Pico Iyer The Lady and the Monk Four

Pico Iyer The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

Where is he from? • Complicated question • He confesses to feeling at home in airports, where everyone is in between (Global Souls) • Parents are Indian, but he’s born in Britain • Choose an Italian name for him so classmates can pronounce it

Background • • Born in 1957 Parents are professors Father = philosopher Mother = religious scholar Family moves to Santa Barbara when Pico is 7 Goes back and forth to England for schooling Excels in school: scholarships to Eton, Oxford, Harvard

Career • Teaches writing and literature at Harvard • Spends summers researching for Let’s Go: Europe editions • Joins Time in 1982 • Travels and writes constantly • First book – essays on literature • Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East (1988)

The Lady and the Monk Four Seasons in Kyoto

Background to book • Travels to Asia (Thailand) and finds the experience transformative • Spends the night in Narita (stuck between flights) and feels strangely attracted • 4 “That first fleeting taste of Japan felt like the answer to some unspoken question. For through whatever curious affinities propel us towards people or places we have never met, I have always been powerfully drawn towards Japan. ”

Testing a Theory • Goes on a 4 -day trip with mother • 7 Wants to search for “the private Japan, and the emotional Japan– the lunar Japan that I had found in the poems of women and monks… If this imaginative Japan existed only in my mind, I wanted to know that soon, and so be free of the illusion forever…. ”

Finding a model way of living • 7 “In Japan, moreover, I wanted to put another daydream to the test: the vision I had always cherished of living simply and alone, in some foreign land, unknown. ” • Buys a ticket, taking off for Japan on the first day of autumn

Why Kyoto?

Kyoto • He’s got the name of a temple • Kyoto as a city: Imperial capital, so rich in history • Rich in temples: lots of temples, and lots of famous ones (esp. along the Philosopher’s Path)

Kyoto cont’d • • • Modern and ancient Number of foreigners Geisha girls Center for higher learning UNESCO sites Spiritual center

Four Seasons in a City • Measure of a year as a narrative device • Definition (clear arc and time frame) • Promise to look at the city in at least four different stages • Promise to concentrate on one local (in contrast to narratives that leave us breathless)

Lady and Monk • Connection to a monk seems logical • Connection to a lady? (Note my cover: Geisha girl!) • Interesting contrast • Note: Monks usually don’t interact with ladies • Hint of mystery

Autumn

. • When he first gets to Kyoto he goes to live with a monk • Soon meets a lady at an initiation celebration at a temple • (Much later, we find it’s a story he tells Kachiko about unrequited love)

Storytelling • Non-fiction, but many references to storytelling • Some stories within the text itself • Also references to literature, poetry, cultural stories

Other techniques: • • • Incongruities Gion= flower district Also a temple Lives in a monastery Sneaks out to call NY Temples to the east Pachinko parlors, Convenience stores to the West

Birthday Party • Meets lady at the temple • Mostly, his world was filled with ladies and women—everyone else was working! • Sachiko invites him… cultural lesson in strangeness • He’s the only guest • Winds up playing with the children and inventing a raccoon story

Kyoto= Maze Excerpt • 57 Tries to find particular places, winds up going in circles, “defeated by the maze of Japanese planning. ” • Realizes: he can’t plan epiphanies • Expectations: defeat themselves • His solution: Try to keep open, “waiting to see what kinds of things found me”

Zen as Paradox Excerpt • 65 Wants to cut through all the dualities, east/west, here/there, coming/going • Why? • Mind was “a devil’s advocate, an agent of diabolical sophistry that could argue any point and its opposite with equal conviction” • True things in life came not as thinking but as thunder

City as Contradiction • 78 Attraction of opposites esp. strong: • conservative city in a traditional society • Dotted with radical foreigners who did not or could not fit in at home • “Pairing of Western men and Eastern women was as natural as the partnership of sun and moon. Everyone falls in love with what he cannot begin to understand. ”

Language Fun Excerpt • Records some of his conversations, descriptions are hilarious • 82 Fight over which bad language to use: “tugof-war as to which should be the medium of confusion” • Sachiko bravely ploughs through English: “She was happy to plunge ahead without a second thought for grammar, scattering meanings and ambiguities as she went. ”

Worse still… • Sachiko naturally tries to be ambiguous and thereby consensual • He’s had the same training in England: “Might it not be easier perhaps to try this road? ” • Would go round in circles, ending up where they started • “Should me meet on Tuesday? ” I asked her. “No problem! Yesterday, Thursday, okay!”

Techniques • Narrative steps back and moves forward, then pulls back • Note contrast to Booth, Harrer, even Nicholl • Literary touches: 107 “The sky was slivers of blue in a gray porcelain bowl” 237 “Back home in Kyoto, the late-March days eased by in a seamless flow of blue epiphanies”

Technique—Rich References • 116 “Drifting along through the huge antiseptic spaces of Kobe’s lonely De Chirico streets, we chatted about Victor Hugo and Jacky Chan…” • 221 “It did not take a Roland Barthes to identify Japan as an Empire of Signs. ” • 337 “the fishermen’s faces were lit up, in a flash of Rembrandt gold…”

Doubts

Dangers • 123 “Encouraging people to realize their potential was an especially dangerous occupation in a country that taught them to fulfill their duty instead. ” • “To begin with, she was married, and I did not know what exactly that betokened, especially in a culture where marriage was often nothing more than separation by another name” • She tuned out her marriage—distant radio station

From Travel Story to…. Excerpt • 128 “In terms of everything I knew, things were fast becoming more and more slippery and strange…” • Husband: spectral figure on margins of her life • Treachery of language • Both have fewer inhibitions in the new language

More Quandaries Excerpt • 133 Quiet moment on the train • “Be careful! He bird! He stay in Japan only one year! But now heart control very difficult. ” • “Santa Barbara sunshine” • He knows she’s wondering. . “whether a happy Western ending might not be better than a melancholy Japanese one. ”

The Moment • The night before he has to leave Kyoto for a writing assignment: • 151 “After the kettle had boiled, I put down two mugs on the table and knelt down on the tatami to show her some earrings I had bought for my mother. She leaned forward till her hair was tickling my face. In the winter darkness of the tiny room, the fire glowing, I brushed back her hair, felt her lips touch mine…”

Winter

Transitions • 156 Becoming native: “Coming from Kyotoquasi-Japanese myself now—I found myself at sea abroad, forgetting to leave tips, reluctant to jaywalk across empty streets. . “ • 157 “At home, in California, I felt Japanese enough to appreciate, for the first time ever, the lavender blush of hibiscus days and the piercing clarity of Venus in the denim sky. ”

Dreaming • 195 “Coming to Japan in search of romance [is this what he says in the beginning? ] I found myself now a protagonist in someone else’s dream, and found, too, that the favor was returned. • “This dream? ” she often said, and the only answer I could find was yes. • But the section ends with another departure.

Spring • Couples by Kamo River

Strategies • Sachiko keeps getting closer • Calls, has a cake, wants to stop by • 241 Brings small presents. “And though I could tell she was holding me hostage with kindness, I could also tell that she truly did do her thinking with her heart. ” • “Before very long, as I looked around my room, I realized that Sachiko was colonizing me … her claims on me were everywhere”

More Narrative Waves • Sachiko is breaking out even as she’s reining him in • 244 claims she’s a “fox-woman” with a broken marriage • Extended information on Japanese marriages, and the separation they usually represent, with spouses operating independently of one another

Sachiko Hazards Wrath • She decides to take a course on how to be a tour guide operator • Her husband is bewildered • Her mother is angry • In the meantime, at the end of Spring, she decides to tell Pico goodbye

Summer • Philosopher’s Path

Sachiko • Her “goodbye” doesn’t last • He realizes how firmly rooted she is • 313 “I could see how hard it would always be for her to break away from Japan, and not only because Japan had never taught her to live without it. ” • There’s a deep connection she doesn’t even realize she has

Final Ironies • 328 “No place is an idyll to its residents as no man is a prophet in his own household. And foreigners everywhere are more solicitous about the traditions of their adopted homes than natives are” • 329 “The tourists who came here for two weeks could not stop marveling at the silence of the place; the longtime residents heard only the clatter of pachinko coins, the syncopated roar of TV baseball crowds. ”

What has he learned? • 329 “For my own part, I began to realize that every statement I made about Japan applied just as surely in the opposite direction. ”

Last Scene • The night before he leaves, they go boating on the lake • 338 “It was only later, after I had left Japan, that I realized that everything had been there that night: the lanterned dark, the moon above the mountains, the dreamlike maiden in kimono. There was the Heian vision I had sought since childhood. And yet, by now, it was so much a part of my life that I had not even see it till it was gone. ”