I’ve been living and making my living in this 650 year old mountain hamlet and 150 year old silk farming house for over 25 years now. I didn’t think much about it and basically enjoyed the time and seasons go by. 

The house, the village and I have aged and changed. The ancient ghosts on the paths and near the streams are much the same. It just took me many years to simply acknowledge them by diverting my eyes when we meet so not to offend. 

I suppose I am the type of person who is relatively fine with uncertainty. (Unlike others who gulp for oxygen if the washing machine eats a sock or two.) 

Showing up in Japan on my 25th birthday with a backpack and a single five-word-sentence from a conversation with my bestie Ingrid Mclainewhen I told her I was going to try to set up a life in Japan. 

Decades ago the backpack was given away but the one syllable laugh, a double nostril expulsion of air propelling my head back with a slight eye roll.

“Yeah…something will work out.”

The sentence is still at hand and just as sustaining as it has been all this time. 

I never did figure out which one of us actually said it. Probably Ingrid. 

Remembering vividly the first time I was inside a Japanese farmhouse. It was truth. 

When we see or hear or read a truth we nod our heads and say…yeah…that is the truth. 

Years later I got me own old farmhouse and looking back someone might have confused the Canadian for Megan Sussex on the moving day in to the dump. 

A self-satisfied smirking Cheshire Cat…. might have even had a green shirt on… different shade of course. 

I digress.

Walter Gropius the founder of Bauhaus wrote an introduction to a book on Japanese domestic architecture in the 1950s :

In revealing the meaningful cultural aims and the high craftsmanship of the Japanese domestic architecture as it evolved through the centuries and in laying bare the compelling motives that directed its development …. 

The Japanese example of the dedication of a whole nation to the task of giving form and substance to recognized spiritual values comes here as an eye opener to all those who doubted that such a unity of purpose could ever exist. 

The design conception had started from the very bones of the building and not merely at its skin as a cosmetic play. Spiritual and practical requirements of living had been coordinated into an artistic approach that represents one of the most valuable contributions to a universal philosophy of architecture. 

I have another old beaten up picture book I found on a garbage can in the rain many years ago. It is a local history book. Watanabe Kahei san from a neighboring hamlet spent fifteen years on two hundred paintings depicting life in these mountains from his youth the early 1920s to 1935. Another local man, Kawaoka Takeharu wrote the descriptions under each picture in the book. 

The original set of pictures for the book started with thirty paintings of the sericulture and weaving culture that appeared in this area where life was so rough that, ‘Five houses share the rare flat land where there should have only been one.’ 

I usually leaf through the disintegrating picture book with my newly arrived workshop guests on their first day here. 

The images of life are worth much more than words. 

I translated the last few lines of the forward without an ounce of elegance.

Nothing has left behind a richer imagery than the unpretentious pictures of life here.
This book, ‘Life in the Mountain Village’ is an outstanding work representing the lives in that period of time expressed through paintings. Now we should honestly go back and deal with these things. I think we can find the basic roots and sources of our lives in the world depicted in these paintings. Even if this evaluation of traditional culture happens, it probably won’t lead to better times…..will it?

I have started to translate the entire book. As I go along I will think about how to use the translation to get across something I found that was important to me. Like Walter Gropius’ insight to Japanese architecture I found a seamless connection between the material and spiritual aspirations of the people. He saw it in architecture and I see it in the life and textiles made in these dark, hidden valleys.

This old house was filled with not only silk farming equipment but silk reeling equipment and loom parts. They were a broken tangle of sooty chaos under the rafters and in hidden corners of this old house and out buildings. Unused for fifty years. It took me years to fix them or replace them and replicate the processes from breeding silk moths to weaving kimono. 

It took me as many years to look at these old timers around me, twenty-five years of working with them and drinking tea with them to get an idea of what their lives had been like. With trepidation I have not introduced myself but simply worked cutting grass around the graveyards behind the houses and keeping the paths clear of overgrowth and getting to know the gods and ghosts that sit around in their old impoverished work kimono. 

My eggs hatch in a few days. The fresh mulberry leaf in the early days of the rainy season await to be picked and fed to the honorable silkworms.

I was down at the river this morning washing the spun silk I have made the past few years and get it ready to be woven. The colors are an attempt to replicate these dark and earthy mountain forests. Lots of indigo and tree barks. Tea harvest is finished for another year. Very little rain this spring so it was more quality that quantity this time. Thank you to the helpers. I finished weaving this madder dyed spun silk a few days ago. It had been on the loom for ages. It was a slow slog weave. And what is a rambling post without a cute cat picture? Whiteboots is eyeing the goldfish in the lily pots while he takes a drink at the front door. The second indigo vat is not in use so plants have moved in.

Procraftination & Craftermath

" I cursed you as I procraftinated for weeks and then double cursed you in the craftermath."

The workshop participants are usually on their best behavior the first few hours of the workshop.

We meet in a calm hotel lobby in the chaos of downtown Tokyo at ten in the morning and I have them in the quiet mountain village by twelve for lunch. There is always that WTF-how-did-I-get-here-? feeling in the house as they peek in their rooms and check out the house and pets and bathrooms. Then they stealthy eye up their fellow indigo otters. (And the otter chief.)

But the happy-happy-craft-holiday-in Japan-spirit is present and thick. 

After lunch we gather round the table and look at the dreaded homework. (They inevitably shyly boast of how they were stitching the last twenty rows on the airplane.)

A total group of strangers and they have to show what work they have done in preparation the past few months.

Judgement time. 

I send out a homework box from Japan to their homes around the world in advance. There is not enough time to stitch and cut stencils once they are here. I use the homework projects to keep them busy to the point-of-almost-desperation the entire ten days. 

There are two bigger projects that take time and talent.

Cutting a few stencils on the smokey smelling traditional persimmon tannin paper.

A woodgrain stitching project that can take up to 50 hours of stitching. A pattern is drawn on and the horizontal stitches and jumps determent the pattern. I send an amazing 2 meter piece of crinkle fine linen for this project. It dyes in indigo to perfection. 

The patterns each has chosen and drawn on with disappearing orchid ink are of endless interest to the young indigo otters. Each person stitches differently. Some have incredibly fine even stitches covering the entire cloth. Others have rough irregular stitches. These details are quietly noted with pursed otter lips and twitching whiskers standing around the table. 

Over the next ten days the threads are meticulously drawn up and tied and dyed in indigo twelve dips/ twelve oxidations and then opened rinsed and taken to the river and beaten until the water runs clear and the blue is deep and gorgeous.

The process binds the otters as they see the pride and hard work and determination in each other through the steps. 

One Scottish lady years ago had a tad too much rice wine at the welcome lunch. She didn't seem so plussed about putting her work on display either. 

" I cursed you Bryan as I procraftinated for weeks and then double cursed you in the craftermath."

Silence.

Fer a wee moment we taut 'er accent was bit 'ard to understand.( Or she 'ad a wee bit of a wisp. )

Then we all cracked up.

I am putting together the 50 spring homework boxes right now to get them in the mail in a few days. 

It has become a winter tradition. Hiro was in the hospital this winter and that gave me plenty of time at home being serious and focused on methodical tasks.

Finding cute stamps for the box, endless postal form filling and double checking everything is in each box and they inch towards the post office....

The country town post office workers dread the days I swamp them with a truck load of homework boxes. 

It is comforting to know that the boxes are opened all over the world with anticipation and delight. It adds to the excitement of their trips to Japan.

I lost my voice for a few days of the last workshop. We were down in the river beating indigo dyed projects on the rocks in the fish ladder.
We had climbed back up the staggered ladder rungs imbedded in the faux rock face and were standing around all chattering from our frozen November wet feet, the excitement of the unfolding of freshly beaten beautiful indigo projects and the overall beauty of the spot with golden light filtering through breeze-fueled autumn leaves.
The old hunter guy next door was up on the road just out of sight firing a rifle over our heads.
WTF?
I doubted he could see us below. Synapses fired... Is anyone dressed like a boar or a monkey by chance....No..thank God.
Are we dressed in monkey-grey hoodies with red-assed trousers on?
No... God is merciful.
I doubt he has his hearing aid in because it would deafen him when he fired the rifle.
Screaming will do no good.
But insanely animated jumping jacks and shouting seemed the only reasonable thing to do in the situation.
The workshop of United Kingdomers...
What is going on? Turned to amusement, turned to terror as I started jumping around waving my hands screaming at the half-unseen 89 year old monkey-killer-hunter on the embankment above us.
Perhaps he would hear the twelve of us screaming just below his field of vision and aim downward to shoot 'monkeys' as they ran across the bridge to escape without looking?
"Indigo workshop members shot in cold blood after rinsing their homework projects...."
He noticed us and blushed and laughed.
He might have been shooting into air just to amuse himself at our expense.
I love this old guy. Lives in the house in front of mine. One foot in hunter/ gatherer in 2019. No glass windows on the front of his old house. Just the most elegant simple entrance imaginable. A red tengu mask above the door.
I walked back to the house and told James the story.
"You mean he was shooting 'at' monkeys over your head. I thought he was shooting monkeys over your head for a moment."