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MEN BECOME FLOWERS
Wineke Gartz, Kitakyushu, 2004

I guess the reason why I ended up in the park with the homeless people was that they lived on the most beautiful places. Their tents were made of blue plastic. For me this omnipresent blue color became a symbol of the homeless community in Japan.

I welcomed the sun after the long rainy season that kept us indoors. The hot and humid summer finally had begun, and I wanted to be outdoors as much as possible. First, I refused to put on the air conditioner because I wanted to experience the climate. I soon gave up on that idea of course.

It was difficult to find a natural or even an unplanned green space. I wanted to go to the beach but doing so was more complicated than I had expected. To reach the beach, I had to cycle for two hours through urban suburbs full of buildings, lifted highways and unnecessary roads. The beach I found was artificial. The rocks were made of cast concrete. Later I learned that also nearly all the riverbeds of the hundred and thirteen big rivers have been reconstructed in concrete and that their natural course has been artificially adapted as well.

Near the station I found an unexplored field. The sun was shining beautifully. It was a relief to find such an empty space with wild plants. I walked around, reflected a bit, and sat down between the grass and the plants. Two hours passed and finally the sun set below the horizon; changing the shadows and the color of the light. I had an amazing view on the mountain Sarakura and on the skyline of Yahata, the mountain being on one side, and the Nippon Steel plant on the other. The sky was clear, with some torn clouds, lit by the sun in pink and orange.

Soon I discovered that the riversides and parks in many cities in Japan were places where homeless communities had settled down. People had built semi-permanent tents and huts where they were living in throughout the year. It was a growing group of men and women of different ages, but most homeless people were men between forty and sixty years old. Their settlements looked very attractive to me. A lot of their homes were cosy and comfortable. It was remarkable how clean and organized the community of the small tents and huts seemed. Laundry was hanging on wires and shoes were left in front of the entrances. It looked like a beautiful blue camping place. This was quite a contrast to the gray neighborhoods and the small, claustrophobic apartments I was familiar with. Although I knew a lot of homeless people were suffering and lost their jobs, they were living in their own sort of freedom in the green places. At times, they even seemed a bit anarchistic to me.
It is the end of summer and I am in Kokura, the lively section of Kitakyushu with many shops, bars and restaurants. I just filmed the blue settlements of the homeless people in the park in the center of town. The park is next to the Kokura Castle and a big new shopping and entertainment complex called River Walk. As I walk back, carrying my camera and tripod, I pass a group of homeless men living under an ultra modern metal structure: a shelter which is designed for people shopping and sightseeing to take a break and enjoy the river view. I am surprised to find the homeless men living in the nice panorama shelter, so close to the Kitakyushu City Hall and the Kokura Castle. A small man is waving at me. He sits on a bench between the shiny pillars that support the elegant curved roof of the shelter. The small man and his friend invite me to join them. They ask if I am hungry and offer me a rice ball and some sake. They see I am making a video and they are laughing. The small man is very friendly and in a good mood. His name is Mr. Kawamoto. He introduces me to the other homeless men under the roof. Each person has their own bench and their belongings are piled up next to it. There are a lot of bicycles, trolleys, books, boxes, many plastic storage containers and clothes hangers. Everything looks very organized. Their blankets and futons are getting fresh air hanging over the modern designed fence alongside the riverbank. The blankets are moving in the wind, which is very strong today. This afternoon a typhoon is expected to come over Kitakyushu.


Taijonohashi - Bridge of Sun

I see the small man again the next time I pass the structure. The weather is beautiful and the Fukuoka baseball team is playing an important game against Osaka in the late afternoon. The game is broadcasted on big screens in several shopping centers in Kokura. The sound of the cheering and singing supporters carries over the water. Every ten minutes the favorite team song starts again. My friend is listening to the game on his radio-walkman. He explains to me that people will jump in the river tonight if the Fukuoka team wins, so it would be interesting for me to stay and film the people jumping from the bridge. It takes a long time until I understand what he is trying to say because his English is very limited and I only know a few Japanese words.
Slowly I get to know the small man and the other men living on the benches under the roof. They have nothing to do. A lot of them are reading mangas. On one of the benches is a big pile of them. This bench functions as a library for the whole group. When someone is finished reading, he puts back the book and chooses another one. This goes on the whole day. Other men come and go and almost all of them ride bicycles. Nobody speaks English. One man has a small pocket translator. He is busy with this machine for a long time but in the end, the machine does not work. Another man is moving huge plastic bags full of empty aluminum cans. He has his own place under the roof where he puts all the bags in order and lines up empty sake bottle into long rows. He is earning money by recycling. It is amazing how much he can pile up on his bicycle. I spend the whole day filming the small man and his friends and we watch the people shopping and walking past the river. Everything has a golden color because of the sunshine. It is a nice day.
The next evening I go back. The baseball team lost the game yesterday, but they have to play again today. Maybe there will be people jumping into the river tonight. I want to say hello to the small man. It is early in the evening but he is already under his blankets and so are all the others. It is strange to enter their place under the metal structure. It is only one step from the route with the passing people but I feel like an intruder walking into their house without walls. When my friend sees me he gets up and we open the bottle of wine I brought with me. The Fukuoka team looses again. The noise and music of the game slowly fades out in the evening.
Autumn has many days with bright blue skies and a lot of sunshine. It spreads a warm light over the town and it is still comfortable to be outside. But in the evening, it is getting cold.
The small man has disappeared and so have all the others. The metal shelter is shut down and surrounded by big metal plates. They are reconstructing the place. I wonder where all the people have gone.
A few weeks later at River Walk I see Mr. Kawamoto walking with his bicycle near the metal structure. I am relieved to find the small man back. He is tapping water from the public water tap next to the closed down structure where he lived before. I call but he seems disturbed. He is shivering, cold and looks like he is about to cry. I notice he is wearing the same clothes that he wore a month ago but it was warm even at night back then. I ask him where he lives now and he points up the river. Four bridges away I finally understand. Then he disappears with his bicycle because he does not want me to see him that way.


One-Day Street

Sjinjuku, Tokyo. The area west of the station is full of skyscrapers with luxury hotels and huge office buildings. I am trying to find a shop but I end up somewhere under the ground in a passage between two skyscrapers as big as the whole base of one tower. As far as I can see there is just stone, marble and steel. Groups of specially designed benches made of steel blocks are spread around in the cold space. They also function as street signs because they carry neons with the names of the buildings and underground streets on vertical nameplates in both Japanese and English. The homeless, who are sitting on the islands of benches, are surrounded by these lit up names. From the signs, I understand that I am under the twin towers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Governmental Office Building. The underground pass way from here to the subway station is called One Day Street.
In the distance, there are a lot of men busy picking up their carton boxes and belongings from the floor, including plastic bags, papers, travel bags and umbrellas. Some guards have just asked the men to move away. The guards seem very friendly though, spending time to talk with the homeless men. The men carry their belongings to the next islands of benches, and settle down again. After a while one of the men comes up to me. He asks what I am doing. He is quite young. I point at the video camera and show him the LCD-screen. Although he only speaks Japanese, we are trying to talk for a long time. I tell him I find it very typical that the place is called One Day Street. He tells me that they are allowed to sit there but it is forbidden to fall asleep. So every time they are sleeping, the guards come over to wake them up. Only when it rains they are allowed to stay, so for them it is better when it rains. I ask him why he does not live in a tent in the park around the corner, but he tells me the park is already full. Also he first needs to have a friend who is already living in the park, as well as a certain kind of passport to get in. He looks very tired. He smiles about the nameplates. He asks me to zoom in to the group of homeless people at the last benches. They are his friends and he waves at them but they do not see him because we stand too far away from them.

One day I decide to go to River Walk and see if I can find the new living place of my friend under the fourth bridge. Kokura is already decorated with Christmas lights. There is a big arch made from lights placed on top of the bridge towards River Walk. It looks like a castle in a fairy tale. First, I pass the old place where Mr. Kawamoto used to live, the metal shelter. The construction walls around the structure are gone and the place has a completely new look. All the benches have been taken out and replaced by big square wooden planters. These two-by-two meter planters are filled with flowers and a few conifer saplings. The roof of the shelter has been removed and the remaining steel frame is now decorated with Christmas lights. Buckets with flowers are hung around the shiny pillars. This is a bizarre combination; flowers, metal and a roof that is not a roof. It looks a little bit like a memorial although I guess it is made to cheer up the place. I stare at the flowers. They are all small white, yellow, orange, purple and blue violas. You can see them everywhere in Japan in buckets on the streets. They can look a bit old fashioned but I like those flowers a lot. They are funny and I always recognize faces in their leaves. When I start filming them a man passes by. He is carrying a huge bag filled with cans on the back of his bicycle. I recognize that he is one of the people who lived under this roof before the flowers were there. He is happy to see me and we try to talk a little bit while I am filming. His name is Mr. Kimura. He tells me that everybody has spread out to different places after they were kicked out.