Chapters of The Abundance of Less
- An Anarchist Potter and His Underground Tea House
- A Woodblock Craftsman Discovers Hand Work and the Heart
- Making Time to Stop and Think: Principles to Live by from a Mother and Activist
- The Exuberant Buddhist
- Breaking the Trance of "The Next Better Thing"
- From Engineer to Children's Book Artist to Cosmological Theorist
- "Sometimes Just Touching the Earth is Enough"
- In Search of the Peculiar: A Collector of Fragrances and His Ceramic Menagerie
- A Philosopher of the Rice Fields
- "Where From, Where to?" A Writer and Philosopher Investigates the Dreams of the Universe
Taking Time to Stop and Think:
Atsuko Watanabe
Chapter 3
Atsuko Watanabe
Chapter 3
Everyone is in a hurry. There may be many reasons for this, but one result is certain: we don’t get much time to think. If we want to be more fully human, one of the places we could start is to consider what exactly “a human being” is. What are we here for? The first time I met the outspoken environmental activist Atsuko Watanabe, I had little idea how profoundly she would shake up the way I think. Meeting her gave me insights into such a variety of things: what it means to educate a child, or why a modern person would choose to pursue a spiritual life, or in what direction this whole world, our earth, might be moving. She has deeply examined the question: Given our small share of days here, what priorities should we make?
We are sitting up late sipping homemade plum wine from small glasses at Atsuko Watanabe’s dinner table next to the woodstove in an old farmhouse deep in the mountains of Shikoku Island. You can almost feel the quiet up here as the warble of night insects fades in and out on the other side of the sliding glass door. We’ve just enjoyed a sumptuous seven-course Indian vegetarian meal cooked by her husband, Gufu, and served on the Watanabes’ pottery. A single light bulb covered by a green glass lampshade hangs over the wooden table where we speak, and upstairs Atsuko’s two daughters are engrossed in their drawing, as usual. We can hear Gufu doing the dishes in the kitchen down the hall.
“The office worker in Japan is always being used by somebody,” Atsuko says in a plain, stating-a-fact tone of voice. “They have no freedom at all.”
We are sitting up late sipping homemade plum wine from small glasses at Atsuko Watanabe’s dinner table next to the woodstove in an old farmhouse deep in the mountains of Shikoku Island. You can almost feel the quiet up here as the warble of night insects fades in and out on the other side of the sliding glass door. We’ve just enjoyed a sumptuous seven-course Indian vegetarian meal cooked by her husband, Gufu, and served on the Watanabes’ pottery. A single light bulb covered by a green glass lampshade hangs over the wooden table where we speak, and upstairs Atsuko’s two daughters are engrossed in their drawing, as usual. We can hear Gufu doing the dishes in the kitchen down the hall.
“The office worker in Japan is always being used by somebody,” Atsuko says in a plain, stating-a-fact tone of voice. “They have no freedom at all.”
Atsuko is always making these kinds of statements. But there’s strangely no anger or churning to her voice. She’s simply stating something she feels is obvious to anyone who wants to see. She continues, “and if you are being used by someone, you have very little freedom of heart. That’s the saddest thing for the office worker; being told what to do. And because he’s always in a hurry, there’s no energy left to think. In Japan, they just don’t grant you time.” She strokes the orange and white cat sitting in her lap, and says, “And if you are selling your time, no matter how much money you get, you can’t ever buy back that time. I knew from when I was eleven or twelve years old that I didn’t want to live that kind of life.”
“When I was a child I played in the rivers and fields near our rural relatives. I would lie in the fields and sketch weeds for hours at a time. My mother would tell me all about different kinds of grasses and plants, and explain the medicinal uses of certain leaves, or sometimes tell me folk tales about a particular flower.”
As she speaks, her words transport me to the Japanese countryside in summer with its intense profusion of weeds, moths, wild flowers, dragonflies, beetles, and fragrances. The thickness of these summers seems to me to be part of the music of her voice. “I also loved to spend hours looking at the moon, musing about philosophical questions. Even when I was a child, I felt that I would have to have a life with enough time to contemplate, to let my mind range freely. And I also knew then I wanted to live in the midst of nature. I began to think that the ordinary way of living life would be boring and tedious in the extreme.”
“When I was a child I played in the rivers and fields near our rural relatives. I would lie in the fields and sketch weeds for hours at a time. My mother would tell me all about different kinds of grasses and plants, and explain the medicinal uses of certain leaves, or sometimes tell me folk tales about a particular flower.”
As she speaks, her words transport me to the Japanese countryside in summer with its intense profusion of weeds, moths, wild flowers, dragonflies, beetles, and fragrances. The thickness of these summers seems to me to be part of the music of her voice. “I also loved to spend hours looking at the moon, musing about philosophical questions. Even when I was a child, I felt that I would have to have a life with enough time to contemplate, to let my mind range freely. And I also knew then I wanted to live in the midst of nature. I began to think that the ordinary way of living life would be boring and tedious in the extreme.”
I think I know what Atsuko means by “ordinary way of living life” in Japan. The city she was born in is about an hour and a half by car from her house and is where I teach English. The overwhelming majority of women there stay at home to care for the children and keep the house spotless while their husbands work extremely long hours. A very small percentage of them have careers—the word housewife is very common here—and not many of the husbands, some of whom I teach, seem to much enjoy their jobs. Traffic, pollution, advertising, plastic, florescent lighting, and noise surround me everywhere I go.
Yet for all of Atsuko’s strong opinions and her willingness to confront people when she thinks they are wrong, her personality is almost always buoyant and full of enthusiasm. She really listens to people, leaning in toward them when they talk. Her high soprano voice is melodic and she is laughing and smiling so much of the time. It’s a pleasure to be in her presence.
“So,” I ask her, “was it in India that your life started to diverge from the lives of other Japanese?”
“It was even before that, in 1976, before I went traveling. That was the period when all the other students were starting to talk about getting jobs. It occurred to me that once I did find a job, and took it, and began working and having money … most likely it would be hard to change back to a life without money later on.”
Then she pauses, thinking, and says, “Also there was likely ‘something else’ I wanted … I had wanted it since when I was small.”
“What kind of ‘something’?” I ask.
Yet for all of Atsuko’s strong opinions and her willingness to confront people when she thinks they are wrong, her personality is almost always buoyant and full of enthusiasm. She really listens to people, leaning in toward them when they talk. Her high soprano voice is melodic and she is laughing and smiling so much of the time. It’s a pleasure to be in her presence.
“So,” I ask her, “was it in India that your life started to diverge from the lives of other Japanese?”
“It was even before that, in 1976, before I went traveling. That was the period when all the other students were starting to talk about getting jobs. It occurred to me that once I did find a job, and took it, and began working and having money … most likely it would be hard to change back to a life without money later on.”
Then she pauses, thinking, and says, “Also there was likely ‘something else’ I wanted … I had wanted it since when I was small.”
“What kind of ‘something’?” I ask.
“I didn’t know exactly what then, but it was not working a job and living an ordinary life.”
“What kind of feeling was it? When you think back can you recall anything specific?”
A little perturbed at my not getting it, she answers, “It’s a feeling that everybody has as a young person. There are songs about it too, with lyrics like ‘I want to travel far away …’ or ‘On the other side of that mountain, there’s probably something.’ The Wizard of Oz is like that too, isn’t it? It’s a feeling like that.”
“Yes, Atsuko,” I say, “but if everyone has it, then why did you listen to that small voice?”
“Probably because I saw the people living around me: every day they just gobbled up their food and then fell asleep. That was it.” There’s a disheartened tone to her voice, a tone so different than her usual enthusiasm. We both let a silence sit there between us, thinking.
“But,” I press on, “there are so, so many people who become reconciled with that kind of life and say, ‘Well, I guess it’s OK,’ or ‘I have no choice.’”
“Yes, there are,” she says, agreeing plainly. “But I didn’t think that.”
Then she adds, “Also, from the very beginning, I liked the mountains. I wanted to live there. There’s such quiet around here. And of course there’s the wind, the air, the water. Especially the wind …” she adds in a dreamy voice. As she says this the insects outside the window, as if on cue, lift their voices in both pitch and volume.
Another thing happened to her overseas, she says. When the other women from the explorer’s club returned to Japan, she kept on traveling for several years. For them, perhaps, the club was a college-age adventure, but for her, she says, “In India, traveling alone, I had a lot of time to just sit and think, and to wonder about the reasons that I am here on this earth.”
“At the same time, I saw that the Indians spent a lot of time in the temples, working to improve their souls, to move up when they go on to the next life. It was clear to me that spirituality was absolutely central to their lives in a way that it isn’t for us here in Japan. I started to give a lot of thought to what the purpose of being alive actually is.
“Many Japanese don’t have the opportunity”--she pauses--"don’t make an opportunity, to think deeply about things for an extended period of time. Maybe that’s why many of them aren’t satisfied with their lives.
“I saw the people’s way of life there--their lives were very poor--and inside of their houses there wasn’t much of anything, almost nothing. And if they went shopping, they didn’t even put things in bags sometimes, they just held on to the vegetables with their hands, or in a basket. So whatever it is that a person has in India or Nepal or Pakistan, it’s plain for you to see when you travel there. It’s not hidden like in Japan. If it’s vegetables, it’s just vegetables, it’s not shrink-wrapped vegetable side dishes. It’s very simple, and it seemed incredibly beautiful to me. I realized that humans could live a completely fulfilling life in simple houses without much money or even electricity. This was an entirely new concept for me. And I started to believe that I might be able to live such a life myself.”
“At the same time, I saw that the Indians spent a lot of time in the temples, working to improve their souls, to move up when they go on to the next life. It was clear to me that spirituality was absolutely central to their lives in a way that it isn’t for us here in Japan. I started to give a lot of thought to what the purpose of being alive actually is.
“Many Japanese don’t have the opportunity”--she pauses--"don’t make an opportunity, to think deeply about things for an extended period of time. Maybe that’s why many of them aren’t satisfied with their lives.
“I saw the people’s way of life there--their lives were very poor--and inside of their houses there wasn’t much of anything, almost nothing. And if they went shopping, they didn’t even put things in bags sometimes, they just held on to the vegetables with their hands, or in a basket. So whatever it is that a person has in India or Nepal or Pakistan, it’s plain for you to see when you travel there. It’s not hidden like in Japan. If it’s vegetables, it’s just vegetables, it’s not shrink-wrapped vegetable side dishes. It’s very simple, and it seemed incredibly beautiful to me. I realized that humans could live a completely fulfilling life in simple houses without much money or even electricity. This was an entirely new concept for me. And I started to believe that I might be able to live such a life myself.”
Listen to the Audio book on Amazon or iTunes