These days though, while I still love the energy of the Susukino entertainment district in Sapporo (above) or the labyrinthine restaurant arcade near Osakas Umeda Station, when I put on my walking shoes and pick up my camera, I tend to go looking for another Japan - a Japan I didn't know anything about when I first came here. Everyday Japan, you might say.
A lot can be said about Japanese cities, but rarely can you honestly call them beautiful. While there's a lot of fascinating architecture, especially if you're into concrete like me, the overall impression tends to be of an ugly mass of cheaply produced buildings crowding in on each other, many of them in various states of disrepair, often with little or no space between houses and no sidewalks. Land is said to be very expensive and many people live in houses and apartments that to a Westerner appear tiny and cramped. Being able to have a garden is a real luxury. A luxury most people can't afford.
Still, the longing for green clearly remains very strong, even in these very urban environments. If you take a walk through some ordinary residential neighborhoods, the evidence is all around you. Some people go to great lengths to insert a bit of vegetation into their concrete and asphalt world. If there's no room for a normal garden, any available space will do, and potted plants are the preferred medium.
Some efforts seem mostly symbolic, like little cries of defiance against the confines of Japanese city space. But somehow those lonely plants tend to accentuate the lack of green, rather than alleviate it.
However, there are those who go all the way too, who certainly attempt to make their part of the city just a little bit greener. The results vary a lot in terms of what impact they make though. Often it seems to me that there is a certain lack of overall plan, and that quantity far surpasses quality on the list of priorities of many an ambitious urban gardener.
The last example above is one of my favorites so far, where the plants work together with the house and the surroundings, something that, in my opinion, is often not the case.
Some landowners make do with whatever space they can find between their houses and the edge of their property, but I have also noted that there is a lot of small-scale annexation of public land going on. Placing cinder blocks, stones or metal sheets across the ubiquitous drainage ditches here in Hirakata appears to be a favorite method for creating stable platforms for pots. Small tables and benches can work too. But sometimes these miniature gardens will just venture boldly out onto the street, daring anybody to complain. After hearing a lot about how strictly regulated Japanese neighborhoods can be, this has come as something of a surprise to me.
While this longing for a garden of your own isn't a specifically Japanese phenomenon - in my home country many city dwellers keep plants on their balconies for example - it does seem to me that the scarcity of land here, perhaps combined with some peculiarities in the Japanese attitude towards gardens that is still hidden to me, has unleashed a particular kind of creativity that I look forward to exploring further in future.
This lack of greenery still amazes me. And the way they attempt to recreate it with all the pots.. to me it just looks messy. It's really sad in a way.
ReplyDeleteOn a more positive note, when I went to Nara today we went past what I believe is considered to be inaka by the Japanese, but it was still fairly heavily populated but with bamboo forrests, paddocks and rice paddies, and mountains in the background. It was truly beautiful.
You have some interesting observations and commentary - but perhaps you should greater emphasize with the fact that you are discussing urban areas. Most of Japan is not urban and inaka areas are full of various greenery (as Rychelle notes in her comment about Nara). I think you can find a lot of green quite close to Gaidai if you ride a bike around Hirakata (would be good for your shoes to have a bicycle).
ReplyDeleteStill your photos have a lot to say about people who can't have gardens and what they do to add a little nature to their urban houses. There is a relationship between culture and nature in Japan - they are not opposite enemies but rather complimentary neighbors. Perhaps that is one reason why the recent Eco trend has been popular in Japan.
I very much like and appreciate your quest for the everyday Japan - this is the goal of ethnography after all. With your previous experiences in Japan perhaps you will be able to see beyond all the glitter and get to real people earlier than other students. And this will be very helpful for the class and our blogging project. Looking forward to your future posts.
I am a little embarrassed now that I re-read my text, realizing that once-again I am guilty of generalizing to broadly from a thin sample. This is something I constantly have to guard against, because it really is so tempting to do so, isn't it? But though I have seen similar pot gardens in Tokyo, I have no idea what other cities in completely different parts of Japan look like in this respect. I would also in retrospect have liked to learn more about the neighbourhoods I walked through when it comes to income-structure for example, before I started drawing general conclusions.
ReplyDeleteI do not, however, quite agree that I need to make a clearer distinction between city and countryside. To me at least, it is quite clear that I am only discussing city areas. I introduce the topic with comments on Japanese cities and I deliberately use terms such as "urban gardeners" and "city dwellers" to emphasize this point.
Of course, as Rychelle describes in her comment, what constitutes a city area may be more blurred here than it is where I come from, so what appears clear to me might be viewed differently here. I'll keep that in mind in future.