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On this sunny hot beautiful early summer day, I’m riding in an air-
conditioned bus motoring through the countryside from Kasama to Mashiko:
Upon learning of my newly discovered interest in Go, Nakeno-san has extended an
invitation through Randy and Yoshimi to visit him at his home where we will play
his favourite game.
I first met Nakeno-san, Randy’s sensei (teacher), when he had driven to
Kasama to join a few friends and potters for the inaugural firing of Randy’s new
climbing kiln. Nakeno-san was a small Japanese man in his mid fifties,
traditionally attired in a man’s summer kimono, obi (a wide cloth sash wrapped
around the hips), and white socks (kutsushita) with separate pockets for each big
toe to accommodate the straps of his wooden platform shoes (geita). (I had already
noticed that even work boots sometimes had separated big toes in Japan! Very odd
indeed, don’t you think?)Nakeno-san — the exact opposite of his outgoing
student, Randy — was quiet and reserved and had spoken to Randy that afternoon
exclusively in Japanese. Nakeno-san’s face, like most Japanese I’d met so far,
somehow looked more western than oriental — in fact, I had seen few people who
looked “typically Japanese”.
Now on the bus, we wind through luxuriant rolling greenery interspersed
with terraced rice fields and farm houses of traditional Japanese style with white
stucco walls and thatched or ceramic tile roofs. The highway has two lanes paved
with asphalt with a white line down its centre. Traffic is not too heavy, not too
light — it’s just right. We pass a farm house in the distance. It has a wasps’ nest
hanging under the eaves of a gable. They must be very tolerant people, these
Japanese, I think. The wasps must have been living there a long time — their nest
is as big as a Toyota! Ah, live and let live. At home we’d call the exterminator at
their first sign. I would. Here and there, I see farmers with large upside-down-
bowel-like straw hats working their fields. The bus is not too crowded, and not too
empty — it’s just right. The other passengers are all Japanese. Most are wearing
western style clothing:grey or brown slacks or skirts, short sleeved white shirts or
blouses, neat black hair. A few women wear kimonos and traditional accessories.
Younger women and girls have longer hair. Unlike me, I reflect, the Japanese
don’t seem concerned about their appearance. I wonder whether one day they will
by Morley Evans