Narahara Ikkō: Japanese Zen

What does “Japanese culture” mean, and in which way words like spirituality and religion are relevant to the Japanese? Where do people nowadays search for the meaning of their life? I was wondering about all these questions while checking photography exhibitions in Tokyo. The name of one of those caught my attention: “Japanesque Zen” by Narahara Ikkō, described as “a sharp observer of modern Japan and its extremities”[1].

I did know nothing about this artist or the place the exhibition was on - the 'Photo Gallery International' in Shibaura, near Tamachi station - but I knew I needed to see it.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo on the website chosen as the exhibition overview: I endlessly chased the wake of the lantern light that showed the passage of Buddhist monks, probably running for the preparations of the morning service. I wanted to discover more about the meaning of that light: what lay inside the image that I was incapable of seeing. I went to the gallery on an ordinary sunny day, and after crossing some bridges, I reached the place on a secondary street. At the entrance, the invitation to freely visit the gallery. I went upstairs to the second floor finding myself in front of a small white room, where a few photos, all framed in white, were waiting silently to be observed. According to the guestbook, just a few people came to see the exhibition, and I was the only foreigner. The 12 photos were taken in 1979 in the Sōjoji temple in Ishikawa and Yokohama, all black and white, where light and shadow are the real protagonists. As Narahara said, shadow exists just because light exists, and human beings' existence could be compared to the space occupied by the shadow of our physical body. For Narahara, the perception of the photo starts from reading the space and time as included simultaneously. This is his way to get closer to the real essence of Zen. In the monosyllabic Japanese word Ma (間), there is the space (門 = door) in which the sunlight (日= sun) peeps in: the interval of waiting for the sun and the moment in which it can be seen from the door is empty, but this emptiness is not an obstacle, rather implies all the potentialities of the moment, both positive and negative. In Narahara's photos, this Ma is filled with motion, captured by the camera in an eternal moment in which past, present and future exist simultaneously. Negative and positive spaces, considered from the point of view of the photographic technique, are blended and not easily recognizable so that the viewer's mind can start its creative process by filling the photo with their thought and feelings.

On a simple bamboo wall, a face profile is reflected by a circular glow as like surrounded by an aura, while from the dark emerges a head illuminated by a dazzling radiance, emptying of any material consistency. What is real? And what, conversely, is our mind product? The external existence is different from the inside? Using the camera as a tool for meditation, Narahara wants to show us the photos as evidence of the external reality and our heart that meet each other and become one. But to ensure they can meet, a mechanism that continues to function properly must be programmed in detail [2].

From this point of view, his works became koan, the enigma of the space-time that separates dream and reality, a way to meditate as per the original Zen Buddhism teaching that focused on a picture to contemplate. Looking back on the past, Narahara tried to unveil the traditional culture that still lives in contemporary Japan, cancelling distances and allowing, perhaps, to see our true nature.

[1]    Time out – http://www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo/event/14127 (consulted the last time on July 5, 2015)

[2]    Nihon no shashinka (31)  – Narahara Ikko, Nagano Shigekazu (curated by), Iwanami shoten, 1997, p. 6.

#photographer #photo #Japan #photography #arte #zen #Tokyo #exhibition #buddhism #japanese

Immerse yourself