Between order and chaos

Al Fresco-Japan Diary

You don't have to go to Japan to write about it," declared Oscar Wilde when the country was unlocked in the mid-19th century after isolation, "you can imagine it sitting on a bench in Hyde Park."

Wilde and his circle, in the sudden rush for Japonisme that suffused western art and style, became fascinated by Japanese aesthetics. And after all is said and done "" from its material wealth to Zen philosophy ""it is Japan's unique aesthetic sensibility that remains a powerful draw well into our century.

The way the Japanese order their life is a reflection of their universe; it is an ideal that is poles apart from the Indian way of doing things.

Indians are naturally a physically expressive, anarchic people. Chaos is second nature to us. A strong individual expression takes precedence over sense of order or community. Stand at an Indian street corner and you'll see what I mean.

Despite traffic signals, underpasses and flyovers, traffic and pedestrians are moving any which way, oblivious to lights and dividers, taking the shortest cut from point A to point B. Wrappers, plastic bags and cigarettes are being chucked all over, garbage piles being our form of public decoration.

Japanese pedestrians will wait patiently for the lights to change even to cross an empty zebra crossing. Smokers will walk to far corners to find a public ashtray. If a train is half a minute late announcements will be made in profuse apology.

Enter a middle-class Indian home and the same street-like muddle prevails. Bright Fabindia upholstery amid terra cotta deities. Miniature paintings next to a strapping 900- ml refrigerator.

Too much western-style furniture "" and often incongruous pieces of 'modern art' "" in a too-cramped Indian space. The writer, Gita Mehta once remarked in an essay on Indian style that it is indefinable because it is one style too many.

Exactly the opposite is true of Japanese interiors, constructions of such carefully edited space, that important modern architectural concepts such as 'minimalism' and 'modular building' derive from them.

It is the height of vulgar bad taste to over-decorate a room . A traditional tatami interior will contain two, at most three pieces "" a scroll hung in the raised niche known as a tokonoma and a small flower arrangement beneath. These are changed with the seasons.

Everything else is put in storage. The straw tatami mat is of a precise size (80 cm X 190 cm) to conform to the size of an average human body, room size is defined by the number of tatami, as in two-tatami room, eight-tatami-room etc.

Two tatamis make up a tsubo, the uniform land measurement throughout the country. A series of sliding doors (shoji, jusuma and oshiare) open out into verandah's, gardens or storage areas, creating an ambiguous counterpoint to precise divisions.

In the era of the Tokugawa shoguns the slightest infringement of space, as in house frontages, could lead to executions. Part of the financial Japanese penchant for rules and discipline stems from this not-too-distant memory.

Nowhere is order more evident that in the Japanese attitude to nature . There can be no other people more obsessed with plant life, natural vistas and gardens. But it is nature disciplined into forms of perfection, the miniaturised bonsai being the classic example.

The Indian concept of arcadia is of untamed jungles as portrayed in the Ramayana; Indian garden design is a derivative of Islamic layouts juxtaposed with English lawns and borders. For the Japanese a garden is a tamed, orderly universe, a microcosm of the idealised landscape.

Natural rocks must be placed just so; each tree and shrub must be planted and shaped in precise forms; water bodies must contain islands in a stylised replication of an island country. In town and country, the commonest sight is of people tending their gardens and plants, shearing, pruning and bandaging maples, cherry trees, willows and bamboo. There are 118 varieties of bamboo alone and the uses they are put to is an unbeatable form of artisanship.

Unlike Indians, who tend to let everything from their dirty clothes to their emotions hang out, appearance, presentation and putting on a front is everything for the Japanese. Conforming is of paramount importance. Individuality must be submerged in deference to the larger purpose of community, corporation and country.

Nothing can explain the difference between India and Japan better "" that yawning abyss between order and chaos "" than being served a cup of tea. An Indian cup conjures the image of a crowded dhaba or a noisy railway station. A cup in Japan can involve a two-hour meditative ritual of movement, manners and spiritual enlightenment.