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I STILL
have to see a film in this land that has produced Ozu,
Mizoguchi and Kurosawa. Something is more cinematic than
cinema in the city of Tokyo, which compels me to look at
things about life, love and this world other than that
source called cinema. In the great city itself, charming
and crazy at the same time, things are brewing about its
move to apply as the Olympic site for 2016. The last
time the Olympic Games were held in this country was way
back in 1964. This morning, we were in Yoyogi, the site
of that Olympics, which marked the beginning of the
ascend of Japan to economic power. Yoyogi at present is
a drab station in the Yamanote Loop, the famous green
train that goes around and around the center. It is so
drab because it sits beside Harajuku and its famous
Takeshita-dori or Takeshita street, that shortest street
in the city which stretches in imagination its presence
with its Cosplayers, usually young women and also men
who are into costume and role-playing. Called kosupure
or cosplay in Nihongo, the event or moment is done with
players walking up and down the street and moving up to
the bridge that leads from the Harajuku station.
For all
their confrontational air, the cosplayers borrow images
and color and inspiration from such sources as manga or
comics, animé, video games, tokusatsu (entertainment
programs that are usually related to horror, fantasy or
sci-fi), or even rock bands. For all their
confrontational air, these young people are really
polite. Remove their makeup and wigs, and you find a
senior high-school student or even a university student
serious about their part-time jobs and other
responsibilities. The main difference really between
non-Japanese cosplayers and their Japanese counterpart
is that for the latter, cosplay is a presentation on a
performance level. Away from that site, these young
girls and boys will come home to their parents uttering
the traditional phrase Tadaima (“I am home”).
The
attitude is put-on and manufactured. Out of the costume,
and we may find them doing odd jobs to save for a fine
costume.
It is
easy to paint Harajuku as one of those sites that run
counter to the Japanese-ness of the nation. Look
closely, though, and you find in these cosplayers
something innately and strongly Japanese: the sense of
group identification and the urge to make things conform
to rules and the oral tradition of this group that is
still seen as marginal and strange by a great portion of
the society. One does not go to a cosplay event to
improvise. That is not Japanese. One goes to a cosplay
event to adhere to a set of traditions that, however,
contemporary, still demand conformity.
Opposite
the street of this new breed of performers always
willing to pose in front of the camera is the Meiji
Shrine, the emperor who was present when the country
opened its doors to foreigners after many hundreds of
years of isolation. Typical of Shinto Shrines, the
architecture of the place is pared down to the cleanest,
barest minimum. The ultimate in minimalism, if you wish.
A day
before Harajuku, I was in Kamakura, the land built as a
spiritual retreat, in so many ways, by the samurai. I
have visited this seaside city many times but each time,
I always discover something odd, something close to
succulent mystery. It must be that the city itself is
changing even as the temples and shrines have remained
loyal to its old forms. A new department store houses
the old tram car, and charming little shops catering to
hobbyists embrace the ancient streets with the
traditional stores selling candies and rice crackers.
Amid all
this, we find that the shrine to Hachiman, the god of
the samurai, or warriors, remains popular among young
schoolchildren who are, as we are, fascinated with the
artifacts and gifts available in the compound of the
shrine. If we are to believe the story, the ginkgo—a
huge old tree at the foot of the shrine—is still the
same tree that managed to hide the assassin who killed
the second Minamoto shogun.
The
shrine to the warriors appears to cuddle against a
massive swath of trees and greeneries. It is a majestic
scenery but, for some, reason, in Kamakura there is a
more magnificent site, that of the Great Buddha. It is
second only in size to that in Nara, another ancient
capital, but its situation—an open-air setting with only
the hawks to check on him—mandates that you look at him
and bask in his serenity and stability. When we entered
the compound and sat at the feet of Buddha, we saw that
we were carrying swords—toy swords. We told one another
that it was eerie that as we took in the stillness in
the Great Buddha’s smile, we were actually appreciating
also the copies of swords used by the warriors during
that period.
Coming
out of the compound, we saw that there was an old store
at the edge of the gate. It was selling mainly swords,
some for decoration and some for practice. I asked the
lady at the counter if it was okay to bring out of Japan
those swords. She assured us that they could always
paste a mark on the box in which they would put the
sword. The label would say: replica. The lady then
asked: doko no kuni desu ka, asking to which country
would we be bringing in the sword. Hiripin. Philippines.
She then moved to a table that apparently had the list
of the countries that would not give a lot of trouble
allowing in replicas of swords from the ancient warring
periods of Japan. She assured us that in the Philippines
it is okay to bring in swords. I thought so, too, I told
myself.
Swords
are divine in another shrine we visited last for the
day: the Yasukuni Shrine. If the Meiji Shrine was
nuanced monumentalism, the Yasukuni Jinja, the tribute
to all those Japanese who died during the Japanese-Russo
War and the World War II, was simply monumental.
Everything was muscular and massive in Yasukuni Shrine.
At the end, as we were walking out of the shrine, we
heard from the farthest end, closer to the main
entrance, a command from someone. From afar we could see
two men marching. They were dressed in the military
costume of foot soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army.
They were not part of the shrine but individuals doing
their share in rekindling memory about the war and the
brave men who became part of our own memory of violence
and cruelty.
The two
soldiers marched on oblivious to the clicking of the
cameras around them. They were like the old soldiers in
Kurosawa’s Dreams. Like the soldiers in that film, these
soldiers in the shrine refused to die. |
