Essay

Treasured islands

By Kit Pancoast Nagamura

I found myself traveling from island to island this summer. After flying from the "island nation" of Japan to volcanic Hawaii, then to the manmade island Balboa off the coast of southern California, and finally to the rural hideaway of Cape Breton, I began to notice some traits common to island life.

First, I encountered the phenomenon known as "island time" — whereby nearly everything happens slower than you'd expect. Delays can span from ten minutes to about three months. Ordering lunch in a restaurant can segue right into the dinner hour, a tire repair can inflate to a week's wait, and minor house renovations — installing a ceiling fan for the summer, for example — might blow right into next season. On an island, one has to go with the flow, even if that flow is like molasses in winter.

Islanders, I found, tend to turn any chore into a social event. When you take your flapping flat tire into an island gas station, all the attendants (and their mothers and neighbors) sidle up to hear the tale. What exactly happened, and where and with whom, they want to know. This leads to talk about the local roads, to be followed by retellings of tire-related accidents throughout the island's history, and finally, if you're not too self-important as to seem busy, you'll hear the latest island gossip. Island people value stories, listen carefully and share news, and, of course, that's how "island time" happens.

Because an island's only border is the sea, the threat of "invaders" (historically, enemies; currently, tourists) is omnipresent. Islanders must also contend with storms and hurricanes, and isolation during off-season months. For protection and mutual support, they tend to treat each other with extreme courtesy — you never know if the person you snub is the only roofer on the island. Once deemed unthreatening, visitors get the same polite treatment.

But visitors leave, so off-season, islanders need to know how to entertain themselves. Perhaps for this reason, regional arts are popular in the isles. Hawaiians dance the hula, Cape Breton is full of Gaelic fiddlers, and Balboans invent sweets, such as their famous chocolate-coated frozen banana. On all the islands, the art of cooking naturally features seafood.

Though many blame Japan's insular attitude on centuries of sea-bound isolation, I rarely think of Tokyo as being on an island. However, perhaps the city is more island than meets the eye initially. Take the average work scenario. Few Japanese will begin a business discussion without a fair amount of social chitchat first, which follows the island code of sociability. Most Japanese offices also feature open layouts that facilitate personal interconnections, another island-like idea. Could the tea ceremony, I began to wonder, though refined and ritualized, be thought of as a four-hour, island-time tea break? How about the Japanese structure of honor? Could it too, have grown from basic island concerns for interconnectivity? I've always known that Japan has a rich array of unique, regional art forms, and few prepare fish better, but as this summer's odyssey ends, I have begun to chart the island dimensions of my adopted home.

Shukan ST: August 20, 2010

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