Author: nwa

Shirakawa, Gifu

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The pastoral landscape which has been handed down from generation to generation. It is the primal scene that anyone yearns for irrespective of whether they have seen it or not. The traditional lifestyle that relies on rice growing and the benefit from nature.

Bending down on the soil, laboring with their hands, cooperating with each other, people are engaged in most steps of food producing process. In those days which people used to devote their lifetimes entirely to farming for their living even without leisure, their experiences were the exact pure phenomenon of life. 

When you put all your energies into your aim without any doubt or other options, your self-consciousness would fade away, a moment turns into eternity, and the reciprocal influence between the environment and yourself would be in perfect harmony.

Saku, Nagano

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In the early morning, a wide kind of flowers was waiting for the rising sun. All of those were breathing fresh air and glittering with dew softly. 

Forming connections with water, wind, and light, they come to purify air, distribute nectar and treat others to their fruits. Then, they would run to seed with the assistance of fur, feather, and insect. 

To give and to receive are inseparably related. Those are one and the same. One receives the life then supports others, and gets help then leave their posterity.

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Giving hues and scents which are loaded in the life of flowers. To celebrate joys and glories, or lamenting over partings.

The saying that ‘dumplings rather than flowers,’ (pudding before praise,) admonish us not to seek our immediate interests in disregard of elegance.

We, the human beings may be the only existence that can — even that must— give priority to the things which have no actual profits.

Nagatoro, Saitama

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While descending to the Kanto Plains, the stream which had a strong current calmed down and turned the color into deep green. Followed one stream and noticed the whole life which is blessed with the benefit of water.

The being that can never go beyond the transmigration of water even for a single moment. If we can not exist without it, water really is a part of the life phenomenon.

We appear to require the liquid of life, but, as a matter of fact, Water itself might be calling us.

Minakami, Gunma

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Turned off the coastline into the inland area. There was a river along the way which goes over mountains, and it was splashing around the slopes as if it was breathing hard.

Passing the cold winter together with plants, the circulation of snow water permeates through every heart of the mountains to the ends of the earth like a blood current of living things.

Floating faintly in the sky, beating on rocks hard in mountain streams, running calmly across planes. As if it were the endless vicissitudes of mind, the circulating water travels changing its form to make flowers open, and to quench us.

Nagaoka, Niigata

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As if they know the color of a blue sky, bright flowery waves occupy the earth. The air is so perfumed with the intoxicating fragrance that it is dyed yellow and then waft into our brains sharply like needles.

Knowing the joy to bloom in spring, to rustle in the breeze, to bear fruit, they are expressing it in the color, in the nectar, and in the fragrance. The color is a color of delight. 

At under our nose, there are each single flowers. When we look over the whole field, they are as one. Since whichever individuals accept themselves as they are, the whole flower field forms a unitary life.

Tsuruoka, Yamagata

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At the base of a huge overhanging rock toward the sea, there stands a shrine named “Yayoke” which means ”evade arrows”. “Tateiwa”, which means “standing rock” has the same pronunciation as “shield rock” in Japanese. It is said that in ancient times, people took cover from enemy’s arrows behind this rock in a civil war.

Shimenawa and Torii — a rope and a gate specific to Shinto — are the symbols of the border between the earth and the great beyond. It is said that Gods exist in nature from old times. People have believed that especially magnificent spots would be sacred places, and many mythologies have been handed down for generations.

Our hearts, which are also beyond human knowledge, catch the wonders of nature and its Creation, divide off from our world and interpret those to be beyond human knowledge. It is not analysis but intuition, not wishes but prayers, not demand but belief.

Sakata, Yamagata

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Sought the seashore for the westering sun. The white sand overflowed into a back alley. On the wide beach were a few people to see the daylight off mutely. Waves rolled in on the sands.

Air dyed blue and scarlet together touched cheeks and breezed away. The whole sky was setting down over the sea, the whole sea was rising up to the sky gradually. The ceaseless sound of waves had already faded away from the awareness before knew it.

Or rather the consciousness unified into the sound itself. Melting into it, heartstrings would not hear the sound anymore. All we can do was to recognize the everlasting moment of dusk.

Akita, Akita

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Fly, swim, hunt, and sleep. At times sing, At times sob. Living without any school, office, lodging, nor grocery. Neither any nursery to leave children, any organ to depend on, nor any property to put in a bank.

Even though lost its one leg, standing on the water, standing on the air, it would be living as long as the Nature permits. It continues to practice the existence. From coasts to coasts, ages to ages, moments to moments. Riding the tide, sailing on air currents, with the lapse of time.

Learn, work, settle, and consume. What will we finally get when we have sold the whole ourselves out short, being buried under the material possessions. Not only one of the legs. What can we give to the world if we could devote ourselves, heart and soul.

Fukaura, Aomori

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At the water’s edge, whether the sounds abated or the heart became calm. Behind the clouds, whether the sun sinks below the horizon or the ocean covers up the sun. Toward evening, whether time is passing away or consciousness perceive transitions.

There would be no hearing when sounds do not exist, there would not be “here” when there is not “there”, there would be no time when there is no consciousness.

Time can be experienced only by consciousness. Neither time nor space does not exist without consciousness. All the things out there that we believe those presences are just experienced by consciousness in here, which involves the whole possibility.

Yokohama, Aomori

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Until 30 miles away from the shore. The things that meet your eyes would be the waters and the skies alone. On the opposite shore, a mountain can be seen dimly in the distance.

Nothing to photograph, nor to write about, nor to keep in mind, particularly. Never themes, it does not mean that we can not experience nor create anything. Creation is not producing something visible or tangible but conceiving concepts of the beautiful and expressing it physically.

As a painting is drawn on a brand-new canvas, and also an architecture is built on an empty lot, all the living things, lifeless things, arts, and emotions would be created from “Nothingness”. 

Misawa, Aomori 

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No buildings, no glaring billboards here are. Not a place to get together, nor a statue nor a tourist attraction. With your back to the sea, only the reed field stretched as far as the eye could see. It seems improbable that this place would be the destination of any trip. 

This marsh, “Hotokenuma” was reclaimed from a fresh water lake by fire and draining to make farmlands. Yet it has been left as it is for half a century owing to a policy of reducing rice acreage.

Since various species of birds, flora, mammals, amphibians, fish, and insects including some near-threatened one have been found here, subsequently, this site received national protection. This reclaimed land did not benefit us after all. However, the longer-term outlook for humanity should involve conserving the nature, not only urban or economic development. 

Hachinohe, Aomori

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Climb up to the top of a breakwater, and look around. In the direction of cities and industrial area, the air is glowing with the lights of those in the dark.

Just like trees grow in the sun, the progress of human beings has also been made under the light, literally and literarily.  As the sun lights the sight, our consciousness throws the light on the occurrence of our life.

The moon does not exist if there were no sunlight. We can not recognize the things which do not reflect the light. Neither can we ourselves exist without any light which is our faculty of perception.

Miyako, Iwate

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Walk through the pine grove, then a greenish blue seascape will peep through trees. At the end of the downward slope, you will find a quiet inlet covered with white gravel.

Ripples are lapping on the surface of the water, which is so clear that you can see through the bottom. Some seagulls are floating on it, others are gliding through the air.

The name of this shore is “Johdogahama”, which means Heaven. There would be the Beyond, beyond those rocks.

Kesennuma, Miyagi

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At 6 o’clock in the evening, there sounds The Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”, known as the New World Symphony, composed by Antonín Dvořák. The people living around here listen to this every evening as a time signal.

At the same hour, at the same places, but not in the same views of the town. Making them feel pangs of the nostalgia for the past, the melody would be engraved in their memories for generations.

Now, the port appears to have regained the lights of ships and buildings. Their daily lives still go on.  However, even though the melody which we can hear in this town is identical, it has a different tone for them. Reaches From the New World.