Tracing the Enchanting Sound, Akio Suzuki
The “Space in the Sun” record marked the beginning of my encounter with Akio Suzuki. Before I even got his autograph, he started a conversation. At that moment, I was heartened by the warmth and kindness in his eyes.
Later, I emailed Suzuki-san, but received no reply. I sought advice from my landlord, a 75-year-old editor of the travel guide “Chikyu no Arukikata”, “oshitsukegamashi (this is pushy)”, he said. With the new vocabulary looping in my mind, I sent a refined email with his guidance. Yet still I received no reply. My landlord analysed the situation, “he must be fuming”. I could not imagine the kind Suzuki-san getting angry. It left me so perplexed.
When I heard of Suzuki-san’s performance at Shimokitazawa, I decided to bring a letter with a writing sample inside an envelope. I had no other option.
During the performance, I heard the ‘bouncy’ water sound that I was trying to emulate with a modular synthesizer. I was shocked Suzuki-san produced it with a wooden stick hitting a pocket flask covered with a sock, whilst balancing the water level. Then, I was even more bewildered by such complex, intricately layered and haunting cosmic reverberations. It was Analopos. A handmade echo instrument that he invented in 1969. The idea was triggered by a coincidental encounter between an empty juice can and a coil spring during his lonely nights in Tokyo.
After the performance, when I was waiting to talk to him, the envelope in my hands crumpled a little.
“Do you use email?” I asked Suzuki-san.
Not really.
Oh… Do you have a phone number?
My wife has one. Should I write it down?
Is it better to contact you via letters?
Yeah, probably…
In the middle of our conversation, he wrote down his home address and his wife’s number without hesitation. It was unexpected.
The bouncy water sound, the mysterious echo from the original instrument, the combination of sounds between materials were unheard of and beyond imagination. It had overturned my understanding of sound. The scene when you were holding the box slowly, then suddenly dropped it, the humour still remains inside me.
“Analopos stretched in the wind, suddenly began to sing with an enchanting tone”.
A week later, in the midst of the bitterly cold winter, I came home from work feeling blue. I opened the sliding door of the minka (old Japanese wooden house), and there lay a thick parcel. It was from Suzuki-san! I was speechless, amazed and shocked. I wondered what it was, as my curiosity level was near explosive. “I’d be happy if these can be your reference materials. Stay well”, a handwritten letter from Suzuki-san with a blue-inked cat stamp. Inside were photocopies of a feature article written by Akimichi Takeda published in Polyfone magazine (1992); another article published by Kyoto Shimbun and a few exhibition pamphlets. My jaw dropped, enveloped in extreme happiness. I was warmed by his generosity.
In May, I finally had a chance to talk to Suzuki-san, after his performance at New Acao Hotel in Atami. As the participants gathered in the lobby, he said “follow me” in a calm voice, and headed outside while hitting a cardboard box with a bamboo stick. Thereafter the performance began.
Our first stop was an “o to da te” mark in front of an onsen boiler facing the Pacific Ocean. Suzuki-san’s footsteps led us to the ocean, where we all sat on a grassy field and relished the sound of bamboo and Miyakita-san’s movements, interweaving with nature.
27 Chairs were facing in all directions in a spacious hall, everyone had a one-of-a-kind listening experience. At last, we reached the game room, the randomly activated machines transported us to a world of chaos.
Oh, I have this as well! Wow, these are old, you managed to get hold of it. (Pointing at the Geijutsu Shincho Magazine)
Yes, I found them at a second-hand bookshop.
“It all began with knowing John Cage”.
A conversation between John Cage and Daisetsu Suzuki, “The Idea and Development of Avante Garde Music” (1962), evoked a feeling of connectedness. He would love to meet Cage in the future, which happened 17 years later. In 1978, Suzuki-san and Takehisa Kosugi attended the “Time-Space of Japan—MA” exhibition in Paris, produced by a prolific contemporary musician, Tōru Takemitsu. The well-received performance led to a tour in Sweden and New York the following year, when Cage came to see the show. Deeply influenced by Eastern philosophy and Daisetsu Suzuki, Cage developed an interest in Akio Suzuki. As neither of them could communicate through language, they used pictures and drawings instead.
In 1976, Suzuki-san’s very first exhibition was held in Minami Gallery in Tokyo, when Kosugi-san wrote for the art magazine Mizuru. That was the beginning of their friendship.
“The two performers now come together in one of the oddest and most beautiful duets I have ever heard. They never force a relationship. They never attempt to imitate each other. They don’t take turns making their similar sounds, but they do not take turns either. They are not controlling, or organizing, composing. Yet they are listening, sensing. I have seldom seen two performers so completely tuned in on the same types of sounds, the same performance attitude, the same philosophy, the same of what music ought to be”.
“The sound of onsen boiler, at times it heats up. To arrive here and open your ears, as sound descends it becomes chance music. This is why I marked ‘o to da te’ here”.
Cage’s music of chance, known for compositions derived from the Chinese ancient book “I Ching” (Classic of Changes). Suzuki-san’s worldview is ‘throwing’ and ‘following’. By throwing a stone into a quiet little pond, the answer simply unfolds. In all things, the world manifests itself through awareness. Most essentially, is to listen attentively, and that’s all he has done. Suzuki-san the narrow streams were disappearing due to the land reform in Japan. In the 60s, he carried out “Visiting Small Streams”, which also embedded the meaning of listening to Bach, ‘the father of music’. As he reached the source of the small stream, he lay down and listened to ‘sarasara’ (the sound of water flowing smoothly), then he placed a branch into the river and it becomes ‘chorochoro’ (the sound of trickling water) – a composition of the river.
The ancient pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of the water
Empathised with Matsuo Bashō’s haiku, a form of poetry.
“Visiting Small Streams”, “Searching for Echo Point” and “Space in the Sun” are the acts that he repeats the process of ‘throwing’ and ‘following’ towards nature, which are titled “Self Study Events”.
Published by island JAPAN
Not collecting records, listening to one and letting go for the next. In this simple life, in 1973, he heard Debussy’s symphonic poem “La Mer” (1905).
On Autumnal Equinox Day in 1988, the practice of listening to nature for an entire day “Space in the Sun” left a mark on his life. From listening to Debussy’s “La Mer”, his imagination expanded – nature awakens at dawn, reaching its peak with the rising sun, and eventually living organisms come to an end as the sun sets. Ever since he has yearned for the observation of nature. In order to concentrate for a whole day, Suzuki-san built two gigantic walls with 10,000 ‘sun-dried blocks’ from the soil on site. The walls ran parallel and intersected the northernmost point of the Japanese Standard Time Meridian Line at 135 degrees, which happened to be on the ridge of Mt. Takatenyama (150 above sea level) in Amino, Kyo-Tango, Kyoto Prefecture. The 3.5 meter high, 17 meter long, 1 meter thick, with a 7 meter distance in between the walls took one and a half years to accomplish. That day, he sat in the centre of the North wall that shuts off his eyesight allowing him to focus. The spot was where he can hear the sound bounces off the wall and loops around the world, which he calls the “imaginary echo”.
In an age without the Internet, his peculiar actions were spread by word of mouth. Favoured by friends and the locals, supporters emerged in various forms, such as donating ‘blocks’ – the way temples were built. The ‘sun-dried blocks’ were kneaded and moulded from the mountain soil with water, which gradually collapsed over time, and eventually returned to nature. “Borrowing space from nature for a day” was Suzuki-san’s humble gesture.
Play more while you’re young. The experiences rescue us when we become an adult. In childhood, Suzuki-san’s mother read him a novel – “Onshu no Kanata Ni” (1919) written by Kan Kikuchi, is the story of a monk on a journey of atonement, who risked his life to dig a tunnel, succeeded at last with the involvement of the locals – this youth memory has supported him during hardships. After the invaluable experience “Space in the Sun”, Suzuki-san continued to live in Kyo-tango, which became his base until this day. I was drawn to feel the charm of Tango, and by chance, I was blessed with Autumnal Equinox Day.
“The way of living – you gain better experience if you don’t decide. I empty myself, like a sponge, which absorbs and expands greatly”.
After the performance and the long conversation, Suzuki-san must have been tired. He nevertheless accompanied me to two exhibiting rooms of the artist whom he was drawn to, “o to da te” mark on the rooftop, and at last, he walked me to the end of the long hallway to view Miyakita-san’s “Nami no Utsushi”, which was the dance of lines with tapes throughout the glass windows.
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