Art Scope 2009 - 2011: Invisible Memories (I)

Exhibition in Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (原美術館), Tokyo
10/Sep -11/Dec/2011

Last Friday, a kind invitation brought us to the opening ceremony of an exhibition in Hara Museum: Art Scope 2009 - 2011. The Exhibition features 4 young artists - 2 Japanese and 2 German - who are sponsored by an artistic exchange program of Dailmer Foundation Japan.

As the reception pressed its attendants to the nightly museum yard, we ran short of time for most of the works. Fortunately, however, we checked out on the works by Koizumi Meiro (小泉明朗), a video artist. It was the second time for K and I to see Koizumi's work. The last time was in Mori Museum (森美術館) in Roppongi （六本木）about two years ago.

This time Koizumi presents 2 videos on the theme of Invisible Memories: 'Defect in Vision' (ビジョンの崩壞） and 'Portrait of a Young Samurai'(若き侍の肖像）. Upon knowing the theme of the exhibition, I was amused with the thought that the presence of his artwork on such occasion is itself already an interesting paradox: how could a 'video' artist talk about 'invisibility' in his 'visual' art?

Nevertheless, the artist solves this paradox and explores thought-provokingly the concept of vision: visibility and invisibility, seeing and unseeing, and remembering and un-remembering.

'Defect in Vision' (ビジョンの崩壞）is a 2011 production, a work of double projections on the 2 sides of one screen (or, 2 screens with their backs facing each other). The showing space allows audience to walk around the screens and alternate between the two simultaneously on-going projections. The story evolves around a couple at the dinner table in a tatami room at (the end of) the Second World War. The characters chat about the possibility that soon the attacks of kamikaze ('divine wind' in a literal translation, or suicide pilots; 神風特攻隊 in Chinese) will help to draw the war to a closure. They are also planning to visit an onsen (hot spring) once the war cannot ground them any longer.

The two films, which are shown at the same time, basically repeat the same narrative and the same conversation but with differences in every turn of the repetition. Sometimes the couple are both at the table to talk to each other, but sometimes only one of them is monologuing their share of lines on the screen. Sometimes the audiences are drawn very close to details in close-up shots, but sometimes they are objectively detached from the story, especially when the director himself occasionally intrudes upon the scene.

Each repetition functions, I think, as an attempt to recall the conversation on that particular day. Every attempt, by either or both of the couple,  intends to reconstruct the conversation, but every attempt only seems to fracture the entire piece of memory further. We never know whether they have made it to the onsen in the end, or what would happen to them afterwards, but that conversation which anticipated a joyful holiday seems to have returned to the couple over and over again as the videos repeat.

The memory about the day is fragmented but remapped with some bits coming from the woman, and some,  the man. It is probably how the faculty of memory works. When one tries hard to remember, there are some patches of the memory getting clearer than others. Most of the time, it is difficult for the remembering subject to recall everything all at once; instead that memory is usually loosely recalled by a specific sound, a singularized object, a sharpened image, or a particular sensation. When the videos repeat, those repeated lines leave memorable traces in the audience. Watching them conversing,  the viewers are as well reminded that the time, the place, the type of occasion, and the historical background, in the video, are also an integral part to a past that they all share. That period of the Second World War is remote to the viewers in terms of time, but they are intimate in terms of emotion. Especially so with the Japanese public.

When the director steps into the scene to make new arrangements for filming, he would interrupt the mode of recollection and the flow of remembrance. His intrusion has a comical effect on the continuity of the narrative. Yet, the purposeful intrusion probably explains the artist's take on the notion of memory. To record is meant for the convenience of future recollection; to film is both to record and to construct a moment in life. Memory is never true to the remembering subject, as artificial manipulation is always involved. A thinking subject may choose what to remember and what to forget, as they are the directors of their own memory. But there remains a question of whether one can be entirely in charge of the 'fabrication' of one's memory. It is obvious that human beings are frequently seized by panic when a forgotten past confronts them unexpectedly.

The video is full of metaphors of visibility and invisibility. It took me some time to realize that both actors are literally blind. The visually impaired husband reads newspapers at the dinner table: an act of looking but not seeing it. The wife serves dinner without trouble: she is unable to see but is able to see everything to its proper order. This thoughtful characterization has a clever double-play on the notion of vision: one might see, but nothing is visible; one might not be able to see, but all are visible.

In the exhibition catalogue, Koizumi provides several passages which have inspired him for the works. One of them is as following.

'I have a wife and a child. It was clear that if I discussed what I was going to do with my family they would oppose it, so I lied to my wife to put her mind at ease, saying "This time I am going to the thermal power plant at Hirono-Machi in Fukushima Prefecture." (Friday, April 22 ed., p. 21, Kodansha, 2011)'


It was a passage by a technician who was sent to the nuclear power plant in Fukushima after its melt-down after the earthquake in March 2011. In post-quake Japan, there have been protests against nuclear power plants; and the catastrophic consequences of Fukushima Daiichi have brought back to the Japanese public the 'un-rememberd' memory of the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagazaki at the end of WW II. The entire nation is asking how it could have forgotten that unbearable past, and who has again misled the country to believe that nuclear power is a savior of the country's energy problem. When the husband in the video anticipates that the kamikaze will soon end the war, he probably never knows that it was actually 2 nuclear bombs which have concluded the war in tragedy. For the couple in the story, the bombing is in the future; but for us now, it is in our memory but, unfortunately, a forgotten piece. Or, that memory is deliberately hidden from being visible. 


Several days after we went to the exhibition, one of the cabinet members of the Noda government in Japan was forced to resign, only 9 days after he stepped in the position. He was criticized for his comment after his visit to the evacuation zone near Fukushima. A dead town (ghost town), he said and was immediately blamed for being unsympathetic to the victims of the disaster. In the end the criticism grew out of control that he had to leave his job. 


I do not quite understand the logic behind the criticism against him and the consequences thereof. But it is strange that he had to resign because he made a comment which is inconveniently true to the reality. If the cabinet member was to blame, does it mean that we are supposed to pretend nothing has happened in March and nothing has gone wrong since then? The on-going political infightings have sought to impose on us a distorted version of memory about that disaster, a disaster which might have been avoided if we had a better memory. 

Forked path

(A draft that I did in 2008 when I was still in York laboring on my PhD thesis.)

It has been quite a merry year since its first day. Two friends got engaged and are planning their weddings. Their wedding- and marriage-related adventures have been hot topics for our gatherings ever since. I came to know how every relationship goes through ups and downs, and fortunately the two parties return to each other again in the end.

This trail is one of my new discoveries this summer. The path on the right leads to the library, and the one on the left the same. The knowledge about the fact that the diverted trails ending up in the same place came much later to me. One day when I was treading on the path, I remember those stories about relationships. I was standing at the beginning of the division of the trails, thinking that this could make a heart if their diverted ends meet again on the other end of the meadow. Standing at this end, we never know what will happen unless we move on and get through.

Last Sunday we invited some friends to the house. As my cooking is not something worth showing off, the choice of ethnic food, especially that of my own country Taiwan, is one of the safe choices.

Mullet roe (karasumi / 烏魚子) was one of the dishes that I prepared. It was served with cubes of leek, apple, and pear in a childish display. The bitter taste of roe was entirely enveloped in the sweet juice and smoothed away.

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' at York Minster, 10/Feb/2007

(The first draft of this entry was done a while ago but was abandoned for some reasons. Now it seems that I have a better idea about how to talk about this concert.)

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' is a perennial concert in which vocal and instrumental religious music is presented in a fascinating audioriam: the York Minster.

This extraordinary space for concert and Gamelan, a traditional musical instrument from the central Java, have been two main attractions of the concert. And these they indeed worked together very well when the Minster allowed the oriental sounds to flow through the enormous space and to create enchanting echoes. Sounds of Gamelan provide a base melody with which the audiences' imagaination and mediation created resonance.

Perhaps the combination of these 2 elements was the main reason why the concert last year got it's name: 'Echoes from the Far East'.

This year's music feast was a success as usual, but it was even more intriguing for its 'experiments of music within sacred spaces' rather than merely 'sounds for sacred spaces'. As the programme said, it is an acoustic adventure.

The spirit of the concert--being spiritual and inspirational--was maintained, but more alternatives were added to the program. Last year's concert featured a stream of immaculate vocals and sounds of which the styles were rather traditional and monotonous and the themes were consistently religious. This year, however, both secular and sacred music were heard. There were spiritual songs of folk religions and some extracts from opera pieces. The flow of the music throughout of the concert was enriched by a good alternation between musical instruments, a short medieval opera and several pieces of choruses.

The internalized profiles of musicians this year definitely helped add a new dimension to the concert and to common perception of reglious music. YoMaMa, among other choirs in the performance, is a good example.

The Garden: Afternoon Glory

In addition to bitter melons, we also grew afternoon glory as part of the green curtain for the house this summer. Both plants have been competing for survival, and at some point I thought the afternoon glory had lost the battle.

Finally in the early autumn when the harvest of bitter melons came to an end, the afternoon glory started to take over the stage. They are such elegant creatures, the buds and the flowers alike! Its flower bud closes in the shape of a spiral; the white color is innocently silky; the the neck of the flower looks firm and its petals tender. How unfortunate that they only bloom at night and only for a night! Only those who sit up late enough could appreciate these beaming gems in the dark.

The Garden: Cooking with the Garden

It is pretty difficult to find fresh culinary spices and herbs in Japan. Most of the time we can only do with herbs from jars. Yet, the choices are quite limited to the types of cuisine popular with Japanese. Occasionally even if one is lucky enough to spot them on fridge shelves in supermarkets, they are as expensive as gold.

After the quake, the concern about the safety of food seeded in me the desire to create a small piece of kitchen garden.

Since the summer, we have been enjoying the lush produce of basil and parsley.

I have been greatly fond of thyme, a herb that is used to season pork and fish dishes. Their elegant look of straight-upward rising stems with small and neat leaves has charmed me greatly. The fragrance, which could be fishy to some, has turned me a slave to them.

Thyme (百里香)

The other day, I replaced perilla frutescens (しそ) with thyme on the recipe. I was not sure about how it would work, but the several spoons of thyme magically turned a traditional Japanese dish of aubergine and pork mince into a western delicacy (<- please be warned that 'delicacy' might be a pure exaggeration).

Before I had an idea about how I could use lemon balm, it had outgrown the flower pot. I followed a recipe on the Internet to mix it with garlic and olive oil and used it as an alternative to pesto. Different from the thick and sometimes greasy taste of pesto, the lemon balm provided a refreshing tint on the tongue.

Lemon Balm （檸檬香蜂草）

I was not a big fan of chives before I started to cook in Japan. The strong smell, like that of garlics, which does not dissipate for several days always irritated me.

K's father planted the first chives in the garden, and I was then compelled to use them as they matured. I have used them to make Japanese egg rolls (卵焼き). To my surprise, They are delicious without any aggressive and residual odor. It is probably because I did not fertilize them very well as there was a secret hope in me for their ill-being. I am now grateful that they have survived my cruelty deriving from a relatively shallow knowledge about the world of cuisine.

Garlic chives (にら, 韭菜)

Pimm's, an English summery taste that I have long craved.

To celebrate the publication of K's translation today, we made this very English summer cocktail with Pimm's, lemonade, cucumber, and pear.

How I have missed the English summer!

Furnishing up the house

Last week, we welcomed a new fridge to the house and sold the small one to a secondhand shop.

It had been our long-term wish to get a fridge of bigger capacity and higher efficiency. However, the moment of selling away the old one was full of struggles. This small kitchen helper was made in 2007 and had been with K since he started living alone. It had assisted me in carrying out housewiferies for more than 2 years. Although it was small, it fulfilled its duties.

We called a secondhand shop for an estimate and reached a deal. When the shop assistant was checking on the fridge and finally produced a number that showed its value, I was emotionally disturbed. It had nothing to do with the job of the lad, but more to do with the act of evaluation itself. My life in Japan had been connected to this little companion in many aspects, and it had been, in a very anti-feminist way, a marker of a new identity that I assumed in this country. And the evaluation itself felt like a judgment on my attachment to the fridge and an final examination of my performance as a wife.

When we were informed that it would be worth 2000 JPY, I felt slightly hurt and perhaps insulted. What did the number 2000 mean? If I had had been a better wife, would it be more valuable than this? Or, it did not matter at all. I am sure I was not greedy in terms of money. It was the pride as a 'housewife' that was hurt, I guess.

I remember the gas stove that we had to remove before we moved into this new place. At that time, the stove was too dated to be of any monetary value, and it was simply taken away by another recycle shop. The shop assistant said that he couldn't offer a price because it would be illegal to trade on an old machine like that, but he offered to take it away because it was still in a good condition. There was a moment of suspicion in me, but it was soon dismissed by a false sense of pride aggrandized by his flattery on my wifery work. It might not be the truth behind his offer and the deal at all, but his compliment (which was only clear to a housewife, I have to admit) had made it less unpleasant to let it go.

(image from todoebook.com)

A Pale View of Hills

by Kazuo Ishiguro

It is a story about several women of different ages in Nagazaki after the second world war and long after.

The narrative is unmistakably Ishiguro leaving a lot hidden and unsaid. However, these uncovered secrets do not spoil the story at all but only make it more intriguing.

I really want to know what have happened to Etsuko, Sachiko and Mariko after all of them left Nagazaki!

The Garden

It has been almost a year till now, a long process, since I started cultivating a garden.

A house should come with a garden, I believe, as it is a living sigh of how the house owners are connected to that piece of land. It also embodies the owners' views on their lives in relation to the environment.

I cannot recall since when I started to brew the desire for owning a garden, or, a simple green space. I am sure that I have hated cement since the early stages of my life: it is a sign of lifelessness and despair. Insects and worms have never been my thing either! During those years in York, a profound interest in greens and flowers has taken root in my mind, I guess. The city and the university campus are surrounded by great nature. A close friend of mine showed me how to enjoy herbs in every

aspect of life: she used lemon balm in sweets, basil in pasta, sage for tea, and lavender and rose to scent rooms.

Perhaps since then I have been dreaming of a garden of my own. Perhaps it is also a way in which I could stay tuned to those days in England.

Following the blueprint that I drew for the garden after we moved in, I started the garden project by creating a first brick patch on the ground, the second last winter, the thir

d and the fourth in the spring, 2011.

Since I was very ignorant about gardening at first, the selections of plants were pretty random, mainly based on choices available on the market in that season. This learning-by-doing process is full of anxiety, uncertainty, and surprise, and is overall smoothed by a sense of achievement. I am also keeping a

gardening diary in which the guidelines on nurturing each plant are noted, a calendar of watering and fertilizing is recorded, and pictures of first blooms and sprouts are kept.

When snow blanketed the ground last winter, I was worried about those young lives on the ground, but it was at the same time amazing to see the beauty of the greens against the snowy backdrop. Every single stem survived the winter, fortunately but unsurprisingly.

the garden in the winter

The earthquake in the spring 2011 hampered the flow of life in Japan, and the crisis of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant and the fear of radioactive substances thereof shut everybody up indoors. I was anxious for several days, but the debate abo

ut renewable and safe energies and the concerns for the

environment pressed me to the garden. First, I was seeking for some distractions; second, when would be a better timing than this to create more green space in the world?

I completed the brick circles according to my am

ateurish plan in the midst of gloomy atmosphere among the public. But the colorfulness of printemps and the vigor that the garden showed provided irreplaceable consolation.

the garden in the spring (before completion)

At the early summer, K and I spent 2 or 3 weeks clearing the empty ground, preparing the soil, and planted turfs. The turfs brought K, who had never showed a singular interest in gardening, to the garden everyday to discern their progress and admire his own work.

the garden in May

When the summer settled in, the shade o

f green dominated the landscape. Sometimes too green, if we did not work hard enough to trim and mow.

the garden in the summer

Then in mid-summer, trees moved in in the front yard. I paved steps and small wooden fences to give it a girly appearance.

the front yard

peony in May

dahlia in July

I always think that the garden means a lot to me: both the creation and the maintenance of it. Creating the garden is to create a bound between the gardener and the land, between me and the house, between me and the person who lives with me on the land. Keeping a garden is similar to keeping a pet, or even having a child. While one may easily move away with the child or the pet to a new place, it is not possible to pack up an entire garden. Garden is the stamp that one makes on the land.

Maintaining the land is to tend a relationship to the land, to declare one's settlement in that place and one's attachment to those which have brought her to the land.

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

I came to know the title of the book a long time ago when I was doing master degree. Around the same time, as I vaguely remember, Amelie, a french film that features a imaginative girl who alters the world for everyone including herself, was a big hit. The title of the book also engenders the same colorful imagination in me. Mango street. What is a street like if it is called mango? Is it always as sunny as its orange and red color suggests? Is it as fragrant as the delicious flavor of the fruit? Is it as colorful as the tropical scenery in which mango fruits are grown?

I didn't get to read the book until last weekend, despite that it had already greatly excited my brain in the early years.

The narrative style is typically feminine, and I doubt if male readers would have appreciated it as much as me. When I shared some passages with K, his viewpoint sometimes appears to be very destructive to the image that the writing has created in my mind. I do love it and like its introduction in which she rationalizes her style and stories. The book is composed of a series of vignettes providing pictures of the residents and friends around the heroine on Mango street. Cisneros writes in a style that is full of humor and color but at the same time laden with inescapable frustration and helplessness.

One of the passages that I heart is that she describes the arrival of a neighbor's wife from his faraway hometown in Mexico.

Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm. Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. PUsh, pull. Poof!

All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her tiny shoes.

(pp. 76-77)

What a blossom! A full bloom of imagination!

Sharaku in Tokyo National Museum

We went to an exhibition on Toshusai Sharaku in Tokyo National Museum today. The wood prints of kabuki actors in the Edo period Japan are among the most definitive icons of Japanese culture for foreigners.

Sharaku is most known for his half-length portrait of actor Otani Oniji 3rd (the image on the top). The almost satirical caricature of the actor in action is fascinating. The color and the contours that give form to the dramatic moment are engaging.

I was drawn, however, to one of a relatively small collection of the portraits that he drew for his contemporary sumo wrestlers. Daitouzan (the image below) was a popular child wrestler in his time. When he became a professional wrestler, he was only 6 or 7 weighing about 70 kilograms. Though appearing childish in many ways, he was depicted powerful when confronted with his human or ghostly opponents. In spite of his over sized body for his young age, his face is still characterized by innocence and naivety. What would be on his mind when he wrestled? Would he be thinking about the rice crackers after a hard-fought battle?

One of the things that I look forward to most when a day starts early.

Prayer in the Morning

Since last month, the world has gone out of control. The quake and its unfolding aftermath in northern Japan, the outbreak of warfare in the Middle East and the prolonged recession in global economy all have made the rest of 2011 difficult to look forward to. It has been almost a month that every morning the relay of news on BBC has inevitably resulted in anxiety, emotional upheavals and wrath.

The uncertainty in the air has made concentration on work almost impossible. Despite all the turmoil, there is one’s individual track of like to carry on.

Here I pray that I would calm down,
For only when the self is sober
Can a better understanding of the world be achieved.

I pray for positive thoughts,
For negative imagination will only shadow the future.

I pray that I feel contented
Because I have more than enough of everything
From my family and friends to live on.

I pray that I am more loving
To return the care and affection that I have received.

I pray that I am more understanding and wise
For parents only express thoughts of concern and care
And never harm.

I pray for sanity.
Even though K is Japanese,
He is not the one to blame for the current nuclear crisis.
He is an excellent listener and companion at all times.

I pray that I will be more capable
To be helpful to the needy.

I pray for a piece of peaceful mind,
For it is time to return to everyday life
And make myself a better being.

Writing

I do like the end-of-year custom in Japan according to which people exchange postcards with friends, colleagues, and family members to inform each other of the year past and celebrate the year to come. Many of the young generation in Japan, however, find it tiresome, environmentally unfriendly, and unnecessary. Messages through mobiles, or social networks, are believed to be more up-t0-date and convenient.

I have been a big fan of handwriting, a practitioner of letter-writing, and a faithful supporter of postal system. Therefore, there is no single sign of cultural shock for me when I was initiated to this.

Due to the late closure of the term in December, my scribal activity finally started with hand-making postcards in January 2011. At first, I came up with a design that was supposed to facilitate easy reproduction making use of Japanese colored papers and a rubber stamp of a backward-looking bunny (for the year of rabbit). There were several variations of the same pattern in my mind, and I was convinced that it would only take less than an afternoon to finish. In the end, it took me three days to measure, cut and paste papers, write messages, sort out postage, and have them sent.

It feels just like a ritual for me to stop everyday routine, sit down, open my handwritten address book, and spend time writing to friends. Sometimes messages would (accidentally) get lost somewhere in the communication and fail to return to me, and which can be quite heart-breaking. I do admit that it is anxiety-making when waiting to be heard and replied. And sometimes, the thought of being forgotten looms lalrge and eventually becomes the reality. Nevertheless, this old-fashioned means of communication is still much preferred for me to online messaging tools.

Last year, I was advised by an acquaintance on the disadvantages of not joining any instant messaging networks online. The drawbacks, according to him, are mainly that the informality of messaging tools makes communication more transparent and efficient, problem more easily solved, and interaction more actively conducted; conversely, the bureaucratic formality of email, or mail in general, often delays the clarification of problems and postpones to an unseen end any solutions.

To be honest, I do not agree with any single point that he made.

Of course, it is undeniable that email is less popular than any current messaging tools these days, and unfortunately I have lost contact with some people since I withdrew from the scene of MSN messenger. However, in a world dominated by fast-food communication like the current one, all can be said, but most are forgotten. The fragmentary nature of the communication that the current messaging software provides really confuses me. I do wonder if the communication by such means is really more efficient or sincere. Or, it actually uncovers the fact that communicants nowadays care nothing but the result, nothing but the informal fun, and nothing from their communicating partner but the bits and pieces of their own thoughts.

Pansy violetsPansies have served as an integral part to the landscape of Japan in winter and spring. I started growing pansies last November. After their full blossom in a comparatively warm autumn last year, their rigor has amazed me since then. As the natural world is gradually waking up from dormancy and responding slowly to the call of spring, these tiny monkey-faced flowers are already, again, in full bloom.

The impression that the name of viola, a species that pansy derived from, gives to me is romantic and therefore connotes fragility. However, they are very winter-hardy.

A couple of days ago, I came across the following sentence in Katherine Mansfield's shorty story, 'An Indiscreet Journey': '[p]olicemen are as thick as violets everywhere'.

I would not have paid serious attention to this descriptive detail if I hadn't had pansies in the garden. It is perhaps too cruel to associate these herbal flowers with policemen and the masculinity that their profession represents, but the density of the blossoms and the watchful faces of the flowers were made surprisingly sensible.

Reading

In order to reread The Canterbury Tales, I started to use Kindle, one of the electronic readers available in the market. It has been a very pleasant reading experience especially when I was traveling between places. For people like me who had considered herself as a devoted follower of the cult of real books, it was certainly a surprise. Reading on iPad, iPhone, or mobile phones has been a trend around me for some time, and my first attempt was a recommendable one. For a moment, I wondered if my faith in real books had fallen apart.

Yet, there are still places where electronic devices are banned, for instance, foreign embassies. (Well, I have to admit that it is not the kind of place where one would frequent.) For security reasons, the embassy that I visited last month disallowed any electronic gadgets; therefore, my paperback Chaucer regained its presence. When the book was opened, immediately I felt nostalgic for the smell and the texture of real papers and the crispy sound when pages were turned. This book that I carried was a fourth of a fat volume of Chaucer's works dismembered for the convenience of reading. Lacking a proper back cover, it felt rather soft and fragile between my palms when the sweat and grease of my fingers damped the pages.

It needed a cover, I decided.

Then, as a amateurish tailor, I spent 3 days cutting and sewing a cover for my Chaucer. The tailoring process also involved necessary mending work when my ill-trained hands misguided the scissors to a wrong direction. This manual labor had resulted in stiff shoulders, sore eyes, and some delays in other work. The task was overall enjoyable, albeit I also felt sorry for the time that might have been more effectively used (who knows?!). The threads that are snaking all around the end product are embarrassing. The embarrassment, however, does not prevent me from adoring the floral pattern of berries(?) or flowers (?) in the frame of cold and conservative black color. It would be a romanticized metaphor for reading itself, I think: inside the dull, conventional, squarish format of a book there are many exciting ideas and amazing stories blooming as the reader goes along.

Despite the cold weather these days and the saddening emotional climate in Japan at the moment, spring has stolen in in the air. I have been waiting for spring since August when we moved. As I have written on the new year's postcards to friends in the freezing December of 2010, spring has been very much anticipated because there are so many to look forward to in the garden. It is unfortunate that right before spring will start, the nation is faced with multiple unprecedented natural and artificial disasters. Yet nothing will linger forever and there is always a tomorrow to live for.

Gardening is a philosophy that attends to the arts of anticipation. A seed planted is carefully nurtured to grow into, to enrich, and to flesh out, its gardener's imagination. Before budding, before stemming, beofore flowering, there are many to worry about, many uncertainties, but much more to hope for.

The seeds that I sprinkled in the soil last autumn have projected for me an exciting image of the garden in the spring.

Today, I planted the first tubers for this year, dahlia, and will look forward to their blossom in between early summer and autumn this year, a time when, I hope, the people and the country that are suffering from the current catastrophe will recover and move forward again. It would take some time, and a gardener's patience and vision will be helpeful when one cultivates the land, cares for the wounds, and looks forward to the future.

The tulip bulbs, which were planted last winter, have pierced through the ground and are vigorously extending their leafy arms to the sun. It was not until the fourth month after the seeding that I was assured of their vitality when buds were felt at the fingertips beneath the surface of the soil. Last winter was fiercely relentless, very cold and dry, but they have made it through.

Writing in the beginning:
Dear friends and family, thank you for heart-warming messages and kind offers. I have talked to my parents and have had them understand the situation here. We will take good care of ourselves and will move when it is necessary. Thank you all for kind supports.

As the name of this blog, Sorry-ology, denotes, the blog owner is expected to be quite pessimistic and melancholic in her writing as she is trained to be sensitive exclusively to the bitterness of life. (So dull! I know!) So be warned of any negative thoughts and feelings that this blog might provoke.


In one of the previous entries, I mentioned using flashlight when there is blackout and managing household work with dimmed indoor lighting.

Soon after last weekend's quake, the supply of batteries and all sorts of illuminating equipments in town all went out. Instead of going for batteries and flashlights (the truth was that none could be found) we acquired some solar light. These solar lighting rods are originally designed for gardens and have been one of my most-wanted items on my wish list for gardening.

On the top of each lamp is a solar panel that transforms sunlight to electricity and recharges a battery inside it. When the small sensor next to the panel can no longer sense sunlight, the lamp would be turned on by the recharged battery. The light that each lamp can offer is only minimal, but it is enough to help us get around in the house in the dark. I have been very fond of this idea of clean energy that this small gadget has embodied. It does not seem to involve very complicated mechanics and appears neat and affordable. What a legacy of the sun that is channeled by modern technology!

Next week, we will have solar panels implemented on the roof following the plan that was scheduled before the quake. I am very excited about the idea of having the house powered up mostly by solar energy in the daytime! I have to admit that there was a point at which my moral courage and commitment to the environment were daunted by the high cost that this change will cause (even after the subsidies from the government and the city council). I am very ashamed of that moment of weakness. Fortunately, K has been there supporting the plan and made it work. With the solar panels, in the future we will be able to recreate power, use it, and sell it to the electricity company to reuse in other needed areas. It is probably unlikely that we will be able to make any monetary gains out of it, but there is nothing to lose. At least, we are making efforts to make it a better environment.

The daily presence of the sun is assuring and comforting. It is probably how the arrangement of the universe has meant to be: always there is the sun to rely on, to be used and reused without many consequential damages to the earth. And perhaps it is only now that the technology has brought us to the realisation of such a grand design.

I prepared two emergency backpacks today.

The idea had been hatched in my mind for some time, but this quake and a flyer about preparation for emergent occasions yesterday finally made me carry out the plan.

There were probably more than 30 items on the list , but I only packed those that seem to be most needed and those that were available to me in the house. My bags contain the following items: canned food and nutrition tablets for energy, raincoats for bad weathers, plastic sheet to sleep and sit on, lighter to make fire, gloves and ropes for rough environment, medical kit for cases of injury and illness, towels, tissue paper and alcohol handwash for hygiene, and flash light for nights. Bottled water and clothing were also packed in.

The flyer advises that a bag of 15 kg is ideal for a male adult to carry, and 10 kg for a female.

I have tried my backpacks, and they are not light. A rearrangement is inevitable.

Packing is never an easy task for me, I have to admit, either for moving or short trip. I am too attached to the things that I own. My dependence on my belongings has made me their possession instead.

I have always been anxious before check-in counters in airports every time when I travel. It has been a question for a long time: how weighty is a life? or, how light should it be? We might only need 10 to 15 kg to live on, but how much is required to have a life?

It was probably the first time for me to be honest about my anxiety after the quake. At the moment of panic attacks, I fired complaints at K accusing him of all the preparations that I myself should have done but didn't.

K took me to an emergency shopping to acquire the things that I thought we should have had in preparation for the ever-unfolding disaster. There were empty shelves in supermarkets, but most of the food supply seemed to be running smooth. After I stuffed my shopping bags, sanity returned.

After the quake last week, the planned power-cut in Tokyo has divided my daytime into preparing food and eating meals. It is probably a desirable means to distract myself from the negative thoughts that are triggered by repetitive news updates. To avoid cooking in dark and to make food preservable, I would be cooking and pickling between meals in the afternoon. Usually soon after all preparations, dinner has to be served and finished before electricity is cut off.

Today in the dark we watched a film on laptop together. With a small torch in hand, I looked through the window into the moon-lit darkness. Perhaps it will be full of radioactive substances out there at some point, a thought into which my wild and pessimistic imagination dragged me. But on this side of the window, every moment is peaceful and beautiful together with K no matter what might become out there.

Thank you, K.

50 percent of luminance

Everyday life has become stressful since the moment when everything was shaken and displaced 5 days ago on the 11th of March.

The pace of the cosmopolitan life was hampered but is trying to resume slowly, but the busy landscape of Tokyo has been inevitably silenced since then. On the morning of the 12th, after a night's horror, I woke up to a bright but quiet Saturday. The day was seemingly as peaceful as any other Saturday, but the soundlessness was unusually uneasy and agitating. The rhythm of routine in the house was greatly altered and interrupted by the 24-hour update of TV news about the devastating earthquake and its aftermath disasters. The flow of life was halted and stopped in front of an unending stream of news updates and a string of more and more heart-breaking images.

Due to the crisis in the nuclear plants in Fukushima and the shortage of electricity supply in the eastern part of Japan, Tokyo metropolitan has started a planned power-cut since yesterday. To be of any help, we have been trying to economize every degree of power. Therefore, whenever lighting is needed in the house, we would tune the light down to a degree that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly. 50 percent of luminance.

Thus in such partial brightness we watch news, cook, eat and feel an ever-aggravating sense of worry about the disasters.

Over these days, I have been thinking how we have persuaded ourselves in the first place to create such a gigantic bomb, nuclear plant, to worry ourselves at this point. Many questions have been asked whether such a monstrous electricity-generating machine is really necessary to keep the body of economy working. And it seems that most of the time, the answer is negative. Is it merely a cheaper and therefore convenient option into which short-sighted politicians and business vultures ensnare the public?

If 50 percent of luminance is manageable to live a life, if 50 percent of energy can be saved when more attention is paid to details, if 50 percent of efforts can be made to develop a cleaner and safer energy, we would probably be better free from this current state of great anxiety about the threat that the power plants have posed to lives.

curve of sunlight

A patch of growing alfalfa sprouts bent towards the sun.
It is quite amazing to see how plants manage to survive wherever they are, indoors or outdoors, in harsh winter or steaming summer. Every fine stem practices well this ritual of solar worshipping in spite of how I have moved it around in different directions.

Plants are unbelievable tough and resilient. In a conversation with some ecologists a couple of months ago, they informed me of some amazing findings about the ecological cycle. At some point, we touched upon a question about what might be the strongest life on the planet. Plants, or trees in particular, apparently. If a city is abandoned, trees will take over everything very soon. They break cement, uproot skyscrapers, hold on to the earth and live on while all man-made structures gradually disappear with time. Nature is extremely fragile but irresistibly powerful at the same time.

I recall an undelivered speech by John, Annie's husband, in the movie, Calendar Girls (2003).
Before passing away from leukaemia, John wrote a speech for the Women's Institute (where Annie and her fellow ladies in Yorkshire are involved) comparing women to sunflowers. Sunflowers never fail to follow and trace the sun, the source of life and energy, and so are women who always remain hopeful and strives to live on.

Last year, an acquaintance asked how everything had settled down for me as a new immigrant in Japan. He commented that '女性は強ういです': women are tough. I do not know if this is a shared opinion among men, but it seems to explain a lot about the lives of many women around me: my grandmother, my mother, and female friends, who have taken care of their families and built up their life all over the world. Some are happily triumphant; some take on whatever comes to them.

I am rather happy to hear that comment honestly. However, I have also heard of some women's stories that are too sad to bear, and that has made me doubt if women are really that 'strong' or 'tough'. Or, my question is rather why women have to be strong. Is that an end result of a society with a structural flaw?

Kandinsky and the Blue Rider: from the Lenbachhaus, Munich

at Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
23/11/2010 - 06/02/2011

Wassily Kandinsky, The Bride (1903)

It was the first time for us to see exhibition together after moving to the new place.

Wassily Kandinsky is not a small name, but my passion for his abstract art when I was a novice learner of the history of western art has long gone. As years have gone by, abstract arts only appear 'interesting' to me now. My adolescent admiration for the complexity and incomprehensibility that abstraction always represents was probably born of a feeling of discontent itself, a dissatisfaction with the world that, as I thought, had misunderstood and taken light of its young people.

The exhibition, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider, however, featured the works of him and his fellow painters, the blue riders, showing their development of styles and change in artistic taste. Kandinsky's works from his early period amazed me with its vibrant and luxurious colors, the comparatively realistic organisation is shaped by impressionistic stroke and brush. These earlier works updated my knowledge about the artist. It might be true that he did not become a real phenomenon in the world of arts until his abstract masterpieces, but these early efforts do tell something about the young artist, who experimented styles, struggled to find his own vision, and labored on canvas as often as he wanted.

The maturation of techniques and styles is always the thing that an established artist is known for, and the long years before this climax are commonly regarded as merely a prelude. The works from his early period might not be particularly unique, but they are characterised by a sense of clarity : clear shape and color, which still engages its viewers with an inexplicable mystery.


Rather than to Kandinsky, I was drawn to a painting by Alexei Jawlensky, Maturity, in the exhibition room.















Alexei Jawlensky, Maturity (1912)
Photo: The Personal Website of Joan Laurie Anderson


The application of the bright colors: scarlet red, yellow, green and blue, are impressively telling about its title, Maturity. As K suggested, it might be about sexuality or puberty, an awkward stage of life that any teenager has to undergo. Sexuality is probably one of the imbedded issues as noted by the black spot, a persistent acne (?), on the young man's left cheek. To me, however, these strong and distinctive colors seem to boldly visualize a broader scope of the overall awkwardness and confusion that a young man might experience in human relationship, sexuality, self-knowledge, and life. The sharp edges of colored patches resist any light-hearted mix-up. There are no blurry boundaries. Nothing can be, or should be, taken for granted easily, and reconciliation between the world and the self is never a convenient choice.

Standing in front of the painting, I was experiencing a sudden return of my teenagehood memory. About a month ago, some high school friends turned up on facebook all of a sudden. A high school group was then formed, and since then an excitement about finding long-lost friends has lasted for a couple of weeks among the members of the group. That part of teenage life has long been buried somewhere in my memory, far far underneath beyond my reach.

It is interesting to see and feel the memory resurging, but it is not necessarily a happy experience per se. Although that stage of life has been more than a decade away by now, the pain and melancholy that maturation inflicted on an immature self prove to be very difficult to revisit. They are those edgy and irreconcilable colors which still firmly occupy the places where they have been.