Summer 2: Men Explain Fly Fishing to Me [FREE]
Outside Magazine publishes a problematic take on tenkara, and High Country News gives me a chance to respond.
Note: Hi! This is a free companion post to a paid post called “An Angler Goes Ever Farther Upstream with Tenkara”, which originally published on 4 Dec 23 in High Country News, and is free to read online. If you’d like to listen to me read the post, audio is available above.
It feels weird to try and claim an identity in one’s middle age. While every other middle-aged male seems to be who they are and frankly quite comfortable with whatever that means to them, I decided that my Japanese grandmother’s death in the 2011 Japan Tsunami was my last chance to become half-Japanese, or hāfu in the mother tongue. I mean, I get it, — “iyamwhatiyam” in the immortal words of Popeye — but choosing a cultural identity in midlife is tricky, and you have no idea where your psyche will find purchase. For example — I’ve all but given up on trying to become fluent in Japanese, the absolute no-brainer of a way to connect with my ancestry, simply because I can’t motivate myself to prioritize the work. So, when you find something that clicks, boy, you hold on to that like a marsupial in a flood.
That’s what tenkara fly fishing has become for me. I would never have predicted that something as pedestrian as fly fishing would help me understand who I am as hāfu, but hey, here we are. And I’ll defend that position like Thermopylae.
“Is Tenkara Pure or Just Boring?” published in the Sep/Oct issue of Outside. From what I can tell, you can’t read it online unless you subscribe. Which is unfortunate, because unless you a) happen to have a copy lying around or b) are intrigued enough to go drop $7.99 on a subscription, you’ll have to take my word as I jump into my objections. But the short summary is that it’s a single-page pro-con piece, with two writers presenting short, opposing viewpoints.
Here are some of the words I scribbled (angrily) as I digested my immediate reaction to the story: incorrect, classist, culturally supremacist, snobbish, and infantilizing. But the editors I’m interested in pitching aren’t looking for 750-word takedowns. And as much as I wanted to expose and counter the large volume of problems within Outside’s unasked-for opinions on tenkara, I opted to pitch something that addressed the piece, then pivoted to what tenkara fly fishing has done for me over the past few years.
There’s a really long, and often ugly history of the West judging the East (and anybody else who doesn’t look like they came from Western Europe) as inferior.
But I do want share some of what didn’t make the cut in my essay for High Country News.
There’s a really long, and often ugly history of the West judging the East (and anybody else who doesn’t look like they came from Western Europe) as inferior. And it hurts to see that perspective pop up in fly fishing of all places. In research for my memoir, I encountered a bemusing chapter in Lafcadio Hearn’s Gleanings in the Buddha Fields. Hearn was a fascinating dude. Born in Greece in 1850, immigrated with his family to Ireland, immigrated to the US as an adult, later immigrated to Japan, eventually naturalizes there, and dies in 1904 as Yakumo Koizumi. Hearn was the first Westerner to bring Japanese culture to life on the page, and Gleanings is a lovely example.
One of the chapters is called “About Faces in Japanese Art”, and in googling the title a moment ago, I learned it also published in the August 1896 issue of The Atlantic. Look, I’m not gonna lie — homeboy was a rambler, like most writers of that time (hey Herman Melville, can I get a sentence that isn’t a half-page?) — but it boils down to Hearn attempting to defend Japanese art after reading a snooty report from a snooty Victorian rich dude society whom took a hot minute to get snooty on Japanese art.
Hearn is earnest in the essay, so I’ll give him that. But the valuation of Japanese things by Western culture — whether Hearn’s or the snooty society he took issue with — are worthless. It was a tradition of gatekeeping that showed up, once again, in the Outside piece. Avert your eyes, kids, because profanity to follow: I don’t give a shit what two American rod and reel fly anglers happen to think about tenkara, regardless of whether they are for or against.
I don’t give a shit what two American rod and reel fly anglers happen to think about tenkara, regardless of whether they are for or against.
It’s always useful to ask ourselves why we react negatively to things. In this case, it was just words on a page, opinions, thoughts. Why did I feel it in my gut every time time I looked at it?
The answers are pretty simple. For one, tenkara fly fishing isn’t just a thing I do for fun. I mean it’s great fun, don’t get me wrong. But it’s become a part of me, emblematic really, of my hāfu identity. And when people come after something that is a part of you, the idea that you shouldn’t take it personally is just dumb. The second answer is actually kind of cool, if you think about it. Reacting to the cultural insensitivities within the piece meant I had skin in the game. It meant that being hāfu wasn’t just an idea. It was — is — a real part of me.
I hope all of this comes through in the High Country News essay. Like I’ve mentioned, it’s not really about the Outside piece, but I did give myself brief permission to be strident.