The Potter's Notebook by Frank Giovinazzi, a historical novel set in 17th century Japan, is available on the Amazon Kindle platform and in paperback.
Fifty-Nine Tomorrow was another day of hauling dung, being ridiculed by the deishi and minor functionaries of the Daimyo's court, and trudging through their day in order to get to what was keeping them both going. Throughout the day, Shuji was sullen. After everything they had been through, he had not expected to have the sort of problem he had last night. Hideaki tried to cheer him up, discounting the whole thing as just a single night and the result of all the stress they had gone through. "We have plenty of time," he said. But Shuji was not so easily dissuaded. As they shoveled and hauled, shoveled and emptied, he obsessed about just how much was riding on him being able to produce what he was always so sure he was capable of, what he had always bragged about even before he was able to do it. The fact was, they were hauling human waste, were performing a humiliating task in full view of the court and the villagers, and had been knocked down lower than anyone could be reduced. There was no room for fantasizing or idle boasting. Besides there was nobody who would listen. As far as most people were concerned, he was getting exactly what he had been aiming for all along. He performed his tasks with a grim-set expression on his face that worried Hideaki even more than a single night of low-grade productivity. * * * That night, Hideaki set about scoping the wood for suitable trees to chop down for the kiln. Now he understood why the whole side of the mountain above the meadow had been decimated and replanted. To fire the kiln would take a significant amount of timber. He was glad for the methodical replanting of the old samurai, for it would enable him to selectively take several trees from each grouping, for each thickness of wood he needed without making it appear too obvious someone was cutting down trees without the permission of the Daimyo. Having been exiled to the Gardener's yard gave Hideaki access to the tools he needed and he went to work with brio, remembering again the old man, and losing himself in the task with a joy that shocked him. After a full day of performing arduous physical labor, he went at his midnight shift with joy. * * * Shuji went to work on the second evening with a sense of doom before he even got to the hut. His hesitation and self-doubt multiplied during the day, sprouting a thousand tentacles that strengthened the vise grip on his mind his worries had planted the day before. Now it seemed more hopeless than ever. His skills and creativity felt inadequate to not just this task, but to any test, and if his mind wandered to positive recollections of the sculptures or previous work, he dismissed them as not that good, or a fluke success. He viewed the clay with horror, didn't even want to touch it, certain it was already decided he would not be able to make anything worthwhile. He eventually centered clay, a much smaller amount than last night, and he did take forms off the hump, but they all looked as if they had been performed by a mediocre amateur, which the pressure of the situation was quickly reducing him to. Once again, his mind was not his to command, running away with him. He was so fatigued, reeling with his own self-doubt and paralysis that it sent him off to sleep once again with only a few things completed. When Hideaki checked in on him after his own work was done, he found him passed out in front of the wheel with a look of defeat molded on his face. * * * On the third day, Hideaki continued to try and keep his spirits high, but Shuji's delved lower. Hideaki gained strength from the task he was performing during the day, and pride in the way he threw himself into his nocturnal efforts, as if to say, 'You can punish me, but you cannot defeat me.' Shuji, on the other hand, saw what he was doing as his true level in life, and was so disheartened he withdrew from his brother, growing more sullen, until his very spirit began to reflect the content of the pits they were forced to labor in. He was convinced he had been defeated, and could barely summon the energy to even do the thing set before them as a test of their resolve. As far as Shuji was concerned, he had been tested, and he had been found wanting. * * * By the time they got to the hut that evening, Hideaki was alarmed and trying to think how to deal with his brother. He knew confrontation would be counterproductive but felt doing nothing was not the answer either. Leaving Shuji in the hut, he picked up the ax, but instead of looking for trees to cut down, he decided to go looking for the old samurai. Hideaki hoped the old warrior wanted to be found, because without that bit of luck, he wouldn't come across him even if he was within arm's reach. So he had gone searching without a lantern. Hideaki, despite this recent crisis with Shuji, felt calm and loose. He was happy with himself, certain their situation would work out. He felt comfortable in his own skin, as if no one could really harm him. He stopped amid a cluster of trees above the hut, drinking in this realization, even dropping whatever anxiety he had about Shuji. He had come into this worried about the both of them, now he was pretty well on his way, and Shuji had just a little bit to go. "Ah, but a warrior is always vigilant, for the end and beginning are the most crucial times." "Have you been talking to the Supervisor?" "HA HA!" The old samurai stepped out of the shadowed wood, walking in his exotic and strangely familiar gait. "No. But he is a good man. The worst fate a born warrior can endure is to be born in a time of peace." Hideaki was pleased the old warrior had been eavesdropping on his mental conversation. It had served as a more reliable beacon than the lantern. "Yes, but the problem with thoughts is they are so very loud and persistent. To shield oneself from light, you can simply close your eyes. But how do you turn off the sounds of thoughts that won't stop?" The samurai and Hideaki were walking side-by-side, headed back toward the hut. "That is your brother's problem. Come, we will talk to him." Hideaki fell in with the rhythm of the old warrior's step. He was marching, according to an older style, from long before even the Daimyo was born, he was sure of it. Near the hut, the samurai plucked a shoulder high bamboo stake from the ground without breaking his magnificent stride. Or so Hideaki thought. He had not plucked it, but snapped it at the lowest joint in a deft movement, providing him with a simple staff. At the hut, the old man stopped. "Do you hear anything?" "No." "Because his worry keeps putting him to sleep. His anxiety chases his thoughts in so many directions it uses up more energy than any day long activity. The first weakness we can help him correct." They entered, and Shuji was indeed sleeping in the shadow of a flickering candle. The old man kicked Shuji in the back with the sole of his old fashioned wooden sandal, whacking him on the shoulder with the staff at the same time. Shuji flinched at the first blow as he received the second. He sat straight up with a hunted look on his face. "The first quality in a warrior is the ability to endure fatigue and hardship. Courage is only second." The samurai was laughing at Shuji. Hideaki remained silent and sat in the corner of the hut. "Now then, you say you want me to teach you. Well, you seem to have the skill of napping down quite nicely." "I'm tired. And I am not a warrior," Shuji was rubbing his shoulder and his back, looking like a sore chimpanzee who is having a row with his trainer. He added, apologetically, "I am an artist." The samurai threw his head back laughing. "Oh, I can see that," gesturing to the meager collection of mediocre pots the boy had produced. "Listen to me, boy," the samurai had picked up Shuji's droopy, moping chin with the end of his bamboo staff. "It is okay for monks and madman to set themselves adrift like a lotus flower, but for the man who wants to achieve something, he . . . " the old man dropped the stick because he now had both both boys' attention, " . . . he must take command of himself." He paused, one hand on top of the other on the staff. "The method of that command is discipline." He gestured to Shuji to address the wheel. There was already a mass of clay on it, which the boy moistened with a few drops of water. The old man sat above the wheel on the raised bench. Shuji waited for him to begin the lesson. Pointedly using the tip of the stick to control the wheel, moving it in a half-circle back and forth, as if wagging his finger in the boy's face, the samurai continued, "Yes, you are a most talented craftsmen. You were born with a gift that one thousand, maybe ten thousand potters would kill for even a glimpse of." Shuji smiled at what he thought was a compliment. It wasn't. The samurai spun the wheel furiously with an invisible effort, slapping Shuji's hands with the staff, leering at him. "So what! You don't even have the discipline to control your mind for a minute, with all your thoughts leading you around alike a bunraku! A puppet, running this way and that, flopping around, getting lucky once or twice in a lifetime!" He stopped the wheel cold. "Your talent is buried so deep beneath your flaccid mind, beneath your fears and vanities, that if you lived to be as old as me you might make one pot worthy of celebrating, and even that by accident, after making a hundred thousand bad designs!" Shuji was speechless; Hideaki liked what he was hearing. "Discipline burns away the rust of the body. Only through discipline can you hope to achieve even a small amount of your talent." The tip of the staff was again on the wheel, moving it a little this way and that. "Now then, would you like to begin?" Shuji had been dutifully redressed, his attention was complete. He nodded. The old man spun the wheel with a deft flick of the staff's tip. He nodded to Shuji who started to slap-center the clay. The old man continued to nod. "When I was your age," he kept the wheel spinning at an appropriate speed for centering, "I had been trained as a warrior, a samurai. That was the time the magnificent Hideyoshi was unifying Japan." Shuji almost had the clay right and wanted to keep centering, but the samurai slapped his hands and reduced the wheel to throwing speed. "Too much time centering, and you ruin the clay, you ruin the potter. Centering is not pottery, preparation is not achievement." Shuji started raising a small lump off the mass. The samurai continued. "At that point, I had already been through years of training. We were set to invade Korea." Shuji had a form started. "Don't waste time, don't hesitate. Like the sculptures the other night, have the form in your mind, then throw away your mind, keeping the form." Shuji quickly brought a cup into existence. It looked a lot like the cup he had been admiring so much. "We set sail, thousands of us, on a grand adventure. But it was not to be, Toyotomi's plan to subjugate the peninsula. So he decided on bringing back scores of magnificent Korean potters, in order to advance the art in our own country." Shuji was still working the cup. "It's just a cup! Do you think it is destined to last forever? Too much self-love in the potter leads to weak and useless forms! Be done with it. Keep your mind away from the pot." Shuji cut the cup from the lump, placed it to the side and started smacking the hump into center again, once, twice. When he went at it again, the staff smacked his hand before the hand could touch the clay. "Make pots, don't center!" Shuji brought another lump up from the slightly wobbly mass underneath it, making sure the section he was working off was perfectly centered. "I was in one of those battles," the samurai said, "as was my brother." He gave the wheel another spin to keep it turning, watching Shuji as he spoke. "We were set to raid a pottery center to bring back prisoners of war, but somehow they had been alerted, and we were subjected to a trap. What should have been a bloodless hostage taking became a messy battle, many men were lost or captured, fewer potters apprehended than desired – and many of us suspected a large amount of Korean gold somehow made it way back to Japan." Shuji was making another copy of the cup the old man had left for him. "As one of those taken hostage, I was set to be executed. But the remaining chiefs of the pottery village demanded restitution for those craftsmen they lost to our army. So instead of becoming a worthless sacrifice, I became a pottery apprentice." Shuji took the cup off the lump quickly this time. The man kept the wheel turning. "Because of my military training my master said I was a better disciple. In return for my skill and diligence, I was kept alive long after many of the others who had proven untrainable were put to death or remanded to other less pleasant duties than working fourteen hours a day all year long." "How long were you an apprentice?" Hideaki asked . The old man hit the wheel again. "Fifty years." Shuji gasped. "Yes, and you want to marry a princess because you're making a few pots in the woods." Shuji was working on a new cup, the same as the previous two. "I had grown to love my master, and he me. I loved making pottery. Even though I was happy, and everything had turned out well, I longed for home." "But if you know so much, then you must help me!" Shuji was pleading like a man who had been lost at sea begs for water to drink, water to splash over himself in a delirium of gluttony. The old man looked at him as if insulted, smacking him on the hands without looking at either his hands or his staff. Shuji went back to finishing the third cup. "So, my master, the greatest Korean potter of his time, gave me two things." The old man feigned to hit Shuji's hands again, but only spun the wheel. "I did not expect it because I did not think I was his best student." He looked as if he was seeing a very different scene than the one in the hut. "My master gave me transmission" Shuji gasped again. Transmission meant that this man was the named successor to a great tradition. It meant that he knew all the secrets and techniques of the master, the forms, the clays and the glazes. "And he gave me freedom." Hideaki was now shocked. To be set free meant his master had the same sort of compassion the grey-eyed Abbot had exhibited. But he also intuited that there was something else behind this, something very much like the reason he himself was here. Shuji was working on the fourth cup. "Master, will you teach me what your master taught you?" The old man spun the wheel again, looking at him with a gaze that cut his begging short. "No. You know enough to do what you must. Rely on yourself, learn to discipline your mind and you will have more than enough knowledge and skill to create what you must." Shuji removed the cup and tried not look crushed. He started another. The old man spun the wheel again. "I will give you this much. You must develop urgency, like you had with the sculptures, but without panic. A curious paradox, but it is essential to good art." Read Chapter 60 of The Potter's Notebook.
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