Kansai Cool. Christal Whelan
presence and abundance of clear and flowing water, always within view, has profoundly influenced both the material and spiritual lives of the people. Though physical environment certainly shapes human culture, it never determines the outcome in any strict sense. Offering suggestions and possible directions, human ingenuity takes over from there. In the case of Kyoto, surrounded on three sides by hills that feed water into the city, the dynamism and gracefulness that collectively characterize these many rivers, streams, brooks, and canals that traverse the city at every turn have left heir imprint through the creation of a strong yet fluid culture.
The cultural dimensions inspired by the nature of water include the culinary, religious, aesthetic, industrial and moral. In terms of food, tofu, rice, sake, tea and sweets are all intimately related to the purity and abundance of the city’s water. To the touch, much of Kyoto’s water feels almost silky, and to the taste it can be earthy, woodsy, or have a kind of transparent flavor. The last type allows the water to bring out the natural flavors in other ingredients. Thus, the delicate Kyoto cuisine developed as a water-based diet with vegetables and tofu (composed largely of water), at its core. The traditional tea ceremony with its minimalist components is almost unthinkable without water of a quality able to stand on its own merit.
Exciting and excitable, water is always going somewhere. The perpetually changing surface of running waters gave to Buddhist ideas of impermanence a positive and creative charge (in contrast to the negative ephemera of falling cherry blossoms). Ponds and waterfalls became not only integral features of temple gardens, but were designed so that their wind-rippled surfaces would cast a fascinating play of shadows on paper windowpanes of nearby temples and villas as they do at Ginkakuji temple. The austerity of dry rock gardens conjures the presence of water abstractly through the skillful placement of sand and stones to suggest the waves and whirlpools of distance oceans. The Shinto, Buddhist, and Shugendo practice of misogi or spiritual cleansing through standing under a waterfall, or dousing oneself with buckets of bracingly cold water, derives from the deep desire to be united with the clarity and purity of water. Water by its very nature changes form according to the container in which it is placed. This quality suggested the Buddhist wisdom of the emptiness of form, and the social value of flexibility and a situational ethic over an unchanging stance for all occasions.
Aside from taste, sight, and touch, the sound of water is also important in Kyoto’s water culture. Several inventions are used to capture its sound. The sui-kin-kutsu is a musical instrument played by water as it drips into an overturned perforated bottle buried underground such as found at Eikando temple. As droplets fall languorously through the hole, the bottle resonates like music from a dragon’s chamber. The sozu, a miniature bamboo seesaw poised above a basin in a balancing act played by water alternately spilling from each end, is Kyoto’s version of a scarecrow. Its loud rhythmical, and never-ending clacking characterizes the sound of summertime in the city.
Kyoto has flourished for 1,200 years nurtured by a series of underground streams that drain from the hillsides and bubble up from the subterranean depths of the earth. In fact, the city sits on top of a buried treasure—an enormous underground water reservoir 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) east-west and 33 kilometers (about 20.5 miles) north-south that holds 27.5 billion cubic meters of water. The mother lode of this vast water network forms an area in the heart of the city with Shimogamo Shrine, the Imperial Palace and Shinsen-en defining its boundaries.
Located at the confluence of Takano and Kamo rivers, Shimogawa Shrine has long served as the guardian of Kyoto’s waters. In fact, the protection and management of water is usually associated with Shinto shrines where water is often plentiful, so that even today many residents (including myself) get their drinking water from wells at shrines famous for their water alone. The water at Nashi-no-ki Shrine, located near the Imperial Palace, is so popular that sometimes people need to wait in queue to draw the water. But countless lesser-known yet fully potable waters are cherished in their neighborhoods alone.
In the 19th century, when the capital of Japan moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, the ancient city responded to this desertion through the idiom of water. It reinvented itself as modern by forging a major new waterway—the Lake Biwa Canal that now links Kyoto to the largest lake in Japan and is the current source of the city’s tap water. The city’s next large-scale project—the construction of the underground subway system in the 1950s—severed some of these vital water veins that led to the drying up of some of the city’s venerable water resources to the chagrin of local tofu makers who depended on it.
Kyoto’s development continues to have a profound effect on the underground water system, the source of the city’s cultural identity. The public protests in 2010-2011 to the building of a massive aquarium in Umekoji Park drove home just how sensitive the subject of tampering with the ancient water system can get. In some cases, water may be rejuvenated. Parts of the Horikawa river, buried for fifty-five years under tons of concrete, are now flowing again above ground along certain stretches. This river was and still remains the center of yuzen dyeing, a process now prohibited that once required placing long bolts of silk fabric on the surface of the flowing water to remove excess dye in order to achieve the vibrant colors for which it is known.
Kyoto actively struggles to reconcile its desire for development with the need for historical preservation, and water is crucial part of its cultural memory. Of all the pleasures of living in a city as ancient as Kyoto, the constant sight and sound of water is perhaps the greatest. From the larger river bodies of the Kamo, Takano, Katsura, or Shirakawa (including the more distant Hozu and Uji) to the major streams such as Takase, Misosogi and the various Biwa branch canals, water flows ceaselessly. Even cemeteries memorialize it in the tiered stone stupas that represent the five phases of the universe with various geometrical shapes. Coming after the cube for the earth is a sphere that stands for water. A single sparkling droplet subject to change, and essential for all life: This is water.
Practical Information
Nashi-no-ki Shrine
680 Somedonocho
Hirokoji-agaru, Teramachi-dori
Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto 602-0844
Tel: (075) 211-0885
Eikando Temple
48 Eikando-cho
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8445
Tel: (075) 761-0007
CHAPTER 3
The Spirit of Bamboo
There is a saying: “In great storms trees break, but the supple bamboo bends.” The strength that lies at the heart of such flexibility is what makes bamboo such a great material, and one that keeps turning up in unexpected guises—as a prime construction material in contemporary vernacular architecture or in soft bamboo rayon garments that easily drape.
A member of the grass family, bamboo is said to grow faster than any other plant in the world and, like a bird’s bones, its hollow stalks make it very light. Ubiquitous in Japan, bamboo comes in an astounding array of colors: deep lacquer black, silvery-blue, jade-green, yellow, brown, and even striped.
It is used in weaving baskets as intricate as knitwear, and as sturdy ribbing for fans and umbrellas. Its upper brush makes excellent fences tied with hemp, and the plant’s many root stubs are left on the flared end of the shakuhachi flute for their sheer finesse. Bamboo charcoal purifies water and deodorizes air, and takenoko bamboo shoots cooked as tempura have a flavor as delicate as artichoke hearts.
The one-room museum in Rakusai Bamboo Park in Nishikyo Ward, Kyoto, even houses the crumbling remains of a bamboo plumbing system from the eighth century. But the story I found most compelling of all, and the one that subsequently led me on a quest, was the counterintuitive connection between the American inventor, Thomas Edison (1847-1931), and the bamboo of Kyoto.
According to a description at the museum, Edison was trying to find a filament that would burn long enough to be of practical value for his invention—the