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The title “Heian” corresponds to a name of period in the
middle age in Japan from the 8 th century to the 14 th, when the country had accomplished a maturity in culture on its own with Shinden style architectures of plain wood and
Yamatoe and Waka (Japanese pictures and poems) celebrating seasonal animals and plants.
On the other hand, with the title, I’ve never had the slightest intention
of provoking any nostalgia for the good old days. Instead, such elements as light, color, humidity, air and tenderness that the word Heian evokes in my mind are
the motivation of the project along with a hope the world today would reevaluate peace and well-being, that are just what the word Heian means.
The concept of the
creation is “substraction”. Because the act of subtraction, as opposed to that of addition, can make things simple to stimulate people’s
imagination. In fact, this is the very virtue of Japanese sprit of beauty.
The materials are all “raw things” as follows:
1) plain wood
2)
living creatures
3) natural light
The plain wood I used is of unprocessed Japanese cypress called Hinoki, that is so sensitive that it loses its color and becomes
cracked only for two days’ exposure to the sun. Therefore, I was obliged to wrap it with vinyl plus black cloth to keep it alive under the suitable humidity until
just before the shooting. And with it, I reinterpreted such Japanese traditional interior motifs as bathroom, alcove, kitchen, rail, folding screen and armor
stylishly.
Living creatures are all small animals that represent the concept “subtraction”: roundfishes, bees, erucas, crows, snakes, frog eggs, carps,
pigeons, silkworms, rabbits and so on.
The natural light means the shooting under the natural light in the open air. Therein, plain wood and small animals were brought
together on a cloudy day at midday (11 to 14 o’clock) when there were no shadows but tender atmosphere. Due to the difficult condition to have, it took years of
shooting before I accomplished the project.
The attitude “subtraction” is applied also to the camera angle I chose. Keeping 7 to 8 meters distance
from the subjects, I respected a natural vision “my sense of sight”. As a result, the size of the animals in all the images came to become nearly of full
size.
The camera aperture I applied were always open, so that all the images will give you the physiologic feeling it is yourself who look at them on site with your own
open eyes. The size of film grains is also so natural, far from the digital resolution of today, that everyone having normal eyesight will get a feeling he/she looks at
them on the scene as well.
Putting importance on the essentials of Japanese sense of beauty “subtraction” and “tenderness”, I wish this kind of
attitude would be effective in the chaotic world of the day.
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