Embedded Memories–A Garden of Camellias
One day, photographer Yoshihiko Ueda discovered that an old wooden house and its big garden trees in the neighborhood he used to live in were all torn down and the land cleared. He was shocked by the view and felt a sense of loss, knowing he wouldn’t be able to see the Otome-tsubaki (a camellia variety) that bloomed every spring in that garden again. Mr. Ueda spent 20 years writing about this experience, and in 2020 his first film, A Garden of Camellias, was born.
In an old wooden house on a hill with an ocean view live a grandmother and granddaughter. The movie depicts them and the people who visit their house. The grandmother takes good care of her garden, which is filled with a variety of colorful flora and fauna every season. The film beautifully captures one whole year of the family, whose lives change with the seasons. Using natural light only, the filmmaker shot the film over the course of a year. The story not only depicts the family, but also reflects the truths of their lives, contrasting a person who is close to the end of her life with a person whose life is just starting to bloom and showing how their lives intertwine.
The film was released in Japan in April of 2020, but it hasn’t been distributed in the US yet, so I haven’t seen it. The filmmaker’s visual images and his passion for the film struck me a lot, however, so this month, I decided to write about the childhood house that still dwells in my memory.
My grandparents’ house, located in Suginami in Tokyo, was a wooden, single-story house built in the early Showa era (1926–89). I have a lot of childhood memories from this house. I can still see my grandfather in kimono pruning plants in the garden. I remember that the wooden floor of the engawa (indoor veranda) was slippery and straight, so my siblings, cousins, and I had fun running around there.
My mother and grandmother scolded us not to run because it's dangerous. In front of the engawa, there was a big, round stepping stone where we took off our shoes. But we did that carelessly––adults properly arranged their shoes––so our small shoes often tumbled down to the garden, and I had to look in the space under the veranda to find my shoes. Also, I clearly remember my grandmother welcoming us beside the slatted door at the entrance. The house was eventually torn down, and on the cleared land stand new houses belonging to my brother’s and cousin’s families––each family is writing a new history there.
The more you live in a house, the more histories pile up. Memories are everywhere on the property, and the spirits of residents live on in their cherished possessions. Moments in time are carved into these objects, and people draw memories from them and feel nostalgic––these memories are sometimes warm and sometimes sad. The memories called up from these objects are transformed into new memories. People wish to find fragments of memories and go back there, I think.
A house, a place of day-to-day happiness, is the site of small, daily events like flowers blooming in the garden and then withering as the seasons change. Time in the house passes nobly through these small activities and cycles of life and death. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Some houses will lose their owners, and those ownerless houses may be torn down and vanish. Every day, we accept the missed memories and sense of loss.
My current house in Chestertown is 120 years old, my previous apartment in a Brooklyn brownstone was 150 years old, and a building I used for my office and shop in Kiryu, Japan, decades ago was 90 years old. Each property is located in a preservation district for traditional buildings. Even though residents come and go, the buildings are repaired, preserved, and memories attach themselves here and there––objects take over a house’s history. I inherit those attached memories and spend time with these objects in just a fraction of their history.
Since this pandemic erupted, I have attempted to go to Japan several times, but in vain. I have another plan to do so this autumn, but I suspect I might have to change the plan. It seemed a vaccination would help reduce the virus spread, but that may be optimistic. From afar, I keep my mother in my thoughts––she lives alone in a house that was once lively and full of family members.
I think that each country or state has a different approach to this invisible virus, and I am bewildered by the rapidly changing situation. It’s now or never, but I am still unsure whether I should go back there or not.
P.S. Goldfish, which appear in the film A Garden of Camellias, are considered the quintessence of summer in Japan. In olden days, every household in Japan had goldfish. So I drew them on my scarves this month.
Yuh Okano, 8.2021
