Tokyo Blues: The city as seen through one material was one of my favourite presentations from last month’s Design Engaged. Nurri explained that blue tarpaulins are used in many different ways across different cities, but the most extensive use she had seen is in Japan, where they cover anything that is passing into or out of existence.
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Such stunning photos.
Would love to have seen and heard this presentation. Interesting idea about these tarpaulins ‘covering anything that is passing into or out of existence’. I’m wondering how their use for ‘homeless’ living was discussed as this is where they are often most visible in Tokyo in parks and so on. In this context–for me–they become stubbornly ‘present’ structures that are partially about symbolically resisting a notion of transience and sort of saying ‘hey. we’re here and part of this city’.
BTW, great blog – I hadn’t realised you guys (ie, the journal ran one). Will be a regular lurker from now on.
Some of Nurri’s work, not just Tokyo Blues, is up on her site.
She actually talked pretty extensively about the tarps’ use by homeless people.
whitebait – yes, she did speak quite a bit about their use by the homeless. your comment about tarps being used to mark territory or belonging is right on the mark; she also spoke of how tarps are used for picnics and other gatherings of family and friends to mark off chunks of public space for private use. but i might still suggest that in the case of homeless people, the tarps actually reinforce the sense of being betwixt-and-between as their sense of belonging also seems so moveable and temporary…the link that andrew gives is the same one i used in my post and well worth a look :)
I’m tempted to agree with Anne, whitebait.
In context, the use of blue tarps in temporary structures for displaced people in Tokyo – Nurri correctly points out that you can’t really call them “homeless” – is a poignant reminder of just how ephemeral these mayfly buildings are.
Visually, they read in the same category as Japanese things you’re not supposed to “see,” or at least attend to: construction sites, excavations, crime scenes and so forth. That’s why their juxtaposition against the selfsame material used as ritual indoor space for cherry blossom viewers is so charged – a feeling deeper, even, than setsunai.
displaced from where adam?
Oh, from just about any stable circumstance you could imagine, just like homeless people elsewhere – though if I was forced to guess (and a guess is all it would be) some slightly higher percentage of people actively choose this way of life than in other places.
When you look at the energy, planning, ingenuity and effort involved in some of these structures – with, variously, porches, windows, moonroofs, shades, vestibules, or pet annexes – you’re forced to wrestle with the idea that the owner *could* have found work or otherwise “fit in” to the larger society had they wanted to. And they pretty clearly do not. : . )
I’m writing an essay called “Becoming/Unbecoming” on just these themes, for the “Tokyo Blues” book Nurri’s planning.
Thanks to all for the thoughtful responses to my original comment. I should say I did follow the original link but couldn’t see a copy of the the presumably oral presentation that I thought Anne was referring to (maybe I’m missing an obvious link??). It was this oral explication of the work that I was interested in hearing more about. There is no reason of course why a written explanation has to be there on the photographer’s site–the photos as series do amazingly evocative work on their own (I want to buy some!)–but Anne simply sparked my interest with the original mention.
While not wanting to get romantic about homelessness in Tokyo/Japan, I’m still personally searching for a better way of understanding how these structures mark out their particular combination of displacement *and* dwelling. The ’strong’ signs of dwelling are seen for me in the old scaffolding materials, wooden doors, padlocks, collected furniture, potplants and washing lines that are integrally connected to the blue tarpaulin. (Probably it is worth saying that I’m thinking of particular Tokyo places I know (like around Miyashita Park in Shibuya and some areas more local to my own house)). And also some of the typical practices you see – like the residents sweeping up fallen leaves and keeping ‘their place’ (that is, the park or associated area) in order.
Part of my struggle is undoubtedly tied up in my interpretation as someone new to Japan. But it is an interesting one for me to continue working on.
I do think you raise some interesting points, whitebait.
I don’t, of course, want to romanticise anything.
Part of the sense I got, too, when following Nurri around Tokyo as she was shooting this series, was that there are different microcultures of homelessness in Tokyo.
Miyashita-koen people seemed a lot more gregarious (and happy to offer a beer to a stranger) than folks in Shinjuku’s Chuo-koen – of course, the latter had just suffered a few deaths in a fire that swept through the park. Under the circumstances, I probably wouldn’t be feeling too outgoing either.
Oddly enough, I never saw anyone in or around the good kilometer of settlements that stretch along the Sumida-gawa in Asakusa. (Maybe it’s something to do with the linear nature of that encampment?)
But we’ve strayed, I fear, from the topic. There’s probably a whole ‘nother book, if not several, in cultures of temporary settlement in Tokyo – but this ain’t it. : . )
Yes, ‘temporary settlement’ is a good term here Adam. I look forward to reading Nurri’s book and your essay sometime in the future.