Guest Blog: Antiques – by Dave Lowry

Probably only a minority of readers here will even recognise an electric typewriter, let alone have used one. In my high school and college years, however, the devices were something, technologically speaking, right up there between soft contact lenses and artificial hearts and not that far, in our imagination, below airborne automobiles. I covered reams of paper with electrically powered ink on my Smith-Corona for my schoolwork; its humming and the authoritative celerity of its clicking keys made me feel as if I was living in the 21^st century.

My typewriter sat on a sewing table, one made in the early 19^th century, of maple, with the yardstick markings imprinted along one edge, a table having been used, no doubt by tailors in early America, to turn out shirts worn by men who’d fought in the American Revolution. That table was in my bedroom not because I come from a wealthy family who furnished our home with classical, expensive antiques. Rather, my parents were collectors and dealers in Colonial era American furniture and decorative arts. So while some of the  antiques in our home stayed for a very long time, others came and went. Most importantly, however, my point is that “antiques” in my parent’s house did not connote objects that rested behind glass or that were never touched, never used at all. The silverware we ate with, the rugs on the floor, the clock on the mantel; all were a part of daily life for me.

I remember absently poking with my foot a soccer ball on the living room floor, only to see it with, with blessedly not too much force, roll right into the leg of an 18^th century table. No harm done except possibly to my heart. Today that table is in a corner of our dining room and right now it is covered with a mat and has some calligraphy brushes and an inkstone; I’m using it for a piece of commissioned work.

My point here is that “antique” is a word we often use to mean something outdated or which is an objet d’art, meant for viewing or for appreciation at a distance and which distinguishes it from what is a part of everyday life. Mr. Amdur, whose blog this is, of course, recently used it in such a way. I think the definition is a mistaken one in terms of koryu—or at least one incomplete.

Once I was in a museum near Boston and, by happy circumstances, I was ushered into the voluminous storage area and into a small room that had, on a shelf, kiri wood boxes containing three tea bowls crafted by Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743), and one that was attributed to him as well.  The curator and I, our grubby hands gloved, unboxed them and sat them on a felt-covered table and then he was called to another part of the museum, leaving me alone with the bowls.

Ogata Kenzan was to Japanese ceramics what Shakespeare was to literature. Connoisseurs may go through their life only seeing a half dozen examples or so of the pottery he made—and seeing those at a distance in a museum. I was sitting within arm’s reach of three. More importantly, the curator, as he left, smiled and said, “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.” He nodded toward the Kenzan bowls.  “Ever wonder what it’d be like to hold those?  You know,” he added, “bare hands hold those?” To my credit, I waited almost until the door behind him was closed before I tugged off the cotton museum gloves.  It was a remarkable fifteen minutes.

If you have never held a Kyoto style glazed piece of slipware, a raku style tea bowl or a vase or container, you should. Your local pottery collective or workshop will have some. The rough, pebbly surface is seductive. It actually invites you to hold it.  Tea bowls are designed in such a way they practically beg to be cupped, gripped in one’s palms. You hold such a bowl properly, exactly as you hold an infant’s head, cradling it. To hold an object like this is to satisfy deep and profound impulses in our soul. To actually use it, is an encounter with the sublime.

While the experience was awesome in the true sense of that word, I left the museum that day elated—but with at least a vague sense of loss and sorrow. The bowls were beyond magnificent. But there was something lacking. I wondered, holding them, how long it had been since they were used. When was the last time a tiny mountain of emerald powder was tapped into their bottoms, a swirl of steaming water? When had a whisker-fine split bamboo whisk last scoured their surface?

Chajin—tea people—sometimes refer to “rearing a bowl.” Tea bowls are considered almost alive; they must be “broken in” and then slowly, gradually brought to maturity, much like one does with a child. Something of the tea—I don’t know; some kind of chemical process well beyond me—is at work, seeping, however incrementally, into the bowl itself. The often-used bowl acquires, over time, a subtle patina, one that requires use to maintain. The Kenzan bowls had, in spite of their incredible beauty and aesthetic success, a kind of sadness about them. They had been neglected in a way that would be hard for the collector to understand, perhaps, but which would be obvious to the person with experience using them.

Antique aficionados employ a rough definition of the word “antique.” To meet the definition, the object must have been crafted before the Industrial Revolution—handmade to some extent that is, or at least not be mass-produced—and even more critically it must reflect something of the nature or character of the maker. By that definition, koryu are unquestionably antiques. To assume, though, that because they are, they are not for everyday employment is, I think, a misunderstanding. Yes, there are some antiques too fragile to be employed. An 18^th century Pennsylvania flintlock could be capable of being loaded and fired; if I owned one, I don’t think I’d take the chance. And yes, there may be some koryu that have been so poorly maintained, so allowed to sit and lapse and to be leached of their true physical integrity, bled of their muscularity, that they are too friable to be considered usable.  (Poor form to call them by name, but they’re out there.)

In the two koryu in which I have some experience, to the contrary, the maintenance of their vigour, at least in those particular lineages of which I am a part, is healthy. They pulse with energy; when they are expressed physically, the air around them throbs and crackles.

(A pause here; already I have nattered on too long, but the question poses tantalizingly: as I said, “those particular lineages” qualifies my observation. There are, to be sure, some lineages of both my ryu that are pathetically epicene, more like choreography than virile, battle-cured disciplines. So why have some remained vigourous, others gone flaccid? One answer might be that ryusei, ryu assembled and propagated under a single soke are more susceptible to dissolution than are ryuha, where multiple teachers have independent authority. If so, there is a persuasive argument for the latter approach. This is a fascinating question for research, one that would include analysis of other ryu, like those devoted to flower arranging or the tea ceremony.)

The ryu of my experience are martial. In these arts, their obvious antiquity is never more important than their essence and their essence is not in the kata, not in the etiquette, not in the public displays. It is absolutely not in the sense of “aren’t we cool in our feudal-era getups and aren’t we noble in preserving the desiccated skeleton of this art?” Rather it is in their corporate expression in the personality of the ryu member.  That personality does not stay in the dojo or the embujyo.  The dojo, particularly for the more advanced exponent, is truly a bullpen, a place to refine, to stay sharp. One exercises the ryu, puts it into practise, out in the world.

To attain any sort of conversance in a ryu is to apply it practically, to implement its lessons of strategy in the field of daily life.  Some koryu, like the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu, use the term heiho/hyoho for their art:  strategy.  The meaning is that this is an art not of technique so much as it is of attitude and intent.  While other koryu may not employ this terminology, if they are serious, it is an unmistakable aspect of the art.

How do we deal, interact, with others in our personal interactions or in business?  No, the boardroom is not a battlefield.  All that crap about Miyamoto Musashi’s Gorinosho being vital for the business executive has any value only if said business executive could read 17^th century Japanese and had a thorough grounding in swordsmanship, Japanese philosophy, and Japan’s feudal culture. But life is a series of conflicts, cooperation, and diverse goals which have resonances not unlike those in battle. In confronting these, the koryu have a remarkable value.  While one needs to hold a sword (or its equivalent in the ryu’s curriculum) in order to truly access these strategies, they are put into context in every area of the member’s life.

I am, to give an example, mystified at the enthusiastic, almost gleeful public postings on social media from senior koryu practitioners in the West, primarily in the USA, of their particular political sensitivities. These are invariably expressed in outrageous emotional terms, mocking of those with different views, vicious ad hominems. The stink of the dilettante attends them. They come across as a bully swaggering into a bar and announcing everyone in the place is a pussy who deserves an ass-whipping. (Not coincidentally, these Interweb bullies don’t give the appearance of confident warriors but read more like pitiable insecure adolescents looking for group approval.) I wonder what strategies are taught in their ryu:  deliberately provoke others? Create enemies needlessly? Either these ryu have some very odd heiho—or their representatives behave as if their strategies are left at the dojo door.

I also wonder about other koryu members who eagerly enter website discussions, expounding on the details of their art, speaking as if they are representatives of the ryu assigned by their teacher to speak in such a manner on behalf of the school. Is this an expression of the strategy they are supposed to be incorporating into their lives?

The koryu are antiques. Living, breathing, organic, and evolving antiques. Their structure is in the past, in the sense that structure is timeless. Their potential is not rooted in the age in which they were created, not if those populating them are serious. They were meant, like that sewing table, like the Kenzan bowls, to be used.

So yes, Mr. Amdur is correct, I think, in labeling those koryu “antiques” if they do not incorporate their ethos and strategies into the wider areas of life in this century. Even if they do, however, they are still, in what I believe is a more appropriate understanding of that word, “antiques.” The distinction is not in the object.  It is in how and why we have it.

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