Experiencing Japan in books: a novel in the Yaeyama Islands, a romantic dictionary, a gourmet walk in Tokyo, enchantment in a tea garden<

Do you miss Japan? While waiting for the borders to reopen, we suggest you get there by books. A varied selection that will fill your lack of Japan for a moment!

The Patience of Jeanne Benameur’s Footsteps: Leaving for Subtropical Japan to Find Yourself Better

Simon is a psychoanalyst, he spent his life listening to others, and forgot to take stock of his own story.

A job beautifully brushed by Jeanne Benameur, who has the art of describing the indescribable, of concentrating a life of listening in a few words, of extracting the essence of each thing to put it into just, perfect words!

“So many years of his life listening to the mystery of all life. To approach it. So many years to accept that at the bottom of all clarity, the opaque remains. It is the most difficult. For the analysand as for the analyst. One by one, we lift the silent things that border each childhood, we cross useless secrets, we can once again caress a scar. And so far we have not solved anything. We always find ourselves faced with the same mystery, the same for everyone, we can't escape it. His job is for those who don't get rid of it by invoking God or some very practical transcendence. He was this discreet servant who brought the enigma of living closer, knowing he was mortal, as close as possible. The one in whom we confide in order to agree to make the journey to the unknown. A Charon for the other shore. Not death yet, no. Just the end of the suffering which, one day, pushed open the door of the analyst's office; and coming to a shore from which one sees life differently. Livable. »

It's a broken bowl that gives him a start. He must leave this seaside town, get away from the island where the trio he formed with Louise and Mathieu, friends from childhood and adolescence, broke up. It was on the advice of his friend Hervé, with whom he liked to play chess, that Simon flew to Japan, but not the Japan of the big cities, the mountains, the subtropical Japan of the Yaeyama Islands.

The dampness, the turquoise sea, plants whose names he doesn't know, and a small pavilion in the guesthouse run by Monsieur and Madame Itô. Two people who know how to listen to silences, give their trust, share what they hold most precious. Their island, their passion for textiles (especially bingata textiles, with radiant colors), he for the ceramics he makes in his studio.

It is not a new life he seeks, but a decluttered life. And he settles down with a book and a notebook.

“He lies down or remains seated contemplating the landscape. He is there alone most of the time. If people pass by, they remain at a distance after a greeting. He has a book and his notebook with him which never leaves him. With his book and his notebook he recreates a home. It is his body that apprehends the new world in which he has immersed himself. His body as a scout. »

A country and a language that he does not know allow him to apprehend things in a new way:

“Not understanding the language here, not even being able to read it, no doubt that is where the most intimate strangeness lies. And peace. No temptation to understand. No sense to look for. Nothing. He finds the state before the alphabet. That's what he's always been looking for. Including by carrying out these cures which occupied all his life. Rediscovering the wild state before the alphabet. This moment when thought knows, with an archaic knowledge, that it is of the body. Above all the body. He is experiencing it. And he experiences with his own body what it is. A precious state. The one before anything desired. The matrix of all desires, it is there. »

It is a book of silences, colors, rediscovered sensations, increased tenfold. The five senses are awakened, life is lived fully, totally. Japanese words rock and lead to dreams, or serve as a support for reflection. Silences are places where emotions expand. The colors float and dress the memories.

“Silence has joined them. Silence allows you to walk in your head without fear. »

Bingata fabrics:

“Then it's the turn of a few fragments of very brightly colored fabrics. Akiko smiled. The colors are so joyful, reds, yellows, blues and delicate patterns. She shows him the cranes, symbol of longevity, the very simple plum blossoms with five petals, the chrysanthemums. These are bingata fabrics, a specialty of Okinawa. Using stencils, the fabric is stored and then painted with very fine brushes and mineral pigments from the islands of Okinawa. Akiko adds that it is a very old tradition, which dates from before the annexation of the kingdom of Ryûkyû by Japan. Before, all the small islands, and ours too, formed a kingdom… a real kingdom…”

Day after day, Simon puts his thoughts into words, tames his silences, those that frighten him, that awaken things that frighten him. “Silence must be lined with righteous words. Only then is it habitable. Mr. and Mrs. Itô accompany him discreetly but firmly on this road that he has long refused to take. Slowly, to the rhythm of days swimming, nights under the stars, encounters and discoveries, he will advance towards the inner peace so difficult to find.

A very beautiful novel, where the painful past comes to the surface, a story of friendship and love struck down... A past to let come in the sweetness of a Japanese island, accompanied by rare beings, for an encounter with oneself that goes through the encounter with the other.

The atmosphere of these wonderful islands is superbly put into words by this author with a delicate pen, who makes you want to write down each sentence in a notebook to keep them preciously with you!

More information on the publisher's website.

A Love Dictionary of Japan by Richard Collasse: All the Facets of a Loved but Not Idealized Japan

It is a voluminous (more than 1200 pages) and fascinating dictionary that Richard Collasse has written.

This lover of Japan who has lived there for fifty years (married to a Japanese woman and speaks the language perfectly) talks to us about him without sentimentality, with frankness, mixing passion and annoyance, dismantling clichés and sometimes pressing where it hurts. .

He immerses us of course in all the arts of Japan with the writers (many Japanese writers that he makes you want to read or reread in a few lines, but also Western writers who have written beautiful texts on Japan), filmmakers , painters… But it also takes us into the most banal daily life with the futon, kotatsu, ofuro (bath), konbini, koban or shôtengai (shopping alleys). He tells us about the objects: kokeshi, chawan (tea bowl), daruma, netsuke, hanko (the seal used for administrative formalities) or washi paper. He also talks about places that have marked him, from Tsukiji (fire fish market) to Kamakura (the hybrid city), from Kyoto (real false capital of Japan) to Shinjuku Gyo-en (with an exciting story that we leave you discover!), from the Tôdai-ji of Nara to the Ise sanctuary via the temple of the mosses.

What is fascinating in this book is that it is filled with anecdotes, things seen and experienced. In fifty years, Richard Collasse has seen Japan change and he gives us his impressions, his favorites and rants, his big and small moments with humor, love, sometimes a little nostalgia and a lot of self-mockery.

Because he did not feel entitled to write this dictionary, as he says so well in the aptly named introduction “He who knows is silent”:

“In his Letters from Japan published in 1888, Rydyard Kipling exclaimed: “Japan, this country too delicious to be soiled with your pen! For a long time I have adopted this adage, as well as this quote from Lao Tseu: “He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know. “My ultimate vanity was therefore to modestly follow the path of discretion, humility and even self-effacement of the Japanese masters who have the elegance to be silent, not to speak, not to teach and are content to show .

I have heard so many perorations about Japan, read so many pedantic works published in haste or enlightenment by temporary visitors, whose only expertise was limited to a short professional stay or to visiting a Japanese girlfriend, that I had always promised myself never to add my own nonsense to the extraordinary amount of nonsense published by foreigners. Especially since, over the years, despite my progress in mastering the language, my professional experiences, my personal failures and my intimate disappointments, I discovered that if the one who knows is silent, then the one who knows that he does not know enough must be silent twice. Not to mention that I had a notion of the ridiculous enough sharpened not to run the risk of measuring myself against the rare travelers at the pinnacle of my personal pantheon who have left exceptional testimonies on the Japan: Émile Guimet, Albert Londres, Ruth Benedict, Nicolas Bouvier, Fosco Maraini, Roland Barthes, Marcel Giuglaris or Pilippe Pons, to name only the most remarkable. It is also not insignificant to note that all these characters have approached their subject on tiptoe, with extreme deference, and after research and studies spanning several decades.

That's how much the idea of ​​one day working on a Love Dictionary of Japan had never crossed my mind. What expertise could I have availed myself of, me, a modest businessman, seller of perfumes and luxury frills, to pretend to decode this country so complex and complete over a tedious primer? »

Fortunately, some people managed to convince him to start writing this kaleidoscope dictionary where we eat in kissaten or yatai, unagi, fugu, natto, sushi, kakigori among others , where we meet Jacques Chirac, Jean-Henri Fabre or Carlos Ghosn, where it is a question of blood groups, My Number card, counters of objects according to their size, shape and others (those who learn Japanese will immediately see what it's all about), kawaii and onomatopoeia. You will come across ghosts as well as samurai or suicide bombers. You will go from pornography to forty-seven ronins in a few pages, from Shintoism to shunga (erotic prints), from Wabi-sabi to xenophobia.

What is certain is that you will probably discover many unknown facets of Japan, and in this this dictionary is a great success! Because Japan cannot be discovered at first glance, it has to be earned… as the author speaks of it very well in the letter A like amado, the heavy wooden shutters so difficult to install in their grooves!

“Despite all these inconveniences, I perform this operation morning and evening in a state of intense jubilation! Sometimes I even pull the amados from the teahouse in broad daylight so as not to be distracted by the beauty of the mosses in the garden or the brightness of the sky when I write.

This tells you how immersed I am in this country whose culture is resistant to any simplistic approach, which bends but does not surrender, which can only be tamed through hard struggle and deserved on a daily basis! These amados of our tea pavilion are the illustration of the permanent struggle to deserve Japan and the colossal efforts that must be made to achieve it! »

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— sarah maria griff Fri Dec 27 16:03:54 +0000 2019

We will delight in his humor on the word Sakura:

"Yes, I dare to proclaim it out loud: the cherry blossom is the most beautiful mystification of Japan, a hoax on an international scale, a "trumpery" with Japanese sauce!

The cherry tree, no offense to the thuriferous, is a well-worn myth.

Indeed, I know of no more mannered tree. Coquettish, he cutes, he pretends, he pretends, he plays the prudish the better to bamboozle you and slips away the moment you fell under his spell. It is frivolous, inconstant, futile. All it takes is the slightest touch of breeze for its vibrating petals to scatter like startled butterflies; a drop of rain, and they lose the curliness of their skilfully permed hair; a more substantial shower sends them irremediably to the carpet; a cold snap veils their peach complexion; an early or late spring scares them away. Global warming disconcerts the cherry tree to the point that it forgets to bloom in order to rush to bud. In short, it blossoms or fades without warning. the swoon of the cherry tree. It is better to know it and to abandon all hope, to rely only on good fortune or chance to hope to see the glory of it during a spring trip.

I prefer the plum tree to the cherry tree, this Quasimodo with its generous humpback, a ball of nerves gathered in on itself, whose thick saurian scales protect from aggression and which impetuously scratches the sky with its slender branches. You're welcome. It does not fear bad weather. He confronts them; he taunts them; he makes fun of them. He flowers in the coldest of winters; it feeds on snowstorms, and its nervous little flowers resist the most brutal gusts. Stubborn, stubborn, tenacious, this donkey doesn't allow himself to be intimidated by the elements. He's a real samurai who fights, while the cherry tree draped in its fragile finery simpers. You will have understood of course that I am in bad faith. But bad faith is the fuel of writing! »

We suffer and laugh with the author at the word Seiza – a kind of torture, the position where we sit with our legs bent on the tatami. These pages are of surgical precision and we almost feel the pain coming into our body when reading this passage!

We leave you by sharing his love for Sei Shônagon's Bedside Notes:

“Reading Shônagon is turning the pages of a herbarium in which are pinned his emotions, his joys, his sadness, his astonishment, his wonder, sometimes his indignation. She puts them under the microscope with her acute sense of observation and with the concern of reporting them as precisely as possible. She is interested in everything and everyone, in nature, landscapes, places, seasons and their meteorological phenomena, animals, and of course human beings. She dissects each of these categories to pass them through the scalpel of her five senses by describing what she has seen, felt, heard, touched, tasted. »

An essential book to read bit by bit, according to your moods and desires.

More information on the publisher's website.

TOKYO by Frédéric Abergel in the collection Les mangeurs de ville by Nanika editions: a gourmet's itinerary

Here is a very original book that takes us to the heart of the Japanese capital, to its entrails with its bewitching aromas, to the small restaurants stuck in poorly lit alleys. We get lost, we wander, we get impatient sometimes, then we marvel, we delight. A book which is not at all a travel guide, but which invites you to walk with your nose to the wind and to pass behind the noren of the innumerable small establishments that this gourmet city has to offer!

Editor Élise Ducamp explains it very well in her introductory note:

“If, on the contrary, you are above all looking for a moment of change of scenery, of literary distraction and poetic intoxication; if you are prepared to have to google a term or a proper name in order to understand a reference or a pun; if you can realize that it does not matter not having the exact address, that it is above all a question of an atmosphere which could not be complete if it had not been preceded by an hour of mop and that, in fact, it will be up to you to browse, to search, to make mistakes and to get lost to find these sensations in another troquet; if you want to dive into a book as one would dive into a smoky Tokyo alley to sit amidst a bric-a-brac of pallets, boxes and electrical wires, precariously balanced on a plastic stool that has seen better days , in front of a steaming bowl and a well-filled glass, feeling the questioning looks on you and raising yours in return, smiling with all your teeth because this moment, this precise moment, belongs only to you and to no other Not-So-Lonely-Planet readers; if you want to feel the touch of the rough tatami on your thighs, the smell of fried tofu in your nostrils, the sound of irasshaimase ringing at the entrance to restaurants, the alcoholic cries of late evenings in izakayas or the moment out of time that accompanies the cutting of fish by a sushi master while you are seated a few centimeters from the pantry; if you are in one of these scenarios, then welcome! »

About twenty walks are offered to the curious and greedy reader. From a little neighborhood sushi to an orgy of tofu (yes, it's possible and it really makes you want to!), from a wagyu tempura with smoked mackerel to a breakfast (with an ode to domesticated embers in mini-grills that impress the traveler the first time he discovers them), the reader is carried away in a whirlwind of flavors and words. Words that are both precise and magical, which almost manage to give him the impression that he is there, at the wooden counter of the grand master of a Tokyo restaurant or in the middle of the haunting smoke of the yakitori.

You will also make other discoveries: walking around Mount Fuji ("a wonder that is better to stay away from"), looking for a saucepan and a whisk in Kappabashi, going to the Nezu museum and Oedo onsen monogatari, finding mushroom powder to make a delicious risotto in a shop in Tokyo Midtown… but each time you will end up in front of a dish that will make your mouth water! Including in Osaka where the walk ends, in Kuromon, “the street of hunger in the city of the table”.

It is necessary to underline the rare talent that the author possesses to put into words what he puts in the mouth!

From the start of a meal… “And calm, we start, in real life. While I crunch an elastic aggregation of fish intestines with the most beautiful effect, our host handles in front of me some heads of shrimp shells: floured quickly, thrown in couple in the cooking, small crackling, blisters that I imagine while 'they soften. And here is a first refined donut, an essence of shrimp with the texture of popcorn, a concentrate of coral taste that drives me crazy, a tender crispness that distills the flavor at low speed. Nice start! »

… As the end of the feast approaches: “Perhaps we feel that the end is drawing near, because we cannot live too long in the sublime, but we have been there for almost two hours and we are still rising with a fillet of wagyu in tempura – carnivorous heresy, yes, but what heresy! What delicate finesse! Served with a few small crystals of salt and exactly four fresh peppercorns – two per bite. Warm in the Master's house, the Lares gods whisper in my ear the words of a forgotten prayer, at their orders I inscribe my two peppercorns in the flesh, observe, move me with the play of black against the marble, place a crystal of salt, and gobble. Finally, “gobble”… not too much, no. Does not stick with the difficult balance to find, the right choice that must be made between crunching, biting, licking, swallowing, the right succession of gestures that will make the flavor perfect. A pause, therefore. Let's analyze the bite: the initial contact salt crystals on the tongue. The caress of the tender flesh beaded with its juice. Ah, but the teeth! Incisors and furious, which pierce the protective crust and take the poor wagyu from behind in an unexpected attack to which he yields, well obliged. Twists under the effect of the mandibular lever while the tongue, again it, collects the perfumed mist which escapes under the pressure. Enter the pepper! Its two insert grains give off a scent of exotic trees, tropical water and primary forest, they decide the color of the mouthful and orient it, extreme, without distorting it. And I won't tell you about the fade that follows under the palate, against the cheeks, of the pure mixture that completes hunger. »

Immerse yourself in the gourmet entrails of Tokyo for an immersion of the taste buds that will make you want to take the first plane to this capital of cuisine!

Come on, one last anthology tonkatsu to make you want to dive into this book:

"This piece, it's clear, promises. A large golden slice placed on a delicate wire mesh, its little rough edges still rustling from cooking, surrounded by grated white cabbage, long and thick, it finds in my appetite an ideal partner for a fantastic end to the day. But don't be fooled: this piece, splendid as it is, promises much less than it delivers. He said to me "at the table" and I replied "Aaaaah ! "He said to me 'enjoy' and I heard 'Enjoy. »I now offer you Wako's tonkatsu: its first bite, at its very beginning, crackles that rustle like the wind in the branches, like the dead leaves crushed under my feet, carried me far up the towers, through- beyond the buildings and the crowd, back to my scattered mountains and the slopes that border them, in the deep and wooded countryside, between birch forests and pines straight as masts, he carried me away, making me wild and accomplice, smell the acorns he gleaned, the hazelnuts he smelled. The simple sound of the pierced crust transported me. Letting my mind wander, my concentrated teeth continued their task. Suddenly, pierce a juice! A dense fluid, an intense source which rises from between two rocks of fat and flows against my cheek, a stream digging its bed around my taste buds, depositing in passing all its load of taste, perfumed caramel which finds the way to my throat, and sinks. Ah! Stop there! To remain suspended in the impression of this water of youth… But the teeth know nothing about it, moved by the force of survival they dig deeply and cut into the flesh. Tear a piece and press it, insist on it, reduce it, break its fibers, make me a singular and vital clay that paves my cheeks, my palate, my tongue. Strengthened by these elements, this sand, this water, this earth, my mouth becomes Nature, a complete universe, wild and essential, entirely at its pleasure, filled with this piglet, until reunited again, this sand, this water, this clay find their way to my stomach, my mouth reluctantly letting them go. »

More information on the publisher's website.

In Manda's Tea Garden: Haikus and Meditations

It is once again a very beautiful book offered by the Synchronique editions. Beautiful object by its binding and the quality of the paper and the prints, magnificent work by its very numerous superb illustrations, which accompany the journey and the meditations of Manda in a tea garden between dream and reality.

For Sen no Rikyû (monk at Daitoku-ji temple, historical figure who established a new way of tea), the garden leading to the tea pavilion, small in size to facilitate strict maintenance down to the most subtle details, must arouse the feeling of peace that reigns in a garden nestled deep in the mountains (shinzan no tei); a garden that evokes both deep mountains and mysterious valleys (shinzan yukoku); a garden as the ideal place to find the way to spiritual balance and an intimate relationship with nature.

Step by step, we walk in this delicate garden over the seasons, over the haikus of great masters evoking each subject discussed. Because each element is the subject of a description always very fine, full of poetry and an invitation to discover nature but also traditional Japanese culture. From a lantern to a door, from a bench to calligraphy. Until entering the tea pavilion, admiring the multi-hundred-year-old pottery, and tasting matcha in the silence and happiness of the present moment.

The texts are delicate and vaporous like a sumi-e painting. The words of the season are savored, the mists that we breathe, the moons that we admire, the insects that we listen to, the birds in the middle of the flowers and the foliage that we touch on our way. All the words of nature sing of its magic, its mystery, its depth and its beauty. Explained without being recited, they are introduced slowly, gently over the steps and images.

The slightly cooler mist had tightened around the early morning silences. We had just entered the season of the “cold dew” (kanro) which follows the autumnal equinox (shûbun). At daybreak the clouds crystallized into a palette of orange-reds. The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, laying on the horizon luminous bands of cloud with a constantly deformed plastic. They stretched, ignorant of their birth and their destiny.

Still well planted on their stem, the petals of the chrysanthemum shivered in the west wind and still held prisoner the warm brightness of the light and the melancholy of the end of summer, the nostalgia of a charm of which we no longer know exactly if he belongs to the present or if he is a whiff of the past. The leaves, with their emaciated veins, seemed to want, in spite of everything, to fight against a too rapid entry into a winter sleep. Shaking like old fans and despite the slow and acrimonious agony with which they decidedly refused to die, they looked a bit withered, defeated. The maple leaves, dressed in a flamboyant brocade enlivened by a brush of twilight light, discreetly began their inexorable fall.

The wind made them run and each of them still wanting to take advantage of a last reprieve, lingered in their fall, as they saw fit, before landing here on top of a grass, there straddling the ridge. of a stone.

Slightly drunkA leaf falls from the treeTANEDA SANTÔKA

The WA KEI SEI JAKU (harmony, respect, purity, tranquility) which sums up the atmosphere in the tea pavilion applies here to the whole garden. And it is a delight!

A slow and beneficial journey!

More information on the publisher's website.

If you can't go to Japan, dive into these books to find the landscapes, the scents, the atmospheres that make this country fascinating!