hmmn: musings from the far east(erwood)
Yurakucho, November 4, 2003. Bessa R2, Konica Hexanon 50mm/2, Fuji Neopan 400 Presto.
For different reasons I’ve been often finding myself in Yurakucho station of late. On this particular occassion Naoko insisted I get a shoeshine for my weary Rockports that have now lasted longer than a year and half of almost daily use, and I snapped the above mirror shot while the nice man was working on my shoes. More Yurakucho images from the last month can be seen here.
Saturday evening there was a local festival a few blocks from where we live, so we strolled on over there to check it out. It turned out to be a Bon-Odori, or Bon Dance festival. The modest festival was held in a dirt lot across from a kindergarten (perhaps a parking lot by day?), but it could’ve been a large boat rocking back and forth on a river in a Suzuki Harunobu woodblock print for all I knew. That is to say, there was something ethereal, something dreamlike, about the evening.
The colored lanterns, they stay with me now a couple of days removed. I don’t know what it was about them, but even now I’m hard-pressed to think of a more beautiful image than the strings of cylindrical shaped paper lanterns in blues and oranges and greens and reds that ascended from the four corners of the lot up to the central tower structure, forming their own kind of open-air tent. That’s appropriate, perhaps, for in the midst of this traditional Japanese event I couldn’t help but think back to the carnivals and state fairs of my childhood in Hawaii. And perhaps deep down there was something resonating with the Obon festivals of the Japanese-American community in Hawaii, though I honestly don’t really remember going to any of those when I was a kid. But maybe I did, and the latent memories were called up the other night. Who knows?
Sadly, the digital camera was not able to capture the colors of the lanterns as I saw them, but perhaps that just adds to the dream. The evening became even more magical when we discovered that from where the festival was, we had a clear view of the fireworks being launched over the Arakawa River at the dual Todabashi and Itabashi Fireworks festivals. A bit too far for the digital, but I managed to grab a few half-decent shots, thanks to a relatively unimpeded view.
Fireworks booming down this way, Bon music and Taiko drums resounding down this way, it occurred to me that perhaps I was at a nexus of something that was uniquely of Japan, yet connected to flickering memories and resonances particular to me. While I chose not to participate, but rather to photograph and observe from the periphery, I still felt not on the outside looking in, but rather a part of the festivities, in my own way. Kind of like those beautiful lanterns making the shape of a tent in my imagination, but a tent not enclosed, and not smothering.
(Click on the photos for the gallery.)
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the Ozu exhibit in Kamakura, held at the Kamakura Museum of Literature. Above is a picture of the museum I took on that day (Fuji Neopan SS 100 ASA). A little bit more information about this structure can be found in the aforementioned post, or by taking a look at the museum’s web site (in Japanese only).