033 TOKYO 2O25 – dérive IV, my Ōkurayama
my places, places to remember, places that remember, everyday life
to VUK@41 !!
giving life to flowers
The very first thing Japanese that I have held in my hand was a small yet heavy, curiously shaped and a bit scary object with round metal base and many sharp spikes. My mother, who has put it on my palm, explained that that was kenzan, thus uttering the first Japanese word I have ever heard. She was excited, as that kenzan was meant to help her experiment with flower arrangements, with ikebana (which, obviously, immediately became the second Japanese word I have ever heard). Much later we deciphered that word kenzan, when written in Japanese kanji consists of ken, “sword” and “mountain”, yama (pronounced as zan); thus my new toy 剣山, was a mountain of swords! In ikebana, ikeru 生ける meant “to arrange” or just “to put”, while 花, hana was a “flower” (which, alas, when written next to ikeru gets pronounced as – bana). Those two kanji together mean “arranging flowers” or, more poetically, “giving life to flowers”. That is how my mother embarked on her kado, 華道, the way of flowers and how I got the first flavour of mysteries surrounding Chinese kanji, the way of writing which also captures the way of thinking (all of which became, and remain the source of my fascination and frustration ever since).
That anecdote is only to evoke the corporeality of my first contact with anything Japanese, an unexpected solidity and weight, combined with subtlety and sensuality of floral arrangements and scents. Who could have ever imagined then that Japan was, over the years and in myriad of steps, to become so important part of my life.
CUT !
a dilemma . . . on my cities, on my Tokyo . . .
_ _ _ I ask myself is this search for something in cities, for something that feels “my” in cities, for something urban(e) there that could/would feel mine, mine just enough, is that only because I have lost actual cities of my origin, that sheltering sense akin to urbanity which has shaped my value system? . . . has that search started only when, addicted to the urban, I have found myself orphaned of my urbanities?
_ _ _ perhaps . . . but, although I think that I have an answer to that question, my answer, I still ask: to what degree can one adopt a city, be adopted by a city?
_ _ _ I know that my Tokyo, something in and something of Tokyo that I know, makes me feel at home (t)here . . . I do feel that in several precincts of this immense metropolis . . . those places, and feelings which they generate in me add up, they make my Tokyo, Tokyo lived . . . that (sense of) vécu (the quality which I feel, and which I can express better in my language, but I let Lefebvre’s formulation prevail, as it somehow reaches beyond the language); as explained in my books and essays which touch upon these issues, in Tokyo there are three (perhaps four) urbanities which make me I feel at home . . . those are the precincts in which I lived long enough, (or) deep enough to sense that . . . something, in me
_ _ _ I am going to share with you several glimpses into those three (or four) places which feed my hunger for the urban in Tokyo, not in chronological order of my living/ learning them, but in the order of my current re-visits . . . I have started with that (being fresh, still hypothetical) fourth place, Daikanyama, where the depth of experience might have substituted the length of being there. I continue haphazardly, from . . .
my Ōkurayama, sanchome (in fragments, of course)
A day before yesterday I took train to Ōkurayama, a precinct formally just outside Tokyo, in Yokohama. I have lived there for four years, 2009-13. One does not go to Ōkurayama accidentally. That is one of countless residential precincts along major railway lines where ordinary local lives unfold. I’ve gotten off the train at Ōkurayama Station, re-enacting the many times repeated two-minute walk to block 3-5, where my apartment 11-E was situated. Everything feels exactly as it was more than a decade ago, when I left this place. That is why I will continue with my 2021 fragments on Ōkurayama, from infraordinary Tokyo, the Right to the City . . . only adding several bold highlights.
Tokyo lived: Okurayama (a+u, pp. 64-69)
“I became the resident of Ōkurayama accidentally. While looking for accommodation close to Keio Yagami Campus, three owners of the apartments which I shortlisted from the real-estate list flatly refused the foreigner. That is a common practice in Japan, which points at the place of gaikokujin, the people from “outside country”, in the World City Tokyo. Albeit unpleasant, from the position of a researcher that situation is simply consistent with broader, culturally significant concept of uchi (inside - as belonging) and soto (outside - as exclusion). Much glorified in urban and architectural literature about Japan both in this country and abroad, uchi-soto relationships are among the keys to understanding of Japanese society at large (Hendry, 2003) – and of direct relevance for our central theme, the right to the city.
(That unpleasant episode with accommodation in Ōkurayama was resolved expediently, by a single phone-call, which triggered the chain-reaction of other time-honoured principles – tsukiai, resulting not only with a very special place for me to live, and giri, a favour to return.) [...]
That very special place I ended living in Õkurayama was a townhouse-style apartment in a densely packed group of nine, a fine example of radical reinvention within the strictures of low-rise high-density paradigm, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and lovingly executed by Mizuko Kaji. Just a block away from the main street, that complex was beyond reach of the locally imposed Hellenophilia. Its beauty helped me move towards formulating Measuring the non-Measurable, an investigation into radical cultural specificities (Radović, 2008) and untranslatability of the term beautiful (Jullien, 2016; Radović, 2020). That small but uniquely beautiful (whatever that might mean) apartment was to become my fieldwork outpost, a place to both live and research, including experiments with Debordian dérive and détournement.
Acknowledging the opening of Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004), in my notebook I recorded how: “my generously sized window frames the view of one nameless street in Ōkurayama sanchome; the street at the northern side of 3-5-11. Like any window, “it selectively brings in a now framed outside; a view or vista. The wall darkens, keeps out light and natural forces, the window selectively enframes them to return them to the interior, bringing illumination inside. … The wall delimits and the window selects” (Grosz, 2008).
My window on Okurayama is huge. Only a delicate curtain protects my privacy from the outside view (although, last evening my students who came by told me how they noticed – from the outside – that there were some nice drawings on my walls). For me looking out, that window frames everyday routines of my neighbours. Rarely anyone else enters that nameless street. The traces of existence of my neighbours and their activities that enter my apartment were never only visual” […]
The rhythm of my ordinary street has an extraordinary feature. Among all those indistinguishable, common façades of Japanese residential architecture (ubiquitous ceramic tiles and all that), this one stands out. Watching how people (still, after almost four years) react to attractive architectural form helps understand one of the many ways in which local intensification can emerge. An aesthetic touch, a pleasing sight, a sense of beauty; a different, precious inside. 3-5-11.
The window at the other side of my small apartment offers views into that completely different realm – the semi … something; semi-public, semi-private. That is my privileged view into an inner area of 3-5-11. The Japanese would say - oku. That is a view into another reality, a kind of quiet space from which one can learn a lot about Japanese culture; its complex, codified urbanity and deeply internalised rules. Unusual, beautiful, simple, tiny space; still puzzling … after all this time. To European sensibility, that is an incredibly underused space.
(How does she manage to create, over and over again, such understated beauty?) Oku pulsates.
(I notice how, with my deeper immersion in inconclusive, hesitant notion of “semi … something” emerged in my discussions of urbanity of Tokyo)
By far the most memorable event during my life in Ōkurayama was at 2:46, on 11 March 2011, when the 9.0 Tohoku quake hit Japan. Tragic events intensify lives. They expose our vulnerabilities and fears, condense our experiences. The crisis in the wake of Tohoku Earthquake has shown some fascinating aspects of Japanese society, confirming the renowned resilience, self-discipline, community awareness, manners. I have witnessed the lives change, careers refocus with a sole purpose to help and minimise the damage in similar events in the future. In my own research, those moments opened an altogether new line of inquiry.
Tohoku Earthquake has shaken Japanese society to its core. And then, the structuring rhythm of drums, the sounds of local matsuri festival which for centuries treasure and ensure the continuity and contextualisation of power in this deeply conservative culture, started to pulse in the streets, announcing the return to normality.”
> > > fast forward to 2025
As mentioned above, some twelve years later very little, almost nothing seems to have changed . . . the same hairdresser still cuts hair (although not my hair any more), the bakery which on a number of occasions helped me survive is still at the entrance of Ōkurayama Station, as is Maruetsu supermarket across the street, a small, excellent greengrocery, many tiny restaurants . . . an overall sense of slowness, including the slowness of change.
Almost nothing seems to have changed there, yet my Ōkurayama sanchome, my 5-11E has suffered a huge loss. In what used to be a small, fine residential block now no one lives! All units, carefully designed as apartments now, it seems in variously unsuccessful ways, accommodate small businesses. And there is a fine urbanistic and architectural explanation for that. Have a look at two images on the left, below. That was the original design by Kazuyo Sejima. The simplest square concrete paves imaginable, placed on simple soil with some low-maintenance grass were slightly apart, facilitating access to each of the nine units, keeping shoes clean even on wintery rainy days – thus fulfilling all what one can expect from the paved access . . . that semi -, semi -, the reality of oku as described in my a+u essay, the 奥 that pulsates with life, as theorised by Fumihiko Maki . . .
That lesson in subtle, yet effective architectural manipulation of human behaviour comes from none less than Katsura Rikyu. That modest pavement was also doing something much more complex than providing access. Walking on such, irregularly placed pieces demands attention; one has to look down, not aside. That is how a gentle design gesture helped protect privacy of the ground-floor interiors. But, while we still lived there, the owner decided to add some comfort, to widen the paths and make them more comfortable. There was also some pure “beautification”, big fake marble balls added to “protect” the edge of the property (as it ever was, in a civilised Japanese residential area, in any danger). In shortest, the change of pavement design has changed the behaviour, the ground-floor units started to became less comfortable to the residents, they moved out and the use has changed. A provocative beauty of Kazuyo Sejima’s architectural forms remains, but one has to ask to what degree the lifeless buildings still are – architecture?
ON leaving traces
_ _ _ thus . . . nothing seems to have changed, yet everything has changed there. An old friend of mine was born in Ōkurayama, Ōkurayama nichome. Until recently, his mother lived there. Her recent passing away must have completely reorganized his inner geography, his emotional map, as I remember well from the period after losing my dear ones. A day before yesterday I walked around the block where his mother used to live, not managing to find that modest home. The piece of wood with their family name carved, which used to help me find way in a messy roji, was not there any more. Has he lost his Ōkurayama . . . has it lost him? I have lost my Ōkurayama . . . has Ōkurayama lost me? We have lost our Ōkurayama. Has our departure caused any loss there? Two intertwining lives, the two who accidentally lived there. Regardless how exotic, we played certain roles in social fabric of Ōkurayama, participating in everyday performances staged in the streets, by the streets, markets, in a couple of restaurants. Asia café is, I’ve noticed, no more. I realised how, with no plan on my mind, I actually wanted to sit and have another good, slow coffee there. Too late . . .
_ _ _ we lose, we forget . . . cities lose, cities forget . . . that is why a smile of our former neighbour, a nod of hairdresser mean a lot . . . nothing seems to have changed, there yet everything has changed . . . regardless all, eternal matsuri will keep the rhythm . . .
CUT !
glimpses: living in Sejima 1
glimpses: living in Sejima 2
