fearful that I’ll be even tardier with my next since I’ll be en route from Chennai to San Francisco. It’s also such an irony that I’m inexcusably late writing about a work born in a country where apologies are expected when a train glides into a platform just a few seconds later than scheduled.

When first published in Japan, Thousand Cranes appeared in serialized form between the years 1949 and 1951, and this classic was published as an entire book in 1952. The novella assumes some knowledge about tea ceremonies in the Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditions. Upon reading a little about these, I learned that tea ceremonies and tea rituals are about taking the time to appreciate beauty and tradition amid the humdrum of our lives.

The tea ceremony is also thought to hone one’s inner spiritual center while teaching humility and restraint. I’ve gathered that it is also an effective means of understanding and embracing imperfection and that it’s also “a healthy reminder to cherish our unpolished selves, here and now, just as we are—the first step to "Satori" or Enlightenment.”

It’s at an elaborate tea ceremony that we first meet most of the characters in the story. Chikako, Miss Inamura, Mrs. Ota, and her daughter. Kikuji, the young protagonist in this novella, is struck by Ota’s daughter charm and struck further by her resemblance to her mother whose description Kawabata returns to in different ways while writing about mother and daughter.

“The white neck, rather long, was as it had been, and the full shoulders that strangely matched the slender neck—it was a figure young for her years. The mouth and nose were small in proportion to the eyes. The little nose, if one bothered to notice, was cleanly modeled and most engaging. When she spoke, her lower lip was thrust forward a little, as if in a pout.”

The story becomes creepy and disorienting as we begin to realize that 28-year-old Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by Chikako, one of the mistresses of his dead father. The ceremony has been arranged for him with a specific intent, for him to meet his potential bride. At the same tea ceremony, is that certain Mrs. Ota, his own lover as well as his father’s mistress before that.

The connections between the main characters are thus rather convoluted; we realize, as the story progresses, just how deep the scars are—of hurt, of resentment, of bitterness, and of mistrust. The feelings run very deep in the women we meet and they are indeed capable of extreme desire and extreme hatred. It manifests outwardly, however, as calmness, in the conduct of the tea ceremony.

As we learn about the legacy of the Kikuji’s father’s tea cups and the water jugs, some of which are four hundred years old, we begin to see the parallels between the tea “equipage” and the ceremony’s hosts and its guests. Just like the cups and bowls themselves, the people, too, bear the marks and stains of the generations. They too must play their part in the continuum of life.

We learn about tea masters who were remembered forever. Sen no Rikyū (known simply as Rikyū) is considered the historical figure with the most profound influence on “chanoyu,” which is “the Japanese "Way of Tea.” We learn also about a period of constant warfare called Momoyama (1573–1603), when Japan underwent a process of unification after a long period of civil war.

“But what diff does it make that my father owned it for a little while? It’s four hundred years old, after all—its history goes back to Momoyama and Rikyu himself. Tea masters have looked after it and passed it down through the centuries. My father is of very little importance.” So Kikuji tried to forget the occsaion that the bowl called up.

It had passed from Ota to his wife, from the wife to Kikuji’s father, from Kikuji’s father to Chikako; and the two men, Ota and Kikuji’s father, were dead, and here were the two women. there was something almost weird about the bowl’s career

While reading this book, I came upon this imperfect flower with several layers. It’s a shoe flower or double-layered hibiscus common in East Asia. I was stuck by its veins, the many shades of peach and its red. It’s striking and strikingly ugly, too.

This was an oddly compelling novella. It’s one of those stories that needs to be reread a few times to appreciate Kawabata’s mastery over both craft and content. It’s an extraordinarily rich work and I felt that I needed to sweat a little more before I could think and write about it critically.

Thousand Cranes made me wonder whether Kawabata was also lamenting the curse of patriarchy in his culture. When men strayed, the women were hurt no matter the outcome. The reverberations were felt through the generations through the crack in their hearts and the stain in their souls. Kikuji, his parents, Chikako and Mrs. Ota are enmeshed in a fraught relationship of many years for which there is no resolution.

There’s so much to unpack in this 100-paged novella about love, beauty, perfection and impermanence. The references to Chikako’s ugly scar on her chest form a backdrop for a work that centers so much on the notion of beauty and elegance. The birth mark is like the crack on the surface of a tea bowl. Ironically, the imperfection that seems naturally acceptable on the surface of a tea object feels unacceptable and disturbing on a human body.

Conversely, the beauty and perfection we see externally on Mrs. Ota hides a stain deep inside her and nothing is what it seems to be. The stoic daughter whom Kikuji falls in love with as the story progresses may be altogether more fragile and broken than the tea paraphernalia acquired by Kikuji from his father. Thousand Cranes bounces back and forth, repeatedly, between the human and the object, investing both surfaces with substance and relevance.

“The very face of the Shino, glowing warmly cool, made him think of Mrs. Ota. Possibly because the piece was so fine, the memory was without the darkness and ugliness of guilt.

As he looked at the masterpiece it was, he felt all the more strongly the masterpiece Mrs. Ota had been. In a masterpiece there is nothing unclean.”