Tree by Aya Koda

Japanese Non-fiction

Original title – 『木』 新潮社

Translator – Charlotte Goff

Source – Review copy

I was so excited when I saw this was available to review. The main reason is the connection to the film Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, which is set in Tokyo, and the main character Hirayama is shown as a reader, and when he one day visits the book shop, the book he picks up is this book. The shopkeeper says Aya Koda she deserves more recognition, she uses the same words we do, yet there’s something so special. What more could you want as an introduction to a writer? Aya Koda had been married and divorced before she ever wrote a book. In her forties, she wrote several books about her relationship with her father, Rohan Koda, a well-known Japanese writer, and also wrote novels. Also books in this style Zuihitsu a japanese style meaning follow the brush a way of piecing together memoirs in a stream of conciousness style this is a book made up of her reaction to trees.

Some kabuki costumes are uncommonly thick, such as Matsumaru’s in the tale of the three brothers Matsu-maru, Umemaru and Sakuramaru – named after pine, plum and cherry trees respectively. I have never touched Matsumaru’s costume, and have only ever glimpsed it from a far-away seat, so I suppose I can’t say for sure how thick it is, but whenever I look at the bark of an old pine tree, I remember Matsumaru’s kimono. Pines wear a heavy kimono. Or they wear them heavily, is perhaps more accurate. Their skin is covered in rough, dry fissures forming tortoiseshell-like patterns, the thickness of their bark clear to see from the depth of these cracks. Matsumaru’s costume features pine trees with snow-laden branches against a charcoal back-ground, creating a cool, clear colour scheme of black, white and blue; the kimono worn by real pines has a dirty kind of colour, its hexagonal fissures lending it an imposing quality. Incidentally, Matsumaru’s hair is incredibly thick, and pine trees will also often be blessed With a luscious head of needles.

 

 

Their rare fifteen pieces in this collection range from personal insights like a sapling she had from her father. To visit an island where the trees are covered in volcanic ash.  For me, I picked three pieces that show her drifting style. The first is the tree kimono around the way bark on some trees looks, and the history of trees and the kimono in fashion see unusual trees in a forest all stitched together. Then we have a chapter around a pair of brothers and their relationship to the woods and trees as master carpenters, their view of when trees are living and when they need to be felled. The sort of knowledge built over a lifetime is evident in the way she watches them treat the trees and wood around them. Then a story about the Sugi Cedar that starts with her looking at a concrete tetrapod and ends with the shape and symbolic nature of the Sugi tree. In Japanese culture, the tree is believed to be among the oldest living trees in the world on certain islands.

Back when I lived in Nara I was lucky enough to hear a number of stories from the Nishioka brothers, both of whom were master carpenters, but the lesson that left the deepest impression on me – which they emphasized in all of their tales, at every possible opportunity – was the living nature of wood.

The wood the Nishioka brothers were referring to was not the kind in trees still standing, but rather wood as a material. These carpenters believed that, just as trees have their way of living, wood has its own life, too. They suggested that we call the period while the tree is standing its first life, and its time as a material its second. Imagining that timber is simply dead tree, they told me, betrays a lack of understanding. Theirs was truly a craftsman’s way of looking at things. I remember, once, I was speaking to the younger brother, and he told me not to focus purely on the life of wood, either, but to also think about, as he called it, ‘wood which has died “

The chapter Trees standing up , trees lying down

 

Now this is one of those books I love. If you are a fan of Wenders films, you will love this. It is a perfect book for his drifting, road-movie-style filmmaking. I can see why it may have been chosen as the book brought in the film. If you are a fan of nature writing, it will appeal, as it captures a distinctly Japanese view of trees and their connection not just to the writer but to Japanese society as a whole. Also, I think it will appeal to Sebald fans. I just loved her passion for the natural world, seeing how trees have impacted her life, and the trees she has seen throughout her life.  The book was published after her death. I will now need to find her novels.  Has anyone read any of them?