In May 1918, philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960) embarked on a tour of Nara's temples “to enjoy the power of ancient art, to cleanse my mind, and enrich it” (p. 10). By then he had already obtained his degree in philosophy from Tokyo Imperial University (1912) and had developed a great interest in Japan's cultural history (p. xiv). The memoir of his journey, Koji junrei, appeared first in installments (1918) and then as a volume in 1919; Hiroshi Nara now brings us an English translation in an elegant book complemented by beautiful photographs that bring Watsuji's descriptions to life.
Readers expecting a traditional travel diary, with entries on the weather, the food, and the mundane, will not recognize Koji junrei as such: the descriptions of train journeys and exhausted bodies, of potholes and annoying people, are few and far between. Less “travel diary” and more “museum catalog meets collection of scattered thoughts,” Koji junrei is Watsuji's occasion to muse on the function of art, the relationship between past and present, and (as Nara suggests in his introduction), “the significance of Japanese culture in world history” (p. xxviii).
Art, to Watsuji, is a source of spiritual enlightenment. His chapters are peppered with allusions to the “ecstasy achieved through art” (p. 7) and to the “enrapturing experience[s]” (p. 51) and “otherworldly mood[s]” (p. 149) art engenders. When he uses art pieces as portals into the Nara period, Watsuji is at his narrative best; a skilled storyteller, he uses vivid imagery to offer a masterful depiction of the consecration ceremony for the Great Buddha (p. 78). Other times, however, he veers toward the technical and quickly turns pedantic—few readers, I suspect, will find his ruminations on “the rate at which the distance between pillars [at the Golden Hall of Tōshōdaiji] becomes narrower” (p. 98) especially riveting.
As a place in which antiquity and modernity coexist, the city of Nara prompts Watsuji to elaborate on the relationship between past and present. To be sure, there is more “past” than “present” in his jottings, but the two occasionally intersect—for example, with steam-engine trains crossing timeless landscapes (p. 77), or with the shiny halls and statues of old now covered in grime (p. 28). The collision of past and present generates melancholy and triggers recollections of Watsuji's own childhood. On these occasions the reader catches a quick glimpse of Watsuji the man—a rare treat, for he usually remains distant and elusive, and lets the art take center stage.
In a site brimming with glimpses of Chinese and continental history, Watsuji also attempts to define Japan's place in the world—not so much from a geopolitical stance but from a cultural one. Readers familiar with the ideas of the mature Watsuji will find hardly any comment to warrant his later characterization as a “harbinger of nihonjinron” (p. xvii). In Koji junrei, the young Watsuji embraces Nara's cosmopolitanism and its adherence to the Chinese model, celebrates the fact that “Japanese creativity … was actually borne out of foreign culture” (p. 110) and that the “many foreigners … who participated very actively in the creation of [Nara] culture … are our ancestors—both spiritually and physiologically” (p. 120). He also strives to find Greek roots for several manifestations of Japanese art, from gigaku (p. 64) to paintings (pp. 4–5). (In the introduction he penned in 1946 for a reprint, Watsuji confesses to being mildly embarrassed by some aspects of his book and admits he would now write something entirely different; pp. 1–2.)
Nara's introduction details the historical background of Koji junrei and sheds light onto Watsuji's philosophical trajectory. It also provides keys to interpret Watsuji's mindset at the time of the trip to Nara—for example, hinting at the tensions between East and West or at Watsuji's struggle in choosing between moral imperatives and the pleasures of life (pp. x–xii). While Nara effectively compares Koji junrei to Goethe's Italian Journey (something Watsuji does himself, p. 31), I would have liked to see Nara contextualize Koji junrei more widely against the Japanese tradition of travel literature. Sitting on my desk, for example, is Takamure Itsue's (1894–1964) Musume junreiki.Footnote 6 We have here two journeys taken in the same year by two iconic figures of Japan's interwar period, both of whom were writing “before they were famous,” so to speak, and for the purpose of being published. Yet, we also have two very different ways to engage with the landscape and with the readers: Takamure can be amusingly self-deprecating or annoyingly snobbish, yet she is always there, in the picture, within the grasp of the readers; Watsuji, by contrast, tends to be humorless and distant, if not altogether removed from the scene. To be clear, I am not saying that one work is better than the other; rather, I would suggest reading the two in conjunction to get a full grasp of the many opportunities for nostalgia, discovery, and self-introspection travel (still) afforded in the Taishō era.
