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CHAPTER 3

The Spirit of Bamboo

There is a saying: “In great storms trees break, but the supple bamboo bends.” The strength that lies at the heart of such flexibility is what makes bamboo such a great material, and one that keeps turning up in unexpected guises—as a prime construction material in contemporary vernacular architecture or in soft bamboo rayon garments that easily drape.

A member of the grass family, bamboo is said to grow faster than any other plant in the world and, like a bird’s bones, its hollow stalks make it very light. Ubiquitous in Japan, bamboo comes in an astounding array of colors: deep lacquer black, silvery-blue, jade-green, yellow, brown, and even striped.

It is used in weaving baskets as intricate as knitwear, and as sturdy ribbing for fans and umbrellas. Its upper brush makes excellent fences tied with hemp, and the plant’s many root stubs are left on the flared end of the shakuhachi flute for their sheer finesse. Bamboo charcoal purifies water and deodorizes air, and takenoko bamboo shoots cooked as tempura have a flavor as delicate as artichoke hearts.

The one-room museum in Rakusai Bamboo Park in Nishikyo Ward, Kyoto, even houses the crumbling remains of a bamboo plumbing system from the eighth century. But the story I found most compelling of all, and the one that subsequently led me on a quest, was the counterintuitive connection between the American inventor, Thomas Edison (1847-1931), and the bamboo of Kyoto.

According to a description at the museum, Edison was trying to find a filament that would burn long enough to be of practical value for his invention—the electric light bulb. From his New Jersey lab, the great inventor sent scouts to various countries in search of an appropriate material, and ultimately tested the fibers of about 6,000 plants.

The one that proved to burn the longest happened to grow in the bamboo groves of Yawata, Kyoto Prefecture. The madake bamboo (Phyllostachys bambusoides) burned a record 2,450 hours. That was the beginning of the global electrical revolution. The inventor then founded the Edison Electric Light Co. to manufacture the electric light bulbs with bamboo filaments from Kyoto. According to Thomas Edison, a biography by Charles E. Pederson, in 1883, Macy’s department store in New York became the first business to use the incandescent light bulbs.

But a personal motive was actually driving my interest in the Edison story. My grandfather, who came to the United States through Ellis Island in 1900 with his parents and siblings from central Italy, worked as a draftsman for 47 years for General Electric Co., a company created through a merger in 1892, and helped redesign the GE logo. I knew vaguely that Edison had become the object of worship for a Japanese religious group called Denshinkyo or “electric gods,” but had never met anyone remotely involved.

According to a newspaper article in 1949, a Japanese ministry granted the group official status after deliberating whether it was Buddhist, Shinto or something else. As the group’s object of worship was “Edison-no-mikoto” (“mikoto” is a suffix used for deities) the ministry identified it as Shinto. The religion would give people the opportunity to express gratitude for the benefits of electricity, peace and scientific knowledge.

The walk from Yawata Station to Iwashimizu Hachimangu shrine, down Edison Road and past a bust of Thomas Edison, took about 20 minutes. Established in 859, the shrine is located on top of Otokoyama, a mountain lush with bamboo groves in which Edison’s scout found the bamboo for the filament that would open the age of electricity. The shrine is considered the southern gate that warded off evil from the ancient capital of Kyoto, while the northern gate is Enrakuji temple on Mt. Hiei. Not only is there a monument dedicated to Edison on the shrine grounds, but since 1934, two festivals a year are held in his honor.

Edison’s birthday on February 11 happens to fall on National Founding Day when Shinto shrines celebrate the “birth” of the country and offer prayers for the prosperity of the nation. At Iwashimizu Hachimangu, the celebration is followed at noon by a gathering of shrine priests, staff and local people to give thanks to Thomas Edison. I joined them this year with the thought of how much the whole story would have pleased my grandfather.

However, this shrine did not have any connection with Denshinkyo, and the priest there did not know anyone from the now defunct religious group. What is more confusing is that there were several secular groups devoted to Edison, such as the Kyoto Yawata Edison Association and the Edison Admiration Society.

“Is Edison a god?” I asked Norito Sakurai, a young priest.

“In the past, Edison might have been deified, but not now,” Sakurai said as he stopped to reflect for a moment. “The base of Shinto is that we humans manage to live because of water, trees, and nature. We’re expressing a deep gratitude that goes beyond the nation. Through Edison’s invention and genius, people’s lives were enriched. He gave us light. And that was initially made possible from the nature around this shrine.”

Here nature and a flexible human intelligence are seen to work together. His almost superhuman grasp of nature’s secrets makes Edison irresistible in Japan. I soon discovered that Iwashimizu Hachimangu was not the only shrine to be associated with Edison. In nearby Arashiyama, on the precincts of the Shingon temple Horinji, is a Shinto shrine called Dendengu devoted to Denden Myojin, the ancestral god of electronics. Here, Edison together with the German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894), who discovered electromagnetic waves, are both memorialized with a stone pagoda and monument.

On my way home from visiting the shrine, I stopped at Kago-shin on the north side of Sanjo Street a 10-minute walk east of the Kamogawa river. The shop has been in operation since 1862 when the whole area buzzed and snapped with the sound of bamboo craftwork. Now only two shops, surrounded by modern buildings, remain on what was once part of the Tokaido highway. Shintaro Morita, a fifth-generation master bamboo artisan, is turning out baskets and vases. His daughter Tsuyako works beside him, runs the shop, and deals with the public.

“In autumn, we cut the bamboo,” she says, “and in February and March we make things.” Most of what they use is madake, the same bamboo used by Edison.

“Edison sent people to our shop to ask about bamboo, too,” Tsuyako says beaming. Since GE continued to send Christmas cards to the family over the years, I told her about my grandfather and his hand in the GE logo.

Our exchange allowed me to better understand the thinking in a place like Kyoto. Relations between people, and perhaps it holds for nations as well, are like the rhizomes of bamboo that travel underground, sometimes over great distances.

Practical Information

Rakusai Bamboo Park

300-1 Kitafukunishi-cho, Ohe

Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto 610-1112

Tel: (075) 331-3821

www.17.ocn.ne.jp/~park/English.html

Kinsuitei Restaurant (specializes in takenoko cuisine)

2-15-15 Tenjin, Nagaokakyo-shi

Kyoto 617-0824.

Tel: (075) 951-5151

www.kinsuitei.co.jp

Iwashimizu Hachimangu shrine