Journal Entry#3 - Expression
In the course with Professor Johnston last semester, I learned the history of bombing and WWII, leading to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The last assignment from his class was writing our own Op-eds about what we learned in class. I wrote my Op-ed about the museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both of which deal with atomic bombings that happened in each city. When I wrote my Op-ed, my attentive audience was foreigners who visit Japan and Hiroshima but don’t make a trip to Nagasaki. I wrote about my opinion about the Hiroshima Peace Museum that the museum doesn’t tell a single story about how the war led to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but the museum is dedicated to telling the tragedy of Hiroshima while the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum devotes one-third of their exhibition to placing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki not only in the context of the WWII history but also of the history of nuclear weapons and their development. However, the Hiroshima Peace Museum held twice more visitors than the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. So, I proposed in my Op-ed that we should visit both museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to learn more completely about the history of atomic bombings.
After reflecting on my Op-ed in the last class, I became to think that I would like to make more opinionated and emotional “Op-ed” that I can carry my emotion. While I understand that Op-ed can be more influential and inspirational when I choose an attentive audience, readers, and listeners (and this Op-ed chooses foreigners visiting Japan as an attentive audience), but the other side of my brain tells that I would just like to be angry, sorrow, and runs tears about sufferings and pains of people under the atomic bombs and bring more attention to the ugliness of atomic bombs that exist many numbers, many years, and in many countries. But I think that my emotion that I’d like to carry and bring attention to is not limited to atomic bombings and bombs. One of the three things I wrote as "three things I am angry about" is the authoritative government that China has and oppresses people with other identities than Han and tries to exterminate the culture and language of minority groups in its nation. I might want to write about them or minorities in Japan, my home country, to let my readers or listeners think about awfulness of oppression that political authority or societal system could perform for its greed.
One of my concerns, when I write an Op-ed, is how I should care about the emotion of people who read and listen to it. To think about my Op-ed about the Hiroshima Peace Museum, I was hesitant to talk about that my Op-ed that I wrote with my grandparents in Hiroshima because I was afraid that any of my descriptions in my Op-ed might hurt them in the sense that I wrote somewhat a critique to the way of an exhibition of the Hiroshima Peace Museum. So, I am still struggling with my own ways of expression for the contentious opinions and thinking when I think of actual readers and listeners of my Op-ed.
Class Reflection:
Whose artworks/ whose stories or artworks move your heart and body.
When Eiko asked this question, I was not able to come up with my answer promptly. The first thing I came up with was a sunset on the beach in Kamakura. But, I realized that it was something that nature creates and not someone’s creation, so I wouldn’t call it “work.” And, the next thing that came up in my mind was icons (paintings of Jesus Christ or another holy figure) that I saw in the churches in Russia. They moved me and stuck in my heart because of the history of them for existing from the 7th century and their mysterious but fascinating detailed expression that religious people had created and respected for centuries. By listening to other classmates’ stories about artworks that moved their hearts, I came to realize that things that move their hearts are different from each other, and the contexts and their memories associated with it are integral for them to remember those artworks and make them special.
Movement: Sleeping and finding our space.
The sleeping movement was new to me. I found it difficult when I let my body move on their own. My mind and intention interfered with my body and tried to control my body’s motions as I always do it in everyday life. And, when I was trying to let my body take over motions, my body suddenly felt stagnant and rejected to take an initiative to move. I think that my body is maybe scared to take on autonomy over movement since I (we) think and “use” our body in everyday life. So, my brain doesn’t know what my body does by letting it go and my body is also struggling to design its movement since it’s new and felt strange for my body to design its own movement. But I think stagnation did recede after many attempts of repetition of movement and get used to living on that movement, which was for me crawling on the floor in this exercise.
When I search around the space, it was difficult to manage myself not to be affected by the objects and space around us. Eiko told us in class to try motions that come only from our insides. But objects around me and the space I was in, of course, limited my emotions and thinking. Each of the things I see, touch and feel enticed me to distract and interfere with my own movement. I didn’t know that it was such a difficult process to manage myself to move solely based on my body and inner feelings and made me realize that I consciously and unconsciously let the outer environment to take over me and form my motion and even thinking. It also made me scared as well.
When we talked about 9.11. The distance was a concept I had my reflection on. I felt a distance from 9.11 and had never felt close to the incident before I visited the Memorial park in NY. But after listening to classmates’ stories about their families traumatized by 9.11. and what they have been feeling about it to today, I am still surprised by my distance from 9.11. Even though I read Tuesday and After and Eiko’s personal reflection on 9.11. I can’t help feeling distance (or difference?) and having a hard time getting rid of distance from 9.11, whereas my classmates take it closer and personal and have their own struggle to find a place and stance to it. (since they were babies when it happened) I don’t have my clear answer yet to how I can shorten my distance to 9.11. Maybe thinking through my movement or reading Tuesday and After again from the beginning might help.., I will keep self-curation.
Dance:
I should not repeat this word, scary, but it’s also natural I think to feel in this way because it’s new and a bit strange compared to other experiences I had before. I decided to move on to
the bank of the river never my house as I felt calmer and the space is more open. But there are people passing by and, at first, I felt scared and shy to show my movement in front of people whom I don’t know. But as I started to move on the ground, I got used to my space and objects around me, trees, grass on the bank, the river, sounds of the streaming river, bags, the noise of people walking and speaking, etc. As I got to known to place, my movement has got more dynamic. And scariness and shyness melt away and turned into courage and will to move. When I was moving, I was so concentrated on my body and movement that I could not afford to think about what people think of me or make a judgment about me moving on the bank of the river. It was pleasant feelings after I was done with my movement because I felt a bit more liberated and autonomy over myself. It was a positive experience for me.
Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya surprised me many times. It was my first time to read the everyday journal talking about his experience from August 6 and it left deep impressions to see how people were dismayed and trying to make sense of what had been happening in front of them (or some were denying) and the whole meanings of death and survival had changed from that day. The lines in the book: “When I thought of the injured lying in the sun begging for water, I felt as though I were committing a sin by being where I was. I no longer felt quite so sorry for those of our patients who were obliged to lie on the hard concrete floor in the toilets.” It was stinging to read these sentences for me to think about how Hachiya had to adapt to these horrendous situations in Hiroshima when he sees patients lying packed without treatment and dying from day to day or completely crushed Fukuya department store and thinks that he was very lucky so that he had to live in to keep his mind and body sane. So he says: “People were dying so fast that I had begun to accept death as a matter of course and ceased to respect its awfulness.” If he started to feel guilt living in these situations, he might have had lost his hope to live. So, he had to accept these dreadful moments and space he lived in and survived. And it’s not just him. His wife went outside in the dark and stumbled on the dead’s foot in the corridor. I was terrified to picture these frightful moments of how a number and number of death and destruction dominated 10 days after Hiroshima A-bombing that I witnessed through his journal. But it also made me ponder when he talked about Ba-san’s death before the surrender was proclaimed to the citizens. He felt glad she died because he knew that it would be disheartening (he describes it as “lonely”) for Ba-san. And, I thought that, though he ceased to respect its awfulness of death, it was the opposite. He still managed to think that people are not numbers but individuals in this part.
After reading Hiroshima Diary, when I was doing my own movement before I go to bed, I feel lucky that my body is moving and I sense every part of my body and inside. I’m a lucky human being that I can move every part of my body as it wants like merging my front and back. Coming to realize my fortunate, I became to feel my body to move more and more and appreciate my body and its movement. I swayed. I hopped. And I wiggled. It was my first time that I found happiness in the process of the movement exercise.
“Now we’re all the same age together. None of us is young this week, and, with death and calamity just down the street, few of us vicarious any longer.” (Roger Angell)
“Imagine the people who have already seen years like these turn into decades – imagine their brief lifetimes made up only of days like these we’ve just seen in New York.” (Denis Johnston)
