lava-singed
Katsushika Hokusai, Dawn at Isawa in Kai Province, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, 1830-1832
Today's art is from Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), artist of the Edo period (1603-1868) in Japan. He was a pioneer of the ukiyo-e genre, ie. "pictures of the floating world", and is famous for another view of Mount Fuji, The Great Wave of Kanagawa. In that work, the wave overwhelms the mountain. Here, the mountain looms large over the village of Isawa. The Edo period was a time of extreme isolationism, and it would have been impossible for the people of Isawa to encounter a person from another country. In my experience, some traces of Edo consciousness seem to linger on. Chiba City, Japan What did the old man on his bicycle think he had seen that evening? Peddling past, beneath the streetlamp cone of light, he twisted his whole body, craning, craning his neck, and his face seemed to crack aghast under the weight of my foreignness. Was it mythic heights, distant snags, long slopes glimmering white, uncanny, like rolling Fuji-san emerging from the mist? Or was I another commodore come to burn rivers through his still, ancient world— nose, eyes, hair set to inflame the locals? I saw the fissures, their gape and, in an instant, a swerve, a wobble of wheels, a wild splay of limbs portending natural disaster. Then, staggering, righting himself, he burst back into the dark and, lava-singed, rode roughly on.
Wonderful poem - so captures my own impressions of my first time as a student in Japan at age 19 in 1969!!!iNarrow Hilly Kobe streets, tiny women shuffling along in house kimono, shopping lists tucked in their obi, old men already clacking tiles in Pachinko parlors- I can just see your bicyclist!!!
This is mighty good, Alan. Excellent.