Nagoya, 1945: Survival - Gratitude - Creation

I've posted some images and thoughts on Japan's current disasters, both natural and man-made.

As I've also noted, the staggering task before Japan is complicated by years of economic prosperity. Even aside from the technological disaster of how to contain deadly nuclear reactors, the earthquake and tsunami left a region of the country buried under the everyday toxic materials of consumer society.

The big picture starts to make the country's task of rebuilding after World War II seem easy, in comparison: as if it had been mainly a matter of clearing rubble to make a clean start.

And despite the post-war scarcity of food and necessities, much of a war-weary populace looked forward to a freer life in a more democratic environment.

These thoughts of "then" versus "now"—and of the survivors whose lives were so terribly disrupted this March—also got me thinking about Ayako Miyawaki.

I didn't know her name at the time, but I started to see her designs when I lived in western Japan.

First, was this poster for a 1984 exhibition of appliqué works—
Unfortunately, I only saw the poster, not the show. But I was struck by the lively textile use in this design.

Then I began to notice fabric products printed with appliqué designs by the same artist. These were natural forms like fruit and vegetables, all fashioned from colorful textiles and signed with the syllable あ ["Ah".]

Catalog of a 1991 exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in D.C.

Beautifully printed in Japan, this detailed look at the work is next-best to actually seeing it. (All images below are from the book.)

This is how I finally learned the artist's name, and something of her story: told in the catalog's biographical sketch, critical notes, and Ayako's own words.

Born in 1905, she married Haru Miyawaki, a painter who taught public school in Nagoya, where the couple lived with their three children.

Ayako was forty when the war ended. On that day—August 15, 1945—

...when tears streamed ceaselessly down my cheeks, I realized now that I would be free to use time I had so long spent in vain going in and out of the bomb shelter on many hard and unbearable days during wartime.

I was happy that the war was over and excited about my own free time, which I yearned to have and which had been long in coming. It was then that I thought I should begin to do something for myself. "Appliqué work" was the first thing that came to my mind.

It was a craft already popular in Japan, but generally done from printed patterns. Taking the old clothes and rags that were available to her, Ayako went to work on her own designs, based on observing natural forms.

When I completed my first work, I gave it a close and joyful embrace! I decided to produce one work a day and exhibited them on the wall of my room. Sometimes I asked my husband to comment on my creations, and sometimes my children would review my work as if they were full-fledged art critics. Those were happy days.

Beginning from that sense of gratitude at the opportunity to start over, joined to her creativity in observation and design, Ayako developed her work over the years.

The designs use a variety of fabrics, often Japanese prints, batiks, and kasuri.

The latter is a technique akin to ikat, with designs traditionally woven in white on an indigo background. An illustrated pdf on kasuri/ikat technique and design is here. Some colorful mass-produced kasuri of the 1950s—and even more colorful labels from the fabric bolts—are here.

Ayako makes ingenious use of printed fabrics and kasuri to form details:

Flatfish and Camellia, 1973

Chinese Cabbage, 1975

Swellfish, 1986

Various fibers also contribute detail:

Onion Cut in Two, 1965

Potential materials are all around us, and in the mid-1980s, Ayako did a number of designs from used coffee filter cloth.

Haniwa Clay Figure of a Dog, 1985

Haniwa Clay Figures of a Man and Woman Dancing, 1985

Oh, It's My Grandpa! 1985

As a textile lover, I find Ayako's work very pleasing in design and choice of materials. This noren curtain is especially charming, as she comments directly on both materials and forms.

Good Forms and Fine Textiles, 1986

A closeup of one bit of a panel shows the beauty of the fabric details contained in each gourd shape:
Ayako began exhibiting work to the public in the 1950s.

... In those days I was full of love for pieces of fabric, nature and natural objects, and full of the joy of creation. As time went on, when I felt aged, I realized how much I was mentally supported by creating my works—I became strong by having a solid purpose in life.

Over the years she received greater recognition, and a mid-1980s exhibit traveled to several Japanese cities.

After her husband's death in 1985—

... I was not myself for some time. But when I was told I could set his soul at rest by continuing my work, I started in again, bit by bit. I always think that my husband's soul is still with me. Whenever happy and delightful things happen to me, I feel his soul keeping guard over me.

In 1988 the Asahi Shimbun, a major national newspaper, arranged for a show to tour Japan, then go on display in D.C.

... When I first heard of this [American exhibit], I was near to tears with joy. I think my husband would be the second person to be glad of this news, if he were here. I can hear his voice saying, "good for you." I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude, as well as that of my late husband. Now I feel as happy as when I created my first works. Involuntarily, I am clasping my hands in prayer.

Ochugen, 2011

With this year speeding by, it's already time for Japan's
mid-summer observance, ochugen.

And it was only last month—three months after the Tohoku region earthquake and tsunami—that Japanese authorities issued some admission of the seriousness of the nuclear plant meltdown.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail interviewed a former nuclear industry executive on the horrifying possibilities inherent in "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind."

Japan's reliance on nuclear power is a sad irony of history, for a country where civilians in two cities were victims of the world's first atomic bombs.

This spring, a number of elderly engineers volunteered for a likely "suicide mission"

That is not at all how the volunteers regard their plan, although the idea does inspire the obvious comparison to the country's World War II suicide pilots. But in the words of the volunteer group's co-founder, "My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don't take responsibility, who will?"

Reuters posted this report on the Japanese nuclear industry's past and present use of "throwaway workers" for the dangerous work of post-accident clean-ups. These are foreigners (including Americans), and homeless Japanese day laborers, the latter recruited mainly from the Kamagisaki section of Osaka.

The story really hits home, considering the widespread desperation created by economic conditions and the shredding of safety nets.

And having lived near Osaka, I've heard the story that Kamagaski, the city's skid row, is omitted from official maps so that general Japanese society can presume it does not exist.

The Reuters piece includes an unsettling look at a dying consumer culture momentarily revived—

In Iwaki, a town south of the Fukushima plant once known for a splashy Hawaiian-themed resort, the souvenir stands and coffee shops are closed or losing money. The drinking spots known as "snacks" are starting to come back as workers far from home seek the company of bar girls.

"It's becoming like an army base," said Shukuko Kuzumi, 63, who runs a cake shop across from the main rail station. "There are workers who come here knowing what the work is like, but I think there are many who don't."

In some ways, the problem is one of digging out from prosperity. On the extreme end of the scale is lethality of the non-degradable nuclear material; at some lower point is the overall amount of stuff there is in a consumer culture.

Photo: Jake Price

Wes Cheek posted words and pictures from a wrecked gas station—

This JA [company] gas station... had just opened last September. This is its last day in business. It sits just back from a cove, next to a river. The landscape is barren... it is a wasteland. The [wind] blows and the birds cry and cars are in the water and trains hang from bridges. This is where the tragic shifts to the unreal...

JA provided this machine, from Kyoto, that is pedaled to draw gas up from the ground. I went ahead and bought gas from them because, why wouldn't you? Again, people didn't just lose their jobs, they lost the places where there were to go to work in. Will there ever be a gas station here again?

Even without the nuclear disaster, this part of Japan would be awash in a staggering amount of everyday toxic materials, like the components and liquids inside cars wrecked by the tsunami, and left lying around or washed into the water.

In comparison, Japan's rebuilding after WWII somehow seems easy: with so much of the country leveled then, perhaps it was a matter of clearing rubble and just starting from the ground up.

And a reading of history suggests that, despite the hardships of post-war daily life, much of a war-weary population felt hopeful at the prospect of life in a freer and more democratic environment.

This March in the U.S., our millionaire rabble-rousing right-wing pundits sneered: Japan thinks it's so green for inventing the Prius and caring about recycling, and look what that got it.

But by early summer, our Midwest [where The Real Americans live] had water at the gates of nuclear plants built on flood plains—making real the threat of a Fukushima of our own.

By no means is sacrificing safety—to coziness among corporate, political, and regulatory entities—something that happens only in Japan.

Political ranting aside, the idea of survivors needing to rebuild their lives has been reminding me of a Japanese World War II survivor.

Her name was Ayako Miyawaki. Beginning by recycling the rags that were an available post-war material, she went on to create some very appealing art.

More about her life and work to follow...

May - Card of the Month

Japanese post card, c. 1960s-1970s; captioned on reverse—

"Tango-no Sekku," Boy's Festival (Children's Day) – May 5

At homes which have a boy or boys in the families, cloth or paper carp are flown on a pole set up temporarily in the garden. Inside of the houses, doll representing various traditional heroes are displayed wishing boys' health. After the World War II, this day was established as "Children's Day" for congratulating every child in Japan on their healthy growth.

Today happens to be the first day since March 11 that workers were to attempt entering here. One can only hope for health for all in Japan and—well, everywhere—considering potential global consequences.

As to the traditional "Boys' Day": a different take, from Mayumi Oda:

Girls Kite, Carp; silkscreen, 1983

Anniversary

On this day, fifty years ago:

Happy anniversary,
Comrade Gagarin, and Sputnik "Vostok"!

I remember the 1961 news only vaguely. According to this, Gagarin's flight was no big surprise to U.S. space scientists. They soon followed with Alan Shepard's suborbital flight the next month, and John Glenn's orbit in '62.

I came upon the Gagarin card twenty-plus years after the event. Beyond the heroic image-making, it seemed the sensitive face of this Soviet boy-next-door had something quite genuine about it.

That seems to have been a good read.

This suggests the first man in space was a highly likeable and accomplished person, shaped by humble origins and the deprivation of a war-time childhood.

On a tour of Britain three months after his space flight, Gagarin was such a hit that

... The Russophobe Daily Mail even ran the headline: "Make him Sir Yuri!", while John F Kennedy was so alarmed by his popularity that he banned him from entering the United States.

And he's still popular:

According to Andrea Rose, a director of the British Council who is behind plans to erect a statue of Gagarin in London, this veneration is because Gagarin is "the one untarnished figure from the Soviet era".

He died far too young, in a 1968 training plane crash.

Interesting to read about world reaction to Gagarin in 1961.

While I remember the flight just dimly, I have very strong memories of an American TV show, about three years later. Now I wonder: did the Gagarin image influence a certain fictional Russian?

He was an attractive, charasmatic Russian.

Sound out his name, with Hollywood Russian accent: hear the strong resemblance to Yuri Gagarin.

Arrival of Spring

Japanese post card, c. 1970s—

Today marks one month since Japan's deadly earthquake and tsunami.

And it's just after the first weekends in April, when the cherry trees flower and people in Japan get together for hanami: blossom-viewing (with picnicking—and especially, drinking—under the trees).

A Tokyo resident, photographer Alfie Goodrich, expresses some thoughts about this year's hanami as "a chance to celebrate the best of mother-nature, after seeing her worst."

I started the year posting Japanese images, and it's been painful to think about continuing, with all that's happened in the last month.

Another post card, c. early 1970s—
There's no English caption, and for years I treasured this card as an amusingly odd image: working-class Japanese enjoying a sunny day outing, as they accompany a boat transformed into what looked to me like a somewhat goofy creature.

(It's something about the look in that eye...)Years after finding this in the U.S., I had learned enough Japanese to identify the location in the card's capition, and google up this description:

Minato Matsuri (port festival), held August 4-5 in the city of Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture. Portable shrines are carried aboard two large boats, decorated as a phoenix (as in the card) and a dragon. The main boats are followed by family fishing boats, as everyone joins in to pray for good catches.

From this series of photographs, here is a Shiogama scene last month:

Volunteers sift through debris in Shiogama, northern Japan, Sunday, March 20, 2011, after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
AP Photo/The Yomiuri Shimbun, Miho Takahashi

Having lived in the country (though in a region far from the disaster zone), I have a sense of how much life will never be the same. And having traveled through a good bit of Japanese countryside, I know that the rural population is elderly, as are so many of the survivors living through this trauma.

Toward the end of March, there were some very moving images and words by photographers traveling in the region.

Jake Price's photo essay is here. He stayed in a shelter for the displaced and reported that —

The elderly were hit the hardest. At least sixty percent of the people in the center were elderly...

While much has been written about Japanese stoicism, I don't see it that way. There's a lot going on in thoughts and hearts if you look closely at faces and eyes as well. The events of two Fridays ago were swift and violent; people along the coast are still in a state of deep shock. The first person whom I spoke with in my hotel in Yamagata started shaking and was nearly brought to tears when she heard that I was interested in her story. "Aside from my husband it's been a week since I've told anyone about what happened. I just needed to tell someone."

... Although I had my own food, I was constantly being given more. I wanted to turn it down, but to do so I thought would be impolite. While reserved, people were also open, giving, concerned for this stranger who showed up with dirty boots and two bags. Not stoic at all. If anything, I found people determined to keep a gracious spirit alive even during this most trying of times. At the epicenter I did not come across one crack in a single building; accordingly, the same can be said about people's dignity.

Price's experiences are echoed by Wes Cheek, who traveled to rural areas where aid was finally reaching some of the people who, isolated in their own homes (not shelters), had been cut off from the rest of the country.

He phoned reports to Sam Seder's podcast during the trip, and the March 30 show [after the 2:30 mark] has some inspiring stories of survivors helping each other.

The March 31 report [2:00 mark] had stories like Jake Price's: of survivors being grateful that someone was simply listening, and that the world had not forgotten them.

Wes also had some observations about how, enormous as the task of rebuilding will be, it will be helped by the country's focus on infrastructure, and a sense of refusing to let the survivors down.

He also mentioned the difference from American attitudes after Katrina, as in the "why didn't they leave?" blaming of victims.

To that, I would add: Japanese society isn't subject to the kind of divide and conquer rule under which we live. After Katrina, the political agenda that benefits from pushing fear of the other acted as it always does, in demonizing the storm's victims. A practice promoted by our media, directly, or by declining to perceive it.

True, there was a Japanese right-winger's grandstanding after the disaster. But Ishihara soon had to walk back what he said; unlike here, there is not a Japanese mass media promoting this kind of thing, 24/7.

One month later: the nuclear plants are anything but contained. Belatedly, the evacuation zone is being extended a bit, as aftershocks continue.

As in this country, there was a long history of government collusion with corporations corruption in hiding the lack of safety.

Long-range consequences to the environment and human health, in Japan and around the world, are unknown. They will be unaffected by national borders.

If there's to be any hope for this poor planet, it will be if activism in Japan and the rest of world aren't too late, and can get results.

Anti-nuclear demonstration in Tokyo, March 27.
Reuters/Toru Hanai

Serious Fooling Around

Sheet music front cover—

Words and music by Slim Gaillard and Lee Ricks, 1946
American Academy of Music, Incorporated
1619 Broadway - New York City

A fine singer—as comes through even his silliest lyrics—Slim Gaillard was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist.

He also was an early experimenter with studio overdubbing, which let him record at least one number, "Genius" (aka, "Ride Slim Ride"), where he plays every instrument in a combo.

In the late 1930s he teamed with bassist Slam Stewart. Recording as Slim & Slam, the two had several hit records.

Songs incorporated a hipster lexicon, "vout," which Slim invented. The lingo is so out there, it seems a parody of hipster talk, and Slim continued to use it to the end of his career.

He had an excellent ear for languages, and was able to combine a smattering of words with convincing ad libbed sounds. One example, in "Spanish," is after the 1:50 mark here.

And this was supposed to have been inspired by Slim's boarding with—and being fed by—a woman of Middle Eastern ancestry. According to Wiki, his landlady was Armenian, and the entry cites several dishes, as well as Arabic phrases ("I'm broke!") in the lyrics to "Yep Roc Heresy."

A few minutes of a 1980s video ; Slim's interviewer is George Melly, an English musician, arts critic, and author.

Melly calls Slim "the possessor of a truly surreal, freewheeling imagination."

My own favorite example is how he turned a 1950s pop hit into this:

Everybody's wondering
How high the moon.
Does the moon ever wonder
How low you are?

That's only the intro; it gets seriously surreal after that.

A good sampling of typical hijinks, as well as musical chops, is here.

The TV show (c. early 60s) is not identified, but a segment combining jazz + comedy has to be from a Steve Allen show. Apparently, Oxydol and Westinghouse were sponsors, per Slim's ad lib lyrics.

Slim's "o-rooney" linguistic inventiveness was surely an influence on "Steverino," perhaps inspiring Allen's "Schmock-Schmock!" catch phrase coining.

About twenty years after that performance on the show, Gaillard recorded with Allen, as one of the quartet on "Steve Allen's Hip Fables" (1983).

These were re-tellings of children's stories, in "cool" jazz lingo. A track I've heard: "The Three Little Pigs," where each line of Allen's lyrics is followed by a melodious barrage of rolled "r"s, as Slim "translates" the story into his own version of Spanglish.

J. spotted this at a library sale:
According to this, tracks were recorded in 1951 and '52.

Some cover art detail:

Illustrator David Stone Martin included cats hanging out here:
With all the food references in Slim's lyrics, I took this for some kind of dish or cooking pot until J. set me straight: it's a trumpet mute.

Back cover portrait of the recording artist:

The song list even includes a seasonal note for April:

March - Card of the Month

Japanese post card, c. 1960s-1970s; captioned on reverse—

March - "Hina Matsuri" Doll Festival or Girls Festival – March 3

On March 3, little girls display their dolls in classical dresses, which have been handed over by their sisters and mothers, on a stand covered with red cloth. They invite their friends each other and share the delicacies of the festival season.