Shelley Galloway

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Japan is a special place for me, for many reasons. I resonate with the culture, the people, the landscape, the arts, the aesthetics, and the basis of the Shinto faith and its relationship with nature. Arriving in Japan, holds an almost mystical connection for me and so my sound walk is fraught with all that I bring to what for me, is a crossing of a physical, psychological and spiritual threshold. “Listening to Japan,” means more to me than my fellow SAS travelers, so I pick up more cultural nuances, as I hold my recorder out to the environment around me. My experience of recording with these friends, as we travelled, was that they too became more attuned to these resonances and were able to appreciate some of my feelings for this country.

From an early age, I was drawn to Japanese aesthetics. I admired the attention to detail, the glorious materials, the haunting images and the elegant beauty of Japanese fabric, woodblock prints and music. Playacting scenes from Madame Butterfly, although composed by Puccini, reinforced my love of Japanese culture. The practice of Ikebana has further exposed me to Japanese aesthetic principles and drawn me into a greater study of the culture and religions of Japan. The asymmetry of the arrangements, the reflection of the natural world and the use of void space are Japanese artistic components that I utilize. Elements of Shintoism and the idea of the kami spirits, which reside in nature around us have also appealed to me in a profound way and have colored my spiritual view of the world.

The image that best characterizes my “ah ha” moment in Japan is a black and white photo taken the last day in Kyoto when I awoke at the Yuzuya ryokan. Sadness about our impending departure reinforced my sense of wabi sabi, a melancholy longing for the beauty in transience. I walked down the stairs to photograph the homelike lobby only to be submerged in a moment of fleeting loveliness and care on the part of the inn owners. The well-worn, dark plank floors had been sprinkled with water which shown in the early morning light from the garden courtyard. The pattern of the water droplets created a flowing stream along the wood floor. To cross this stream or to ford its path, would involve disturbing its visual flow – it was another threshold to cross, another world to explore, another reality to envision – all in the quiet moments before engaging with the hustle of the world outside. Someone had taken the time to create this moment for me to savor and had captured the essence of Japan for me.

My Japanese sound journal has several scenes reflecting moments of insight, meditation, attention and pure fun. In Scene 1, Mark Thomas’ laugh captures the pure enjoyment of the shipboard community as we ran to experience the Taiko drummers as we docked in Yokohama. Several cultural factoids became evident as we participated in this welcome concert. The drummers were middle-aged or older women. This reflected the acceptability of women’s involvement in outside activities, especially clubs teaching traditional arts. The age of the participants was indicative of the aging population in Japan and the focus of this age bracket on traditional arts whereas, younger Japanese are more focused on western art forms. Their mastery of the Taiko genre also spoke highly of Japanese dedication and willingness to practice long hours to master a craft. Our enjoyment was infectious and Japanese passersby, photographed the entire concert and our reactions.

Scene 2 involves several overlapping recordings of travel on the train from Yokohama to Tokyo. There is a "shakei" of sounds present in the first clip. I use this term loosely as it is actually a term in landscape design defining the use of “borrowed” landscape in a Japanese garden. Often a Japanese garden will “borrow” a hillside outside the garden’s border to add depth and distance and a sense of extension into the "spiritual beyond" of the garden’s space. In the train station, the soundscape includes an overlapping of sounds from each platform. There are sound snippets of station announcements, a recording of birds singing, trains entering and departing and the melodic tunes that prepare the passengers for the arrival and departure of trains or identify the station to which they are arriving.

Part two of the train scene is indicative of the value placed on order, rules and silence in Japan. In fact signs and verbal announcements on trains explain in no uncertain terms that passengers are expected to silence cell phones, keep conversations to a minimum and to find a secluded corner if a phone call is to be made or answered. There might not always be adequate physical space during rush hour on a train, but auditory space in encouraged, and in a sense required as part of travel etiquette. The void space or Ma space in art and floral design is something I admire most about Japan. “Ma means empty, spatial void, and interval of space or time. . . the emptiness is often arranged to be a focal point. Space is emptiness, yet it also has shapes. Ma allows for an energy or sense of movement within a design.” Maybe an auditory space in a train, allows travelers to create their own sense of physical and emotional space even in the presence of crowding. Possibly it is also just a rule to be followed.

Scene 3 is my attempt to capture a few moments of what I would characterize as the “kawai” culture of advertising and merchandising in Japan. “Kawai” is a term meaning “super cute” and it has almost a cult following in Japan. Tiny dogs, tiny phone attachments, and possibly Manga and Anime characters, as well as Hello Kitty are all examples of this love of the super cute. Overlapping sound bites from TV ads and children’s shows capture a sense of kawai in their high-pitched language and cute tunes.

Scene 4 is a walk through the marketplace surrounding Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. This soundwalk scene is a typical marketplace in the rougher tones of the voices, the hawker’s calls, the familiar cadence of gossip and laughter from everyday folks selling their wares. There is a sense of the rural and the quotidian that I enjoy recording in markets in each country. People are just themselves engaged in everyday rituals of shopping, preparing meals and selling their produce.

A sound anomaly is the subject of Scene 5, the Pachinko Parlor. Its continuous and deafening din is broken by occasional melodies and bonanza themes – suggesting the addictiveness of this activity for the participants. Does the potential monetary reward draw people to this sound barrage or is it a need to escape the strictures of rigid societal roles and expectations? In the Pachinko Parlor you can be anonymous and detached, focusing only on your screen, your numbers and the chance to soar financially out of your societal position. Men and women can play this game and there is no apparent time limit or stricture posted to control how you play. This activity is suggestive to me of the cultural underbelly of Japan which is reflected in entertainments involving salarymen and hookers, liaison between older men and young attractive “hostesses”– all possible ways to avoid a society’s strictures and daily role expectations.

Scene 5 holds several episodes of sound from the grounds of the Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto. There is a legendary strength test for men, the sound of bells ringing and clapping at a Shinto shrine and the resonance of a large brass prayer gong. This is followed by the sounds of the bell at our meditation center and the large temple bell being struck at 6 pm outside a temple in Kyoto. The echoing of these sounds of worship gives audible credence to the sense of "the other" in the Buddhist temples of Japan. Zen, in its teaching, stresses simplicity and nature and the communication of the spiritual from the mind of master to the student. It is as if this spiritual communion is resonating from the musical object out to the mental sphere of the worshipper, engulfing both in the sense of the infinite. The openness of the temple structures to the outdoors and their placement and harmony with their natural setting are in keeping with Zen Buddhism's connection with the environment.

My final scenes are simply fun anecdotes. A lovely melody that reminds me of a haunting Japanese refrain is followed by a more contemporary version of shamisen music. Store clerks at Takashimaya Department Store welcome us to their amazing chocolate festival in honor of Valentine’s Day.

The final steps in our journey through Japan are brought full circle with the Taiko performance in Kobe harbor, this time featuring a younger, but no less enthusiastic group of female performers. The last punctuation mark to our Japan journey is a loud blast on the ship’s horn, telling us we are pulling away from one of our favorite port.