Good, Inside and Out

I've suggested below that the out of control technology of nuclear power—and a rather out of control quantity of consumer goods—must make the cleanup of northeastern Japan a task very different from the country's post-World War II rebuilding.

For one thing, modern marketing and consumption habits make disposable packaging ubiquitous. And in a country where presentation is so important, each cookie in a box is likely to be wrapped individually. When I lived in Japan in the mid-1980s, I also learned that you have to speak up fast, before the book store clerk wraps the magazine you've just bought to read on the train.

Japan is a country where packaging is an art, and traditional wrapping can be both artful and reuseable. The practice of carrying furoshiki is being encouraged again by Japan's Ministry of the Environment.

And Japanese are very recycling conscious: a point American right-wing pundits— shameless as ever—used in mocking tsunami survivors.

Food tins are one type of packaging that can be reused as storage containers, if not put out with the recycling. For me, the designs on Japanese tins made it hard to part with any I acquired.

It was in the U.S., though, that I found this sembei tin—at a Seattle Buddhist church rummage sale, late in the 1990s.

The color scheme seems to be from the 1970s. If that's right, the tin was likely reused for twenty or more years before it came my way.

The post-war urge to decorate things with English (or the appearance of English) is also on display here.

In this case, English seems not a matter of flashy marketing but of eagerness to inform buyers of the product's great virtues:

MIRINYAKI
OKAKI
"MOCHI CRUNCH"
...

Delicious tea-Cake

Tasty accompaniment to adr-
ink nice relish taked with beer.

Good taste and nourishment are our
first consideration in making this
sliced rice-cake by the recipe of our
own, using superior materials and
genuine soy and a sweet kind of sake.
This rice-cake digests well, nutri-
tious, and will suit your taste. We
solicit you orders.

The text may have been written for the tin. Or it may have done double duty, as it sounds like it could have been part of a letter pitching the product to foreign distributors.

The earnestness does seem quaint because, by the 1980s, English words and phrases connected to products and marketing were pretty much decorative. When there was a vogue for the word "communication," there were "Chocolate Communication" candy bars, "Bread Communication" bakeries, and more.

Some products have designs incorporating longer pieces of text. These sometimes start off sounding fluent; but then... To quote a tee-shirt from around 1985:

It is imperative that the rising generation master at least one foreign language. I like study Engrish.

Sometimes I saw products with sentences or paragraphs in a Romance language, French being most common. To me (and my high school French ability), those examples seemed far more grammatical than the usual English on products—I think because those texts were likely lifted from some printed source.

It was the seemingly literary passages, appearing in strange, out of context uses, that was so striking.

My favorite example is this cake tin...


... and the tale it tells:


My translation:

She never went out. She would rise each morning at the same time, look at the weather from her window, then sit down before the fire in the room.

When she had finished her meal, she went to the window and looked at the Rue de Seine, full of people.

Taken from a literary rendering of upper class ennui?

A sad story; and yet, it seems quite grammatical.

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...