Rejuvenation, according to Google, is defined as “giving new energy, vigor, a youthful appearance to something,” even “restoring a river or stream to a condition characteristic of a younger landscape.” “Juvens” is Latin for youth, and the word rejuvenation hints at the return to a younger time of life by someone older and not so young or energetic. Summer can be a season with humid, sunny, lazy days that invite us to take a slower pace of living, to enjoy the warm sunniness and the surprise of sudden showers. Like its sister season spring, summer can be a time of renewal and transformation.
As with past summers, I did not travel. Due to the high temperatures of ocean currents exacerbated by global warming, Japan this summer has experienced ten torrential typhoons, including some “super typhoons.” Floods have caused damage all over the countryside and the typhoon season is not over yet. Traveling during this season could prove dangerous and discouraging. Instead of traveling anywhere physically, this summer was a staycation where once a week, I went to a collage class in the home of a close friend. Lisa, a retired art history professor, would spread butcher block paper on her dining room table for us to work on. We started out with simple two-dimensional collages created with photos from magazines, old postcards, calendars, and a wide variety of hand-crafted papers. A couple of weeks into June, one of the group members brought cigar boxes, so we were encouraged to create three-dimensional scenes. For me, the boxes reminded me of the dioramas I created in elementary school using a cardboard shoe box. I would draw figures on paper, color them, cut them out, and then paste them inside the box. All the scenery was hand drawn because we didn’t subscribe to magazines or have any old calendars to cut up. But the simple act of cutting, creating a scene in my mind, positioning the various textures, and finally pasting all the snippets together touched a deep seed of creativity from my childhood.
Over the years I had saved beautiful Japanese Christmas cards, and origami papers. I also had a wonderful book of Japanese scenes of birds, mountains, rivers, moons, and flowers, which this same friend Lisa had given me. For several years, I did not know how to use the book. But now, using these materials I started creating dioramas with a Japanese theme. Not only did I use Japanese scenes and handmade paper, I started incorporating little figures as well. It was almost as if for years, these figures were imprisoned in my china closet, waiting for the day to come out, and have a new life. This was particularly true for the Emperor and Empress figurines, who had for decades, sat patiently collecting dust. Now I created a scene where they could be displayed prominently in a special setting, and I imagined they were silently voicing words of gratitude for the release from their imprisonment and restoration to their rightful place out in the open!
Time and again I just wanted to create scenes that were imaginary but had a visible Japanese cultural presence. I couldn’t think of creating abstract scenes with geometric shapes or something modern like contemporary urban landscapes. The scenes that popped into my head were always connected to a Japan that perhaps was from a century before. Whether realistic or not, I felt I needed to continue weaving with that thread.
Almost a century ago, my father created a new kind of Japanese art called “bonkei” or “miniature garden scene.” He invented a special mixture of cement and plaster that could be shaped and molded, then painted. With this sculpting material, he created mountains, rocks, and landscapes, then added miniature Japanese human figures, houses, animals, temples. I still have several of these “bonkei” scenes in my home. Perhaps my mind has always been very much immersed in Japanese art and what is naturally flowing out is a natural outgrowth of ripening dormant seeds.
Have I felt relaxed this summer? Yes! It didn’t matter that I was an adult and all grown up. I felt like a child once again, concentrating and creating without any sense of time constraints, the equivalent of playing outdoors and not going back home until dinner time! In my mind, I could walk into each scene, bow to the Emperor and Empress, eat my rice ball on the beach, and play in the clean snow of the countryside. What better way is there to return to a “younger landscape” than through imagination and creating art?
© 2024 by Emy Kamihara