A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations

by Pico Iyer

Somehow, shockingly, tears pricked at my eyes after a few minutes in the silence. I realized how the ovals in the roof of this womblike space recalled the oval pool around which I was staying. I noticed how this space rhymed with the Turrell opening in the sky, on the neighboring island, but in a softer and more feminine key, the two openings allowing me to see different scenes from wherever I sat. I watched a light drizzle falling against the trees, the sky change color. A young woman lay down on the floor, silky black hair fanning out against the white. The effect was not conceptual, but dazzlingly sensual; there was nothing to think about, only to feel. One result—so Japanese—was that I was bound together within a community of strangers; we were not in our own heads, but in some shared encounter. Which century had we ended up in? I couldn’t say, and perhaps it didn’t matter.