By Anna Kunnecke
Early fall is my favorite time of year to go to Mashiko, that venerable old town of potters and sculptors and total unapologetic artiness. (If you do a blood test your first day in Mashiko, the output will read: artiness saturation level 60%. You have to consume copious amounts of cynicism to keep it from going higher than that.) Each shop is stacked high with plates, bowls, pots, and every form of earthenware container you can imagine. This is the perfect season for all this heavy pottery, and the bright colors of autumn flare against the dark earthiness like a poem.
I learned about white space in Mashiko, the art of mu, the aesthetic of leaving empty space around one dramatic or quirky form. (This also describes what happens at parties when you drink too much shochu. Consider yourself warned.) A heavy brown urn will sit at the far right end of a tansu chest with a single red-berried branch sweeping out over the emptiness. Stunning. This isn't the studied elitism of ikebana, heavens no, it's just 'house flowers'--a sprig of geranium poking out of a little creamer, a fiery bunch of maple leaves floating on a platter, a drooping poppy pod trailing out of a lumpy teapot's spout. One white blossom rearing up over a swath of deep indigo cloth. Mashiko is one of my favorite places, and its rough, dramatic beauty is the Japanese aesthetic I find most endearing.
Back at home the fruit trees are practicing indecent exposure. The kaki (persimmon) trees are just ridiculous--they're adolescent girls with makeup, they just don't know when to quit. The luscious orange orbs are dangling everywhere. The trees don't even have room for leaves anymore, they're as urgent as a woman in labor. People leave plastic bags of persimmons on neighbor's doorsteps; entire neighborhoods stink with the sweet smell of fruit going sour.
Berries burst into color out of nowhere. Vines that used to hold flowers now hold up only themselves, gnarled and brown and respectable. The shops are full of grasses--golden tipped wheat, billowy thistle, dusty sea-green grass. Branches twine and curl. The florists begin tucking tiny apples into their bouquets.
Hordes of people travel to the countryside to see the trees change colors in the mountains, watching the leaves churn from yellow to orange to red almost before their very eyes, like watching the season do a paint-by-numbers routine. I don't find it necessary to travel that far, because I can gauge this season by the bonsai that the local shoe guy keeps on a shelf next to his store. He has an interesting approach to selling shoes; he covers his merchandise in thick yellow drapes to protect them from the elements and the annoying gaze of customers. But his bonsai trees are always ready for a roll in the hay. (It's all I can do not to go up to him and suggest that he start offering the bonsai for sale instead of the shoes, but so far I've resisted. Life coaching career hazard.) Most of the tiny trees are mysterious evergreens, depressingly static to someone as impatient as me, but there is this one tiny maple in a black square box. Its entire branch spread is smaller than my daughter's backpack, but no one told the maple that it's a minor player in the scheme of things. It flames red right on cue, licking from a fiery red to a crimson so deep and brilliant, it seems to feel that it is personally responsible for containing the spirit of autumn. And come to think of it, a surly shoe merchant is as good a cover as any for the god of autumn fire. You never know. Maybe it is.
To be continued...
Early fall is my favorite time of year to go to Mashiko, that venerable old town of potters and sculptors and total unapologetic artiness. (If you do a blood test your first day in Mashiko, the output will read: artiness saturation level 60%. You have to consume copious amounts of cynicism to keep it from going higher than that.) Each shop is stacked high with plates, bowls, pots, and every form of earthenware container you can imagine. This is the perfect season for all this heavy pottery, and the bright colors of autumn flare against the dark earthiness like a poem.
I learned about white space in Mashiko, the art of mu, the aesthetic of leaving empty space around one dramatic or quirky form. (This also describes what happens at parties when you drink too much shochu. Consider yourself warned.) A heavy brown urn will sit at the far right end of a tansu chest with a single red-berried branch sweeping out over the emptiness. Stunning. This isn't the studied elitism of ikebana, heavens no, it's just 'house flowers'--a sprig of geranium poking out of a little creamer, a fiery bunch of maple leaves floating on a platter, a drooping poppy pod trailing out of a lumpy teapot's spout. One white blossom rearing up over a swath of deep indigo cloth. Mashiko is one of my favorite places, and its rough, dramatic beauty is the Japanese aesthetic I find most endearing.
Back at home the fruit trees are practicing indecent exposure. The kaki (persimmon) trees are just ridiculous--they're adolescent girls with makeup, they just don't know when to quit. The luscious orange orbs are dangling everywhere. The trees don't even have room for leaves anymore, they're as urgent as a woman in labor. People leave plastic bags of persimmons on neighbor's doorsteps; entire neighborhoods stink with the sweet smell of fruit going sour.
Berries burst into color out of nowhere. Vines that used to hold flowers now hold up only themselves, gnarled and brown and respectable. The shops are full of grasses--golden tipped wheat, billowy thistle, dusty sea-green grass. Branches twine and curl. The florists begin tucking tiny apples into their bouquets.
Hordes of people travel to the countryside to see the trees change colors in the mountains, watching the leaves churn from yellow to orange to red almost before their very eyes, like watching the season do a paint-by-numbers routine. I don't find it necessary to travel that far, because I can gauge this season by the bonsai that the local shoe guy keeps on a shelf next to his store. He has an interesting approach to selling shoes; he covers his merchandise in thick yellow drapes to protect them from the elements and the annoying gaze of customers. But his bonsai trees are always ready for a roll in the hay. (It's all I can do not to go up to him and suggest that he start offering the bonsai for sale instead of the shoes, but so far I've resisted. Life coaching career hazard.) Most of the tiny trees are mysterious evergreens, depressingly static to someone as impatient as me, but there is this one tiny maple in a black square box. Its entire branch spread is smaller than my daughter's backpack, but no one told the maple that it's a minor player in the scheme of things. It flames red right on cue, licking from a fiery red to a crimson so deep and brilliant, it seems to feel that it is personally responsible for containing the spirit of autumn. And come to think of it, a surly shoe merchant is as good a cover as any for the god of autumn fire. You never know. Maybe it is.
To be continued...
Post a comment