Three pomegranate seeds in the Nether…land

At first, I tried not to eat any bread or cheese. But then, just like Persephone, who did eat 3 pomegranate seeds in the netherworld, I ended up tasting an inviting piece of old Dutch farmer’s cheese at a party on a boat during a very slow, gorgeous sunset on a canal at 10PM, and a slice whole-grain bread with my favourite biological raspberry jam the day after. But hey, Persephone did manage to negotiate a system of or alternate attendance (sankinkōtai, 参勤交代) in upper and underworld —will I ever manage it?

 

But first things first. What aspect of Japan do I want to keep in my Dutch life?

Let’s focus on one aspect. Plus, of course, I want to learn 5 kanji a day. And learn by heart all dialogues from the book Genki. And contact my Japanese teachers for lessons. And watch Japanese anime. And we will buy a rice-cooker… but this is not what I wanted to blog about!

I want to cultivate a more Japanese relation to space. I would like my movements to express the belief that the function of others and of objects is not the one “not standing in the way”. I am sorry if I essentialize “Europe”, but it seems to me that the default way of moving in Europe —in a supermarket, a station or at home— is moving like the main character of a video game, who needs to get to the next level in the shortest possible time while bumping into fewer things possible.

A completely different attitude to space is the one I have experience in Sendai. There people, for instance, do a slight bow and a slight movement with their hand if they need to pass in front of you. This makes me feel as if I am a co-protagonist in our common video game. Nishida might correct me and say that, actually, it is space to be the “protagonist”, whereas we are various expressions of space. In Sendai, at Isabella’s birthday party, to my complete astonishment, two of her friends started washing dishes after finishing their cake and before leaving the room. At Isabella’s international school in Japan, on the school bus, high school students always make sure that all elementary school students are seated. Isabella and a fellow grade 5 student had a role as “peace builder” for younger kids every Friday morning —this meant that if anyone was crying or distressed during recess, they would hear them out and, in case they were hurt, they would take them to the office. My impression is that people feel co-responsible for the space they inhabit, be it a room in which they are for an afternoon, a bus, a school yard, a supermarket.

In Japan, people and things did not seem to me to be related to space as pencils are related to a pencil case — they are rather expressions of space, they transform the space with their movements, they inhabit the space and feel responsibility for it. Their movements suggest to me that they are made of the same stuff out of which space is made.

Their behavior suggests that they know that the environment is not only the melting polar ice cap —it starts with the room we are sitting in right now. 

I want to suggest to Isabella to keep some Japaneseness, by, for instance, checking if her friends all have an ice-cream before starting licking hers or something. But of course, the ice-cream will melt. And shall I manage to smile and acknowledge their existence before carefully passing in front of others at Amsterdam Central Station during rush hour? What if the value of efficiency overrules the one of togetherness, respect, embeddedness?

What about starting with stopping (とまれ), looking right and left, checking the status of a room before entering or leaving it? Can we try to treat our surrounding as ends and not only as means? I remember reading about expressing one’s virtue by slicing a tomato with respect. The author made it clear that Zen Buddhism would recommend such respectful slicing —not because they regard tomatoes as sentient beings! The point is that we are not pencils in a pencil case, we are not subjects next to —or in front of— more or less disposable objects. How we behave with the tomato will tell a lot about how we will behave with anything or anyone who does not qualify as “the same as me”. And such practice will make us aware of our way of relating, in general.

So, the good resolution might sound: “check the status of a room or another space before entering or leaving it”. Perhaps the only real way to train this —rather than only making it a soon to be forgotten good resolution— is meditating, or practicing qi gong. Anything that gives us the time to become aware of being a body in space. Slowly one might start feeling what it means to be an expression of space. Then, we might start seeing things differently. Not only other people in the room, but also the tree, which we might want to use to lean our bicycle on, and the sweater, which we might want to toss on the floor when we are hot, will change. From being objects in the background, they might become expressions of space, just as we are.

 

And now —shall I cook some nice rice for lunch or succumb to the vibe of the Netherworld and its easiness of bread and cheese, eaten in front of the computer?