The Hidden Garden of Kichijōji

Earthshine reader —

It's me, Dazé, and this letter represents the last I write in 2024, bringing the newsletter total to a humble 14. (You know where to find the others.)

Initially, I thought it would be fitting to make this December issue a "winter edition", but then I remembered I'm more of an upstream kind of fish, and decided on a walk I took around this time last year during my last weeks in Japan. (I may or may not be feeling nostalgic.)

Fun fact: At the start of this year, I meant to submit some of the following photos to an end-of-year street photography challenge organised by a fellow creative, Hunter James. Unfortunately, I ran into technical difficulties, which led me to give up on the attempt and shelf the photos … until now.

It was December 6, 2023. My wife and I had just concluded a month-long mission of packing, selling, giving, and throwing furniture in time for our move-out day. (Most flats in Japan are rented unfurnished, which smells like "gaijin" repellent, but that's a tangent for another time.) Suffice it to say, we needed a break.

Luckily, despite being flat-free, our stay in Japan wasn't over. So, how did we choose to spend the remaining ~2% of our visa? It came down to travelling away from the capital area, or staying within it — we chose the latter. After all, it was more economical, and many of our favourite stores and restaurants are there.

But the biggest reason? Tokyo is an enormous sprawl — six times the size of Paris — where the opportunities to discover new places, especially on foot, are seemingly endless. For us, one such place was the hidden garden of Kichijōji, nestled in the heart of Musashino, not far from the Ghibli Museum. Its name: Inokashira Park.

A warm-up shot featuring a solitary cormorant giving me the shoulder, showing no desire to relocate to the first or second post from left despite my many telepathic signs. Wishful thinking aside, I believe my retina was attracted to the repetition orchestra composed of the fence posts, the row of boats, and the rippling water surface. Or could that be wishful thinking too?

Here's an example that demonstrates the value of anticipation in spontaneous photography. You see, in this case, the scene didn't come first; I spotted the duck, and it led me to it. I had seen the feathery fellow gliding my way, bound to cross under the momiji leaves, so I raised my camera and waited for it to show up inside the frame. Anticipation — it gives you control in an uncontrollable environment.

I also didn't spot this frame — my wife did. That's not anticipation, though. That's just having a wife with a good photographic eye. It's the only reason I let her join me on these walks. (Sarcasm? Yes, but this is the only time I'm pointing it out. You're on your own from now on.)

On another note, something I noticed while living here is that the Japanese autumn colours are in no hurry to leave, and I'm all for that. Coming from Iceland, I'm used to a rather perishable autumnal … phase — let's call it that.

Flat surfaces, they are a reminder that water doesn't move by itself; it requires a force — like the wind, a fish, a motor, or the combination of gravity and the right container, as in the case of rivers. Even so, sometimes you come across windows of time in which little to nothing disturbs the surface, and it's not exclusive to ponds — you see it in the open ocean too. In those moments, the water finds itself at peace, and only then, is it able to synch with the world and become one with it, mirroring it seamlessly to the point that it becomes hard to perceive the division between the two realms. I can relate to water — not because I was born in March, but because, I too need moments when I'm completely undisturbed and grounded in the present. Only then am I able to recalibrate and, ultimately, project a sense of authenticity — to the world, to those around me, and my art.

This house stood outside the perimeter, but its colours harmonised with those of the park's foliage, proving that what's apart can still be united, or as the following proverb puts it:

The right perspective makes the impossible possible.

I haven't read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, and yet, to me, this image has a The Hound of the Baskervilles aura. How on earth does that work? It shouldn't — so am I making a fool of myself? Those who've read it, let me know if my intuition is off track.

I'm a storyteller, and although I do non-fiction (newsletters + essays), most of my writing is dedicated to fiction in the form of screenplays. Hold that thought. I'm also, surprise, a photographer. Photographers talk about capturing images that tell a "story". There's also that saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. As a photographer, I agree with this, but as a screenwriter who spends years working on a "story", I can't help but recoil a little. I believe both sides hold some truth. An image can tell a story, even a line of poetry can cause tears. At the same time, the story of an image or a poem can't be compared to the intricate character and plot developments distilled in a novel or a script. The best way I can mediate this self-discussion is by saying that photographers tell stories while authors tell Stories.

Before I get to my point, as a second introduction, let me put on my photographer's hat for a moment. I take many photos. Most have little to say, some have the potential to do so, and then there are those odd cases that possess a kind of alchemy that hits you hard and leaves you in deep thought. The last example is rare, but, in my opinion, does not necessarily only depend on serendipity or things outside of the photographer's control. (By the way, the third case scenario is what writers aim to achieve, page by page, scene by scene.)

And now, to pay off my rambling, the photo you see above fits somewhere between the first and second cases. The badly dented roof caught my attention and made me wonder what had happened to it. Seconds later, an officer of some kind walked into the scene and roamed around the shed as if investigating. Without him, the photo tells a story, but with him, it further enriches it. It's as if he's looking for an answer to my very question. In this case, the story is open-ended.

I'm not sure what this building's purpose is, but on this day, that purpose was at rest. You know what wasn't on a break, never wavers, and has a clear life mission? Vending machine-san. He's always there — around every corner, on every floor, even at the summit of mountains — forever satisfying the thirst of dehydrated natives and gaijins alike. Best of all, his pricing is reasonable.

Ducks are fascinating — perhaps the most naturally versatile animal on Earth. Unlike other animals, ducks are blessed with four (!!!) abilities: walking, swimming, diving, and flying … Evolution, care to justify this blatant favouritism? (To its credit, at least it didn't make them natural predators the size of condors, boasting the intelligence of orcas. Now, that's a blockbuster I'd pay to see.)

An experimental composition. I employed a Dutch angle, not to match the orange theme, but to straighten the slanted tree trunks — albeit at the cost of the background's geometry. The result fills me with unease and makes me worry those kimono girls are up to something more than innocent selfies …

Another Dutch angle, this time for the Dutch hue … and the repetition patterns.

To conclude, a visual metaphor depicting my wife and me as we mentally prepared for our migration. But, like most migratory birds, we shall return.

As I alluded to at the start, this was only one of several saunters I took during my last days in Japan after living there for almost two years. I shall write about the others too. When? Your guess is as good as mine, but they will most certainly pop up in the Earthshine newsletter, be it in issue 008, 080, or 800, along with many other past, present, and future "globeappreciations".

Until next time,
D