tenkara - a great escape

It is impossible to travel without expectation, Sometimes it is good to have those expectations confounded or exceeded. Other times it is good to have them met. I came to Japan for many reasons, but mostly to find the real place behind the tired cliches. But the moment I caught that amago, on a tenkara rod, in a clear mountain stream down to its autumn bones - that was when I touched Japan, or at least my expectation of its essence. I’m sure we’ll go on to find many other faces of Japanese-ness, but for me that amago moment was special.

Night in Kyoto. Dismal room. Looking out over fifteen air-conditioning units, eyeless balconies, rat chewed pipes. A thin strip of blue sky above bleeds down to night.

Fujioka San picked us up early. Goodbye to air-con-view. It was a long drive, along motorway at first, meeting up with one of Fujioka’s fishing buddies at a motorway toll station. Finally a twisting mountain road, the forested slopes closing in. A sense of countryside, wildness. The developed landscape - any flat ground - is an ugly one. Buildings are functional and grey. There is much concrete and plastic. And everything is compressed, busy. Colours come mostly from plastic signs - which are prolific. There is little open space - in the sense that I am used to - anywhere. Even the flat ground either side of the river is divided up into squashed geometric parcels - rice fields, orchards, vegetable gardens. And in between concreted space everywhere: hard standing yards, car parks. But look up and the mountain side are unbroken forest. Mist rolls over wilderness only yards away from all this compressed utility.

We drove further. The bailiff had not left my permit at the door to the co-op hut like he said he would. We’d have to fish without it.

We pass a dam drawn down to a level that has left a hundred yard deep ring of apocalyptic barrenness all around. A strip of dried, caked earth, dead trees, old walls. And on again until we were on a single-track road through trees, pushing up into a steep gorge-like valley. We stopped by a pull-in just short of a bridge over the river. Down to its autumn bones. Narrow enough to jump over. A cascade through boulders. In winter torrents it would be a different, violent thing. But now the first few fallen leaves of autumn are floating from pool to pool, hanging briefly over the cascades before flowing on.

Tenkara is about simplicity - so Fujioka San explains. it originated with professional fishermen over three centuries ago - an efficient, uncomplicated way of getting fish to sell. I asked if there were any professionals left - perhaps a few. Subsistence small-holders who might use it as part of their living.

The subtleties of the technique differ from prefecture to prefecture and there are different fly patterns too. Fujioka San would take me through all of these back at the inn that evening, a sake fuelled fly nerd-in. By the river he explained that there are three parts to tenkara fishing: giving the fly life; using the wrist to create a snappy cast; and keeping only the tippet on the water. In practice it is much like the way I’d fish any mountain torrent - the Lyn or La Cere, allowing the fly to dance across the surface, animating it, or pausing it over good lies.

I spook a small darting grey shadow at the first pool. The river ought to hold countless fish. But they are either few or they are spooky and difficult to see. The tenkara rod is soft, but it is also pleasantly elemental. Nothing but the pole and the string! Unsurprisingly, the simplicity of the style allows me to concentrate on the fishing itself.

An amago breaches the water after my fly. There is no fight to speak of. It is far too small for that, but even so I have touched Japan at last. The fish flicks across the surface. Fujioka San whoops and laughs with delight - and probably relief. Gavin is filming something else, so the poor fish, Fujioka San and me have to go through our routine one more time. But I keep the fish underwater and send it home quickly. It is the jewell I imagined it might be. Tiny. A bonsai trout. I wouldn’t want it any bigger. The body is barred with finger-width stripes and over this orange spots. There is something oriental about it. The delicate greens and blues like a soft zen watercolour, the orange the same flaming colour as the Japanese maple leaf as it turns in autumn.

What Fujioka San and his mates have let me in on here is their own riff on the pastoral whimsy that fishermen the world over love to swim in - with their cane rods and “things ain’t what they used to be.” It is great to find it here too. It is pastoral, nostalgic. Even though Fujioka San and his mates are reluctant to admit it. They insist that they enjoy tenkara only because it is so simple. But simple is not so simple. Least of all in Japan!. As an idea it resonates with a yearning to look backwards. The sake ceramics, the fly boxes arranged with ancient patterns derived from particular prefectures, the archaic rod (albeit a graphite version) the simple inn whose ancient building was rescued from the flooded reservoir valley, our bathing ceremony, the long evening of dining round an open fire - all this is an escape from the busy, frenetic, complicated Japan just down the road. And a great escape it is too.

First published 3rd December 2008