A Guide for the Olfactory Tourist in Japan

     For those of us foreigners interested in Japanese incense the relationship (or obsession) must by necessity occur at a distance: purchasing boxes online with little sense of what might be inside, burning incense alone to avoid the quizzical looks of others or learning how to assemble an incense bowl from youtube videos and blurry diagrams. So for those fortunate enough to visit, a trip to Japan can be a revelation. The current strength of the dollar and growing prevalence of tax-free shops can lead to significant savings over purchase in the US. But with the obscurity and small size of many Japanese incense companies it can be difficult for the English speaker to find sites to visit or hands-on resources to learn more about the art. I was lucky enough to spend a month in Japan in 2019 and made it a priority to search out resources for buying and learning about Japanese incense. This is a short guide to the shops, classes and museums I found. While others may exist these are arguably some of the best - and most accessible - in the country.

Shoyeido, perhaps Japan’s most well known incense company, has stores all around the country, many of them tax free (https://www.shoyeido.co.jp/english/stores/index.html). Of the three stores in Tokyo the Shoyeido Aoyama branch (Pinevillage, 5-47-13, Jingu-mae, Tokyo 150-0001) offers English language assistance as well as occasional in-store lessons on how to prepare a koh bowl (¥1000 per person, max four, appointments can be made same day though it is probably best to reserve in advance). Like many other shops on this list the clerks are happy to allow you to sample sticks before you buy, simply point to a box and they will gladly light a small piece for you.

Kyoto, one major historical center of Japanese incense culture, sports numerous small incense shops and sites worth visiting. One of these, Tenkhodou, has a branch in the Arashiyama neighborhood (https://tenkhodou.com, 47 Katsurahisakata-cho, Nishigyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto,) offering an array of fine stick-type incense, kneaded incense, aloeswood chips and sachets.

The Yamadamatsu head store (http://www.yamadamatsu.co.jp/en/, shimodachiuri-agaru, muromachi-dori kamigyo-ku - not far from the old imperial palace) is an elegant retail space surrounded by antique koh-doh implements and sizable pieces of raw jin-koh (aloeswood). The store offers two workshops (http://www.yamadamatsu.co.jp/en/exp/index.html) which should be reserved in advance. These are conducted solely in Japanese though a good quality English language pamphlet is available and reservations can be made in English via e-mail. The mon-koh workshop (¥1500 per person, max ten people) lasts about an hour and takes the form of an informal Genji-koh session in which participants attempt to distinguish five separate koh chips from one another. The experience is very accommodating and far more about the appreciation of fine incense then any sort of competition.

Kyoto’s monthly Flea markets are some of the great events in the city. Hundreds of stalls pop-up for the day (though it is always best to get there early) selling excellent street food, handmade crafts and antiques. Tenjin-san Flea Market at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine (Bakurocho, Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture 602-8386) is held each month on the 25th. Among the chawan, statues and occasional taxidermied sea turtles can be found brass censers starting at ¥2000 and antique celadon censers starting around ¥10000. Stands selling incense can occasionally be found mostly with lower grade sticks though at reasonable prices.

For those looking for the finest products Kyoto has a branch of Kyukyodo a few blocks north of Nishiki market (520 Shimohonnojimaecho, Anekoji Agaru, Teramachi, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto 604-8091, Kyoto Prefecture). Kyukyodo sells high end calligraphy products and washi alongside a variety of jin-koh chips, koh-do bowls, implements and other accoutrement. Prices range from the tens of thousands to many millions of yen. Products are artfully displayed so - even though some bowls cost more than an average travel budget - it is worth stepping inside just to gaze at these rare works of craftsmanship.

A whole other kind of olfactory and artistic appreciation can be found in the Kiseru, Japan’s contribution to the world of tobacco. The Kiseru is a long, narrow pipe with a vanishingly small bowl made of brass and bamboo which is used to smoke finely shredded tobacco called kizami. The Kiseru was used widely around Japan until the introduction of cigarettes in the late 19th century. The size and shape of the Kiseru as well as the kizami itself are all designed to minimize the effects of nicotine, shifting the focus of the smoking experience to the delicate and refined aroma of the tobacco itself. Once an indispensable accessory for the Samurai, Dandy, Kabuki actor and Geisha alike the Kiseru itself has been elevated to the status of art object and can be appreciated apart from any tobacco consumption. Only a handful of Kiseru artisans are still active today and the only store still selling the pipes, Tanigawa Seijiro Shoten, can be found in Kyoto (443 Tachibanacho (Gokomachidori), Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture 600-8044). The storekeeper (also the craftsman of all the Kiseru sold in the shop) is a wellspring of knowledge about the history and cultural significance of the Kiseru, plus, if you purchase a pipe, he will be glad to show you how to smoke it, with hands-on practice. While the shop itself does not sell kizami it can be found at Kuriyama Daizenshu a short walk away (400 yen, 600-8001 Kyōto-fu, Kyōto-shi, Shimogyō-ku, Shinchō), the store keeper will be happy to draw out a map.

In the Onsen town of Beppu is the Oita Fragrance Museum (48-1 Kitaishigaki, Beppu, Ōita Prefecture 874-8501, http://oita-kaori.jp/ ¥1000 entrance fee). At three floors one could spend an hour or so here lounging among the historical incense containers and hundreds of ornate perfume bottles. Some of the text has English translations. Evenly split between the worlds of incense and perfume, the historical and contemporary, a wide range of topics are covered to a suitable depth. Highlights of the museum include historical Koh-doh implements, antique perfume stills and samples of raw perfume ingredients - including large chunks of ambergris, castoreum and musk - which can be sampled in isolation. The museum also holds a Make your own Perfume Class (¥2200 for a 30 mL vial, occasionally offered in English) where you can mix a range of ingredients yourself under the watchful eye of an expert.

Finally Buddhist temples around the country will occasionally compound their own incense which can only be purchased on site. This can be a little hit or miss but temples and sites where I found site-specific incense for sale include: Zojo-ji (４丁目-7-35 Shibakōen, Minato-ku, Tōkyō-to 105-0011), the Kyoto Imperial Palace gift shop (3 Kyōtogyoen, Kamigyō-ku, Kyōto-shi, Kyōto-fu 602-0881) and Senko-ji (15-1 Higashitsuchidōchō, Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima-ken 722-0033).

Lucid Dream

Had a stand out lucid dream last night.

I woke up about 2am and was awake for about an hour or so then I fell asleep again.

There was some lead-up to the lucid aspect. The lucid aspect started as I was standing outside of a building with a friend I have not had contact with for about ten years. We each entered separate doors to the building.

On entering I found myself in a tight, steep staircase. I noticed that the walls were old and yellowed and pitted. At that point I realized that I was dreaming. When I came to the top of the stairwell I entered a very close room whose walls were all covered with the sorts of doors that are on very old refrigerators, that have the thick metal latches on the side. The room had an air of being very old and somewhat dilapidated though I distinctly felt that I was not afriad and, somewhat strangely, had the distinct feeling that 'there was no one else around'.

I spent some time looking around the room. In one corner there was a box or bucket filled with tiny book. I didn't (or couldn't) read any of them, but felt like my purpose there was to get as many of those books as I could. I stuffed a few handfuls of the tiny books into my pockets.

I wandered around a bit more, and came to one more room that was filled with scale models of various things.  I was able to pick up one of them, something like a tank, and look at it very closely. There was a light in the room and I had to turn the model in order to see it clearly. The level of clarity and detail on the model was unusually high for a dream. I then walked into a hallway at which point everything turned black and I had a sensation of weightlessness which lasted for a few seconds at which I woke up in my bed.

Kind review of 'Gallaher Calls'

This kind tweet review of my story 'Gallaher Calls' by @robop_style:

"Two siblings pursue Totality through art; they have no contact with the world outside their mansion aside from the disgusting lawyer Gallaher. Evenson rewrites Edwin Mullhouse in a fever dream brought on by reading too much Straub. Excellent"

'Gallaher Calls' is included in Dim Shores Presents #1 

'Transcendant Creative Experience' Survey

I put together a short survey on 'transcendent creative experience', the feeling of having 'something else' work through you while engaging in a creative activity. This survey is open to anyone, and if you have ever engaged in creative work (whether as a hobby, professionally or otherwise) and whether or not you have even experienced something you would call a 'transcedant creative experience' I would love it if you took the survey! You can find the survey here: http://www.survey-maker.com/QAZNUV8H

Prayer/Exhortation

All hail the idiot king! All hail the idiot god! All hail! All hail!

All hail the executor pope! All hail the hand of god which calls down its host of righteous justice in the form of the church and its officers! All hail!

All hail the robber bureaucrats! All hail the legion of inspectors! The tax-collector soldiers! All hail! All hail the prostitute queen, the beggar prince, the orphan, outcast brood! All hail the philosopher prisoner, the musician heretic, the pitwasher priest. The Pitwasher Priest!

All hail, oh all hail.

Interview of Mark Gluth in Dennis Cooper's Blog

I spoke with Mark Gluth about his new novel 'Come Down to Us'.

You can read the interview, as well as excerpts from the novel and see photos by Steven Purtill on Dennis Cooper's blog.

'Dim Shores Present Vol. 1' now open for pre-orders

'Dim Shores Presents, Vol. 1' which will include my short story 'Gallaher Calls' is now open for preorders!

On perpetually drowning in the waters of solitude

Secretive bands, reclusive writers and sculptors and artists. Cults and cult like activity. Cults that are not just religious cults but that revolve around something that is totally unusual, like a set of sculptures or a pop star or a stock symbol. Anything like this. The public delusion. The masses pulled aside and into their heads. Hyperstition. Mass hysteria. Our capability to lie to ourselves, to create a great lie, so many great lies layered on on top of another. How we see other great lies and find them to be so ridiculous, rail against them, rage against them but then settle back happily into our own lies again and again. How this is not some aberration, but just the human condition. How this is not some fault, but just the way things are, just the base state of human society. How these lies have always existed, more or less, how their strength and influence and variety grow proportional to the size of a society and how we can easily look back and see them, and study them and critique them but are still ignorant (not even willfully, more like inherently) of our own. How the recluse can be a sort of delusion of one, or how solitude and isolation are perhaps the only way to fight against this, that only in solitude and isolation can be found the remedy, the antidote, the serum, the truth, the evasion of these delusions, of these lies and myths and insanities. 

Art, as it almost always must be—at some point or another—generated in solitude (the lone painter, writer, sculptor, director) is perhaps the only other escape from this. In another’s solitude, conveyed through sufficiently well made art, can we get a glimpse into this mind state. Of course not all art does this, in fact much of it falls into the old patterns, the old mass delusions. But that art that is created totally in solitude? Agnes Martin, Thoreau (even though his solitude was more fiction than fact, more veneer then vessel). Two examples, one good, one bad, but the heart is still there. Wordsworth and Stevens on their endless walks. Perhaps a window or the passing road, another voice far off, but so, so far off. The brief image of another body, but just a head or tuft of hair and then nothing. The wind, the rain maybe. Then the sun and the sun forever. The night sky. Ansel Adams and the endless west. A single body lodged in a place with no anchors. And then whatever you want to call it, so close and so near. The Carthusians, all of them. So many with words in their hearts which they know will be spoiled in the telling. The endless rage of the hermit, a rage born out of love and confusion. The door so close, and the door open! Trying to push back the noise, trying to outrun the noise. They sink and seep. We rub against each other like stones, but some stones hard and others soft. It is endlessly fascinating because it is endlessly exhaustible. This is because the hermit loses themselves in their solitude. The don’t focus on themselves, they focus on everything else. They lose focus. Being around others we find or form the boundaries on ourselves. We have these boundaries put into place. This in not an inherently bad thing, it is conducive to some things but not others. Beckett alone in his mother’s room. He had to be alone. If she were there he’d have had no epiphany. The epiphany can only come in solitude, the epiphany can only be found in perfect and absolute emptiness and emptiness. A single person in a room lit only by the low light of the rising sun filtered through a thick layer of clouds. It seems so dark but so much light can be let in there. Even the smallest sounds take on the weight of a great creature. Even the smallest changes hold a monumental gravity. 

Institutions are inherently antagonistic to this sort of thinking, to this sort of work. It might now seem so, but it is the case. We are drawn to these institutions out of fear, out of confusion, out of a thrashing and grasping. Like a drowning person. But the drowning is the thing. The drowning is the challenge. One must fully drown first. One must drown eternally in the solitude to enact something worthwhile, something great.

There are no sayings that can do this justice. No words or wisdom needed to support this. At every moment the true artist must feel the pain of the drowning and say: ‘This is what I came here for’. They must say, ‘I am doing my job, I have done my job. I have drowned in solitude and let the waters filled my lungs and died to the world.’ One must be totally inundated, but revel in the pain of solitude and the silence of the waters around them. It is the only way.

To grab at a life raft is to abscond (and this can only happen for a short while) from their true duty. It is to give up the work for a short while, to paddle at the surface, to waste energy struggling, kicking before the waters take over again. Perpetually drowning in the waters of solitude.

'Gallaher Calls' to be published in Dim Shores Presents #1

Very excited to announce that my weird, literary horror short story 'Gallaher Calls' will be included in Dim Shores press' 'Dim Shores Presents' #1.

https://mailchi.mp/ddf96ab02d35/dim-shores-update-2429057