A Different Kind of Luxury

"Making the Time to Simply Stop and Think"
Atsuko Watanabe

by Andy Couturier (C) 1999
Kamikatsu, Tokushima

	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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	We are sitting up late sipping plum wine from small glasses at Atsuko Watanabe's dinner table next to the woodstove in an old farmhouse deep in the mountains of Shikoku. Atsuko's husband, Gufudo, is washing the dishes from tonight's seven-course Indian vegetarian meal served on the Watanabes' own handmade pottery. Nothing out of the ordinary here where the time to prepare elaborate delicacies from the sub-continent, or linger over a discussion of cultural philosophy is clearly valued more highly than getting a bit more work done.
	Ms. Watanabe has been telling me about the impact on her lifestyle of her many years of living in India and other parts to Asia . "I was influenced greatly by the Indians in two ways. First, it was clear to me that spirituality was absolutely central to their lives in a way that it isn't here in Japan for us. Secondly, I recognized that humans could live a completely fulfilling life in simple houses without much money or electrical appliances. This was an entirely new concept for me. And I started to believe that I might be able to live such a life myself."

	As early as junior high school, however, Watanabe (now in her forties) knew that she wasn't interested in a conventional lifestyle. "When I was twelve or thirteen, I began to think that the ordinary way of living life would be tedious and boring. The office worker in Japan is always being used by someone or another: they have no freedom at all. I knew that I didn't want that kind of life for myself."
	At first glance, the unadorned rural life that Atsuko Watanabe lives might seem to be a return to traditional ways long gone in most parts of Japan. She cooks her meals on a wood-fired stove made of mud-and-brick, grows much of her own food on the terraced fields that descend into the misty valley below, and hand-paints illustrations onto the ceramics by which she and her husband earn their modest income. Nevertheless, many of the decisions she has made about her life path were in direct reaction to the negative aspects of her grandparents' ways.
	"My father was raised in a family with an extremely old way of thinking. He was forced to study every second of his boyhood, never allowed to play and develop who he was, and he was ordered around by his mother until she died at 82. He was never completed as a human being. I actually feel really sorry for him."
	Even so, when I looked around the house earlier in the day and noticed that there was no television, no electronic appliances, no items made of plastic, and when I noticed the hand-made wooden bath tub and the freshly harvested rice plants hanging upside down from bamboo poles, I was understandably tempted to see in all of it a return to the past, a return to traditional ways. Ms. Watanabe, however, corrects me immediately. "I am not a traditional person. I am a just a woman living a simple life in the middle of the mountains. That's all."
	According to Ms. Watanabe, each of her lifestyle choices has been made consciously, with a particular purpose in mind, often environmental or spiritual. "I gave up using a gas stove to cook on because here in the village there are a lot of lumber mills which throw away their scrap wood; I didn't like seeing it all go to waste. It's also quite interesting to cook with wood. Planting rice by hand makes me feel connected with my ancestors. Also I like knowing where my food comes from. And we use solar panels here because, as we all know, nuclear energy is incredibly dangerous to our children and all life on earth."

	I asked her what in her personal history made her give up the city life that her brother and sisters all chose.
	"I've always loved flowers, plants and trees. When I was a child I played in the rivers and fields near our rural relatives, even though I myself was raised in the city. I knew I wanted to live in the midst of nature. I also loved to spend hours looking at the moon, musing about philosophical questions. I felt even then that I would have to have a life with enough time to contemplate, to let my mind range freely."
	"I studied oil painting and Japanese art in college and focused on botanicals and landscapes. I would just go out to any abandoned field and sketch pictures of flowering weeds for hours at a time." Even now, the designs she paints on the pottery are primarily of wildflowers, and dinner table conversation often turns to rare or exotic species and sub-species of flora, about which she and her husband Gufudo are veritable walking encyclopedias.

	After college, Watanabe traveled by herself in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, studying not only the natural environment but the spiritual and aesthetic traditions of these ancient civilizations. Instead of just taking a ten day "graduation voyage" as many Japanese young people do, she stayed on for several years, absorbing the lifestyles, the rhythms, and, most of all, the spiritual philosophies of these diverse peoples.
	"In India, traveling alone, I had a lot of time to just sit and think, and to wonder what I have come to this earth to do and be. And I observed that the Indians spent a lot of time in the temples, working to improve their souls, and move up into the next life. It was then that I gave a lot of thought to what the purpose of being alive actually is. Many Japanese don't have the opportunity--don't make an opportunity--for themselves to deeply think about things for an extended period of time. Maybe that's why many people aren't satisfied with the lives they live."

	A few years later Watanabe came into contact with the thinking of Rudolf Steiner, the nineteenth century Christian mystic and founder of the anthroposophy movement, as well as the originator of the educational theories that are the basis for the Waldorf educational system. "One of the main influences I had from Steiner was about what it is to succeed, what it is in this existence that I should attach value to. To become rich, or to paint pictures and become famous: these are not things to worry about. I live almost without money, and I don't mind at all. I don't care what people think about me. These are not things to worry about, not one bit."
	Deeply moved by his ideas about the progression of souls through numerous existences, she decided to become a Christian--although, like most mystics the world over, the form of Christianity she practices is pretty far from that practiced by mainstream members of an organized church. "I don't believe, for example," she explains to me, "that we have only one life and either go to heaven or hell. I believe that we are reincarnated and gather up abilities and potencies passing from one incarnation to the next. I also believe that we have as many as six bodies, six spiritual bodies, in each of us, none of which can be seen by ordinary sight."
	I asked her why she became a Catholic. "Of all the Christian denominations, I chose Catholicism because I was interested in those things that might have remained, passed down century by century all the way through from Jesus Christ himself. I wanted to understand what, in a specific way, are the essential elements of Christianity and what has been mixed in later by ordinary people."
	Besides her interests in foods, plant life, aesthetics and spirituality, Watanabe is also involved in a number of environmental and political struggles, often taking leadership roles and arguing face-to-face with company directors and government officials. She has fought the construction of nuclear plants, coal-fired electricity generating stations, massive dam construction projects, and is involved in a local Amnesty International chapter.
	The major form of activism she engages in, however, is educational, trying to fight for a freer, less competition-focused school system for her two girls. "They want to assign a number for everything in school: who can swim better, who can climb a rope faster. Why all this ranking? Does it really help the children develop?"
	In fact, she allowed her elder daughter, Junko, to quit school for several years and do home-schooling simply because Junko herself didn't want to go. "I won't force my children to go to school. When my daughter was at home all day, she pursued a lot of her own interests, and we studied things together, she and I. When she decided to return several years later, she was actually ahead of all the kids in her class."
	When Junko graduated from elementary school last year, the parent's group asked Watanabe to give the traditional "thank you to the teachers" address. She wasn't particularly eager to do so, but since the other parents didn't want to, she agreed. I smiled to myself imagining how the local officials and school administrators might have felt upon hearing that it was Ms. Watanabe-- known for her outspoken views--who was going to be given a platform at a public function.
	"What did you say?" I asked.
	"Well, I told the teachers I couldn't thank them, not yet, because their relationship with the children has just begun."
	"I don't understand," I told her.
	"Children leaving the sixth grade are just beginning to have a real interaction with what they have encountered so far in life. Up until this point, they have just been receiving all that has been told to them, all that the teachers have said and taught. Now they are entering the age in which they reflect, evaluate and criticize. So their interaction with the teachers is actually just beginning. That's why I told the teachers that it's too soon to thank them. Once my child has a chance to really relate to their teaching, I'll be able to know whether to thank them or not."
	"But," I ask her, "don't you think it might be perceived as a little rude to not thank the teachers? After all, they did work all those years."
	Ms. Watanabe raises her eyebrows, "They received their salary, didn't they? I personally don't think they did anything beyond the minimum that might be expected. And anyway, I don't like such formulaic ceremonies in which school officials pressure parents into saying 'thank you' to them when the parents might not necessarily feel it. In our case, a lot of the parents felt just like I did: those teachers did at best an average job. But none of the parents would even consider saying such a thing. I, however, have no problem in that regard, so the fact that I was chosen to say so was just perfect."
	It occurs to me that Ms. Watanabe's ability to break with the ritual practice of saying the expected "thank you" exhibits the kind of inner fortitude that has allowed her to resist the pressures to conform which many Japanese people face every day.

	As we are concluding our interview, and the old wooden and brass clock strikes eleven, I say to Ms. Watanabe that maybe more people would live this way if only they knew how much fun it could be.
	Never hesitant to correct a misconception, she replies that she didn't make the choices she did based on ideas of enjoyment. "People of the modern age are focused on 'having fun.' I think that's a totally modern concept. Before, humans did what they needed to do, and if pleasure came their way they welcomed it. But enjoyment was not the purpose of life then. Now we need everything to be entertaining. When it ceases to be entertaining, then we stop doing it. Sumo wrestling, for example, used to be a rite, a way for the people to call the gods down to earth, to have them enter the strongest wrestler. It was part of village festivals--which weren't parties but ritual ways of connecting with the spirits. But as soon as it ceased to have that function, it became something for amusement, so now you mostly have Sumo wrestling on television, as a sport."
	"I didn't choose this life for the pleasure of it, but because it seemed to be the right way to spend the life that I was given."

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