Prologue
BRIDGES: A BORDER BETWEEN THE SECULAR AND THE SACRED
Keiichi Tanaami
A severed head with its eyes rolled back sits on a riverbed amidst a dark abyss. Copious amounts of blood gush from the decapitated woman’s neck, making bloodstains on the surrounding grass. The camera slowly pulls back to reveal an arched bridge looming above, and one learns that the brutally severed head sits in the shadows beneath it.
This is a scene from a film that I saw with my father when I was a child.
I have completely forgotten the title and content of the film, but I think that it was a black and white period drama. However, strangely enough, I recall the arched bridge being a bright and vivid red, as well as the blood on the woman’s neck. The red color of the arched bridge, which should not have been visible due to the film being in black and white, forever continues to be deeply ingrained in my memory.
When all of Tokyo was being hit by air raids, my parents and I took refuge many times a day in an air raid shelter just a stone’s throw from our house. The late-night air raids instantly transformed the pitchblack darkness into a sea of fire, and the gusts of scorching hot air and the strange odor of something burning persistently clung to my body. The crimson flames covered the entire night sky, flickering and wavering in a semicircle like an enormous arched bridge. The lumps of fire, writhing around as if they were some living creature, were a stunningly beautiful yet sorrowful sight to behold. Once the bombers were gone, and a brief moment of peace had been restored, I returned to the house with my mother. On my way home, I peered through a circle of men wearing air-raid hoods and caught sight of a woman—her face pale, eyes rolled back, and teeth firmly clenched. Her long hair was coiled around her neck like a snake, making it seem as if her head had been severed and strewn on the ground. This woman, who had died while desperately trying to cling to life, appeared to smile ever so slightly at me, her expression distorted as it was reflected by the light of the flames.
In later years, I was casually looking through a book of Katsushika Hokusai’s work and was astonished when I came across an eerie painting titled Severed Head (1842). The image of the dead woman’s face that I had encountered as a child came back to me instantly, filling me with so much fear that it gave me goosebumps.
My secret playground where I loved to play as a young boy was Meguro Gajoen, a traditional Japanese restaurant that had been built around 1931. It was called the “Ryugujo Dragon Palace of the Showa Period,” as everything from the ceiling to the walls, stairs, and even the sliding doors was adorned with an array of colorfully ornate paintings and sculptures.
Gajoen, which was located next to the Gyoninzaka Kindergarten that I attended, was a “dream paradise” for me as a child. This was back in its restaurant days before its renovation, when a warmhearted staff with a deep sense of generosity welcomed anyone to play there freely.
While I have no recollection of the building’s internal layout or its architectural structure, my memories of the paintings are vivid. I clearly remember the vibrant women in gorgeous kimonos standing in front of cherry blossoms in full bloom, and the valiant expression on Urashima Taro’s face as he rode on the back of a turtle. One that I recall is a horizontal painting of geishas with their glossy Japanese coiffures and colorful kimonos, and in the center, a bright red arched bridge. I was immensely fond of that painting, perhaps because I was truly enchanted by the rich colors and the luxuriant volume of the bridge.
Looking back on it now, it is hard for me to understand why I, as a child, had been so taken with that painting. Perhaps I found pleasure in tracing the thick coat of red paint on the surface of the bridge with my fingers.
Inside the restroom of the current renovated Gajoen Hotel, one finds an ill-fitting arched bridge installed in the center. As I look upon this useless bridge, which occupies most of the restroom’s interior, I am reminded of that seemingly half-dried red-painted surface I gently felt with my fingertips as a child.
The strange and dramatic combination of the dead and the arched bridge that I had witnessed in the scene of a film and on the night of an air raid summons me to another world that lies beyond the bridge.
The arched bridge that I find most beautiful is the bridge at Kameido Tenjin Shrine. Known as one of Edo’s most distinctive bridges, it was depicted by Katsushika Hokusai in the series “Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces” (1833–1834). While its structure is simple and straightforward, the streamlined semicircular shape is nothing short of magnificent.
Another interesting bridge is the one that leads to the Buddhist Pure Land of Amitabha in the work The White Path Between Two Rivers (13th–14th century), painted during the Kamakura period. It is a bridge between this life and the afterlife, and the white path from this world to paradise is employed as a metaphor to teach people who wish to be reborn in the Pure Land of the difficulty of having the faith to overcome all worldly desires.
Soga Shohaku’s Lions at the Stone Bridge of Mount Tiantai (1779) is another terrifying and almost vertigo-inducing fantasy painting. Hundreds of lions, crowded together, scramble up a cliff, then slide off what appears to be an arched stone bridge soaring in the sky. The viewer is drawn into the picture and is overcome by a feeling of unease, as if they too were floating through space along with the falling lions. Looking at the stretch of rocks beyond the bridge, one can see that none of the lions have made it across. The endless circle of lions, forever falling, seems to highlight the subject of the “uncrossable bridge.”
In the old days, it was a common belief that a “completely different world” existed beneath bridges. As suggested by the term kawara-mono (literally “riverside people,” it was used to refer to itinerant entertainers in feudal Japan), such areas had strong ties to the entertainment industry, and were the birthplace of all kinds of performing arts, from street performance to kabuki. Derogatory terms such as kawara-kojiki (literally “riverside beggars”) were also prevalent, and since ancient times the riverbank has been a place deeply connected to the development of theater. There was also the belief that it was a world different from reality—an otherworldly place excluded from all systems and order.
Riverside spaces beneath bridges were lined with strange and frightful-looking freak shows, where acts and exhibits that shed light on the underside of society, such as long-necks, snake women, and midgets, lurked in the shadows. Furthermore, masked by the bridge which acted as a sort of roof, they were also a place where corpses were hidden, and a secret hangout for prostitutes looking to sell themselves.
Bridges were also places associated with tragic separations, as between a man and a woman who part after much agonizing, or where lovers throw themselves off the parapet in a double suicide due to heartache and desperation. In any case, the connection with death is very strong, and this is a distinctive characteristic of Japanese bridges.
My recent works that deal with bridges as their subject are inspired not only by the structural beauty of bridges, but also by their histories filled with mysterious anecdotes and legends. While the white path connecting the banks of the rivers in The White Path Between Two Rivers is not a bridge per se, it is recognized as a link between this world and the world of enlightenment (nirvana). This is a way of thinking that does not exist in Western culture. The profound and uncanny world that the bridge encompasses presents me with a complex and elusive sense of mystery.
If a bridge is a boundary between the secular and the sacred, separating this world and the world of the afterlife, it can also be a place of encounter. One wonders who sings the song that echoes mysteriously from the other side of the bridge. I would like to find out.
There is no end to my interest in the infinite darkness that quietly spreads out beneath the bridge, a mystical otherworldly place that is home to an unfathomable enigma.
A Hundred Bridges, one of my latest works exhibited on this occasion, is an installation on the theme of bridges.
The inspiration for this work came from one of Hokusai’s unique bird’s-eye view paintings, View of a Hundred Bridges (1823).
While the meticulously painted shapes and structures of the bridges in this painting are impressive, what is truly overwhelming is the imagery of bridges that exceed the imagination, with arched bridges, hanging bridges, and bridges over steep rocky mountains.
I would like to take a peek inside the surreal mind of Hokusai, who stated, “One autumn day, I saw this as a vision on the wall.”
