Mr. Mao was a tall, broad-shouldered, well built Chinese man. Already in his seventies, he was bald except for an ear-to-ear fringe of thin grey hair, yet his fresh, rosy complexion and puckish grin gave him the air of a mischievous teenager who was always getting into trouble.
By the way, my Mr. Mao was quite a different person from that other Mr. Mao from Hunan, celebrated for liberating millions of Chinese from the chains of wrathful feudalism and vilified for the callous, irreversible stupidity of the Cultural Revolution.
My Mr. Mao was from Tai Chung in Taiwan and he was a follower of the Buddhadharma. As his outlook was tinged with Taoist beliefs, I suspect he came to Buddhism rather late in life. That being said, he was anything but a fully paid-up Taoist practitioner (a common phenomenon among the Chinese), but I never plucked up the courage to ask him about it. By the time I met Mr. Mao, he had adopted an almost shamanistic kind of Taoist thinking, bundled together with a smattering of Buddhist aspirations that were significantly enriched when the Taiwanese became fashionably intoxicated by their newly rediscovered Tantric Buddhism.
The Taiwanese are an unusually warm people, and that warmth is said to be a legacy of Confucianism. There is even a word for it: ‘ren-ai’. If you look at a map of Taiwan, you will see Ren-ai Township, Ren-ai district, Ren-ai restaurants and even a Ren-ai road in Taipei city. Mr. Mao overflowed with ren-ai. He was warm, friendly and generous, and he was deeply devoted to the Buddha’s dharma. But he also had a great weakness. It was almost impossible for him to resist good food and large quantities of hard liquor. Asians, especially Chinese Buddhists, often make judgements about whether a person is a true Buddhist or not by their conduct (good Buddhists don’t eat meat or drink alcohol and so on) rather than by how often they think about impermanence and the illusory nature of life. Conduct and good behaviour, their own and that of others, is their yardstick of a ‘good’ Buddhist, not the expansiveness of a person’s ‘right’ view. Small wonder that Mr. Mao blushed sheepishly after gorging himself on rich food or binging on sake, as if to say, “I know, I know and it’s true. I really am the worst Buddhist on the planet.”
I was still young in 1984 and just beginning to explore the world outside my Himalayan homeland. I have often wondered if it was my enthusiasm for anything that was not quite ethical or wholesome that drew me to Mr. Mao. Whatever it was, we soon became quite close friends, bonding over manly stuff that had little to do with the Dharma.
Like many Taiwanese of his age, Mr. Mao was entranced by everything Japanese and talked about Japan non-stop (even though Japan colonized Taiwan at the beginning of the 20th century, traces of which can still be seen today). For Mr. Mao, everything Japanese, the mountains, the trees, the temples, were ‘fabulous’, ‘perfect’, ‘out of this world’, and the Japanese people were always elegant and beautifully presented (he went on and on about this). He also loved to flaunt what sounded to me like fluent Japanese. Instead of answering the phone with the usual Chinese “Wai!” he would bark, “Moshi Moshi!”, which annoyed many of his friends whose experience of the Japanese at that time was mixed.
When we first met, Mr. Mao’s enthusiasm for acquainting me with every aspect of Japanese culture was so great that he decided to pay for us both to take a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto. And to be honest, I didn’t need much persuading. I was more than eager to see that magical world for myself.
Before I met Mr. Mao, my knowledge of Japan had been sketchy. Growing up in India, I had already learned to respect the ‘made in Japan’ label (back then, the Seiko brand was as desirable as Patek Phillippe is today), confident that it indicated the highest quality. I knew a little about Pearl Harbour from American movies, although the depiction of Japanese brutality made me uncomfortable. I had also heard about how the US dropped atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the horror had so far eluded me.
I first set foot in the Land of the Rising Sun one cold, wet night in December 1984. Mr. Mao arranged everything. With the energy of a true zealot, he booked us onto back-to-back bus tours. We rose before dawn, rarely returning to our hotel rooms until long after sunset, having given ourselves up to a string of briskly efficient tour guides who chaperoned us past as many famous monuments, gardens and shopping districts as was humanly possible.
Our hotel provided us with perhaps the smallest guest rooms on the planet. Even so, mine provided me with everything I needed, including a toothbrush, comb, slippers and, miraculously, a television set. Japanese television enthralled me and rather than sleep, I often watched until dawn. It was on that tiny television screen that I first saw and developed an instant crush on Momoe Yamaguchi, the Japanese actress who starred in Katsumi Nishikawa’s Izu no Odoriko. I had no idea this film had a huge cult following in Japan at that time and only much later, discovered that it was based on a story by the Nobel laureate, Yasunari Kawabata.
Unsurprisingly given my age, it wasn’t long before my loyalty to the dazzling Momoe Yamaguchi was superseded by an even greater devotion to the intoxicating Setsuko Hara, who remains in my mind to this very day as one of the most powerfully inspiring Japanese women I have ever come across. But I sometimes ask myself, did she have such a strong effect on me because of herself, or because she was so exquisitely directed by the formidable Yasujiro Ozu?
Mr. Mao was particularly keen on introducing me to Tokyo’s famous nightlife, although I must admit, my first experience of Asakusa in the old town was a bit of a culture shock. But I soon got over it and became just as eager as Mr. Mao to explore Tokyo after dark. If we weren’t roaming through Asakusa, we were sampling the delights of Harajuku, where Japanese girls sported the highest, mightiest platform shoes ever created and mini skirts so short they were more like belts.
The karaoke phenomenon had just landed in Japan and would quickly spread to Taiwan, Korea and the rest of Asia. In the early 80s, karaoke was very much the thing to do and Mr. Mao loved it. Gazing in wonderment at the karaoke screen, his eye carefully followed the lyrics and he sang at the top of his voice. At first, I felt embarrassed for him because he was a really bad singer. Then I noticed that men like Mr. Mao went to these bars to forget themselves, pouring all their hopes, fears, loves and wishes into their singing. It was probably the only opportunity they ever had to express themselves. The videos they watched as they sang were of popular singers, including the latest teenage heart-throbs, and the songs they sang along to were almost always about falling in and out of love. I was intrigued by how satisfying it was for these dedicated karaoke singers to borrow young people’s looks and performances via the video screen (including the musical arrangements and backing musicians), then simply sing along, again and again and again. It was often midnight, sometimes later, when Mr. Mao and I returned to our hotel, him to his bed, me to my television.
As a Buddhist, the great Zen temples, like Daitokuji or Sanjusangen-do in Kyoto, filled me with pride. I remember how amazed I was to learn that the spectacularly beautiful Kiyomizu-dera temple is a seat of the Chittamatra school. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that the Chittamatra philosophy we studied in our teens was still formally connected to a temple. Even so, it didn’t take me long to realize that the Japanese had all but lost their appreciation of Buddhadharma and Buddhist values and, for the first time ever, I experienced a profound sense of sadness at their loss. Today’s immaculate temples and coolly fastidious Zen gardens are exquisitely beautiful, but empty.
Where I grew up, high in the Himalayan foothills, most of the temples were vibrantly alive with spiritual activity. Messy and lived in, temple buildings swarmed with monks, nuns, yogis and devotees, the walls and ceilings black with soot from centuries of daily butter lamp offerings, the air heavy with incense as there was always one puja or another going on. It was quite different in Japan where there were few monks or nuns and the temples were little more than impeccably refined monuments to Japanese artistic integrity. I sometimes wonder if, in fifty years time, the traditional Tibetan Buddhist temples that lamas are currently building all over the world will also end up becoming cultural mausoleums.
Japan is an exceptionally expensive country and Mr. Mao was not the wealthiest of men. Conscious of just how much he was spending on me, I stood firmly by my decision to keep my trip short. Perhaps it was the very shortness of our time in Japan that inspired Mr. Mao to pack each of our days with quite so many tours and shopping trips. And, as I was also making the most of my tiny television set, I barely slept.
Once or twice, I ventured out on my own but often got lost and had to ask for directions. Everyone I approached went out of their way to assist me, which made me feel rather guilty for having bothered them. One very kind man accompanied me for two miles to make sure I found the right address.
It was during one of my solo outings that I noticed Japan’s pristine road works and construction sites. Whether roads were being mended, telephone lines laid, or skyscrapers built, the area where the work took place was always spotlessly clean and well-ordered, the tools and materials neatly stacked and squared away. I would peek into the buses that held the workmen’s equipment, just to gaze in awe at the neat lines of named and numbered tools, and often found myself wishing that the monks back home would be as tidy and well-organized – especially the monks who looked after the shrines and temples. I also noticed, to my amazement, that in addition to an army of skilled construction workers, each building site employed two to four liaison officers, who spent their entire working day asking passers-by to forgive any inconvenience the construction site had caused them.
And then there were the parking attendants. Many of Japan’s city buildings have underground car parks. When a car enters or leaves a car park, a team of parking attendants instantly appear to guide it in or out and to ask passers-by to forgive the inconvenience. I can’t imagine this happening anywhere else in the world, certainly not in India or New York. Most businesses would consider such a service to be a waste of company resources and employees’ time. But this is precisely the kind of attention to detail that makes Japan, Japan.
The one place I never got lost in was Shinjuku train station. Despite the sprawling labyrinth of train lines, Shinjuku is so well designed that I didn’t need any Japanese to find my way around. Coming from a land where trains only ever run late – sometimes by a week or more – I was astonished to discover that Japanese trains not only run on time, but to the very second.
I particularly enjoyed the trendy and hip parts of Tokyo, like Shinjuku or ritzy Omotesando, that are full of fashionable young people, many of whom dress like characters from Manga comics. It often felt as if my eyes were glued to the outfits the young people chose to present themselves in, especially the boys. Their attention to detail and the amount of time and effort they put into dressing to go out was mindboggling! A boy might simply be wearing belted blue jeans, a white shirt, and a beautifully cut black blazer with a bag slung casually over his shoulder, yet he probably spent at least an hour, if not more, getting that look just right.
One day, as I took my seat in an overcrowded carriage, an elegant sneaker-clad foot attracted my attention. Even to my eyes, the sneaker was a work of art. I glanced at the wearer’s other foot, then did a double take. It was a loafer – a loafer that was just as beautiful as the sneaker, but it was still a loafer. Then I noticed that the sneakered-foot wore a tartan sock and the loafered-foot a simple plaid sock. Intrigued, my eyes slowly panned up the body of the man standing in front of me. His black jeans, fashionably shredded below the knee to expose his socks, were skin-tight and held in place by a broad, soft leather belt with a large metal cowboy buckle. Over a finely woven purple polo-neck sweater, his stripy blazer was the colour of indigo. As he clung to a leather hanging strap to steady himself, I saw he wore rings on each finger and thumb, and bracelets around his wrists. To top it off, a black Caballero hat was perfectly balanced on his head and a long black plait of hair hung halfway down his back. All-in-all, a masterpiece.
As my departure date drew nearer, I realized that I should make the most of every second I had left in that extraordinary country. That night, long after midnight, I found myself sitting in yet another crowded subway carriage, feasting my now tired eyes on marvellous bags, shoes, jackets, quirky manicures, and all manner of hats. (Today everyone would be engrossed in their phones. Back then, they buried their noses in Manga comics.)
Suddenly, at the other end of the carriage, I thought I saw… No, I was sure I saw… Could it be? I leaned forward to get a better look. Yes! The great Fudo Myo-o was sitting in the very same carriage. Black, well-built and muscly, a great deal of curly hair had been piled on top of his head, a plait hung over his left shoulder and his two fangs were clearly visible, one pointing up, the other pointing down. For a moment, time stood still. Then I had to look away as the power of that momentary glimpse overwhelmed me. For a few seconds, I could hardly bring myself to look up. Then, burning with curiosity, I raised my eyes to take another look. But he was gone.
Was he a phantom? A mirage? A vision? Who knows. I wondered at the time if seeing him was a symptom of exhaustion brought on by our punishing daily schedule. Or the effect of the vast number of TV shows I had devoured, most of which were about samurai, ninja and yakuza, whose tattooed bodies often displayed vivid depictions of Fudo Myo-o. But thinking about it now, he had been on my mind throughout that visit, especially since I learnt, on one of Mr. Mao’s bus tours, that Japan has its very own brand of Vajrayana Buddhism. As a follower of the Vajrayana myself, this discovery thrilled me and from then on, I willingly sacrificed several restaurant dinners and shopping expeditions to visit one or two of Japan’s great tantric shrines.
It was during that visit that, for the first time ever (in a trip chock-full of firsts), I was introduced to Shingon Buddhism. The intricacy of Shingon mandalas and the pristine, meticulously devised, beautifully arranged shrines were as unlike Indian and Tibetan temples as it was possible to be, and they enthralled me. As the great Japanese author, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, wrote in his essay, In Praise of Shadows:
In temple architecture the main room stands at a considerable distance from the garden; so dilute is the light there that no matter what the season, on fair days or cloudy, morning, midday, or evening, the pale, white glow scarcely varies. And the shadows at the interstices of the ribs seem strangely immobile, as if dust collected in the corners had become a part of the paper itself. I blink in uncertainty at this dreamlike luminescence, feeling as though some misty film were blunting my vision. The light from the pale white paper, powerless to dispel the heavy darkness of the alcove, is instead repelled by the darkness, creating a world of confusion where dark and light are indistinguishable. Have not you yourselves sensed a difference in the light that suffuses such a room, a rare tranquillity not found in ordinary light? Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and grey?
The impact of those Japanese shadows was immense. Just as young Japanese boys put such effort into their personal presentation, it was clear to me that the ancient Japanese shoguns, samurai, Emperors and laypeople alike had put all of themselves, heart and mind, into every detail of their temples, including placing windows in such a way as to direct the sunlight to hit the shrine just so.
Many Shingon temples house incredibly impressive statues and mandalas. Everywhere I went, I saw mandalas of the Mahavairocana Sutra and Vajrashekhara Sutra[1] surrounded by images of the main deities and their entourages. Yet, even in such illustrious company, the statues and paintings of Fudo Myo-o were impossible to overlook. Perhaps the best-loved and most sought after of all Japanese deities, his face and form – whether carved in stone, painted on the walls, printed from a wood block, or described in calligraphy and so on – are unmistakable.
Unlike India’s beloved Nataraja, Dancing Shiva, who is adored for his sensual curves, the supple strength of his slender limbs, his square shoulders and the perfect poise of his gracefully raised left foot, Fudo Myo-o is darkly menacing, powerful, even disturbing. Although some of the statues I saw in Japan showed him with both eyes open and bulging under a fiercesome frown, or one eye looking up and the other eye looking down, the image I know best shows him with one eye open and the other eye closed. His mouth grimaces like a Chinese dragon or a frog, often with one side open and the other pressed shut, while his fangs follow the direction of his eyes, one pointing up, the other pointing down. Most of his thick, curly hair is loosely tied in a top knot with a single skein plaited and pulled forward over his left shoulder. He holds a sword in his right hand and a coil of rope in his left. Black or dark blue, he is powerfully built, and looks both unmovable and ready to spring into action in an instant. Either sitting or standing in the midst of an inferno of flames, he commands the space around him with absolute authority. If you ever find yourself in a room containing an image of Fudo Myo-o, you will have eyes for no one else.
Back then I had hardly any money of my own and what little I had, I spent on postcards and prints of Fudo Myo-o. I felt I wanted to show him off simply because he was so magnificent – perhaps in the same way some people like to flaunt their beautiful, charismatic friends at balls or black tie parties,
I have practised Arya Achala since I was six year old and, as a child, spent many hours listening to marvellous stories about him. Atisha Dipamkara, for example, once sailed from India to Indonesia to beg Dharmakirti for teachings about how to be kind. As the ship left the Bay of Bengal, perhaps to sail through the Malacca Strait, a storm blew up that was so violent the ship began to sink. Atisha immediately prayed to Arya Achala (Fudo Myo-o’s Indian name) and within seconds, he appeared waist deep in the ocean to lift the ship above the furious waves. This is the kind of story that I grew up with.
Ever since Mr. Mao introduced me to that most elegant of countries, I have opened my mind to Japanese culture, books, films, music, and so on. I have now read English translations of many of Yukio Mishima’s novels and eaten at his favourite tonkatsu restaurant in Tokyo. I have read a number of Yasunari Kawabata’s stories, listened to Kokoro by Natsume Soseki and watched the films of Yasujiro Ozu. What a great artist he is! Without moving his camera an inch, a pile of dirty laundry can reduce you to tears or make you burst out laughing. I have seen several of his film a dozen times or more, each time falling into post-movie depression because I know I can never match his extraordinary accomplishments.
Traditional Japanese gourmet food is not my cup of tea; my palate has yet to acquire the level of sophistication necessary to appreciate this style of cooking. There is almost too much to admire: the arrangement of the morsels of food, the colour combinations, the size of the portions, the taste and so on. Coming from a rather more rugged culture, I am far more likely to grab a bowl of ramen at Hakata Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi in Kyoto than to try one of Japan’s many three Michelin star restaurants.
I have now visited Japan more times that I can remember and my respect for Japanese precision, order, attention to detail and, of course, their elegance and etiquette has only increased. I once spent a week at a hot spring in a village on the outskirts of Tokyo. The village train station was tiny and the soba noodle bar that had been squeezed into one of its corners was even tinier – but then, the Japanese are unrivalled masters of the art of making the most of impossibly small spaces. I ate at that noodle bar many times and the quality of the food was always excellent. Not once did the texture of the noodles or the taste of the cold sauce vary or diminish. I would take a book and sit for hours reading, people-watching and drinking coffee. All that coffee sent me to their toilet at least one, if not twice or more, but no matter how often I went, the toilet paper had always been refolded in a neat point.
Technologically, Japan is one of the most advanced countries in the world. In the 1960s, Japanese engineers pioneered the production of high-speed trains and have since built a ground-breaking rail network for their Shinkansen or ‘bullet’ trains. Everything the Japanese do, they do exceptionally well.
Japan’s form, its outer world, remains as elegant and beautifully crafted as it ever was. However – and I really hope I am wrong about this – my fear is that, like the Chinese (not just the Chinese in mainland China, but the Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Singaporean Chinese), the Japanese are shedding more and more of their inner culture, becoming if not embarrassed about their heritage, at least unwilling to draw attention to it. Most Japanese are more comfortable listening to Chopin piano music at public gatherings or in elevators than music played on their own shakuhachi (Japanese flute) or koto (a half-tube zither) instruments.
Since the mid-19th century restoration of the emperor and the arrival of their new American and European trading partners, the Japanese have become increasingly attracted to western culture. From what I have read, this attraction began quite some time ago. Murakami often writes about the American and European novelists he admires, like J.D. Salinger and Franz Kafka, and the American and European music he loves, like jazz and J.S. Bach (whose music he very correctly refers to by name and BWV number). But I have yet to read a story of his that mentions music played on traditional Japanese instruments. It is as if the entire country has surrendered to western values. So much so that the Japanese seem to approach their own cultural traditions, like Noh or Kabuki, in the same way as foreign holidaymakers do – for fun, for entertainment, as a ‘recreation’. The Japanese have become tourists in their own land.
The Indians are quite different. Not only are Indians proud of their music, they love listening to it. Traditional Indian music can often be heard blaring from the open windows of Indian houses – I can’t imagine hearing a Bach cello suite on the streets of Varanasi. And wherever an Indian community lives, New Delhi, London’s Southall or Vancouver’s Little India, there are always shops selling fire puja sets tailored to different deities and even neatly packaged cow dung for use in religious ceremonies or simply as incense. As an inveterate traveller, I see Indian men and women in all the airports of the world, the men wearing kurta pyjamas and the women in saris, their foreheads smeared with sindoor. They don’t dress like that for fun or because they feel the need to preserve their cultural traditions, it’s just how they always dress.
India’s deeply-rooted cultural traditions continue to be woven into their most worldly transactions. I read recently that in 2020 at the Ambala air base, a traditional ‘sarva dharma puja’ was included in the ceremonies celebrating India’s induction of new French fighter jets into their air force. And even today, totally nude Jain monks (who practise non-attachment to worldly possessions by owning nothing at all, not even a dhoti) serve as members of India’s Parliament.
My sense is that, unlike the Japanese and the Chinese, Indians are not shy about turning the candid lens through which they view the world on themselves. By contrast, a little more than fifty years ago, appalled by the spiritual barrenness of modern Japanese life, Yukio Mishima tried to persuade members of the Japanese army to help him forcibly return their country to its pre-war, warrior traditions. His great fear was that the Japanese would sell their souls to the Americans. When he failed, he committed hara-kiri. Today, if he hadn’t been cremated, he would be turning in his grave.
Every time I return to Japan, my great longing to bump into Mr. Fudo in a crowded train carriage, a tiny sushi bar, or an elegant Japanese coffee shop is as strong as ever. But, as my training in Buddhist philosophy continuously reminds me, that forty years of longing and hoping is probably the very reason I have not seen him again. Not yet, at least. Paradoxically, my philosophical training also tells me that longing and hoping for him is my sadhana and that I should never give it up. So, just as many of Lord Krishna’s devotees move to Vrindavan then spend the rest of their lives longing for a glimpse of the blue god, or at least to hear the sound of his flute, I will make my way to the Land of the Rising Sun once more, full of longing and hoping that this time, I will finally catch another glimpse of Mr. Fudo.
[1] The Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha Tantra is known as the Vajraśekhara Sūtra in the Shingon tradition.
