“Right after the accident, I found a blog about peacocks that were left in the evacuation zone, within the 20 km limit. I then began imagining those peacocks, walking around the empty town with their beautiful wings spread.”
On the 11th of March, 2011, a catastrophic earthquake shook Japan. I was working for a Brazilian TV company in Tokyo at that time, and we headed to Tohoku, the northern part of Japan where the tsunami hit. It looked like it had just been bombed. Fragments of rubble showed us that people’s daily lives had ended all of a sudden. I always knew that our lives end one day for sure, however it was the first time that I really realized that. This tragedy returned me to art.
When I started to study painting and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, I was 19 years old. I heard the sound of a switch turning on inside myself, telling me that finally my life had started by meeting art. After years of studying art, I realized that I was not mature enough to produce art.
That is why, when I went back to Japan, I took a break from producing art to learn about the world and life. I ended up working as a journalist producing TV news and documentaries for more than ten years. I was sad not to be doing art, however I kept shooting pictures without developing them, because I knew that one day, the time to return to art would come for sure.
Then in 2011, after the disaster, I found pink roses blooming beautifully in the middle of the rubble in Kamaishi, where more than 800 people had been washed away by the tsunami. The roses bloomed simply because it was spring. The beautiful and uncomplicated statement by those roses was beyond our thoughts. They taught me that it was time to return to art.
Even after I decided to go back to art, I kept visiting Fukushima for years with different TV crews. Most of the stories we covered there were very intense and heavy. But because of that, I found a little beauty, kindness and humour, which I would not have noticed in normal daily life. For me, it looked like hope… and that was what I wanted to share with people thorough my art, not in a “documentary” way, but in my own way, as if I am a flute and inspiration goes through me and becomes beautiful music.
- Miho Kajioka
Artists
