Dorogawa
Ridgeline as Seen, 2021acrylic resin paint on cedar, Tenkawa, Nara, JAPAN
Photo: Yuta Togo
Waves and Surface
Before trying to name it
first embrace it
Vapour released by the mountains slowly envelops the town of Dorogawa. In Ridgeline as Seen, I overlaid this phenomenon, surely repeated over a long time, onto a forest of moss-covered fallen trees. Yet the poem Shuntaro Tanikawa wrote for the work seemed to see through me, whispering, “Not yet. There is no need to hurry.” Taking it this way, I recalled that view of shifting vapour and began to look for a way to “embrace” it.
In conversation, Asa Onoda, who lives in Dorogawa, told me that what comes from trees, moss, soil, people and animals is carried in the air and touches her skin, and that through this sensation she recognises the place where she stands. Her words seemed like a guide to understanding that view more fully.
Later, I climbed into the mountains of Dorogawa for the first time. Along the way, the inhabitants around me—trees, moss, stones and soil—responded with vapour to the morning light falling between the trees. As I walked on beside this scene, the same thing began to rise from my own body. It seemed that we, too, were part of what made up that view.
I would try drawing the movement of air against the skin as waves. Perhaps this could be a way to “embrace” it. The “waves” I drew with this thought in mind are the contour lines of the mountains of Dorogawa.
On view: 16 September 2023–30 November 2024
Waves and Surface, 2023ink on glass, Tenkawa, Nara, JAPAN
Waves and Surface (detail), 2023ink on glass, Tenkawa, Nara, JAPAN
Photo: Senzo Ueno (@senzo_ueno)
Ridgeline as Seen
Surrounded by the natural environment of Mount Ohara and the surrounding area, I was thinking about how people come to perceive scenery as landscape. As I listened to stories about Tenkawa, mitate—the act of seeing one thing as another—emerged as one way this happens.
Through mitate, something unfamiliar acquires meaning and becomes recognisable as something particular. I thought that people might then share what they have come to recognise and grow to cherish it.
In this place, I saw the mountain ranges of Tenkawa, which people have long travelled through, cherished and held in awe. Seeing those ranges in the upright trees and moss-covered fallen trunks, I placed fields of colour in the forest, presenting the scenery encountered there, for a brief time, as landscape.
On view: 9 October–28 November 2021