An astronaut greets passengers at Kazusa-Murakami station. Leonid Tishkov titled his installation “Mr. Murakami’s Last Flight,” or “Waiting for A Moon-Bound Train.“
Today I have a couple links to something fun happening in Japan, where whimsical art in the countryside is drawing tourists.
At the Economist we learn that “a cosmonaut sat for most of the winter on a platform at Kazusa-Murakami station in Chiba, a rural Japanese prefecture next to Tokyo. As they waited for trains, local grandmothers would chat with the inanimate installation, the work of the Russian artist Leonid Tishkov. Visitors to an abandoned clothing factory in the nearby village of Ushiku found a multimedia labyrinth assembled by the Japanese artist Nakazaki Toru, using objects and memories retrieved from the site: old sewing machines, mannequins draped in fabric samples and recorded interviews with the family that once ran the place. These were two of over 90 pieces created for a triennial festival known as Ichihara Art x Mix, held in the Ichihara area of Chiba in late 2021.”
Alan Gleason at Artscape Japan continues the story: ” ‘Art x Mix’ may seem a curious title for the triennial art festival in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture. However, the event does boast an unusual blend of elements that serve the art it showcases very well. One is the verdant, rolling landscape of the Boso Peninsula. But even more central to the festival’s identity, and perhaps the key to its success, is a tiny privately operated train line, the Kominato Railway.
“The festival is a fairly new event. First held in 2014, its third edition was scheduled for 2020 but delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic. Sponsored by the city of Ichihara, the program itself is planned and directed by a team under Fram Kitagawa, Japan’s reigning outdoor art festival impresario. …
“Operating since 1917, the [Kominato] line is a living anachronism, a holdover from the days — well into the postwar era — when trains got everyone everywhere in Japan. As roads improved and rural areas emptied out in a mass migration to the cities, passengership plunged and, one by one, Japan’s local railways shut down.
“How has the Kominato Railway survived? At least partially thanks to the vision and marketing savvy of its management, it would seem. In the last decade the company has carried out what it calls ‘reverse development’ of its stations, restoring them to their appearance in days of yore; enlisted the help of residents along the line to keep brush trimmed back and the station yards attractive; purchased used diesel rolling stock from closed lines in other parts of the country; and, in 2015, introduced the Satoyama Torocco (from ‘truck,’ a small rail car used in mining or logging).
“Satoyama, literally ‘villages and hills,’ is a buzzword the city and the railway favor to highlight the pastoral beauty of rural Ichihara. The Torocco is a special train outfitted with open-air passenger cars and a miniature steam locomotive that is actually a diesel. …
“Ichihara Art x Mix is a brilliant initiative on the city’s part, not least because it gives the Kominato Railway pride of place as an art object in itself. The trains — at most two cars in length — trundle slowly along a single narrow-gauge track at roughly one-hour intervals, making the 40-kilometer trip from Goi, on Tokyo Bay, up the Yoro River Valley to its southern terminus in the Boso highlands in one and a half hours. …
“The other defining factor in the festival’s allure is the Yoro River itself, which twists and turns its way through the highlands, carving deep ravines and creating some impressive cliffs and waterfalls in the bargain. …
“In typical kitchen-sink festival fashion, the organizers have installed works all over the area — far too many to see in a day, or even two or three. … A car is certainly the most efficient mode of transport, but also the least rewarding. The train is a pleasure in itself, but its sparse schedule, and the distance between the stations and many art venues, will limit the number of destinations you can easily get to. A good compromise is the festival’s free shuttle bus, which travels around two circuits that cover most of the major venues. …
“Ushiku: In a copper-clad former sundries shop, Chinese artist Ma Leonn’s Mobile Photo Studio has a hilariously retro stage set inspired by prewar kamishibai (‘paper play’) storytellers; staff will kindly photograph visitors posing against this backdrop. …
“Satomi Elementary School: The dark, cavernous gymnasium is the perfect setting for a ‘playback’ of Artists Breath, a tour-de-force display of multiple videos with corona-related messages by artists from around the world. …
“Tsukizaki Village: Sitting in the middle of a fallow rice field is Dutch artist Elmo Vermijs’s cryptically titled installation Mirror of Soil. But that is precisely what it is: a shallow concave hemisphere scooped out of the ground that functions as a ‘sound mirror.’ Stand on the raised platform smack in the center of the pit, and it’s true — you will hear a faint murmur you did not hear before, which the artist describes as the ‘sounds of nature.’
“Just down the road stands an imposing edifice, the now-vacant residence of one of the village’s more eminent citizens. Currently it is home to Turkish artist Ayse Erkmen’s installation Inventory. Erkmen videotaped the process by which the entire contents of the house — not just furniture, but decades of accumulated bric-a-brac — were removed, sorted, and placed in wire crates that now line the path from the gate to the house. Running this gauntlet of family heirlooms, one encounters everything from wall clocks and electric fans to old swords, stuffed birds, dolls, and souvenirs of the kind that all postwar families of means used to acquire on holiday excursions. The experience will give anyone who has lived in Japan a twinge of nostalgia; we all have friends whose parental homes were full of just this sort of stuff. Inside the house, the artist has placed video monitors in each room that play back her recordings, striking a poignant contrast between the on-screen activity and the silence of the emptied rooms.
“The ancient but well-preserved stations along the Kominato Railway are also part of the fun. Each one features at least one prominent outdoor art object, and one extremely eccentric public toilet. The toilets are the brainchild of architect Sou Fujimoto, who appears to have thoroughly enjoyed himself designing facilities customized to the ambience of each stop. Kudos go to Itabu station’s Toilet in Nature, a pristine white throne that sits in a glass box surrounded by a 200-square-meter garden. It’s for women only, by the way. Privacy is ensured by a curtain and the 2-meter-high log fence around the garden.
“Greeting every train at Kazusa-Murakami — an unmanned station that is the first and last stop on the line just outside the Goi terminus — is Russian artist Leonid Tishkov’s astronaut.”
More at Artscape Japan, here. No firewall.
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