Extraordinary Properties of Ordinary Things Freer Gallery Depicts Everyday Life in Japan Dating Back to 1500s by Christine CubÈ Westerners have always had their fantasies about the East, and most of those fantasies have been about the past. When many of us think of Japan, for instance, we donít think of Honda Civics or high-tech gadgets or those modern, violent comic books, or even the titanic struggles of World War II. Rather, many of us think of samurais and geishas, teacups and sake glasses, Kabuki and shoguns, and Haikus and ancient scrolls. So most of us would be right at home at the Freer Gallery of Art these days in a small but abundantly charming exhibition called "Life and Leisure: Everyday Life in Japanese Art." The display depicts the traditional, but not quite prosaic aspects of ordinary life in Japan that date back to the 1500s and span 300 years, to the Edo period and a time when shoguns reigned and the West was but a distant dream. These paintings and representational works, accompanied by objects such as vases, teacups and sake containers, are of course about an idyllic past, but we recognize it right away as being inherently Japaneseóat least the kind weíve always imagined. This exhibi tion, and the range of activities and subjects it covers, is a kind of poem to a life ideally lived and realizedóthose moments when we forgot everything and gave in to the flight of a maple or cherry blossom, the neighing of horses, the joy of frolic and foolishness, the languor induced by the strokes of a hairbrush, or the sound of laughter along a river where men and women lie in active repose. Itís probably unlikely that Japan was the entirely heaven-on-earth idyllic place as the one depicted here, particularly not with the ruling classes and samurais having an almost casual power over the life and death of the peasantry and the country in the iron grip of a class system every bit as cruel as anything Western nations could devise. Peasantsóthe lowest of the low, the people with their backs closest to the groundówere probably as miserable or as happy as they would have been anywhere else. The best way to look at this exhibition is to see each object and each artwork as a moment, a kind of offering. Look at the teacup, for instance, and see its ritualistic form and contemplate the quiet grace of a Japanese tea ceremony. Study the solemn even curious appearance of a beautiful Geisha looking at herself in a mirror, studying ways to improve what she sees and make it delightful. Or look at the animation in a painting that depicts a baby being presented at a Shinto shrine, bursting in singular style with the same joy that one might see at a baptismalóan introduction of the world to a newborn. If much of this looks a little unreal to Westerners who might be unable to imagine themselves in these scenarios, itís also very familiar on several levels. Some of the works may have a certain otherworldliness to them, but they are also what we expectóthe foreign as exotic, appealing, utterly charming, enticing and seductive. And although the rituals and activities are stylized and particular in location and time, they are similar to our own retrievable historiesóour frescoes, woodblocks, paintings, etchings and drawings depicting the peasantry in Europe at play, work and war. Of note is the fact that as the actual execution of works nears the 20th century, the lines and styles change, with the faces thicker, even harsher, but also more active. The 17th- and 18th-century depictions have this idea of repose about them, a kind of languid, studied feel. It is perhaps the best description of the small and regular pleasures of everyday life in Japanís past, as well as now. "Life and Leisure: Everyday Life in Japanese Art" runs through Feb. 20 at the Freer Gallery of Art, 12th Street and Independence Avenue, SW. It complements another exhibition, "Work and Commerce: Scenes of Everyday Life in Chinese Painting," which runs through Jan. 17 at the Freer. For more information, please call (202) 633-1000 or visit www.asia.si.edu. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.