Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Cemetry Gates


memorial to the dead
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
Standing in Zoshigaya Cemetery under the staccato rain, I couldn't help noticing the oddly tombstone-like shape of the Sunshine60 Building. Is it a memorial to the war criminals who were incarcerated at Sugamo Prison on that very site? And are the thousands of shoppers and office workers who pass through its vast halls and arcades paying tribute to their ghostly traces?

I shivered as a breeze brought a surge of water off the trees above me.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Big Fish

Tonight, there was an advance screening of Darwin's Nightmare, a documentary directed by Hubert Sauper, concerning the painful assimilation of Tanzania and the Lake Victoria region into the global economy. Haupert spent 4 years filming the devastating effect of the fishery industry in Lake Victoria; in his words:
"The logic of global capitalism is more visual where the capital is created." The implication is that where the capital is controlled (i.e. Wall Street) all you would be able to see are a bunch of computer screens. Indeed, his film captures the starkness of a society in crisis, under the roaring Illyusha cargo jets, and on the shore of a lake on the verge of ecological catastrophe. Hupert argues that this is not simply about Africa and its fish exports to Europe and Japan; this is a structural issue that can seen in a number of local situations: for Japan, perhaps the most pertinent example would be tuna and paper pulp imports from Indonesia, a place where the fishing communities are too poor to eat the tuna they catch.

On art: the work is not simply 'reality' though the audience seemed to respond to it in that way. They constantly thanked the director for showing the 'truth' about Tanzania and economic globalization. Yet, it's telling that Hupert himself prefers to discuss the film as 'art', and as nothing more than an expression of his limited subjective experiences in Tanzania. Perhaps overlooked is the intricate editing of the film, working Duchamp-like with found objects, catching serendipitous moments like a discussion of war in Africa interrupted by a sudden thunderous squall, to an air traffic controller in a cramped tower filled with broken radio equipment frantically swatting bees. There is a touching lyricism to the film's imagery, which is perhaps reason enough for the film's prize-winning entry at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

But when the director talks of the political effectiveness of this 'art', I am immediately dubious. He wants to express the gap between our own societies and one where justice is conspicuously absent. He wants to generate anger, fear, indignation. And yet, when he criticizes the imagery in the news that has numbed us to the reality they represent, I cannot help feel that, while he has experienced Tanzania first-hand, his audience cannot help but appreciate his documentary in the same way as any other form of entertainment. Is this not, to borrow Guy Debord's terminology, merely spectacle? Can we not be satisfied with our artistic appreciation so that we forget our indignation? Can we fully believe the images we see without being directly implicated in their circumstances?

I am reminded immediately of a dramatic report commemorating the 20th anniversary of the crash of a JAL airliner this summer. While methodically providing evidence that the government and Boeing did not delve into the cause deeply enough, the bulk of the programming covered individuals and their families. And stepping from investigative reporting into the realm of melodrama, the programs included lachrymose reenactments of the victims, and how their families dealt with the disaster. While there is potential for serious public reevaluation of the case, and creation of political action to force a deeper investigation by the government, the Japanese friends I spoke to did not believe any of this would take place. (In fact, the issue quickly faded from the media after the commemoration.) Thus, what was the point? Emotional catharsis? And how different is this from Saupert's work? Is it merely full of sound and fury? And how do we develop from this medium a politically effective awareness?

And to take this thought experiment further, I can't help noticing the connections between these types of reenactments and the Japanese traditional theatrical form 'Noh'. In Noh, the actors are seen to channel the residual emotions of restless spirits, a practice derived from shamanistic Shinto rites like kagura. The actors 'become' the spirits, whose anger or grief is quieted by a priest on stage. Thus, the ultimate aim is neither change or political action, but exorcism. The melodrama of the reenactment on Japanese TV today seems to provide a similar outlet for the audience's emotion; we share in the grief, and are thus satisfying ourselves and our need to reassure ourselves that the dead have not been forgotten.

Monday, October 10, 2005

I believe in magic

A vastly capacious hotel room built on top of a pavillion in Yokohama's Chinatown is part of the Yokohama Trieniale contemporary art exhibition. Defiantly superfluous and flippant, it even comes with its own brochure full of marketing-speek. It's an extravagant bit of nonsense, but one illuminatingly in the wrong context; because of that minor distinction (the 'significant' world of contemporary art vs. the travel agent's brochure stand) it seems to draw our attention to the vast abundance of nonsense all around us. . .

The artist, Nishino Taro, describes his artistic mission as "creativity will save the world," arguing that artworks that scream out 'stop the war' in the end have the opposite effect because they deaden our creative sensibilities. But isn't saying that creativity is going to stop mankind from making war pretty much the same thing as saying you believe in magic?

But while confronting this piece I had a sudden flash of empathy. Today Chinatown was overrun by ROC flags because of the National Day holiday (Oct. 10th). On the other hand, certain shops refused to fly the ROC flag, and the PRC-backed associations were shuttered, somber, silent while the firecrackers snapped and popped around town. In the midst of this I began to wonder if there is any hope in resolving the entangled dilemma of Yokohama Chinatown within the framework of PRC-ROC political identities. More broadly speaking, thinking about China and Japan, I have my doubts over the efficacy of treating national categories as natural descriptive words around which reality should conform. Certainly as political and legal boundaries, they have a certain inescapable influence on our reality. But what I wish we could share is the creativity to see that nations can be unnecessary for the compartmentalization of our cultural and social lives. If we could imagine our communities in a different way, couldn't we rearrange the game such that we could actually win? What type of magic would that take?

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Goodbye Kyoto


at Kodaiji
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
It rained for most of the day, and I started seeing things in monochrome (with the help of a few smart setting on my Minolta S414).
I spent the last few hours in eFish Cafe gazing out at the Kamogawa (river) and dreading the overnight bus ride to come. I was thinking of the soft light of the setting sun screened by layer after layer of gossamer water vapor. I was going back to Tokyo, but I was wondering how much longer I would even stay there.

Who's your Danka?


danka-and-me
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
So, I was enjoying a Red Stripe beer at a reggae bar called 'Rub-a-Dub' in Kyoto (yes, there are bars for every persuasion here) when a woman walks in wearing a formal black kimono. This is very unusual for the t-shirt, Teva sandals expat crowd. But she's swaying to the dub, and sipping a cocktail now, with a client in tow.
Am I stupid? I'm striking up a conversation with her, even though her client is probably paying $250 an hour for her company. Her name is 'Danka' (nearly like 'thank you' in German) and her website is here. Apparently, she had just finished a shamisen performance.

Why reggae? She explained that 20 years ago, when she was still in highschool she used to frequent this bar. It was her decision to drag her client there, under the wan light and crude graffiti. Guess she had something of the bad girl in her back then. And even now, still?

Everything's changing


kobe-harbor
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
Early evening at Kobe's commercial port, and the wind is blowing cool down from the cloudless sky. I planted myself on a mooring post and started to sketch the harbor scene in front of me. This was not art for the sake of art; I was only doing it to train my eyes to see again. Sitting in one place for a long time teaches you to that you are not the only one in motion, that the world around you is actually subtlely evolving and shifting in aspect.

After about twenty minutes of painstaking visualization and sketching, an elderly lady in a white polka-dot purple blouse, somehow reminiscent of the Japanese farmland, approached and asked if I was drawing something. I looked into her sun-weathered face, no longer young and with wrinkles radiated outward from her puckered lips. She told me in a heavy kansai accent that she used to oil-paint when she was young. . . she used to love to paint. . . Now her son, who works in the harbor adminstration office, is too busy for such things, and so is she. She pointed to a broad white building, gleaming in the setting sunlight.
"I work there, at the Oriental Hotel, for 800 yen an hour. It's tough. I'm too busy to paint anymore. When we moved, we had to throw away all my painting supplies. . . "

The sky was turning from the color of faded jeans back to its original deep indigo hue.

"My husband's now retired, but he worked five years past the usual retirement age, and even now he still gets back in the truck to make deliveries a few times a week. It doesn't bring in much money, but we need it."

"I used to paint. I miss it." She's now back on topic. It's almost too dark to continue drawing.

"Let's meet again." She turned away as she finished her story. I imagine she must not have had anyone to listen to her all day, while she toiled for 800 yen an hour. She didn't care that I was a foreigner, that I spoke with an accent; she never made a single comment about that.

I looked down at my drawing. The scene in front of me was thoroughly transformed. The derricks were facing 180 degrees away, the lights were on and shadows were stretching over the contours I had already traced. Nothing matched.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Spider Fight


Hikone in the Dark
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
Hikone is a strange, quiet city along the shore of Lake Biwa. At night, reluctant to board the train directly, I turned back toward the castle and park. The sky was black as pitch, and the chilly breeze was full of the heavy silence of the Japanese countryside. Cars would intermittantly roar past, but the silence would remain. Students strolled by me in groups of three or four, wearing the unadorned and charmless uniforms of at least 30 years ago (for the boys, perhaps not 100 years ago). Nobody had dyed hair. I didn't notice a single pair of loose socks. Some were smiling as they strolled, chatting, joking. Others held their silence behind troubled frowns, the depths of which no one else would ever know. Theirs is an unassuming town, where the stores close at 6:00PM, and nights are most often spent in warmly lit homes. I was envious, nostalgic.

One lap around the park, and angry thoughts entered my head. Around and around they went, (as tends to happen these days). Then as I passed a lamp-post, I noticed a tangle of spiderwebs where two spindly spiders were frantically struggling under the wan light, stabbing each other with their needle-like legs. Faintly bouncing on sticky silken strands, theirs was surely a poisonous, victorless struggle. The perfect visual metaphor.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

early morning light


early morning light
Originally uploaded by benkei242.
The light at 6:30AM is somehow different in quality than the hazy late-afternoon sun. At times like this, even the drab colors of Kyoto's plaster and wood homes seem to gleam with an unexpected richness.