Japan: Calm, Cool and Collected in Kagawa and Tokyo

I love being in Japan again. It’s our third visit. I can order in a restaurant now (by pointing), produce the right money, and bow and say “thank you” in more ways than one. I know to accept unbounded hospitality from acquaintances, and so I rein in requests because they will be taken as an obligation, and acted on directly. Japanese people typically work VERY long days. (7-11 stores are so ubiquitous in Japan, I think, because those numbers define the typical work day here!) Japanese social hierarchy remains stubbornly rigid. A Japanese person’s life is bounded by countless expectations (most of which pass blissfully over the head of most foreign visitors). The bottom line: It’s a lot of work to be Japanese!

Perhaps that is why (and also because the Japanese summer can be as hot as North Carolina’s!) that the aspect of local culture which attracts me most this trip is the “calm, cool, and collected” ambience that is cultivated, sometimes in the most surprising places, all over Japan. Japanese people can certainly be exuberant and lively—indeed, many of the people we like best in Japan have those traits—but I also appreciate the moments of contrived tranquility I encounter in East Asia.

Japanese gardens are, of course, prototypical centers of relaxation, but even at the longest shopping arcade in Japan (think Southpoint Mall but eight times the number of shops and much quieter), the piped-in music is relaxing bossa nova recordings. I’m delighted that this is often the go-to sound in East Asia: calm and cool, redolent of love and nature, and light as air.

I hear this sound at night, too. As those who are closest to me know, I have the peculiar habit of listening to the radio through the night. If I wake up, I tune in until I drop off. In both Korea and Japan I woke in the middle of the night to hear that bossa nova sound—in Portuguese, English and French, as well as Japanese and Korean. The Brazilians have successfully sold the world a musical outlook on life. I’m glad that the sound pleases me so!

Also on Japanese and Korean FM I've heard a mixture of western classical, jazz, and standards. A radio station I chose in Takamatsu would focus a two-hour, late-night show on a particular artist. One night it was Harry Belafonte, the next Richard Strauss, and then Connie Francis. All great choices, I thought! Our first night in Tokyo we even went to a 24-hour Denny’s (trying—successfully—to find vegetables, which are served mainly just as a garnish in Japan, unless fried as tempura), and what did we hear but a cool and light piano trio playing a very hip, slightly up-tempo version of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”!

Today we walked over to St. Luke’s Hospital and School of Nursing, where Jan will make a presentation in a day or two. It was noon on a bank holiday, and the beautiful, art-deco bell tower burst into the Westminster Chimes. I noticed that the whole thing was taken at a slower tempo than you hear in the States or the UK, and there was an especially long pause between each phrase. Time for a breath! After their twelve deep bongs, the real bells then played “Amazing Grace,” including a key change. A fancy carillon! We were sitting in the children’s vegetable garden below, taking in the vibrations with our whole bodies. It couldn’t have been more peaceful!

Another small example of Japanese peace and calm is the way pets behave. Tiny, apartment-sized dogs are widespread. But do they ever strain at their leashes or yap or snap? I have yet to see one do that, even when Jan rides by on her scooter. The dogs are completely relaxed and attuned to their owners. In the Takamatsu arcade Jan turned around from peering into a store window to find herself eye-to-eye with a small white dog and a large white cat, sitting like twins in a two-seater baby stroller. I wish I had pulled out my camera in time! The dog and cat literally seemed like happy siblings, and they were both completely calm in the presence of a gaijin with her odd appliance. The owner smiled calmly.

Perhaps the most striking example of Japanese calm I have noticed—and the one that might be the key to the rest—is the way babies are born in Japan. Jan was privileged to visit a birth center and actually attend a birth there. Everything was peaceful and calm at this birth. Indeed, the laboring mother wass encouraged to “Breathe . . . breathe . . . breathe!”  There was NO PUSHING. Several Japanese doctors, nurses, and midwives explained that there’s no need to push; the uterus will do the work. Epidurals are practically unknown, and the c-section and episiotomy rates are far below ours. (Circumcision, of course, is virtually unknown in Japan.) Babies come into the world in a relaxed way, and they remain that way.

When Jan’s mentor, Dr. Brazelton, researched Japanese babies in the 1980s he observed that they had remarkable powers to regulate their states and to pay close attention. The several babies Jan has worked with in Japan have all had the same ability to remain in the “Ready Zone” for much longer stretches than American babies of the same age usually can manage.

We stayed in a traditional tatami room for our last night in Takamatsu. (I believe we got an upgrade because they’d misplaced our reservation.) Traditional tatami mats are made of tightly-woven grass, rectangular and about two inches thick. They are typically about 6’ X 3’ long—perfect for a reclining person. Our room had a large sleeping/sitting room (about six mats across), a reading or conversation room, separated by sliding doors, plus a bathroom suite with a large sink in one room and separate, smaller rooms for shower and soaking tub, and toilet (with the ubiquitous, but totally unfathomable, multi-function toilet seat). The tatami room smelled like a hay-loft (but not enough to set off any allergic reactions!). The shoji screens filtered soft, natural light. The cedar plank ceiling appeared to be supported by cedar posts (but the posts could have been just cosmetic). Across the ceiling, concealing indirect lighting, a woven mat about two feet wide was stretched; it terminated in small, split cherry tree logs (bark on), scored with grooves running lengthwise to anchor the mat. In the midst of a busy port city, it was like we were staying in a mountain hut. Very cool, calm and collected.

Just so the public bath—although here the water was plenty hot! People of all ages, segregated by sex, first wash off (VERY thoroughly) sitting on little plastic stools in front of flexible shower hoses, with all the body care products in front of you, and no walls or stalls between the patrons. The human body, in all its forms and functions, is accepted as is. No Western baggage about sinfulness, or ideals not attained, is carried into the ofuro. Everybody is relaxed about being there. Indeed, relaxing is the very reason to go! After you wash off, you walk (calmly on the slippery slate floor) to the soaking pool. Everybody is even more relaxed in there. Audible sighing is permitted! Then you walk back to your tatami room, padding nonchalantly across the hotel lobby in your slippers and yukata, feeling renewed and natural and harmoniously whole.

No doubt the calmness I observe and appreciate has much to do with Japan’s Buddhist past, but among the people we have met Buddhism seems largely to be a thing of the past, like Anglicanism or Quakerism often seems to be in England. Mostly it is the elderly who practice the ancient traditions regularly (maybe only the retired have time for true religion!), although many Japanese people do turn to Shinto and Budhhist traditions for life passages or holidays. Nevertheless, the peacefulness and mindfulness taught by the Budhha, and by his Japanese followers for centuries, still underpins (somewhat like the extra earthquake outriggers we see on Tokyo’s bridges and overpasses) a culture whose aesthetic of cleanliness, simplicity, naturalness, and calmness remains enduringly appealing.