JOURNALS

My first Japanese Journey

How does one prepare for a journey? I had sought out information on the Internet, about the country and the cities I would be visiting, and churned through several books by Murakami to try capture a mood – and read travel books. Beautifully sticking with me was Nicholas Bouvier’s Japanese Chronicles. Images slowly forming in the mind before departure. Then, suddenly, you are there. And everything is different. Streetscapes, people around you, smells and tastes. The letters have been replaced by signs, and people are numerous and everywhere. Everything so different from places I have experienced before. The everyday aesthetics, the courteousness, the bowing. But also my helplessness and the powerlessness of not being able to make myself understood.

Naoshima. Yayoi Kusamas pumpkin

First, five days in the big city rush of Tokyo, where I spent hours walking around, visiting museums, merely absorbing. I will never forget the first night, when Yuka took me to a tempura restaurant where I had a deep fried fish spine, tied into a knot. With chopsticks! Or when I heard the song of the crickets near Oji Station, and my friend Toshi told me that the crickets remain underground in a cocoon stage for seven years before they awake. They then sing intensely for seven days, before they die! After busy Tokyo days, the Shinkansen to Okayama, where I was met by Kiyonori. I stayed in the city of Kurashiki, a beautiful place where the river winds through the ancient Bikan area, the red and gold carp swimming in the green water. Kiyonori had planned a program which was both impressive and well constructed. Visits to the world’s most stunning museums designed by among others Tadao Ando and Arata Isozaki. Wandering around ancient temples high up in the rolling, green landscape. In the beginning I felt some frustration at having such limited language in common. We had spent hours in silence together. But after a few days it became normal. The easiest, yet also the most difficult, is to accept something when you do not have a choice. Through simple English, drawing, pointing and some interpretation services we have managed to make a plan of sorts for the exhibition at F15. Kiyonori’s bright, monumental work, with the working title A Space Within Space and my earth coloured objects will intertwine in the exhibition hall. How the white will create waves and sound when one passes by, and the darker objects will outline themselves almost as frail drawings or webbed structures. We have been able to make these thoughts clear through our “spartan” communication. Most of it is still inside our heads, but it is starting to materialize in works in an Oslo studio and in an Okayama studio. The actual installation period will be very important to both of us. This is where the last pieces are put together and where there is room for improvisation.

-----

Images of Japan in my mind in Oslo’s November darkness: Dinner with Machiko and Keiko at a steaming Kyoto restaurant. The thousand year old Ginkgo Biloba tree up in the mountains of Okayama Prefecture. The island of Naoshima, with its dedication to modern art. Museums and installations scattered across a hilly, green island in the Sea of Japan. Tadao Ando’s Chichu Museum, buried beneath the ground, with slits in the raw concrete allowing daylight to enter – as near a cathedral as can be. Tatsuo Miyajima’s work in Kadoya House; Sea of Time, where digital, neon coloured numbers flash in a pool of water, or James Turrel’s light installation Backside of the Moon and Sugimoto’s sacred Gooh Jinja Shrine. The flying fish playing as I sat on the beach looking at the sea, Shikoku in the distance.