A Betel Nut Basket from Upper Reaches of the Rajang River

 Upper Rajang River, Sarawak, Malaysia -- May 1986

In 1986, while travelling up the mighty Rajang River in central Sarawak (Borneo), I stopped at several longhouses to meet village elders and learn something about their way of life. At the time I was on term break from teaching in an American university program in (West) Malaysia, and some of my Iban and Kenyah students encouraged me to visit the tribal communities they’d grown up in.

In one longhouse where I had been entertained, I interacted with a man who spoke good English and whose elderly mother sat near us casually chewing betel nut during our mutual sharing. The lady’s lips and teeth seemed to be dyed deep red from her habit, so when I was offered the opportunity to try chewing the nut, I had to politely decline. However, as we talked about the struggles that the family had economically, I made an offer to purchase the woman’s betel nut basket in an exchange that felt like a gesture of trust.

Description of the Basket

According to what I have read, the baskets themselves can be a fine example of Dayak craftsmanship—light yet sturdy, woven from rattan, and darkened by years of handling and hearth smoke. This one shows a tight weave and symmetrical form that reflects skills passed down through families for generations. Such baskets typically held:

• Betel nut (areca nut)

• Sliced betel leaf

• Lime paste (kapur)

Similar baskets were used for tobacco or small personal items.

The one in my possession also includes a well carved face. For me the most amazing aspect of the image is that it seems to change character depending on the light. (Look at the various photos and see if this idea works for you as well.)

The Carved Face: Guardian and Marker of Identity

The stylized human face carved into the wooden lid of the basket transforms it from a utilitarian object into something animated, and more intimate—maybe even sacred. With its prominent eyes, full lips, and earthy palette accented by red and green colours, the face evokes both watchfulness and a certain contentment. It may represent a guardian spirit, a revered ancestor, or simply the artisan’s way of imbuing the basket with personality and presence.

In many Dayak traditions, faces carved into household items or ritual objects serve as protectors or reminders of kinship. They mark the basket not just as a vessel for betel, but as a 'companion' in daily life—one that watches over its owner, travels with them, and holds the rhythm of their routines.

The wear and patina of this one suggest long use, and the face—now softened even moreso by time—feels less like a mask and more like a memory. It’s easy to imagine several generations of elders having carried it, each person chewing betel while seated by a hearth, the carving resting as a face.

Using a betel basket like this was a daily ritual for many of the village elders, many of whom were women--much like a tobacco pouch or pipe is used in other cultures.

Betel Chewing Among the Dayak Peoples

From what I have read, betel chewing—called 'mama' or 'nyirih'—was widespread across Borneo long before European contact. Among the Iban, Kenyah, Kayan, and other Dayak groups, it served more than a functional purpose:

1. Social Bonding

Offering a betel to a guest was a gesture of welcome. Accepting it began the conversational ritual that built trust. (I guess I blew that bit in my encounter.)

2. Daily Stimulant

Betel sharpened alertness, warded off hunger, and provided warmth on damp river journeys or after fieldwork.

3. Status and Identity

For elders, the betel set signified adulthood and social standing—deeply personal and always close at hand.

4. Ritual and Symbolism

Betel nut featured in marriages, negotiations, healing rituals, and peacemaking, symbolizing sincerity and binding agreements.

Historical Context

Betel chewing in island Southeast Asia dates back at least 3,000 years. Stains have been found on ancient teeth from the Philippines, Indonesia, and coastal Vietnam. By the time the Dayak peoples settled Borneo’s interior rivers, betel was already woven deeply into daily life.

According to what I’ve learned, while the practice of chewing betel nut has waned among younger generations, many elders in upriver communities still chew it, maintaining a ink to ancestral tradition.

A Personal Note

As I reflect on this basket, on this face, I see it as more than a crafted object—it’s a reminder of the warm welcome I had received in those longhouses, numerous rice wine - inspired conversations, and the small rituals that knit a community together. It holds the colour and texture of a time when travelling up Sarawak’s jungle rivers meant entering a world shaped by kinship, tradition, and the natural world of the Rajang highlands.

Tatami Threads: Half a Lifetime Walked in Zōri

Akita-ken Japan to Bohol, Philippines via Singapore -- 1990-2025

These worn zōri—frayed at the arch, softened by time—are more than sandals. They are the quiet archivists of my journey, tracing steps from the rice fields of rural Akita to the coral-edged soil of Bahi Pantad. From May 1990 to March 2007, I lived in the rhythms of northern Japan, where tatami zōri weren’t just footwear—they were a way of being. I wore them through seasons of snowmelt and cicada song, through school corridors and shrine paths, through the slow unfolding of a life rooted in movement.

But my connection to Japan began long before Akita. I was born in a U.S. Air Force hospital in Texas in 1955, delivered, according to my mother and confirmed by my birth cert, by Dr. Suzuki—a Japanese American physician serving in the military.

Years later, while in graduate school in education at Ohio State, I entered my first marital partnership --- and that was with a Japanese woman. Though brief, the relationship was my first full immersion into Japanese culture, and it left a lasting imprint.

Since then, Japanese aesthetics have quietly shaped my life: in the food I favor, the textures I seek, and the garden I now tend in Bahi, where bamboo leans into stone and into meditative silence.

Since leaving Akita 18 years ago, I’ve gone through two other pairs of zōri—each one a companion in transition, each one gradually giving way. This final pair, waraji zōri, shown here, has carried me into the last stage of my life. The soles are worn thin, the straw fibers unraveling like old stories, yet the fabric straps still hold. They remind me that endurance isn’t loud—it’s soft spoken and neatly woven. It’s the daily act of stepping forward, of grounding oneself in the humble textures of place and of memory.

I’ve walked half my lifetime in zōri. And in their fading form, I see not loss, but a sort of loose fitting destiny.

For anyone drawn to the quiet grace of traditional zōri, similar pairs—woven from rice straw or tatami mat with fabric thongs—can be found online at Etsy, Rakuten Japan, and Amazon Global. Search for “tatami zōri” or “waraji-style sandals” to begin your own Japanese style journey.

Threads of the Upper Rajang: A Longhouse Textile and Its Journey

Belaga, Sarawak (Borneo), Malaysia — May 1986

During a term-break from my teaching stint in Malaysia in May 1986, I traded the classroom for the open riverways of Sarawak and found myself aboard a longboat heading up the mighty Rajang River. From Kuching I travelled by bus to Sibu, then from Sibu onward to Kapit and Belaga by boat. I travelled in the company of a Dutch colleague, our longboat traversing both mellow waters and occasional white rapids, winding through lush jungle, wooden settlements and some areas of intense logging. The journey was my first ever experience of the rhythmic life of river towns.

Three days into the river trip, we arrived in Belaga in the weeks leading up to the 1986 Malaysian elections. The town was alive, bustling, as men from upriver longhouses had come to town to vote, some of them wearing traditional headdresses, loincloths, and large brass earrings that glinted in the light. As I walked the clapboard sidewalks one evening, a resounding chorus of “Rajah Brooke!” rang out to greet me in an echo of colonial memory and friendly teasing from the tribesmen who had gathered. (James Brooke was the 19th century English explorer who had been gifted Sarawak by the Sultan of Brunei for having helped him quell a rebellion of local tribespeople.) Their poking fun at this orang putih (white man) pushed me quickly into the safety of the nearest wooden sundry shop.

The Discovery

It was in that moment, in that tiny shop, surrounded by the hum of Belaga’s election-day energy, that an elderly Chinese shopkeeper led me to a deep pot that harbored half a dozen rolls of traditionally woven cloths. What caught my attention immediately was the use of vegetable dyes and the human-like images as a motif. I still recall that the shopkeeper explained to me how all the cloths carried ‘good luck,' and that they were crafted by local women.

I checked later to learn that the piece I settled on was indeed a Kayan or Kenyah ceremonial textile, woven in a longhouse somewhere along the upper Rajang by a traditional ikat weaver. The piece that's now been in my possession for 40 years was an easy purchase, and I carried it with me on my return to Kuching, unaware that it would become one of the most evocative 'travel treasures' of my years in Southeast Asia.

About the Textile

The cloth itself is a warp ikat, a technique in which the warp (length-wise) threads are resist-dyed before weaving, which means some parts are blocked from being dyed. This results in the slightly blurred, dreamlike patterns characteristic of Sarawak’s interior textiles. Its main design features ancestral human figures, flanked by curling aso’ (mythical dragon-dog) motifs and spiraling vines. The various images are symbols of protection from evil, fertility, and a connection to the spirit world.

The dominant reddish-brown tones were likely produced from morinda root with tannin mordants, while the undyed cotton threads create the ivory patterns. Such pieces, from what I have learned, were woven not for daily use, but for ritual and prestige — used to wrap sacred heirlooms, cover ritual objects, or honor the dead during ceremonies.

Provenance and Significance

This textile was acquired at a time when river transport and longhouse life still defined much of Borneo’s interior. Given its motifs and natural dyes, it likely dates from the 1940s to the 1960s, woven by a Kayan or Kenyah woman in one of the Rajang riverside communities (possibly Long San or Long Nawang).

From what I have also recently read, in today’s market, authentic vintage pieces of this type can earn quite a bit of coin, depending on condition, complexity, and dye quality. But for me, the piece’s real worth lies not in its valuation but in the story: It's a reminder of that curious evening in Belaga, when the past and present of Borneo's interior highlands met on a clapboard sidewalk under election banners and lanterns.

Reflections

Each time I unfold this cloth, I am drawn back to the laughter of the men who called me ‘Rajah Brooke' that night. It evokes the smell of the Rajang River, the Wild West-like qualities of Belaga, a jungle town lit by kerosene lamps, and the sense I felt of being momentarily suspended between different worlds — the fully modern and the tribal, the real and the mythic. In that way the long textile carries more than simple pattern and pigment; it carries a short moment of my own journey of discovery. In its threads are woven the spirit and the artistry of a weaver whose name I will never know, the layered but soft texture of material culture, and one more indication of my own good fortune, sourced in an unexpected place.

Cherry Bark Memory: A Meiji-Era Tobacco Pouch from Rural Akita

Akita-ken, Japan -- 1990-2007

Seventeen years in rural Yuwa-machi, Akita-ken, Japan left a deep impression on me and gifted me more than enduring friendships and thoughts of changing seasons and heavy snowfall; it offered stories of day trips to local towns where, among many activities, I would sometimes find myself rummaging into the corners of junk shops with their boxes, shelves and wicker baskets of odds and ends.

This cherry bark-covered container, found during one such wandering adventure, carries the textured grace of Meiji-era (1868-1912) craftsmanship. The tradition of using wild cherry bark to make such a hand polished container is called kabazaiku or yamazakura.

A friend with an art shop suspected it to be a tabako-ire, a tobacco pouch paired with a kiseru pipe and netsuke cord. (An alternative is that it was used for carrying tea leaves.)

The bark, likely harvested from one of Akita’s ageless cherry trees, speaks of the legacy of the famous samurai town, Kakunodate, and the region’s reverence for natural materials. Its cylindrical form, worn yet dignified, speaks like a whisper from the past, utilitarian though elegant.

I arrived in Akita from Malaysia in 1990, and after nearly two decades, returned to Southeast Asia with this simple but representative object in tow.

Looking back, I find it easy to imagine a bushy-faced country gentleman trudging through deep snow to his neighbor’s thatched roof house, and after shaking flakes of snow from his winter yukata, sliding open a heavy wooden door and entering the home’s genkan to a boisterous greeting, slipping off his boots, and taking a seat on the straw tatami to the side of a slow burning fire.

Once settled, the fellow would dig deep into his thick cloth jacket and bring out this precious pouch, half filled with moist tobacco. The guest’s long pipe would have been drawn from a leather sachet in another pocket, and the ritual of smoking while conversing would have begun.

With that concoction lingering in my head, I look again at the bark box. The tabako-ire is more than a relic; for me it’s a bridge between places and between times, it's a vessel of my warm memories of an amazing place, and it's a tribute to the beauty of overlooked things.