Something is hatching

Every day Gunch does wonderful things for me and we have wonderful conversations. I have become wholly spoilt and come to expect it. Today he surpassed all expectation. When I arrived through the office door, I still had my teacher face on, having just taught a class. I don't know exactly what my teacher face looks like although I do know what it feels like; it feels stern but motherly, like a nurse in a WWI tent who has seen a thing or two, takes no nonsense from boisterous invalids and will kindly mop the brow of the legless until they breath their last. That's what I want to be, when I am a teacher. How ridiculous.

Anyways, I arrived through the door with my teacher face on and Gunch was sprawled at my desk, looking triumphant, a newspaper open in front of him. This was unusual because generally we respect each other's desks as private space. By meeting at the empty desk in the middle of the office, we allow each other privacy. His mouldy coffee tins and dictionary towers are his business. My celeb blogs and heaps of chocolate wrappers are my business. 'Jemma-san', he said, 'today I have some very very good news.'
'Really?' said I, I know he likes to play these things out at a leisurely pace, 'what's that?'

It turned out to be very, very good news indeed; a bulb of news that, as from-bulb gardeners know, may flower beautifully or sadly come to nought. If it does flower...well let me just tell you!
Gunch had me sit down and he showed me a small article in the local section of the paper. In the picture accompanying the article was a man doing a Kamishibai performance. Kamishibai is my new obsession, the traditional form of storytelling said to have spawned manga. It effectively died with the advent of TV but it can be seen in places like the manga museum (where I saw it) or at little local festivals and events. Before the war it was huge. Every town had several Kamishibai performers: men trying to supplement their income by riding around on bicycles with ingenious, very portable little stages strapped to the back. They would be welcomed at the gates to the local temples by swarms of kids and would tell stories using painted picture cards that slotted into the little stage. The monies were earned by selling sweets. Everyone could watch a Kamishibai performance but buyers got to sit in the coveted front row.

The article Gunch showed me had a picture too. The picture was not a black and white one of a 40s Kamishibai performance, but a colour pic of a performance that happened two days ago at the local medical school, which is spitting distance from my house. The crux of the article, which we read together (so very slowly, in case we needed to build any more tension) was that medical students stand to gain valuable people skills from performance like Kamishibai. It teaches them to chill out and listen and the importance of humour. Nothing new there. Then the article talks a little bit about the performer himself Higeroku-san (a nickname that roughly means Beardy). He is 67 - 'a spring chicken' says Gunch, now 68. Higeroku-san used to work in a collar and cuffs at a desk right here in Mihara. Then he retired and began performing Kamishibai. He travels all around Hiroshima prefecture but he lives in Mihara and produces his work from here.

We finished reading the article. I now knew where this was going and Gunch obliged by leaning back his eyes twinkling. 'Yes, he said, we will make contact with this man and you can speak with him.'

For months I have had thoughts rattling around in my kop - mostly they polarize into two camps - the 'what am i doing with my future' camp and the 'why am i feeling so fucked up in Japan?' camp. Kamishibai, at first abstractly but now I think, pretty concretely, will help me to calm and order my thoughts. As an art form, it neatly and perfectly includes everything I like to do. Making the pictures and telling the story. As a viable theater form its kind of great too. The style of storytelling relies heavily on sounds and gestures and the pictures of course, so it can transcend languages and age gaps quite nicely. Different pictures, or different deliveries can change your performance from playschool fare to serious political analysis or bawdy nonsense. As a proposal to a university it also seems like a pretty good weapon to have. "I want to make cheap, effective, sometimes political, sometimes educational, always relevant, mass appeal theatre and I want to do everything myself and this is how I can do it." l

Then, really the 'why am I feeling so fucked in Japan?' question has had an answer for months but it's very had for me to acknowledge. I am feeling fucked because I am not integrating, I have spent the better part of the year simply adjusting to the horror or foreign cultural terrain and any time left over I have divided equally between avoiding the now less alien but no less terrifying cultural terrain and berating myself for avoiding it. Apart from Gunch, I have no Japanese friends here. Not in any real sense. That is immensely depressing, given the length of time I have been here, and I blame no one but myself.

Imagine though! Imagine if Gunchy and I meet this man (whose real name is Rokuda Genji) and he is cool and he offers to show me Kamishibai, or even just chat with me? It could be the beginning of my next creative endeavour, an endeavour that is inectricable from th place where I am - Japan. Something I can take away and show to people - "In Japan I learned this." . My friendhsip with Gunch will I am sure, always be the most valuable thing I have gained here, but Kamishibai is something else, something quantifiable to people who wear glasses and want to see product and issue scholarships. For that I am very excited. I am excited to have found an art form that makes me excited. For a time, friends, it did feel like those pockets of my brain had plasticized. Did I blog about it? Probably not. It was too fucking terrifying.

Gunch went to find Rokuda Genji in the phone book. Sure enough, he found him. We crafted a letter to him, I wrote in English in green ink and Gunch wrote in his signature dusty pencil on bent and mucky paper. I don't know how he manages to destroy paper, old Gunch, just by holding the stuff. I will give him a pristine pile of worksheets, he hands them to students right then and there and somehow by the time they are in their hands not his, they are water-damaged, torn, bent and covered in mud. It's amazing. Gunch had no doubts that Rokuda Genji will be responsive; he reckons that if this man grew up in Mihara then they probably sat and watched original Kamishibai performers of the town together. He assures me that Rokuda Genji will know the famous Kamishibai story of The Golden Bat - a super hero with a skull for a head. He ended the day's excitement with a (mis)quote from Charlotte's Web - 'life is full and rich when we are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.' He knows that the quote isn't quite right and heas been browsing through Charlotte's Web for weeks trying to get it right. He hasn't found it. He has turned his copy into a frayed soggy mess. But I know exactly what he is trying to say.