A Journey to Explore My Roots...

I received a message from Jun Motokawa, an installation artist living in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture.
He said, "I had the opportunity to see my great-grandfather's old family register and learned that my roots are in Utashinai City, Hokkaido. I want to use the soil from that place to fire pottery, create original musical instruments, and perform."
However, it was February, the height of the bitter cold. Is it even possible to "dig up soil" from frozen ground buried in snow?
I was worried, but he is an artist (and was accompanied by a photographer documenting this trip). With motivation, grit, and youth, they dug soil out of the frozen earth. That's amazing.

The Honmachi area of Utashinai City, where his great-grandfather lived, was once a bustling area in front of Utashinai Station. Was he running a business there? Or perhaps...?
When asked about his "impression of Utashinai" after visiting for the first time,
he said, "I thought that true artists might live in a place like this. A place where you can get away from the crowds and be alone..." As expected, his perspective is different.
As he said, it would be interesting if Utashinai City became an artist village like that.
He was deeply moved by the paintings of Yoshio Honjo, a local painter he had hoped to meet, and was surprised by his collection of antique clocks gathered as motifs for his paintings...
He received a lot of inspiration from Utashinai, a depopulated area that might look like it has "nothing" at first glance, and returned home with soil from his ancestral land.

I am looking forward to seeing the finished pots (which will become instruments) fired in an anagama kiln, and what kind of performance he will create with them.
Artists, come to Utashinai City. There are many vacant houses that can be used as studios. As Mr. Motokawa said, this place might be perfect for artists and writers to live. I, too, am one of those artists.
Silence is a fountain of inspiration. I hope you will come and visit.
(Yoko Ishii, Utashinai City Community Revitalization Cooperation Squad)