2012
May 17: Tokyo. One day
I’m back. Tokyo called and here I am. Sumida, rocking and rolling, reflects my excitement. This time the cherry blossom is over and Tokyo is greening – punctuated by bright splashes of pink azalea; while Sumida, the river, is followed by a ribbon garden borrowed from an English country cottage.
Sky Tree stretches high into warm city air, awaiting it’s grand opening on the 22nd May; it is visible for miles and miles, looking down on the 53 floors of the Mori Building and the red dinosaur that is Tokyo Tower.
The skinny-wheeled chair greets me at Narita airport, slower than I had remembered, but every bit as versatile and enduring.
My journey here was impressively smooth. Special Assistance at Heathrow has never worked so well for me and the people never seemed so ‘human’.
The plane was only half-full and I had the seat next to me for bags normally on the floor out of my reach, making the flight very civilised.
Hovering over quiet endurance,
Utopia beckons me onwards.
The human subconscious
dances attendance on the
persistent lure of better.
The promise of perfection
in wheels, shapes my future.
Sparkles through my hopes
for journeys into the places
that haunt my dreams.
The promise of independence
close as a heartbeat,
is within reach, isn’t it?
My dream, is reasonable, isn’t it?
And this Eutopia is real, isn’t it?
May 19: Settling in
International Flowers
Smooth as a financial manager, Sumida reflects my sunshine hopes back at me in a glassy smile. Tokyo, gateway to Utopia, or the crutch to support my fantasies?
Is the promise of independence sweeter than the realisation? Is the realisation realistic, or merely my wheelborne take on the impossible dream?
Humanity seems to possess a built-in hunger for the impossible dream, and living in an age where the dream becomes increasingly universal, and increasingly focused on bodily perfection, I am tempted to question my desire for a ‘perfect’ wheelchair.
And that longing for the one thing we do not have? The one thing that would make a difference… Is my hope of independent mobility a reasonable human right, or evidence that I too, am on the treadmill?
Am I seeking without, the things that should be within?
No, even as that thought occurs, I reject it. Too long I have sought solutions within myself for circumstances that require other input and mobility is certainly one of those.
Nobody covets a wheeled chair, No
amount of universal design has
made this symbol of disability
desirable to anyone who
doesn’t need to be wheelborne.
But the desire to be more, to be
faster, stronger, tireless, could make us
all equal in a powersuit; provided of course
disabled people can afford them.
May 20: Roaming
Glitterwheels
Today I spent roaming in the sunshine, getting my bearings. I rolled alongside Sumida and headed for Ginza. There are more cyclists weaving along the pavements, more mobil-phonists standing in awkward places and I do believe more wheelchairs in evidence.
I have discovered that Japanese department stores regularly host art exhibitions, and just past Ginza I did indeed see evidence of a Japanese artist, possibly inflenced by Klimt and Picasso, exhibiting on the sixth floor; what a great idea.
The artist didn’t grab my attention, but a sparkling, jewelled manual wheelchair did.
Positively bling – I loved it!
On one of the designer-wear floors, tucked between international Names, sat this transformed duckling just waiting to party. Covered in crystals, it was the focal point of a section devoted to ‘sit-friendly’ clothes for chairborne people. And knee bags – I think I might want one!
2020 already calls.
The Paralympics will happen
here, the hype has begun.
Access comes into focus;
the future promises better
and yes I believe. Here where life
already feels good on the outside,
here really could be gearing up
to make groundbreaking breathtaking.
Coming here opened my mind,
re-connected me to
Utopian dreams.
Please, tell me I’m not just being
greedy.
May 21: Two legs ok. Four wheels cyber?
sitting – I do that too.
I subscribe to the theory that Utopia always appears to be getting closer. And with the perfect place, the perfect society, comes the perfect life-form – the cyborg. And wheelborne people could be closer than most.
The chairborne aquanaut leads the field, being more than just a metaphor for her chosen life-form, closer to whales, dolphins and sharks than any mere human in dive-gear.
I came to Tokyo hoping to pursue my hunt for Disability Arts, but instead find myself on an apparent detour. I want to return to Odaiba, the artificial island at the end of Rainbow Bridge, to revisit the Universal Design Centre at Toyota’s Exhibition Hall. Here they demonstrate developments to a Universal ‘wheelchair’.
This ‘chair’ transports it’s user in upright or horizontal positions and travels at speeds that exceed those aspired to by most powerchair manufacturers. It is being designed to be universally desirable. Is this what mobility disabled people want? Is it a viable alternative to a powersuit? Is it anything more than a detour on evolution road? Is it sexy enough to compete?
Technology could be my best way forward: a way to make some connections; a way to look below the surface of life here; to discover heterotopic spaces. There may still be treasure at the end of the rainbow, or this could be going nowhere.
Sumida flows
contra flows
radiating
shell patterns
with no
apparent
sense of direction.
Sumida sees
me. Carries
my reflection
hither and thither.
I see Sumida.
Together
we dither.
Sumida rolls
I follow.
Today we find
a tree-lined
avenue of
artwork.
May 22: Creative Asia
Tian Tian Xiang Shang
.
Ok. I’ve been here 6 days, this is blog number 5, they all sat frustrated, unposted, on my iPad while I attempted to master the technology using unfamiliar tools.
How do I monitor the size of my images? Resize? Crop? How do I convert .png to .jpg? I guess I will have figured it when I post this, but the Greenroom blog will be out of sync with my tweet…
I may use wheels to augment my body; I may long for a cybersuit, or an avatar, so that I can run and climb and swish a skirt, I enjoy using the technology, but what can I do about my inability to think computer-think?
Yesterday I rolled out in the sun to explore Hibiya Park. The entrance is cobbled and painful to navigate and last year soggy pathways also limited my ability to move around. Access has been greatly improved. The park is bigger than I had imagined, but actually last year’s accessible bits were probably the best and most traditional; with a cybersuit, I would have known that already.
The cybersuit needs more development; the Japanese guy testing it out in the French Alps will actually be carried by it’s user. The guy lacking the disability will have his strength augmented. I guess we’ve all heard that story before.
In Marunouchi Building
point a host of decorated
figures. Onwards, upwards
they seem to say
through the eyes of
HongKong and
Japanese – crossing
partnership in
creativity. 129
pointing fingers
educating the world;
artistic expressions with
subtle undertones.
May 23: Tokyo inspirations.
Barge on Sumida
Today I’m trying out a Japanese wheelchair to take home; not exactly the one I’d planned for or expected, but good. I hope.
I sense my eutopia moving closer. Actually Utopia moves like Michael Jackson; the moonwalk ever deceptive.
Having the iPad is great, the Brushes app frees me to explore previous frustrated trains of thought and practice, and being here in Tokyo inspires me to make more creative links between image and word, links I had previously been struggling to realise.
My search for roots and identity mingles with the desire for mobility. I come face to face with the need to acknowledge that my roots cannot be linked to a country or a culture; that I am genetically in the past as Scandinavian, in the present as European, and in the future as Asian. My search is no longer a search, but an exploration.
Who am I today? I am the artist who makes links with Toyota’s Universal Wheelchair and Bruce Sterling’s “Lobsters”; an artist who wants to explore the implications of Haraway’s postgendered possibilities from a wheelborne perspective.
As a wheelborne entity I’m asking how the concept “cyborg bodies lead to cyborg consciousness” (Danielle Devoss) might be creating my identity.
And my soft sculptures need to be more than seeking into the earth, they need to stretch into time and space. I need them to explore Thirdspace (Edward Soja).
Sumida today has a choppy quality,
lending an air of expectation and excitement.
The floating landing for tourist-boats squeals
like a stressed-up pig, but occasionally
emits a soft feminine moan. A flash of green
marks the flight of a Japanese sparrow
with a bamboo leaf in it’s beak.
Here feels creative, is it just the change of scene?
May 24: Greenroom Festival. 2012
In the Green
My time is going in a bit of a daze. I’ve been looking forward to the day-trip to Yokohama. It requires several changes of train, easy and accessible changes!
Yokohama’s Greenroom Festival of music, art and film (www.greenroom.jp/ ) was this year held in the historical Red Brick Warehouse, close to the futuristic Odaibashi ferry terminal:
“Never has architecture been so clearly at the forefront of the festival experience as it is at Yokohama’s Greenroom Festival, the annual jazz, ska, lounge and surf-rock celebration that takes place at the Odaibashi International Ferry Terminal at Yokohama port”
(www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/09/turning-Japanese-architecture-pop)
Under blue sky, sunny but not yet too hot, this was the perfect weekend for an open air festival. Approaching the festival area we passed families sitting in clover – green spaces where patches of clover grow unchecked, and the festival atmosphere could be appreciated for free.
In fact a lot of the music could be heard, and seen, without entering paid space. Arts and craft stalls were in freespace too, and apart from the crush of people, everything except the tree-house seemed very accessible.
I saw no trace of other wheelborne festival goers, and felt sure my presence in the crush must have inconvenienced quite a few people, but they were never, publicly, other than friendly and helpful. The atmosphere was great.
The music sounded rather more international than when the Guardian reported on the Festival in 2009, but I did find some of the Japanese rock musically difficult to access.
Early evening we headed out to Chinatown to find food – some time after the easy to listen to Tokyo Number 1 Soul Set had finished playing.
Stumbled upon,
coincidentally
strangely
in keeping with
the accidental
theme of this year’s
Japanese blog,
the Green
Room festival
feels like fate
joining my
search for
Utopian
spaces.
May 25: Semicyber
Supported
Lying in bed, not ‘wearing’ my wheels, it occurs to me that I am semicyber, but being without them does not free me from their impact. And these times, out of the public gaze, have no impact on the way society views me. Cyborg or cyberbodied, in the public consciousness a chairborne entity is ‘bound’ to it’s wheels.
Here in Japan where I have almost no Japanese, I am freed from any negative feedback regarding my wheelborne presence, by my own lack of understanding. In that way I am freer to create and express my own identity, to find my own eutopia/heterotopia.
With no way to penetrate the polite veneer of Japanese society, I have no access to the can of worms that must inevitably wriggle under its skin.
Nevertheless I retain my optimistic view of the Utopian. Japanese public, social interaction seems to function in a universal way, working for those lacking disability as well as for those with.
Is this why I’m finding it hard to find any real traces of Disability Culture here?
Over the Rainbow Bridge,
this time in the glow of
bright lights, Tokyo Tower
defying it’s age, gleams
a juicy orange spike.
Tokyo Wheel, as it shrinks
into the past, colour
changes, pattern changes.
Tokyo winks and sparkles,
welcomes with no trace of
irony. The Universal
Design Museum is
closed. A power saving
measure.
May 26: Tema Hema – Effort Time.
‘art school’ – collage
Today I revisited Design Sight 21_21, the design exhibition space of the Issey Miyake Foundation, created by Issey Miyake and Tadeo Ando.
Tema Hima – the Art of Living in Tohoku, was exactly that. Film and exhibited objects described the traditional ways of sourcing food and tools that are being practiced in Tohoku, site of The Great East Japan Earthquake.
Visually fascinating, informative and an advocate for the inspirational quality of this way of living holding a key to future survival, this exhibition was exquisitely curated and absorbed my attention for several hours.
The artists and craftspeople who put this exhibition together believe that the future is potentially a dangerous place, and that to be knowledgable and capable of feeding yourself and local community is one kind of utopian space.
The space itself was beginning to settle. The raw concrete no longer the severe irritant that drove me away last year. I left feeling uplifted.
At the National Arts Centre, now celebrating it’s 5th anniversary, were two special exhibitions: Cezanne, Paris – Provence, and 400 years of European Masterpieces from the State Hermitage Museum.
There was also a massive and well visited exhibition of local artists, the amateurs, as the staff apologetically described them. There seems to be no middle ground, you are famous, international, or nobody; this seems to be one of humanity’s universal directions.
But maybe in their search for what it means to be Japanese, people here have not really bought-in to this notion of what it means to be famous; maybe the apology is merely thought appropriate for a foreigner like me.
I was certainly impressed by the scale of local talent which seemed both more international and more Japanese than last year.
And this year there appeared to be a selection of wheelchairs and baby buggies available for visitors to borrow, with even the possibility of a volunteer to do the pushing.
Nobody exhibits in the
National Art Centre.
Nobody has ten
1000m2 galleries
with 5 metre
ceilings and 20
moveable panels.
Nobody has
370 metres
to share.
Kisho Kurokawa
makes good space.
May 27: Shibaraku. /
Shibaraku – stop a moment!
I have made a journey back to Asakusa, it involves changing trains and previously the station staff have been very helpful, but this time the helpfulness petered out when I arrived at the first station.
The man-with-the-ramp was not there and I was on the point of blocking the sliding door, to prevent the train leaving, when he came running onto the platform barking ‘wait’.
At Asakusa station, following signs for the Temple exit, I came to a full stop at a flight of stairs and proceeded to get lost in underground corridors.
There is this strange business of the narrow focus, where people are capable of just not seeing you. Asakusa station staff ‘couldn’t’ see me, and later when I got myself wedged into a tight corner in a tiny shop, the elderly owners ‘couldn’t’ see me even when they were stood in my way and I was speaking to them.
There are a lot more tourists around this time, is this attitude just evidence of tourist-fatigue? Or am I discovering cracks in the skin of Utopia?
I was rescued by a kindly Japanese person who offered to take me to the elevator and proceeded to accompany me up to street level and point out how I could get to my destination.
In the past Asakusa was famous for theatre and night life, today the Temple attracts a lot of disabled visitors as well as school children and elderly people.
Today there was also a pair of tourist-geisha, looking exquisite and promenading – with groups of male business-men tourists trying to catch their attention.
Maybe on another day I’d have found all that male strutting and posing funny, but this seemed to be ‘pick up a tourist’ day and I was fielding unwanted attention from locals and foreigners. A persistent Japanese male had me practicing the narrow focus myself and wishing I knew the Japanese for ‘get lost’.
.
Sumida rolls to Asakusa,
shiny water shivered
by quaking earth
under sunshine sky.
The cormorant
arcs basking wings,
alert, ready to fly.
While I, underground
encased in metal tube
am rocked in my
subway cradle.
May 28: Onsen, Na’vi and black eggs.
Scars
The journey to Hakone involves platform-lifts, chair-lifts, elevators, trains, metro, cable train and cable car (ropeway) as well as some energetic pushing and pulling up and down very steep hills. Mount Hakone is famous for it’s hot springs, peaceful lake and eggs boiled in simmering hot pools. These eggs, their shells turned black by sulphur, are said to prolong life.
The ‘boiling valley’ is 1044 metres above sea level, and contains a lake created by volcanic activity; this was our destination and getting there was the great adventure. The day started with a first – my first travel on the JR line from my local station using a recently installed platform-lift; my destination was Tokyo Station and once there the accessible route to the next platform involved a journey deep underground ‘behind the scenes’ in one hundred year old tunnels.
About 90 minutes out into the countryside, changing trains, we began our climb on a single track line that zig-zagged up the mountain, going alternately backwards and forwards up the tree lined slopes.
Moving from one mode of transport to another required up to four men lifting, pushing or pulling my wheelchair. The cable-train gave way to cable-car and suddenly I was swinging up and over the trees, climbing from about 800 metres to 1044 where sulphurous ‘smoke’ seeped and billowed out of the earth in this steaming cauldron.
I felt I was in an alternative scene from the film Avatar – one where the ‘americans’ had won the war with the native people – as I looked down on the scar of what looked like mining activity at the summit. Breaking our journey we paused to take in the smell, buy black eggs and wonder at the steaming earth.
Swinging back over the treetops and expecting any moment to see strange flying beasts and giant blue Na’vi, we swooped down a couple hundred metres to the crater lake lying along the southwest wall of this complex volcano.
Here we boarded mock pirate galleons and explored the 20 km length of lake Ashinoko and a view of the lakeside Shinto Temple.
The lake is an incredibly quiet and peaceful place, we watched cranes patiently stalking fish, and overhead what might have been honey buzzards floating on thermals.
Somewhere to come back to,
for an Onsen experience
Hakone’s hot springs beckon.
Swooping through the air is one thing,
how will the skinny wheels cope
on the ground? All of this day’s
travel used only two bars on my
battery level indicator;
giving my day a surreal
quality, as if I
really did possess
an Avatar. And although
I didn’t manage to
swish a skirt, or flick a tail,
I did feel incredibly free.
May 29: Spatial justice and privilege
sitting stones
My life in Tokyo is not exactly domestic, there are few meals to cook or chores to attend to. The robot cleaner takes care of bare essentials and meals are mostly eaten out. Passing a restaurant, we check for access and availability and by the time I roll in, several seats have been removed to give me a choice of seating.
I am greeted with dignity, with no sense of being too much bother, or of being patronised.
This area that I call home is quiet and comfortable, with very little evidence of poverty or social injustice. Obviously it colours my impressions of Japanese society and maybe it makes access to issues a slower process.
Around me I see Universal Design embraced with the collective acknowledgement that age will inevitably render it necessary for most people; and I see evidence of design being used in a more socially aware fashion.
In English public spaces people lacking wheels inevitably choose to use the dropped curbs and the automatic doors, yet designers of these spaces continue to ignore the implications. I live in a part of England where there seems not much attempt being made to take advantage of design possibilities to promote, or symbolically play with, notions of equality; or create spatial justice.
Running alongside Sumida, the walkway has fascinating changes of shape and texture and many resting places. One particularly attractive portion has a narrow chequerboard pathway leading to steps where it widens out before more steps lead back up to the sinuously sloping wide sweep of path rolling consistently alongside.
People lacking mobility disability inevitably choose to descend into this little pit, before coming back up to my level. I love the symbolic significance and the impression of design awareness that created this role-reversing space.
.
The random seeds of the flower garden
are coming full circle. In beds beside
dark soil is cleared and raked to a fine tilth.
I watch and wait with anticipation,
but one morning a regimented row
of soldier marigolds, over-bred and
barren, stand to attention as I pass.
A playful echo, Sumida’s ribbon
companion is fading, and easy
gives way to the approaching season.
Heat and humidity creeping closer,
my journey is broken by orange and
yellow reminders of law and order.
May 30: Crowds, cat cafes and Teleporting.
Teleport option.
Tokyu Hands (pronounced Tokyo Hanz) was reviewed by the New York Times as ‘the’ department store for the serious home owner and hobbyist, it has also been described as a ‘makers paradise’.
Floors of fascinating items, many only available in Japan, tempt me. Countless arts possibilities reawaken as shelves full of curious and useful items demand attention. I want to take one of the stores home with me.
We visited the flagship store at Shibuya, but at Ikebukuro they also have a cat cafe, with around 20 cats willing to be stroked and petted by customers.
Without my rose tinted specs I have to admit there is one gigantic flaw – the store is devided vertically into three sections, right and left sections have elevators, but access to the middle section is via steps.
The stores have free demonstrations and workshops as well as magazines and areas devoted to inspire and enable the newly creative. Next time I come I will bring an extra suitcase – maybe I said that last time?
Shibuya is a hilly place and getting around on steep slopes and uneven surfaces in amongst dense crowds of people takes patience and determination. It is also quite fun – if you have plenty of time. The famous Shibuya Crossing, where all the lights go red together, has pedestrians streaming in all directions.
We visited a newly opened shopping mall to sample their famous cakes and wasted about an hour waiting for lifts with enough space to fit the wheelchair in. Travellers squeezed themselves together and beckoned helpfully, but I guess most Japanese have a poor sense of spatial awareness.
I needed to lean forward to balance the skinny-wheeled chair in order to negotiate the long, steep hill to the Thai restaurant where we planned to eat our evening meal. But was then disappointed by the flight of steps that greeted us at the entrance. The restaurant has a lift – at the top of the stairs – people without wheels often overlook these little things.
High in the sky
warm and safe
its easy to loose
sight of ground level.
And deep down
layers make up
and down journeys
as necessary as
back and forth
progress. I find
ways to suspend
acrophobia,
bathophobia
in favour of
cat cafes and
big city lights.
May 31: Symbolic clothes, Kimono and Peter Pan.
Kimono – Colours and Shapes of the Ryukyu Dynasty
Discovering the imposing bronze statue behind Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa reminded me that I really do wish to attend a Kabuki performance. The traditional Japanese building of our local Kabuki theatre is controversially being replaced by a modern brick box and not due to reopen until next year. I’m hoping it will be amazingly accessible.
I checked out the alternative theatres and discovered that I had missed the May season. I had hoped to go to a morning performance as the event usually lasts around four hours. I would need a translation too!
The Kabuki stage has a ‘catwalk’ running from the deck to the back of the auditorium, where the hero of ‘Shibaraku’ appears to deliver his monologue. Unlike Shakespeare plays, this piece was conceived spontaneously in the middle of another play, by the actor whose family developed the drama and now seems to have exclusive rights to the role.
The hero wears an impressive padded costume to add height and width to his stature. I think Japanese people are perhaps more aware of the symbolic possibilities of clothes and they are fond of dressing up.
There are quite a few young people wearing kimono, but so many women in ‘dolls clothes’ one gets the impression there are almost no grown- ups in the country.
Outfits that look like mini, frilly nightwear and cute little- girl hairstyles make it seem like Japanese women pass from childhood to old age with no adult years between.
And indeed, a lot of them are reluctant to take on roles as wives and mothers, to the extent that the government is seriously worried about the shrinking population numbers.
Is our fascination with being/looking youthful leading humanity on the road to extinction? Is this particular Utopia a dead end?
Kimono: the hair
the style, the pins,
socks and shoes
as well as the
signature wrap
garments with
belts, all belong
together. Conspire
to make tiny steps
into a future
looking back
at somewhere
slower.
June 1: Chopstick impressions, access and flying solo.
I’ve had a disagreement with a woman in an art gallery. We were discussing; I was talking about the visitors to galleries, she was talking about the exhibitors in general and the artist exhibiting there in particular.
I said that Japanese took art very seriously. She declared that he had a free and easy style and Japanese art was very varied.
We politely agreed to disagree when suddenly she realised what I was trying to say, looked discreetly around, and then totally agreed with me. We both laughed, but quite discreetly; the atmosphere was very solemn.
While Japanese people walk around galleries in a state of solemnity, once positioned in front of a piece they are not intimidated by art; everyone seems keen to deliver their personal interpretation and to express an opinion.
Not much of an exchange, yet quite a milestone for me who speaks very little Japanese. There are moments when I feel I understand other people’s conversations, but dialogue is much more tricky.
I am frequently approached by strangers keen to try out their language skills and strange meanderings across a variety of European languages result in painfully protracted monologues that have no real content.
I am however left with the impression that the locals have noticed me, like the way I look and enjoy the humorous positioning of chopsticks in my hair.
The chopsticks probably say more than I do, certainly more than I am aware of, and they seem to give the impression that I am accessible.
.
Wandering out of my comfort zone,
finding less accessible quarters,
I discover galleries. Indeed many,
all with steps enough to keep me out.
And curbs not dropped enough
to let me pass; but then I find
a rush of angels keen
running to open doors;
eager to be
of assistance.
Solicitous.
And I start to ponder
the seldom seen
disabled person
flying solo.
June 2: Trying on Umbrellas.
Hide and Seek
I often duck into department stores to use the facilities, or change the batteries on my chair; today threatens rain and there is a small queue of people trying on umbrellas. An assistant stands by to hand over the next choice, opened and ready to use, so that the prospective purchaser can look in a full length mirror and check out the colour, style and size. Plain, ruffles, frills or lace? Large, medium or small? Tan, black, or… the colour options are plentiful. Finding an umbrella that suits is quite a task.
There seems to be plenty of people with the time and money to indulge in choices like this; I do see evidence of homeless people, but not much obvious evidence of poverty. I see wheelborne people, mostly being pushed in ‘disabled chairs’ (the sort with small wheels that cannot be propelled by the disabled person) and I see people on crutches – usually accompanied. Clues – like the poor condition of the wheelchairs – and the rarity of powered equipment, do lead me to conclusions about day to day living for disabled people here. Reality might not be keeping pace with the optimistic spaces and equal opportunities may only exist for visitors with independent means?
Having said all that I then came face to face with a lone disabled female. I didn’t need Sherlock Holmes’ deductive skills – she had well-worn knee braces and used crutches; she also spoke quite good English; we exchanged email addresses.
I’m pretty sure she isn’t Japanese, but she lives and works here and is the first disabled person I’ve managed to make contact with.
How ironic that these flashes of Utopian space
that so attract and release me, do not appear
to promote greater independence for the
Japanese crip population. Produce no tangible
evidence of a solidarity or awareness
of a need. But then the need could be mine.
Could be most disabled people are so integrated
I never notice them. The people that catch my eye
the lucky ones who, in a less caring society,
would be lonely behind brick walls, sitting
beneath windows too high to see out of.
Mrs Q might have been happier here, with
more than just a bottle of whiskey and a bunch
of roses to see her through the week.
June 4: Soldier marigolds, pots and recycling.
Over the Top
I have made contact with a potter, Yoko Terai, who has an exhibition of beautiful pots and a friend who speaks some English.
The pots, elegant forms in calm shades of white, have a gentle, sensuous beauty, but also the imposing authority of Mount Fuji; I had difficulty restraining myself from picking them up.
I can imagine living with them.
I could also live with a regular delivery of flowers – the most beautiful arrangements of cut flowers; exquisite mini-bonsai in round balls of moss or tiny bowls; or more lasting – groups of fine pots containing complementary green foliage plants.
As the season develops and Tokyo gets greener, the higgledy- piggledy street- assortment of degrading plastic containers containing a variety of beautiful plants multiplies. Around doorways, in alcoves, around the many public trees, bushes and street furniture; lining alleyways – anywhere they would not create nuisance – there are plants.
The soldier marigolds that march Sumida’s walkway are the exception, but their regiments multiply to occupy the available spaces; they are supplemented by a crack team of bold, red salvias who engage the bright pink azaleas in a war on the optical senses.
One quarter of the population suffers from hay-fever from the millions of, State planted, Japanese cedar trees that shed their pollen at this time of year. The government is seeking creative ways to tackle this man-made issue.
Occasionally I see Japanese pots – big, bold and beautiful, but normally plant containers appear to be anything recyclable that comes to hand. A curious aesthetic.
There is more than distance between us.
More than the sounds that never quite make
understandable words; more than the
shape of our backgrounds. There is a
desire to reach out to foreign culture;
to touch the exotic where east meets
west. To colour our days with the unknown.
I have no natural investigative skills,
make no intuitive leaps that take me
beyond the obvious. I persevere yet
appear to make no progress in this
one-woman effort to connect with
creatives who might want to engage
an outsider in the revelation
of insider issues. Utopia continues
to move like Michael Jackson.
June 5: Mutilated tans and a duck cenotaph.
Image: The Tea House
I seek Japanese fabric. Something on a roll, where I could ask for a metre or two.
I love the colour aesthetic here, and the use of texture. I feel the need to take some of it home with me.
This fabric lives in the past. It comes in one narrow width, one long length – it comes in a Kimono quantity – a ‘tan’ – ca 35 cms wide and twelve metres long. Linen or silk, sometimes cotton, each with it’s own tradition of weave and colour. And each weave or colour has it’s own traditional application: the male Kimono, the female Kimono, the child Kimono, the door curtain – the size and shape of each is defined by the size of the tan.
Tailors and fabric shops sell tans; tourist shops sell off-cuts and scraps. Somewhere as yet inaccessible to me, I’m convinced there is patchwork. But the idea of cutting into, or defacing, a tan, mystifies and horrifies the traditional tailor. My search exposes the alienness of my thinking.
Wider fabric is western fabric, in western quality and colours; western fabric is cut and sold by the metre. Someone somewhere must surely be creating a bridge, opening up the possibility of buying half a tan, a quarter even, for something Other.
If I lived here, my home would be outrageously furnished in mutilated tans. My wardrobe would be full of corrupted shapes – tans distorted to interpret western convenience clothes. Even on powerwheels I balk at the mobility restrictions the Kimono imposes.
Hamarikyu contains a duck
cenotaph; a mausoleum of
departed souls. Traditional duck
hunting grounds of past emperors
awakened the need to honour
the spirits, if not the consumed
bodies, of ducks who gave their lives
for imperial entertainment
and gastronomic pleasure.
Hamarikyu is a moated garden,
with ponds and islands, a haven
for ducks spared the fate
of their predecessors, to gather
unmolested by hunters past
or present. Forgotten humans
fading in the shadow of
a memorial to ducks.
June 6: Proof of Existence.
Siesta.
I travelled part of the way to Hakone sitting under a poster with an image in shades of grey, of cracks in a pavement – Proof of Existence. The Hakone area seems stuffed with museums and galleries that will tempt me back; this poster was for Shinji Omaki’s Proof of Existence.
Passing the Hakone Open-Air Museum I saw evidence of artworks that will need to be explored. Plentiful signs and posters pointed to other inviting destinations; Hakone brought itself to my attention and certainly has something to live up to, next time I come.
Standing in front of the naked musician blowing an oversized horn, I presumed it was an homage to the real life naked trumpeter.
This one was small – less than hobbit-sized and on loan from, yes, somewhere in Hakone. A bronze statue in the Marunouchi Street Gallery in Tokyo, he was modestly shaded by a tree, small in every detail (bar the musical instrument), and looking very comfortable with his nudity.
If I am frequenting all the wrong places to find disability culture, it is not just the lure of the ‘mainstream’ famous arts, it is also their accessibility and plentiful abundance. I continue to question the existence of disability culture yet daily hope to find it hidden in plain sight. Invisible only because of a culture chasm.
Yet is a society without the need for disability culture good or bad? Is this taking integration too far? Does it free up disabled people or oppress them?
This experiment of trying to find Disability Arts and artists ‘from the ground up’ needs some control data to line up against. Maybe I need to visit London as a foreigner and see how far I get.
Those universal sounds, uttered by
deaf people signing, alert me. Here
on the train I travel, wheels on wheels
back to the crowd, quietly watching
window reflection, unobserved.
Instant curiosity lifts heads
momentarily; and flashed tension
comes, goes, never was. I get the
outrageous idea of a culture
where disability just isn’t
a concept; a culture where people
are just and gloriously people.
June 7: Dancing dresses and do I take sugar…
The Midtown Plaza from Galleria which houses the Suntory Museum of Art.
‘Does she take sugar’ seems to be a question foreign to most Japanese; I am always spoken to directly. When I travel, all help, questions or instructions are directed at me – even if I have a Japanese companion who knows the way. And if my companion presumes to commandeer the guiding process, I am usually asked if I am ok with that.
Of course they do tend to presume that I need help, but then most times they are right. I always feel the intentions are good, the attitude is right. It makes a big difference.
Finding my way around in the multi- layered super-city that is Tokyo does get easier as I learn to use the sky-scapers as landmarks and begin to understand the layouts.
I have even got used to the idea that the enormous, formal-looking office blocks frequently have arts, shopping areas and restaurants that are worth looking into.
I was in such a place, outside a dress shop, when the dresses began dancing. Swinging about on their rail like crazy puppets, they looked quite surreal.
Unusually, one of the young staff members began to cry; normally earthquakes do not provoke much reaction from anyone. She was embraced and consoled by one of her colleges.
I have noticed that, wheelborne, I seem somewhat insulated from the effects of earthquakes. I notice other things moving and shaking, and during small forays on crutches, or in bed, feel them much more.
Where were you when we had the earthquake, is a question I frequently cannot answer.
Another quake, another shift
the living earth has more presence
here. And thus creates a greater
sense of need for harmony
of effort. Need to recognise
outrageous and delicate
strength that moves mountains and seas,
grows cherry blossom, and floats
cloud soft over Fiji San.
Humanity invents ways to
co-exist, to live and dance,
to celebrate life on the edge
of each possible extinction.
June 8: Gothic Lolita and Princess Trees
Tokyo Tower by night.
Googling for occasion clothes, I discover that the kind of frilly baby-doll outfits mentioned in ‘Symbolic clothes and Kimono’ are in a style labelled Gothic Lolita. Mmm; says it all, I guess.
Sun sets early in Tokyo, and the warm night air lights up with city living. The Gothic Lolitas who have prowled in packs by daylight, melt away; daydreams insubstantial. Groups of Suits gather, fill the streets with contained anticipation.
Negotiating space to pass ‘Gentlemen’s Clubs’ advertising live nudes, I get to practice my almost forgotten ‘excuse me’ phrase. I exist outside of their narrow focus, I have become a different kind of invisible; the kind that promises safe passage.
A line of suits on the gutter side afford me a clearway, but as I begin the roll-past an equal and opposite line emerges and I am trapped between them. With great formality, and loud exclamations both lines bow deeply over, but still towards, me-in-the-middle.
I Process Like Royalty – wondering and delighting in my invisibility.
Tokyo is warming, rain is more frequent, the humidity rises and large insects swarm silently. Soon cicadas will emerge to sing, and Paulonia wood will come into its own.
Said to keep clothes dry (damp mould being a serious problem), the Princess Tree was traditionally planted at the birth of a daughter and the wood then used to create a chest of drawers for her wedding gift. Today Paulonia is prized for it’s warp resistance and used in skis, surf-boards and guitars.
The fast growing Phoenix Tree
is the Green Goddess
of reforestation. The
Ultimate Renewable,
she regenerates
from root-stock, grows
twenty feet in a year
in her eager youth, and
miraculously reclaims
ecologically
stressed earth, increasing
possible food production.
This Princess Tree, saviour
of us all, also sounds
good in the body
of a Dean ML XM
June 9: Snake poison and affordable tans
Chinatown.
Yokohama gets a rough deal from me. She’s always squeezed between other places, other attractions, yet evening Yokohama Chinatown lures me with some excellent dim sum in a quiet first floor restaurant, with windows looking right at the elaborately carved and decorated Chinese temple opposite.
.
Kamakura is the day’s first destination, the site of the giant Buddha I visited last year, it also has a small, but excellent art gallery showing works from the Kamakura collection of traditional and traditional-inspired illustrations.
Last time it was closed, this time I get lucky. Down a leafy little alleyway, turn left into a beautiful, private- looking mini garden, negotiate some small changes of level and the glass doors slide open to let you in. If you are a fan of Edo period Ukiyo-e you will not be disappointed.
The day also includes shopping, I have been trying to find an affordable ‘tan’ that I can corrupt into curtains for my kitchen and, dependent as it is on the tourist trade, Kamakura comes up trumps.
My ‘tan’ is a cotton linen mix, in the natural linen colour with earth brown stripes. I also find a very fine box in which to carry my chopsticks. I’ve been looking for something that would keep them clean in my handbag. This little box is a light fine–grained wood with tiny magnets to hold it shut. It closes with a satisfying click.
One unmissable temple later and I’m back on the single track train that hurtles past mini gardens and kitchen windows to the station on the other side of Yokohama, that brings me straight into Chinatown.
The slow roll to the restaurant is colourful and crowded.
Chinatown offers the strange
to western eyes, variety
of goods or bads we may just
not be ready to do more
than mock. But also stuff
that shudders as I pass.
Dried shark fins, snake- poison
face packs, tiny bottles with
small bones and mysterious
hand- scribed labels.
How does this look to the neighbours?
June 10: Created geography and spatial justice
The pirate ship on lake Ashinoko, Hakone.
If nothing else, being in Tokyo has served to clarify my ideas about spatial equality; to crystallise my thoughts about some of the negative psychological effects of historical Greek and Roman architectural practice on European urban design, to ponder the power of hegemonic places and to begin to formulate further ideas about created heterotopic spaces.
I am quite lazy about following up on even my most important ideas and although my blog intro states that my work ‘engages with issues of access, from acknowledged physical needs to perceived symbolic exclusions’, I’ve never spent time in the blog explaining or exploring what I mean by that and why I feel it is important.
As yet, I am unaware of any studies on spatial justice of created geography from a wheelborne viewpoint. Studies of urban poverty by people like Marxist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology David Harvey (‘Social Justice and the City’), resonate with some of the issues – his postulation that Capitalism ‘annihilates space to ensure it’s own reproduction’ raises awareness of the shrinking dimensions of many modern created environments; but the notion that justice has a geography and the equitable distribution of resources, services and access is a basic human right (Soja), is at the heart of my interest in perceived symbolic exclusions. Created geography that marginalises difference has negative psychological effects on how society sees itself and invests in it’s future.
In Britain I queue,
for the wheelchair-wide
dropped curb and wait
while the wheelless
use this easy space.
I queue for the
auto-door, wheelless
prefer it’s lack of
effort. And I am
required frequently
to make excuse for
my bulky presence;
squeezed to the edges.
This urban geography
lacks a sense of
welcome, lacks
every sense of justice.
June 18: Some other Culture?
Undeterred.
I’m back among people I should theoretically have some understanding of and connection to. Back in a culture that should feel familiar, if not comfortable. Back wondering how to rejoice and celebrate difference and diversity while committing to integration and equality of opportunity, comprehension and access.
I say I don’t want to be seen as different, but what I probably mean is that I don’t want my difference to be seen as alien; I still need to be accepted as me; an individual with unique properties. Maybe I just want ‘Difference Easing’…
Integration, what does it imply? Do I confuse the issue with the nature of my uniqueness? As a chairborne entity, my identity has been shaped by my dependence on wheels. I have things in common with other wheelborne that wheelless cannot do better than empathise with.
the alien-cold loo seat,
a repeated reluctance;
negachieva echoes in,
chatters through, my annual
rehabilitation.
Expectation revisits
this repeated sound
with no hope of accuracy
or comprehension.
Negachieva – going nowhere?
unlike the fast closing
elevator door proclaiming:
Door- e mashy- mashy.
Silly flights of alien
fantasy, fun until
one day I get real language.
But that has toupee
sm’otherplace, smother time.
A summer stay when
tapestry snot twirly, halves
heaven snot tool eight. Domo
arigatou gazaimasu.