Nara

I'd been planning my Christmas travels for weeks - a big deal, my first extended trip that I'd ever done alone, travelling for three weeks across Japan, after only learning the language for two and a half months.

A virulent stomach bug kept me in bed for a week before my travels began, and I was still pretty shaky when I got up for my first morning's travel. I had a three-week rail pass, valid across the country; but, of course, I still missed my first bullet train of the day.

Spending most of the day on trains, I arrived in Nara around 3:30. I'd left Fukuoka in the far west, and was now close to the middle of Japan - to simplify horribly, I was in the bit of Japan that the history comes from. Nara was the capital of Japan from 710-784AD, after which it moved to Nara's more famous big-brother, Kyoto, about an hour away on the train.

It's a very small city, centred on a pedestrianised high-street which leads onto into a large, green park, full of mangy deer that flock to the tourist like pigeons in Trafalgar Square. But I guess the better comparison would be to Oxford - it had the same venerable air of peaceful dust - almost nowhere to go out at night, but steeped in ancient buildings and great treasures. It would be a great place to retire to, if anyone's looking to give up on work anytime soon.

But by the time I arrived there, the temples were shutting, the light dissipating to dusk, and tiredness was setting in. I stomped grumpily around the parks, and got a bit lost in the wooded pathways to the east. Wandering in the deepening gloom, listening to the sporadic deer shrieks, feeling a little unimpressed with the world. And then I saw a sign saying 'Pathway' (in English). It didn't say what to or where from, just 'pathway'. But it seemed like a good omen, and take it I did.

I found myself in the quiet back streets, a fair way from where I wanted to be. But then I came across a couple of wonderful instances of unusual light. Whipping my camera out, I began to feel a lot happier...


Warped, bare trees in neon street light.


A cat hunched on a flood light for warmth, by the historic Sarusawano Ike (but then everything in Nara is historic - it's basically just a nice pond).


The great wooden pagoda of Kofukuji, rebuilt after fire in 1426.


The next day, I went to see 東大寺 (Todaiji - 'Great East Temple') - the biggest wooden building in the world. And it really is BIG...


Photos always shrink things, but click on the pic to make it big, and look at the people on the steps for scale. There's something about its sheer bulk, a shape so familiar from a hundred temple roofs but stretched far beyond the scale of anywhere else. But it doesn't feel humbling, more uplifting to see something man-made and so monumental.


Inside sits the 大仏 (Daibutsu - Great Buddha), a vast bronze statue of Buddha that stands (or rather sits) over 50ft high, completed in 751. The next year, a ceremony was held to bring the statue to life, ceremonially painting in its pupils to see the world. It took so much bronze to cast the statue that it left the fledgling kingdom on the verge of bankruptcy.

The result really is wonderful, and it and the surrounding artwork has a clear, strong aesthetic. The shapes are bold and clearly defined, but abstracted into stylised forms. The pastel red wooden walls are as faded as the green wooden ornaments and dull bronze statues - it felt dry, but warm and accessible.

I timed my visit to Nara in order to see the On Matsuri, one of Nara's biggest festivals. It is a Shinto festival, in which the resident gods are invoked in a midnight ceremony, and housed within a single, portable shrine that is carried down from the hills and set up in state in a temporary temple in the woods for the 24hours of the festival.

During the day, hours of festivities see all manner of traditional costumes and outfits parade through the town; little kids stuttering along in wooden sandals, and rather tubby would-be samurai seemed to make up the largest part of the participants. It was fun, but didn't really set me on fire.


Around 4:30, as the light began to fade, the event began that I really wanted to see. In front of the portable shrine, a large covered stage had been set up, brightly lit and surrounded by braziers, flames billowing in the wind.

The wind picked up, and blew flocks of crows overhead.

A series of extraordinary figures appeared. One robed man walked elegantly on half-foot tall platform sandals, and carried a 3ft diameter headdress with a 2ft high diorama balanced on top, featuring seven dolls in full traditional dress.

An entire Gagaku ensemble was ranked up on the right, playing the ancient music of the Japanese Court (a very rare treat) - its history goes back over a thousand years, though it has changed much over that time. The music has an extraordinary, ethereal quality, with clangs, booms, whistling flutes, and harmonic voices. Underneath it all is the rasping Sho, sounding like an opening accordion, and looking like hands pressed together in prayer.





And to that unearthly music, dancers emerged dressed in fabulous, bright costumes, and wearing large, elaborate headdresses. I've seen them elsewhere, sitting dull and lifeless in museums, but here they were, in part of a real performance.



Four orange dancers walked slowly onto the stage, and spread out into a wide pattern. They danced slowly and gracefully, making curved, sweeping movements with one limb at a time. A circle with the arms, slow spin on the heel, step forward, sweep with both hands. They moved with glacial slowness, and an intensity that demanded attention.

The weather tried to steal our gaze, with scattered rain and a strong wind that blew away priest hats and music papers, shaking the marquees as the musicians tried to pipe over the blustering elements.

A later dance saw a proud dragon skip through the sparks of the fires fanned by the wind, flicking its arms and and legs in the air; a loose jaw hanging free beneath its face, its shining green eyes bulging large.

Another dance featured an orange insect with a long white beard, flicking its heels then sweeping into a protracted, slow turn, drawing its long orange train behind it.


These dancers were serious, powerful, and possessed a real gravity. I spent a lot of time staring at their moving backs, because they danced facing away from the audience. Instead, they danced to the shrine, making their purpose clear - this was a ritual, not a performance. As was partly true of the Yokagura, the point of these dances are that they are performed as well as possible, NOT that the audience enjoys them. But by performing them with such intensity, they drew the eye and had a powerful effect on the emotions.

That's a lesson artists in the west could certainly do with learning - we're too obsessed with the audience's view, their experience, whether its in the judgement of academic theory or arts funding. If the artist keeps looking at they're audience, they'll fumble the ball and stop listening to what's inside. It takes a real arrogance (or confidence) to just concentrate on your own work - maybe you need centuries of tradition to give you that confidence, and so we've lost it in much of our contemporary art.

That power derived from a performance of total, absorbed conviction sent shivers down my body.

Or maybe that was just the wind, rain, and biting cold.