338. Autumn Light

Link to Table of Contents

New book - Autumn Light

by Pico Iyer - Knopf 2019

Tale of Genji referenced on page 14. God help me.

P22 I didn’t pay much attention to the description of the failed new development of Nara in the ‘80s, but this is a perfect example of top down planning that doesn’t understand how cities and business work. It was like Skywalker Ranch on a much larger scale -- a lovely idea but not really practical. He references Mountain View, but even Mountain View and the original Silicon Valley only made sense because of Stanford and the existence of San Jose and San Francisco nearby. That and the fact that the first generation of tech engineers were mostly from the Midwest. Suburbia appealed to them, especially California suburbia.

P30 “...I can hardly recall the bright-eyed kid who made such a pius point of telling himself that purity and kindness and mystery lay inside the temple walls and that everything outside them was profane; the beauty of Japan is to cut through all such divisions, and to remind you that any true grace or compassion is as evident in the convenience store -- or at the ping-pong table -- as in the bar where two monks are getting heartily drunk over another Hanshin Tigers game.”

This is pretty damn close to my response to Buddhism -- though he left his pal the Dalai Lama and people like him off the hook with that ending. The point I think he is making here is that Japan encourages a mindfully sacred way of looking at life while not rejecting life as most religious traditions do. His teachers are not the Dalai Lama and his local equivalent, but Hiroko and the routine of life in Japan. This does make me curious about how different his life is in California. 

P32 “...I can hear kids chanting... the forty-seven syllables of the hiragana alphabet, in the ceremonial song that features every syllable once and once only.
...

“This song, though, might be the scripture of Japan. ‘Bright though they are in color, blossoms fall,’ I hear the children shouting out. ‘Which of us escapes the world of change? We cross the farthest limits of our destiny, and let foolish dreams and illusions all be gone.’ ”

Well that’s pretty profound for a school song. I tried to find the rest of it through a Google search and could only find a link to this book. 

Among the things that Iyer doesn’t cover, but I wish he did, are more about his relationships with his own family -- another book, perhaps. His feelings about SoCal. And, since there’s a fair amount, thanks to Hiroko’s father about wartime Japan, a little about how things like education changed after the war. Most of what I know about pre-war Japan and the education system has to do with the indoctrination program.

P33 “The season is a kind of religion, I think, to which we offer poems and petitions, but it’s not one you believe in so much as simply inhabit.”

P34 “It took me a while, after I settled down here, to realize that every detail -- the apples, the boxes they sit in, the table on which we place them -- counts, because none of these things is inanimate in Japan. Only yesterday, Hiroko remembered, ‘I small time, I kicking table -- sometimes little angry -- every time, my father say, “You must apologize! To table. That table has heart. It never hit you. Why you must hit it?” ‘ “

I bet her father could have explained why the Japanese military didn’t repair damaged planes during the war. Something I’ve read about but never understood. I think it’s related to this idea of animation.

P37 ...”What makes the air feel thronged [in Japan] is the presence of household deities and ghosts, the spirits that for my neighbors inhabit every last desk or box of chocolates. Nothing essential ever seems to die in Japan, so the land is saturated with dead ancestors, river gods...”

This reminds me of the Ryuko Lady in Genji who, even after her death, possessed Murasaki. There was no further mention of Genji after that first one, but I do wonder what Hiroko would make of this aspect of The Tale. Would she find it exaggerated or very familiar?

P41-42 So I guess the Japanese Buddhist notions of death and after death are quite different than the Tibetan notions. Since you are supposed to be reincarnated after a year, it wouldn’t make any sense to honor the dead past that period in Tibet. I’m not sure about the other Buddhist traditions in India and SE Asia.

P46 The mother in law refusing to eat (but secretly eating) is so like the prince’s daughter at the end of Genji. I’m doomed.

P50 I love Hiroko’s baseball analogy. Sometimes it seems like the true purpose of American foreign policy is to spread baseball around the globe. It has only taken root in places where we have profoundly messed with the local culture. I wonder if they see this as reasonable compensation?

P54 The point of this introduction into being Japanese is so opposed to our being ourselves. While he is using ping pong to show this, I can see how ballroom dancing would work even better.

Pico reminds me a bit of Bill Bryson in how he ends up in Japan. So far, and I know this is his intention, Masahiro is the most interesting thing in the book. How is he possible? What is his story? It is a great way to preserve your status since you can’t do anything wrong if you are never there. He’s like a god you choose to imagine in the best possible light and no one can argue since he’s invisible. 

Pico has just mentioned that his own father was not happy with his own life choices -- why Hiroko never met him -- but we aren’t learning much about his family so far. Settling in Britain or Japan is a little like ignoring your own family, though not as decisive. More passive aggressive than outright rude.

P88 "Tokyo Story" and Yasujiro Ozu are a call back to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, unsurprisingly.

P94 Of course the brother is the absent heart of this book. Such an interesting story and perhaps a plot less predictable than the story of aging and death. You expect some kind of resolution or else why is he writing this? (And why is he giving so much information for a potential stalker? Have they moved now?) From my perspective, I see that siblings have options that only children don’t have. Or they do but it would be even more egregious. 

Here’s a question, Are Hiroko’s charming lines her English or his translation of her Japanese? What language do they usually speak? 

P112 The battleship Hiei that sank at First Guadalcanal was named after Mount Hiei. That was the battle in which the USS Barton was sunk (family connection to our book club. A better way of putting this is that First Guadalcanal was the battle in which both the Hiei and the USS Barton were sunk.) 

Just hit the part where everyone is reminiscing about the past and in particular their work past. There are different ways to count this, but I’d say I’ve had around fifteen different jobs, all of which I liked to some extent. My twelve years of greening work is the longest period I’ve done the same thing. I worked in tech for a similar time but as a writer, tester, and coder. And for many different employers. Though it is also seasonal, so I imagine I worked more hours as a bookstore clerk. Hard to know for sure.

P139 Being sent to Manchuria was probably the best way to survive the war. You were very fortunate if you were sent east and survived.

P143 Transient global amnesia -- oh, great, something new I’ve never heard of to worry about. I did think it didn’t seem like a stroke, but this would be very confusing. Of course if you were alone you would probably just go to sleep and wake up fine. So maybe not so bad.

P158 Interesting about forgetting your own observations. I know this is true for me as well thanks to blogging, especially with books. Hard to know when you’re plagiarizing yourself. 

P191 He mentions Thoreau translating the Lotus Sutra but not that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita at Walden. Like Iyer, he was a mix of Western, Indian, and Japanese influences. I didn’t say anything about the passage with the Dalai Lama but he captured what I had a problem with on my friend’s chanting tour of South Asia -- the places are of no real importance. I was thinking -- with some pride -- that there are no particular sites associated with philosophy. The Academy in Athens is an exception, but it isn’t regarded as sacred or anything. Walden Pond, come to think of it, probably has as much status as the Academy does. And that makes sense as it is the nature experienced there that is important. Unlike with a religious “sacred place” the connection with nature Thoreau experienced there is available to anyone willing to look for it. Of course Thoreau would say this patch of nature is not so different from others so you shouldn’t have to travel there to see what ought to be visible everywhere. 

I guess I was naive to expect any kind of resolution in this book. I am surprised that he has taken the liberty he has with the brother’s story. Not exactly kind, but a reasonable guess, I guess. And I’m still surprised he gives so much personal information. Unless he’s fictionalized it.

P227 I love the way he shows us Hiroko, 
“ ‘You writing autumn story?’...

“ ‘Not so much story,’ I say. If autumn is a religion, it’s something you recite -- or see with your eyes closed -- more than put into words.

“ ‘Like Ozu movie?’ she asks in apprehension. My attempts to inflict the seasonal explorations of mood and dissolving families on her have not been a success...

“ ‘You know me,’ I say. ‘I’m so greedy for sunlight, I need to be pushed into the dark.’

“ ‘Your book, nothing happening?’

“ ‘Well, not exactly nothing. But what happens is not so visible. It’s hard to see which parts are important until years later. Or maybe never.’

“I see her watch me skeptically, and gird myself.

“ ‘When I came here, I was so taken by everything that was different, full of drama, so distinctly Japanese. Like you when you go to America. Now I see it’s the spaces where nothing is happening where one has to make a life.’

“ ‘Little no-action movie,’ she says, visibly unpersuaded, and closing the pages of this book without needing to open them. ‘Rain come down window. Car stuck in traffic jam. Quiet music playing. Autumn light.’ 

“Exactly.”

I would love to hear her synopsis of The Tale of Genji. Perfumed men raping every women they see then musing about becoming monks but never getting round to it.

It's curious to me that he briefly references his family's connection to Theosophy without any suggestion of the Hindu influences. I wonder if this was part of his awkward relationship with his father?