After The Great 1923 Earthquake, Tokyo’s few remaining bonsai nurseries moved north to Omiya. Up here the air was cooler, the water purer and the soil perfect for growing miniature trees. Today, only ten nurseries remain in the world’s most important area for Bonsai cultivation.

Controlling the beauty of the natural world is difficult, time consuming and often impossible. Yet, we try. That hasn’t stopped us from domesticating beautiful beasts or clipping the wings of birds so that we can enjoy their plummage (without them having to fly away), or brining parts of the natural landscape into our homes – flowers, trees and rocks.

In Japan and China, this control of the natural landscape has been raised to a kind of ritualistic art. In China it was called Penjing and sometime between 1185 and 1333 it travelled to Japan and was named Bonsai. It is the art of growing miniature trees which evoke the natural landscape. “Growing a bonsai is like taming a Lion to become a pet, it is that difficult,” Tabata says, looking out of a window at dozens of bonsai; some decades old, some centuries old, all making the same asymmetrical shadows on the grounds of Omiya’s Bonsai Museum.

The 37 year old is a ‘Bonsai Gishi’ (bonsai technician) at the museum, his job is caring for the health and well being of the plants here. Walking through the museum’s collection Tabata speaks about each plant as though it were a person, commenting on their names or history (famous or important bonsai are given unique names). It feels more like a guided tour around a retirement home for plant people. “The most important thing for a Bonsai Technician is knowing the plants you are working with. Even if there are ten examples of the same species of pine tree they will all have distinct personalities. Some trees need a lot of attention, others need a little, and there are other more subtle characteristics too.” However, Tabata stresses that tree’s can’t be wholly treated like people, “humans must balance out their strengths and weaknesses, with a bonsai you just cut out the weak parts.”

Tabata first came to Omiya as an apprentice after finishing high school in his hometown, Kagoshima, in Southern Japan. His father was one of a few local bonsai enthusiasts and he pushed his son to move to the bonsai capital of Japan and work for a nursery. Here Tabata discovered and learnt the origins of the Bonsai Village, and the reason that Bonsai nurseries were declining. The first blow was Tokyo’s devastating 1923 earthquake and fire, after which all of the nurseries moved further North to Omiya, “because it had good water, soil and was a little cooler than most areas,” says Tabata. The second blow was the firebombing during World Ward II, and today there are only around ten nurseries left here. Unexpectedly, the patronage of occupying American forces (at the behest of General MacArthur) likely helped keep even that small number in business. Such a decline in an ancient tradition is saddening – perhaps even humbling – and reinforces the idea that, “no matter how much you have under control, something always goes wrong.” Tabata forms these words slowly. Like other Bonsai workers, Tabata is never slothful, but measured and he measures these final words carefully, “I think that is the one aspect of Bonsai that really interests me.”

This entry originally appeared in Papersky No. 37 (Norway, 2011).

The Omiya Bonsai Museum:
The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum is Japan’s newest museum dedicated to Japanese bonsai. Located 50 minutes North of Tokyo in the Bonsai Village district of Omiya city, it is a short walk to some of the greatest bonsai nursery’s in the world. The museums exhibits significant bonsai from all over Japan, carefully selected by a team of three curators, and cared for by a team of three bonsai technicians. An indoor section presents these exhibits beside historical information and examples of how Bonsai would have been used in different types of Zahiki Kazari (reception rooms) during the Meiji and Edo era. An outside section shows plants from museums private collection. The museum is intended to sustain local bonsai culture around Bonsai Village (Bonsaicho).

How did the BNE Water Foundation start, where did the idea come from?

It wasn’t one event it was more a combination of things and a feeling that had been growing inside of me. The root of most major problems society faces today, poverty, war, destruction of nature etc. is human greed. A growing disgust of greed and a general disappointment in what we have become as a society is what initially made me want to step up and do something. I knew that I needed to use the fame and recognition that I have built up around the world and my art to make some sort of difference but it took a lot of time and research to decide on exactly what I could do that would make the biggest difference. After a lot of reading and research I learned that providing clean water solutions to people in developing countries was what would have the biggest impact on poverty.

Were there any other activists or artivists‘ work which made you think you would like to do something similar and start a foundation?

I know that there are many people doing great humanitarian work all over the world but no one in particular inspired me to do this. As far as art activists go, I see a lot of people critiquing social issues in their work which is cool but what I do not see is any of them offering solutions. I wanted to offer a solution and real change not just get rich selling people the idea of change. Many people have approached me to use the BNE name to help sell their products or add credibility to their brands. I have looked these people in their eyes and closely watched their actions and saw nothing but greed. The fact that they wanted to use my life’s work and the culture I come from to sell their bullshit products, caring about nothing other than profits infuriated me. Experiencing that, and seeing extreme poverty, suffering and social injustice up close and personal is what really made me want to do this. It wasn’t really something I wanted to do but more so something that I needed to do. 

Does this Water Foundation represent a potential of graffiti which you didn’t personally realize in your earlier days? What is different about how you thought about graffiti when you were younger and now, when you say graffiti has a potential to raise awareness?

Of course when I was younger I looked at graffiti completely different. Some people start doing graffiti to make a name for themselves or get some fame. I never really cared about fame or recognition, It was simply something I had to do, I was naturally attracted to it at a young age and it was something I really enjoyed. I never saw it as a political statement, way of communicating or even as an act of rebellion when I was young, it was just something I needed to do, it made me feel alive. As an adult I now have a deep understanding of the psychology behind graffiti. I still love graffiti just as much but I look at it very differently now. At some point I began to realize that I had a voice and what I was doing was basically advertising. Up until that point I had only been advertising my own ego and eventually realized that graffiti could be used for much more than simply saying “I WAS HERE”. Don’t get me wrong though I don’t see anything wrong with simply saying “I WAS HERE”, a tag is the essence of graffiti and something I will always love but after spending thousands of hours out on the streets, traveling and seeing everything going on in the world, its natural for me to want to use graffiti for a deeper more meaningful purpose.

How did you go about starting? What was it that you “needed to know” and how did you learn it?

No I never googled “how to start a foundation” but of course I researched many existing foundations and NGOs to see exactly how they operated and who was at the forefront and what strategies they were using. Our foundation is registered in Indonesia so of course we had to research the local laws and procedures that needed to be followed to legally become an official foundation.

What were some setbacks or hurdles along the way to just establishing the Foundation? Tell us about this “one year of research” or “a lot of thought.”
  
Things move very slow in Indonesia and I am use to a very fast paced big city lifestyle where things need to get done quickly and efficiently. Paperwork, bureaucracy and everything in general moves pretty slow in Indonesia so just adjusting to that speed has felt like a giant hurdle. The year of research was spent researching poverty in depth and deciding what we could do that would have the biggest impact. Water is what all life needs to survive. It is the root of all life, without it we die. Water related diseases kill more than 6000 people everyday so there is really no point in doing micro finance, education programs or other type of work if a child will be dead next year from diarrhea. Once we decided that water would be our priority I had to become an expert on water and implementing sustainable clean water solutions. That took a lot of time and research.

A key to the foundation is artist donations- tell us about artist participation worldwide- from what cities have you received art works and who are some of the artists you are hyped donated?
    
I have always thought it would be amazing if all artists around the world united for one cause. It’s very optimistic but this part of the movement is a true platform for that to actually happen. We have just started reaching out to artists very recently but the response has been great. We have received artwork donations from big name artists as well as unknown artists and that’s exactly what I wanted. Some artists may have more influence or fame than others but I am equally excited every time someone submits work regardless of who they are. This is very progressive and has never been done before, it may take a while for the art community to comprehend the magnitude and potential in a project like this. The online gallery will be open to all serious artists who would like to participate and eventually I am hoping to get thousand of artists from all over the world involved in this project. As artists we are suppose to be at the forefront of creativity and progressive thinking. I feel that all artists have a responsibility to use their talent and influence to better society.

Tell us about BNE products and Activism Through Commerce. How does this work?

As another way of raising money to fund our work we will be designing and selling a line of BNE branded products. These products will be very similar to other products on the market which people buy everyday, shoes, bags, clothing etc. By simply choosing a BNE product over another brand a consumer will become a part of a our movement. 100% of profits will fund clean water and and sanitation projects. These products being out on the streets and in stores will also help spread the word about our cause and what we are doing even further. I really want to challenge people to start thinking about what they are buying, who they are giving there money to and where their money is going. Personally I am disgusted that people are foolish enough support brands whose owners do nothing with the profits except buy diamond teeth and Rolls Royce’s. I would never support a brand like that and neither should you. BNE products will offer consumers an opportunity to be a part of something real which has the potential to change the world by simply buying something they would normally buy anyway. 
          
What do you think of young Japanese, in their 20s and 30s and their willingness to donate to charity or to volunteer for charity?

I don’t believe I am in touch with the young Japanese mindset enough to accurately comment on this but I think that we are all humans and the majority of us would want to help if we were face to face with extreme poverty and suffering. Normally in day-to-day life Japanese people are not confronted by the horrible injustices occurring around the world. However the recent earthquake and nuclear disaster have put Japanese people face to face with a very sad,very real, very serious tragedy. In light of all this I think it is a perfect time for young people in Japan to start getting more involved in charity, helping the less fortunate and to start thinking on a deeper level about what we as humans can do to make this a better place for all of us. 

So what are some of actual clean water solutions the Water Foundation puts into action? Literature? Water filters?

Every situation is different and varies from village to village but for our next project in an area of Indonesia notorious for drought and famine we will be manufacturing and distributing bios and water filters which can be made completely from locally available materials and can provide a family with clean water for many years with very little maintenance an no ongoing costs. We will also be installing and improving existing rain catchments as the residents are already harvesting rain water, digging wells and conducting sanitation training courses with the local women. I actually thought the same thing that being able to follow your donation from start to finish would be great. We plan to be at the forefront of transparency and through photos, video and GPS tracking, our supporters will be able to see exactly where their money went, what it accomplished and who’s life it affected. 

Tell us about some of the amazing people you have met along the way, like in Jakarta, who is Mr. Pak Nur?

Pak Nur is a homeless man in his 50′s who has been living under a bridge in Jakarta for the last 6 years. He paints in the streets, mostly political stuff and what ever else is on his mind, always speaking from the heart. None of you have heard of him and probably never will again but as I said on our blog he is the epitome of a REAL street artist. His intentions are completely pure. He has no intentions of making money from his art or being recognized by galleries or museums. In fact he does not even know what the internet is. I tried to explain it to him but he didn’t really get it. Most of society and the police see him as a nuisances or mentally ill but for me he is one of my favorite artists that I have encountered. I’ve met many great people in my travels. Two of them who are special to me passed away recently. My friend POKE from Queens New york died last year and my friend Fumihiro Hayashi from Tokyo passed away earlier this year. These were two great people I had the pleasure of spending time with. I miss both of you. Thank you for all the good times.

About the “cribs” blog post, was this visit connected to the Water Foundation? Was it research?

No that was not research. A friend and I have been helping to fund a school/community center in central Jakarta and many of our elementary school aged children are very poor and live with their whole family in one tiny room in very sad conditions. I visited some of the kids at home and took those photos. Very recently the government has started to pay for education in Jakarta so we have fewer students now.

We ask everyone, simply, what are your favorite places in the world and which places would you like to travel to which you haven’t been?

Japan was one of the very first places I traveled to when I was younger and that trip was a great experience. We didn’t know anyone in japan and couldn’t speak the language at all, Me and a friend from New York just bought tickets and went. I think it’s very important to mention that unlike most foreign artists going to Japan it was never our intention to make money or sell anything to the Japanese. We only went for the experience and to share true graffiti culture with Japan. There was no live painting, sponsor, art show or any of that. No one paid for our tickets or gave us a hotel. It was all very real and I know for a fact that every older Japanese graffiti writer remembers that part of history. Some parts of Japanese society annoy and frustrate me but at the same time there are many things I admire and respect. I have to say that Japan has been one of my favorite places. I’ve shared a lot of good times with friends there. I also really enjoy Spain, France and Europe in general. The Swiss alps are very beautiful. On the other side of the world in some of the poorest places I have been it was a pleasure to see the strength and kindness of people living such a hard life. In my experience the poorest people I’ve met have been some of the kindest and most generous. I’ve already covered a big piece the globe but plan to visit every country before I die. I really enjoy wandering through the neighborhoods of a city I have been to for the first time. In the beginning it was about wanting to hit every city with my tag but now that I have been around the world and know about all of the horrible things going on, I have found myself wanting to do something about it. Traveling for me now has become more about gaining knowledge and spending time with people than about doing graffiti. I always have to leave my mark though, its in my blood. 

With all the travel and nomadism, is there a place you feel quite at ‘home’?

I have lived this nomad lifestyle for so long that I really do not know what a home feels like. Wherever I am though, if I am with good people I feel at home.

Was it important for you to use the BNE name? Was there any kind of process of trying to decide on a different name?

Before the idea for the water foundation even came about it started with wanting to use the BNE name and my art for something deeper, something to make a positive change in society. Brand recognition is something that companies pay millions of dollars to achieve and maintain. BNE being known around the world gives us a head start in that department. Using a different name would have been starting from scratch and would have taken a lot longer to get the word out. Using the BNE name and graffiti in general will get young people thinking about social issues who might normally not think about such things. To a 15 year old kid out in the streets doing graffiti, a Unicef commercial will have no effect on them at all but when the issue is presented in a visual language they understand, respect and look up to, it has the ability to inspire someone who normally would not care at all. 

The BNE name is so related to graffiti and let’s say the mainstream “just doesn’t get it,” but something like a charity or good will work towards sanitation seems like something a general audience can understand so how do you balance or separate or express this clearly positive cause of the BNE Water Foundation with the generally bad reputation graffiti gets in the public eye? Is BNE now a double edged sword?

That’s a good question. The mainstream does not “get” a lot of things that are not polished and presented to them in a certain way. I don’t think it’s necessary to separate the two things, one bad and one good. There are good and bad charities as well as good and bad graffiti. Of course the charity aspect of BNE is a good thing that everyone can relate to but the BNE name in the streets is the advertising for this cause and there is nothing bad about that. These days smart forward thinking charities know that they have to become brands, be innovative and use all the marketing and advertising techniques that world famous brands use. BNE is a brand unlike any other because it is 100% for the people, by the people and benefits all of society. I do not feel that a brand who’s sole purpose is to better society should have to pay for advertising. I now look at a BNE tag or sticker as the voice of the poor and that voice is saying “Hey! We exist and we deserve health and happiness just like you do!” Most people do not understand graffiti and its human nature to fear and dislike things you do not understand. However, as time passes any intelligent person who takes the time and looks closely at what the BNE movement is all about will have no choice but to say, ” You know what, this all make perfect sense. This is truly something great.”

I like this quote from your twitter page on July 22: “A million times more advertising $ and creativity are used to sell unhealthy beverages to our children than are 2 promote social issues. #BNE” Can you elaborate past 120 characters on this point?

When you walk around in the streets, ride the train, drive on the highway or watch TV you are confronted thousands of times a day with ads for products and services. Billions of dollars are spent on getting people to buy these things but we never see clever sleek ads making it cool to care for our fellow human or a million dollar ad campaign telling us that war is not cool. If the same amount of money and creativity went into advertising NGOs or things that would advance society, the world would be a much better place. The power of advertising is enormous. Louis Vuitton is worshipped religiously in Japan, imagine if LV donated the majority of their profits to charity and through advertising they made it glamourous to care about the less fortunate , that would be incredible. It would give that logo so much more meaning. That would be something that could inspire real change, something actually worth worshipping religiously. 

Did you ever think you could transform your tag into a movement embraced by all? What does it mean for BNE now?

A movement that can be embraced by all is what we are in the process of trying to create. What does this mean for BNE? This means that the BNE name no longer belongs to me or is about me. It now belongs to the people. 

Can you reflect, however romantic or not, on “how far graffiti has come?” From being branded as vandalism to not respected as an art form to galleries to films, marketing campaigns, big retrospectives at the LA Museum to even a ‘role’ in political campaigns and now humanitarian efforts. Could you connect this to any thoughts on the future of graffiti or [street] art or protest culture?

Graffiti has come a long way is one way to look at it but others with a deeper understanding of the culture may look at it another way. With the exception of humanitarian efforts everything you mentioned in your question involves an outsider making money off of a culture that they were never a part of. Some may look at all of these things as contributing to the dilution of a culture originally meant to rebel against the system, not dance on a stage for the system. The future of graffiti? I hope that graffiti will always exist. Graffiti is a sign of life in a city. It’s a pulse that says “Hey, we are alive and we are not mindless obedient drones.” The culture is getting watered down but I’m sure that  there will always be people out there in the streets keeping graffiti alive.
 
So let’s wrap it up- how can people help?

This is a movement that every one can participate in. First, check out our website at bnewater.org and you can read more about what we are doing. You can support the movement in many ways. If you can afford to, you can donate money or buy BNE products but its not always about money. Use your power or influence to spread the word about what we are doing. Tweet or blog about us, do whatever you can to spread the word. Sometimes you do not realize the power you have. You are always looking at celebrities and brands as great and powerful, you should remember that none of them can exist without you, the consumer. You are the ones with the real power, you just do not realize it. It will not be a celebrity, corporation, or famous artist that will make this project a success. It will be you the people who will determine whether we succeed or not. I have created the platform but its up to all of you to make this dream a reality. One person cannot change the world but when enough people change themselves, then the world has already changed.

This interview originally appeared in Papersky No. 37 Norway (November, 2011).

BNE Water Foundation stickers can be seen throughout the Shibuya area of Tokyo.

“When I was on my university cycling team, I thought being a world champion like Nakano was too hard because frankly, the bar was set too high. I also didn’t think that Keirin was as ‘world class’ like the UCI (International Cyclist Union) which had races on an international scale. I thought those races were more serious, in the same way the World Cup just seems so huge in Soccer. Along with the gambling infused into the sport, people just assumed the international races were more on par with the Olympics and after the Second World War, Keirin was seen more as a form of entertainment. But things really changed when Nakano started winning.

Nakano’s name was on everyone’s lips and nicknames like ‘Mr. Keirin’ were all over the media. Amid the economic boom of the 1980s, the status of the sport continued to grow wider in recognition. Everyone started to think that Keirin riders were so cool and riders from all over the world were astounded by Nakano’s success and domination. After Nakano’s fifth straight year of winning sprint contests, the UCI thought Keirin itself was a world class system and saw fit to send some of its board members to Japan to learn more about the sport and its governing body. In turn, nine pro Keirin riders, along with a pacemaker, were invited to perform a demo race at a world championship. These events introduced Keirin to the world.

Before I turned pro, I had just gotten a right-out-of-school job as an engineer but it didn’t last too long and it was about six months before I quit. My old teammate from my university cycling team phoned me one day to tell me he had entered the professional like he had always wanted to. He asked me what I was doing with my life and naturally, it got me thinking. The next time he called me, he was in the hospital with a broken collar bone from a race accident so I went to see him and again, he asked me what my dream in life was. At that point, I felt I wanted to open a bike shop or a frame factory rather than being a pro rider but he convinced me to come out to training camp and that he would take me under his wing. It was 1981 when I quit my desk job and began to train everyday. At the Keirin school, I learned the ins and outs of the sport and in 1983 I made my official debut as a professional.

One thing you don’t forget is passing the first test- dashing one kilometer within a minute and 12 seconds. It’s a dead or alive thing, with the best seventy-five riders of each class selected to move on. Every six months, new riders enroll while at the same time seventy-five graduate and meanwhile, there are sixty pro riders retiring each year. Since that’s twice a year, you have 120 riders retiring and 150 entering- its all regulated by the Keirin Association but you can see that the number of active riders is increasing every year. I think about right now there are about 3,900 registered Keirin riders, with at least one in each prefecture and here in Tokyo I’d say there are about 160.

Another thing every rider must take from the Keirin school, or at least be aware of, are the styles and techniques that riders rely on to help them cross the finish line first. It’s often said Nakano had none of the standard methods but he did have his own style, and everyone referred to it as the ‘go, dash’ since he would just blaze straight through the track. While it emerged as a new style in spring racing, there is a handful of styles or techniques which riders employ. There’s Makkuri which I would say is the hardest, is when a rider intentionally lags behind on the first lap then powers through all the way to the front on the last stretch. There’s Senko which is dashing as soon as the pacemaker goes off the track- which is probably the most common. One every rider knows is Sashi which in Japanese means ‘to stab’ is when a rider pokes out his handlebars and body, giving it his all right before the finish line since every half-second makes all the difference. Another style is Oikomi which is just passing someone near the end of the race and then there’s Marking which is when a rider stays in 2nd place and follows the leader until they can pass when the wind-drag effect is just right. All in all, these techniques make for some of the most interesting and dramatic races.”

While Koichi Nakano was a beacon for young Keirin riders and fans alike, Tomita had his own personal hero. One of his closest and most enduring relationships throughout his years in the sport was with one of the most revered and respected frame builders in Keirin, and the world, Akio Tanabe. “When I was younger, I had gone to my first Keirin race and that was were I met Tanabe-san who was a well-known amateur at the time. I asked him a lot of questions when I met him after his race and was in awe- he was god-like, with huge, bulging muscular legs and a super aerodynamic bike. I remember pressing up against the fence and watching the Tokyo Track Championships, which on the one-kilometer dash, Tanabe easily took other riders. In my later high school years, I had attended a national athletic collegiate meet and Tanabe started training me and teaching me the more profound aspects of riding, technical bicycle maintenance as well as racing techniques. These were invaluable lessons for me and allowed me to enter my first race with confidence. I often spent time at Tanabe’s workshop and when he asked me what my dream in life was, I simply realized and said, ‘I want to be you’ and from that point on, Tanabe-san taught me everything about the sport and even suggested that I go to the Keirin school. At the start, I was weak, just a high school boy but within two years, I made it to the Japan Nationals and placed third, and even earned a little bit of a reputation along the way.

Most riders aren’t paid by sponsors nor supported by the smaller frame factories and don’t necessarily have a very close relationship with their builder but because of my close relationship with Tanabe-san, he knows everything about me, my style, my height, my size and so I don’t even really have to too involved with all the technical details like other riders may have to. I think I’m pretty lucky in that respect, I just decide on the color [laughs]. Sure, a lot of frames are pretty much the same but it’s the spirit and passion the builder pours into the frame that counts.”

Since retiring in July of 2010 and stowing away his racing gear, Tomita is currently involved in a carbon fibre frame building project as a test rider and consultant. “Since the price of carbon sheeting has leveled out a bit, it’s more possible to experiment and that what we have been doing with other components like forks and handle bars.” Commuting from his home to this project, Tomita gets around town on one of his former racing bikes, which these days, seem a bit more common on the streets than before. “Sure, these days everyone is riding these Keirin racing bikes on the street and without brakes. Naturally, this actually worried the Keirin Association. I thought it was dangerous after having been a pro and only knowing Keirin inside the track, not on the streets but the more I started to ride my bike on the streets I came to appreciate the feeling in this riding environment. I was able to see the good side of the culture but still, I always tell all those riders I see out there to put a brake on!”

Tomita has just opened his first frame-building studio and is open for business at: 1-9-2, Nangai, Higashi Yamato.

Thick and black; reflecting the fading sunlight, a small sea of ink rests inside the pool of a carved Amehata stone Suzuri. This sumi ink, made from bamboo ash mixed with melted fish bones (and dried into a solid stick) has been ground by Taiun Mochizuki, a 95 year old Shodo (calligraphy) master. On the floor of his room long white sheets of paper have been marked in thick brushstrokes with words, poems, songs and sayings. What words are his favourite? “I have many favorite words” he laughs, and begins searching at length through his documents, finally discovering an A3-sized page with a long numbered list of these favourites.

Taiun Mochizuki is a revered man in Yamanashi, for both his Shodo ability and teaching. He tells us that Shodo culture can — like many of Japan’s traditions — trace its roots back to India. Artefacts such as tortoise shells, wood and bones, inscribed with pictographs have been found from as early as 200BC. That tradition of inscribing then spread to China, where writing culture flourished dramatically and it was here that inkstones were first developed. Writing culture then travelled further East to Korea and finally, to Japan, where it was modified to meet local needs. Over the journey the technical side of writing was simplified down to four tools, the “treasures of the study” as they were called in China: paper, ink, brush and inkstone (Suzuri). But today, of those four, Suzuri is the most threatened.

“Shodo culture will not die anytime soon, it is taught in all Japanese schools. I used to teach it in the forties and fifties,” says Taiun Mochizuki. “But Suzuri making, that is really threatened, especially the Suzuri from Amehata.” These days the local monkey population far outnumbers people in Amehata but it wasn’t always so wild and forgotten; “there used to be almost 10,000 people living in the mountains near Amehata Village when I was twenty-one. I remember we used to bathe in the river in those days.” That was the era when he first began taking Shodo seriously, but his earliest exposure to the form of writing came when his father would call him and his siblings together to show them beautiful written letters. “He’d say ‘you should write like this,’ I remember that well. I was the oldest of nine siblings, now I’m the only one left.” Taiun Mochizuki is very old, and as we lose track of our talk about Shodo and Suzuri he talks easily about events and memories from vastly different eras and continents.

Many things change in a life lived so long; some things remain constant. Every time he writes, dipping his brush into a small sea of ink resting in a carved Amehata stone, he tries to invoke the same meditative state, calling upon those memories from the past. “I put all my life into my Shodo, I put everything in. My whole life goes into what I am writing. All my experiences come together in one small moment and it feels like nothingness. And that all starts with the Suzuri, it’s just my movements and the stone. No thinking.”

For more information, visit: http://villa-amehata.com/

Original text and images were published in Papersky #36 (Tokaido August, 2011).

Suzuri are an essential part of Japan’s writing history but they are also an embodiment of Japan’s spiritual history; as instruments for meditation. “If you want to write something pure, something approaching truth, then your mind should be clear. This is what is interesting about Suzuri, it is a tool for self reflection, and I believe it can be viewed as a sculptural item.”

Sitting cross legged on a mat, Yataro Amemiya, a 17th generation Suzuri maker, explains his philosophy from the concrete floor of his workshop. Down the road from the Amehata slate mine, just out of the mountains, is a small house and workshop owned by the Amemiya family. For over 500 years this family has been carving stones into Suzuri. Yataro Amemiya, wide eyed and permanently smiling is devoted to his craft, but he wants it to adapt. “I want to change the thinking about Suzuri, it is a craft object, but it is also a fine art object at the same time.” It is hard for us to understand today, but historically, Shodo (calligraphy) in Japan had a deeply spiritual function.

Borrowing from Chinese ideas about Buddhism, the act of mixing ink for writing became a meditative act; the physical expression of Zen philosophy. Writers grinding the ink stick often found themselves falling into a natural rhythm, and because making ink this way is time consuming that rhythm invoked a state of in-motion meditation. The depth of that state all depends on the look, and feel of the Suzuri. Unfortunately, over the past fifty years Suzuri have increasingly been built by machines using ceramics or plastic; turning them into cheap and ubiquitous items, and over time stripping them of their immaterial values. “People today do not know the value of a good Inkstone, or its connection to the past,” says Amemiya.

Unfortunately these values and history are not known easily, it seems. After graduating from an art university, Amemiya worked briefly for an Italian sculptor in the 1980s. His works from this time were large-scale sculptures, where heavy metal shapes have been bored with large holes. “At first I had separate names; one for my Suzuri work and one for my sculptural works. I thought they were separate, but art and craft are the same. Categories which separate them are meaningless.”

It took Amemiya a long time to reach that conclusion. The qualities of stone are not understood easily or intuitively. Least understood is its potential for invoking spiritual states, but to Amemiya this is the key to the Suzuri. Amemiya takes us to his collection of Suzuri, and we see them lined up behind glass. “You can have a totally non-functional Suzuri – an instrument which grinds ink poorly – but it can still easily clear your mind. Or you can have a totally functional instrument which can not clear your mind. It is a balance between physical and spiritual worlds.”

For more information, visit: http://amehatasuzurihonpo.com/

Original text and images were published in Papersky #36 (Tokaido August, 2011).

The stone is cold and wet to touch; a close grained and smooth slate. In the dark we feel for an end to the rock before a single light bulb turns on. Deep inside a forested Yamanashi mountain, this cave is the last place to mine for Amehata stone — one of Japan’s important ancient materials. When these stone walls collapse, or when Gyokusen Mochizuki mines the last piece of slate from the mountain’s geological guts, a living piece of Japanese cultural history will have become extinct.

Mochizuki is the last Suzuri shoukunin (“inkstone craftsman”) in Amehata village making inkstones out of the last fragments of valuable Amehata slate. He carves this slate, making it suitable for grinding dried ink sticks on. Adding a few drops of water (or morning dew, as they did in the old days) while rubbing an ink stick in circles on the flat stone creates a thick liquid ink. Japanese Suzuri have been used this way since the 8th century; they are an ancient and essential tool. Chinese Suzuri date back even further.

Across Asia, calligraphy owes an enormous debt to Suzuri; without these carved stones, writing would not exist. “There are five other mines in Japan which contain stone suitable for making Suzuri, but none are as highly regarded, or have a history as rich as Amehata’s.” This mountainous part of Japan was the place where an extremely hard, and lustrous type of slate was found by a Zen Monk. The Suzuri made from this slate would eventually be mimicked all over Japan and today, the stone is highly sought after by craftsmen and collectors. At its peak, nearly 100 years ago, Amehata village had around 20 Suzuri makers working beside its turquoise river.

Today Amehata village has only Mochizuki, a few abandoned houses and a Suzuri museum beside that turquoise river, where Mochizuki spends his days carving slate. He transports it from the cave via a homemade satchel constructed from a section of thick conveyor belt (“it’s a thick material and the rocks don’t hurt my back”) and in the workshop he polishes the bottom of each stone, checking for hairline cracks caused by excavating.

Then once he has a suitable stone, he begins carving. “I’m trying to achieve softer forms than my father. I’ve been doing this for a long time now but I still don’t feel I have ever made a perfect stone. The hardest part is making the Ike.” Japanese for “pond,” the Ike is the pool where the liquid ink runs into and Mochizuki has spent nearly his whole life perfecting the balanced slopes, the slight inclines and the curves necessary for a high quality Suzuri; essential for producing viscous, rich ink.

With Amehata village now almost empty, Mochizuki seems to spend more time with stones than people. “If I’m in the cave all day I get a strange feeling, like someone is squeezing me tight. Once I’m out I am ok, but inside there is a lot of energy. A shaman once told me these stones have a very strong power, but I don’t know about that. There is no meaning to this stone unless you are actually using it. There is no other way to really understand it.”

For more information on Suzuri visit: http://amehata.suzurinosato.com/

Original text and images were published in Papersky #36 (Tokaido August, 2011).

Tell us first, now that you’re skating with Autobahn Wheels, how did this charity project to help Japan after the March 11th earthquake come together?

When the March 11th earthquake hit in Japan, I could’t believe the devastation Japan suffered nor did I ever expected something like this could happen. I thought it was a nightmare but it was definitely real. At the same time, Jason Rogers at Autobahn heard the news and then sent me an e-mail in which he suggested making a Japan Disaster Relief Wheel model. Soon after, we put some video footage I had into the commercial to get the word out. After that, I thought if we could give some relief to the victims of this disaster it’d be a great contribution from skateboarding. I know I couldn’t have done it myself but with the mutual concern of others, it all worked out so a big thanks to Autobahn wheels. Now, I’m sure that skateboarders and skate companies can make other social contributions and if we all keep going- it’d be awesome. From now on, another friend and I plan to keep trying to organize some demos for the disaster relief on as much of a regular basis as we can. So again, I really appreciate everyone who helped me out to coordinate all of these projects.

You’ve been traveling, so what have you been up to recently?

Well, recently not that much but I usually go abroad for like almost a half year every year. I went to California from last September to last December and just cruised around SF, LA and Costa Mesa, where the Volcom skate house is, then Carlsbad and San Diego. When I stay in Cali, I always tried to get in touch with my friends who are pro and go film or shoot some photos and hang out. There are also a lots of amazing skateboarders out in Cali so I’m enjoying skating with them or just watching how they skate [laughs].

How has it been living abroad? Do you feel settled in the US or do you feel like you are constantly on tour?

Every time I go or stay in California it feels like “I’m on tour” so when I stay in any place, I always meet up with a photographer or skate friend to session every single day. So, I like living in my hometown of Tokyo too but also staying in the other countries since they offer different experiences and happenings than Tokyo. I used to live in North America and Australia so I’m always looking forward to seeing friends there and meeting new people. But the mix of it all balances out.

Sorry, but we have to ask- how did you get started skating?

When I was like a 13 or 14 years old, my cousin was a snowboarder and would take me with him and after that, I started skating then I watched my first skate video at the local skate shop and that just amazed me. I remember which video too- it was Rodney Mullen vs Daewon Song and Mouse (produced by Girl Skateboards). So that blew my mind and I decide to switch to skating. I thought skateboarding was all about the street and that skaters had little regard for anything on street and also, I had never seen people skating like that on streets in Japan. I ended up going crazy on skateboarding and going out every single day- those were the good old times.

and then you ended up getting sponsored…

Yeah, I always skated with Junosuke Yonesaka, Shin Okada and the Volcom guys in Tokyo and they started to hook me up and flowed me some products when I was 16 or 17 years old. At the same time, I skated and drank with my Canadian, Australian and American friends in Tokyo, so they taught me how to speak English. Then one of the guys in my crew hooked me up Modus bearings from Australia so I’ve been grateful for all the support I got. I did’t expect to get sponsored at the time so I was super excited.

What are your thoughts on the skate scene in Japan and for foreigners looking up skating in Japan, what should they know?

Well, I guess the skate scene in Japan will keep getting bigger and bigger for sure. Now, there are a lot of good skate parks in Tokyo and all over Japan that include all the familiar things from the real world of street skating and that will help skaters keep growing and reaching the next level. I also think skateboarding is getting more and more globalized, so I hope that this new wave will raise the popularity of the skateboarding culture more and more in Japan and all over Asia. I think the young guns will make it big internationally if they try hard. Look out for Kota, Ace, Ryou and Shogo- they are intense, got the style and yeah, they are my favorite skaters! As far as actually skating here, I think that the many tough spots and variety of spots we have here in Tokyo and Japan are good points. The street spots are not perfect like in California, I mean here, the street spots in Japan are cracking and not as smooth like in Cali.

Skateboarding became a multi-million dollar industry in the US, do you think Japanese skaters have to go to LA “to make it”?

Well, most of the skate industry is on the West coast but it doesn’t really matter since there are a lot of great skaters coming out from all over the world. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from anymore- you just have to be a nice and modest person and show your skating skills. There’s lots of ways to approach skateboarding but one thing I know is that I don’t want to forget that our love of skateboarding is at the core of what I, and we all, do.

So what do you have coming up in 2011, what do you want to set out to do?

Well, in May, when I was skating in a pool, I got stuck on some coping and fell into the bottom of the pool and landed on my head. I felt OK at the time but then, just in case, I went to the hospital, and the doctors told me my skull was cracked and there was a little bleeding in my brain. Luckily, the bleeding stopped but it actually freaked me out a lot so now I just want to keep going at my own pace and take care of my head first. Well, after my head recovers, I really want to get back on board as soon as possible, then I will plan to go to California for the summer. That’s the skate life, I’m going to keep going, filming my video parts and photos and improving every day as much as I can.

Definitely. Anything else?

Oh yeah, I also want to quickly mention www.modusfamily.com, www.volcom.jp and www.dcshoes.jp

Thanks and Respect Buchi!

Buchi can usually be seen skating at the new Miyashita Koen skatepark in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Roland Kelts: How has travel affected your work as a writer, translator and scholar?
Motoyuki Shibata: The first time I went abroad I was 20 years old. I had just entered my third year of university and I took one year off to go to England just to travel around, hitchhiking. I met a lot of people, and I think that helped me look more levelly at people, instead of looking up to them. I never looked down on people, of course, but before I went to England, English-speaking people seemed to be superior human beings. When I was a kid, the Japanese had this underlying assumption that there were three levels of people: At the top, Westerners. Second, Japanese. And the rest were at the bottom. Separate classes of human beings. So I traveled in England, and some people actually said to me that my English was superior to theirs. I didn’t speak English that well, but I could speak grammatically and clearly. It was just a small thing, but just having conversations on lorries [trucks] and just speaking to other backpackers at the youth hostels—I needed to learn that people are people. It might be something younger people in Japan know today by instinct. But I think you need to get in touch with actual people to really feel it.

R: Did that first trip give you confidence?
M: I think so. Of course, I wasn’t very fluent, in terms of language, but I’m not very fluent right now, either. But it helped me become more comfortable around non-Japanese people. And the reason I bring this up is that people sometimes talk about how new translations by Haruki or by me are different, and in what ways they differ from older translations. To speak very roughly, older translators used to think that Westerners were different, maybe superior, and certainly never inferior. So the people in their translations spoke very elevated or stiff language, and it was okay because they were different beings from us Japanese. But in Haruki’s translations, people speak normally in the Japanese language. And so Japanese realized that other people could speak like them, too.

R: Did Haruki’s translations change that? Did he start translating before you?
M: Yes. Some of the first writers he translated were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver and John Irving. And I and some friends from graduate school helped him with his first Irving translation, Setting Free the Bears. But Haruki had been translating for some four or five years before we came in.

R: Is it fair to say that the transition from Japanese translators who looked up to Westerners and rendered English into more formal Japanese to more colloquial, even slang translation was Haruki?
M: Before that you have to look to Kazuko Fujimoto, who translated Richard Brautigan. American people are always surprised to learn that Brautigan and Vonnegut are big influences on Haruki.

R: And big influences in Japan.
Right—compared to Roth or Updike or Bellow. And that’s because of Kazuko Fujimoto. And that was the first time I realized that the language in Japanese translations could be alive and very contemporary.

R: What about your first trip to the US?
M: It didn’t really have a big impact on me. I went a bit late. I was 27 at the time and already married, and I went with my wife to see my brother. So I wasn’t going on my own without knowing anybody and having everything be new. But I saw a very interesting aspect of America. My brother was living in the mountains of Oregon. He was running this sort of hot springs retreat. They had lots of cabins, and city dwellers came for the weekends—weekend hippies. And my brother was growing vegetables there.

R: In Eugene?
M: Outside of Eugene. He said it was really easy to hitchhike in the Indian reservations. He actually looked like an Indian—with long hair, a mustache and beard. So I saw a very informal West Coast version of America. Not like Los Angeles. No one smoked, except marijuana, and no one drank, either. Before that he was running a natural food restaurant in Eugene, and it was a co-op. There were several owners.

R: Why do you think you and your brother became so focused upon America and American culture?
M: I think it was music. We didn’t know much about movies, but we started listening to American music when we were about ten or twelve. And there was always this sense that something interesting was going on ‘over there.’ When we were kids, over there meant the center of Tokyo. We grew up in Kamata, which is at the far edge of Tokyo. But as we grew up, we became disinterested in what was happening in Tokyo. So the place where interesting things were going on was overseas, outside of Japan. It could’ve been Germany or Sweden, but America in Japan is an almost generic noun for all Western nations.

R: Did you think that America would provide bits of Germany, bits of Sweden?
M: Not really. But it’s true that some Japanese think the terms ‘gaijin’ (foreigner) and ‘Americajin’ (American) are synonymous. We still tend to be like that, I think.

R: You decided to focus exclusively on American literature.
M: But that was a coincidence. I went to England when I took a year off because I thought it would be safer to hitchhike in England than in the U.S. Everything was sort of a coincidence. One of the big reasons I went to England was because I took a course in American literature and our professor said we should use an English-English dictionary instead of an English-Japanese dictionary. And he recommended Taisei-do [?] Books in Shibuya, where they used to sell foreign books. And I went and looked but couldn’t find any dictionaries. Instead I found Anthony Scaduto’s biography of Bob Dylan, and a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe, instead of to the galaxy. So I read that book and thought it would be interesting to go to England. My decision to study American instead of English literature was because I met this wonderful professor of American literature. When I was at Todai, the professor of English literature was an alcoholic, and he just didn’t come to class. He showed up for the first class and assigned reports. And I was assigned a report the first week. I did my report, and he showed up ten minutes before the end of class and said, “Okay, Shibata, let’s do it.” I said, “But there’s only ten minutes.” So he said, “Okay, let’s do it next week.” He didn’t come back. But the professor of American literature, professor Ohashi, was just the best. Everything was really new, and even when the book itself wasn’t that exciting, the way professor Ohashi discussed the book was very exciting. And it made me wish I was like that. I wanted to do the same thing. I still remember the books we read in my first class, Dreiser’s American Tragedy and Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. We read them in the original English. We were undergrads reading English language texts like Sister Carrie, 400 pages, American Tragedy, 700, Gatsby 200. Thirteen-hundred pages a semester. I couldn’t do that with my students now.

R: Why not?
M: Well, they have other things to do. Their English proficiency isn’t high enough. Plus, I’m not authoritative enough. If professor Ohashi said, “Do it,” we did it. But that was a different generation, and I have a different personality. Also, students today are not inhibited or cowed, and that’s a good thing.

R: Why haven’t you lived for longer periods in the US?
M: Well, I lived in New Haven for a year. But I already had a teaching job here, so I took one year off and knew I had to leave after a year. I was already married and speaking Japanese all the time with my wife, so it didn’t really feel like I was living in the US. I was at Yale, living on campus.

R: When you’re traveling, are you able to translate and write as easily as you do at home in Japan?
M: Oh, even better.

R: How so?
M: Well, let’s say I’m in a park, or in an open air café, and I’m translating something, and people are talking around me. In a Tokyo park, they would be speaking Japanese, so I would be catching all of their comments and that would interfere with my translation work. But if I’m overseas, I would be hearing English conversation, and if I don’t concentrate, I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Just sounds—like nice background music.

R: So you can be freer from distraction. I definitely feel that in reverse when I’m working in Japan. When I’m in the US, I hear everything, and it’s all distracting.
M: Sure. I enjoy working at home, but whether I’m in Japan or overseas, I love translating in parks or in spacious, roomy outdoor spaces in nice weather. I just use notebooks—no laptops.

R: Do you use a PC at all?
M: Not with translation, except when I translated Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon and had to do a lot of research on the Internet. My wife usually transcribes my handwritten translations on the computer. She just reads my notebooks. She makes a few mistakes, but with Mason & Dixon, if she made any mistakes, I wouldn’t have known. It was just so complicated. So I did it on the computer on my own. But it’s so much easier on my eyes to use paper notebooks. When you use Japanese word processors, you always have to choose which characters to use, and that’s very distracting. I much prefer working by hand.

R: And you still don’t have a mobile phone?
M: No. If you don’t have many friends, you don’t need a mobile phone. Maybe it’s similar to resisting being photographed, as I do. The great thing about living in cities is that you can stay anonymous. I feel uncomfortable if somebody knows me and I don’t know them. It’s a kind of asymmetry I don’t like. Of course it’s nice when somebody talks to me on the train and he or she tells me they love my translations. It’s very rare, but it’s really gratifying. But my writer friends tell me that to become known is to get more of those kinds of friendly approaches—but also more hostile approaches. They both increase ten times.

R: I often learn of American writers through you. You had a great professor, Ohashi, in the beginning, but you’ve also continued to focus on America. So many years later, why do you think American fiction still absorbs you?
M: Well, once you get to graduate school, it’s very hard to switch disciplines. If you’re brilliant, you can switch either way, of course. But I wasn’t that good, and once I focused on American literature, it would have been hard for me to switch, even if I didn’t like it. But I liked it. And Japanese scholars of foreign literature tend to mimic the personality of the culture they are studying. So people focusing on British literature tend to be conservative and respectful of organizations and traditions. And among scholars of French literature, egoism seems to be the rule—it’s considered polite to be egoistic and selfish, because everyone is.

R: And scholars of American culture?
M: Very individualistic. They don’t care about organizations and institutions. Kind of selfish, but not the way scholars of French literature are. Individualistic, I would say—and they don’t pay attention to what people at the top say. They don’t follow authority.
If I had studied British literature, my personality would have changed. More respectful of authority, more conservative, and I would have been a bit uncomfortable with that. Since I studied American literature, it allowed me to be more individualistic and disrespectful of authority.

R: You’ve done quite a lot of translating for this publication, Paper Sky. What has that been like?
M: The only rule is that the story I translate is about traveling. But I soon realized that all stories are about traveling, in a certain sense.

R: How so?
M: In a story you go somewhere most of the time, or someone comes. One of the stories I translated for Paper Sky is Guy Davenport’s story about Kafka visiting some town to see airplanes, and in the audience is Wittgenstein, and he sort of stands out. So that’s traveling. Name your favorite stories. For example, “The Fall of the House of Usher”—in a way, the narrative travels to this very weird house. Or take “Bartelby the Scrivener.” He doesn’t go anywhere, but it’s also about this new aspect of the metropolis, and how nameless and anonymous in a frightening way you can be. Maybe I’m using the term traveling in an expansive way, stretching it.

R: Do you get comments on your translations to Paper Sky?
M: It’s hard to get comments about what you’re doing in magazines instead of books. But sometimes young people who are trying to become translators find my work in Paper Sky helpful. They compare it to the original and say, “Oh that’s how you do it.” That’s why I like the bilingual format of Paper Sky.

R: Speaking of travel: What would be your three favorite destinations?
M: Depends on the seasons. I like to avoid Tokyo in the summer, and would prefer to go to Australia, Melbourne or Sydney. I like speaking English, and I feel uncomfortable in places where they don’t speak English or Japanese. And nobody speaks Japanese outside of Japan. So Australia has good food, a nice climate. It seems like a logical choice. For autumn, I would love to be in New York. I love New York City. I love its sense of the past. When I’m in Washington Square, I think about Henry James’s New York. If you look at the architecture,it hasn’t changed that much since the 1930s. New York has a much greater sense of tradition than Tokyo. Also—and maybe this is what’s both exciting and tiring about New York—I feel people there are trying to be what they want to be, and trying to invent themselves. You feel that strongly in Los Angeles, too, but there, it’s almost a joke. You take a taxi and every driver has some kind of screenplay or is an actor.

R: What makes it less of a joke in New York?
M: They’re not just talking about it in New York. They’re actually living it.

Shibata is a professor at The University of Tokyo.

From its heyday as one of the initial start up skate companies in Tokyo, Otaki has remained at the helm of T-19 Skateboards and ensured the company and team remain no less creative, defiant and community-focused. When I spent time with Otaki at the T-19 house in Setagaya, what came to the fore of my mind as the history unravelled and our conversation progressed? ‘Family.’  All the anecdotes, pictures on the walls- the house itself- seemed to echo it. So did the team hanging out and chattering in the kitchen, having drinks and eating together- or the bedrooms which were compartmentalized by operational tasks of the company- sleeping included. 

Perhaps ‘family’ is a word less often associated with skateboarding than words like ‘trick’ or ‘photography,’ ‘gnarly’ or even ‘cops’ but when spending time at the house with Otaki made it clear: T-19 has history and community at its core.  Otaki has been more than just involved in the skate community in Tokyo, he practically helped build and nurture it- the network, the actual skate decks, the first skate parks (with city cooperation), cross-pacific relations as well as a sense of camaraderie and respect. It was Papersky’s pleasure to hang out at the T-19 house for some story time with Otaki-san. 

“You see, back in ’86, there was barely anyone left skating in the streets, you could sense the first skate bubble beginning to deflate. If you brought your skateboard to school you pretty much got made fun for still riding one. People realized it was just a fad but we would keep reading through issues of Thrasher, get excited and then go skate off of that. I remember you could smell signs of a new generation, and that meant a new direction. Some friends and I were skating in the streets of Tokyo but it felt like there were only five skaters in Tokyo. Just us. So after school we would go meet up in Harajuku where there was a Murasaki sports shop. That was it so that’s where we would go. People were also skating in other areas like, in Yoyogi it was more slalom-focused skaters while other kids were skating in kyosho tengoku, the pedestrian areas created by blocked-off roads.”  

Fast forward a bit and Otaki eventually got sponsored to skate and entered a few contests in North Tokyo. ”I remember it was sponsored by the skate shop Max Motion in Ueno, Betties- a surf store in Shonan and Murasaki Sports. I was skating more of a street style but soon after I dropped out of these more formal competitions.” Then, in a life-changing move, Otaki ended up moving to Venice, California on somewhat of a whim. “The owner of Betties was going to California a lot and was filming skaters out there. After watching some of that video footage- I knew that’s where I wanted to go and so that’s what I felt I had to do. I actually stayed at Jim Miur‘s house (of Dogtown and Z Boys fame) and he gave me a job in the factory. Then, I started working for a distributor and made friends with some California, skater-run companies like Real and Anti-Hero.” 

In a way, Otaki, sparked a Venice-Tokyo connection and eventually made his way back to Tokyo.  ”I have to say that there was too much drinking and drugs going on around Venice at that time and that was one reason why I decided to come back. I came back without any money left and found that things had changed in Tokyo- and I had little friends left.  For those two or three years, I had been doing a job silkscreening at the Dogtown factory so when I came back I tried to look for a similar job but couldn’t find it. I got pretty down and felt my dream had slipped out of my hands in a way. I stopped skating.”

Around the same time, Otaki met up with illustrious Japanese skater at the time, known to most as Akiyama who was the owner of the shop BeInworks. “He was skating for a surf company back in 1975 and 1976 and would go to the US for slalom-based competitions. With his younger brother Katsu, who had actually come to visit me in California, they started the first skater-run company in Japan and started up a distribution company with the same name and it’s still running to this day. Katsu called me and said he had heard that I had stopped skating and told me that he was starting up a new company so we started talking ideas. I wasn’t pro then and didn’t get cash from companies but was in a bunch of magazines. We ended up coming up with the name Tokyo Skates. S is the 19th letter of the alphabet so we just changed it to T-19.”

“So like I said, I tried to make T-19 something ‘local’ for Tokyo- for who we were. I wanted to do that here.  It was our community, and not only skaters- graffiti writers and BMX riders were in the mix too. When I first started pressing the boards, at runs of one hundred at a time, I had managed to get two riders on the team and we all rode the same team board. That was the only one I made- it had the Beinworks and T-19 logo handwritten. The original logo was made by Sk8Thing, who most people now know as the designer of A Bathing Ape.   Sk8thing also made original patterns for us. Sk8thing and the original two riders, are still riding for T-19 to this day. Whenever I cruise through Harajuku, I can still see pretty much everyone I know- it’s definitely a family feeling. Here at the T-19 office, I sometimes make dinner here. People come over and hang out and watch videos together or catch up on what’s going on; the barbecues can get pretty out of hand ya know [laughs].”

“For four years I was at BeinWorks, which had their office close to Setagaya. So the local skaters would skate in the open spaces of Setagaya park. Local skaters were allowed to skate there but then we lost the right, we talked to the city government over and over. It turned into this back and forth thing, one year we were allowed to skate there and then for some months we would lose the right again. For about ten years, this has been going on. It eventually turned into a skateboard school because we weren’t allowed to skate there. In a way, I mentored this young guy Rikiya, who had wanted to secure skating in the park and starting up a school, and I told him he had to start the park and school there.  Through the bureaucracy, we secured it and now every second Sunday of the month we have kids young and old, supportive parents, boys and girls in their teens coming out. It’s at about 70 kids each time and the skate school is up and running. On opening day we did a demo, but we ended up finishing up really quickly since all the kids were really clamoring to skate; they were clawing at the chance and I was so glad to see that it’s still that way around here. 

The Otaki-driven Setagaya Skate Park, where the Skate School takes place, are located in Setagaya Park.

T-19′s online home is at http://www.t19skateboards.com

What does your success across a fairly wide spectrum of readers say about the possibilities for alternative media today?
To make an independent magazine, and stay independent you need to have other ways to make a living on the side. It’s the key to independence. Or you can just be rich. But there are very few rich people interesting enough to make such a magazine. There are too many alternative fashion magazines anyway, but their role is to discover things and experiment with new ways to talk about things so that afterwards mainstream magazines, and advertisers, can steal all their work and ideas.

So why is the magazine named Purple?
I liked the color. There’s a link with the 70s. It’s the color that sexually attracts women, something I found out in a dictionary of color a few years ago.

Every artistic endeavor that is worthy of that name must conceive itself. At the most general level, what is Purple trying to say to the world? What is it it you?
For Purple, there’s no will to say something to the world, we just try not to be an offense to it and go through. I believe artists should not say themselves what they are trying to do, and I’ve always considered Purple to be an artist’s magazine like there are artist’s books. It’s for critics to comment on what we’re doing.

How would you describe the role of fashion in the pages of Purple?
Important. Too much maybe. It took over the rest of the years but I think we really changed things in fashion and still bring something to it: spontaneity, love, inspiration, art, thinking, cinema, literature, life…

The fashion world has become an extremely important patron of artistic endeavor. As the editor of a magazine that seems to rely on that patronage, what are your feelings towards it?
We wash our soul everyday, at least to be sure not to loose it.

Anonymous, often abstract imagery and poetry often play an important role in the pages of Purple, recalling other magazines that have worked to break down the barriers between text and image. What are some of the dangers and potentials using material like that?
The dangers are to get lost into some kind of meaningless imagery, to publish pointless texts. The potentials are the possibilities to find some clues for new situations and an ability to represent it as a life form.

What are some of the challenges that Purple faces today?
The challenge is to change again, question what we do again and again.

What artists interest you at the moment?
I have to say that I am more inspired by literature, philosophy and cinema at the moment. Music is always present but you wouldn’t discover anyone through me. At the moment I listen mostly to Bob Dylan and Schubert. I think we’re at a mediocre moment, from a creative point of view, and in this context I prefer to take inspiration from the past. My last encounter with something inspiring is a book by Caio Fernando Abreu, a Brazilian writer who died of Aids in 1996.

When did you first become aware of Japanese artists and fashion?
In Japan I am mostly interested in photographers. As for artists, there’s only one I’m interested in, Shimbaku. We started to be aware of the Japanese scene in 1994, 1995.

If you could get on a plane tomorrow and travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Rio de Janeiro. Kyoto. Erevan (Armenia). Macao. Lisbon.

What are you working on now?
My new journal Helene. I am also working on the next Purple. For five years I have been making photographs, so I continue this activity. I just had an exhibition in Tokyo at Tress Are So Special. I also write for my journal, and the Japanese magazine Ryuko Tsushin.

What can you tell us about your journal?
It’s quarterly, a newspaper of a season. It is mostly text (in French) about any subject, like in a daily newspaper but no journalists, writers, filmmakers, philosophers. It’s subjective journalism. But the goal is to change the world, or at least pretend to have hope.

Born in 1968, Elein Fleiss co-founded the influential art and fashion magazine Purple, and serves as its Editor in Chief. Fleiss also works as a photographer, and her exhibition “Fontainbleau/Beauregard” opened in Fall ’02 at Tokyo’s Gallery 360 and Poetry of Sex in Daikanyama. A number of her titles are available at the Utrecht bookshop in Aoyama.

Original text and photography of this entry appeared in Paper Sky No. 6 (New York: Urban Green, 2003)