When you look under the “Awards and Prizes” section of our college website, you find the following:
Technos International Event
This rewarding and prestigious event takes place each year in Weeks 7 and 8 of Trinity Term. Four second year undergraduate students and a member of the teaching faculty spend two weeks in Japan at the invitation of the Tanaka Ikueikai Educational Trust.
You can imagine the covetous sparkle in my eyes when I read this for the first time. As I went on to read the requirements a candidate for the event was to satisfy, though, I had to accept that my hunger for a tasty chunk of Tokyo would most likely go unfed. A genuine interest in Japan, its people, culture and history. I had to admit my knowledge of Japanese culture was rather slim, and I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about Japan. But then knowledge and interest are two different things, and enthusiasm can be developed. I described what happened in the 6 months after my hearing about the event in my application; here’s a fragment.
When I found out about Technos International Event, I was motivated to look at Japanese art, of which I had previously only known throughits influence on the French Impressionists, with a fresh eye. I discovered Hokusai’s masterworks and saw in them a strong resemblance to impressionistic art, a resemblance that runs deeper than the dissimilarity in contours. I was captivated by his series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, with its unending variation of vantage points (predating the invention of photographic cameras and Degas’s pastel works) and atmospheric conditions (so reminiscent of Monet’s haystack and poplar series!).
As I delved deeper into Japanese culture, the parallels between it and impressionist art became more and more apparent. I found the impressionistic fascination with the fleeting moment to suffuse much of Japanese poetry, from Yamabe no Akahito’s 8th century poems to Matsuo Baisho’s haikus. But, of course, Japanese art is not impressionism, and there are important disanalogies. The former is more restrained – the haiku is, after all, a highly codified form. Rather than the French impressionists, the one Western artist that Japanese art reminds me of most is James Abbott McNeill Whistler (who was, of course, strongly influenced by Japanese culture). His art is minimalistic in a meticulously thought-out way, which does not diminish its fresh, impressionistic quality, but only enhances it. I find the same characteristics throughout Japanese art. I was especially spellbound by Hasegawa Tohaku’s Pine Trees – here was a work of art embracing sophisticated simplicity, executed by a contemporary of Caravaggio! I believe that this appreciation of minimalism is something we can all learn from the Japanese, and I would give much to see Tohaku’s original work in Tokyo’s National Museum.
When I first heard about the Technos Event, my knowledge of Japanese culture was limited to a vague idea of its connections with impressionist art and a mass of stereotypes. After half a year, I found fascinating parallels between Japanese art and the Western painters I had long admired. If I was driven to learn so much by the mere dream of a stay in Japan, how much more would such a stay teach me?
But before I had even started on my application – though after my interest in Japan had been sufficiently developed – I encountered a difficulty which threatened to shatter all my hopes for an unforgettable two weeks. Last year’s event had taken place in weeks 7 and 8 of term – and I was to have exams in week 9. That would give me two weeks fewer for revision than everyone else got, and a day between returning from Tokyo and exams. My hunger overpowering all sense, I wanted to apply nonetheless, but I knew I had to seek approval from my tutors before I could do so.
I was severely disappointed when I got two more-or-less negative replies. One tutor was decidedly against it, the other said she’d support whatever decision I made, but urged me to consider the implications doing worse on my exams could have for my future.
After a day of sulky thoughts, I decided to ask the academic office whether it would be at all possible to – if I got in, that is – return from Japan a day or two early to be able to recover from jetlag. To my intense joy, the reply I received informed me that this year the event was to take place in weeks 6 and 7, rather than 7 and 8. I could now safely apply; I’d have plenty of time to revise in the break between terms, and then still have a week after returning from Tokyo to run through my notes.
You can imagine (you all have very good imaginations, I know) how I jumped up and down when I found out my application had been accepted. You can also imagine – after all, you went through it yourself – how shocked I was when I heard about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan this March. A week or so after the cataclysm, we were informed that Technos International Event had been cancelled. I was disappointed, of course – especially since our college only allows second-year students to apply to take part in the event, so I would have no chance of going the following year. Still, I had to admit that others had been affected by the disaster in incomparably worse ways. Also, not going to Japan meant I didn’t have to do as much revision during the break between terms – after all, I’d still have those two extra weeks.
Therefore when at the end of April I got an email announcing that Technos International Event had been brought back in the form of Japan Tour – a week – rather than two – in Tokyo for two of the four Pembroke students, I didn’t jump up and down anymore. I’d done very little work over the holidays, and I was sure that at least two of the other three students would be more interested in coming than I.
To my surprise, they were not. Two backed out immediately, as they had already made other plans for the week of the Tour. To my even greater surprise, the very same tutor who urged me to consider the implications of going to Japan was this time all for my going – more so than I myself! And so, believe it or not, I applied to go this time without much enthusiasm.
Like my enthusiasm for Japanese culture, though, this enthusiasm too grew with time. When I walked out the bus that drove me to the airport on the day of my departure, I was as impossibly excited as anyone who had just won an exclusive holiday in Tokyo could possibly be.
My excitement turned to worry as the self-checkout machine refused to let me through yet another time. “Your flight was overbooked. We’ll have to move you to a different one. Stand in that line there” – the member of airport staff I asked was less apologetic than she should have been, I thought.
It turned out it wasn’t so bad – I’d be moved to a flight that arrived in Tokyo only half an hour later. That did mean going to a different terminal with little time to spare before the gate closed, but it also meant a 260 pound refund. A free stay in Tokyo plus 260 pounds – life, I love you.
