Elsewhere by Rosita Boland

Author:Rosita Boland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473565548
Publisher: Transworld

I have just reread this piece. I still have the clipping. I’m looking at it now. I pasted it into a scrapbook long ago. When I first read it in 1978, I found Mary Philpott’s story harrowing. Her loneliness came across so powerfully. Her life seemed so pitifully small. She was surviving on tinned food, and the anonymous shelter of a public library and an aspiration to write: to have her voice heard, to be acknowledged. I thought it was the saddest thing I had ever read.

Once I realized the minshuku that I thought had been booked for me in Tokyo was closed, I had to make a decision about time. The afternoon was wearing on, and I was anxious not to lose the chance to explore; to see the samurai houses and to wander around the town. It was winter, and the daylight would fade away in the next couple of hours. I was due to leave on the precisely timetabled 7.21 a.m. train the next day for my next destination (I was definitely getting value from my Japan Rail Pass), and did not want my entire time in Kakunodate to be swallowed up with the quest for accommodation.

So I decided to explore first, and then seek somewhere to stay later.

There was a specific district in the small town where the samurai houses were located. In the spring there are lots of tourists, because of the old houses set against the flowering cherry blossom. The trees were bare now and most of the houses were closed. There was an avenue with dark wooden houses and carved pitched roofs. They stood sternly facing each other from behind tall fences. The gates to each house were closed. It didn’t seem as if anyone lived there. An unseen dog suddenly barked out of nowhere, a huge growling, snarling kind of bark, which startled me. There was the strangest and most unnerving atmosphere in the place.

There was nobody out at all, except me. Snow still lay on the ground and on the roofs, and the sky was a peculiar shade of grey. After the frenetic urban chaos of four days in Tokyo, the resolute quiet of Kakunodate was like another culture shock. Years later, when I saw the Hulu production of The Handmaid’s Tale, I puzzled over what the austere avenue of gated houses in Gilead reminded me of. It was that deserted winter street of samurai houses in Japan.

Only a couple of shops were open. They sold items made from cherry bark; mostly trays, tea caddies and caddy scoops; an art called kabazaiku. The cherry bark glowed with rich colours of amber and chestnut and sienna. Some had cherry blossom flowers inlaid in marquetry over their lids. I picked a few up wistfully. They evoked memories of some of the beautiful things I had seen in the Tokyo museum, where there was a whole gallery devoted to tea-ceremony objects. I bought a tea scoop; a small piece of curved cherry bark that resembled an ancient dugout canoe.

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