＜ Clicking the image will display it in full screen. ＞
Shuren
One hundred years old. I tried to imagine what color my mother’s century-long life would be. I tried to imagine it, but I thought it would be impossible to express it in one color.
The colors I chose were yellow and purple. I felt that two contrasting colors were appropriate. Yellow and purple exist in opposition to each other. And they blend together. However, yellow and purple do not express her in pure colors. A purple with a bluish tint or a lemon color with high brightness and saturation would not do. It had to be a color with a touch of antique beauty, soft and somewhat warm. A dignified presence was necessary among the faded colors.
My eldest brother, the heir who lived with my mother, passed away. My mother, who had always said, “I don’t want to see my child die before my parents,” was bereaved by her child, of all things.
I, who had only visited her occasionally until then, began to visit her frequently. I was still working at the time and was busy, but I made time to visit her.
One day, my mother surprised me by saying, “You don’t have to come so often,” and “Young people don’t have to be sacrificed by the old.” I was over 60 years old, so I was no longer young, but I felt relieved by my mother’s strong-willed words. I thought that my mother’s feelings were similar to those of Orin, the elderly mother in Fukazawa Shichiro’s “The Ballad of Narayama,” who volunteered to be abandoned on a mountain.
Ten years have passed since then. These days, when I visit my mother, she says, “Oh, you came.” When I leave, she says, “Please come again.” And she repeats stories from her time at high school 80 to 90 years ago. It seems that she had a lot of fun when she was a girl of 15 or 16. Another topic that comes up frequently is my mother’s father and her brother. My mother lost her mother when she was young. So she seems to remember her father and her brother who was like a parent to her. She says, “I can hear the voices of Bunbee (my father’s name) and Bunpei (my brother’s name) on the TV.”
The mother I know worked tirelessly through the turbulent postwar era. I imagine they faced many hardships, but my mother is now very easygoing.
I am witnessing the convergence of a century of time.
(Excellence Award, 15th Yamanashi Prefectural Culture Festival Art Exhibition, 2015)