SO SMALL MY ISLAND

this is a focus leader if we hear movies look like this do your soundtracks sound like this or like this it's so you need this a focus leader first set your lens so that these lines are sharp and clear on all parts of the screen now set the volume control on your projector the sound level should be adjusted until my voice can be clearly understood in all sections of the room you are now ready to participate in another pan-american travel adventure you're a few hours from your destination cruising gently your mind tingles with excitement and that's how it is your adventure starts when you walk into the plane your visit to japan begins even before you get there as you sit now relaxed talking some more with your old friends friends you met just the night before so little my country but so much to do to see to learn well it is just that we wish to be understood cities scenery all very fine and all very close at 600 miles an hour forgive must not spoil own adventure but to know my country see my people too please so you flew the pacific 6 000 miles and now you're here fujiyama japan you're so excited you pay scant attention to your japanese seat mates last minute plea remember to know my country see my people too please sure you promise sure but you're landing you're down a few formalities at the airport and you're ready you're off for tom the big town tokyo tokyo tokyo it isn't quite what you expected no not what you expected at all except that the traffic keeps to the left why this could be anywhere chicago new york rome or rio all that traveling for this and the people the japanese all right but are they japan is this japan even when you do catch a glimpse of the kind of thing you expected it's just as lost and bewildered as you are no no tokyo's too big too busy to tackle first of all so you head out of town to the quieter places you've read about and to meet the people after all remember you promised to know my country see my people too please you make up your mind to stop at the first in whose porters flag you down ah this is more like it this is the politeness you'd been expecting and the different customs you'd heard about you're not just seeing them you're taking part in them and now you meet ceremonial tradition politeness most humble politeness no that's not right politeness is cold impersonal this is truly graciousness they make you feel not like a paying visitor but like an honored guest of a family with my people a meal is a ceremony the surroundings of the dinner are as important as a food for the hunger for beauty must be fed too we enjoy not only the taste of the food but the balance of the colors of the different meats and fish and we will say honorable guests forgive our humble efforts so unworthy of the honor you pay our house forgive these poor offerings but examine the bowl priceless like everything else like the picture in the takanoma for dessert nature seemingly brought indoors as a window becomes a picture frame for this is japan where nature is made to obey the rules of art where brooks are made to curve with grace and ponds designed to fit bridges trees shaped to frame an island their young branches hung with weights to persuade them into proper lines for frames and even fuji begins to look as if he was shaped by art then you begin to see him as the ideal of all this land in all nature the one perfect and final creation you're in a real picture brookland yes but when you look a little closer at the picture you realize each little patchwork in the design is an entire farm beautiful yes but the people tell you much beauty too little land eighty percent mountain only twenty percent soil each of us must take up every inch of his topsoil every three years and refine it through his fingers so very little must go a long way a little rice a little grain and so many people and what the land does not give we must take from the sea when evening creeps down the mountains the work with the land has to stop but the work of the day isn't over dusk brings no rest for the weary for at evening the fishing boats come back the self-same people who labor in the fields go down to the docks to help with the heaving and hauling and handling what the land cannot give we must take from the sea or starve and at long last the farm and fishing village goes to sleep but long before you're up and on your way again they're hauling the fishing boats out to sea strange that one fish should be eaten and others being sacred are fed strange that some people must work to live and others have play as they're living they are geishas their teacher tells you their story i make artists in music department fine writing arrangement of flowers singing and dancing i accept them for training at six at 18 they are graduated suppose you are director of bank in kyoto and you give fine dinner for machamps from osaka you corrugations they serve in the proper way make right conversation speak of art and the poetry sing dance they are japanese tradition and traditionally each year the most skillful geishas appear in the great cherry festival at kyoto two things you meet everywhere you go festivals and children and both are enchanting the girls and boys doing the things kids do all over the world on special days tradition transforms them from just kids to tiny samurai warriors celebrating a festival of their very own festivals for everything presenting insects free to hear them sing for lantern lighting for harvests but the solemnity that puzzles you at first always comes out fun just kids all dressed up and playing parade acting out the past or having it acted out for them by the wandering minstrel the traveling teller of old tales with his paper slide theater and what does it cost to hear a fairy tale just a piece of penny candy by now this unusual land has begun to capture you not yet do you understand it quite but you begin to sense the spirit behind it for everywhere there are shrines great and small buddhist and shinto what is a shrine a jizo image on a hillside nestling a private offering of incense at his feet a giant buddha looming to the sky hearing the prayers of pilgrims by the thousands as they trek to kamakura a torii gate in the inland sea or a lantern of bronze should the fortune teller sell you a prophecy that's bad you hang it on the lantern and forget it a shrine a place of prayer each spot on earth is a shrine a rock a tree the silver sea in all great and small resides the divine a prayer can be silent a pebble picked up on the shore and placed in the lap of the buddha to protect the soul of your child let my child be strong like the pine clever like the sacred fox noble as the ancestor warriors brave against spirits of evil what will be will be yet grant o buddha after my child be born that the banner of the carp may fly over the house of my husband the banner of the car like so much in japan is a symbol what it means you learn from a little boy on your way to jumps upstream against current over my house little carp me big one big brother everything in japan means something now take the devil masked bugaku dancer on the inland sea with his ceremonial gestures he's not just a dancer he's a shinto priest and each motion each step summons down the spirits foshinto worships the spirits in things and as he calls upon the great god of the waters you too feel the magic in nature around you and now your mind's eye summons to memory fujisan symbol of all you have so far seen of different faiths and gods and ways of worship summoner of spirits he had you enchanted you almost forgot he was just a man your pilgrimage goes on the true milestones on your way to understanding are the people you meet centuries ago along this the old tokaido road the warrior knights the daimyo used to make their annual pilgrimage to the emperor at kyoto today little boys and girls retrace their ancestors steps along the self-same road do they know its traditions do they know what it means do they know yes they know yes just like his country living but the youngsters aren't the only ones who relive the tales of times long gone grown-ups play at that game as well you leave the actors and their camera crew to their retakes and take up again your pilgrimage into what makes this country tick by now you think you have it pretty well figured out at least in terms of its people consider this tiny land so much manicured into gardens where a dying leaf is plucked from the tree before it mars the perfection they know its beauty they've made a tradition of arranging that beauty this is where it began the art of arrangement where but here could one flower mean man the second flower earth the third heaven and the whole tradition they know the beauty of their land for their shoulders bend to its burdens and their sea an island people hemmed in by water its depths mean the difference between enough and too little so they found the prows of their boats to frighten fish to the nets they use the shallows too for the weeds of the waters are food for life as well as its fruits amma they're called these girls of the sea as their sisters cultivate the shallows of the patties for rice so they harvest the floor of the sea for edible weeds and dry themselves by a fire of straw legend says the gods of japan meet each year to decide the fortunes of the year to come of the eight million gods only one does not attend the god of the sea he has to stay home not even for one day can the waters fail to yield their fruits tradition it colors their lives as it underlies their ways of work modern and bright as their textiles are when you shop for them in the cities in the brookside villages they fix the colors fast in the age-old ways and it's man and the work of his hands that lies behind the beauty of pottery even when machinery helps the work along it's here on the outskirts of kyoto you size up japan here it comes into perspective this land that has clung to the ways of the past yet industrialized itself almost overnight it's an alloy this country its people have forged their metal of equal parts the new and the old and when you get into kyoto itself it all begins to fall in line modern streets yes but even traffic makes way for tradition once again a festival this time to celebrate the blossoming of the hollyhocks now the glimpses you catch begin to add up again you see geishas prosaically shopping for groceries sure they have storefronts and plate glass galore but nowhere else in your travels have you seen such beauty for the buying yes the old and the new you have to see both sides of the picture together they make up the true japan that's your yardstick and the old that you see it isn't set apart it's embedded right in the present like the traditional water festival in the public park oh it's the mother in japan that moves you back toward tokyo over the inland sea what's new for you is that you've learned something you can relax you can take time out for the timeless again you move a while by rail you make a pleasant stopover at a lakeside inn its counterpart the comfortable the new is everywhere just as everywhere you go there is the old the cultural a many faceted beauty of color and form and symbolism jewels of art and architecture of painting and sculpture some you've never so much has heard of before others you've known all your life with so much of the real japan behind you you're ready to tackle busy tokyo again how will it seem to you now will the old and the new meet and balance each other here too will it well there's the emperor's palace wall right off the busiest street people doing their everyday things in the everyday kind of way and even here the old old festivals main idea in this one is to let the will of the gods determine which way the shrine will go but the same fervid passion can carry over from yesterday's excitement to today's sport same people different game yes your measuring stick is accurate your figuring is true truly you've come to the crossroads of the east and the west but you learned it really from the people going about their daily business whether in shirt sleeves or kimonos sandals or wedgies modern as they are today on the outside inside it's both together you have to meet both on your journey if your journey's end is to be understanding fuji sun he knew that when you first saw his majesty but fuji keeps silent he tells nothing you have to learn you have to find out for yourself you have to go you