Visiting Ozu’s grave
On an overcast Friday afternoon, Natsuko’s aunt’s ashes were buried at the temple, ten minutes from the family home. After another formal meal in the temple dining room, similar to the one we’d eaten at the crematorium, Natsuko’s sister drove us quickly through the narrow streets back to the house she shared with her teenage daughter.
We spread our futons out on the living room floor, took off our clothes, and immediately fell asleep. In the past two days we’d slept only five or six hours.
The next morning, Natsuko—knowing I would return home the following day—asked me how I wanted to spend my last day in Japan. More than anything, I told her, I wished to visit Ozu’s grave.
I recalled a scene from Tokyo-ga, Wim Wenders’ movie about Ozu: the railway station sign saying Kita-Kamakura, Ozu’s headstone engraved with the character mu…
“I think he’s buried at Kita-Kamakura,” I told Natsuko.
“We’ll have to change trains at Ofuna,” she replied.
At Kita-Kamakura no-one knew where Ozu was buried so we walked back to the station to wait twenty minutes for the next train. I wandered out and stood by the level crossing, snapping pictures of people as they waited then crossed over the railway line. As an express clattered past, I thought of the mandatory train scenes in Ozu’s films, particularly the ninety-second sequence in Ochazuke no aji, with Taeko on the train to Nagoya in a futile attempt to escape the invented unhappiness of her marriage. Natsuko sat on a bench at the station, reading a magazine.
Eventually I strolled back and we rode one stop south to Kamakura to ask at the koban, the police box next to the station. Japanese police usually know where everyone and everything is but they had no idea who Ozu was or where he might be buried.
Natsuko suggested we look for books on Ozu in the bookstore across the square but the single book on the shelf mentioned only a memorial service held in Tokyo after his death. There was nothing about his funeral or burial.
Discouraged, we went to a coffee shop. Natsuko ordered strawberry pancakes.
Suddenly, her mouth full of pancake, she said: “There must be a tourist bureau, we should have asked there.”
The young woman at the Visitors Center had never heard of Ozu but she pulled a thick blue binder from the shelf behind, dropped it on the counter with a thud, and slowly flicked through the pages. Sure enough, under “O” there was a brief note: he was buried at Engaku-ji. We bought another set of tickets for the ride back to Kita-Kamakura.
Engaku-ji was just a few minutes walk from the station. The old attendant to whom we paid our entry fee spoke rapidly to Natsuko, pointing to a steep slope above the carpark. I thought I caught the word “mu.”
“He says Ozu’s buried up there, we should look for a black marble headstone with the character ‘mu.’”
We walked across the carpark, climbed to the top of a set of worn stone stairs, and looked around the jumbled profusion of Japanese graves. Instinctively—was it my memory of Wim Wenders’ film?—I headed off to the right and there it was. Ozu’s grave.
We’d come in late April, the end of the cherry season. Damp pink and white petals lay scattered around the huge marble cube. I could just make out the character “mu.”
I took some photographs. Natsuko did the same. Then we stood before the grave and bowed our heads to pray.
I looked back through my life, remembering Ozu’s films, when and where I’d seen them, who I’d been with at the time… most of all I thought of all he’d taught me about the inextricable link between beauty and sadness, about mono no aware.
It had been years since I’d prayed: like Ozu, I believed primarily in nothingness. But I recalled Murasaki Shikibu’s visit to Ishiyamadera, the temple on the edge of Lake Biwa, where she is supposed to have prayed for and received inspiration to write The Tale of Genji. I asked Ozu to guide me as I attempted to write my own book.
The sound of two sharp claps shattered my reverie. Natsuko had finished her prayers in the Japanese style.
“Ozu-san ni inotta no?” she asked me. “Did you pray to Ozu?”
“Inotta yo,” I replied. “Yes I did.”
“Eigo de? Nihongo de?” In English or Japanese?
“In English,” I told her, “it was too complicated for my Japanese.”
“Well, you know, Ozu didn’t speak English,” Natsuko said tartly. “He wouldn’t have understood your prayer.”
“The gods would have translated for him,” I told her as I walked towards the stairs, trying to recall the face of a woman I’d photographed crossing the railway tracks, a woman I would never see again.
Jeez Jonathan, saying Ozu's films are about mononoaware is like saying photographs are about light and shadow. They are about something else but you don't seem to be aware of what that is. I won't tell you because you will have to discern this on your own.
Posted by C on 4 July 2002 (Comment Permalink)And "mu" is not "nothingness." Mu is a complex religious concept, it is often translated as nothingness because there is no similar western concept. But it is most definitely not "the absence of anything" but "something."
Please work harder to understand these concepts before spouting such bilge.