Heading north to Tsumari and Toge AKA Snow land
The car is fitted with a chip that registers the road toll as you pass the barrier - very efficient, each time you pass a barrier the chip emits a tak tak – the real sound of one hand clapping
As we pass through the 11km tunnel through the mountains that divide north from south we move from sunny spring to frozen winter, the coolness is a relief.
I am completely shocked by Tsumari, the snow - which is melting - but still piled up 4 metres deep has destroyed the place, it’s like an annual earthquake, the trees are all broken up the sides of hills totally scalped. It seems almost impossible that in 3 months time this will all be a scene of verdant abundance. There is a pressing urgency to get rid of the snow and get the rice in the ground, it's a short season, the snow is already 2 weeks late. This really is a tough place and one wonders why the people still hang on under such conditions.
Toge village meeting
40 old people lined up on their knees (of the 31 houses in the village 28 turn out for the meeting), these are very tough people and outside of the translation I could smell the word joker hanging in the air. There were sharp questions, ‘how does he (me) know what you are translating is what he is saying’ mmm. I suggested that we might help in some way - they suggested weeding amid much laughter, sounds ok weeding rice fields in 40 degrees hot rain from 6am till 6pm I am hoping the Samurai are up to it, like an endurance test if we fail we are lost.
One man explains that the photographers come to Toge and take pictures, the village get no money. Music to my ears the very subject we had been thinking we could help with. I know Art Front (the Triennale managers) are ambivalent about this idea, they are concerned about being confrontational to the tourists and they don't like the mention of money. Both aspects I think are levelers, the real subject, a measurable response, a real currency. The dialogue with the tourists should not be confrontational, once there is communication everyone is humanized and interested in each other. The idea of generating money for the village is certainly a straightforward attempt to give direct benefit, but it should be money generation that the village can easily maintain. Money is a great leveler, unattached to art, the village will be faced with the quandary of what to spend it on.
But these are very practical tough people existing in a tough environment, they remind me of Aberdeenshire farmers, no time for jokers, this is going to be hard.
The people in the village have some time in the winter, they don't make crafts much, as one villager later pointed out to me all the people who wanted to develop themselves have left. They do have afew traditional activities like rope and straw work, mostly farm related equipment. There is a lot of ‘well we used to do that’ lost activities, a sense of an end of a way of life, an impending doom, without inhabitants the village will be flatten by the winter snows within a few years (we see several flattened houses). In the 5 month winter and 12metres of snow they as they ‘laughing in the face of adversity’ say ‘Ski and shovel snow’.
After the meeting I walk through the one house frontier town looking for Alistair and Lisa, the click of my heels echoes down the street, it’s 9.30pm and there is no sign of life – a man in a poncho steps out from behind a house, there is a low whistle …. A single lit beacon leads me to a bar and the sound of a Scottish accent confirms the occupancy, the sole occupants. While we drink and chatter excitedly about the day I notice the barmaid is working on complex lace patterns which she studies in a book – it’s craft Spock. Lisa and Alistair have had a full evening bar side and when we leave the bill seems unfeasibly large, we click clack our way up the street, suddenly a car races up the street and pulls in sharply, the barmaid leaps out shouting ‘mitake, mitake, solly, solly’ and bowing she hands me back half the value of the bill. Lisa comments that you would’nt find that sort of service in Coniston and I regret thinking of Lisa and Alistair as dipsomaniacs.
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