Mirai Moriyama
Mirai Moriyama
A conversation with Mirai Moriyama
— as appeared in the Patience issue of Whitelies Magazine
Interview Terri Fujii
Photography John Clayton Lee
Styling Hayato Takada
Terri Fujii: The theme today is “Patience.” In Japanese that concept could be thought to translate to mean “tolerance,” “perseverance,” “endurance” — but also: “calmly observing and considering our next moves”. It has already been almost two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking back at these two years, the word “patience” perfectly describes the state you were in regarding your work whether it be a performance or a movie production. Can you elaborate on this? The world was turned upside down but reflecting on your activities you have created works which would be considered as “historic” by later generations. The most recent of which was the opening performance at the Tokyo Olympics — the Games which we were unsure would go ahead until the very last minute. The decision to have the Olympics during COVID-19 was questioned by many. Under the circumstances, what motivated you to take on the event? What thoughts did you want to express in the performance?
Mirai Moriyama: I think many people had ambivalent feelings towards the Olympics. In this regard too, people who did not know what I had been doing up to the event thought ‘what the hell?’, (upon seeing my performance). Many questioned why this particular show. But, leading up to it I depicted Zaha Hadid’s soul in the form of Mugen Noh in Unexplored Ghosts and Monsters. Prior to that, at Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto, in a ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, I took part in a dance performance, Re-Incarnation, dedicated to the God of the shrine. Before that I was a part of a Butoh performance by Akira Kasai, Sakura no Ki no shit ani wa, a story that under the beautiful cherry blossom, in the earth, lie dead bodies of people and other living things over the course of history. Circulation of life and death. Ugly things, beautiful things — all a part of the earth — emerge with the transient beauty of the cherry blossom. It is about the perspective of life and death.
I was always interested in the world view posed by Butoh but this was the first time I engaged in it. I was exposed to the spiritualism of Akira, who in his works consciously explores and expresses in words the border between life and death from a belief that life and death are not a simple dualism. In the end, all these works were related to this view on life and death and in facing the Olympics, I carried forth this philosophical foundation.
The opening ceremony of the Olympics is a grand and a public occasion. However, I see the heaps of corpses lying along the road. I cannot just ignore them and stage a joyful, celebratory performance. To me, the performance was not about repose for the souls of the dead or a memorial for the COVID-19 loss. What I felt most heavily was the weight and presence of the furies of the living. So I wanted my performance to relate to them. There is a ritual that is an incantation to drive away a plague in the Todaiji temple’s Shunie ceremony called Gotai-Tochi (a prostration in which both hands, legs and head are pressed to the ground and expresses his heart of repentance through the body). In the ritual there is a movement in which a monk hits his knee hard against the ground. It signifies a will to disperse the plague at the expense of physical endurance. For Shunie, the act is a prayer but for me, shouldering the furies of the living souls, the hitting of the knee against the ground becomes an act of madness and one of anger. In ceremonies, today we offer food but in the old days when threatened by starvation: a virgin, a horse, a cow, etc. A so-called human sacrifice was offered. In this age, under the circumstance, if I do hara-kiri on stage, then I should be able to pacify the wraith. I didn’t have the courage. So instead, I wanted to hit my body against something, like gotai-tochi, resulting in the performance. Something like that. Being in the firing line of an event like the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I cannot just do a performance that says, “Hey guys, the Olympics happily begins.”
Seeing my performance at the Olympics may have triggered something for those unaware of what I had been doing. Those who knew my activities may have taken away a different message. I do not know what viewpoint people saw me from. Whether it be Akira Kasai’s work, the performance at the Kiyomizu temple, or Zaha Hadid’s of Unexplored Ghosts and Monsters, I feel my body acted as a medium and delivered an output of some sorts. Then came the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony performance in July. The physical body may be empty but things that passed through me, the emotions, the thoughts, as a medium culminate. I as a medium, the raison d’etre of existence, was all out in the performance. Some people saw in me the soul of Zaha. Some people saw a person dedicating the dance to the god of Kiyomizu temple. Some people may have seen an Sakura No Ki No Shita ni ha existence that breathes between the blooming Sakura and the land of accumulated dead bodies in a Butoh-like context. It is not the result of “sitting in silent thought” but rather through encounters with different people (through such encounters), many things pass through my body. The residues of the echoes illuminate from the body. As an artist this is my unique way of being, way of expression, and proposition — in very abstract terms.
TF: The word “Karada” (body) originated from “Kara” (empty). I think this state of being is “Patience” as an antonym of “Impatience.” So as an opposite of that, “Patience” would mean, the state of being “Kara”. So, if you are patient, you have many things come in, they come to you, but if “Impatient”, nothing flows in. And in the case of you, Mirai, you make yourself always ready to receive things. This state of being, I think, is “Kara” being empty. It is not “nothingness.” It is about allowing things to flow through and flow in.
MM: I was in Israel from 2013 to 2014 as a cultural exchange ambassador and was part of a local dance company. I was the only Japanese person or Asian, the other half of them Israeli with others from Germany, Italy and other Western European countries. In spending time with the others I realized how Asians and Westerners treat the concept of “face” in a completely different. The approach in Japan is to perform not with your face but your body below your face and neck. In Japanese classical theatre there exists a collective thinking / philosophy that we act as a vessel; we act as a medium of the higher beings of the spiritual world. It is not a theatre theory, but it is about spiritualism / a way of expression of those who stand on the stage.
The existentialism of the West versus an Asian or ‘Eastern’ way of thinking, the concept of the vessel; spiritualism. I realized that the difference translates to the characteristics of performers. In the case of existentialism, the whole being including the face exists / stands on stage. I wondered whether we can replicate this in Japanese culture or as an individual from this background.
I thought it might be interesting to play around with the challenge while I was in Israel. Then I came back to Japan and the first work offer was that of the performance Vessel by Kohei Nawa and Damien Jalet. I was ready to explore an existentialist approach to performance but was asked to be literally a vessel! (laughs). Damien’s interest in the Japanese ancient earthen figurines greatly influenced and inspired the performance. It was also a collaboration with Kohei Nawa, who explored how to transcend the physical body in order to become more like sculpture and vice versa. I think Damien paid attention to an Asian style of physicality. The vessel philosophy flowed from the earthen figurines Dogu and Damien saw and interpreted this concept of embodiment as a philosophy amongst Asian dancers and performers. So, all this made me more confident that as an Asian male and Japanese dancer, in performing, it would be amusing to consciously pursue existence as a vessel. Take Butoh for example — though the definition of Butoh may vary from person to person what is common is that same concept. You take scripture into the body and the body changes its shape. Words, personal, abstract words are all thrown at the body and the body transforms. Such is also a vessel and one dimension of Butoh. You dance with the spiritual plane, not the physical forms.
TF: COVID-19 is a natural disaster — but a man-made one considering the globalisation bringing humans and animals in close contact. The Great Japanese Earthquake Disaster, on March 11th 2021, marked the 10th anniversary — it is a result of the fury of nature. However, at the same time it is about environmental issues. It makes you contemplate on how humans and nature coexist. The performance at Kiyomizu temple took place along this line of thinking. What are your thoughts?
MM: I did not proactively pursue Kiyomizu but it was a chance encounter. The French gallery Perrotin in Paris offered a performance project in Kiyomizu temple, which started my thought process. What is Kiyomizu, what is it in context to Kyoto, Kyoto’s geology, in today’s context. I started to deep-dive and from that emerged a concept, a theme. Many such chance encounters with people who despite the setbacks of COVID-19, explored different means and forms of artistic expressions. I also explored new paths and also contemplated. It so happened that someone had an interesting idea and called me, I was in the right place. A continuum of chance meetings led to collaboration. The world got turned upside down and changes were forced, and you had to step back. Under such circumstances there are people who try to find a way to adapt, to breakthrough, new methods of proactive expression. I continued to do what I could last year and this year I was involved in different projects through encounters of such people. So I was sitting next to such people and (what they were exploring) sounded interesting so I joined them. That continuum of chance meetings led to collaborations and projects from 2020 until the present.
The purification ceremony of shrines and temples has a set formula — for example you turn right, you take a number of steps, put the feet together then count how many times you bow then clap, you take off the lid in a certain way. The ritual’s formula is so clear. They are not performers, so they are not judged on how well done or interesting. Just by following the steps to the end, even when the voice reading the ritual prayer sounds pained, they are really ok. The purification ceremony is completed smoothly, and all is well. The strength of the formula — where does it come from?
In Zaha I am absolutely the vessel — using the formula of Noh with a contemporary interpretation. Not even an interpretation. The formula is that of Noh and the performance develops accordingly but what is inside, the texts, the music and the content are current. It really made me think about the physical body Karada, originating from “Kara” — empty.
I am now reading the manual of Kitaro Nishida, a philosopher and other books on philosophy. I realize the concept of subject and object are different in the West and in Asia. I exist. I experience. I transform. The concept of starting with one’s existence versus what Kitaro Nishida says of only pure experience can lead to self. In the case of the cherry blossom, it is blossoming, and you see this. In that instance of experiencing there is no subject, no thinking; while the cherry blossom and search for it is beautiful, there is no thought process. Once you settle down and reflect, only then is the existence of I, the subject. It is aligned with the Zen concept.
The notion of having subject or the starting point as I exist versus only objective experience subject emerges (experience in its original form is not the exercise of individuals equipped with sensory and mental abilities who contact an exterior world; rather it precedes the differentiation into subject experiencing and object experienced, and the individual is formed out of it — Nishida). The repetition of the object experiences form the subject or me. That leads to the thinking that there is no self or subject to begin with. Consciously reading such books. I contemplate what it means for the body to be a vessel.
For about one and a half years, I was going back and forth between Japan and abroad to work. Then I was offered the Olympics. Participating in an event like the Olympics, one can be subjected to lots of criticisms but as a performer you also receive a high degree of media exposure domestically and internationally. The largest possible audience you can perform to. After the event, I continued to shoot movies, act in theatres and do dance performances but deep down I wanted to make changes.
To have a home base in a new place and be in Japan half the time and spend the other half in a foreign country, would allow me to have a different outlook and as such life becomes more wholesome. Time enriched. As a result, what I do in Japan becomes even more meaningful. My hypothesis. Then the COVID-19 hit. Life became complicated — can’t go outside, can’t do stage performances. So, we do online, etc. Then suddenly I realized I had a plan to go abroad. However, going abroad was continuing to be challenging. Then the 2021 Olympics was greenlit. I felt the flow starting to change. I felt that there was no reason to remain in Tokyo. Abroad was difficult so I started to consider a move within Japan. Kobe is my birthplace, but it is not like returning home. I considered different places from Hokkaido to Okinawa. I was in Kobe until high school but realized I really didn’t know the place and had no objective point of view. So, I researched. Since the Great Earthquake of Kansai Awaji of 1994, 27 years ago, recovery projects have been the main initiative in the prefecture. For non-productive industries such as art, no attention was paid. I think it was this January that Kobe city launched the “Kobe City Culture and Arts Promotion Vision.”
Kyoto has a strong backbone of art and culture, so emerging and contemporary culture can find a home. Osaka is a city of merchants to begin with and because of this it is a melting pot and lots of interesting culture emerges. Street culture. The city has a strong underground power. When it comes to Kobe, there is no defined culture or characteristic. Despite this you have mountains, the sea, and a port dating back to another, though the atmosphere remains; a place where the cultures of different countries and regions within Japan crisscross, stay and then flow.
Has the leave to “the mercy of winds and waves” ambience? It suits my temperament. I don’t intend to be rooted in Kobe but rather I want to gather, collect from abroad and other regions in Japan (art, cultural ephemera, etc.) and create hybrid works, some of which may naturally become part of the city. The flow. To be amid the flow, seems agreeable to me. In the South, we have Awaji, and the sea, a city that is very near to nature. And the city plays the role of allowing air to flow through. I wonder where such initiatives will take me to. I envision myself to flow with the wind of Kobe, ride the wind of Kobe to go abroad and back. I would be very content.
TF: Kobe feels very international, a point of contact with the outside world; exotic, creative. Feels like a different sensibility than Osaka, a city of merchants. By the way, the art film of the Kiyomizu performance should be shown at museums. Because of COVID-19 only few people have seen it.
MM: In Kobe, in Nagata ward, there is a place called Shin Nagata and near the station there is a NPO contemporary dance center, called Dance Box. I have been asked to be an external choreographer for an 8-month resident program there attended by dancers across Japan as an “away” program. When I thought about what I could do, a sequel to Re-Incarnation there — the Nagata version. For the best part of August and September this year, I was in Kobe researching towns, seas, and mountains around the region. In this regard, the Kiyomizu project was very meaningful. As the sub-steward of Kiyomizu temple Eigen Onishi said, “every place is a sacred place.” Each place has a history and reasons for people being resident that supersede religion.
Nagata has a long history having ancient tombs, Yayoi earthward excavated. Some say that people already resided in the area from antiquity onwards. Kobe has Rokko mountain and Setouchi sea and is developed east/westward. But a place like Nagata was also developed in a south/northward direction. 700-year-old literature mentions the town of Nagata and the importance of the sea and the river for humankind and how they were integral to the land and people. I suppose you can say the same thing about any place in the world, not just Kyoto or Nagata. I am testing the theory as we speak.
TF: Making Kobe’s culture more exciting?
MM: I am dreaming of making KITTO, an art and culture facility in Sannomiya, an art and cultural hub of Kobe. To begin with, in preparation for a performance in Tokyo next fall, Ella Rothschild, an Israeli dancer and Nobuko Nakano, a neuroscientist, and I are planning research, workshops, and artists-in-residence. Such an initiative will make locals and others aware of Kobe as a place to be, in touch with culture.
TF: So, beyond Kobe, as a home base, which country comes to your mind?
MM: If the opportunity presents itself, I do want to go abroad. If I have a base broad, Paris is a place I always considered. I thought Hollywood and Broadway were my dreams, so I did go to the US but found the sensibility dry. Especially New York, the speed is too fast for me. It so happened I had opportunities to work in Europe from time to time. I felt the Parisienne sentimental, warm-blooded temperament matches my own. It is located in the middle of Western Europe, so it is easy to move around. The juxtaposition and co-existence of filth and beauty are very human, and I like that. The irony and cynicism I don’t mind.
TF: You are now the MC for the show “Meet Your Art.” Did you take this on because of its similarity to what you have been doing or is it because it is a completely different world that you wanted to explore? According to a survey on internet viewership during COVID-19, initially, people went for games and entertainment but in the end the museum websites enjoyed the highest access. Why are people attracted to art? According to a global survey among its top collectors, one reason is that a great work of art gives one the opportunity to self-reflect.
MM: An encounter with Yuko Hasegawa, a leading Japanese curator, greatly influenced me when it comes to art. Yuko was appointed cultural exchange ambassador the same year as of my own appointment in Israel. She was planning an exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in which contemporary art meets physical performance. Then I joined the Inbal Pinto Avshalom Pollak Dance company in Israel while she was involved in activities there, one of them being a performance at a museum to which she invited me — this led to performing there in Tokyo. So many coincidences occurred and I had the opportunity to learn from Yuko about contemporary art.
When you talk about art broadly, things vary but what is common is its currency. Artists around the world find themes from the social conditions of today, human interactions, relationships to things and events, then commit with enthusiasm to pursuing artistic expressions. In contemporary dance it is the same thing. In artistic expression, you sort of find the right distance between the world and yourself. Ultimately, you take in and translate into artistic expression, today’s contemporaneity. Of course, you do have the art history context, but currency makes contemporary art strong.
When I was asked to take on the MC role for “Meet Your Art” it was not from a sense of duty — I really wanted to. There are classical artists who are no longer alive I know of and like. On the other hand, I did not have much knowledge about living contemporary ones. So, I wanted to meet more artists and see their artworks. The program gives me the opportunity to reflect on what I propose is a contemporary artist. It is for me. I met artists in their 20s and 30s as well as the masters. I find it particularly interesting that artists of the same age and generation are struggling to distance themselves from consciously creating artworks and to be more incidental and random in their methodology. On the other hand, there are artists who base their artworks purely on intuition. I get to observe the contemporary from such a perspective. My time being part of the program has been a highly constructive one.
TF: Your mother won an award from the Nika Association. Is she also a source of inspiration?
MM: Music, film, and paintings. My interests likely originated with my mom. She was not a painter initially though she did enjoy art. After 50, she started to talk about her wish to pursue painting. So she studied remotely at Kyoto University of Art and Design and successfully graduated. Since then, she has been painting. I am very proud of her receiving an award at the Nika exhibition. With dad, he was not into artistic things, but he was an entrepreneur jumping from one business to another — can’t count how many businesses he’d gone into up to the time of my high school graduation. Started with a furniture store, then he managed a supermarket, he managed a live house, a dance studio, then became an interior coordinator. He just can’t be idle. He is so honest about pursuing what interest him at that moment. He is not good at making money but he has vitality, and, in that regard, I am very much affected. I always call him an “all out” youngster. Their way of life and attitudes did influence me.
TF: I am excited at the prospect of your doing greater things. Your Kara “patience” attracted people and things and that resulted in who you are. This year must have been a very significant and rewarding one.
MM: After the Olympics I shot three movies in a row but I die in every one of them (laughs). In the case of Kiyomizu, it was not as if I deliberately pursued the concept of life and death but as you know, it did lead to the theme; its cyclical nature. The border between the two. In retrospect I have done a lot of projects along these lines. I don’t know the meaning of all this but our collective unconscious is talked about a lot these days. Living like bees and ants is the best, it is said. I say “really?” I live as an individual in this world. People as individuals and as groups, living interactively. What does it mean? I have been contemplating this. Interestingly enough, this year my focus seems to be death or being dead (laughs).
After the Kiyomizu performance, a friend gave me a book called “Philosophy of Decomposition.” It is currently the focus of my thoughts. When I think about the cycle of life and death there are producers, there are consumers, there are decomposers. Who are the decomposers? From inorganic matters such as water something very simple nurtures plants, then the primary producers, herbivorous animals, eat them. Then, higher consumers like the carnivore eat them and they die and insects and others devour them then, excrete, excrete, then become the earth, then decompose further and further and become inorganic matters, then the water dries up. Those that devour the dead bodies, people refer to as decomposers but the herbivorous animals, they eat and excrete and decompose, then the higher consumers they decompose. So where is the border of life and death? Upon death, decomposition begins, it is said but when we think about our food, we may just be playing the role of decomposition to support the cycle going back to the earth. We may just be a material that enriches the earth. So, we are not producers but consumers and decomposers. The book also depicts a story on decomposition — river salmon migrates from its birthplace to the ocean then back to the river. They go back to lay eggs.
Once salmon lay eggs their colors change. It is a sign of aging, it is in their very genes. Then they are eaten by bears, etc. and die. Then return to the earth to the mountains. A cycle. They become part of the earth and the mountain and ultimately, they become nutrients for offspring. It is said upon laying eggs they start aging. It is the most efficient way of passing on the genes to the next generation. Along these lines of thinking, what humans call aging takes on a new meaning in this context. The earth is enriched upon death through the decomposition process. An academic says that a funeral is a party for the next life or a new life.
So, what does it mean to die? We get to have a big party upon death as a celebration for a new life. Really, what it means to “to die” changes. People have been afraid of death and so religion, science, etc. enter the frame. But if you change your mindset or perspective, your life can be richer. That is my train of thought.
