The Melting World

This piece was made by the sculptor, Mikako Tomotari, in dedication to the Ainu lands submerged by the Hokkaido government-sponsored dam in the Nibutani area of Hokkaido. Her comments and then comments on her comments (in English) are here.

She had wanted to throw it into the waters, so that only by the elimination of the dam could it be revealed to our eyes.

I think I read somewhere else that it was set near the damn instead, though.

Her sculpture demands that we re-think how so-called technological developments impact our land and the people who live on it (though, to be honest, no one really knows the benefits of this particular dam, besides the construction company and maybe the pockets of a few politicians, since its reason to exist–a proposed industrial park–never came to be).

In a similar way, I think I am trying to use the classroom as a space for some Ainu people to meet and speak with the primarily wajin university students. By listening to other ways of seeing, we have the chance to deepen and expand our ideas about how to live and why we live.

This week we watched the film, BARAKA, in class, which also celebrates the beauty of our world and at the same time unites us as fellow humans trying to make a life as best we can for our short time here. One student said he understood better how Japanese Zen Buddhism must seem odd for others not from Japan, and he imagined it must be how he felt when watching the scene in Bali of the Javanese men moving and singing in synchronicity.

For me, I realized again that the power of seeing up close the eyes and faces of other humans, and even the faces of animals (in the film there is the close-up of the snow monkeys in Japan, and one old monkey in the hot spring meditates, with his eyes slowly closing, just as any human would). In these unedited close-ups I feel the connection between us, no matter how different we may seem superficially.

Maybe our world leaders need to watch this film for 3-days-straight, without food or water. Would they then re-emerge more aware of the world’s interconnectedness, more in-tune as to how a death–even if they wish to soften it by calling it ‘collateral damage’– happening way over in another country due to their policies impacts the entire planet, impacts everyone’s quality of life? We are all diminished by the deaths of war. Do they care how their decisions design so many deaths and so many miseries? I think they will all realize it someday, preferably long before their eyes glaze over in that last moment of awareness, and I hope they can alter their ways.

I sound a tad grim perhaps, but I am not feeling grim. I just wish for more sanity and love. Today, not tomorrow!