Louis Vuitton – Borderless

Narratives and photographs by Suzanne Kamata

Several years ago, I published a short book, A Girls’ Guide to the Islands (Gemma Open Door, 2017) about traveling amongst the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea with my daughter, who is deaf and uses a wheelchair. One of the islands that we visited was Naoshima, the site of several art museums, including the Chichu Art Museum, which houses five paintings from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. In addition to writing about our responses to the various artworks, I touched upon the difficulties and differences in traveling with a wheelchair user. For one thing, the ferry which conveyed us from Takamatsu City to the island, did not have an elevator to the upper decks. While others got out of their vehicles to take in the scenery from above decks, my daughter and I spent the crossing in my car.

Shortly after this trip, I received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation for a longer book about traveling with my daughter, which became the award-winning Squeaky Wheels: Travels with My Daughter by Train, Plane, Metro, Tuk-tuk, and Wheelchair (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2019). A slightly different variation of our trip to Naoshima appears in that book.

Although I loved our time on the island, and had not yet visited all the museums and installations, I had not been back since that trip with my daughter. I finally had a chance to revisit last month when I learned that the couple who had administered the grant that had made my book possible would be visiting Naoshima. I arranged to meet with them on my way back from Kyoto, where I was going to attend a book launch. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be going with my daughter this time. She is now an adult living in Osaka, and it takes a bit of effort to coordinate our schedules. Nevertheless, I figured I could scout out the situation before planning our next mother-daughter adventure.

Although on previous visits, I had taken a ferry from Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku, this time I took the shinkansen, Japan’s high speed bullet train, from Kyoto to Okayama, where I spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, I easily found the stop for the bus bound for the ferry terminal. Almost everyone in the queue was foreign. As far as I could tell, most of them were from Europe.

No doubt some had timed their visit with the Setouchi Trienalle, an art festival which takes place mainly in the ports and amongst eleven islands every three years. Japan, in general, has seen a huge surge in tourism over recent years due to the weak yen and governmental efforts to promote inbound tourism. While this has been good for Japan’s economy, it has driven prices up for local residents. It also means that public transportation is often crowded.

When we arrived at the ferry terminal, I purchased my ticket and joined the tail end of a very long line. Luckily, I was able to board the ferry and find a seat. I was pleasantly surprised to find the ferry had been upgraded since my last visit. Not only was it appointed with plush seats facing the water, but also there was now an elevator!

About twenty minutes later, we arrived at Minoura Port. Armies of English-speaking guides were readily available. I quickly found my way to the bus stop and onto the bus that would take me to the recently opened Naoshima New Museum of Art. I had just enough time before meeting my benefactors to check it out and have lunch.

The inaugural exhibition featured the work of twelve artists and groups, including Takashi Murakami, who has achieved worldwide fame. His cartoonish characters appear on coveted Louis Vuitton bags. He also designed a special shirt, printed with cherry blossoms, for fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers. His work on display, a 13-meter-wide painting, is modeled after a 17^th century folding screen titled Scenes In and Around Kyoto by Iwasa Matabei. Murakami’s rendition portrays scenes of everyday life in early modern Kyoto. But look closely, and you will find some of his iconic original characters!

Another impressive exhibit, Head On, by Cai Guo-Qiang, features lifelike wolves running toward and colliding with a glass wall. According to the exhibit brochure, the wall “symbolizes the intangible yet deeply felt ideological and cultural divisions between people and communities.”

After going through the exhibits, and vowing to return with my daughter, I popped into the museum café for a quick lunch. The dining area was in open air, with a view of the sea and the islands beyond. I ordered pumpkin toast, perhaps Naoshima’s answer to America’s ubiquitous avocado toast, and a nod to the famous Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculptures which grace the island.

Finally, I took another bus and went to meet my friends. They are no longer awarding grants to parent artists, having shifted their focus to indigenous groups, however, I will remain forever grateful for their support. We met and had a drink near the Benesse House Park, just outside the Terrace, where my daughter and I had dined several years ago. Then it was time for me to head to the ferry terminal and back to Takamatsu, where I would catch a bus. I happened to cross at sunset – a final blast of beauty before returning home.

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Owls in the Ginza

Suzanne Kamata visits an ‘owl café’ in Tokyo

The last time I had found myself in Tokyo with some free time and the freedom to move about, I had tried to drop in at an owl café. However, after making my way to such an establishment on the heels of a couple of Chinese tourists, I discovered that a reservation was necessary. The place was booked weeks in advance.

A few weeks ago, I again had some business in Tokyo, so I contacted an old friend and suggested we do a bit of sightseeing together.

“What do you want to do?” she asked me.

I replied that I wanted to visit an owl café. She messaged back that she didn’t like birds.

We had lunch in a sushi restaurant that normally had a queue as early as seven a.m. Due to the coronavirus, we waltzed right in and had a leisurely lunch. After that, we went to a museum that normally required reservations, or at least a long wait. And since there had been so little time wasted standing in line, my friend agreed to take me to an owl café. She found one by using her phone and called the place up. Sure, we could visit, the owner said. No reservations were needed.

The Mofu Mofu Owl Café Ginza was down a side street in Tokyo’s tony shopping district, steps away from the likes of Louis Vuitton and Chanel. As we climbed the three flights of narrow stairs, I wondered what it would be like inside. It would be dark, I imagined, because owls are nocturnal. But no, when we pushed open the door, we were met with light.

It’s a bit of a misnomer to call the place, and others like it, a café. Coffee is not served, nor is there cake or any other kind of food. There were no tables, no young women with aprons or maid costumes, just a guy wearing a T-shirt in a roomful of owls tethered to perches.

The owner seemed happy to see us. We were the only customers. He instructed us to disinfect our hands, and then showed us how to touch the owls – a gentle rub on the top of their heads, much in the way that my cat liked to be caressed. The owls were big and fluffy, like cats, and I wanted to hug them, but I figured they would probably try to bite me if I did.

My friend, the bird-hater, hung back while I went around looking at each owl. They were of various species from around the world. I wondered if they were bored, sitting on their perches all day, with nothing to do. Maybe our being there was their entertainment.

“They wouldn’t survive in the wild,” the owner said. “They have been raised from eggs by humans.”

He told us that they might live for thirty years in captivity, but only half that in nature. What was worse, I wondered? Thirty years of boredom, or fifteen years of being stressed out about their next meal, and where they would build a nest? Was keeping owls in this room any worse that keeping a parakeet in a cage? Or not allowing my restless cats to go outside, even when they meowed pleadingly at the door? (Actually, I sometimes did allow them to go out, knowing full well that they might be dodging cars, picking up fleas, and murdering songbirds and mice.)

The owner explained that before the pandemic, he’d operated two cafes – this one, and another in Roppongi — but due to the travel restrictions which prevented tourists from overseas from visiting, he’d had to close that one. All the owls were now gathered here. They’d been given names of nearby shops. Gucci was a Japanese Northern White-faced Owl, while the Little Owl from Belgium was named Bottega Veneta. There was also a Tawny Owl, born in 2016, named Tiffany.

“Before the pandemic, a lot of foreigners came here,” the owner said. Some famous people, too. He showed us a photo of the singer Akiko Yano, ex-wife of internationally renowned musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, with one of the owls. Yano lives in New York City and had heard about the café while abroad. I looked around at the empty space. Apparently, Tokyoites didn’t have an urge to commune with owls. I worried about what would happen to them if the tourists weren’t welcomed back to Japan soon.

The owner let me pick out an owl and settled it on my hand. My friend finally got up the courage to stroke one of the owls between its eyes. The phone rang, and the owner went to answer it. I heard him booking another customer, and I felt a bit relieved. Apparently, this one would come at mealtime and watch the owls consume dead mice. That was probably an exciting part of the owls’ day.

Part of me thought that the birds might be happier in an atrium somewhere. But while they were here, I hoped they would be well looked after. I wanted to contribute as best as I could, so I loaded up on souvenirs – a pen encasing an owl feather, made by the owner’s wife; a handful of chopsticks with owl motifs; and a bottle of Hitachino Nest beer, which had an owl on the label. And I promised to post some photos on Instagram so that more tourists would come.

Thanks to the columnist Suzanne Kamata for the photographs.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL