“It was the straightest thing I ever saw, running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees and the ground too and full of sunlight like water in a river only straighter than any river, with the crossties cut off even and smooth and neat and the light shining on to where you wouldn’t even see that far. It looked clean and neat, like the yard behind Louvinia’s cabin after she had swept it on Saturday morning, with those two little threads that didn’t look strong enough for anything to run on, running straight and fast and light like they were getting up speed to jump clean off the world.” - William Faulkner, “The Unvanquished”
We have now been homeschooling our boys for about eight years, deciding that with my wife’s degrees in chemistry, math, and secondary education, along with my MD, we could piece together some semblance of a quality, classical Christian education for the two of them. Part of the deal was if they never gave us any grief about being homeschooled, we’d go wherever they wanted for their respective senior trips.
My oldest son just graduated high school. A deep-thinking introvert with an engineering mind and a penchant for anime, Japan was a natural choice for his trip. “Of course he wants to go somewhere halfway around the world,” I thought, as he bounded downstairs with his decision one morning almost a year ago.
And so we buried ourselves in Japanese history, culture and language. The dates were set, flights were booked, and passports renewed.
I could write a 10-page essay on our adventure, but one of the more memorable moments was traveling on the Shinkansen, colloquially known to us as “the bullet train.” During the ride, I took out William Faulkner’s “The Unvanquished,” a work to root me in my own Southern culture like a security blanket on our expedition.
The book follows the Sartoris family as they navigate the shake-up of a life ripped from its seams by the Civil War and early Reconstruction. As God’s providence would have it, I boarded the Tokaido Shinkansen bound for Kyoto Station at about the same time as young Bayard Sartoris described his first encounter with a train and its tracks barreling through the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County, Miss.
The Shinkansen was breathtaking. It was smooth, sleek, white, and ran almost as if it were hovering over the tracks. We charged ahead at speeds up to 200 mph without the slightest sound or movement to suggest we were covering ground at NASCAR speeds. Geographically, I was racing from the city of Mishima to Kyoto. In my mind, though, I was passionately transported to the Old South.
I was morbidly enraptured by what allowed Faulkner to leave such an indelible imprint on American literature: tales of the South in decay; old family orders of generational aristocracy breaking down in defeat and devastation; moral frameworks overturned; social hierarchy flipped on its head. Out with the old and in with the new, as it were.
As I read the stories of the Old South crumbling while experiencing a culture different from my own, I couldn’t help but notice a sense of longing in myself. Not for the Old South, mind you. But for the New South … our South. Our South is not a decaying land but rather a thriving one. We have a South worth celebrating and preserving, painted with the broad strokes of beauty, tradition, and a true fear of the Lord.
As we cut through the Japanese countryside, the bullet train “running straight and empty and quiet through a long empty gash cut through the trees,” I missed home. I missed strangers striking up random hospitable conversations about football and the miserable heat (Japanese travel culture lends itself to silence). I missed Sunday meals at my parents’ place. I missed my noodles being warm and my fish being properly fried.
And further still, as I was “running straight and fast and light like [we] were getting up speed to jump clean off the world,” I didn’t just miss home … I felt home. I felt the red clay and Sunday worship coursing through my veins. I felt Saturdays in the fall, I-65 traffic jams, and real barbecue imbibing my neurons. The beauty and tradition of our land took hold of me, strong like iron and gentle like linens on the clothesline. It was the opposite of Southern Gothic’s decay. It was the beautiful, lasting fruit of Southern Pastoral … at a breakneck speed in Japan.
Andrew is an internal medicine physician in Scottsboro, Ala. God has blessed him with a wonderful wife and two awesome sons. He has a special interest in Reformed theology and cultural apologetics.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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