In May 2025, we went to Hara Museum in Ikaho, Gumma for a family trip during the Golden Week Holiday in Japan.
The traffic on the highways from Tokyo to Ikaho was a hell since it was the prime time to travel for Japanese. Being the driver of the family, I did not mind the pain of being trapped in the traffic jam because I knew that at the end of the drive, when we finally reached the destination, it would be a entirely new experience for the children for sure. My husband does not like travel and does not enjoy natural environment, so if we ever go out on a holiday, the destination is always a city. Automobiles are probably the main culprits of global warming, but they take us to places where public transportation doesn't. I think somehow cars mean a lot to women at home when they provide precious mobility, a rare moment of being in control and therefore a rare moment of independence. I remember having a chat with my Japanese teacher, who told me that her late husband, like my partner, did not like cars and didn't drive either. He, like my partner, thought that it was good enough if he could visit wherever public transportation would reach. As for the rest of the space, it does not matter to them. My Japanese teacher and I, however, share the same interest in driving and relies much on the power of the technology of automobile. It is not a love for car itself but the addiction to freedom that the vehicle promises.
As we reached Hara Museum in Ikaho, the open space immediately made us leave behind the fatigue and complaints that we experienced on the road. The children also enjoyed the regular exhibitions very much. A lot of questions were asked, and a lot of chuckles were shared over curious facts about artworks.
On of the collections that Hara Museum owned really struck me to the core of my soul, Sophie Calle's Exquisite Pain (1999). It is an art project in which she progressed through a journey before and after her boyfriend broke up with her. The work consists of two parts: the first 90 days to pain to the day on which the artist and the boyfriend agreed to meet up in India, and the later 90 days after the day on which the pain inflicted upon her when the boy friend failed to show up and told her that he had fallen in love with someone else. In the later ninety days, she talked to people, strangers to her, who narrated to her about their pain and loss, until the last day when she could finally recover from the loss of love. Since the children were around, I was unable to savor every panel of the artwork while spending time cautioning them against touching the artworks, against speaking aloud, and against running around in the open space.
Every panel is a story of someone's sorrow, and every word is embroidered on a piece of fabric. There is an explanation in the article about how the embroidery (a work of tremendous labor) was finally achieved in a embroidery factory in Niigata, Japan. The form of embroidering pain was so powerful to me to the extent that I felt my hear ached at the same time.
Several weeks before the trip, a friend of mine lost a beloved family member. I thought of doing something for her, so I started looking for poems about mourning to send to her, imagining that perhaps poetry can help. One of the poems that I came across stunned me with its simplicity and precision. It is Separation, a poem by an American poet, W. S. Merwin, in 1962. It writes,
