Two different times and spaces on the riverbank

I was raised in a busy shopping street so we, children in the area could find no other ideal place for a playground but the location of the river in the neighborhood. There were spacious fields inside of the huge bank. Sometimes we ran into a hut of a homeless hidden in the bush of the tall grass. The location of the river was actually an exciting place for us but I sometimes made a bicycle journey by myself alongside of the bank. To the sea pedaling my bicycle on the bank to get to the sea, after a while the huge floodgate was shown then the huge paper factory with strange smell emerged on the right side. I got a great intimacy with the factory because the paper of the books of the series of Doctor Dolittle, my favourite was produced there. I could not find the bridge to get to the other side of the river, which was sheltered behind the bank but my uncle had taken me there to fish Edo gobies before so I knew how the place was like.

It was the area where the water, the earth and the sky were merged into the one and the fishermen and the clam pickers with different accent lived. The coast of Kamakura where my dead grandfather had lived had clear outlines but here, everything seemed to start to melt into the emulsion of the time and space. This was the zone of ambiguity hard to know where I was.
The tidal flat in the brackish waters called ‘800 acres on the shoal’ once had been polluted with the industrial black waste from the paper factory. I later knew the fact that in 1958 numerous dead fish suddenly floated then the desperate protest by the outraged fishermen broke out. This incident known as ‘the black water pollution’ was now considered as one of the historical actions against pollution to trigger the change in the environmental administration by the government. However, the fishing-centred lifestyle in the area was about to end. Most of the residents could not be against the current of capitalization. There was the last scenery before the clear shapes and roles were given to the land and the water in this zone by the reclamation.
Although, the manipulation of the data of waste smoke was revealed seven years ago, the paper mill is still working since 1922 without any interruption.
On the tip of the mouth of the river, Cinderella Castle in Tokyo Disney Land is standing, which is the materialization of the greatest common denominator of people’s dream after world war two.

I, as a child in 1964, suddenly felt a chill swallowed by the obscure mist on the other side and happened to cease to go to the sea and decided to return.
The bank in front of me was higher than any house buildings and endlessly horizontal. On the left, Tokyo Tower in the centre of Tokyo and Mt. Fuji about 100 km away from here were clearly seen. Everything was dyed in orange of the sunset on the height of eyes and the distant noise from the downtown became the low vibration then the both avalanched into me. On the right hand the full moon looked like another sun was shown in the west sky. The earth located in the centre, these three astral bodies were almost on the same line. Bathed in the sunset light, I was conscious that I now stood on the edge of the earth and would be seen from somewhere in the cosmos. On the intersection of the cross of the North-South　axis of the river and the immense East-West axis, I got the euphoria as if I was running to the north with heavenly bodies.

Kentaro Chiba

Still fromThe Rings of Saturn 2014

Left : Black Madonna, black velvet on canvas, Size 26cm x 22cm 2012
Right:Detail of Lifescroll, Ink Drawing on Paper, size 38cm x 49cm 2010

website : www.kentchib.com

e-mail: urotankebachi@yahoo.co.jp