In the novel The Hunchback of
Notre-Dame, a deformed ugly looking child was abandoned at the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
The baby was named Quasimodo by Archdeacon Claude Frollo who adopted
him.This scene reminds me of a scene from
the movie Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, showing an unwanted baby abandoned at the
ruined Rashomon Gate. The baby then was adopted by the Woodcutter (read “An
Interview with Akira” in this blogspot).
In the novel The Hunchback of
Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo wrote largely about Notre-Dame to make the people of
Paris become more aware of the value of the Gothic architecture, which was
neglected and often destroyed to be replaced by new buildings or defaced by replacement
of parts in a newer style. The first three chapters of the novel are a plea to
preserve Gothic architecture—in Hugo’s words, a “gigantic book of stone,” which
he found beautiful.
After centuries of mistreatment,
additions, vandalism, and purgings, the visitors find a beautiful cathedral that
was not as it is today.Victor Hugo was
able to bring about the salvation of a magnificent church because he was able
to capture the lost beauty of this church with his novel.
Now the cathedral is widely considered
to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, and it is among
the largest and best-known church buildings in France, and in the world. The
naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass serve to contrast it with
earlier Romanesque architecture.
However, currently the cathedral has
required an extensive makeover once again due to deterioration, broken gargoyles
and fallen balustrades replaced by plastic pipes and wooden planks. Flying
buttresses darkened by pollution and eroded by rainwater. Pinnacles propped up
by beams and held together with straps.
Little of that deterioration is
immediately visible to the millions of awe-struck tourists who visit the
Cathedral of Notre-Dame, many of them too busy admiring the intricately
sculpted front to notice the deterioration.
Everywhere the stone is eroded, and the
more the wind blows, the more all of these little pieces keep falling. Experts
say Notre-Dame, although not at risk of sudden collapse, has reached a tipping
point, therefore it needs a make-over, an expensive make over estimated to cost
150 million Euro.
As Victor Hugo wrote in his novel, the
words ring true today 150 years later: “Assuredly, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame
at Paris is, to this day, a majestic and sublime edifice, but noble as it has
remained while growing old, one cannot but regret, cannot but feel indignant at
the innumerable degradations and mutilations inflicted on the venerable pile,
both by the action of time and the hand of man.”
Arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris
in a cool afternoon, I noticed how huge, busy and modern airport it is. Terminal
1 was built to an avant-garde design, comprising a ten-floor high circular
building surrounded by seven satellite buildings, each with four gates. The
main architect was Paul Andreu, he is famous for his work on various airports,
including Dubai International Airport and Shanghai Pudong International
Airport.
After clearing my passport and collecting my
bag, I head towards the shuttle train station. The ticket cost around 10 Euro,
for a 35 minutes ride to Gare du Nord, nearby my hotel.
The next morning, after a good breakfast of
bread, cheese, a benedict egg and orange juice, the first place to go is off course
the Champs-Élysées. The Champs-Élysées avenue is 1.9 kilometres long and 70
metres wide, running between the Place de la Concorde and the Place Charles de
Gaulle, where the Arce de Triomphe is located. The name is French for the Elysian Fields, the
paradise for dead heroes in Greek mythology. The Champs-Élysées is known for its theatres, cafés, luxury
shops, and for the annual Bastille Day parade, and as the finish of the Tour de
France bicycle race.
The monument at the beginning of the avenue, The Arce de
Triomphe, honours those who fought and died for France in the French
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and
generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. The Arc de Triomphe is the
biggest arch in the world. It was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to celebrate
his victory at Austerlitz, designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier from World War I.
From Champs-Élysées, riding the Hop-on Hop-Off Tourist
bus, I go to the iconic Eiffel Tower. While in English it is pronounced sounding
like “Aifel”, in French it is pronounced sounding like “E-fell”. The Eiffel
Tower is a wrought iron lattice tower named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel,
whose company designed and built the tower.
Constructed as the entrance to the 1889
World's Fair, it was initially criticized by some of France's leading artists
and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of
France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.
The Eiffel Tower brings magic to Paris when
the nights come. The sparkling lights are made up of 20,000 light bulbs, 5,000
per side.Paris is called the City of
Lights because of its dazzling landmark boulevards and bridges illuminated with
thousands of light bulbs each night. Paris was also one of the first European
cities to adopt gas street lighting.
However, the name actually stems from its
cultural legacy. It used to be dubbed The City of Lights, because Paris was the
birthplace of the Age of Enlightenment and was known as a centre of education
and ideas throughout the whole of Europe. The city inspired many poets and
philosophers, engineers and scientists.
Walking the Tokyo
streets in the evening we can see many people flooding the enormous pedestrian
walkways. It seems people here, although they are famous for their hard working
for long hours, yet don’t go home straight-away after work. They like to stroll
the streets, the shops, the coffee shops and bars after work. The atmosphere is
lively, many of them are just chit-chatting outside bars or at the squares in
Shinjuku.
Shinjuku area is
constantly a bustling, busy town, being a business district in the day and an
entertainment district at night. This area initially flourished as a post town
for travellers, and gradually developed into a downtown area after the railway
station was completed after the Meiji period. Furthermore, many of the lines
used by majority of the people living in East Tokyo gather at Shinjuku,
evolving the station into a huge terminal.
If you are into youth
fashion, there is nowhere in the world that people can see such a dynamic,
colorful and youthful street fashion culture with fascinating styles changing
every day like whatis happening in
Japan, especially Tokyo, the new raising fashion capital of the world.
If you're looking
for certain youth fashion styles, Takeshita Street , and the surrounding
areas,offer countless different unique
styles. You can get band shirts, 'princess' style, goth style, and even
costumes. That's what makes this street so unique and popular. You can buy
everything from boots to earmuffs, and band t-shirts to badges in lots of
styles you might not get at home - and at decent prices, too.
It hard to imagine
how fashion of Japanese pop culture has developed into such a free style trend
that value individual uniqueness in a country of collectivism, focusing on
harmony, politeness, hierarchy and tradition.
Away from the busy
streets, there is another world.Inside
a grove of trees through the winding path with 3000various sizes of stone lanterns along the
walk , stands the Kasuga Taisha temple. It is a Shinto shrine, its location was
purposefully chosen inside a grove of trees. Shinto is deeply connected with
nature and walking through the woods makes it feel you are in another time,
even though you are just a few miles away from the busy streets.
The 3000 lanterns
are symbolic of the 3000 Kasuga shrines spread throughout Japan. Each lantern
is donated by a citizen to show thanks and support to the shrine. Writing on
each lantern shows which deity the lantern is donated to, or the person’s name
that donated the lantern.
I discovered Katsushika’s work while looking
at souvenirs displayed at the front of a souvenir shop in Mount Fuji 5th
station, pictures of a great engulfing wave with Mount Fuji at the back ground
on mugs, fans, key holders, and tee shirts. Somehow its uniqueness sticked to
mind as something of Japanese painting style, in otherwords it branded itself
as something Japanese, it becomes iconic. Such is the power of this picture.
Later, upon browsing the internet I
discovered that it is the well known “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” woodblock
print work by Katsushika Hokusai, which is part of his Thirty-six Views of
Mount Fuji woodblock work.
Then I attempted to reach Katsushika-san for
an interview, and managed to meet him in one great sunny morning at his
residence.
I said:
“Katsushika –san, your famous “The Great Wave
off Kanagawa” and other most important work from the Mount Fuji series were
made at the beginning of your “final years”. You already had a long career in ukiyo-e – the
art of the floating world – with beautiful prints of hurried pedlars, kimonoed
courtesans and pilgrims spellbound by the moon over your home city of Edo (old
Tokyo). Yet, your master piece creativity seemed to bloom in your final years,
in your seventies. Why did you “emerge” so late?”
Katsushika-san:
“The 1820s was a difficult time for me, I was
struck by lightning at 50, suffered a stroke in my 60s that required me to re-adapt
to my art work. So I did little work in my sixties; my wife got ill and one of
my daughters died. I could cope because that time I was prosperous from my
work.
But then I was faced by my grandson
misfortune who had a lot of debts from gambling habit and I had to pay off all
his debts. But in about 1828, I sent my grandson away to the far north of Japan
where he couldn't gamble. Then I was free to devote my energy to my creative
work. Although, even while drawing the Thirty-six Views, I had scarcely any
food. Edo was ravaged by smallpox and flood, and a fire in 1839 destroyed all
my studio work.
One of the factors for the emergence of my
work was the introduction of Prussian blue to the market, imported from the
West. As a synthetic pigment, it is more lasting and it lowered the price
enough that it became feasible to use the shade in prints for the first time.
A print produced entirely in Prussian tones looks
like a landscape during pre-dawn. Also, the Great Wave seascape incorporated a
middle distance, with Mount Fuji in the remote background, so that the foaming blue
foreground wave gives the picture a deeper dimension.”
I said:
“ The period of ukiyo-e – the art of the
floating world – represented the floating Japan, or the prosperous Japan, which
generally depicted the pleasurable side of urban living – courtesans and kabuki
actors included. It was the period of Japan’s hedonism world, living life for
the moment, partying, dancing, getting drunk, along with the economic boom in
Edo (old Tokyo).The art of this
floating world, ukiyou-e, raised with the demand,pictures of Kabuki, beautiful women, geisha,
courtesans became popular and displayed at homes. Hence you were floating too,
your wood block print works were sold well that time.
Then came your Great Wave woodblock print depicting
a very huge wave about to swallow the two floating boats of fishermen. Was it
some kind of a “tsunami warning” to the floating world approaching in a few
minutes?”
Katsushika-san:
“It is not a tsunami, it is a huge wave, but
not a tsunami. It was meant for decoration, depicting one of the various views
of majestic Mount Fuji, in Prussian blue. For me, the world is more panoramic,
and the joy lies in making new graphic representation for each visual
phenomenon. Such that more than 5000 prints of the Great Wave had been made and
sold that time.”
I said:
“Indeed
you are known to be a good businesman, you have a good sense about popular
demands. You are also good in promoting yourself, creating massive paintings in
public with the help of your students. At a festival in Edo in 1804, you
painted a 180-meter-long portrait of a Buddhist monk using a broom as a brush.
Years later, you publicized your best-selling series of sketchbooks with a
three-story-high work depicting the founder of Zen Buddhism.”
Katsushika-san:
“From the age of six, I had a penchant for
copying the form of things, and from about 50, my pictures were frequently
published; but until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice… Thus
when I reach 80 years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to
see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I
will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at 110, every dot and every
stroke will be as though alive.”
I said:
“You painted dragons, creatures of long life,
by the dozen. You painted the phoenix, bird of resurrection, and Mount Fuji; immutable, enduring, outlasting all your
fellow painters, calligraphers, woodblock-cutters and sellers of coloured books
who scrabbled for a living Edo, old Tokyo.
You changed your name so frequently, about 30
times, often related to changes in your artistic style and production, that are
used for breaking your life up into periods.”
Katsushika-san said smiling:
“In my seventies, I was Manji, which meant
‘ten thousand things’ or ‘everything’. That is what I wanted to paint —
everything. My tombstone shall bear my final name, Gakyo Rojin Manji, which
translates to “Old Man Mad about Painting.”
I said:
“ You also made manga drawings. There is 15
volumes of them a pictorial encyclopedia of everything under the sun: frogs,
snakes, samurai, sumo wrestlers, parasols, fish markets, farm ploughs, oceans
and tea bowls. You also made ‘shunga’,
or Japanese erotic ‘spring pictures’, which is quite sexually explicit like the
Dream of Fisherman’s Wife which became one of the most celebrated of all
Japanese erotic prints.”
Katsushika-san:
“Shunga is sexually explicit art, produced to
exactly the same technical perfection as art in other formats by the same
people. The Dream of Fisherman’s Wife was based on the story of Princess
Tamatori, highly popular in the Edo period.
In this story, Tamatori is a modest shell
diver who marries Fujiwara no Fuhito of the Fujiwara clan, who is searching for
a pearl stolen from his family by Ryūjin, the dragon god of the sea. Vowing to
help, Tamatori dives down to Ryūjin's undersea palace of Ryūgū-jō, however then
pursued by the god and his army of sea creatures, including octopuses. She cuts
open her own breast and places the jewel inside; this allows her to swim faster
and escape, but she dies from her wound soon after reaching the surface.
The Tamatori story was a popular subject in
ukiyo-e art. The artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi produced works based on it, which
often include octopuses among the creatures being evaded by the bare-breasted
diver.
The
Dream of the Fisherman's Wife is not the only work of Edo-period art to depict
erotic relations between a woman and an octopus. Some early netsuke carvings
show octopus fondling nude women.”
I said:
“ Then who are the consumers of this Shunga art?”
Katsushika-san:
“In the Edo period it was not only men who
appreciated Shunga, but women were also customers. Further, there clearly was
interest in Shunga from the young and old, regardless of status or location,
and included commoners in the cities, farmers, as well as first-class
intellectuals and powerful daimyos.We
can also see that shunga was not simply for stimulating sexual desire, but
aimed to depict a wide range of aspects of sexuality.”
I said:
“ Thank you for the interseting chat
Katsushika-san, wish you long life and success with your work….”
This is an imaginary interview in memory of Katsushika
Hokusai.
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