Notes

An exhibition was planned for Taipei, and a large painting titled Miss Moonlight was a candidate to be shown. I thought that another painting of the same size was needed to pair with Miss Moonlight, which was my newest piece at the time. I had this thought back in last autumn, but it was close to the end of January when I actually began painting. I wasn’t being lazy. Miss Moonlight is powerful, both pictorially and spiritually, and I knew I needed to be at peak mental condition to create another painting of the same quality so I didn’t dare pick up my brushes immediately. If I was still my younger self that I was in my 40s, I think I would have just plunged right into painting. And it would not have gone well, and I would keep waiting for the person in the painting to be born. Painting and erasing, over and over again, waiting for that person to come to life. In my 40s, it was like that. 

Ten years ago, three months after I had turned 51, a huge earthquake devastated Eastern Japan. The news of this disaster, which included not only the earthquake and tsunami but also the nuclear power plant meltdown, was broadcast to the world. The large affected area of what came to be called the Great East Japan Earthquake was an expanse between Aomori prefecture, where I was born and raised, and Tochigi prefecture, where I currently live. It overlapped completely with the path I take to travel back home. There was non-stop media coverage of the entire coastal area being destroyed by the tsunami, the ever-rising numbers of the dead and missing, and images of evacuated people. Seeing these broadcasts, I began to feel like my creative desire was also destroyed and swept away by the tsunami. I think people all over Japan suffered from this sense of emptiness after the earthquake. I had no desire to create anymore, and so I headed to the affected areas to volunteer, maybe in an effort to confirm my own existence. Six months after that, I was still unable to paint but I turned to clay instead, and started sculpting as if I were wrestling with the clumps of earth. Using no tools, only my two hands, I began sculpting human heads. These were over 1m tall, and so it really was like wrestling with my whole body. I did this work at the same university I studied at when I was in my 20s, alongside the current students in the same studio. This took me back to my own student days. I ended up living in the university dorms, working in the school’s studios, and cooking and eating dinner with the students every night. This continued until February of the next year, and by March, I had completed a lot of statues. Exactly one year after the earthquake, I found myself picking up my brushes and facing the blank canvas. 

I was able to paint again. But I couldn’t paint at the same speed as before. And yet, I think I’ve become able to paint more deeply at a gentle pace. Layering colors, engaging in meaningful conversations with the faces I’m painting; I wasn’t just moving the painting forward on my own, but rather doing it in dialogue with what was being painted. Sometimes this went well and sometimes not, but my attitude in facing the painting surface had clearly changed. Instead of pushing forward with youth and force, I started to meditate deeply instead. It takes time, but I now paint thoroughly. This thoroughness is not about technical neatness but about how seriously I think inside my heart. My production is slower now, but the finished paintings don’t have a wide variance in quality like they used to. I think I’m now able to maintain a certain level of quality. And all of this came to fruition with Midnight Truth, which I painted in 2017. I believe that Midnight Truth is my true value that I reached after six years from the earthquake. 

Now, I thought that 2017’s Midnight Truth was the destination of my painting work post-earthquake, but of course I continued to create after that. I felt no pressure and I continued to create matter-of-factly. And what came of this is Miss Moonlight. In early spring of 2020 I painted Miss Moonlight; she was born from a place of no expectations, no desires. It felt like the thing that I desired most was born from a place where I desired nothing. This figure has her eyes closed as if thinking about something; I felt like this was the goal of my painting after all of my struggles and pain since the earthquake in 2011. If Midnight Truth was the destination, Miss Moonlight felt like it was telling me, “It’s ok to rest now.” When this painting was completed, I felt like I was wrapped in happiness.

And finally, to talk about my newest piece, Hazy Humid Day. When the exhibition in Taiwan was decided, almost all of my favorite pieces including Midnight Truth were in Los Angeles for a large retrospective-style exhibition, and it didn’t seem possible to show them in Taiwan. So I felt that I needed to create a painting comparable to Midnight Truth for Taiwan and started working, but I got worked up and it didn’t go well. During this frustration, I realized that I might be able to show a painting called Miss Moonlight in Taiwan, which at the time was on exhibit at the Mori Art Museum for a show called “STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World.” This exhibition, composed of the work of 6 artists representing Japan, was originally planned to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics, which was later delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. My newest painting at the time, Miss Moonlight, was in this exhibit, and when I knew that the timing would work out to show this piece in Taiwan also, my heart trembled. The realization that I would be able to show a painting that really represented me in Taiwan made me feel very relaxed, and I became filled with natural enthusiasm to create a piece to go face-to-face with Miss Moonlight. There was no pressure because this feeling came about organically. So I stretched a canvas to create a painting that could face off with Miss Moonlight. And then in front of the blank canvas, I started to think about all kinds of things. This was not pressure-bearing thinking. A painting that freely took in Miss Moonlight and responded to it. That said, it shouldn’t be an impulsive response; it would be good if it was a painting that expressed my feelings at the time naturally. It was autumn that I thought of this, but when I started painting, it was the end of January of the following year. Objectively, this may have seemed too tight a turnaround for the exhibit in Taiwan, but I knew in my heart there was plenty of room to breathe. And in actuality, several days was all I needed to thrust onto the canvas all of the feelings that I had saved up since autumn.

This painting that came into being in this way is not what I would call my current best, but my genuine norm, my raw self. As I painted this, I was thinking of Taiwan, which I’ve visited several times already, and named it Hazy Humid Day. Thank you for following this story of how this painting was born, I appreciate it. I believe it has turned out to be an even deeper painting than it looks. I’m happy that I can show this piece in Taiwan, and I also want to say “Thanks” to my previous selves.