Utsubo Park

This Friday I went with a friend to an exhibition of contemporary German photography at the Museum for Modern Art in Kyoto. The exhibition was called Zwischen Wirklichkeit und Bild: Positionen der Gegenwart. The exhibition is about contemporary German photography from the 1980s to today. Their are pictures byt the leading figures of German photography since the 1970s are Bernd and Hilla Becher, who photograph industrial buildings. They always take black and white pictures of those industrial constructions, like water towers, factory halls and mineshaft, in the same clinical manner: a front and profile angle provide a clear and objective documentation of each structure, the building is placed in the centre of the frame and isolated from its environment. One of the intriguing things is that they take those pictures of those structures and by putting them together all these structures kind of get a personality and one can see the differences in structure although their function stays the same. The other thing that stroke me was the total absent of humans in their pictures, although the buildings are there because of human efforts.
At the same time as I was at the art gallery, my German friends were in Osaka at Utsubo Park shooting material for a documentary we are making about the homeless living in that park. There are 30 homeless living in tents in Utsubo park. Most of the homeless are single males and in their between the 50’s. They got laid off by their companies, usually in construction work, and being unable to pay the rent they end up on the streets. Usually by doing all kinds of petty jobs, including those for the yakuza, they are able to get some money to keep themselves in live and be able to buy the material for building a tent. The estimate is that there are about 10000 homeless people in Osaka and that more than 200 of them die in one year because of starvation or because they freeze to dead. Osaka wants to evict the homeless from the Utsubo park and turn down the tents, because in May there’s going to be held the 'World Rose Convention 2006' and they are afraid that all those blue tents with homeless people in front of them is going to give them a bad image and that it might hurt tourism. The homeless received a official order from the city to leave the park, and as an alternative they are offered a place in a shelter also called "self independent centers". Which sounds as a reasonable alternative, but the trick is that they are expected to have found a job and be able to get back in society in a few months, and thus they have to leave the shelter after a month. Because a great number of the homeless has not had a regular job for almost 10 years, the actual chance of finding work is really limited. Which basically means that they are back on the street again but this time even without a tent.
It’s obvious that the homeless do not want this to happen, so the homeless of Utsubo park filed a law suit against the eviction order of their park from Osaka city. My friends and I have followed the homeless of Utsubo park with a video camera for almost a week. We filmed them at their tents, but also in their actions to call attention of both the public as well as Osaka city for their case. Today it was announced that the homeless have won their lawsuit against the city of Osaka but the question is still whether or not the park is going to be evicted on Monday the 30th.
If buildings are capable of getting personality when grouped together I also hope that the city of Osaka can see those homeless people also being distinct human individuals, who all have their own stories, and all had a live as an ordinary citizen before they were homeless.
And we think it is worth that their sides is also heard, although we know that we also blur the distinction between reality and image by making a documentary about them. But for them it is the hard reality, that they are now facing the fact that one of the most basic needs, a space for living, is going to be destroyed.

Chikushino

The second part of my winter vacation brought me to the southern part of Japan, back to the island Kyushu. To be more precisely it brought me back to Chikushino-shi, basically a suburb of Fukuoka. I was invited to spend new year with my host family of 4 years ago.
It’s strange to notice that a world that one the one hand was the reality I lived in for one year, but seemed so far when I was in the Netherlands, still existed almost unchanged.
I am always nervous when I see people or places again that I haven’t seen for a long time, but both the persons as well as the environment had hardly changed. And after the first excitement of seeing each other again had faded away, it felt like those 4 years in between had never existed, they kind of faded away, that’s how natural it felt to be back in their family life even it was for only one week. After Tokyo, the speed of life was way more relaxed, I was not there as a tourist but as a guest in a family. Toasting in front of the TV we entered 2006. On January the first we went to Dazaifu Shrine, where we prayed for a good new year and I also bought omamori, a kind of amulets that protect you or enable you to achieve you certain goals. I bought the omamori for good results at school. Also in Dazaifu there had recently opened the 4th national museum of Japan, this being the only one of it’s kind in Kyushu. And because it was located in Kyushu, one of the focus points is international relations, because the ports through which those relations took place were mainly located on Kyushu. So they concentrated on the relations with Korea and China but also with the Netherlands. With my hostfamily I went to a special exhibit of Chinese treasures, and later returned to see the permanent exhibition. At the station there was also a banner for the Olympic Games of 2016, for which Dazaifu was competing. So although by now means as sparkling, one can see that Dazaifu is trying to make her way up in gaining fame as a city. By the kind of lucky coincidence what you sometimes encounter, 3 friends of mine who study in Nagasaki were at the same time in Fukuoka. And we were all able to watch one intriguing fact of consumerism in Japan. The winter sale start on the 3th of January and already early in the morning people are cueing in order to be able to get a fukubukuro, a bag full of brand clothes. The trick is that you pay far less than what is the actual amount of money for the clothes, but on the other hand you don’t know what is inside the bag. The shopping area was extremely crowded on this holiday, loads of women carrying bags and bored-looking husbands and boyfriends dragging behind. Later it appeared on the news that people almost fought about the bags, and used all parts of their bodies in order to be able to buy such a bag. Without having bought any clothes I returned back to Kyoto. But my heart felt as if I had done the best buy in the world, because my host family had told me that as long as I was in Japan I could regard their home as my home, and I was always welcome. And that’s something more worth to me than all the money spend on clothes on the 3rd of January.

Tokyo

I am on the 30th floor of a building in Shinjuku and looking over a tremendous number of lights, white and fleshy, yellowish, and red flickering ones as far as my eyes can reach.
It’s incredible that there are so many people on the move, the lights of cars in a line is like an never-ending snake crawling to Tokyo, sometimes crossed by trains full of commuters going home. But still I am here, together with Wataru, a Japanese friend but currently studying in the Netherlands, who was here to visit his Italian girlfriend Adriana, and a good German friend of mine, Constantin. It seems a little miracle that we were able to meet each other in this tremendous city. Just a brief meeting with people from all over the world, a moment in time, all gazing over the vastness of Tokyo. How to describe my experience Tokyo, a city with at least 12 million inhabitants, numerous parts with all their own distinct character. I and my travel mate Constantin decided to try to go all kinds of different parts to get a kind of kaleidoscopic experience of Tokyo, both covering the tourist as well as the back alleys. The rustic feel surrounding the Imperial Palace, with all kinds of joggers passing us by, all neatly dressed in sporting gear, taking a break from life. But also the flashing lights, the crowd, the constant movement of Shinjuku, and the fashionable youth in Harajuku, standing at the corners, some singing songs, others doing tricks on their skateboards. The cramped subway, people who almost loose their shoes in their desperate try to catch a train, although 5 minutes later the next one will come, equally crowded. My favourite district, the book district, with neatly organized bookshops, quite different from those in Kyoto where the books usually are piled up everywhere at the shop and you have to be really careful not to hit anything. And if you continue walking you’ll end up in the heaven for anything electric, Akihabara. And of course I had to visit the district which at first appeared at my study books, Ueno. Around Ueno Station there have emerged all kind of little shops selling a number of different kind of goods, people are bargaining, people are screaming for attention. It has the feel and air of a market place, which stands in contrast with the usually shops that sell brand names. And especially in Ginza, where one can find most of the flag stores of all the European and American brands that the Japanese are so fond of. A visit to the famous Yasukuni-shrine with it’s infamous museum, which has really a lot of information but sometimes not exactly the information I learned in my history classes. At 5 o’clock, after a 2 hour nap, back on my feet to visit the fish market in Tsukuji, all different kind of fish, which I could not discern, but they were all going to be sliced to be pieces to be consumed. And Constantin and I did or share, to eat fresh sashimi at a little restaurant in the neighbourhood. But not only our stomach had to be filled, but also our cultural appetite. After seeing Noh in Kyoto we also wanted to experience Kabuki, and we watched a dance and a play. It was nice that one could see the elements similar to Noh but also the differences, it does not have the monumentum of Noh, but has an attraction of it’s own, by it’s fast dances, which clearly show the actor’s ability.
And before I knew I was back in the bus, gazing out the window to this enormous city, totally worn out but still feeling the adrenaline of all the different experiences running through my veins.