Diary
Letter from the past
Introduction
Keeping a diary is one thing; showcasing it is another unless you’re already a successful public figure. People are always curious to see how celebrities experience everyday life or thoughts on what they do. I’m also one of those. There has always been a fascination with reading their mind through diaries. It makes people feel like they are experiencing their life for a split second.
I always enjoyed reading diaries from an architect, Osamu Ishiyama. He’s one of Japan’s most influential architects and Arata Isozaki, if not a general opinion. In contrast to his acute thoughts towards architecture, how he puts his thoughts into words in his diaries is utterly relaxed. Humane more like. The intellectual topics are, of course, involved, yet he does not aim his criticism to anyone/thing. He’d instead write about his vegetable garden on the rooftop of his house and his thoughts on what reminded him of it.
However, I’m not a public figure. I’m still millions of miles away from being mentioned, at least now. I’d rather feel embarrassed to share my opinions online if I’m honest. I’m not trained as a writer and do not have someone who can professionally help me with my writing either. Although I quote lines from books or my professors, I’m entirely on my own for writing. What’s worse, I’m about to share my diaries from my high school days.
Why am I supposed to share my diaries? It makes a lot more sense to share once I become well-known to the public. What’s even more complicated is that the text I share here is what I experienced in the cities where the Tsunami hit in 2011. Fighting against astronomical hesitation, I’ve always felt I should share. I started to share on Facebook back in the day. It was basically a blog that I post only once a year. This is clearly uneasy and brutal for the victims of the Tsunami or the great earthquake because I myself did not get hurt or lose my family. Therefore, the question I should ask myself is, “Am I supposed to share?”
Regardless of any complaint or backlash I’d get (not famous enough to get?), I believe it’s always possible to justify this kind of act on writing under the name of “the freedom of speech.” But, for me, my diary is probably a rambling of my thoughts. Nothing really much to conclude; it is fairly unscientific and possibly illogical. Not that I’m being irresponsible about people’s feelings or facts, but what “outsiders” feel matters too. Besides, I also felt the earthquake quite strong in Tokyo, and I still get scared when I have to feel it. So, writing about the disaster is my way of remembering the awe towards nature.
Having said that, the awe cannot justify myself sharing diaries. One would claim it’s torturing for victims; the other would say it’s crucial as a record. The latter is right in the sense that someone has to summarise what happens so that we can pass failures or accidents down to the coming generation. But I’m neither of them because I’m not a journalist or a writer. As horrible as it sounds, publishing my diary is a part of my act on art and requiem for victims.
I’ve come to see the significance of keeping a diary, and I started writing one on my first visit to Onagawa. It’s located in the northeast, facing the Pacific Ocean. The most scary thing is that there is a nuclear power plant, and it’s almost destroyed by the Tsunami. I spare the details about my experience here, but I learned about what culture is in another city, Kesennuma, close by where the Tsunami hit as well:
“When I was the only one left in the cafe and about to leave, I was chatting with the owner and told him that I come to Onagawa every year. The owner, who looked a bit like Che Guevara, asked me, ‘What do you think culture is?’ I answered that it’s when people think about something in their lives and make/say something, it accumulates, and when they look back on it, they can call the traces of that something culture. The shop owner went, “How you spell ‘culture (文化)’ means ‘a character (文字が) transforms (化ける)”. So, I think it’s something like the joy of taking a vague thought and turning it into a character/text or a thing’. He continued: ‘Kesennuma is doing a lot of things for reconstruction, but honestly, it’s not that interesting, is it? We are doing a lot of things here, but I see the reconstruction as a culture. Everyone talks about reconstruction and recovery, but they seem to be talking about restoring the town to its original state. If this Tsunami comes once every 1,000 years, it means that in another 1,000 years the same amount of damage will occur. It would be nonsense and uninteresting if we restore the town to as it was, and people would suffer from the same damage again’. He plays guitar, makes coffee for his customers and displays the work of local artists in his shop. For him, this is part of the culture of reconstruction.“
For those who work in art or architecture, it is significant to address history or politics. This is quite a banal thing to say, but this highlights that we tend to think culture comes after civilisation. Which is a fair thing to say, and it is true almost all the time. If you see pillaging and killing are the essence of civilisation, culture would not be a synonym for it. And culture is not dependent on civilisation. If anything, civilisation and culture may even contradict. The two may be inversely related, just as the development of a civilisation may lead to the demise of a culture. This almost happened in Japan not a long time ago.
It is often the case that you cannot specify what kind of culture you’re experiencing at the moment. We always look back, observe what we had and inscribe names. People talk about their feelings and put them into words or objects. This process is not necessarily out of serious thoughts or a devastating state of life. It is sometimes simply about playing around with words and objects. This is how humans, as a species, have survived.
To tell you the truth, what motivates me to write is the diary from Osamu Ishiyama. I was drowned in the tone of his writing: utterly calm and playful choice of words (which probably comes from his age) and hopeful lines. As much as I was shocked when I visited Onagawa, I thought I should make a record of my thoughts with a playful or hopeful tone. It seems to be a failure for the first time; however, this act of writing still shares the same interest as I have now.
The subject of this diary series is almost all about what we experienced in 2011. I’d keep writing about it and visiting those cities as much as possible. Not to mention, I’d share them. It will not always be pleasant, but it is not my contention that I try to open up the wounds of victims. I’d rather like to see what kind of culture they cultivate after the disaster and reflect on my art.
So, coming back to the original question, I share the diary for the sake of my pursuit of painting and architecture. And I believe diaries are the best medium for you to know what I genuinely feel. It may not be the ones from André Masson, but putting raw emotions into words greatly influences any artist.
It took me actually a long time to translate these diaries. One thing is that it is generally hard to translate Japanese into any other language. The other is that I couldn’t help but reminisce about the days back in Japan. It was just like receiving letters from the past.
01.11.2024 Basel
Diaries
– 03.04.2014 Diary from Onagawa
– 03.04.2014 Recovery as a culture
– 11.03.2021 Onagawa / Kesennuma