Eels, escalators and a side-splitting story

30th July 2008

If you've visited this blog before, you'll know that what follows is longer than the published version.

How much longer?

About 100 per cent. I was under the influence of eel.

...

Some people say that we live in but one universe among many and that parallel worlds hold other versions of ourselves.

These theories may be more than science fiction because, every now and again, something rumples the fabric of space and time – and I get e-mail meant for an alternative me, in particular, the one doing a column called Letter from Tokyo.

I answer the messages anyway, and hope that the other me responds to readers who write in about the Letter from Kyoto column.

But I’ve been thinking lately that there can’t be that many fluctuations in the space-time continuum and perhaps people just confuse Kyoto with Tokyo?

I’ve resisted this explanation because though the names sound similar and the two cities are separated by only about two and a half hours by bullet train, they’re worlds apart.

Even without going into the centuries of rivalry, it takes just one visit to start seeing the differences.

In Tokyo, I get lost in train stations like underground cities and among reefs of steel and glass skyscrapers.

In Kyoto, buildings in the city centre are capped at 31m – about 10 storeys – and the sky can breathe out without fear of being poked and pinched.

But I still get lost. Though if I’m lucky, it happens in streets of picturesque wooden townhouses.

If you were to take a bird’s eye view – assuming you can find an urban-minded bird – more differences appear.

Tokyo sprawls over a plain by the sea, crowding neighbouring prefectures, while Kyoto city sits with its feet together in an armchair of mountains – and doesn’t look like it’s going to move from its inland spot any time soon.

As a result, Tokyo was in a good position to become sushi capital of the world unlike landlocked Kyoto, where not much is said about the fish. But what it lacks in raw tuna, it makes up with tofu. And its vegetables, whether pickled or fresh, can turn the most unrepentant meat-eater into a convert.

But cities are fed by more than food. In Tokyo, government, finance and commerce sustain its population of 12.8 million as they race from one trend to the next in a relentless pursuit of the new. Kyoto, on the other hand, draws strength from the past; some of its shops are run by families who have been in the trade for over 20 generations.

I’m generalising, of course. Tokyo has plenty of history – Sensoji, its oldest temple, dates back to the seventh century – and Kyoto, for all its tradition, is also the headquarters of Nintendo, which began there in 1889 as a company that produced handmade playing cards.

Still, don’t throw away the stereotypes yet; they may come in handy as we flip through the pages into the past, all the way back to 794, when Emperor Kanmu established his base in the river basin that came to be known as Kyoto, the Capital City.

Centuries of power struggles followed but in 1600, warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu fought his way to the top, eventually ruling a unified Japan as shogun from his castle in Edo (now Tokyo). Kyoto ended up politically sidelined, like the emperor and his court, but this freed its citizens, from the nobility down to merchants and craftsmen, to devote themselves to culture.

Specialising in disciplines such as poetry, incense and the tea ceremony, Kyoto's people built on their reputation for refinement, creating luxury goods for the rest of the country. That reputation has lasted and the city is still a shrine to traditional arts and crafts. So if you find yourself there during Kyoto's notoriously sticky summers, fan yourself with one of their delicate, handmade sensu - and melt in style.

If Kyoto was the city of culture then Edo was the city of samurai, the linchpin of the military government that remained until 1868. It was a man's town, with about 70 per cent of its land given over to the samurai, who swaggered about with two swords stuck through their waist sashes.

In contrast, Kyoto didn't even have a residential area for samurai and neither did nearby Osaka, the port city that became the centre of the Japanese economy in the first century of Tokugawa rule.

Discussions of the Kyoto-Tokyo divide tend to spread out into a wider regional debate that sweeps up even foreigners in Japan. Over in the eastern corner is the Kanto area, commonly equated with Tokyo because it takes up such a Godzilla-sized place in the popular mind that the prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Chiba get overlooked.

To the west is the Kansai region, probably known best for rambunctious Osaka, but also buoyed up by the idiosyncracies of Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, Hyogo, Mie and Shiga.

The rules of the debate are simple: Familiarise yourself with the stereotypes and then…pick a side!

The very names ‘Kanto’ and ‘Kansai’ are about sides. Kan means barrier – in this case, an old checkpoint in Hakone – so Kansai refers to the land west (sai) of the barrier and Kanto, the region east (to) of it.

This division is found in everything from dialects to eels to escalators.

A Tokyo friend who met her future husband when they shared the same office in the capital said there were times when she just couldn’t understand him. This had nothing to do with the usual man-woman communication breakdown. Born in Nara, he would lapse at times into the Kansai dialect, which veers away from standard Japanese in intonation, inflections and even in vocabulary.

But the rift goes beyond how people talk to what they actually say. According to the stereotype, Kanto residents are cool, reserved and more interested in sophistication than Kansai folk: a straight-shooting, entrepreneurial lot who would rather play for laughs.

This perception has a great deal to do with the association of Kansai with Osaka, which has a history as a city of merchants – and comedians.

Manzai duos from the city became famous across the country when they took their routines to television but the ordinary Osakan is also seen as someone with an Inner Comic just waiting to be unleashed.

Here’s something to try if you visit the city: Hold your fingers like a gun and pretend to fire it at a passer-by, preferably with a cry of ‘bakkyun!’ If the passer-by is a native of Osaka, chances are, he’ll fall about and do his best to act like he’s been shot.

Having cut their teeth on comedy programmes, Osakans are primed to join in gags even if they’re by complete strangers.

Chizu-san, a friend who explained the phenomenon from a native’s point of view, said: ‘I think none of us can stop ourselves from pretending to be shot if we were “bakkyuned”.’

But Osaka is also known as a city of people who would bankrupt themselves for food. (In Kyoto, it’s kimono. As for Tokyo, er, I don’t know. Black suits and shoes, maybe?)

And food is another area where Kansai and Kanto have agreed to disagree. They split over the soup for noodles (darker in the east) and complain that instant noodles taste funny on the other side of the country. If the debate goes on, someone may raise a stink about the smelly fermented soya beans called natto – a lot of Kansai people won’t touch the stuff though Kanto swears by it.

Even the ways eels are sliced depends on region. In Tokyo, they’re split in the back because cutting across the front reminded the samurai there of seppuku – ritual suicide that began with slashing the abdomen.

But in Osaka, with samurai making up less than 1 per cent of the population then, this was hardly a problem. If anything, to the merchants of the city, opening up the gut symbolised hiding nothing from customers.

The we-merchant-you-samurai difference is also whipped out to explain why people in Kanto stand on the left on escalators, leaving a path clear for people to charge up and down, while Osakans line up on the right side.

Standing on the left, it is said, lets samurai draw their swords freely but merchants will keep to the other side to protect their belongings in their right hands.

It’s a great theory though it starts to unravel when you consider the number of years separating the ban on carrying swords and the introduction of escalators.

The more convincing explanation is that when the World Exposition was held in Osaka in 1970, a railway line there made announcements asking passengers to keep on the right to accommodate the numbers of foreign visitors.

But what all this really means is that by travelling a little, you get to take a ride on the other side – and taste different flavours in soup, speech and spirit.

When I asked a Japanese businessman about this, he said: ‘I’ve been to 56 countries but still think Japan is unique because, even though it’s not a big country, the regions have their own identities – perhaps because there are so many mountains separating them.’

For this reason, I get the feeling that I’m not just doing a Letter from Tokyo column in an alternative reality. I think I’m scattered through the worlds of the multiverse, filing stories from all corners of Japan – and enjoying the view from whichever side of the escalator I’m on.