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.”