After the disaster, my reconstruction efforts were not limited to just restoring buildings and facilities. It was about reestablishing a place where people could find happiness. I believed in the vital role of connecting people's hearts with the history they cherished.
I perceived this task as a phase that bridged a millennium of history with the next 1,000 years.
In the community, humans and nature once coexisted. Their existence wasn't defined by being good or bad; they simply existed. Each stood independently, yet also intertwined, displaying a cycle of separation and fusion.
Amidst a maelstrom of emotions where no clear answers emerged, feeling as if the soul of someone was always near, I sought guidance in the Age of the Gods depicted in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. Moreover, understanding the history of the Polynesians allowed me to reset my prior beliefs.
I made sure that the connection between the community, its natural environment, history, and gathering places remained intact.
Reflections at Project Completion
It all concluded mentally within me on March 10th, in the midst of an uncertain environment where I processed the information and emotions needed for decision-making. Hope and responsibility. I did everything I could with all my might, lived betting on it, and within it. I cried on the way back, sent on a first errand as if the sea and mountains were my parents. That was a decade. Aiming for the Polaris, I faced ambiguity like darkness yet with enough clarity.
During my student days, I aimed for a single point and tried to add another layer to the sandhill, overwhelmed by the breadth and quantity necessary as its foundation. It was about the expanse of time and space back then. Now it's different, like the depth of the sea. I am a device that combines a microscope and a projector, projecting the world onto a screen. The beginning was a cradle of utopia or co-dependency with my mother, where I used the word "to be" as a clue to explore more deeply the value of the natural environment and the collective existence itself.
The first sight of the sea and mountains as parents was a dramatic farewell. Like Persephone. With the suffocation of Cinderella, accompanied by duty, regret, and guilt. Holding the necessary emotion of hope for escape, playing the role of a prince suggested by a glass slipper. The light-hearted rescue like Urashima Taro. Almost simultaneously, riding in a pumpkin carriage to a turtle carriage, to the fantasy deep-sea palace and the underworld. Facing another princess while dominated by anxiety, anger, joy, and sadness as if the contents of Pandora's box, which reached only through time, were the sole goal. If there was revelation, it was there. And the sea and mountains were always there, silent, watching over with leisurely and boldly beautiful atmosphere, as if with joy. In my heart, as an unborn child intended for the center spotlight, like the dark space of a closet. Nature as a mother, myself as life, and the human in between. Piling up the meaningless as junk, with the atmosphere of a Disneyland but as a grave. Enthusiastically innocent greed.
Pointing in the direction indicated by the words "to live," "to exist," "to be," I wander, search, act, leaving a mountain of meaningless dreams seen at night, even while expecting the romantic vision of daytime dreams. The meaninglessness of that mountain becomes its meaning. The salvation and forgiveness I sought. The smiles of the sea and mountains that required no doing, no achievement, arrived unexpectedly, reflecting the depths of my heart like the seasons. The surprise scene where good and evil intermingle by a trickster will be the same even after a millennium. Everyone, on their first errand called life, heads towards the joy of realizing their true self, crying on the way back. The path to happiness is both universal and individual.
