These pages preserve Trish Duggan’s text and captions from Imagine the Beauty of Japan.
Author: Trish Joy Duggan · Photographers: Adam Bodnar, Craig Alexander, Mickael Goupil, Serge Ramelli, Alexander James · Designer: Silvia Molina
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A Year in Nagoya
The year I spent studying at the Jesuit University, Nanzan University, in Nagoya was incredibly enlightening! I studied the language intensively as well as culture, sociology and woodblock printmaking.
I lived in the upstairs in the home of a master in flower arranging and his wife who had no children. I was invited to join his weekly class! In the first class were four elderly people including a monk. We were each given a package which I unwrapped only to find it was twigs with no leaves. I promptly stuck it in a pot and was proud to finish first! I love speed, but I soon found out as I looked at the other students, they were each carefully observing each twig and placing it just as meticulously. Then my teacher explained to me that the sun hits each twig in a certain way and it’s important to place the twig in the arrangement so that it’s facing forward, not backwards. I quickly learned
PATIENCE and the IMPORTANCE of OBSERVATION!
My father joined the military when he was seventeen. His ship departed from Pearl Harbor three days before it was bombed. My grandmother was living in Hawaii at the time of the bombing and was washing her hair in the sink early in the morning when she looked up. Her eye connected directly to the eye of a young Japanese pilot in an airplane seconds before he performed his Kamikaze maneuver! She screamed to my grandfather who was an engineer and naval officer, “We’re being attacked!” It was my grandfather who did the first damage report. He eventually became a three-star admiral. Recently I learned from my close Japanese friend who just turned ninety years old that her seventeen-year-old brother had died as a kamikaze pilot. I wonder if his eye was the one that connected to my grandmother’s eye!?
I went to a private dinner with a former president of the United States. He gave a talk on “The Transformative Nature of Freedom.” The president specifically talked about Japan and how they had become such allies of ours now! Times change! I prefer to stay on the high plateau of communication than sinking down into the valley of communicating with bullets.
“Peace can become a lens through which you see the world. Be it. Live it. Radiate it out. Peace is an inside job.”— Wayne Dyer
For Americans, the Japanese are very unique and unusual. While Americans stress rugged individualism and the vital importance of individual accomplishment, the Japanese place a far greater importance on the group getting along with each other, being loyal, respectful and polite.
I wrote my final paper at the university on what Americans could learn from the Japanese and what the Japanese could learn from the Americans.
The Japanese have a very high focus on aesthetics—pure attention to beauty! The flower arrangements, the bonsai trees, the Japanese garden, the papermaking, the printmaking, the sword making, the attention on cherry blossoms blooming in the spring, the appreciation of the magnificent Mount Fuji, etc.
I learned that when one puts one’s attention on beauty, one will most certainly find it! I learned the importance of the group and helping all of those around you to be better and do better! I gained the highest admiration for these amazing and wonderful people!