May 05, 2015 The Asahi Shimbun By
LOUIS TEMPLADO/ AJW Staff Writer
Satoshi Murakami tested the hospitality of lots of strangers on
his recent pilgrimage across Japan. When he shows up on someone’s
doorstep at dusk, instead of asking for a room, he asks for space
on their land where he can put down his own house, which he carries
on his back.
“I think what I do really challenges people and makes them aware
of how attached they are to what they own,” says Murakami,
“Everyone assumes that their property is permanent and inviolable.
What I do is make a nuisance that hopefully lets them see that they
can't completely isolate their own part of the world.”
The 26-year-old Tokyo-based artist says he was shocked into
action by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011. Like many
in Tokyo he watched the disaster unfold on TV and saw entire towns
swept away.
He decided to reduce his possessions to the bare minimum and be
always be ready to move. He built the portable house out of plastic
foam and duct tape and set off on a journey across Japan in April
2014 in order to test the lifestyle.
Since then he has plopped his house down next to isolated
farmhouses, in alleys, occasionally in parks and often under the
eaves of local temples and shrines. Buddhist priests, he said,
often told him they could connect spiritually with his voyage.
To share his experiences, Murakami came back to Tokyo for an
exhibition of photos of his house in various locales throughout the
country. The show, titled "Iju wo seikatsu suru 1-128" (moving as a
way of life) was held last month at Gallery Barco in the Kameari
district of Katsushika Ward. It recorded the first 128 places to
accomodate his house as well the structure itself, along with
pencil sketches of the homes of the people who agreed--sometimes
reluctantly--to let him set up home on their land for a night.
Traveling on foot, Murakami covered about 20 kilometers a day
before knocking on doors, sweaty and dusty, to ask for a spot of
his own. Reactions varied, and not all regions of Japan were
equally hospitable toward Murakami.
“In the Kyoto area, for example, a lot of people found me
suspicious," he says. "If I put my house down next to a bathhouse
or convenience store, for example, to take a bath or buy a drink
inside, it would cause a commotion. The owners would come out to
make sure I wasn’t squatting and that I’d move on."
In parts of the Tohoku region devastated by the tsunami,
however, he found the going much easier.
“Some areas were completely flattened so it was hard for owners
to tell where their property ended and their neighbors’ began.
People would just say, ‘Go ahead.’ Old residents have been moved
around, and there are many people who’ve come from outside to work
for the reconstruction. So someone like me didn’t stand out so
much,” he explains.
The house he built weighs about 8 kilograms and is roughly the
size of an office desk. Yet Murakami purposely constructed it so
that it can’t be taken apart or folded away. That would make it
something more along the lines of a tent, he says, and the
responses it draws would be different.
“The reactions would be systematized. If I showed up with a car,
for example, would be directed to a parking lot. In the same way,
if I showed up with a tent or something foldable I would be
directed to a camp ground. It’s part of everyone’s logic. But if
people see you coming with a house, they have trouble fitting it
into their world.”