"An old photo." "It's my favorite." "In the 1920s, almost all Japanese women wore kimono." "They are classmates, who graduated from a girl's high school in Kyoto." "This is my mother." "I love my mother very much." "She looks happy and free." "The place is called Arashiyama." "West of the city of Kyoto, it's a very popular tourist and holiday resort." "Over 60 years have passed." "The pine tree which was in the photo has been cut down." "Did my mother ever come back to Arashiyama?" "She died three years ago at the age of 80." "I don't intend to say my mother's life was not happy and free." "But her life wasn't as cheerful and peaceful as these people's, who are enjoying a party under cherry blossoms, called hanami." "They enjoy hanami everywhere in Japan." "But hanami is especially popular in Kyoto." "It's too hot in summer and too cold in winter, because Kyoto is surrounded by mountains." "Maybe spring is especially valued because of that." "My mother loved flowers very much." "But they were the flowers in our garden." "She sometimes visited botanical gardens." "But never enjoyed hanami with friends." "From where did a life such as hers come?" "We promised to have a reunion once a year, but it was difficult." "Finally we separated from each other." "Because you all got married?" "Yes, they went far away." "Was it difficult to go out of the house after you married?" "Yes, my husband was a very stubborn person." "Even if I believed I was right, I had to obey him." "Is the relationship between husband and wife especially severe in Kyoto?" "Yes, the husband was strong." "The wife must do everything like everyone does... obey her husband." " Have you been in Kyoto all your life?" " Yes." " You've never left Kyoto?" " I'm living in the house where I was born." "These typical Kyo-onna, that is Kyoto women," "Shinada-san and Funazki-san, who are class mates and close friends of my mother, have lived their 84 years life in this kind of house called machiya." "Kyo-machiya, a city house of Kyoto." "The right side of the front was a show room of goods, or a workroom for handicraft in the old days." "People could tell the profession of the house from the outside." "Passing under noren, a curtain on which a symbol of the shop is dyed, the right side is a reception room for customers, and the back is private living space." "Passing under noren and passing under a second noren rope curtain, there's the kitchen." "The most typical characteristic of machiya is, that the front is very narrow, and the building is very deep." "Therefore it is called unagi no nedoko, "the bedroom of eels."" "It's said unagi no nedoko shows how clever the people were." "To avoid plundering by samurai, they pretended that the house is small and they are poor." "In addition, the taxes were levied according to the width of the front." "So the narrow construction of the machiya was a clever means to avoid high taxes." "The interior of machiya is totally dark." "Tsuboniwa, a little garden, is in the middle of the building." "It's very small, but every tsuboniwa is a miniture cosmos, with a stone lantern, a basin and garden stones, representing mountains, rivers and so on." "The garden also lets sunlight into the upper floor making it a little lighter." "It's mainly a place for the shujin, the male head of the family, who had time and space for hobbies." "The heat in summer was made bearable by the wind, which blew through between the garden and the entrance." "The cold in winter was unbearable, especially in the kitchen." "The cold rose from the concrete floor." "And from the well." "The women had to pump the water up." "With a wet dust cloth, they mopped the woodwork, floors and tatami-straw mats every day," "It was an undeniable daily work in their lives." "Strict cleanness was most important." "I can't stop remembering my mother's hands swollen by frostbite." "It was natural to want to warm your hands over the fire." "Okudasan is the kitchen range that uses fire to boil rice." "But you were requested to pay most careful attention when handling fire." "It could destroy the whole fortune of the house." ""Be careful with fire!" was stuck everywhere." "Precious items were kept in kura, a separate storehouse." "But the houses were divided from each other by only one wooden board." "So, if a fire broke out, it immediately spread to the neighbors." "The family which caused the fire was severely punished." "Wealth was highly valued." "It was totally different from Edo, where people were craftsmen, who didn't live of their fortune, but lived by their skill." "Fire and fight were the flower of Edo." "There are many temples and shrines in Kyoto." "Every temple belongs to each school of Buddhism." "And every shrine celebrates its own god." "So, there are many religious festivals called matsuri in Kyoto." "Yazurai matsuri is one of them." "It's a festival that doesn't take place at a shrine, but all over the district." "The participants assembled in a temple, and now they're visiting the houses of the faithful to offer prayer and dance." "Finally they come to lmamiya-jinja, the lmamiya Shrine." "The faithful want to be under the big red umbrella." "They believe they can escape from bad diseases." "The family of the house, which has been offered prayer and dance, gives some money to the parade, and celebrates the god in prayer." "How people were afraid of disease and disaster in Kyoto!" "Think of the construction of their houses." "What a terrible place it was for disease." "What a terrible place it was for fire." "My mother and her friends, Shimada-san and Funaki-san, they were living in such a place, Kyoto." "I would like to hear something about the old days." "What kind of person was my mother in school?" " A serious and good person." " She was serious and frank." "And never harmed others." "We were good company." "We thought nothing bad of each other." "She was tenacious, wasn't she?" "Yes, she was." "She studied very hard." "Did no one ever consider not to get married, but having a job?" "No, we never did." "Your mother didn't either." "We thought it was destiny." "It was impossible for a woman to do anything but marry." "20 percent of girls from primary school entered high school at the time." "All these girls graduated." "They did a two years course and got their teachers license." "Nevertheless their way of thinking about marriage and the life of women, was no different from the feudal Edo era." "Women should obey their parents in childhood, their husbands in married life, and their sons when they are old." "Sanju no chie, the teaching of the three obediences." "Like today, in those days an arranged marriage started by exchanging photos." "This is my mother's photo for her arranged marriage." "I don't know how my mother's marriage was arranged," "But, different from Shimada-san and Funazki-san, who got married in Kyoto, my mother got married to a government official, who worked at an experimental fish farm in Setonaikai." "Did my mother ever think about the difference between her old life in Kyoto, and her new life in Setonaikai with brilliant sun and blue sea?" "I was born in 1932." "According to Japanese custom, my mother gave birth to me in Kyoto, where she came from." "I was named Nagisa, which means "a beach."" "My first memory is of the sea, shining and glittering behind pine trees." "I was happy like a prince." "We moved to Setonaikai, where my father was working." "I'm sitting on my father's handmade chair, surrounded by tulips and anemones, chocolates and children's books, which were new in Japan at that time." "But my fate was to change." "On the day I finished the first grade of the primary school, my father suddenly died." "I had to leave Setonaikai." "My mother had to return to Kyoto with me and my sister, who had just been born." "Mother was 33." "The 33rd year is said to be a bad year for women." "My mother returned to the world of the machiya in Kyoto." "I hated the darkness of the house." "And the fish on the dining table in Kyoto smelled badly." "The house was build by my mother's father, when he retired from being assistant station master in Kyoto." "This is on the upper floor." "He was the only one left, when we came here." "He passed away one year later." "This is the front of the house." "Soon after we arrived here, my mother put the name plate Nagisa Oshima on the gate post." "It was very unusual to show the name of a six year old boy on the name plate." "The head of family was a position of absolute power, which women couldn't take." "So, despite being only a little boy, I was obliged to take the position of my father." "I cursed my fate, which brought me back to Kyoto." "The Kyoto Imperial Palace." "The structure is not original, and it's in a different place." "From 794 to 1868" "Tenno, the Emperor, resided here, and Kyoto was the capital of Japan." "Kyoto was called Heian-kyo, the capital of peace." "The town itself is designed like a Japanese castle." "With the imperial palace put in the center of the North, surrounded by the houses of the imperial family's nobles and people and markets and Buddhist temples, the whole town was neatly divided by the roads from east to west," "and from north to south." "When you go to the North, you say you go up." "And when you go to the South, you say you go down." "Kyoto is obsessed by this sense of up and down." "This picture scroll called Kitano Tenjin Engi, a national treasure, describes Suzakumon, the main gate of the Imperial Palace." "When Heian-kyo came into existence, rebellions in other areas were suppressed." "The Emperor's power became dominant over the struggles of the nobles." "For the first time central government was established." "Court culture blossomed." "This scroll illustrates Murasaki Shikibu's important novel Genji Monogatari." "But the lives of ordinary people were constantly threatened by famine and disaster." "Rashomon was the south gate of Heian-kyo, corresponding to the main gate of the palace, Suzakumon in the North." "It was destroyed very early on." "The people of Kyoto were afraid of it, because an ogre lived there." "Mibu Kyogen Theater is performing this story of Rashomon gate." "At the beginning of Heian-kyo Toji, the East Temple, was east of Rashomon, and Saul, the West Temple, was west of it." "[Nothing of Rashomon and Sal]!" "Remains, except some stone monuments." "Toji exists almost in the same shape and the same place, although it was rebuild a few times." "It attracts the faithful and many tourists." "It's market once a month is full of people who want to buy bargains." "It was forbidden in Heian-kyo to build temples inside the city." "This was because part of the purpose of moving the capital from Nara was, to escape the strong Buddhist influence there." "But the nobles wanted to build temples to secure their afterlife." "And the people's demand for help in their faith could not be ignored." "So, to begin with, temples were only build outside of Heian-kyo." "This is lnari-jinja, Inari Shrine, outside of Kyoto." "First a god for the rice crop, and now also a god of commerce." "People firmly believed in the spirits of the dead at that time." "So, when an epidemic or an earthquake happened, they thought it was someone's curse." "And enshrined him as a god." "This scroll describes how a minister was slandered, expelled and died in anger." "He became an evil spirit." "And finally was enshrined as a god of study." "This inferno is described in the same scroll." "I'm wondering if people believed they went down to hell when they died, or whether they felt that this world was an inferno." "The primary school I went to." "Shichiyo Primary School." "Kyoto was divided in numbered streets, and Shichiyo means 7th Street." "It was located between Rashomon and Toji." "My district belonged to the South." "If you said up and down, it belonged down." "The war against China had already started." "Physical training was much valued in school." "And boys with physical strength were dominant." "I, who wore glasses at the age of 10, was not suitable for the times." "The next year, Japan started a war against America, which became the Second World War." "I spent the time reading books, left by my father in the dark machija." "I was crazy about Japanese history, especially samurai history." "Oshima was a long established samurai family." "I was very proud to belong to a samurai warrior family in wartime." "The Heian era, which began with the establishment of Heian-kyo lasted 400 years." "At the end the power of government was taken by the samurai from the nobles." "Two big samurai clans, Genji and Heike, were fighting each other in a large number of battles." "Kyoto became a battlefield, and the samurai had a lot of influence over the emperor and the court." "Finally, victory went to the Genji clan and Heike was destroyed." "The clan chief of Genji opened, what is called the Kamakura Bakufu, a government of shogun in Kamakura, far from Kyoto." "This is the beginning of the age of samurai." "And also the beginning of the age of double power, with the emperor in Kyoto and and the shogun in Kamakura." "Kyoto started to change from being the center of power which flourished by collecting the wealth of the area through tax, to a city which earns it's living by commerce and manufacture, run by the people themselves." "This change took a long time." "Kyoto, which was totally destroyed by the war was rebuild by special citizens, called machishu in the 16th century." "This was the cornerstone of today's Kyoto." "I was walking east of Rashomon towards Toji Temple on my daily way to school," "I looked at the tower of Toji every day." "Kyoto was frightened by the ominous thread of another holocaust." "The bombing of the US Air Force was destroying Japanese cities one by one." "I'm standing on the roof of the school's swimming pool." "As students, we were foolish enough to dig out the pool by ourselves." "Besides swimming, the pool served to keep water to put out fires in case of bombing." "But finally there was no big bombing of Kyoto until the war ended, though we heard later, that Kyoto was one of the targets of the atomic bomb." "The pool was left uncompleted." "We were shocked by the defeat which we had never imagined, and had no more energy left to do anything." "But, soon after hearing the voice of the emperor telling us about the ending of the war, there was one thing I did." "Namely to go home and dig out a big pot in the tsuboniwa." "I had put my most important books in it." "But the books were flooded, and could not be used anymore." "Talking about tsuboniwa, I once planted sweet potatoes." "How could potatoes be raised in a stony garden with no sunshine?" "But at least we ate the leaves of sweet potatoes." "The shortage of food was very serious." "My mother had to go to the farmers to buy rice and potatoes." "There was not enough money." "So, my mother took her kimono out, and exchanged them for food." "At that time, a Kyoto woman got married with enough kimonos to last her whole life." "It was sad watching my mother's figure silently leaving the house with a package of kimonos." "You didn't go to the farmers to buy rice?" " No, I didn't." " Me neither." "My father left rice in our storehouse." "A lot of rice and other food." "I used them." "Was there enough for two or three years?" "Yes, the storehouse was full of rice in big braziers like this." "And there was sugar, too." "It was a relief." "Was this the wisdom of a Kyoto merchant?" "I don't know." "But I never went to a farmer to buy rice." "And I never went to exchange a kimono for rice." "I said before, that it were citizens called machishu, who reconstructed Kyoto, which was burned out by the long war at the end of Kamakura era." "But there was heavy pressure on the citizens by the samurai, the ruling class." "Tokugawa, who was the final victor of the war, opened bakufu," "Thus began the Tokugawa rule of 300 years." "But the system of shared power with the shogun's bakufu in Edo, and the tenno in Kyoto remained the same." "This is Rakju raku-gaisu, a painting of Kyoto city and the suburbs." "At its heart is a parade of the tenno going to Nijo Castle, the center of power of the Tokugawa in Kyoto." "And it describes touring places and working people." "Kyoto prospered." "Under the rule of Tokugawa and other samurai clans, the citizens saved money and created culture." "There are many dramas in Mibu Kyogen Theater, which started in Edo era in Kyoto, to teach wisdom and morality to the merchants and citizens of that time." "They are always spiced with a sense of humor and satire." "This one shows the struggle between two merchants, over the size of a shop." "This is a lesson how to need a rope after catching a thief." "This is against drunkeness." "They are all played in silence." "I'm wondering if silence was respected among citizens." "This calligraphy was displayed in almost all the houses of merchants and manufacturers in Kyoto." "And it still is to this day." "Kani" " Patience." "This is the key idea of the philosopher Baigan lshida." "Shingaku, the philosophy of the heart." "What is the most important thing in dealing with neighbors?" "Don't gossip about them and don't meddle in their affairs." "But if they need me, I must go to help them." "For example if something is wrong with older people in your neighborhood, you must go...?" "Yes, I have to." "And I should bring them something special, like a dish or cakes." "The same goes if there is a celebration in my family." "Respect authority." "Pay full attention to your neighbors." "Don't cause friction." "Be extremely careful with fire." "Clean up everything beautifully." "And be patient for everything." "Thus beautifully Kyoto was created." "I was young." "I couldn't be patient." "Why must I be patient?" "Kyoto should be burnt down." "I thought about a samurai hero in one of the picture scrolls." "Oda Nobunaga burnt temples." "If he had lived long enough, he could have burnt the whole of Kyoto." "Like him, I wanted to burn Kyoto." "He was attacked by a betrayer in Kyoto and died." "I wanted to be like Nobunaga Oda, I wanted to burn Kyoto." "To me Kyoto seemed to be a symbol of old Japan." "When the war was over and my sister grown up enough, my mother started to work, getting a job in an office in Kyoto city." "I didn't want my mother to work out of the home." "Why must human beings work?" "I spent four years at Kyoto University in the backstage room of this sturdy building." "Not attending the classes of the faculty of law." "This is called West Auditorium." "40 years ago, in the early 50's, I proposed a plan to reconstruct this building, to the university." "But it wasn't accepted." "It remained as it was in the 60's and 70's, and became a Mecca for the radical student movement." "I spent every day here in a student movement and a student theater." "I was a clumsy actor, and had only one chance to direct." "Neither worked very well." "My opinions weren't accepted by the student movement." "At that time it was dominated by the Communist Party." "I thought I'd join any company that would take me, but nobody would." "I took an examination to be an assistant director in a film company." "And I passed it." "The studio was in Ofuna, on the outskirts of Tokyo." "I felt relieved, thinking I could finally leave Kyoto." "But at the same time I felt I was expelled, driven away by stones." "I never even thought about what my mother was feeling at that time." "This is Chion-in, one of the biggest temples in Kyoto." "Chion-in was established at the beginning of the Kamakura era, by a founder of new buddhism, who believed, that the faith of the people was important, as opposed to the old buddhism, which was a protector of the state and the men in power." "Despite that Chion-in was strongly protected by the Tokugawa clan during the Edo era." "The buddhism of my family belongs to the school of Chion-in." "Jodo-sh u." "Jodo means paradise, shu means sect." "My mother was trained in the way of jodo-shu." "After her husband's death, she was given a posthumous name, as if she was dead." "She became a nun, though she didn't cut her hair." "Her attitude was proper for a Japanese woman at that time." "She never thought of a second marriage." "I feel, that the Japanese family and their faith is very strange." "The buddhism of my mother's family belonged to Jodo Shinshu, which is different from Oshima's Jodo-shu." "But Japanese women don't hesitate to convert to the sect of their husband's family, when they get married." "When I go to Europe, I always wonder about the differences in religion." "Western people think, the the paradise is in the sky." "Whereas the Japanese think, that the paradise is far away in the West." "Or that, if they cross a mountain in the West, paradise will be on the other side." "Japanese have long wished, Amida, the chief buddha of this sect, would come and lead them to the paradise." "I wonder, if my mother wished the same." "Does the merciful hand of Buddha also embrace these soldiers of war, who are resting in these high tombs of this cemetery?" "I wonder, if he led them to Seicho-jodo, the paradise in the West." "I think, parents didn't care about girls." "So girls felt very hard done by." "Why didn't parents care about girls?" "They preferred boys." "When I asked my mother's only brother, Yamamoto-san, he spoke out very frankly." "Discrimination?" "Women were out of the question." "For example, food was different?" "No, but their education was different." "A boy was well looked after, but a girl was not." "It must have been very hard for my mother, because she was an unyielding person." "Yes, it was, I think." "So, she became a hard woman." "He told me that their family was not originally from Kyoto." "I always thought, she was a born Kyoto woman." "But she wasn't." "Different from her friends, Shimada-san and Funazki-san, she was a stranger in Kyoto." "Mother really looked like a born Kyoto woman." "She became one, coming to Kyoto very young." "How did she become one?" "Automatically, perhaps little by little..." "You are not like a Kyoto person." "A city like Kyoto is not so good." "You don't like Kyoto, do you?" "No." "Kyoto people are not good." "They have been big shots for too long, I think." "I don't think, my mother automatically became a Kyoto woman." "She had to work hard to be one." "She had no option, but to become a perfect Kyoto woman." "It was the only way a woman could be respected in Kyoto." "And she kept to that way all her life." "I became a film director, five years after leaving Kyoto, and married the next year." "My wife was working as an actress." "So, when my first son was born, I asked my mother to leave Kyoto and live with us." "Saying nothing, she came to my house, and devoted the rest of her life bringing up my two sons." "I don't know, how she felt about it." "She sometimes joked, that she was deceived into being a nurse maid." "Otherwise she could have lead a quiet life alone in Kyoto." "Jokes sometimes contain truths." "And often they contain terrible truths." "Mother never went out to enjoy herself." "Once, eight of her friends met nearby." "They invited her to join them." "She went there, but soon left again, to return home against the will of her friends." "Sometimes she left." "But she always returned home in the evening." "In her last years, when she became weak, she left the house in anger, saying, that she would never come back." "But she always returned at the end of the day." "She said, that if she wouldn't come back, the family would collapse." "At my mother's deathbed my wife apologized to her, for the sacrifices she had to make." "But my mother said, smiling under a painful breath, that she did exactly as she wanted." "I know she could have had another life." "She left behind the books she read at high school." "Her favorite was written by a woman thinker, who founded a school of liberal philosophy." "Mother was cheerful, had a sense of humor, and enjoyed telling jokes." "She always smiled, when she met someone." "But my mother didn't live freely." "She didn't live for herself." "It makes me very sad for her." "Why did she want to be a perfect Kyoto woman, when she wasn't even born in Kyoto?" "She was forced by Kyoto, perhaps." "Kyoto had such a power." "38 years have passed since I left Kyoto, which I hated very much." "I realize, that lots of things in me were formed by Kyoto." "My life." "My work." "My attitude." "My aesthetics." "And my kimono." "I'm in a festival crowd invited by my primary school friends." "The festival starts at Matsuri taisha, the Matsuri Grand Shrine." "In existence since Heian times, it's considered the oldest shrine in Kyoto." "It's a guardian god for different professions, especially famous as the god of sake brewing." "I did my omiyamairi at this shrine as a baby." "31 days after my birth my parents took me there to pray for my peaceful growth." "However, this did not turn me into a big sake-drinker." "The spirit of the god is being put into a mikoshi, a portable shrine." "There are six mikoshi for the six districts of Matsuri taisha." "To carry a mikoshi you need physical strength and technique." "I have never carried a mikoshi on my shoulder." "The mikoshi sails across Katsura River on board of a boat." "It's the highlight of this festival." "Lunch is prepared for the men by their families on the river bank, before they return to their district, after a ceremony." "After visiting each district, the mikoshi are gathered at the otabisho towards evening." "Otabisho means a resting place for the mikoshi." "The movements of the mikoshi are getting stronger." "Finally I'm forced to carry the mikoshi by friends." "The otabisho is next door to my old primary school." "The mikoshi stay here for 21 days, and then will be carried back to matsuri taisha." "After the mikoshi are put to rest, people are going back to their homes with a pleasant fatigue and excitement." "At home, their families, together with relatives and friends, invited for dinner, are waiting for them." "I'm invited, too." "Yes, let's drink tonight!" "I'll be trying to forget my mother, who never drank a drop of sake."