For some years, Masako Toyota, a young Japanese
woman from Onomichi, has quietly been fighting a personal
battle to preserve her city and its history. Her unsolicited
work is motivated by natural sensitivity, and is not the product
of architectural or artistic training. It has seen its first
results in the rescue of the “Gaudí House”, an old abandoned
building that Masako has brought back to life.
The house is one of a group of structures typical of
the 1920s and ’30s, a prosperous period for the port of
Onomichi, which faces onto Japan’s Inland Sea. At that
time, rich merchants took up residence on the city’s hill,
the most panoramic location in Onomichi, and had houses
built there in a style that mixed Eastern and Western
influences.
The neglect of these houses over the years and their
current state of disrepair have condemned them to gradual
demolition, even if pulling one down is an expensive operation,
given their acrobatic positions on the hillside. Struck
by the beauty of this historic nucleus and aware of the
danger of further losses, Masako decided to make a stand
against this destructive trend. With only slender resources
she devised a long-term intervention programme. She
bought Izumi’s House, which was soon renamed the Gaudí
House, since the work site that saw its transformation
was permanently open, and devoted herself to its gradual
renovation.
The house was built in 1933 by a carpenter on behalf
of a factory owner. Sited on a tiny plot of land, the whole
structure is rooted in the hill, challenging all the laws of
statics. Masako took over this artefact along with all the
disordered furniture and antiques it contained, reorganising
and transforming it into a centre for artistic and cultural
activity. In pursuing her aim, she found the support of other
people with similar values.
Attracted by Onomichi’s distinctive scenery, the two
artists Tamaki Ono and Kiyohito Mikami became involved
in Masako’s project and decided to set up installations in
different parts of the city to make residents and tourists
aware of the need to protect its heritage.
In the summer of 2007, they organised the AIR (Artists
in Residence) event, offering the Gaudí House to Motoi
Yamamoto, who was originally from Onomichi, as the setting
for one of his temporary works. Yamamoto utilised the
place with its vibrant echoes of the past, and created an
extremely intricate salt labyrinth in response to it. This is
a theme which he returns to repeatedly, one he uses to
express his grief for the death of his young sister. He occupied
two rooms on the upper floor, linking them with a delicate
tracery of tiny paths, each one a dead end. Through
an opening he found in the floor, he let small piles to salt
fall to the lower level: an act of contemplation and also of
purification concerning existence and its end.
In this place, Yamamoto has found a profound harmony
with the meaning of Masako’s struggle. She, in the meantime,
has bought another house to restore. Her crusade
for regeneration, led in a whisper, without media fanfare,
continues – delicately and tenaciously.
An Onomichi story
In the dramatic scenery of Onomichi, a young Japanese woman leads a noiseless initiative to protect historic houses. Text Rita Capezzuto. Photos Alessio Guarino.
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- 23 December 2008