Old-World Japan: Well In The Heart Of Honshu

Despite wrangling with decades of rapid modernisation, old-world Japan is alive and well in the heart of Honshu.

- Andre Frois

After glacial melting raised the sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age, Japan found itself disconnected from the rest of the Eurasian landmass. Over these past fifteen thousand years or so, its inhabitants have taken great liberty in disconnecting themselves from the rest of the world, nurturing their own distinctive, intriguing culture and values, which are both off-kilter yet stringently principled.

On one coast of Japan’s main Honshu island, the fluorescent metropolis that is Tokyo burgeons as the world’s foremost adopter and disseminator of pop-culture. Juxtaposing this insatiable hunger for ultramodern entertainment, automation, and all concepts avant-garde, the twin cities of Osaka and Kyoto persevere as retainers of the old guard’s mindset.

Six hours after jetting out of sweltering Singapore, my taxi pulls up in front of a 200-year-old house in the unhurried township of Izumisano, four kilometres inland from Osaka’s bustling offshore international airport, Kansai. My brother’s octogenarian grandmother-in-law stops work in her charming orchard to receive my party. Being hunched over to almost a right angle hardly deters the jubilant obasan from being as gracious a host as any Japanese person aspires to be.

Having survived the Allied bombings, hers is the oldest house in the neighbourhood. Tucked behind blossoming Satsuma mandarin trees, a wall of handmade tiles and wooden fixtures opens to reveal a diligently manicured garden. She receives our gifts with gratitude, chiming a bell in front of pictures of her late husband and late son-in-law to offer our tributes to them. By tradition, we have to be received in the guest reception chamber, where her daughter, granddaughter, and my nephew serve us wagashi cakes.