Since her experience studying abroad in the United States in the 1970s, Awaya Nobuko has been concerned with issues of identity, and has since traveled the world to study minorities and intercultural communication. In recent years, she has been launching art projects based in Chihanan in Izu, her hometown. We spoke to her about the content and intentions of her activities.
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A cross between the past and the future, Japan and the world
Kawai: I heard that overseas artists from various fields have participated in the " Chihan Art Project " event that you hold at "Chihan-an" in your hometown of Izu. Please tell us about the relationship between your research and activities to this project and the aim of this project.
Awaya: The Chihan Art Project is, so to speak, a practical version of intercultural communication. We make full use of my childhood home, the Former Suganuma Residence: Chihan-an, and hold exhibitions, concerts, and other high-quality original projects together with our staff, known as "Team Chihan." People who have never seen Chihan Art may sum it up as "Oh, it's art in an old house," but that's not the case.
There is no idea of holding a shakuhachi concert in an Edo-period house, or simply bringing contemporary art into an old house. Each art project is planned in collaboration with the Izu site, so it takes three years to implement. Every year, we think about what will happen three years from now. From the beginning, we have been planning projects that cross various things, such as the past and the future, Japan and foreign countries, Izu and Edo, with the theme of "cultural intersection."
Kawai: Specifically, what kind of artists have participated so far, and what kind of events have they held?
Awaya: Wow, that's a tough question! I don't know what to talk about from the 13 projects... I'll explain some representative ones.
The joint US-Japan contemporary dance performance " Izu House " was held in the very early days, but it was born out of an invitation to Roko Kawai to give a lecture at the Asian American Studies Association. She is a self-described 1.5 generation Japanese who came to America at a young age with her father, a heart surgeon who came to America as part of the brain drain. As a dancer, she expressed the gap between cultures. When she visited Chihanan, something in her creative process must have been sparked.
He immediately contacted Leah Stein, the director of a dance company in Philadelphia with whom he often dances, and a few years later, he created a dance suited to the location of Chihanan in Izu, and returned to Japan with a grant from the United States. In addition to them, voice Kimura Mika from Japan, dancer Arai Hideo, and another percussionist, Toshi, participated from the United States. The piece, which involved dancing inside and outside the house, featured shoji and fusuma doors that opened and closed freely, and the audience split into small groups to follow the dancers, making for a fun performance. It was also featured in the International Herald Tribune, and the following year, the same members were given a grant from the Japan Foundation and toured the United States.
" Silent Pulse " is an exhibition by French artist Cecile Andrieu, who creates works with the theme of words. She creates her works using materials such as shredded dictionaries and newspapers. She has come to Chihan-an many times, and we have talked about the functions and lifestyles of houses in the Edo period. I am the last of the "midwife generation," and I was born when my mother and the midwife entered the inner room of Chihan-an with the sliding screens and doors closed.
The inner room was the most important guest room, but it was also used for childbirth. While waiting for the birth, the father and grandfather would be nervous inside, but would leisurely play Go in the hall, and when they heard the cry of "Ogyaa", they would finally stop playing. In any case, in old Japanese homes, births, weddings, and funerals were all held at home. There wasn't much movement or fluidity of people, and people were born at home, died at home, and when they died, they were buried in the ancestral tombs in the back. Nowadays, births, weddings, and funerals are all outsourced industries.
So, Cecil said that if he were to create an artwork at Chihan-an, he would like to create a work that represents the cycle of human birth, activity, and death, and planned to represent a series of life events with gradation-colored paper for each room. I suggested that he use materials from the house, and in the end, he printed 6,800 sheets of scanned paper related to each room, such as baby's clothes from the hermitage for the birth room, paper strips from haiku meetings that were regularly held for the activity room, and his great-grandfather's will for the death room, and shredded them all to use as art materials.
At that time, we applied for sponsorship from the French Embassy, which showed interest and not only sponsored the event, but also designated it as a commemorative event for the 90th anniversary of Japan-France cultural cooperation.
The theme of the exhibition "Voice of Sumi" was ink, and I commissioned a three-dimensional work from Aoki Ichika, a representative Shizuoka artist, and a calligrapher and contemporary French artist Dominique Hezard, who created a calligraphy piece and an outdoor installation of washi paper stretched over trees. I also exhibited Alain's work for the first time in Japan after several decades. My concept of ink is that it is a medium that penetrates into the layers of fibers, and as the degree of penetration of a painting differs between the front and back, I hung Alain's work in the middle of the room so that it could be seen from both the front and back.
Chihan Art often holds concerts of contemporary Japanese music, and for the first concert in a series called "Air Concert," we performed "HARAKIRI" composed by Hungarian composer Peter Eötvös, with his direct permission. This piece is a contemporary piece that is often performed at European music festivals, but is rarely performed in Japan. Not only is the piece unknown, but it also requires three performers, two wind instruments, and a woodcutter, in addition to the narrator.
The sound of the woodcutter chopping wood acts as a percussion instrument, and since it's difficult to get a woodcutter on stage even in Europe, Japanese clappers are often used. But Chihanan is a house, so the venue was a room facing the garden, and outside, a woodcutter chopped over 100 bamboo sticks to make the sound, while in the room in front, Christopher Yomei played the shakuhachi and Kinoshita Daisuke played the woodwind flute. It was very realistic and powerful.
Christopher is an American who grew up in Texas, but encountered the shakuhachi in Japan, studied under Goro Yamaguchi, a Living National Treasure, at the Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School, and was given the name Kinko-ryu. Kinoshita is a young musician who studied at a music university in Germany and has also been active in China. The narrator was Hidejiro Honjo, a leading figure in the contemporary shamisen who has won numerous awards, including the Idemitsu Music Award.
The 2023 "In the Gardens of Japan" concert features eight English poems about Japanese gardens written by Kenny Fries, an American living in Berlin, set to music by Kumiko Takahashi, a composer known for contemporary Japanese music, sung by Mika Kimura, and featuring Japanese instruments such as the koto, shakuhachi, shamisen, and noh flute, and was premiered by Chihan Art. The concert was made free of charge with funding from the Canadian Government Arts Council. Kenny is a disabled person, and he came to the Izu venue in a wheelchair from Berlin and even recited a poem. He is a wonderful novelist who is openly gay and Jewish, and his friend, Alison O'Daniel, a deaf filmmaker, came to Japan and provided silent footage that was shot there, which was a luxurious concert to be shown in parallel with the concert.
Japanese Music in the World
Awaya: Modern Japanese music may sound strangely difficult, but it's not about knowledge. It's about whether the sound itself resonates or reaches you. For example, many people think that the shamisen is Japanese, but there is knowledge that it originated from a Turkish three-stringed instrument. By the way, when I interviewed Yo-Yo Ma before, he said that the cello also originated in the Middle East.
Among Japanese instruments, I think the shakuhachi in particular is an internationalized Japanese instrument. Christopher, mentioned above, is one of the shakuhachi players who founded shakuhachi festivals in Colorado and the Czech Republic. You may wonder what I mean by internationalization, but it's not just that there are many shakuhachi performers from outside Japan, but there are also many composers of shakuhachi music overseas. The fact that there are so many such composers is proof of the internationalization of the shakuhachi. In addition, Colleen Schmicow, who composed and performed the rakugo story "Botan Toro," is also researching shamisen music itself and often gives presentations at academic conferences in Western Europe. Japanese instruments are no longer as Japanese as Japanese people think, but are enjoyed by people all over the world.
For starters, many people in the Japanese community continue to play the koto and taiko drums, and it's been a long time since they created new music like "HIROSHIMA" in America.
There were two unforgettable events, though they were not concerts. One time, Christopher took his family, Mark Izu (who, together with his wife Brenda Aoki, led Asian American culture; he passed away in January this year), to Chihanan and spent half a day relaxing there. Just before Mark came to Japan, there was a screening of the film "The Izu Dancer" at a museum in California, and Mark had composed the music for it.
There are various versions of "The Izu Dancer" depending on the era, but Mark said that he set music to an early silent film. I was surprised. It was the 1933 version directed by Gosho Heinosuke and starring Tanaka Kinuyo. Gosho and my grandfather were close friends, and Gosho would often come to Chihan-an. He was a member of the haiku group that Chihan (my grandfather's pen name, which is also the origin of the family's registered name) held at the hermitage. During the war, my grandfather also looked after Gosho, who, like Ozu Yasujiro, was not the kind of person to make films that encouraged war. Mark was very surprised and happy that he had been led to this place by chance.
Another one is Ron Chew. I haven't seen him for a long time, but I was impressed by the vivid memories of our interactions during his stay in Seattle in his book "My Unforgotten Seattle" published in 2020. At the end of this short chapter, he mentions the Wing Luke Museum, where he serves as director, and the Chihan Art Project. He says that the spirit of connecting the past and the future in a living form is parallel to his and my own. I was overwhelmed to think that what I learned from my contact with Asian America is firmly embedded in me and that it is what has made me who I am today.
This year, we are in talks with Izu City to hold a shakuhachi performance at Asahi Falls, a sacred place for the shakuhachi in Izu. Japanese and American shakuhachi players will play Takiochi, a famous Edo period piece that was born from the waterfall, in front of the waterfall. Also, Chihan-an is planning to hold an exhibition called Mt. Fuji and Shiroyama from November 1st. This is an interesting art exhibition that parallels Mt. Fuji, a world-famous mountain that symbolizes Japan, and Shiroyama, a low mountain that is a source of support for the people of Izu.
Protecting freedom of mind with intelligence
Kawai: What kind of events would you like to do in the future that relate to the theme of cultural intersection and multicultural coexistence?
Awaya: More than anything, I want the Chihan Art Project to be a "treasure box of culture" from Izu. There are various theories, such as revitalizing local culture and site-specific art, but the most fundamental foundation is the desire to "spread the reach of culture." We are working hard together with staff from various backgrounds, known as "Team Chihan." Culture is not something that is unnecessary or non-urgent, but something that can be the foundation of the heart and can save us in times of emergency.
Kawai: I think that the meaning of Nikkei has changed over time, but what do you think it means culturally? What other opinions do you have about cultural intersection and intercultural communication?
Awaya: Yes, in a world with so much diversity and fluidity, it is not possible to simply distinguish between majority and minority, and the concept of Nikkei is also left to how one perceives oneself. In the first place, the concepts of Japanese and Nikkei are not even definite in the field of intercultural communication. Each individual's small story simply forms the larger story of a group.
Fundamentally, I believe that "culture" is a larger concept than "politics." However, there have been many instances throughout history where culture has been restricted or limited by politics, and this will likely continue to happen again in the future. This is true when we think about Japan's wartime history, as well as local wars and global wars. I think the challenge for the future is how to protect freedom of the mind through the power and intelligence of each individual. I too would like to cherish Izu and do my best to achieve this.
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Awaya Nobuko Born in the inner room of Chihan-an (a registered tangible cultural property of Japan) of the Suganuma family, a village headman in Nakaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture (present-day Izunokuni City). Graduated from the Department of English and American Literature at Tokyo Woman's Christian University, College of Literature and Science, and completed her graduate studies in Contemporary Culture (Communication). During university, she studied at Southern Methodist University, School of Art, as an RI scholarship student. After returning to Japan, she worked as an interpreter before becoming a magazine journalist, and returned to the United States on a journalist visa from 1979 to 1986. She worked as a staff member for The International Examiner newspaper in Seattle and the United Nations Association. After spending short periods in Africa and Hong Kong while in the United States, she returned to Japan. She has covered, written, and translated many intercultural topics, including gender. In 2000, she became a professor at the Department of Intercultural Communication at a private university in Kanagawa. She has taught intercultural communication for 20 years. During her time as an assistant professor, she launched the Chihan Art Project , turning Chihan-an, which was on the verge of becoming vacant for the first time in the university's 200-year history, into an art space, which she continues to this day. Received the 2017 Regional Cultural Activities Encouragement Award from the Shizuoka Prefectural Cultural Foundation. She has written and translated many books, including "Re-Imaging Japanese Women" (edited by Anne E. Imamura) published by the University of California Press, and co-authored an English book. Her essays have been included in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-approved textbooks "Modern Literature" (published by Taishukan, high school modern Japanese) since 2003, and "Japanese Language" (published by Gakko Tosho, junior high school Japanese) since 2011. |
© 2025 Ryusuke Kawai
