Tokaido Make-Over

Tokaido Route
copyright Guus Rijven

In the just published book Tokaido Make-over photographer Guus Rijven provides a modern view of the 53 stages of the Tokaido or Great Coastal Route. This highway, a 500 km route linking the imperial capital of Kyoto with the more worldly Tokyo, was the principal road in feudal Japan. The 53 post stations provided shelter and food for travellers: landowners and their retinues, as well as pilgrims and merchants.

All text was provided by friendly courtesy of Mr. Guus Rijven, known to us as a collector of Japanese prints and a client of artelino for many years.

Dieter and Yorie in August 2006

Book and Photograph Exhibition

Rijven¹s photographs - www.guusrijven.com - are shown along-side a complete set of Hiroshige¹s (1797-1858) Tokaido prints in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam until 22 October 2006 as a part of their Japanese Season. In the spring of 2007 the series will be shown in Krems Kunsthalle near Wien.

Tokaido Make-over, ISBN 90.5330.500.9

49,90 euro: 192 pages, 85 large colour photos, many black & white illustrations as well as 40 woodblock prints in full colour; size 30 x 25 cm; Mets & Schilt publishers, Amsterdam. You can order on line via www.metsenschilt.com or visit the bookshop nearby.

Tokaido Make-Over

Mariko
copyright Guus Rijven

For centuries, the Tokaido or Great Coastal Route has been the most important road in Japan. Over a distance of five hundred kilometres it connected Imperial Kyoto in the east with Worldly Edo, now known as Tokyo. The route of the Tokaido, that literally means Eastern Sea Way, follows the coast for most of the way.

When Japan underwent the rigorous transition from a 'medieval' society to a 'modern' state in the second half of the 19th century, railway construction rapidly made the Great Coastal Route superfluous. Besides a jagged line drawn on a map, what remained after the road was no longer needed for transportation was an idea, perfectly reflected in numerous books and hundreds of woodcuts. The existing route remained in spirit only.

The second half of the 20th century provided Japan with financial scope and her population with spare time. Leisure became an industry, which discovered that making history accessible could be a valuable investment. Sections of the Tokaido were renewed and opened to day-trippers and ramblers. Tourists gave the Tokaido a new purpose, waking it from 150 years of 'hibernation'. The circle has come full circle, rebirth a fact: from a functional road connection to the source of travel ideas to a leisure time destination.

From Fragmentation to Concentration

The organisation of this book is based on the traditional series in which each print has its own character and individual qualities while the particularities of place, landscape, society and sometimes history are reflected in the picture. A series of Tokaido prints used to give a visual commentary on life on the road and the surrounding landscape along the whole route.

Merging loose elements into a meaningful whole is a characteristic of Japanese culture, a sequential structure common in much of its literature. Short stories are still a more common literary form than novels in Japan today. Fragmentation is almost as natural in public space as it is in literature. Built objects are placed in relatively accidental relationship to each other, and without relationship to their surroundings. The overview is ignored and details are cherished. Buildings, traffic islands, pavements, the lines on roads, and one's own garden are all designed and maintained with love and great skill. The zoom lens is the perfect point of view in the Japanese universe.

First Make-over in the Third Millennium

Fukuroi
copyright Guus Rijven

Lenses are also the instruments for the newest Tokaido series in book form. The wide-angle lens creates overview and distance in the photographic series, the zoom lens sharply reflects specifc subjects in the text. My route passed through the cities and villages of the 53 stops. If the Tokaido was once the only perspective from which to study and comment on this distant, strange land, the series of photographs in this travelogue will breathe new life into this tradition.

This mitate or visual analogy records once again the Great Coastal Route and encourages discussion about it. After all, photography, journalistic and documentary photography in particular, implies that it represents the world; the photograph as a witness of what once was. Yet a photograph merely promises reality, referring to a place or an event; it slices a piece of reality and witnesses it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Emperor's palace has been located in Kyoto since the 8th century and the place where the Emperor resided was used as a compass for travel directions. In 1868, when the Emperor moved to Edo, Tokyo instantly became the place where people travelled 'up' to. This modern photographic series reverses Tokaido's polarity and preserves the same sequence and numbering, the operating base was Kyoto and our journey ended in Tokyo.

The Pilgrim's String of Beads

Kanagawa
copyright Guus Rijven

This series of photographs is an ode to the Tokaido, the archaeology of the route, not a report of a journey. The 53 stations are loose beads that the traveller strings together by trekking. The starting principle was that each of the photographs had to be self-evident, independent of the others in the series. The sum of the parts offers comment on the designed landscape and therefore on its inhabitants as well.

The page next to each photograph is to study in depth a detail or idea encountered in the picture, but the photograph itself is not explained. A spectrum of subjects covers past and present in all sorts of historical, political and cultural fields. If the photographs present a cross section of modern Japan at the beginning of the 21st century, the texts go beyond that horizon. They glance over the shoulder to the past and lay the series in the bed of time. This way a journey over land becomes a journey in the mind. It is the view of a Dutchman, the vision of an outsider.

Guus Rijven

Text and images on this page are the property of Mr. Guus Rijven and may not be published or distributed without the owners prior consent.

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