This spring when things had settled down a little, at a time when I was also tidying up around the place, I was deciding whether to put away stuff I didn’t need, or throw it out, in order to leave just the bare minimum required in my limited living space. I think I was in the process of choosing things to leave out in my room, when it struck me there were some odd objects that I had unconsciously assumed to have a fixed position, which had in fact just been sitting where they were for years, untouched, with not so much as a glance from me. Before scrutinizing this photo as a work, I had this feeling of being made to identify, in a no-nonsense manner, the strange stuff on my own shelves, and it was with strong echoes of this that I selected it.

I’ve brought along some stones that are not a work of mine but sit on my shelf and are not especially essential to me, but which I have left there for years, unable to bring myself to discard them. A new space has now opened up on that shelf, and if there is nothing to fill it, I imagine these stones will end up back there. I know that to seek new worlds one must start by shedding something, but I suspect I’ll be returning them. Thus pondering if maybe this is what is meant by a collection, I find the empty space on top of the long stand starts to look like a new world.

Feeling that the works by Miwa and Naito would draw the viewer’s attention to relationships, I came up with a display that would create relationships within the space. Specifically this meant erecting a wall 1.55m high and 8.14m long. So that it feels like a wall constructed simply to partition off the gallery space for an exhibit, I have made it the same material and color as the gallery walls, and positioned it quite casually. The wall, works by Miwa and piece by Naito appear to be standing alone and unrelated to each other; my hope is that those who visit will find various relationships between them, and thus create landscapes and sensations of their own.
In everyday life we too frequently focus on objects, and I believe if we were to shift our focus slightly to observe things in terms of the gaps or relationships between objects, different values would start to emerge.

The boulder in Naoya Hatakeyama’s photo is known in geological terms as an erratic, and has been carried to its location by glacial flow, and left behind when the glacier melted. Transported some distance, it is of a different rock type to other boulders nearby. In Japanese such rocks are also known as “strays” or lost stones, but for the title of his series, Hatakeyama chose the word “findling.” According to his text¹, the “find” of “findling” comes from the verb finden meaning in English to find, and is German for an orphan, or foundling; a name apparently given to these boulders as research revealed their origins and a connection grew between boulders and humans.
We recently learned that Japan also has large boulders of this sort, in this case washed up on shore by tsunami waves. Many are found in coastal and inland areas of the Sakishima Islands of Okinawa, mostly, it is said, deposited on land by the devastating tsunami following the Yaeyama earthquake of 1771. These boulders also have affectionate local nicknames, with some also having divine status, or forming the foundation of stories in the islands’ oral tradition.
To us Hatakeyama’s work seemed to trace centuries of human engagement with the workings of the natural world. Some of the boulders photographed have sturdy bolts attached, perhaps to moor boats, or hold signs. How do these rocks, transported here by the mighty force of nature, relate to humans, and vice versa, and what further scenarios involving them will emerge in future? We sensed here a mysterious power evoking myriad stories. That said, this is not simply some “man vs. Nature” relationship.
Hatakeyama’s “CAMERA” series meanwhile, also presented at a previous Tsubaki-kai, consists of a row of works in which the light from a lampshade in a hotel room is used to illuminate the ceiling. One senses a relationship between things already there, and human, either as temporary visitor or person with roots in that place, that is as solidly capable of anticipating the future as it is of evoking the idea of traces, or history.

The weed Sonchus asper (oni-no-geshi/prickly sow thistle) is European in origin, but now distributed all over the world. It is commonly seen at roadsides, and produces a yellow flower resembling a dandelion, but the leaves have a tougher appearance than dandelion leaves, are darker and have prickles, giving the impression of a rather more robust plant. Sonchus asper was first found in Japan in 1892 as an accidental import, twenty years after the founding of Shiseido, and has since spread all over the country, thanks to its superb ability to adapt to every environment from cultivated field to orchard, grassland, lawn, roadside, and waste ground.
A team of researchers including from Oregon State University recently revealed that marine life carried from the waters off Japan was still turning up on the West Coast of the United States several years later. According to the paper published in Science, species including shellfish, sea anemones and crabs had been carried on some of the vast amount of flotsam generated by the Tohoku tsunami of 2011, all the way to the Americas. Even just the species known to have arrived amount to almost three hundred. This means that ecosystems of different creatures living symbiotically arose among the floating debris, with at least three generations surviving there.
If each of us were destined to live out our entire lives in a limited space, how ought we to do so? This feels like a good place from which to begin looking at the world. The flora and fauna of Japan and elsewhere will after all continue to breed, and even if the result of something accidental, there are probably many things with the survival skills to become naturalized in a new place, and put down roots there.

In Ikuyo two girls called Chiyo and Yukiko spend the night together in wartime Tokyo. Yukiko is wearing the perfume “Serenade” by Shiseido. Chiyo takes a liking to the scent of Serenade, because it has the same name as a favorite song of hers by Schubert. The bottle features moon and stars, joined by lines in the manner of constellations, but never forming perfect constellations.
As Japan’s war takes a turn for the worse, Yukiko returns to her hometown of Shingu. On leaving the capital, she passes her bottle of Serenade on to Chiyo with the words, “I only ever wore it when I was with you anyway.” As Tokyo comes under increasingly ferocious aerial attack, the Serenade remains unused. One day, the air-raid siren sounds, and Chiyo, at home, grabs her bag of essentials and heads for the air-raid shelter in the garden. In the bag is the Serenade. In the dim light of the shelter, Chiyo wonders if its fragrance will gradually dissipate without ever being used again.
Shiseido no longer has the formula for Serenade. I have no idea what its scent was like. The fragrance that connected two people in wartime Tokyo is no more. But that fragrance named for a song sung at night definitely did exist. Quite likely there is someone, somewhere who knows what it was like. Perhaps one day the formula will be rediscovered, and the perfume recreated. Or perhaps a new Serenade fragrance will be born.

Yukiko, living in Shingu, writes to Chiyo. Perhaps that letter will remain in Yukiko’s hands, never to be sent. Chiyo also writes to Yukiko, but fearful of the censor, cannot write what she truly wants to say. How many letters are never sent, staying in the hands of the writer, or discarded? After the war, what kind of letter might Chiyo write to Yukiko? Putting fountain pen to writing paper, would she wonder how to start? Would there be so much to say, that she’d pause, pen hovering over the paper? Perhaps a tiny spot of ink, like a star, would stay there.

I chose Naoya Hatakeyama’s Findling – Schwanenstein, Lohne Rügen and Noe Aoki’s Where water remains with the idea of mixing in my own work and presenting the resulting relationship. Findling – Schwanenstein, Lohne Rügen is a photograph of what is known as an erratic boulder. Also referred to in Japanese as “lost stones” these are boulders surrounded by glacial ice and carried along by the glacier until reaching their final destination. One of the ideas in my own practice is that of realms that change and persist, and the sight of these erratic boulders morphing and persisting struck a quiet chord with me. This boulder is like a time capsule awoken from a glacier, and it occurred to me that the way a stone geologically different to the place in the photo continues to spin a new strand of time there, is also similar to a person’s life. I was struck by the urge to combine this work with a reforming naphthalene sculpture. Another inspiration has been Noe Aoki’s Where water remains. Aoki’s works are invariably graceful and generous in form. One marvels at how she manages to take such hard materials and clothe them in such soft gestures. I wanted to present Aoki’s work on the same lineation as my own, from the perspective that it has the same sculptural element, and though the material is totally opposite to naphthalene in nature, it captures the sculpture with wonderful suppleness. So if I were to display my own work between these two: Findling – Schwanenstein, Lohne Rügen and Where water remains, I thought perhaps I should do a naphthalene sculpture resembling a message in a bottle drifting on the ocean. The idea of arranging the three in a kind of “aquatic triptych” in Ginza, which once was ocean, holds great appeal.

Hagu I is a two-dimensional work consisting of an enlarged photo of a 1000-yen note, shot by Genpei Akasegawa. This work by Akasegawa calling into question the fabricated structure of banknotes, whose value lies not in the original but the duplication, went on to generate immeasurable value. [mé] are currently experimenting with making a work that in a sense takes the completely opposite viewpoint from it: matter α, which endeavors to look at the world in a different way by taking an ordinary stone lying on the roadside, and making duplicates of this meaningless original. Though matter α has a different perspective, to our minds it shared something fundamental with Akasegawa’s work, so we decided to position it alongside Hagu I.
Similarly, we thought Hagu II was endowed with the ambiguity of the inevitable charm of an old and useless an object, in contrast to its value and function in this case as an item of furniture. By adding what for this chair was a layer of “brand-new damage,” Akasegawa seems to have been trying to further emphasize this reversal of meaning.
To this [mé] has added a further layer calling into question “the eyes of the viewer seeing that” and “the unique fact of having seen.” Without revealing details, Hagu II is being moved around at irregular intervals by staff during this exhibition, raising the possibility of two separate chairs being swapped in and out.
In Hagu I and Hagu II, made by Akasegawa in his later years, we sensed not only the linguistic meaning of the works, but a force for which there are no words, like a scene from a fever dream. We don’t know whether the works by [mé] will also offer this, but what we do know is that this force only arises in tandem with the senses of the person in front of a work, viewing it. We hope that it will lead those who make their way to the exhibition to discover new kinds of scene.
We believe that “this new world” is one that will show us the power of looking.