Japan  &  Basenji

We knew from the beginning that the free time at our disposal would have been short, but when we could have another similar occasion, such a great invite? A lot of hours spent on the plane and we found ourselves in the same Italian weather, a bit more humid, sun light at 4:30 and dark pretty soon. Even when the weather is nice, in Tokyo the sky is always covered by the smog. Most of our days are organized and full of appointments and established engagements. First stop the Pacific Flora in Hamamatsu, a flower and furnish fair that last six months, where my husband’s company has planned a Tuscany Garden, then the last two days in Tokyo…

We are amazed by the Japanese’s passion for all that is Italian, by their education, the strong tidy and silent influx of people at any exhibition, the relative few technology, the high price of fruits, the not so expensive price of life as long time ago for us European, thanks to the birth of the Euro, and the almost total absence of information translated in English, everywhere.

We try to have a confirmation of the news that a couple of basenjis have been given as a gift to the Emperor but nobody knows anything about it. In reality every one is really gentle but nobody knows the basenji’s breed.

Only in Tokyo we succeed in having a free half day and we are accompanied at the National Museum (http://www.tnm.jp/) to see paintings, statues, clothes and old Japanese swords: on the territory we have passed with the coach, the car or the super-fast train everything is new or rebuilt, there are no real traces of an ancient past like here in Italy.

We enter inside the first building of the Tokyo National Museum: Honkan, inaugurated in 1928. We found ourselves immersed in another, different world, the rooms are a lot and crowded, there is also somebody who prays in front of statues of ancient divinities. We spy quickly on the section about the prehistoric finds, the time at our disposal is limited and we cannot see everything. I am amazed to consider a diverse aspect: Japan for us is ancient printings on rice paper, swords and samurai, kimonos; it is difficult to think at their origins. Suddenly I bump into a series of terracotta artefacts: houses, warriors, animals, they are very simple, smooth and stylized. A part of the collection is closed but what we see leave me with a sense of inquietude, like when you find something arcane and not at all explicable. Only at the end of our visit I will understand why.

The time at our disposal is ending, a fast dash into the shop of the museum to buy something and we will go back in the grip of the programmed encounters of this trip…

But suddenly, I am attracted by a terracotta shape familiar to me. I look at it, I look again, it is not possible, it cannot be here. I search for some explanations in English in order to understand, to have a confirmation…

HANIWA: terracotta Dog; Kofun Period: 300 a. C.- 552 a. C.

It is the copy of a little statue of a dog with pointed ears, of a squared shape, stocky but elegant and smooth. It has a little curly tail, a slit mouth with the tongue outside and a little bell around the neck with a string. Why is it here? I cannot understand a lot from the little information in English present there, only after our return in Italy, through the Internet, I am able to disclose part of the mystery.

At the downing…

The first Japanese settlers, during the Neolithic, were the Jomon (about 10000 b.C-300b.C.). They realized little statues called dogu, mainly representing female figures.

Lately, between the Copper Age and the Bronze Age, lived the Yayoi (about 300-b.C.-300 a.C.), the nucleus of whom, at the beginning of the period, was represented by a different group of immigrants, who created copper weapons, bronze belts and potteries cocked in the ovens.

Typical artefacts of the following period, the Kofun (Mounds’ period, about 300-710), during the Bronze and Iron Ages, were bronze mirrors and clay sculptures called haniwa, that were erected outside the tombs. Simple figures with a stick’s shape on belts (dotaku), produced in the Yayoi period, and paintings that decorated the internal walls of the tombs in the Kofun period, represent the origins of the Japanese painting.

This period ends with the arrival of the Buddhism and of the different practices of burial linked to it.

The Haniwa were placed above the mounds, the nobles’ tombs, built like hills in dominant areas. The terracotta artefacts were ornaments and were supposed to be well viewable at a long distance. The manufacturing was different but all pretty 

fast, there were potteries of different colours or even painted but the tomb in general was supposed to be prepared as quickly as possible.

Particular Haniwas like birds, cows, horses and dogs were grouped and their place was no established. Probably, for the continuous changing of place in time, everything has a ritual value and a ceremonial use.

I do not know exactly what was the dawning of the migrations or the exact origins of the human beings and their contemporary animals, but it is sure that this is the umpteenth proof that the Basenji, in this culture too, was a magic creature that silently, even here, left his scent.

22 May 2004