Taiwan Travelogue marries literary criticism of Japanese colonialism in Taiwan and its complex cultural and power dynamics with subtle gay romance reminiscent of Chinese danmei novels—all under the guise of a gourmet travelogue originally written by a fictional Japanese author and translated into Chinese.

A superficial blurb: Written by Yáng Shuāngzǐ and translated by Lin King, this novel follows Japanese writer Aoyama Chizuko on a one-year research trip to Taiwan in 1938, when it was part of the Japanese empire1. When Chizuko is assigned Ō Chizuru, a young Taiwanese woman, as interpreter, she is intrigued and determined to become friends with her. As they travel Taiwan and enjoy local foods together, their evolving relationship also highlights differences they can’t seem to overcome.

There’s so much in this little book that I can’t even begin to unravel. has written beautifully on the complex history between Taiwan and Japan as well as the onion layers of fictional background story around the novel’s writing and publishing so I won’t go into detail about that here.

Instead, I’ll merely mention some aspects that stood out to me… with spoilers. If you’d like to discover the book for yourself, please come back after reading it.

The language used to express the political state of Taiwan as a colony: Mainland vs. Island, the euphemisms used to describe Japan’s colonising (Taiwan “was received by the empire”), how the author and translator2 chose to transliterate place and food names (Aoyama Chizuko uses the Japanese spelling for places but local foods are described by their local, mostly Taiwanese, names, and there’s even some Mandarin Chinese mixed in), Japanese as the “national language”, and many more details.

The deep and profound way in which colonisation and its effects are described, especially when Chi-chan explains how the Hoklo people coming from China also forced their culture and language on Taiwan, long before Japan did the same. I was reminded of reading on the author’s Wikipedia that she identified with the Republic of China until she participated in a protest movement as a university student, when demonstrators weren’t allowed to use the ROC flag. Her quest to understand why led to her studying Taiwanese literature and coming to identify as Taiwanese. When Chi-chan says “The absurd thing about humanity is that we only feel pain when we’re on the receiving end,” it really feels as if the author is speaking from her own feelings and experience.

The relationship between protagonist Chizuru and love interest Chi-chan see-saws between heavy with subtext and deliciously light-hearted. I saw both the coloniser husband with his colonised wife, calling her by a cute nickname, wanting to “protect” her from discrimination and buying her expensive clothes, as well as the more subtle Chinese-style gay romance dynamic, even though (or perhaps because) all they ever do is hold hands3.

The ending, too, felt like a perfect mix of mature revelation on the part of Chizuko and romantic reunion—sweet yet realistic. Chizuko accepts they can’t be together as “friends” but multiple fictional afterwords tell of a belated happy ending when Chizuru translates her novel Taiwan Travelogue into Mandarin Chinese after Chizuko’s death.

The ending highlights perfectly what I enjoyed most about this novel: the successful balancing act between genres, cultures, languages, and the two main characters, never slipping completely into cold history nor into rose-coloured romance. Just like the dishes Chi-chan prepares for Chizuko in the cottage by the Yana River, it is cooked and seasoned exactly right.

Everywhere in Japan, nature is balanced with settlement to highlight nature rather than force it back. On that Sunday, April 27, I was excited for what would be my first trip to the Japanese countryside, my first experience of places that weren’t Tokyo, Osaka, or Kyoto1.

Monkeys in the Mountains

Nikkō (日光) has been a place of mountain worship ever since Buddhist monk Shōdō Shōnin (勝道上人) founded Rinnōji (輪王寺) Temple in 766. He was also the first to climb Mt. Nantai (男体山) and succeeded in reaching the 2,486m summit on the third try. In gratitude, he founded Chūzenji (中禅寺) Temple by Lake Chūzenji at the foot of said mountain in 784.

After arriving at Nikkō Station, I spent about fifteen minutes in town before boarding the bus into the mountains. An hour later, I got off in the middle of the woods by Lake Chūzenji and found my hotel further up the hill. It was nestled at the foot of the same Mt. Nantai that Shōdō had climbed over 1,200 years ago. I was desperate to do the same but had found out before my trip that trails would only open on May 5.

I checked in and caught the bus back to Chūgūshi (中宮祠), a town at the eastern tip of Lake Chūzenji. With no convenience stores or chain restaurants in sight, I had dinner at one the few restaurants that were open on Sunday night: delicious mushroom udon and alcohol-free kirin beer. The servers were surprised by my Japanese, perhaps the clearest sign that I wasn’t in Tokyo anymore.

On the way back to the hotel, a group of Japanese macaques casually crossed the street in front of me. Had they come for the famous hot springs too?

With nothing else to do—most restaurants in Chūgūshi close at 8pm, there are no bars that I could see, and the amount of dilapidated, rusted, and empty buildings give off a ghost town vibe especially after dark—I went back to soak in the hotel hot spring. I was alone, save for one girl who came in as I was leaving.

Summering with Diplomats

The next morning, I stumbled upon the first clue that Nikkō had once been a popular summer resort for diplomats and other wealthy foreigners.

One of the first foreigners to develop an interest in Nikkō was English diplomat Sir Ernest Mason Satow. After his arrival in Japan in 1862, he served as interpreter for a residential legation and later for envoy Harry Parkes. Satow wrote of his experiences in Japan, including the turbulent years around the 1868 Meiji Restoration, in his fascinating memoir A Diplomat in Japan.

Parkes would be the first foreigner to visit Nikkō in 1870. Upon his own visit two years later, Satow became interested in the area and even wrote A Guide Book to Nikko, making Nikkō more widely known around the world. In 1896, he built his own villa on the southern shore of Lake Chūzenji and visited many times, collecting plants and climbing the surrounding mountains. His villa later became an auxiliary office of the British Embassy and remained in use until 2008.

Inspired by Satow, many foreigners built their own villas on the lake shore. Nishi-Rokuban Villa was one of them.

Nishi-Rokuban Villa (西六番別荘) was built by Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover2 (1838-1911) on the shore of Lake Chūzenji in 1893. After working for trading company Jardine Matheson in Shanghai, he came to Japan to buy and sell green tea. Soon he founded his own trading company in Nagasaki and the house he had constructed for himself there, now known as Glover Garden, is the oldest Western-style building in Japan.

The scenery of Lake Chūzenji reminded Glover of Scotland and so he invested in growing trout in the nearby Yugawa River and built a villa by the lake so he could spend his summers fishing.

This must have been one of the first of forty villas built in the area between the Meiji and Shōwa periods to be owned by diplomats and other wealthy foreigners. These villas were numbered according to their distance from the mouth of the lake that flows into Kegon Falls. South or West was added depending on which side of the falls the villa was located on, hence Nishi-Rokuban: the sixth (六番 rokuban) villa from the falls to the west (西 nishi). It seems the names of the western villas changed over time as new ones were built or abolished.

After Glover’s death, the villa was purchased by English-Japanese businessman Hans Hunter (1884-1947) in 1927 and turned into a clubhouse for the Tokyo Angling and Country Club. By that time, Nikko had reached the height of its popularity as international summer resort. It’s easy to imagine that Nishi-Rokuban Villa was a popular spot for politicians, businessmen, and diplomats to gather and socialise.

Unfortunately, the villa burned down in 1940 but the concrete mantelpiece, floor tiles, and ice room can still be viewed today along with the garden.

From Samurai House to Hotel

I spent most of that day hiking Senjōgahara Marsh (戦場ヶ原) and Ryūzu Falls (竜頭ノ滝), taking in the mountain scenery that had enchanted Shōdō and Satow, which is now part of Nikkō National Park.

The next morning, I took the bus out of the mountains to spend the last day of my trip in Nikkō proper. I walked the route of world heritage temples and shrines: Rinnōji, Tōshōgū, and Futarasan Shrine. My personal highlight, however, and another connection to the history of foreigners in Nikkō was Kanaya Hotel History House.

In 1870, American medical missionary Dr. James C. Hepburn visited Nikkō and was invited by Kanaya Zen’ichirō (金谷善一郎)3 to stay at his house. Hepburn encouraged his host to open a guest house. Following this advice, Kanaya opened the so-called Kanaya Cottage Inn in 1873 which played an important role in accommodating the influx of foreign visitors after the Meiji Restoration.

The house, originally built in the 1600s, is characteristic of upper-class samurai residences in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) as well as the Shoin-zukuri (書院造, literally study room architecture4) style developed in the Muromachi period (1336-1573), making it a fascinating example of traditional Japanese construction.

Among the notables staying at the “samurai house”, as its guests called it, was English explorer Isabella Bird. During her travels from Edo to Hokkaidō in 1878, she stayed at Kanaya Cottage Inn for 12 days and was enchanted, describing it in her book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.

I don’t know what to write about my house. It is a Japanese idyll; there is nothing within or without which does not please the eye, and, after the din of yadoyas, its silence, musical with the dash of waters and the twitter of birds, is truly refreshing. It is a simple but irregular two-storied pavilion, standing on a stone-faced terrace approached by a flight of stone steps. The garden is well laid out, and, as peonies, irises, and azaleas are now in blossom, it is very bright. The mountain, with its lower part covered with red azaleas, rises just behind, and a stream which tumbles down it supplies the house with water, both cold and pure, and another, after forming a miniature cascade, passes under the house and through a fish-pond with rocky islets into the river below.

After Satow, Bird was the second foreigner to praise Nikkō in writing, which doubtlessly fuelled its popularity all over the world.

Zen’ichirō operated his inn for twenty years. In 1893, he opened the Kanaya Hotel as Japan’s first western-style resort hotel. Today, there are two Kanaya Hotels in the Nikkō area. The original “samurai house” was preserved, registered as nationally-designated cultural property and opened to the public in 2015.

Walking its creaking corridors and admiring the tatami rooms, I could feel the rich history surrounding this house and the role it played in making Nikkō the popular destination it is today. More so than the temples and shrines or the traditional architecture though, it was the nature of Nikkō National Park that fascinated and inspired me. When I return to Nikkō, I will follow the footsteps of Shōdō Shōnin or even Isabella Bird and seek more of those unbeaten tracks.

After all, nature has always provided me with more profound insight than churches, temples, or shrines.

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On March 13th, I learned I had to move out of my apartment by the end of the month.

I had been living in the same short-term rental for over a year, extending the contract every two months—not an ideal living situation. If you wanted to have guaranteed contract extension, you had to pay a one-time fee. I never did and was able to extend my contract every time until March rolled around. In Japan, March is peak moving season because the academic and fiscal year starts on April 1st.

To make matters more complicated, I was going on a work trip between March 22nd and 30th. I had to find a new place to live, as fast as possible.

I started looking the next day. And had an apartment secured only four days later. This is a comprehensive guide on moving in Japan (Tokyo) based on what I learned through my own experience and talking with friends who also moved recently.

Disclaimer: I speak Japanese at JLPT N2 level. This is a huge advantage when looking to rent because it signals you will have no trouble interacting with management companies, utilities providers, complying to rules and regulations etc. I’m not sure how the process differs for those who don’t speak Japanese.

If you’d like Japanese-speaking help with understanding apartment hunting and the application process as a foreigner, by all means reach out to me!

Preparation

Renting in Japan 101

There are different options for accommodation, depending on whether you’re staying in Japan for the short or the long term.

• Share house: You get your own room but share kitchen and bathroom with other residents. This is often recommended for short-term stay or the first few months as searching for an apartment is much easier if you’re already in the country. Oakhouse gets recommended a lot. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about staying in share houses so I can’t recommend it.

• Short-term rental apartment: If you only stay for a few months and can pay the full cost upfront, this might be the option for you. I stayed at a Union Monthly apartment and can recommend it for the short term.

• Regular rental: Two-year contracts are the most common. You need a Japanese bank account and phone number so I would only recommended this if you plan to stay long-term.

If you choose to go with an apartment, there are different types as well as Japan-specific features to consider.

• Apartment (アパート): Wooden property that is two stories tall or less. Since insulation, earthquake resistance, and security are lacking, this is for low budgets.

• Mansion (マンション): Apartment complex that is over three stories tall and constructed from reinforced concrete (RC). The most common rental property.

• Rental home (貸家 kashiya): Small single-family house for rent.

• Room layout: Usually described in terms of number + LDK, where the number stands for the number of bedrooms, L for living room, D for dining room, and K for kitchen. For example, a 2LDK will have two bedrooms, one living room, one dining room, and a kitchen. The most basic layout for single residents is 1K.

• Corner and south-facing units are slightly more expensive.

• On the other hand, first-floor units are slightly cheaper.

• Unfurnished: Doesn’t have a washing machine or fridge but might have a kitchen stove.

• Semi-furnished: Comes with a washing machine and fridge.

• The listed apartment size should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it includes storage space and/or the balcony. Photos are taken at wide angle to make small spaces look bigger so in-person viewing is recommended whenever possible.

The Initial Cost

It’s important to clarify your budget before you start looking for apartments. The initial cost of moving in Japan can be quite expensive, as it includes a variety of different fees.

The below list is a full rundown of fees that made up the initial cost for my apartment. Believe it or not, my initial cost was comparatively low so there might be more depending on the property.

• 1-2 months of rent

• deposit – one month rent

• key money, one-time payment to the landlord or landlady that you do not get back – one month rent

• management fee

• guarantor fee, to be renewed every year – 60% of monthly rent

• renter’s insurance – upfront payment for the full contract term

• fire insurance

• contract fee

• agency fee

The general rule of thumb is that the initial cost will be about 4-5 times the monthly rent expense. Some places have lower initial cost by skipping key money and other fees. Your agent should have suitable suggestions for you if you tell them your budget for rent and initial cost.

Where and How to Search

All Japanese rental agencies have access to the same database of listings that they query to give suggestions to their customers. This means that it doesn’t really matter which website or agency you use. Still, these are the best English-language websites I used during my initial search.

Many agencies offer to communicate via Japanese instant messaging app LINE in addition to email. This is perfectly normal1 and you will often get faster replies if you agree to connect via LINE—if you haven’t yet, I recommend getting the app!

• Wagaya Japan – great English-language support throughout the whole search and application process, however, their support was somewhat lacking after contract signing as I ran into some issues with utilities activation

• Living Japan – extremely competent during the search and application process

• GaijinPot Apartments – this is just listings without a dedicated rental agency, but it can be assumed that all are foreigner-friendly

• LandHousing Japan – English and Thai agency recommended to me by a colleague with friendly and helpful staff that suggested properties that I didn’t see on any other website2

As you look at listings and submit contact forms, take care not to contact the same agency twice. When reaching out to you, they will ask about your preferences and suggest additional properties so you don’t need to request multiple properties from the start.

I mentioned all agencies draw from the same database but I did get different suggestions from different agencies. It’s worth shopping around. Wagaya Japan, Living Japan, and LandHousing Japan are rental agencies with English-speaking support that have been helpful to me during my search.

I’ve also had positive experiences with Sumaino Seika. Their own website seems to be in Japanese but they have listings on other English-language websites where you can contact them via the form.

A note on viewings: Whenever possible, you should view the apartment beforehand. However, an in-person viewing might not always be feasible during busy times such as March and April.

I gave up on viewing soon after starting my search. Any place I was interested in might get applied to while I was viewing it. I did agree to one online viewing because the owner required a viewing before application. Sometimes you can also view the apartment after applying.

The Application Process

In the end, I was able to apply to two places I liked.

This is how the rental application process in Japan works.

• Give all requested information and documents to the rental agency

  • Emergency contacts: You’re required to give emergency contact information for overseas and in Japan. Ideally, the overseas contact is a parent or other relative. The Japan contact should be able to speak Japanese. In some cases it has to be a Japanese national living and working in Japan. You can ask a colleague3 or friend. Most people will agree if you explain that it’s not the same as a guarantor. Some rental agencies agree to provide an emergency contact in Japan for you.

  • Guarantor: This is usually handled by guarantor companies now.

• The rental agency submits the application for you

• Screening of your application

  • If you stated in your application that you speak Japanese, the guarantor company will often call you to verify your details and language ability. For this, your Japanese should be at working N2 level or higher. I got calls for both of my applications and in both cases, they spoke naturally as they would to any native speaker. In one case, they asked a lot of detailed questions. In the other case, they only verified my identity and the property I’d applied for. Sometimes they don’t call at all.

  • Your application needs to be approved by the guarantor company and the owner. Most of the time the owner goes along with the guarantor company’s judgement.

• The rental agency informs you of the result

The time frame can vary from a few days to 1-2 weeks. As far as I’ve heard, the screening usually takes about one week, depending on your desired move-in date.

For me, thanks to the efforts of my agent, the screening went through extremely fast and I got the news that my application was accepted only two days later! This took a load off my shoulders. It meant I could finalise all the details before leaving for my work trip—I literally signed the contract on the day of departure.

The Moving Process

Congratulations on your new apartment! Here’s what happens after your application gets accepted.

• Contract signing and handing over of keys

  • I’m not sure if this is common but during the signing, an employee of my rental agency explained the contract, going through paragraph by paragraph, in plain Japanese. (My agent was there to interpret into English if needed.)

  • I’m assuming the handing over of keys and explanation about building facilities by the management company usually happens during the same appointment4.

• Activation of utilities

  • If your building uses gas, you have to be present at the apartment for the activation.

  • Electricity and water should be straightforward.

  • Some apartments come with free internet service. It’s worth asking if yours does too!

• Registration of your new address

  • This must be done within 14 days of the move!

  • If moving within the same city, go to your municipal office to update your residence card and My Number card.

  • If moving outside of your city, go to your old municipal office to get a “certificate of change of address” (転出届 tenshutsutodoke) that you hand in at your new municipal office to update your residence card. If you have a My Number card, you can have them process the change digitally, without the need for a physical paper certificate. You will still need to visit both municipal offices though.

Once you’ve completed these steps, it’s official! Enjoy your new home.

Happy End

I ended up going forward with the apartment that I had only viewed online before application. At the time of writing this, it’s been one week since I moved and I couldn’t be happier with it! It fulfils most of my initial search conditions.

• Close to work

• Slightly larger than the previous apartment

• Great neighbourhood with lots of shops, restaurants, and services such as post office and coin laundry within a 1-2 minute radius

• Clean building and, as far as I could tell so far, decent neighbours

Of course, it has some drawbacks too, all of which I knew about before committing.

• No view to speak of as the windows face a wall and a stairwell respectively

• No washing machine or fridge, which I had hoped to get with the apartment

• High noise levels during the day as there’s construction right outside the building – this will stop at some point once construction is finished, I’ll just have to endure until then

Still, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for me. And while this apartment search was stressful, it was also a great learning experience about rental properties and moving in Japan.

If you’re looking to move in Japan too, I hope this was useful. Let me know if you have additional questions or concerns, I’d be happy to provide more advice or resources. Good luck!

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It’s another quiet autumn day at Hakurei Shrine—shrine maiden Reimu is sweeping fallen leaves, chatting to her friend Marisa on the porch.

Suddenly Yukari Yakumo, the yōkai of borders, steps out of a tear in space and chucks 2000 yen into the shrine’s offering box. She asks them about a tree behind the shrine that was previously destroyed by lightning but grew back towering over its clearing in a short amount of time. Does Reimu know anything about that?

She doesn’t. Before it was struck by lightning, she started worshipping it, building an altar and leaving offerings but abandoned the idea soon after.

Yukari scolds her.

Gods will inhabit pretty much any object. It may be just a tree, but the moment you start worshipping it, a god starts living in it. The god who inhabited this tree must be rather regretful, after you abandoned it and all.

Later, Yukari approaches Sunny Milk, Luna Child, and Star Sapphire, three mischievous fairies of the forest who are planning to move into the tree. Fairies are spirits of nature and can help living things grow but the trio says they aren’t strong enough to make a tree grow so quickly.

Be that as it may, Yukari is protective of the tree and decides she will test the fairies to determine if they’re fit to live in it.

Meanwhile, Reimu has been thinking about what Yukari said to them. Hakurei Shrine marks the border between the world they live in, Gensōkyō, and the outside world, divided by the Hakurei Boundary. In a way, the shrine belongs to both worlds.

Let’s say you split a garden in half with a wall. One side north, the other south. Now, which garden does the wall belong to? (…) Let’s say the wall does belong to the north side. Then, inbetween the wall and the south side another boundry is created. In other words, the moment the wall becomes part of either of the gardens, it ceases to be the boundary between them. And this shrine is right in the middle of that boundary. What this means is that it belongs to neither. Or, if you look at it in a different way, to both. I believe it’s the latter, personally. You’re free to go to and from Gensokyo, and many things find their way here from the other side.

The tree is “right where the boundary meets”. Could that have something to do with its unusual growth?

The fairies are having trouble escaping Yukari’s onslaught of attacks. They’re not strong so Yukari beats them up with little resistance. Finally she declares that they pass the test—she only wanted to know if they were weak enough to not corrupt the tree with their powers.

Leaving the fairies to celebrate, Yukari returns to Reimu and Marisa to reveal that the current tree came from the outside world after its predecessor was destroyed by lightning. It’s not the same tree!

The tree belonging to the barrier split apart, and the barrier itself grew smaller. The tree from the outside world came to fill in that hole. The area around that is connected to the outside world. (…) Such a large tree, and yet not a single fairy living in it. The air around it was warm, and yet dirty. It was easy to tell.

Usually a tree like that wouldn’t die from a lightning bolt but Reimu weakened it by forgetting to worship it. The moment she started believing in its deity, it started existing—when she stopped, it died off just as quickly.

Living up to her role as wise yōkai elder, Yukari used the fairies to fill the hole in the new tree. As spirits of nature, the fairies are an embodiment of Gensōkyō itself and therefore suitable to fill that hole. After all, it would be bad if anyone could move between Gensōkyō and the outside world (possibly Yukari wants to keep that privilege to herself).

After the fairies come to live in the tree, they are often spotted playing pranks around the shrine. Even fewer visitors come, leaving even less money in the offering box.

The end.

Touhou Project

This story appears in chapters 23 to 25 of Touhou Sangetsusei ~ Strange and Bright Nature Deity, a manga series belonging to the multimedia franchise Touhou Project. I’ve written about the popularity of Touhou Project before.

One big reason why I love Touhou is that it tells stories about belief, religion, and the human relationship to the supernatural through silly and mischievous characters wreaking havoc and getting intro trouble.

Those three chapters from Strange and Bright Nature Deity touch on all these themes, starting with how and why Gensōkyō was created and ending with the relationship between humans and yōkai. Let’s take a closer look.

The Creation Myth

According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, Gensōkyō was originally nothing more than a remote spot in the mountains. Around 500 years ago, however, humans were beginning to lose faith in deities and spirits, weakening the yōkai living among them. Yukari Yakumo, yōkai of space and boundaries, decided to create a boundary of illusion and reality around Gensōkyō to give yōkai a place to live that was separate from human reality. And so the land of fantasy was born1.

What strikes me is how Gensōkyō and the Hakurei Boundary are described to differentiate them from the real world. For example, Touhou Bougetsushou ~ Cage in Lunatic Runagate says Gensōkyō exists within the borders of uncommon sense to explain certain events taking place on the backside of the moon.

Gensokyo was separated from the outside world by a border of common sense, and it existed within the borders of uncommon sense.2 To maintain the border as the way it was, everything needed a backside.

Perfect Memento in Strict Sense offers this footnote on the Hakurei Boundary.

It's a boundary of logic, but it is said to have become extremely difficult for humans and youkai alike to pass through it, so it's clearly a strong boundary.

The only place that connects Gensōkyō to the human world is the Hakurei Shrine, residence of shrine maiden protagonist Hakurei Reimu. As mentioned above, Strange and Bright Nature Deity describes it as belonging to both and neither.

Humans and Kami

One core concept of Shintō is that kami live right beside humans. At the same time, sacred space is still marked by shrines, sacred rope and other symbols. Why? In a world where the sacred often looks like the profane, I suppose those symbols help us recognise its dwelling places and avoid being disrespectful (inviting bad luck or curses)3.

Perfect Memento in Strict Sense acknowledges that it is human belief in them that creates and maintains kami.

The powers of the divine spirits come from the power of faith. If they have many believers, they will have a greater influence on humans and youkai, and the shrine will also become greater4. Conversely, when faith decreases, their powers of influence will become weaker, and their shrine will begin to decline.

Humans pray to kami for health, safety, and success—it is easy to imagine that humans in Gensōkyō ask their kami to protect them from the resident yōkai. In other words, humans rely on kami to maintain the order they have established in the spaces they inhabit and to keep the outer world at bay.

Mircea Eliade describes this role of the sacred in The Sacred and the Profane. Traditional societies distinguished between their inhabited territory and the unknown space surrounding it. The former is their world or cosmos, the latter is a foreign, chaotic “other world”, populated by demons, ghosts, “foreigners”.

Whenever these societies settled a new place, they consecrated it by building an altar or temple. This is effectively a transformation from chaos into cosmos, mirroring the primordial act of creation that lies at the core of so many religions and mythologies.

When they tilled the desert soil, they were in fact repeating the act of the gods who had organized chaos by giving it a structure, forms, and norms.5

Kami, specifically the kami revered at Hakurei Shrine, exist to keep the chaos, represented by yōkai and other supernatural beings in Gensōkyō, at bay. But wouldn’t it be more effective to exterminate those supernatural beings altogether?

Humans and Yōkai

Similar to kami and humans, the yōkai and humans of Gensōkyō also form a symbiotic relationship. As explained by Yukari in Cage in Lunatic Runagate, yōkai eat humans but can’t eat all of them because they would starve. Humans, on the other hand, fear yōkai but can’t exterminate them because Gensōkyō was created for yōkai in the first place.

Youkai need to attack people because if they don’t do so, their very existence will be at risk, so youkai will attack humans. The lives of those who live in Gensokyo are maintained by the youkai. If there were no youkai in Gensokyo, Gensokyo would collapse. Thus, humans will not forget the fear that they have for the youkai and yet will not exterminate the youkai that might attack them, since doing so would destroy Gensokyo. The opposite is also true, and if youkai didn’t have any humans to attack, the youkai would lose the meaning of their existence. Thus, youkai may attack humans but do not eat them recklessly. Humans from the town are generally not for their eating under the contract.

You could say that any humans dumb or delusional enough to settle in such a place made their own bed.

What would happen if humans and yōkai were to mix in this environment? We probably don’t want to find out—Reimu at least firmly believes that if a human turned into a yōkai, it would spell the destruction of Gensōkyō6.

Afterword

Touhou Project is a setting born out of humanity’s need for the sacred and supernatural. It helps us distinguish the real from the unreal. Both the sacred and the supernatural play important roles for human society: Humans make sense of the world by separating their ordered territory from the disordered chaotic outside world and clearly defining their borders.

Still, they need to interact with the outside world every now and then to prevent stagnation and decay. Therefore there are touching points that enable communication and exchange between both worlds in Gensōkyō, such as Suzunaan, a bookshop that deals in yōkai books, and Kōrindō, an antique shop led by half-yōkai Morichika Rinnosuke that often buys and sells artifacts from the modern world. At the same time, this communication is monitored by gatekeepers such as Yukari, author of Perfect Memento in Strict Sense Hieda no Akyū, and Reimu herself.

And so humans and yōkai coexist peacefully in Gensōkyō, as humans and the sacred coexist in modern-day Japan and elsewhere… or do they?

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Japanese-English translation note: Translations of Touhou Sangetsusei by DamageDesu. Translations of Touhou Bougetsushou by Sabino. Translations of Touhou Suzunaan by Clarste.

I was told it never snowed in Tokyo. Indeed, it only lasted for two days but those two days were magical.

一

Originating from China, the Japanese plum flowers in January and February. Its popularity is only topped by the cherry, which flowers in April. Both trees form their buds during the previous summer, which become dormant during the longer autumn nights. Plum trees flower earlier than cherries because they need fewer days of intense cold before breaking this dormancy. As soon as temperatures increase, they wake to grace us with their delicate fragrance1.

二

In Japan, the plum has carried poetic and legendary significance since ancient times. The most well-known tale is the Legend of the Flying Plum Tree or 飛梅 tobiume: When revered ninth century poet and scholar Sugawara no Michizane was falsely accused of treason and lost favour with the court in Kyōto, he was forced to leave for remote Dazaifu in Kyūshū. Sad to part with his favourite plum tree, he wrote a poem expressing his feelings.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

東風吹かば Kochi fukaba
にほひをこせよ nioi o kose yo
梅の花 ume no hana
主なしとて aruji nashi tote
春を忘るな haru o wasuru na

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

When the east wind blows,
flourish in full bloom,
you plum blossoms!
Even though you lose your master
don't be oblivious to spring.

Now, his beloved plum tree stands in front of the main hall of Kitano Tenmangū Shrine in Kyōto, which is dedicated to Michizane and features the plum blossom in its emblem.

三

There’s also a kabuki play about Sugawara no Michizane, which is traditionally performed in March. Titled 寺子屋 Terakoya, it tells the story of one loyal retainer sheltering his lord’s son, even at the cost of killing another child. The kabukiza theatre website summarises the play as follows.

The former imperial minister and master calligrapher Kan Shōjō has now been exiled and his family are in grave danger. Takebe Genzō was Kan Shōjō's most gifted disciple. Genzō runs a small school in the country and is sheltering Kan Shōjō's son and heir, Kan Shūsai, whom they are trying to pass off as their own son. However, word has reached the enemy that Kan Shūsai is at their school and Genzō has been ordered to behead him. Moreover, the retainer Matsuōmaru who knows Kan Shūsai's face is to come to inspect the head. Genzō's only hope is to kill one of the other students as a substitute. On that day, a new student named Kotarō who has a refined bearing arrives. Genzō takes the terrible decision to kill him in place of his lord's son.

It is said that after Michizane’s death, lightning struck the Emperor’s residence many times. Out of fear of the scholar’s vengeful spirit, Kitano Tenmangū Shrine was built and dedicated to him.

四

The Japanese plum features in many lists of plants and flowers. The 四君子 Shikunshi or Four Gentlemen have deep significance in traditional arts such as tea ceremony and feature the plum alongside the bamboo, orchid, and chrysanthemum2.

There’s also the 歳寒三友 Saikan no San’yū or Three Friends of Winter, a traditional art motif that includes the pine, plum, and bamboo, and the 雪中四友 Setchū no Shiyū or Four Friends of the Snow, a list of flowers that bloom in the snow that includes plum, wintersweet, camellia, and daffodil.

五

If you need even more proof that the plum has cast deep roots in Japanese culture, the name of the current Japanese era 令和 reiwa takes its inspiration from an ancient poem about plum blossoms.

時に、初春の令月にして、気淑く風和ぎ、梅は鏡前の粉を披き、蘭は珮後の香を薫す。
Toki ni, Shoshun no reigetsu ni shite, kiyoku kaze yawaragi, ume wa kyōzen no ko o hiraki, ran wa haigo no kō o kaorasu.

In this auspicious month of early spring, the weather is fine and the wind gentle. The plum blossoms open like powder before a mirror while the orchids give off the sweet scent of a sachet.3

It has connotations of beautiful harmony and culture flourishing when people come together in mind.

六

The plum blossom continues to be a symbol of harmony and elegant beauty in the cold season. It’s dear to me as one of the first examples in a rich world of literary and cultural symbolism that greeted me after my arrival: plum blossoms in the snow. Through learning about this symbolism and its roots, we also learn larger lessons about appreciating every season, every day in the nature around us and the experiences we share.

What’s your favourite flower or tree and does it have symbolic meaning in your culture? I certainly hope to learn and share more as I keep experiencing the seasons in different places in Japan!

What are kissaten1? If you think of café types in Japan, kissaten are as far away from chains like Starbucks and Doutor as you can get.

Initially surging in popularity during Japan’s post-war era, kissaten were meant to cater to people like writers and businessmen who needed a quiet space to read, think and converse in low tones over a coffee and a light meal. Think of them as a type of cozy shelter from the incessant goings-on of the city, a place divorced from time.2

Many kissa are furnished and decorated in the Shōwa retro style: dark wood, leather booths or mismatched chairs, floral patterns, crammed to the brim with books, magazines, and knickknacks, all illuminated by the dusty haze of one too many cigarettes and days gone by.

To find the perfect kissa, I had to wait in the freezing cold for thirty minutes. I had no idea when a seat would open up, was debating leaving and coming back another time. Something about the worn wooden door and the tiny cat figurines wedged into every crack of the grey brick shopfront kept me there.

Finally the door opens and I’m greeted by a European-chic young lady who welcomes me in a wispy high-pitched voice, the most anime girl voice I’ve ever heard outside a screen. After exchanging my shoes for indoor slippers, I climb a steep staircase, so narrow I’m scared of falling back down or bumping my head. Until I’m seated, the kissa feels like a space at least two sizes too small.

In addition to the three tables downstairs, the second floor has another four tables of varying sizes in what I envision to be the young woman’s living room: low bookshelves, colourful stained glass lamps, glass tabletops, every available surface crammed with plants, cat figurines, and stranded Christmas decorations. There’s still a tree in the corner. It makes you believe time has come to a halt, preserving a rich rainbow-coloured slice of the Shōwa era. The quiet is fragrant with soft choral music playing in the background.

The menu comes with “requests to customers” in Japanese on the first page and awkward but endearing English on the second.

• First-time customers are asked to speak in a quiet voice that cats will like. “It’s a small and quiet shop, so it would be helpful if you didn’t advertise it (because cats are sensitive to crowds. I’m sorry…)”

• Please don’t stay longer than two hours or if you do, order another drink.

• Customers with cat allergies or who don’t like cats are asked to refrain from visiting. “This is my home and shop, so sometimes cats are relaxing in the shop.”

• It’s not a cat café so customers are asked to not touch or disturb the cats. “It seems that the cat will feel relieved if you can gently watch over it with a moderate sense of distance.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen a café that doesn’t want to be advertised, citing that cats hate crowds. I’m charmed. After a while, I notice a fluffy grey-white fur ball sleeping in a cushioned basket on another table. The young man sitting at the table is typing away on his Macbook, only occasionally gazing at the cat. Is he checking she’s still comfortable or stocking up on cute and soothing vibes?

As an Austrian, I had to order “Vienna coffee”, which turns out to be Einspänner—two shots of espresso, topped with whipped cream and served in a high glass. It comes with a glass of iced water and one Biscoff cookie on the side. It’s delicious.

The longer I sit, the more obvious it becomes that it’s the cats ruling this café. The chic young lady only acts as custodian for them. True, they were doing little more than sleep and munch on dry cat food on a high corner platform but their imperious gazes leave no doubt that they would leap to action the second someone misbehaves.

Two men creak up the stairs and occupy the largest table with their big black jackets, their male-perfumed bodies, and one DSLR camera squatting on the glass tabletop like a panther. One speaks American-accented English, the other Japanese, both are dominating in their noise. They chat about the alcoholic drinks on the menu, photos they took, and lunch plans for the next day, Monday.

They ask the chic young lady to take a picture for them. Ever the gracious hostess, she complies but only looks to the Japanese-speaking man for instruction and confirmation. In Japan, foreigners that boisterous are either shunned or brushed off with “Sorry, my English is not good”.

The men leave quickly. Perhaps they were hoping for a different place. Perhaps they were uncomfortable in the quiet. Perhaps they didn’t care for the cats—I can’t claim to understand but there are in fact people who don’t care for cats.

The cats certainly didn’t care for them. Their magic is only for those already susceptible to falling through time and space.

Peace returns. When I climb downstairs, the chic young lady apologises to me for the long wait. I thank her for the delicious coffee and the wonderful atmosphere. The tiny cat figurines watch as we exchange bows of goodbye and gratitude. As I cross the street and make my way to the nearest subway station, memories of the café warm me against the winter night. Despite the distance—over one hour on the train from where I live—and the limited seating, I vow to return soon.

What is it about this café? Like many others, it resembles a second living room but better: I’m not fond of cramming my own apartment with clutter, however cosy. I don’t make delicious beverages reminiscent of Vienna coffee house culture. I haven’t been ruled by a cat in many years and yes, I miss it. Perhaps the appeal lies in the idealised living space, untouched by the monastic Scandi-Ikea-Instagram aesthetic that we can’t seem to escape and watched over by beings shaped like cats that might as well be bakeneko3.

Whatever it is, I only know that I’ve found my perfect kissa. And I can’t tell you its name or location because I was asked to protect its timeless Shōwa retro magic. Trust that if you’re meant to find it, you will.

What is it that makes Japanese living spaces so alluring?

I.

If beauty is an ideal, it must still be anchored in reality. We define beauty in relation to whatever we find ourselves surrounded by. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō discusses the notion of beauty in In Praise of Shadows, his famous 1933 essay on Japanese architecture and aesthetics.

The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.

Traditional Japanese homes were wooden structures with small windows or lattices to keep the summer heat out. Fire was a hazard and so the interior remained dark. According to Tanizaki, where Westerners would seek ways to improve the situation, the Japanese saw darkness as inevitable and even immersed themselves in it.

We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce, then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.

From architecture to lacquerware design, shadows came to be seen as beautiful.

II.

The same could be said for clutter. As an island nation, forced to arrange itself with scarcity of liveable space, Japan has always been good at getting the most out of that limited space. The Japanese are masters of both clutter and decluttering, as Matt Alt has written recently.

Matt also mentions Tokyo Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, which I finally bought after it haunted me in different bookshops and in my dreams for weeks on end. It is a photo book with sparse description, reissued and translated into English thirty years after its original publication.

First published in 1993 after the collapse of Japan’s infamous bubble economy, photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s book Tokyo Style showcases the unfiltered realities of a handful of ordinary people living in one of the world’s most fetishised cities.1

The author claimed that media portrayals of luxurious living spaces of the eighties bubble economy moved him to capture and show how ordinary people made the spaces they lived in charming.

Tokyo Style invites the viewer to refocus their lens when it comes to the romanticisation of everyday life in the city. Challenging the picture-perfect minimalism so often sold as archetypal Japanese living, the one hundred or so homes immortalised by Tsuzuki narrate a love story so many living out their fantasies against the backdrop of high-density urbanism will resonate with.

Tsuzuki’s photography elevates clutter to style that you want to emulate. Whenever I pick up this book, I can’t stop flipping its pages, getting inspired and dreaming of decorating my own space, filling it with all the things I love. This might be another example of not only resigning yourself to the situation you find yourself in—the apartment you can afford2—but actually leaning into it, making it into a creative expression of yourself. You don’t need a ton of space to do that.

III.

Indeed, another striking feature in these photos is the individuality that shines through in furnishings and decorations. Many of these interiors showcase their residents’ tastes or favourite activities, in a way that might have been more common before the digital age.

Tsuzuki himself says looking at these photos fills him with nostalgia now, implying that the aesthetic has moved away from hyper-individuality towards the more polished, pastel-coloured minimalism of Instagram and Ikea. I would argue there are still plenty of corners where individuality shines through.

My neighbourhood can be classified as residential suburb, I think, comprised of family homes with the odd apartment complex thrown in. It’s small homes with vegetable patches, old-fashioned low mansions with beautifully curated gardens of pines and flowers and tiny shrines in back corners. It’s a fancy yellow sports car with tools haphazardly stacked on shelves nearby and fans hanging from the corrugated iron roof. It’s a white front door half hidden by flowerpots. Of course, it’s also balconies full of fresh laundry because that’s what balconies are used for here.

To me, all of that screams of individuality (excluding the laundry) and so I often roam the narrow streets, looking at houses. I dream of decorating my own apartment with a more personal touch too, hindered for the time being by limited funds and the fact that the furniture isn’t mine. Still, I learn from the Japanese and make the most of the situation I find myself in: living in a simple space with hanging scrolls, tea bowls on my kitchen shelf and books stacked in corners.

It has its faults but it’s not the worst of places. And on weekends, I hang my laundry on the balcony to dry.

IV.

By the way, I’m in good company. Poet and traveller Matsuo Bashō was content with grass for a pillow and appreciated simplicity.

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.3

Do you agree? Are you obsessed with ordinary living spaces too or content to lay your pillow wherever you find yourself?

Historically, women have often been excluded from public activities and official records. This is also true for tea ceremony, as Japanese traditional arts have been largely dominated by men until the last century. This doesn’t mean that women didn’t participate in tea ceremony at all—on the contrary, there is evidence that they did so as far back as the early modern Edo period!

From Zen to the Cultured Lady

Why is Japanese tea in particular dominated by men? Like its written characters and Buddhism, powdered green tea was first introduced to Japan from China. From the early 9th century, it spread first in temples and the court, then among the warrior class1. Early tea gatherings were focused on tasting different teas and appreciating luxurious utensils.

Starting from the 15th century, however, tea was simplified and the connection with zen strengthened again. This trend culminated with Sen no Rikyū (1522-1591): Son of a merchant, he studied zen and tea ceremony from a young age before becoming tea master and adviser to Toyotomi Hideyoshi. A replica of the famous golden tea room Rikyū built for Hideyoshi can be viewed at Osaka Castle. Even though he had to satisfy Hideyoshi’s lavish tastes, Rikyū’s personal preference was the simple “grass hut” style of making tea that had been refined by his teachers and that he would pass on to his students. Today he is revered as founding father of the three most prominent tea schools in Japan2. The connection to zen, merchants, and the nobility also meant that tea was dominated by men for much of its recorded history.

After the Second World War, tea ceremony experienced a boom in popularity especially among women. Female tea is showcased in print media of the era, such as this photo book digitised and explained by of Old Photos Japan.

These changes culminated with a boom in the popularity of the Japanese tea ceremony after the end of the Second World War in 1945 (Showa 20). The tea ceremony schools attracted a growing number of students during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth.

In the late Showa period (1926–1989), several important collections of tea ceremony masters were acquired by art museums, while the publishing industry put out an increasing number of books about sadō. The growing number of students, and the interest by museums and publishers lead to the tea ceremony being widely recognized as a cultured hobby, which in turn fanned its popularity.

As seen in the photo book, tea came to be viewed as a cultured and elegant hobby for the young lady, an image that persists to this day.

Handbooks of Tea

However, women practised tea ceremony even in the Edo period, although more covertly. As Rebecca Corbett argues in her book Cultivating Femininity, Edo women were more socially mobile than men and tea was a useful skill to climb the social ladder, either to find a marriage partner or to serve in an elite household.

Commoner girls learned “refined arts” and served in elite households. This contributed to the merging of elite and popular culture that was already happening in other places, most notably in kabuki. The play Mirror Mountain. A Woman’s Treasury of Loyalty3, for example, describes the tension between two attendants at a daimyō mansion, one a samurai daughter with martial arts training and the other a commoner. Even the fact that these tensions could exist proves that attendants served as “bridging class” between town and village, commoners and samurai4.

Marriage provided another opportunity for commoners to move up in society. Unlike service, this was a way to truly leave one status group and enter another. It was also a path uniquely available to women. Men could achieve the same by being adopted as sons-in-law, perhaps a less common practice. Needless to say, parents were willing to invest in their daughters’ education in hopes that she might score a good marriage.

Tea was a significant part of that education. How would commoner girls have learned it? In the Edo period, tea culture circulated not only through oral transmission but also through written manuscripts. Tea masters compiled their teachings that were then circulated among disciples and private networks.

And why manuscripts? Despite the rise of woodblock printing and a commercial publishing industry, manuscripts continued to be produced to transmit secret or restricted knowledge precisely because their reach was limited compared to more modern production methods. Tea handbooks were probably circulated through lending libraries5. Most Edo period women were literate. Some were even involved in the publishing industry as copyists, publishers, and booksellers, where they would have had access to those tea handbooks as well.

Was tea alone useful enough for a women to rise in rank though? Corbett cites one example that seems too good to be true, of a woman who married into the highest echelons of society.

The Greengrocer’s Daughter

She is known as Keishōin (1627-1705), as described by Susanne Formanek:

The daughter of a Kyoto-based greengrocer who, via her getting appointed to the service of a lord who had access to the shogunal residence, managed to enter service in the shogun’s palace itself, became the lesser wife of the third shogun Iemitsu and upon her son Tsunayoshi being appointed to the fifth shogun, became one of the most influential female figures in the realm.

Talk about climbing the social ladder! Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto still has a plaque dedicated to her.

Other women, too, rose after finding employment as attendants in elite households. Nishimiya Hide, daughter of a low-ranking samurai, became attendant to Yoshiko, wife of Mito domain lord Tokugawa Nariaki, because she was trained in tea. When she interviewed for the position, her personal appearance, ability to compose poems, and skill at tea were inspected by Yoshiko herself. Skills such as flower arrangement and playing music were highly valued as well.

How were tea skills put to use? At Edo Castle, secondary attendants and antechamber attendants were responsible for selecting and arranging utensils for tea gatherings. Women of secondary attendant rank hailed from high-ranking samurai families and were highly accomplished in the mentioned cultural skills.

The Precocious Hostess

The household of Ii Naosuke (daimyō of Hikone, 1815-1860) was yet another environment where tea skills would have been put to good use. An ardent and accomplished tea practitioner, he frequently included women in his tea gatherings and writings on tea culture. His tea gatherings involving women were of an intimate, familial nature. In his transcriptions of other contemporary tea texts, he didn’t hesitate editing the parts he didn’t agree with.

For example, these sources state that the order of seating among guests of a tea gathering should be determined by the man’s social position. Naosuke, however, commented: “This is not the Way of Tea; social position has no place in the tearoom; the positions are determined by that day’s main guest.” He also had no qualms with male or female hosts inviting a member of the opposite sex to a tea gathering.

In fact, his daughter Yachiyo is another well-known female practitioner. She studied tea ceremony from a young age and allegedly hosted her first tea gathering at age nine. She is frequently mentioned as formal guest in Ii household tea gatherings and occasionally hosted them too, with her mother, tea instructor Katagiri Sōtetsu or prominent family retainers as guests.

In 1858, she was married to Matsudaira Yoritoshi, after which there is no more record of her tea activities. However, she likely continued practicing tea, serving as host or honoured guest for tea gatherings in her husband’s household.

Tea as a Female Art

Overall, tea seems to have been a space of surprising equality within the class-based society of the Edo period, a space where nobles and retainers, men and women were able to enjoy tea together.

The majority of women who participated in the gatherings were attendants, women we know only by their first names, such as Tase and Makio. These attendants were not merely studying tea and attending gatherings as companions to the women they served; they were listed as guests in their own right, and some were even hosts on occasion. Thus, they sat alongside the daimyo and his retainers (some of whom were accomplished practitioners with tea names) as equal participants in the social network.

Today, over 80% of tea ceremony practitioners in Japan are women6. Tea is seen as a desirable skill for the young woman and wife. Yet out of the three most prominent tea schools, Urasenke continues its tradition of appointing male iemoto while Omotesenke does not allow women to achieve the highest rank7.

It is my hope that women will increasingly receive the recognition and rank they deserve in the future, honouring the fact that they have practiced tea alongside men and formed their own styles for much of its recorded history.

If you are interested in tea or just curious about what Japan has to offer in terms of traditional arts, this is for you!

This list will be updated as I visit new places so feel free to bookmark and check back frequently!

Tea houses

1. Te Hong

Te Hong, located in Minami-Aoyama, close to Nezu Museum, offers a variety of Japanese and Chinese teas with traditional sweets that are prepared in the shop as well. Of course, I had to try the matcha first: There are three varieties to choose from, ranging in price from 1500 to 3000 yen. I went with the shopkeeper’s recommendation, the mellow chōan 長安. It was served in a hagi ware tea bowl, with mizu yōkan that was extremely soft but also firm and not to sweet—the perfect refreshment on a hot summer day.

While Te Hong is a tea house first and foremost, they also sell a few tea utensils at the usual high prices. It’s worth visiting for the ambience and the décor alone.

Closest subway station: Omotesandō

Shops for tea utensils

2. Hoeido

Hōeidō 宝永堂 in Machida is probably the largest tea utensil store in Japan. Don’t be fooled by the jewellery and fancy eyewear on the first floor—the second and third floors are all tea ceremony, with the second being the main shop floor and the third serving as a gallery for the most high-end items. If you want something specific but not too rare that’s not available online or if you have the cash to splurge, Hōeidō is your go-to. Shop attendants are as friendly, knowledgeable and helpful as you would expect from a high-end shopping experience.

If you live in Japan, you can subscribe to their monthly newsletter, a brochure advertising latest arrivals and sales.

Closest subway station: Machida

3. Hanazono Shrine Flea Market

The flea market at Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku takes place every Sunday, weather permitting. Your best bet is to check its X account on the day. There is no official closing time but vendors usually pack up around 3 to 4pm so I would advise coming no later than 3. If you arrive in the afternoon, you might miss out on highlights but vendors are more willing to lower prices if you show some interest.

As it is a flea market, the selection varies but I’ve found hanging scrolls, tea bowls (priced between 500 to 3,000 yen), kettles, and other ceramic and lacquer ware. My most recent find was a beautiful mid-sized iron kettle for 6,000 yen.

Closest subway station: Shinjuku San-chōme

4. Rakuzan

Rakuzan 楽山 in Kagurazaka is a tea shop with a staggering variety of both Eastern and Western teas plus everything you need to prepare a cup. I found a reasonably priced selection of simple but pretty tea bowls, some iron kettles and a smattering of small tea utensils (scoops, whisks, tea caddies). The shop attendant was nice and chatted with me about how to properly care for iron kettles for at least ten minutes.

Closest subway station: Kagurazaka

5. Online

With the exception of Hōeidō, tea shops in Tokyo offer an eclectic selection at best—they’re fun for browsing but not the best if you’re looking for something specific or rare.

In those cases, I usually use the Tankōsha Onlineshop—they offer a wide variety of Urasenke tea equipment and related books—or Yahoo Auctions. The latter is an amazing resource for finding affordable tea utensils in Japan. Many auctions close on Sunday evenings, making it easy to plan your shopping.

Shops for traditional sweets

6. Baikatei

Baikatei 梅花亭, located just down the street from Rakuzan (see shops for tea utensils) in Kagurazaka, has a great selection of seasonal omogashi as well as higashi. If it weren’t so far away, this is where I would buy all my traditional sweets for tea gatherings, omiyage etc.

Judging from the website, they also offer regular cooking workshops followed by tea tastings (only in Japanese).

Closest subway station: Kagurazaka

7. Mizuno

Mizuno みずの, located on Jizō-dōri shopping street1 in Sugamo, is famous for its shio daifuku (daifuku are pounded rice cakes filled with sweet bean paste, this one has salt in it too) but sells other traditional sweets too.

I first visited it with a friend who lives nearby and really want to go back and explore the area some more. Many neighbourhoods probably have little traditional sweet shops like this one.

Closest subway station: Sugamo

8. Pop-up vendors

In Japan, you often find temporary vendors around large to mid-sized subway stations, selling everything from clothing to accessories to healthy supplements. Some sell seasonal sweets like dango, ichigo daifuku, or flavoured mochi. It’s always worth keeping an eye out for them and getting some fresh sweets to go!

Museums & Other

9. Seikado Bunko Art Museum

Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, located next to the Imperial Palace in Marunouchi, offers changing exhibitions every few months, some of which are related to tea ceremony. The exhibition from September to November 2024 was centered entirely around high-class tea utensils, displaying among other treasures one of only three remaining yōhen tenmoku tea bowls. Rare for an art museum, photography was allowed in all areas but one.

Closest subway station: Nijūbashimae

10. Nezu Museum

Nezu Museum, located close to Te Hong in Minami-Aoyama, is an art history museum with a large Japanese garden. Apart from its impressive collection of pre-modern Asian art, it also features a small permanent exhibition on a tea gathering hosted by the museum’s namesake Nezu Kaichirō (1860-1940). The large garden has several traditional tea huts that can be admired from afar and the café is worth visiting for its yuzu tea.

Closest subway station: Omotesandō

11. Kyukyodo

Kyūkyodō 鳩居堂, located in Ginza (right in front of the subway station exit A7), is the go-to incense shop in Tokyo. Skip the stationery and head up to the second floor to browse the wide selection of incense and related equipment. Kyūkyodō is where my tea teacher buys the expensive sandalwood incense used for tea ceremony. It’s also where I buy reasonably priced ordinary incense sticks for my apartment.

Closest subway station: Ginza (exit A7)

For now, these are all the spots I visited and recommend, although I still have a backlog of places to check out. Are you inspired to go out and explore now? Which spot would you like to visit the most? Let me know in the comments and share this article with a friend who likes tea!

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Postscript

This is the first of several articles I’m writing on Japanese tea ceremony, diving deeper into the practice, utensils, its history in China and Japan etc. These will be collected in a new sub-newsletter titled Tea Almanack.

Thank you to everyone who expressed enthusiasm for this new project on Notes. You can expect a lot of traditional Japanese culture and history. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recently posted a sneak peak about visiting two museums with tea-related exhibits. I hope you’re as excited for this new direction as I am!

If you’re not interested in tea (hard to imagine but possible, I guess), you’re free to unsubscribe from the new sub-newsletter with no hard feelings.

According to Touhou Wiki:

The Touhou Project (東方Project), also 東方プロジェクト (Touhou Purojekuto) or Project Shrine Maiden, is a Japanese doujin game series that specialises in shoot 'em ups by sole Team Shanghai Alice member ZUN. Generally, it's a series of 2D (with 3D background) vertically-scrolling danmaku shooting games, that also creates related print works and music CDs.

Still doesn’t tell you much, does it?

What is Touhou?

Many years ago, I was introduced to Touhou by an online friend. With his help, I installed some of the oldest games I had experienced to date on my shitty laptop. They were the original PC-98 Touhou games. I played maybe ten minutes of Highly Responsive to Prayers (first released in 1996) before I got frustrated and moved on.

The premise, however, stuck in my mind: Red-clothed shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei lives and works at Hakurei Shrine, situated on the border between the human realm and Gensoukyou, the realm of supernatural, ghostly, and godly beings. Tasked with defending the humans, she shoots heaps of colourful bullets at her supernatural enemies. Her best friend and secondary player character is broom-riding witch Marisa Kirisame. The games are populated with a kaleidoscope of characters inspired by Japanese mythology and folklore: gods and ghosts, fairies, demons, tanuki, kitsune, and more. Each enemy opens with a few lines of dialogue before plunging into battle with intricate and vivid attack patterns.

When I stumbled upon Touhou Project for the second time, I stayed for the characters, the setting, the stories, the music. Everything but the games, really1. I started reading the manga Strange and Bright Nature Deity. I listened to IOSYS and Akatsuki Records2 on repeat. I helped translate fan works like Forbidden Scrollery and Cage in Lunatic Runagate into German. In short, I fell in love with it.

To me, the success of Touhou Project is as fascinating as the series itself. Outside of Japan, it might be called an underground phenomenon. In Japan, most people know of it thanks to the so-called yukkuris3, talking heads of the main characters that can crop up in Youtube videos explaining or commenting on something completely unrelated to Touhou.

Needless to say, Touhou Project is a long-standing and beloved series. Its success—not only commercial but also in bringing together a diverse and creative fan community—offers inspiration to writers. In analysing it, I hope to learn lessons I can apply to my own writing and storytelling.

What makes Touhou so popular?

Manga, anime, light novels, audio drama, TV, theatre, videogames—Japan has a healthy entertainment industry, to say the least. There’s no shortage of multimedia franchises to choose from. What is it that makes Touhou Project stick out from the crowd?

I believe it comes down to four aspects that Touhou does exceptionally well.

1. Consistent success as indie game series

The creator of Touhou Project, known as ZUN, started making the games by himself while at university. He literally did everything himself: art, coding, music, and selling the CDs. To this day, ZUN creates the main games himself and acts as creative advisor for spin-off games developed by other studios, manga and other print works.

Instead of commercialising and trying to appeal to a wider audience, Touhou has managed to stay true to its original spirit with little variation in the base games.

Perhaps it should not be called indie but rather doujin. Indie games are defined in contrast to AAA games developed by large studios, whereas the Japanese doujin space is characteristically hobbyist and disregards commercial profit. As ZUN first sold his games at Comiket, Japan’s biggest doujin market, Touhou Project can be seen as doujin too4.

2. Challenging but rewarding gameplay

Danmaku (jp. 弾幕, literally “barrage” or “bullet curtain”) or bullet hell games are notoriously difficult to beat. Players invest hours upon hours of practice to not only beat the games but also achieve high scores. There are countless videos and articles with beginner advice, threads full of commiseration about the grind. World record score holders are celebrated.

I lack the patience and dedication to beat Touhou games but to a certain player type, they strike just the right balance between challenging and rewarding. Imagine going through the exact same game two, three, ten times—no one would do it unless they loved it to begin with. Then imagine the satisfaction of beating the final boss of this game you love. In lunatic mode. After weeks of practice.

It’s the difficulty that makes it so rewarding, the repetition that cultivates emotional investment.

3. Lore and storytelling

Many other fans, however, all but ignore the original games. They might have played one or two but to them, the games are not what Touhou is about. Instead, it’s the characters, their adventures and Gensoukyou, the world they inhabit—in other words, the lore.

After 28 year of development, Touhou lore is rich and varied. There are at least 180 characters across 24 games and official print media such as manga and light novels. As mentioned above, the stories follow shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei as she investigates supernatural incidents around Hakurei Shrine and strives to protect humans from the youkai of Gensoukyou. Reimu isn’t your typical shrine maiden though. She is lazy, greedy, hot-tempered, and somehow ends up befriending the very youkai she is supposed to punish or exorcise.

When ZUN first developed Touhou Project, space SF settings were the popular standard for videogames. Still, he deliberately took inspiration from Shinto and Japanese mythology, and that inspiration runs deep: Many story lines make subtle points about the nature of humans vs. supernatural beings, the universe, and the necessity of religion, myths and legends. There is a lot of depth, which I will discuss in a separate essay.

The tone, which alternates between humorous and profound, is a perfect match for the stories too, supporting the lighthearted but also the philosophical.

4. Attitude towards fan works

In addition to official games and print media, there are countless fan-made games, comics, novels, and various merchandise from t-shirts, figurines, and plushies to—I kid you not—stained-glass artwork.

You might wonder: What is it about Touhou that encourages its fans to create?

It’s ZUN’s attitude. He not only allows, but actively encourages fan works and only asks that they get his permission to sell (which he generally gives).

While there’s a fair number of Touhou content at Comiket, Touhou has its own events too. The largest of which is Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai or the Annual Hakurei Shrine Great Festival (a name modelled after traditional shrine festivals, usually shortened to Reitaisai), dedicated solely to selling and buying Touhou fan works. Every year, Reitaisai draws over 50,000 visitors.

Remixing

More often than not, there is no one secret ingredient we can point to that makes a successful series. With Touhou, I believe it’s the combination of these four aspects: its doujin game status, gameplay, lore, and fan community, that make it as popular as it is.

What does this teach us? It’s never one brilliant idea but always the unique combination of two or more ideas or aspects that make a good story. This is true not only for plot but also for genre, format, medium, anything you can think of. Keep combining familiar elements in new ways. When you’ve hit on something that’s unique enough readers will keep coming back for more.

Since coming to Japan, I haven't had a chance to practice tea ceremony. It still feels like my practice has deepened though because this is the holy land—no need to import everything from tea utensils to clothing to the tea itself, like we do in Europe. Everything is within easy reach.

I am lucky to have guides pointing me towards the best resources. They have taken me to flea markets, to the largest tea utensil store in the Tokyo area, and to hunt for tea books at second-hand stores. At a friend's recommendation, I started reading 『日本人の心、伝えます』 (Nihonjin no kokoro, tsutaemasu) by Sen Genshitsu, the previous head of Urasenke tea school.

Compared to The Wisdom of Tea by Morishita Noriko, it is less personal, more instructional but Daisōshō-sama (as we respectfully call him) does add the occasional personal anecdote to illustrate his instructions1. With his gentle and humble voice, reading the book feels like enjoying a fresh cup of usucha (thin tea). My tea practice has changed a lot since I wrote You Must Offer Serenity, my first essay about practicing tea ceremony, so I wanted to collect these additional insights gleaned from a book that is only available in Japanese.

How to enter the tea room

If you are invited to a traditional tea gathering, you enter the tea house through the nijiriguchi, an entrance about 65 cm tall and 60 cm wide. Every guest has to crawl in on all fours. This entrance was developed by founder of Japanese tea ceremony Sen no Rikyū.

We go through daily life with deeply ingrained ideas about hierarchies and status that help us navigate society and function as a civilization. The nijiriguchi, however, invites us to leave those notions behind when we enter a tea room. Instead, we should be like babies, born into the world with no prior knowledge or concern for their place in society.

If everyone is the same, we can enjoy a peaceful cup of tea together.

この枠組みは私たちの意識の奥深くにまで根を張っているため、取り去るのは容易ではありません。 (35)

Even Daisōshō acknowledges in the above quote that it is no easy feat to cast off these notions. This, too, is part of practicing the way of tea.

The World

Most tea rooms are small, only four and a half tatami mats or 7.4 square meters. Konnichian, the most famous tea room of Urasenke tea school in Kyoto, is just big enough for the host and one guest.

Far from feeling cramped, however, tea rooms invite nature in through windows and sliding doors: sunlight, moonlight, the breeze. Thus, the room grows in size to encompass the whole world. Sitting in such a tea room, you feel connected to the universe not only through the tea you drink—that grew on fields somewhere far away, was harvested, ground into powder, shipped to sellers, and eventually purchased to be enjoyed in a tea room—but also through the space around you.

茶室は極小なのに、無限の広がりが感じ取れる場所です。 (37)

茶室のあの小さくほの暗い空間は、自然、そして広大な宇宙とつながっています。(39)

Respect and humility

When the guest receives their tea, they turn the bowl so the side that was presented to them faces the host before drinking. Why do we turn the bowl?

The usual answer is: If the bowl is decorated with a picture or pattern, we want to avoid drinking from that side. According to Daisōshō, this is not wrong but also not correct.

If the tea bowl does not have any patterns or pictures, for example, the front (or shōmen) is the side the host presents to you when they offer you the bowl to drink. In fact, you turn the bowl out of respect for the host. The feeling should be the same as when you say to the other guests: "Excuse me for drinking first." Host or guests—each and every person in the tea room should treat the others with respect and consideration.

Only when you abandon all pretentiousness and worldly desires can you learn and practice humility, which is what the way of tea is all about.

茶道とは、見栄や欲をできる限り捨てて、己の心をみつけるための道筋です。(43)

Gratitude to the host for making tea for us, as well as to the guest for enjoying the tea we made with care, brings a feeling of humility with it too.

感謝の気持ちが生まれると、謙虚な思いが湧いてきます。(41)

Again, words are fleeting and it is hard to express the appeal of tea ceremony. What I will say is that through sharing tea and practicing together, I have experienced rare feelings of connection with others. I owe some of my dearest friends to tea ceremony and am looking forward to continue practicing and meeting more fellow practitioners.

If there is one thing you take away from this article, I hope it is this: Tea is not just a hobby, it is a way of life.

After arriving in Tokyo, the first sightseeing trip I indulged in was to Ginza to see the Art Aquarium Museum in famous Mitsukoshi Department Store. For this exhibition, goldfish aquariums, decoration, neon lighting and trance music were arranged to create a unique and inspiring experience. I discovered not only traditional Japanese influences but also new and exciting ideas.

Photos are mine unless otherwise noted, but completely unedited. I have to admit: I don’t know much about photo editing and the last weeks have been so busy, I just wanted to get something out to the stack. Forgive me and appreciate them for what they are: un-instagrammed.

Vermillion Treasure

Goldfish themselves have been beloved pets in Japan since 1502, when Chinese traders first sold them to samurai and nobility. A vermillion colour with a gold glint was seen as doubly lucky as gold represents wealth and red is said to dispel illness or misfortune. Until about 1868, however, only aristocrats could afford to keep goldfish.1

Back then, the fish were kept in ponds or porcelain pots. Because they could only be watched from above, varieties without any dorsal fins or with tail fins that spread out to the sides were considered most attractive.2

With the modernization of Japan in the Meiji period, more people began to cultivate goldfish and breed different varieties. Kingyō-sukui3 where you try to scoop up live fish with a paper ladle has been a popular game at summer festivals ever since the Edo period. From woodblock prints to hand towels and keychain pendants, goldfish remain a central element in Japanese popular culture and art.

Echoes of Tradition

One popular exhibit was a series of short square aquariums on pedestals, lighted from below so we could observe the goldfish drifting and interacting among sparse foliage. Looking in from above or from the side, the water surface distorted the view, multiplied the fish—this harkens back to the Edo period when goldfish were admired from above. The pedestals were decorated with kimono obi featuring beautiful traditional patterns, many of which symbolize long life, prosperity or luck.

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, is not only about paper cranes but also has ceremonial uses (in which case it is called origata). Slips or ropes of folded white paper are used to purify or to signify sacred space. The huge faceted fishbowl with paper goldfish in the background was obviously inspired by origami.

Traditional Japanese lanterns served as inspiration for multiple exhibits. The chōchin4-shaped fishbowls lining a corridor decorated with momiji (autumn leaf) and even one or two pumpkins put me in the spirit of a beautiful autumn night at the neighbourhood shrine. The bowls also acted as magnifying glasses on the goldfish. The most famous chōchin is the massive lantern that hangs at Kaminarimon of Sensoji in Tokyo. Made of bamboo, it weighs 700 kg!

Another exhibit was based on the andon5, a rectangular type of lantern, decorated with a protective hemp leaf pattern. The goldfish swimming in its orange-red light serve as guides along your way, like a flickering but reassuring flame in the dark.

Flowerings of Utopia

This work "expresses imaginary flowers blooming in the sky inspired by heaven, depicting a fantasy world of flowering aquariums". Flowers as well as fountains, ponds, and aquariums have always been a sign of luxury—not for eating or harvesting but for beauty alone. You could even say utopian.

This exhibit reminded me of sceneries from beautiful Chinese fantasy shows such as Love between Fairy and Devil (which Elle Griffin also brings to life in her utopian novel) or The Longest Promise—shows that depict heaven as a pastel-coloured place among the clouds where the wise and virtuous cultivate and strive for enlightenment.

And this in turn always reminds me of Tang Dynasty poet Hanshan who paints a more mournful picture.

Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed
accepting my fate I fled to the woods
to dwell and gaze in freedom
no one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds
soft grass serves as a mattress
my quilt is the dark blue sky
a boulder makes a fine pillow
Heaven and Earth can crumble and change6

When you descend from the mountain, you might arrive in a lush forest and be soothed by rustling leaves and birdsong. You're surrounded by tall straight bamboo all around, perhaps feeling as if in a high-ceilinged echoing hall. After mountains, forests complete the image of utopia.

Bubbles for Sale

Lastly, there was a gallery featuring ukiyoe (woodblock print painting) by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the Edo period's best-known artists. Kuniyoshi was born in Nihonbashi in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1798 and has a wide variety of works to his name, from more traditional paintings of warriors, actors, and beautiful women to more modern landscapes and caricatures. He also painted animals such as cats and fish in realistic as well as imagined settings.

Kuniyoshi's charm lies in the ever-expanding world of imagination. In terms of the ability to embody the dreams of stories and romance of adventures to the world, he represents an outstanding talent that no one can match, which he can be called an Edo graphic designer.

His Modern Version of Ise Monogatari7 merely has an aquarium in the background. A Variety of Goldfish: Bubbles for Sale8 shows a goldfish bubble seller showcasing his wares in front of other fish, turtles, and even a tadpole.

This blending of the realistic and the mythical or supernatural is typical for Edo period artists of all mediums and something I wrote about in Realism and Unreality in Japanese Storytelling.

At first glance, the art aquarium might be an overwhelmingly modern show of lights and music but upon looking closer, I found a wealth of traditional art and symbolism that made for a truly inspiring experience. So much of Japanese art and philosophy is about appreciating beauty, then as now.

What sort of stories might come out of this experience? These images, especially Edo as seen by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, will definitely stay in my mind for a while. What would you do with them? Feel free to share in the comments!

I am moving to Japan before the year is out.

Part of me is still surprised I can say this1. Living in Japan has been my dream for a long time, ever since I was a naive student memorizing my first kanji like 木 (tree) and 口 (mouth). Since then I've learned a lot about the country, its people, and its culture. Some naïveté was shed but the dream hasn't changed. Earlier this year, I realized it's something I need to do—if nothing else, so I won't have to wonder what if for the rest of my life.

I don't just write to entertain myself and others, I also write to visualize where I want to go in life. When I wrote On the Way to the Convenience Store, I was just beginning to think about how I might make that dream come true. The megacity in that piece is Tokyo.

Back in 2021, I even wrote 東京へ (To Tokyo) in place of the dedication into my self-published novel which essentially served the same purpose.

Still, I didn't expect to realize it so fast—only months after taking the first steps. I was immensely lucky. Naturally, I'm looking forward to what Japan will do to me as a writer. Let me know if you'd like to read stories inspired by what I see and experience! This stack is and will always be a place for fiction but I might add the occasional touch of Japanese literature (like Yuki Tejima from booknerdtokyo) and traditional culture (like Leanne Ogasawara from Dreaming in Japanese). And after all, Japan and Tokyo are 'cool' places to write about, possible reasons for which might be worthy of their own little essay.

The people I know who made it to Japan did an exchange year as students and just stayed. Whenever I felt like I'd never follow them, that my best chance had passed, I would reread Donald Keene's Chronicles in which he talks about how he came to live and work in Japan as a scholar of literature and history. I would tell myself that when he first moved to Japan, he was already 31.

When I move to Japan, I will be 31! This is pure coincidence although I did hold that number in the back of my head for a while. Admittedly, it's silly to want to achieve something by a certain age but now that I have (however accidentally), I can't deny how good it feels.

On Keene's first night in Kyoto, he and his friends walked along the river in Ponto-chō, the historic quarter.

It was so beautiful I could hardly believe my eyes. All the buildings on both sides of this narrow lane were in Japanese style. There were lanterns at each door, and along the lane walked apprentice geishas wearing kimonos whose gold thread glittered in the dark. Ponto-chō seemed like the other face of Sekigahara, the feminine side of Japanese culture. That night it was magical.

Tokyo is more modern than Kyoto and arguably the largest city in the world but the feeling remains. I dare say every place in Japan will always keep some essential Japaneseness, whether it's ancient wooden shrines or skyscrapers to the horizon. Yet another aspect I hope to explore soon!

If I'm rambling, then only because it's hard to articulate what this means to me, someone who has studied Japan for over 10 years but only ever spent 10 days within its borders. When I think about it, most of what comes to mind is the words and lenses of other authors. There's Ian Hideo Levy whose experiences as a foreigner in Japan inspired his novel A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard, ironically written and first published in Japanese. The son of a diplomat, he lived in Tokyo as a teenager and felt confident he could 'become Japanese' through complete immersion. Later, he calls this a 'crazy schizophrenic drive' and an illusion but also says he doesn't regret falling into it as it eventually led to him writing in Japanese.

Then there's A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, a science fiction novel that nevertheless beautifully describes the feeling of wishing to belong to a culture not one's own, of loving and hating a foreign culture you've studied so much it almost feels like your own but which will never stop pointing out your differences to you.

Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language.

Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper.

We felt that way.

One thing I love about Japan is that you've never learned all there is to know about it. Maybe I'll find some words of my own to describe it as I continue exploring this love (also hate but mostly love) relationship in the future.

Literature, too, can fall anywhere on the spectrum between realism and fantasy. Since I believe that we can keep our own stories fresh by taking inspiration from other cultures and traditions, I decided to dive deeper into this aspect of Japanese storytelling.

Anime & traditional theatre

Anime might just be the most accessible and widespread part of Japanese culture. Whether it's Your Name or Spirited Away, most people have likely seen at least one animated film coming out of Japan. If you grew up with Pokémon and Sailor Moon like me, you know that many anime feature supernatural elements like intelligent creatures the protagonists live and do battle with or magical girls who change into cute costumes to save the world every night. You are familiar with its highly stylized art.

Stevie Suan discusses this particular brand of realism and unreality in his book The Anime Paradox1, pointing out that it is common not only in anime but also in traditional Japanese theatre.

When watching the productions mentioned [in the book], first time viewers may initially be struck by the performances' embrace of unreality (i.e. not aiming at verisimilitude or a strict imitation of reality in their presentation). Heavily stylized, in a swirling mixture of unreal and real components, fanciful worlds are created before us. Within Asia's artistic traditions, there is a long history of unreality in "art", and Japan is no exception. (171)

However, realistic unreality is apparent not only in the stories themselves but also in how they are performed, creating another layer. Suan goes on to quote Donald Keene2 describing that in Bunraku puppet theatre, puppeteers are always in full view of the audience. Spectators know to overlook them, focusing only on the puppets. In Kabuki theatre, too, black-clad stage hands can be observed placing or taking away props or otherwise assisting the performance in full view of the audience. Like in Bunraku, their black clothing signals to the audience that they should be ignored.

According to Keene, a scholar of Japanese literature, art, and history, this is a central element of the country's philosophy and culture.

The great plays of the Japanese theater have always combined realism and unreality in intimate conjunction. It may be that the Japanese have permanently lost their taste for this unique variety of theater; certainly their films, for all their excellence, show few of the old traditions. I think it more likely, however, that the combination of the seeming opposites which has proved so congenial to Japanese audiences over the centuries will again exert its appeal, and add to the generous contribution Japan has already made to the theater of the world. (70)

Keene also quotes the famous playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon on how unreality is used in literature and theatre.

If, when one paints an image or carves it of wood there are, in the name of artistic license, some stylized parts in a work otherwise resembling the real form, this is, after all, what people love in art. The same is true of literary composition. While bearing resemblance to the original, it should have stylization. This makes it art and delights men's minds.

Both traditional theatre and anime strike a very particular balance between realism and unreality. Suan mentions as contrasting examples the Evas, huge battle mechas starring in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the Yakan demon mask of Noh theatre. The Eva is clearly a concept of science fiction animation but still constructed as convincing bio-mechanical humanoid robot with details such as glowing eyes and ergonomic grooves. Similarly, the Yakan mask is meant to evoke specific emotions and create a stylized image of a demon while at the same time allowing the actor wearing it to portray that demon more convincingly than he would be able to without the mask.

The realism in the details

Ironically, Noh masks might have been originally used to promote realism: As Noh acting is a male-only profession, masks might have been created so that female and non-human roles could be played more convincingly.

Kabuki theatre—originally meant as light entertainment for the common folk as opposed to the more aristocratic and stately Noh—features wonderfully diverse casts of not only humans but also ghosts, demons, spirits, and deities, but it, too, was very realistic in portraying everyday life at the time most of its plays were written. As a result, it is largely thanks to Kabuki that we know how pipes were lit, food was prepared, or make-up was applied in premodern Japan.3

In anime, too, realistic portrayals of details, characters, and worlds can be observed, even to the point of being over-the-top or grotesque. This is especially apparent in titles for more mature audiences, such as the noir space western Cowboy Bebop or the dark fantasy Attack on Titan. Again, Suan finds the right words.

There is a predisposition towards precise detail and realistic depiction of objects that are completely unrealistic, often fringing on the absurd and grotesque. Anime expression is paradoxically realistically unreal, or unrealistically real. (314)

Arguably, even Pokémon, the world's highest-grossing entertainment franchise4, is grounded in realism as the first games were famously inspired by the creator's real-world childhood hobby: bug catching and collecting.

Premodern literature

These comparisons got me thinking about other instances of this reality-unrealism mixture I knew about. The first that came to mind were Kaidan, traditional Japanese ghost stories originating from Edo-period folktales. Many of them, such as Banchō Sarayashiki (The Dish Mansion at Banchō) or Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan (Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Tokaido), were made into Kabuki plays as well.

The most important literary example is Ugetsu Monogatari (Takes of Moonlight and Rain) by Ueda Akinari, a collection of supernatural tales first published in 1776. Its stories feature ghosts of loyal warriors, vengeful spirits, supernatural beings disguised as beautiful women, and dream visions. In typical folktale tradition, these beings appear as a matter of course, like honorary residents of the land5—quite appropriate for a country dominated by not only Buddhism but also Shintōism, an animist folk religion that venerates streams, trees, rocks, and many wild animals.

Another popular genre of Edo-period literature, known as Ukiyo-zōshi (literally Books of the Floating World), was doubtlessly inspired by these folktales but marked a shift towards greater realism, as mentioned by Charles Shirō Inouye and Haruo Shirane in Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900.

One important characteristic of ukiyo-zōshi is its intense realism. (…) [I]t was not until ukiyo-zōshi that Japanese prose literature approached true realism. Ukiyo-zōshi is markedly less sentimental and reveals a more objective and cynical perspective. For example, many of [Ihara] Saikaku's stories end tragically and are written in a detached, ironic tone. (Wikipedia)

Many Ukiyo-zōshi also feature ghosts and supernatural beings, as for example the story of the doll who fell in love with two beautiful Kabuki actors in Ihara Saikaku's Great Mirror of Male Love.

Only a dream within a dream?

Where did this tradition of realistically unreal storytelling originally come from? Identifying the answer would likely exceed the scope of this post. However, I believe it might be closely tied to the concept of ukiyo that Edo-period Japan, the heyday of both Kabuki theatre and the literary genres I just mentioned, seems to be so obsessed with.

Ukiyo 浮世 literally means floating, fleeting or transient world. In medieval Japan, it was associated with Buddhism and meant "this transient, unreliable world". Written with different characters, it can also mean "sorrowful world" and refers to the earthly plane, i.e. the cycle of death and rebirth that Buddhists seek release from. In the Edo period, the floating world could also mean the gated pleasure quarters of Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto as those places were potent representations of the impermanence of all things. Without going too deep into philosophy, all this can be traced back to the fundamental Buddhist dichotomy of samsara (the material world, full of suffering by definition) vs. nirvana (the place one goes after achieving enlightenment, thus escaping the cycle of death and rebirth).

This dichotomy, with ukiyo also referred to as dream or dream within a dream, has become a subtle trope in Japanese storytelling. I'm not sure where I heard it for the first time—it might have been in Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū6—but I was curious about it long before I knew what it meant. It is mentioned, for example, in the tragic Kabuki play Kasane7.

The showers are endless; so is one forever lost in this dream of a floating world, suffering eternally without waking. (3)

If all things are transient, if everything is a dream, might we not invite a little unreality in the shape of ghosts and other supernatural beings, of highly stylized stories and art into our lives to ease our suffering?

Whether we are really dreaming or awake, I believe appreciating and analyzing Japanese storytelling like this can teach us valuable lessons about the purpose and nature of stories all over the world. We need realism to relate them to our lives but we also need unreality to escape the real world for a while, to soothe and comfort us in our suffering.

My first lesson was in spring, one year ago. With one year under my belt, I feel more or less qualified to tell of my experiences although I might expand this article as I gather more experience and knowledge around Japanese tea ceremony.

Tea in a Bowl

I am always enchanted by the look of green matcha in a beautiful tea bowl. Thin tea which I experienced first has a different look and feel to it than thick tea.

If you take a black tea bowl, the light green hue of thin tea with its layer of foam provides a refreshing and elegant contrast. In Nogami Yaeko‘s historical fiction novel Hideyoshi and Rikyu, translated by Mariko Nishi LaFleur and Morgan Beard, Sen no Rikyu makes thin tea for his disciple Soji in a black raku bowl.

The whipped tea looked glossy and fresh inside the black tea bowl, which had a wide top and a narrow bottom. Just as a fresh, clear spring bubbles up from the ground, or the blooming flower opens, or the moon peeps through the clouds, the flavor changed to suit the moment. It was simply natural, as if it was produced by some force beyond the human hand.

Thick tea, on the other hand, is prepared with less water and kneaded rather than whisked. It is darker and thicker in texture with no foam. In a black tea bowl it looks like a dark forest pond full of faeries and secrets. Someone once told me they associate thick tea with winter because that is when they had their first taste of it and I can see how thick tea might fit the darker months of the year.

The Sound of Water

It was during my first ro (winter) season that I noticed how different water sounds depending on its temperature. Water is an essential component of every tea ceremony: It is used to rinse the bowl and bamboo whisk before and after preparing the tea and of course it is also an essential ingredient for the tea itself. You work with what you get but soft water seems to be ideal. Japan is a country rich with mountains, rivers and springs so it might not come as a surprise that good water quality is valued in tea ceremony.

Back to hot vs. cold water: I only noticed it after my teacher made an offhand remark during practice. When all guests have drunk their tea and the bowl is brought back to the host, it is rinsed first with hot water from the kettle, then with cold water from the mizusashi. That was when I noticed the difference for the first time: Hot water sounds deeper, more muffled whereas cold water sounds lighter, higher in tone, louder even. Shortly after I noticed it for the second time when ladling cold water into the kettle to cool it down.

This has since been confirmed to me by acquaintances who worked as baristas but it is especially noticeable in a quiet tearoom where everything is focused on the action of making a single delicious bowl of tea.

Video of a tea practitioner preparing and hosting a gathering

Different Styles

As time went on, I met other members of the local tea school chapter and got to enjoy tea with them. I noticed that different people move in different ways even when performing the exact same type of tea ceremony and it has been exciting to watch and experience different styles.

My teacher, for example, is very decisive but not hasty. Watching him work is overwhelming in a good way because there is no time to process consciously. It just leaves you in awe. He is always telling me that even if I make a mistake, it is best to carry on as if nothing had happened. Even if the guests are experienced tea practitioners, it is likely that they will never notice anyway. He embodies this mindset perfectly.

My fellow practitioner, on the other hand, is very deliberate and mindful. Her movements are almost too slow but the careful deliberation that she puts into every gesture is beautiful to watch too. New practitioners and those who do not practice regularly are often jerky and awkward. As for myself, I imagine my movements to be quite fluid, bleeding into each other but I also fear I am not as precise as I should be. This is likely because I take inspiration from yoga flows and because of how I move in general.

However, individual style is not something one should think about but rather something that arises naturally from continued practice. As Noriko Morishita writes in The Wisdom of Tea, translated by Eleanor Goldsmith:

In Tea, form comes first. You shape the form first to provide a vessel for the spirit, which comes later.

The World in a Tearoom

With continued tea practice, I also learn to appreciate the nuance of what goes into each cup of tea and everything that happens in the tearoom. This in turn makes me curious to learn even more and perpetuates a sort of joyous cycle of learning and experiencing tea.

Surprisingly, I found Angela Duckworth describing this exact feeling when she writes about why gritty people sustain interest in their chosen field of expertise in her book Grit (quoting Paul Silvia).

The key (...) is that novelty for the beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn't been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance.

This is rings true for tea as well: When you first begin practicing, you have your hands full with memorizing the procedure, what comes when, which utensil goes where at which time and how to move correctly.

As you keep immersing yourself into the world of tea and meeting other practitioners, maybe even different teachers, details are added to your repository of tea knowledge. For example that the decorative flower arrangement is always placed on the side of the tokonoma closest to wherever the mizuya (kitchen) is located outside the tearoom. Or that aoi (blue-green) which often crops up in poetic seasonal words for spring means fresh greenery as opposed to midori (green) which refers to mature greenery in summer.

Tea ceremony is a traditional Japanese art and comprised of many different aspects. Practitioners I have met are often proficient in similar arts like calligraphy, flower arrangement or making traditional Japanese sweets. All of them have their place in the tearoom as well and can add to the experience.

Serenity

Again, one aspect my teacher emphasizes a lot is that your tea ceremony needs to appear effortless. Mistakes are inevitable as you keep learning and improving. If you prepare tea for guests, however, you must stay calm at all times. If you happen to make a mistake, nobody should notice and you should carry on as if everything was perfectly fine. This is how his teacher taught him, a Japanese lady famous for passionately exclaiming: “You must offer serenity!”

Another facet of this principle might be making tea in such a way that the tea seems to prepare itself. As Nogami Yaeko writes:

Each utensil, that was carried into the tearoom, even the wooden waste-water bucket, responded. Rikyu had only to touch the ladle, the tea whisk, the eggplant-shaped tea container, and the tea scoop and, just as pure water springs out from between rocks in a forest, tea the color of fresh, young leaves in May swelled softly from the bottom of the white Chinese-style tea bowl, bitter but sweet, thick and warm. That was Rikyu's way of making tea – not to prepare tea, but for the tea to prepare itself.

The Tea outside the Tearoom

Practicing tea has influenced how I see and experience the world even when not in the tearoom. Tea ceremony changes with the seasons, the most obvious transition being the one from brazier (furo) in summer to kettle (ro) in winter. In winter, the kettle is placed between host and guests so the latter do not feel cold. This arrangement changes how tea is prepared.

During formal tea ceremony, the host selects utensils, flowers and other decorations according to a theme of their choosing. More often than not, this theme is seasonal. Every week I find myself looking to nature and the weather for inspiration. Thanks to my tea practice, I feel more attuned to nature. I notice details because I am paying attention to my environment in new ways. Practicing tea seems to have strengthened my aesthetic sensibilities in new and exciting ways.

I might not be thinking about it, but tea is with me wherever I go.

Tsuruko‘s tea journey short film