The wisdom of monkeys

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We’re sitting in the windowed gallery of the dining room, waiting for our cooked breakfast to come. I’m fascinated by all the tableware. Each piece of chinaware has on it the hotel’s emblem, a pattern with leaves. The cutlery is silver plated, as is the milk jug, and every item has the hotel emblem engraved on it, including the little butter knives. It’s a genteel traditional elegant western style, and as far as I can remember, the only other hotel I’ve ever stayed in with the same feel was the Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Yesterday we’d looked at all the memorabilia in the corridors and rooms - photos from bygone days with westerners in Edwardian dress, a row of seven or eight early twentieth century hotel buses, ballroom dancing in the banquet hall. There are entries on pages from old guest books framed on the walls – Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1927, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, and many other well known names from the past, all in their own handwriting. It’s like stepping back into a past world, when high society came to stay here. I count the other guests at breakfast – eight other people, all Japanese. Where is everyone?

I check my guidebook: ‘Nikko became famous when chosen as the site for the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord who took control of Japan and established the shogunate that ruled for more than 250 years, until the Meiji Restoration ended the feudal era. Ieyasu was laid to rest among Nikko’s towering cedars in 1617, and in 1634 his grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu, commenced work on the shrine that can be seen today. The original shrine, Tosho-gu, was completely rebuilt using an army of some 15,000 artisans from across Japan, taking two years to complete the shrine and mausoleum’.

The path up to Tosho-gu seems quiet for a Sunday. We’ve been here several times and it’s normally bustling. Tosho-gu is like no other shrine or temple I’ve seen in Japan. One ornate structure leads on to another, every surface covered in brightly coloured elaborate carvings. The swinging roofs are edged with gold and carved dragons creep along the ridges, ready to pounce. It is far more Chinese than Japanese in its flamboyance, though time has slightly softened the colours. All around there is greenery – the forested mountains beyond and Japanese cedars like giant sentinels in between the shrine buildings.

There is one plain wooden building amongst this display of colour and intricacy – the stable for the sacred horse. A small group of Japanese are photographing one section of the stable. It’s the famous carving of the three monkeys, ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’. They are part of a frieze going round two sides of the stable, with many more monkeys. I notice some photos of each group of monkeys or of each single monkey, with an explanation below in Japanese, and fortunately also in English. I can’t remember ever seeing these photos before. I write all the captions down – ‘A mother monkey is looking far into the future of her child, and a child is looking up at the mother’; ‘Three monkeys tell us that children should “See no evil, say no evil, hear no evil”; ‘He is about to be independent’; ‘He is ambitiously looking up’; ‘He is frustrated in life and desperately looking down the cliff while one of his friends is cheering him up’; ‘He is love sick’; ‘A newly-wedded couple are going to sail through the rough waves of life together’; ‘She is an expectant mother, and return to the first scene’. As I write this now, one of those images appears in my mind and I see a monkey resting his head on his hands, looking hopelessly over the cliff into the abyss, with another monkey with an arm around him. I think of all of those refugees from the tsunami and from Fukushima and I wonder how many of them are feeling like that monkey.

We’re climbing up a series of steep steps to Ieyasu’s tomb. It must be particularly hard work in the summer when it’s very hot and humid here. There’s a very descriptive word in Japanese for hot and humid – mushiatsui. Now it’s anything but mushiatsui as it’s still quite chilly even though it’s April. Earlier in the morning we saw plum blossom – ume no hana. Mika had told me that there was still plum blossom in Mito’s famous garden, Kairakuen, although normally it flowers from February to late March. It’s been a cold year.

We’re almost at the top and we come to a small area with a basin and ladles to cleanse your hands. To the side is a refreshment area with covered seating and a drinks machine selling nothing but cold green tea. I smile to myself. There are drink machines everywhere in Japan, and I guess that if it’s mushiatsui, you’d be very glad of a can of chilled green tea at the top. Normally the drink machines sell a variety of cold drinks, and sometimes hot cans of coffee too. I don’t know if it’s significant that there is only cold green tea. We turn the corner and up a few steps is Ieyasu’s tomb. We are surrounded by Japanese cedars with their mid green fern like leaves interlaced with pine trees, matsu, with their deep green spiky needles. Their scent fills the air.

At Honji-do, one of the many buildings in the complex, we stop at the entrance to take off our shoes and place them on one of the shelves. You always take your shoes off to enter a shrine or a temple, as you do a private house. The hall to a private house is set lower than the rest of the house, and you leave your shoes in the entrance, and step up into the hallway into the slippers provided by your host or hostess. Several journalists commented with surprise that refugees removed their shoes in the shelters, but you would never take the dirt from outside into your living quarters in Japan. We pad round the floor in our socks, instantly feeling the penetrating cold. We come to the hall where the monk explains about the painting on its ceiling of the Crying Dragon. First the monk claps two sticks together at the far end of the hall. He comes closer towards us and then stands under the mouth of the dragon. He claps the sticks together once more, but this time they resonate and the noise from them hangs in the air. He does it several times, the roar of the dragon. It is quite remarkable the difference in sound compared to the other side of the hall. I glance down at the monk’s feet, and notice that he is wearing a pair of fleecy slipper boots. I’ve never seen fleecy slipper boots like that before in Japan.

I ask the hotel receptionist if I may take the Japan Times which is on a newspaper holder from the lounge into our room to read. We are the only foreigners in the hotel. He says in Japanese that it’s for the lounge but that there are some free newspapers for guests. He points at some newspapers elegantly spread out on the counter which are all in Japanese. I tell him I can’t read them. You need to know about 2000 kanji to read a newspaper and I know about 100. He asks me to wait a moment, disappears with the Japan Times into a far office, and after a few seconds reappears with the Japan Times minus its holder and gives it to me.

I try finding out more about the carved monkeys on the internet. Apparently they were all carved by Hidari Jingoro and are believed to have incorporated Confucius’s Code of Conduct, using the monkey as a way to depict man’s life cycle. It’s a shame given how famous the three monkeys are, that the whole frieze isn’t more widely known, as the eight panels do demonstrate many of the crucial phases in life.

I browse through the paper. The Earthquake Phenomena Observation System detected and monitored the number of aftershocks during the first three days after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of 11th March. In that 72 hour period, they recorded more than 250 quakes of magnitude 5 or higher – that’s an average of one every 17 minutes. At least 45 of those exceeded magnitude 6, and three topped magnitude 7.

The leader article is titled ‘To hanami or not hanami’. It says, ‘Staying cloistered at home instead of sitting in local parks or strolling along cherry tree-lined canals helps no one. The disruption from the disaster will continue for some time, but returning to some semblance of normal life helps society stabilise and move forward. Hanami has always been a reset button for people’s mental attitude and emotional outlook. Now, it can serve as another step toward finding the inner strength and positive attitude needed for Japan’s recovery. Meditating on the brevity of life and reassessing the beauty of each passing moment is not such a bad offering for those who have no way to see the blossoms this year.’

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