Open letter to Indiana Jones

Dear Dr. Indiana Jones,

I went to movie theater in Yokohama with my son yesterday.
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" ...oh, welcome back, Indy!

When I saw the first one of this series "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark", I was the same age as my son. That movie was full of adventure, dream, romance, and amazing imagination, in fact, worthy of kingship of Hollywood stuff.

So yesterday I was so excited because I would be able to share my good memory in my childhood with my son although there is a big generation gap between us.
And yes, my son came to like the latest Indy very much, of course.

Indiana Jones,
I'm so happy to see you again. You are still very attractive, giving a great hope to aged people and becoming my son's new hero .

But at the same time I think you made a big mistake this time. And this mistake is unpleasant for us Japanese, Indy.

Nobody can survive from such a terrible explosion of atomic bomb.
No matter who.

You put yourself into an old refrigerator to avoid the bomb's effect, right?
Nonsense.
According to the knowledge from my school education, at the center of the explosion such a cheep refrige melts down in a few seconds.

After the explosion, you unbelievably get out from the reflige and look up the huge mushroom cloud just in front of you!!
No way.

And you wash out "ash of death" with water and deck-brushes!
Too easy, Indy.

August 6th, 1945.
As you know the Enola Gay threw drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima city.
And 3 days later another one was dropped on Nagasaki.

According to the research in 1991 by Hiroshima city, it is said that the numbers of victims by acute radioactive disorder is 140,000(＋−10,000) at the point in November 1945.　During following 5 years, other 110.000 people died by the aftereffect.
Other living victims have been keeping on suffering from long terrible physical aftereffect and miserable mental pain called "prejudice" until today. For more than 60 years.
In my country, not only for the victims' generation but also for my generation who have war-experienced parents, atomic bombs are the one which we must not explode again even in books, on TV or in movies.
The one which is absolutely untouchable.

Indy, why did you make light of atomic weapons so stupidly although you are such a world-wide-famous hero?
Don't you think many kids might get a wrong image about atomic bombs?
Why atomic one. Are there no other ways to show your attraction without atomic bombs?

You married Marion. Happy for you, Indy.
But I know your marriage would become tough.
Because you will have some different kinds of cancer at the same time very soon.
Surgeries, painful endless chemical treatments, the burden of financial problem......... it might be hard for you and your family.

I'm so sorry about it.

Good bye, Indiana Jones.

Your fan,

Makiko

Under my skin

As I used to live in Hokkaido island (north Japan) for several years in my childhood, I'm good at ice skating.

But it's speed skating with long-edge-skating shoes. Without any graceful performance elements like figure skating. "Run fast, run!", that's all...
As we learned skating in school gym class every winter time, all the local kids including me could skate well and enjoyed it although we sometime felt a little boring (no spins, no turns, no jumps...).
Actually full-throttle-riding on a huge ice link was crazy exciting !

One day, my feet and legs got entangled when I was skating in full speed on ice. My body was suddenly thrown up to the air and fell down from head. At the moment my sight turned into darkness, and I faded out for a few seconds.
After some minutes, I got finally able to stand up with some friends' help...

Of course my mother took me to hospital immediately because I still felt sick, had ringing in my ears.
As soon as I got the hospital, the doctor decided to take X-ray photograph of my skull.

Somebody, have you ever seen your own skull? Maybe quite few.
That was one of the most unbelievable, impressive and funniest photos that I've ever seen.

As I felt so bad and very sulky, I clinched my teeth and I knitted my brows so tight. My face must have looked so painfull.
However, in the photo, all the teeth were shown to the end of back ones very clearly, there were no skin gathers, of course........Yes, to my astonishment, my skull showed a big smile!

At that moment, I could get a very philosophical answer although I felt sick.

A, ha.

Something painful, disgusting, unpleasant, sad or angry happens only upon my skin....

My skull was smiling even when I faced hardships.
Is smilimg today, will be smiling tomorrow, too.....under my skin.

Getting colors from Mulberry Leaves

KUWA. Mulberry tree in English.
We all Japanese have been feeling familiar with Mulberry. Because Mulberry leaves are only foods for silk worms and you could see many silk farming-farmers here and there in Japan until before the World War 2. In fact, you can see " Mulberry Mark"(the right photo) in any Japanese maps as a common.

Although Japanese silk is well-known to all over the world with its high quality, Japanese silk farming is almost disappearing in these days because there are no successors.

KUWA is dioecim. Male and female has different shape of leaves.
I have a female KUWA tree in my garden and it has a lot of berries right now.

Last year I dyed some silk scarves with the leaves of my KUWA in the same season. I could get very profound dark greenish grey with iron mordant. My color therapist friend said " This color has a special power to ease people's pain and to remind them importance of having time to make a conversation with themselves."

Of course KUWA berries are good items for making jam or fruit liqueur.
At the same time we Japanese have been taking its dry leaves as tea traditionally. It is said that KUWA leaves includes much iron, calcium

I and some students in my dyeing class will dye with KUWA leaves again tomorrow.
We are going to try to get 2 colors from KUWA liquid with 2 different mordant : iron and aluminum.

I will report the colors later.

Shape of Life

Makiko,Today is July 4th in 1985. This card is to be delivered 16 years later.You are to be 35 or 36 years old. You must have married and have 2 or 3 kids . Or are you a sccess as a great textile artist? Any way, Grandpa and Grandma wish you all happiness from heaven."......

On New Year's Day this year,　2001, I surely recieved the card which my grandmother wrote this message on at an event of Post Capsule to 21st century　&　supervised by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in Tsukuba World Science Exposition in 1985.
I wonder why she wrote this message to every grandchild supposing she would be dead 16 years later though she was 65 years old in good health at that time.
As she passed away 3 years later, I can't help feeling that the card was delivered from heaven.

Yes,I became a professional weaver,but contrary to her expectation, I'm single, have only one kid. Sorry, Grandma.......

The card made me aware that my life is sustained by not living people around me, but people who has been already dead.
I could see that the people used to live with dead people until my parents generation.
They used to report every day's happenings to their dead parents or gandparents in front of a house holded alter.

'Bon' is one of Japanese annual functions in August 13 〜16 (July 13〜16 in the Lunar calender)
Originally,　it's from Buddism. Many of us take Bon-holidays around these days even today. But the spirit seems to be almost lost. It has been quite naturally thinking that the closed dead people come back to their family during Bon.
All the family gather to spend the holidays togather including dead members.(By the way, on the16th,　the last day of Bon, we prepare some dolls in the shape of horse or cow made of cucumber or eggplant as vehicle for dead family to go back to the other world. It's a little delightful,　isn't?)
I suppose the distance between to be alive and to be dead is perhaps much shorter than we think.

Custom of birthday celebration has become permanent fixture with today's Japanese society. If a boy forgets his girlfriend's birthday, she will not speak to him for three days and all grandparents have their grandchildren's birthday present at heart.
But, until the World War, as it was general thinking that people grew a year older on New Year's Day in the year. Birthday itself seemed not to be so important at that time. On the contrary, it was the Day of Person's Death called 'Mei-nichi', which is written 'Day of Life(!)' in Chinese characters, that the Japanese had been taking as much more serious. When somebody passed away, his or her closed peopleused to memorise and pray for him(her) not on 'Mei-nichi' day, but every monthly 'Mei-nichi' day.

Each family keeps the family list book of carender called 'Kako-cho'(notebook of history), in which all the names of dead family and each date they passed away are recorded. As my mother was the eldest daughter of her parents and had no brother, she inherited her family's 'Kako-cho' . But it is kept on being closed recently.
It's easy for me to belive that some people say civilization began with funeral performing.Thinking of the way of sending off the dead and death itself could be connected to thinking of 'how to live', the essence of civilization, I suppose.

I have a vision. Being born is that a small part of universal energy gets a shape.
A shape and another shape make a good harmony.
A shape and another shape repel each other.
A shape and another shape get united and divided again and again.
That's to live, isn't it?

I dye some natural fiber materials to weave in my studio where is more than 70years old wooden house in Japanese traditional style surrounded a big yard full of various kinds of wild plants and trees.
I take those plants as dye stuff almost every day season by season. I boil all kinds of leaves, roots, barks and fruits to extract hundreds colors. The colors are put onto silk, wool, linen and cotton yarns. Each color changes delicately depending on the season, weather, soil and so on. Through every process of dying and weaving I can see life of plants changes its shape complicatedly. I'm always surprised that unbelievable beautiful colors which are not imaginable from the color of extracted liquid and the plant itself come out, and are put onto, for example, silk fiber spat out from tiny silk worm's mouth. After dyed yarns are set on the weaving loom, warp and weft sing in turn to make a symphonic poem 'cloth'.
I feel a whole process of this work is a relay of life, shape to shape.

Shimura Fukumi who is a living national treasure of weaving in Japan and also well known as an outstanding essayist wrote about such process in her book.
The bark of cherry tree is a good dye stuff to get pink color,but the color changes season by season. Only in spring, just before blooming, the bark gives me pale pink, the very color of cherry blossoms. It seems that the tree of full body stores the blossom's color for blooming.
A shape of energy is not influenced by another but by invisible energy that hasn't have any shape yet. And maybe it will influence next shape .
To be given a shape, to give back the shape. This repitition could be the cycle of life and death. ....Overthinking?

I could see that there is a rule taking charge of all of these universal energy's actions. If it's allowed to call the rule 'God ', being aware of such huge energy, to imagine waves of the energy, or trying to read the way of energy's moving is a dialog with God for me, I wonder.

We have some choices to dispose empty shapes. I wouldn't like to put my shape into a tomb. Thinking of any other style of disposing, I've found my parents was thinking in the same way and they became members of " Free Funeral Association" putting the head office in Tokyo. They seem to hope that their crashed bone is scattered in the ocean. (Oh, no, wait a minite. Who scatters their bone ash??)
The 21st century is the time of ecology. So, I don't care to give any parts of my shape to sombody needs it. But, at the same time, I can't agree with easy thinking of modern medical science like "Let's cut off the diseased part and put the new one." Then, for the time being, I've finished registered my eyeballs to Eye-bank. It's the last message to others from me who has been working in the world filled with beautiful coloers and trying to transmit the fun of colors.

Living with dead people and unborn people thinking about universal enargy.........
Saigyo, a well-known monk as Tanka poet 1117-1198, says "I want to die under a cherry tree of full blooming in spring." But I 'd like to give back my shape to the earth in the deep forest of beech tree at the middle of May hearing of murmuring of a river with believing "Yes, I've certenly hand something to following people." And I'll be so happy if my shape becomes manure for the forest.

Oh, it's perfect.

by Tanaka Makiko

-from Khaju Newsletter 2001 early spring version