Ten years ago.
Just a little walk from the west exit of Shinjuku station was the place
called the “village.” There was no real limit between the “village” and
the crowd of Shinjuku. It was like a huge creature that kept expanding
and reducing until it finally collapsed in fire and disappeared.
For five months, I painted on cardboard houses in the “village.”
＊
At that time, I was living in Tokyo. I moved out from Osaka to study in
an art institute and I was preparing for entrance exams to an art
university. The sketching and oil painting assignments everyday were
making me so tired that I was slowly losing interest in getting into
university. But I wasn't brave enough to stop everything and change my
life. So I was just standing halfway in between, constantly worrying
about what to do.
But Time didn't care about my feelings, summer was gone already and the
second term had started.
So, I decided to concentrate on drawing until the next exam, and not
think about anything else, knowing all the time that this would not
lead me anywhere.
While I was finishing the sketches for the first year class, second
term, I heard that Take and Takeo were drawing pictures in the streets
of Shinjuku.
Take Junichirō and Yoshizaki Takeo had been students in the same art
institute as me since the previous year. We all failed the last
entrance exam and they quit but I stayed.
“Why don't we go to see them?” Ōta Tomomi said to me. So I decided to
go meet them and tell them that I was working hard for the next exam.
On Sunday we took the train to Shinjuku. I was much exited to meet them
after such a long time. Yet I had no idea about what they were doing
there. On the way, Ōta told me some stories. "They draw on cardboard
houses.” “It was picked up in a magazine article a few weeks ago.”
“It’ll all be carted away sometime soon.” All those stories made my
heart beat.
But what I saw there made my heart beat even harder.
The number of cardboard houses was huge. I had never seen a place with
so many homeless people living together. It really was a village. And
so many pictures were drawn on those houses. Ōta had been there before,
so she was showing me around this cardboard house village and taking
many pictures. Those pictures painted with cheap paint and expressing
boldness, were something I had never seen before.
After walking around for a while I found Take and Takeo painting on one
of the cardboard houses. I felt that there was something really
happening here and I wanted to paint so badly.
It had been a long time since we all met but they were pretty much the
same. It made me feel comfortable and I really enjoyed the reunion. As
we were talking about art and how we had been getting along, Take
suddenly asked me,
“Would you like to paint a picture?”
I wondered if I deserved to paint anything since I hadn’t even told
them I was coming. But my desire to paint was so strong that I started.
I didn't know what to paint and it was the first time for me to paint
in this kind of place, where I wasn’t alone. So I was nervous but at
the same time became absorbed in moving the brush to paint.
By the end of the day, I decided to participate in painting the houses
in the “village.” I asked Take to let me join them and vowed not to go
back to the art institution.
So my “Shinjuku cardboard house painting” started. It was September the
fourth in nineteen ninety-five.
＊
There were rules.
First, we had to get the permission from the house owner. Of course,
there were people living in those houses so we couldn’t do it if the
owner didn't want it or without asking them first. For me it felt like
painting on the walls of someone's house. (Later we also painted on the
walls of love hotels.)
Second, we didn’t take orders from the owner. We didn't paint if the
owner didn't want it. But once he gave us the permission we didn't
listen to specific requests. We only painted what we wanted.
Only one time we painted a portrait of the owner as he requested,
probably because he was a good friend and had accepted us from the
beginning. Take, Takeo, Ōta and I painted his portrait together. When
he asked us to paint his face, we all liked the idea so it seemed like
the natural thing to do.
Third, we didn't paint pictures that were only beautiful. We didn't
paint to beautify the environment. We weren't hired to paint. We
weren't volunteers. And it wasn't practice or training for us. We just
wanted to be people painting. We were painters. Beautiful paintings
weren’t ruled out either.
While we were painting, we were often asked this question. “Why are you
painting this here?” For people it made more sense to think that we
were volunteers, students, or employees (getting paid for) working.
Once someone from the village told us, “Painting doesn't bring you
anything to eat.” He was right and I couldn’t think of anything to say.
We didn't know who we were. We couldn't even feed ourselves with what
we were doing. So why? What we were looking for was a deeper reality
which couldn’t always be covered over with beauty.
＊
One day, Take said that if you look at it from above, the rotary in the
center of the village and the area around it looks like a womb. The
pathway that goes to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office is like a
birth canal and the Government Office itself like a phallus. I felt a
deep agreement with this vision. I remembered that someone had said the
Metropolitan Government Office was hardened up by concrete. It was an
angry symbol, and had to be angry to project an image of power which
would serve the dignity of the officials working there. The idea of
looking at the city as if it was a human body was new, erotic and also
funny.
After a while we were allowed to paint on a cardboard house which was
used as a shed. It was very solid and much bigger than the others. It
was great for us to have such a big space, so we really wanted to draw
something special and massive. We really took time to decide what we
should paint. Finally we reached a conclusion.
There was already one public art piece called “Eye of Shinjuku” (by
Miyashita Yoshiko). This Eye was standing on the opposite side of the
rotary than the house we would paint. So we looked carefully at the
“Eye of Shinjuku” and found out that it was a right eye. As one eye
only it was unbalanced, and we all agreed that we had to draw the “Left
Eye of Shinjuku.”
We painted from sunset to sunrise. Because nobody was living there we
could do it during the night. Compared to day time there was almost
nobody passing by, so we could really concentrate on what we were
painting.
We had a rough composition. Take, Takeo and I took the brushes and
started painting at the same time.
One of us drew something, and the other one would put some color over
it. After that, one of us would paint over it again. When one was
satisfied with what he or she had drawn, another one would make a mess
of it. Colors against colors. One would create an edge and another
would assimilate the colors and wipe it off. We did this over and over
again. It was almost like a martial arts fight. We moved the brushes.
Moving only to each changing moment, it was live painting, the real
thing.
After a few days of working this way, closing in on the details,
finishing the flanking pieces, and getting to the point eventually
where there was nothing we could add, we finished. We were not sure if
it was completed, but at least we couldn't do anything more to it.
The last things we painted were the small eyes inside the small eyes
that were inside the one big eye. Tiny eyes almost disappearing
forever. Inside the pupil of the biggest eye we reproduced the
situation of the city where people gathered to create constructions or
concepts, in other words, Village-Shinjuku-Tokyo. There was an image of
a universe that was connected with my body and the place where I was at
the moment.
When I finished working on “Left Eye of Shinjuku,” I left these words
in my notebook.
Project
“Left eye of Shinjuku”
Maybe
it’s the presentation of a religion.
I’m a
religious artist.
The
religion has no doctrine.
No
need for theoretical explanation.
It is
something that just appeals to emotion and soul.
A
religion for me to live by myself, this is the “Left eye of Shinjuku.”
“Left Eye of Shinjuku
(新宿の左目)” by Take Junichirō, Yamane Yasuhiro, and Yamazaki Takeo.
＊
And winter came.
We already had painted on many cardboard houses by then. But we never
felt that the number of pictures increased because new houses were
built much faster than we could paint them.
The day of the removal was getting closer, footsteps walking together
with the winter cold. The village was getting very tense, maybe because
they could hear the footsteps too. The three of us could feel the
atmosphere change but the only thing we could do was keep working on
painting as many houses as possible, so we worked on a few houses next
to each other. They didn't plan to remove all the houses in the
village, but only the ones that were built on the pathway to the Tokyo
Metropolitan Government Office, so we tried to finish painting on those
houses first.
There were planters lined up all along the pathway and the cardboard
houses were arranged along them. Most of those houses were very
settled. Some of them were attached together. In those houses you would
find a nice sky light or a room named
“guestroom”
where they would put a sofa to use as a salon.
Our goal was to fill a 300 meter long line of cardboard houses with our
paintings.
In this line, there was a house we never got the permission to paint
on. The owner didn't listen to any of us. Sometimes, people refused to
let us paint and we understood that. But we really wanted to paint the
whole line, so we tried to talk to him over and over again.
And after a while, he finally agreed to let us paint. We were so
grateful to him that we decided to make it special and take more time
to paint than we usually did.
We went there everyday and started to paint from the morning. At first
he would never talk to us, but little by little we started to get along
and started to talk. He told us that he thought we were volunteers and
that is why he wouldn't let us paint. Because he would never accept to
be taken care off by volunteers. He graduated from a famous university
but his company collapsed and he lost everything and ended up living
there. But he didn't want to stay there. He was ready to start over
again and already had a new job. He wanted to leave the village as soon
as possible.
He was looking better day after day and his new job seemed to be going
well. We were happy for him and put all our energy into every movement
of our brushes. That's the only thing we could do.
We continued painting on New Year's Eve, and we spent the night there
finishing the work. Soon it was New Year's Day. When we finished our
day of work, he brought us
osechi
[The traditional dish eaten on New Year’s Day in Japan]. I just said
“thank you,” without finding the right words to express my emotion.
When I brought it home I ate it slowly. This was the first time for me
to eat osechi since I left my family in Osaka.
＊
January 24. 1996. Early morning.
The removal of the cardboard houses was taking place in front of our
eyes. A chorus of shouts sounded along the pathway. They put barricades
along the pathway and people held a sit in.
The three of us gathered in front of a painting that we had called:
“Sweet Home.” It was a group painting and we had worked on it for a
long time but we hadn’t finished it yet. So we agreed to just keep
drawing there and to go as far as we could. What we did was to generate
a collision between the moment and our painting. We had nothing else we
could do. The “moment” was our intention. The “moment” was the only
thing we wanted. Since the painting of “Left Eye,” it was the first
time that the three of us faced a painting with such intensity.
We do not even remember how long we had been painting. The pathway was
quieter than ever. Finally we lifted our eyes from the painting and we
saw a troop of policemen coming.
＊
A truck drove into the pathway and they started removing cardboard
houses. But we kept painting.
Almost all the cardboard houses were gone. The only one left was our
“Sweet Home.” Is our work finished or not?
Slowly, very slowly, “Sweet Home” fell over toward us.
＊
After that, Take and Takeo kept drawing on cardboard houses for two
more years. I stopped drawing in the village. I did not return to
the institute.
Just one time, long after I stopped, I went to paint in the village
again. But everything had changed, the village, the people …
Now, the village has vanished. The paintings are gone. Memory and
pictures are the only things we’re allowed to keep.
After ten years, our work, our effort and our time became a book.
Nothing could be more pleasant than if this book helps you to
understand what was happening then.
Lately, I found a scribble of a note I left on the “Left Eye of
Shinjuku.”
“An entire station in Tokyo Metro is covered in our works.”
Reality always comes from the mind within.
--- Yamane Yasuhiro (2005) |