The Craze for Japan

 In a glass cabinet inside a magnificent white room in the centre of London there is a book. It was published over a hundred years ago, to mark the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition in the capital, and it's open at pages 22 and 23. I do not exaggerate when I write that, as I read the text on the left hand page, I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

   Perhaps I'm particularly susceptible to the written word. One of my few treasured possessions is a book by Nikos Kazantzakis called Zorba the Greek, whose last chapter I have defaced with highlighter. I think it might be the greatest thing I've ever read, and when I open the pages, yellow with the passage of two decades, I feel the same sense of shivery excitement I experienced in London. 

   What set me off at The Craze for Japan exhibition was nothing more than a passage about the temples of Kyoto. The names were as familiar to me as household words: Ginkakuji, the Silver Temple, which is in fact not silver but boasts a wonderful garden; Nanzenji, with its viaduct and rock garden; Heian Jingu, famous for its massive orange torii gate. My mind swelled with the memory of sweat-drenched walks around these places. 

   Two temples, however, were unknown to me. One of these, 'Kurodanin', is in the north of the city, I learned, and is notable (at least it was, a hundred years ago) for 'two curiously trained pine trees'. One of these was called 'fan-shaped pine', while the other was known as 'yoroikake-no-matsu', so-named 'because warrior Naodane is said to have hung up'... who knows? For here, the page ended. 

   Reading that single page, and seeing black and white images of Kinkakuji, the Golden Temple, blanketed in snow, and the wooden temple Byodo-in, filled me on a sudden with the urge to return to that great city.  I hadn't been since 2016, which now felt like an eternity! I would go to Kurodanin and discover if one of those pine trees does indeed look like a fan, and find out who Naodane was and what on earth he hung up. 

   Inspiration comes at unexpected moments. In my case, it came courtesy of a free and low-key exhibition which I only learned about because I happened to be in London, and because I have fond memories of Green Park. If you like Japan, I recommend you go too. 

   The Craze for Japan in Victorian and Edwardian Britain is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday at the Embassy of Japan on Piccadilly. 

11.3.11

   In March 2011 I was living in a Japanese city called Fuji. The famous volcano rises to the north of the city and the streets and ugly buildings sprawl up its lower reaches. To the south is the sea; from that direction comes the foul smell of paper production. 

Fuji

   I lived on the rural eastern edge of Fuji, in a tiny apartment near a bullet train line. At night the frosted front window would be illuminated by the lights from super-express trains making for Tokyo or Osaka. Then the blackness of the countryside would return. 

   On March 11 that year I went home early from my job. I was washing dishes when I felt a shudder. It was almost imperceptible, and I asked my wife if she had noticed it. A few seconds elapsed, then the building started to shake violently. 

   Comically, we wasted a few seconds deciding what to do. We then rushed down the stairs - not a sensible course of action - and outside into the car park. I have only impressions of those few minutes: finding myself outside barefoot, still clutching a dishcloth; the swaying of the power lines; my heart pulsing rapidly; the sun; the quiet. I have no idea how long the trembling of the earth lasted.

   That was the first earthquake that scared me. I had only experienced one other, many years before, and it seemed somehow exciting: I was in a hotel in the south of Japan and woke in the middle of the night to find the bed moving. I was groggy with sleep, and wasn't even certain it was an earthquake until the next morning. 

   I can't imagine what the Great Tohoku Earthquake was like for those near the epicentre. Fuji was several hundred kilometres to the west, and I felt badly shaken up. For days I felt like I was on a ship at sea, and I went to sleep on edge expecting to be woken by an earthquake warning. I did ask a Japanese friend who had been in Sendai on the day about it once, but all she told me was 'Kowai' (scary).  

 

   Years later I returned to Japan to teach at a university. I would ask students about their experiences of the day. I guess it was like the Kennedy assassination: everyone remembered where they had been. One guy even said he had been having sex in a love hotel!  

   The German writer Goethe once remarked on a visit to Naples  that 'here people talk of [earthquakes] as they talk of the weather'. I eventually came to feel that way myself. Numerous were the occasions when I was roused early in the morning in Tokyo by the swaying of the building. It got to the stage where I didn't even bother hiding under my table. I would lie on my futon, half-asleep, and wait until the quake had subsided. 

    And yet, it's a fact that another massive tremblor is around the corner. I no longer live in Japan, but for my old colleagues and friends in Fuji, it's like being on a precipice. They accept it as part of life. I'm not sure I could.

La Rioja Alta

    

    We arrive in Haro at midnight, where, in true Spanish fashion, our host Francisco proposes a drink. A lone bar is open, and the silent streets and empty room suggest they might consider shutting early on a Monday. Most of us order a caña as George Michael plays on the speakers and an alsatian sniffs around and howls for attention. Despite the delicious cold beer, I decide against a tour of the deserted town and crash out in a huge room with oak beams on the ceiling. 

Tempranillo vines at La Rioja Alta S.A.

    

    The last time I went to Spain was four years ago, yet, as I wander around this famous wine town the next morning, waves of familiarity wash over me. A man's voice booms out from a café; a half-hidden figure leans out of a second floor window and beats a mat againt the wall; two nuns in black habits walk past a church; a woman stands on a street corner selling lottery tickets. There are old buildings with long cracks down the middle, and lovely views beyond the town over to hills and vines. 

    I came here for the wine, of course, and the sight of a row of trees shaped like gobelet vines turns my mind to the tasting ahead of us. We drive the short distance to my favourite Rioja producer, La Rioja Alta S.A., in the Barrio de la Estación. I ask Francisco, who is driving, which Rioja he likes the most, other than his employer's. 'Who asked this question?!', he jokes. 

    The wines are lined up for us in a crescent: eight reds and a solitary white - 'to cleanse the palate'. I'm not usually a big fan of whites, but the Lagar de Cervera Albariño is delicious, with peachy aromas redolent of Viognier. 

    Although I've had most of the reds many times before, it's a joy to drink them again. My favourites are the 2015 and 2016 vintages of Viña Ardanza. 'The Garnacha is the DNA of Ardanza', says Francisco. 'It brings spice, liquorice' to the wine. The Garnacha grapes are grown on vineyards covered in huge pebble stones, 50 miles away in the hotter Rioja Oriental zone, we learn. 'The winemaker calls it little Châteauneuf-du-Pape', says Francisco. 

Garnacha vines in Rioja Oriental

    

    We don't finish all the tasting samples, which feels almost like a crime considering the quality of the wines. (A member of the party later tells me he went round the table polishing off all the flagship Gran Reserva 890, however). 

    Over a lunch of Riojan vegetable stew and barbecued lamb cutlets, we drain the remainder of the 890, plus several more bottles of the Ardanza, including a velvety 2005 vintage. I ask in Spanish for more of the vegetable dish. 'His Spanish is good!' the waitress tells Francisco, filling me with pride. 

    This was my first trip abroad in over three years. I returned home tired but euphoric, with three goals: to go back to Spain; to drink lots of wines made by La Rioja Alta S.A.; to take up Spanish again. I can certainly achieve the first two objectives; we'll see about the third...