April 4, 2009
LETTER FROM KYOTO
The ritual ebbing of sorrows
By Janice Tay
IT WAS news I'd been waiting 10 years to hear. An old friend from college recently confirmed a visit to Kyoto - a reunion for us after a decade apart. But then I realised that her trip would cover Hina Matsuri: the Doll Festival on March 3, a day when parents with young daughters pray for them to grow up safely. And the worry began.
I met Frauke in Oxford University about 13 years ago, when I was reading English literature. She was a German exchange student.
She invited me to spend Christmas with her family. And almost every Easter, summer and Christmas holiday after that, I would appear on her doorstep with a toothbrush.
But it is now 10 years after my graduation and I am in front of a shrine in Kyoto. The wind still has a winter bite but the 2,000 plum trees blooming in the shrine disagree and declare it spring.
A taxi pulls up. Frauke and her parents climb out - and though the wind has not loosened its grip, I think the plum trees are right.
But in showing them Japan's past, I keep seeing my own. The double vision dogs me to a village north of the city, where we spend two nights at a ryokan.
It is Frauke's first time in a traditional inn and she eyes the parade of dinner dishes nervously.
'Last night, when I got into the bath, a tidal wave rushed out.'
I tell her that this is normal for a Japanese bath and change the subject to what little boys do at hot springs. Sometimes, the boys wait until people have entered the baths - then switch the signs indicating which entrance is for which gender.
Frauke's father laughs and says Frauke did something similar as a child when they stayed at a hotel that left the room keys in the doors. I ask him how old she was then.
This stumps him. 'But I can remember what car we had at the time so I can calculate back,' he says. It turns out that Frauke was four.
'He can remember the car but not his child's age,' she mutters.
Her mother covers her eyes in despair. 'I'm getting a divorce.'
Meanwhile, Frauke tries to salvage her reputation. 'It was probably Tina's idea,' she says. 'She was always the ringleader.'
At the mention of her older sister, I freeze but no one notices.
Towards the end of their trip comes the Doll Festival: the day I've been dreading. The festival, also known as Girls' Day, is usually celebrated at home, with families putting up elaborate doll displays and serving special food.
But Shimogamo Jinja, one of the oldest shrines in Kyoto, is organising a special event, so we make the trip there.
Though the custom of displaying dolls began only in the 17th century, it has its roots in a much older practice. On the third day of the third month, people would cast paper or straw dolls into a river or the sea, hoping that as the figures floated away, they would take ill health and impurities with them.
The rite is still carried out at the Shimogamo shrine once a year as a prayer for children's safety. People can buy a little straw basket with two dolls in it and send it down the stream in the shrine.
As I watch people carrying these baskets, I think of Frauke's sister again. Not long after I met her, doctors found she had cancer. On my trips to Germany after that, the hardest thing to get used to in that unfamiliar country was the sight of sturdy, outgoing Tina in hospital - on a couch, in a sickbed, in a wig.
Some time later in Oxford, I stopped by my mailbox on my way to meet a friend for lunch. The envelope waiting for me was lined with black paper. And when I read the letter from Frauke, I learnt there are times when chemotherapy and prayers don't work.
I made it to the restaurant somehow. Soon after ordering, my friend leaned over the table and asked if I was all right.
'No,' I said. 'Not really.'
Eleven years later, I watch people lay dolls in a quiet stream. I think about a little girl called Christine - Tina's namesake and the daughter of her best friend.
The night before, Frauke tells me that she's Christine's godmother, the honour Tina would have had if she'd lived. Christine, says Frauke, is already showing similar traits - like being messy.
According to Frauke, Tina wasn't fond of cleaning up. But she also liked things to look neat so she would persuade Frauke to leave her tidy room and move into Tina's cluttered one.
I fall about laughing. Frauke ducks her head. 'I know - what does that say about me, right?'
Two days later, just before we leave the inn, I watch Frauke make her bed so neatly it looks like no one has slept in it. My lips twitch.
Even after Frauke and her parents leave Japan, the story of Tina the Master Con Artist makes me smile in a way I didn't think possible before they arrived. But 11 years will work changes, so many it may take another 11 to see them all.
One thing, at least, has become clear: It's not that you stop missing those who went ahead but it's that the way you remember them changes. So though the memory of that black-lined envelope can still blank everything out, easing over it is the picture of a small Tina conning an even smaller Frauke out of her orderly room.
And to my surprise, I find that I can laugh, almost as if something has slipped away, borne off by dolls in a basket that floats further and further down an unseen, insistent stream.
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