A Different Kind of Luxury

"The Accidental Mystic"
Jinko Kaneko

	Articles from the Japan Times series "Alternative Luxuries" (each article will be rewritten into a book chapter in the forthcoming: A Different Kind of Luxury)

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	As I arrive for my interview with textile artist Jinko Kaneko the morning light is pink on the crags of Mt. Yatsugatake rising across the valley. Then, as we crest a hill in her car, I can see the milky silhouette of Mt. Fuji rising in the distance through the hazy mist beyond the receding ridgelines of the deep green mountains.
	"Yes, it's beautiful to live here," my host tells me in reply to my words of awe, "but it's a very difficult place to make a living."
	Still, when we arrive at her small studio and gallery, I immediately sense a lush abundance that conveys a wealth of a more intangible kind.

	Ms. Kaneko puts some water on for tea and shows me around her wood-paneled atelier. Skeins of silvery-hued yarns hang from oak racks; a tall wooden frame displays a felt rendering of a multi-armed and many-headed Hindu deity, lithe and androgynous with skin of mustard yellow against a background of deep evening blue. Upstairs I am shown an array of one-of-a-kind garments: a chemise of white silk with patterns in hand-dyed indigo, a variegated burgundy felt overcoat spangled with glowing white half moons and swirls of orange and yellow, and, most stunningly, a long felt wizard's gown of slate blues, star clusters and cloudy galactic nebulae.
	For the second time in one hour I find myself expressing an admiration bordering on astonishment. Ms. Kaneko, however, seems almost indifferent to my praises, as if she were far away, in a different land. Like her art, she emanates a combination of seriousness and love of beauty, as though moved by a lyric inaudible to others.
	The tea water is boiling and we enter into the other part of the building, where, on weekends, Ms. Kaneko operates a Himalayan curry restaurant. Handmade chairs surround a table constructed from thick slabs of light blonde wood, and Zairian makosa music plays from speakers hidden inside mottled brown hanging gourds. Above the table is a woven blue and white tapestry, and in a high corner, an inlaid Hindu altar houses the elephant god Ganesh who looks down on us from above. Overall, the feeling is warm and welcoming.
	As we sit down to talk, I notice that there's both contemplation and humorous detachment in the manner in which she answers my questions. Her relatively deep voice is often inflected with laughter at the seeming cosmic joke of the human condition. The Japanese she uses also is somewhat elevated, even at times archaic, lending an air of poetry to our discussion. Friends are "compatriots;" her own high-school-aged son is referred to as "the one of few years." Yet her manner is simultaneously intimate, as she uses the personal pronoun boku for "I," which is usually employed only by men.

	She tells me that she is currently preparing for a show of new traditional Japanese mineral-based pigment paintings, although she has been working almost exclusively in fabrics for many years. When I ask her why she gave up painting after studying it at university in Kyoto, she tells me a story that reveals much about the forces impelling many to choose a life outside the boundaries of the system.

	"The art world in Kyoto is an extremely old-fashioned society. Even if you have a lot of talent, you must maintain a delicate balance of relationships with your teachers. If they suddenly decide that they don't like you, it's almost impossible to get into a show. One of my fellows at school was studying with a master, and his work was very beautiful. There was an important exhibition coming up in which everyone naturally expected that he would show his work. But the teacher said to him, 'Boy, you go get me 1,000,000 yen, and then you can be in this show.' My friend was so naive: he was shocked, destroyed. In the end, he committed suicide. So I knew what that painting world was all about, and I also knew that as a woman it would be especially difficult. I just didn't see a place for me there.
	"Why did you then decide to go to India?" I ask.
	"Well, as for going to India, there really was no incongruity in doing so," she says plainly. "I was brought up in a temple, and my father was a priest in an esoteric sect of Buddhism, so we had a lot of Indian people coming to the temple and staying. I was quite used to it."
	"But," I ask, "why did you stay there for so many years? Most people travel for only a few weeks after they graduate."
	"There was nothing to detain me from leaving Japan, and I really didn't have anything to come back to," she says disarmingly. "When I left, I had basically discarded Japan."
	She answers in a similar vein when I ask why she chose to live in the mountains when she returned to Japan. "My father worshipped a mountain deity, so again there was no incongruity with my choosing a mountain life."
	I am surprised by her offhand and almost indifferent tone, as if she has been both unaware of and subject to the mysterious movements of fate. Her art as well, whether it be painting, weaving, fabric dying or felt work seems to me also to simply appear, as if it was only coming through her, but not from her such that she seems almost surprised herself.
	I begin to get the sense that many of the directions she has taken in her life were not so much logically reasoned choices but--like the Taoist metaphor of flowing water finding its way downhill--because there was less blocking one particular path than the others.

	"What did you do for those years in India?" I ask.
	"Well, one thing I wished to do was to tread in the footsteps of the Buddha, and that I did. I visited the village where Shakyamuni met Sujata the Milk Girl; I climbed a mountain populated by wild green monkeys and owls hiding up in high branches; I walked across rivers barefoot and I entered into a cave where the Buddha trained, and which now houses a Tibetan temple, and then I went to Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment."
	"Also I traveled in Nepal, which is a fantastical place. One evening, I came upon a festival of lights, with hundreds of people holding candles in the night. Amongst these candles I could feel a gathering of thousands of fairies. It was one of those moments when I knew that this world is not only made from things that you can see."

	Ms. Kaneko tells me that her restaurant, Bonten-ya, is named after an incarnation of the Indian deity Brahma who appeared to Buddha to tell him to spread his learning and enlightenment to others. I thus imagine that my host may do some spiritual practices. But when I ask her, she surprises me again.
	"I don't do anything in particular."
	"But," I continue, sensing an otherworldly aspect to this person's presence, "how do you find ways to keep the sacred as part of your life when most of the world around you, and most people in it, seem to be completely occupied with mundane reality?"
	She corrects me right away. "I think it's a mistake to think that so-called "ordinary people" are not on a spiritual path. You have no idea what is happening inside of them."
	In fact, her interactions with other people--though she doesn't say it in so many words--might be considered to be the main way that she connects to the divine.
	"The life that we live in this world is, I think, about polishing, cleansing our beings, our inner spirit. It's a world of meeting other humans, of coming into contact with the chaos of the world. We meet so many completely different kinds of people in life. There are those that we feel are wonderful, and others not so; there are people we like, people we dislike. I don't want to use the word 'level' for people, because how can we know what is a higher level, and what is lower? It implies some sort of ranking. But maybe there's no other word. The important thing for me is to intently observe how I react inside when meeting someone new. When I direct my consciousness to the other person and examine how I feel and respond inside I . . . well, I can only say that I doing enjoy this, it's what I like to do. Perhaps that's how I keep the sacred as a part of my life."

	Indeed, as I spend the day with Ms. Kaneko's I can see the importance of other human beings in her life. Bonten-ya seems to be a gathering place for the local community of craftspeople, farmers and artisans. I meet a broad-faced and smiling man, affectionately called "Uncle" (in English) who comes to install the metal chimney for the wood stove, as well as Ms. Akamatsu, just back from studying the baking of whole grain brown bread in Germany, who delivers some nan, or Indian flatbread for the weekend's restaurant customers, and finally Mr. Oe, now in his mid-sixties, who has written books on bunraku puppet theater, the hippie movement in the 1960s in California and who also did the first translation into Japanese of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
	It's quite a rich assortment of people, and I feel the warmth of Ms. Kaneko again, this time as it is reflected in the people around her--her "compatriots," as it were.
	At the end of the day, as the her customers arrive for their five-course dinners of steaming Nepali curries, I ask her whether she will still be here in Nagasaka in five years, running this restaurant and making her art.
	"I don't know," she answers as though mystified anew, "it depends, I suppose, on what the world brings."

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	You can visit Ms. Kaneko's restaurant and fabric arts gallery in Nagasaka, Yamanashi prefecture. The restaurant is open from Friday to Sunday. Please call in advance at 0551-32-5242.
	It is OK to copy, print and forward these articles for non-commercial purposes BUT please just send me a brief email at andy@theopening.org along the lines of "I have copied/printed/forwarded this article" to let me know that you have done so. Thanks.