How beautiful is that which does not last

Gestures and silences, shadows and colours make Japan an entanglement of enigmas and sudden joys. Which Antonietta Pastore, the Italian translator of Murakami Haruki, dissolves in her Where do you want to go, sensei? A journey into the heart of Japan, made up of three verbs - discover, understand, rediscover - and decades of experience that makes us tiptoe into the homes of the Japanese, into their traditions. To come out believing we are grasping a country less exotic than we think.

The translator arrived in the Rising Sun at the age of 28, in 1974, and it was 'almost like going to the land of Oz'. The population centres, large and small, are along the coasts, the shores of lakes or rivers, or at the bottom of valleys, they do not need to be perched because Japan has never experienced a danger of invasion. The real danger is the earthquake, so the buildings must be flexible and have a structure that resists seismic tremors. As demonstrated by the Shinto shrines in Ise, on the east coast: every twenty years they are dismantled and rebuilt a short distance away, in a ritual operation that reproduces the cycle of death and rebirth at the basis of Shintoism and Buddhism. It is the art of interlocking, it is called sashimono and there are about four hundred different types of interlocking. Which do not need nails so as not to injure the wood. Architecture is a philosophy of life: "from the precariousness of dwellings, due to the geological constitution of the land, to the suddenness with which an earthquake can destroy inanimate things and life, derives the value that the Japanese attribute to the concept of impermanence, which is so ingrained in the culture that it has become the most heartfelt aesthetic criterion. What is beautiful is what is not durable, what shows itself in its splendour for a short time and then fades away'. Like the cherry blossoms that are subject to the concept based on the acceptance of transience and imperfection, the wabi sabi.

With Antonietta Pastore we cross the threshold of the house, we sit on the tatami in the correct position, we discover the shōji, which serve to separate rooms. It is the minimal life that becomes universal. Just as eternal is the use of paper: 'the tradition of exchanging gifts has a religious origin, and the fact that the ideogram shi, which means "paper", is also pronounced kami, which spelled differently means "god", continues to remind us of this', as does the exchange of gifts, a true ritual of the Japanese. Just don't discard them in front of the person offering them, so as not to cause any embarrassment.

There are many superstitions: not laying chopsticks against the rim of a bowl with the tip pointing upwards, a gesture considered unlucky because it is done during a Buddhist funeral rite. Equally ominous is passing food from one diner to another with chopsticks, because it evokes the ritual following the cremation of a corpse. The number four, pronounced shi, is homophone with the word 'death' and, in the numbering of flats, hotel rooms and hospitals, it is not there. Another rule is to close the flaps of a kimono by overlapping the left side with the right, because the opposite is only done in the dressing of corpses.

On page after page, life today reflects the flow of millenary traditions: not blowing your nose in public; not emptying the bathtub if you have bathed first; an aesthetic 'based on asymmetry, on the detail that, by breaking up regularity, creates a sense of imbalance, and amazes'; despite apparent formalities, habits of intimacy unthinkable in the West. Public spaces, like private ones, thrive on care. Every corner of the house has a meaning, like frequenting the onsen, the hot springs, where one is naked and where a purification inspired by Buddhist doctrine takes place. Shepherd talks about the katana and the kimono - meaning the 'thing to wear' -, the small restaurants, the funeral vigils during which people eat and drink, the concept of authority and why there are so many suicides. Thus, Japan becomes less hermetic and visiting it is a joy of silence and order in which to also try to understand how the Japanese perceive other peoples. For little that customs differ from their own, the Japanese call others henna kuni - 'strange countries'. Moreover, going abroad in Japanese is called kaigai ni dekakeru - 'going across the sea', an expression evoking adventure and danger -, and so one can perhaps understand the prior request for help that is written on the passports of citizens of the Rising Sun: 'The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan requests that the bearer, a Japanese citizen, be allowed to pass freely and without hindrance and, in case of need, to offer him all possible a+ide and protection'.