Junction
Made in collaboration with my mother, Julianne White
July 1994 was about Japan. After project managing a cultural exchange between Osaka and Brisbane, I was invited to Osaka for the Tenjin Matsuri, a 1000 year old, two day festival when the Shinto diety, Sugawara Michizane, is carried from the Tenmangu Shrine, through the streets and on to the river to see his people and his city.
The three entities we had worked with on the exchange treated us like honoured guests. We were dressed in Kimono, taught and shared in rituals, saw the mighty land parade as it beat and danced its way through the streets to the river where we were invited to be on the Gūji’s (the chief Priest’s) barge during the river parade and the fireworks.
The true beauty of this trip was that we were with people who we worked with in Australia, who had now become friends and who wanted us to know more of their ways of life and culture.
We stayed in their houses and realised how incredibly tight living space was in Japan. Bathhouses were the norm because many homes had no room for showers.
Religion was important
Shrines, monasteries and palaces were carefully tended and surrounded with beautiful greenery and gardens.
When houses were so small there seemed to be an imbalance. These gardens however were for everyone. We saw a Kabuki performance in the gardens of the Osaka Palace. Kabuki was presented every week in the Palace grounds and thousands of people were in the audience and walking through the gardens.
The Japanese people were generous with their time and while it is a cultural obligation, it also made them happy
Food was to be enjoyed and the more beautiful the surroundings the better it tasted and the more memorable it was
Picture a narrow ravine with a creek, beautiful forest growing on both ravine walls, a platform built over the creek and a very traditional bento box feast set up on a low table. Add 2 Australians and their 2 Japanese hosts (who kindly explained what the food was), saki and laughter – perfect.
Every now and then a great job comes along. The Tenjin Matsuri was such an event.
As a child I remember looking through the photo albums which were on the bottom shelf of mum’s timber bookshelf. There were lots of albums from before I was around, of mum and her friends, coworkers, siblings, lots of albums of our family together, of me as a child, some of her trips to America and England.
One album had my favourite set of photos in it. It was my favourite even though I didn’t feature in them at all, remarkable for a kid who thought the world revolved around them. These photos were from mum’s trips to Japan. Everything looked magic and I imaged fantastical stories around the photographs but wasn’t very interested in hearing stories from mum’s actual trip. Some 23 years later I was planning my own trip and had a sudden interest in hearing about mum’s time in Japan and her recommendations and experiences. Unsurprisingly, she recommended going to Osaka, and I did, along with other places.
This work is a collaboration between the two of us, 6 years after my trip and 29 years after mum’s trip.
A shared album, of junctions, parallels and mirrors… decades apart, and experienced independently of each other.
