Week Nine
Tuesday, September 9, 1997 - Tokyo, Japan
AP
I spent all day at the Associated Press. Jim Lagier, the president of AP, was involved in awarding me the scholarship from the Foreign Press Club. He said that if I needed anything I could ask AP. I spent about 7 hours scanning some of the film from the nursing home. It made me happy to see the images larger. It also got me thinking about what was missing. I still want to get some of the care workers working to care for the residents, particularly the bedridden residents.
I also spent about an hour talking with a Japanese reporter and photographer about my project. I explain it to people that I am trying to look at two issues that are affecting the countryside of Japan
1. Aging- Most of the older people live outside the metropolitan areas. The young people are leaving for the city, leaving the aging population alone or placing them in nursing homes. But there are also a fair number of elderly who are still working the family gardens and doing other jobs around the house.
2. Farming is changing. Farmers are finding other crops instead of rice, like peppers. These two photo subjects are linked through the idea of family in the traditional sense of the farmer and in the new adapted form of the nursing home.
In the past two days, I have read quite a bit on the state of the healthcare system in Japan. It all points to the substandard quality of care here. Hospitals are particularly bad with a lack of staff and nursing homes, like in the States, are known to over medicate rowdy residents or tie up patients who may have a tendency to wander, like those with Alzheimer’s. I talked to the two women about their impressions of the care here. I told them about the home I am working in that seems to be a much better place than what I had read about. This got me thinking about what these pictures say. I am not trying to explain all nursing care in Japan. I am only showing a small town nursing home that has become a sort of adapted family/community for the residents and care workers who live and work there.
What was really interesting was that looking at some of my images, the Japanese photographer became visibly uncomfortable. A single working woman in her late 20's, the first thing she brought up that it is really hard for working women in Japan today. Traditionally, they are expected to care for the aging parents of either their husband, or their own parents if there is no son in the family. I hadn't even thought of this. It made me realize the value of showing my photos around. She is from Hiroshima, and now lives in Tokyo. I think she is dealing with some kind of decision like this. She says that there is a lot of guilt surrounding this decision for working women all over Japan, so a story like this seems to bring up some of this guilt. I told her I was grateful that she shared her honest feelings. She also said that she did not think that the aging issue in Japan was a big one. She said that probably not many people think like her, but that she thinks the older populations are going to be retiring later and later. While this is true, I think that regardless of whether they are working or not they are going to be living alone more and more. Of course in the metropolitan areas, it is very rare for the older people to live with the family.
This experience started me thinking about this project, nothing new. I keep making lists of pictures that I have photographed or that I want to photograph, and ideas that I want to include. The nursing home is the biggest chunk of this project. But I am not doing an essay on aging. I am going to spend more time with the farming family for the next few weeks to balance out the nursing home. But I am not sure I am going to be able to get the kind of shots I have from the nursing home.
So what does all this add up to? I feel like I am going around in circles but I also know that this is an important part of the process.
1. I have photos of one institution in the country where old people go when there is no one in the home who can care for them or they cannot care for themselves. I have photographed this home as a kind of family. This home has become an adaptation of both the community and the family with interaction between old and young. But in order to show this better I need to show elderly in the context outside of the home.
2. I have photos of an still-intact traditional family with the grandmother living with the family and the family is farming, though they are not farming rice, they are farming peppers and cows. The grandmother does many of the household chores because the mother works on the farm. The kids watch TV and go to their jobs or school. I am still going to work on this.
3. I have photos of a festival and the week-long holiday to show really young people and the older people as well as some interaction between the young adults and the older people.
I keep asking myself, what do I want to communicate? This is the important question.
It seems like I am spending a lot time looking at elderly people in this area. Could this be some kind of dialogue on their contemporary life and how they have adapted to the modern world?
This essay seems to be centered around adaptation of both the farmer and the elderly. But in order to show adaptation don't I have to show the before and after?
Wednesday, September 10, 1997
Travel from Tokyo to Akita
Thursday, September 11, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Okaerinasai (Welcome Home)
Kawabe So
Being away for two weeks feels like yesterday for a woman who is almost thirty, but it is an eternity for those who have lived out the prime of their life and now move slowly through their daily schedule. Like children who grow quickly, elderly people also grow quickly and two weeks is long enough to see visible changes. Visible changes in the human landscape caught me by surprise as I walked through the cafeteria. It was lunch time and everyone was dealing with the daily struggle of eating. Maybe I am a bad photographer but I don't want to photograph this. I do not want to show this aspect of aging. For some reason it seems too private for a picture and almost demeaning. There is no joy in eating, there is no sadness in eating, only the continued reminder as one struggles to pull the chopsticks up to their mouth or chew their food, that it is getting more and more difficult, even as the size of the food in the bowl becomes smaller and smaller. It feels like I am much more of a voyeur taking photos when they eat than when they are naked taking a bath. ( I did manage to take one photograph)
As always walking in for the first time is a bit of a rush for me. All of a sudden things felt different. Mrs. Noto's eyes weren't smiling, Mr. Sato wasn't there, Mr. Yamakami was more yellow than I remember, and Mrs. Toita seemed smaller. The familiar markers like a silver smile a toothless grin asking if I were going to stay the night, were either absent or seemed distant and foreign.
I saw Mrs. Noto first. She had her head down and was struggling to eat some tofu. I said hi and she slowly looked up. Her eyes were dull and food was dribbling from her lips. She didn't have her teeth in and there was something else wrong. I told her I would come back later after lunch. I saw another woman who is totally deaf and always asks me if I am going to spend the night, which she did today but it felt strange because I had no camera on my back. But she had the same grin and the same devilish look in her eye. Mrs. Toita was busy shuttling residents in their wheel chairs back to their room after they had eaten. But she came scurrying up with her big silver front tooth exposed by her welcoming grin. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly saying Okaerinasai which is what a mother says to her child when she comes back to the home from school, work, anywhere.
I went from room to room saying hi and searching out my friends. I saw Mr. Sato who did not come to eat lunch with all the others. His face lit up as he reached out his right hand and grabbed my hand tightly. I told him he was my only Japanese grandpa. He stiffly bent his head and nodded. He didn't let go of my hand as I asked him if he felt sick today. He nodded and continued to look up, not raising his head only his eyes. I noticed the rock I had given him several weeks before sitting on his bedside table.
I kept thinking about Mrs. Noto. Before I left, I talked to her. The right side of her face was swollen, she said. There was some kind of problem with her teeth. I asked if she had been to the doctor, she said no. I asked if she was taking any medicine, she said no. I felt sick. I decided to ask both the director and a care worker about it to get another story. The care worker said her dentures didn't fit well right now. Later I asked the director what was wrong with Mrs. Noto. He said that her seishintecki was sick, translated this can either mean that her spirit or her mental state is not good. Most of the words in the dictionary lean towards the mental aspect. It is my guess that she is depressed and still wants to go home. She has always had problems with being in the home. Because there are two nurses on staff and a doctor that comes on Wednesdays, it is my guess that someone is aware of this problem. The Japanese place a lot of emphasis on the mental spirit, if ever I am sick they always seem to think that it is because I am worn down mentally. When someone asks you if you are genki (healthy) which they do as a greeting, they really are asking more about your mental health.
The purpose of my visit today was to talk to the director and to show the scanned images. Last night I showed them to my friend Naoko who was the photographer for the newspaper here. She was visibly impressed and said that she really felt a lot of emotion in them. She also made a few observations about the pictures that I never would have known. First of all I have a photo of a giant moth fluttering its wings in an effort to fly, but between it and the outdoors is some glass that has wire in it. Naoko let out a gasp and said this is perfect citing the name of the glass as hamegoroshi, which is a wire reinforced glass that is difficult to break. The director was excited by the photos and made a bunch of students who are studying at Kawabe So for the month come and look at them. Although everyone was busy preparing for the Respect for the Aged Ceremony which happens tomorrow, I managed to have lunch with the director and was able to ask him my questions. Fortunately for me, he met a friend who happened to live in San Francisco for a year and spoke good enough English which helped to clarify the answers.
Here is what I learned:
* Kawabe So was built 20 years ago, it started out as publicly run institution, but now has private management.
* It is closest to an American nursing home in its model, but it is a home strictly for those who need care (those who can't care for themselves, and are sick).
* There are 54 people, 50 are permanent residents, 4 are considered short stay which means they stay for 2 week intervals
*Residents are classified into types A- E
A are bed ridden and really need care
B average, they need some care but for the most part are OK
C Healthy need care, can't care for themselves, no one can care for them
D Small group care (didn't understand this really well)
E Alzheimer’s (there are many in the Day Service Center who are in this category)
* The Day Service Center was opened as a daily facility ( he said primarily for those with Alzheimer’s but I have seen people come who are bed ridden and some come who are very lucid, I have to ask the care workers), but the demand has been so high that they cannot accept people on a daily basis so they have to take turns, the maximum they can come is 3 times a week
* There is a waiting list to get into Kawabe So, there are 10 people waiting.
* It costs 500 yen ($4.50) to go to the Daily Service Center per day everything included except medicine and doctors visits.
* 2 nurses at KS, and 1 for Day Service Center
* Fees for Kawabe So are on a sliding scale, though this whole thing is rather vague to me.
* When a person enters KS, KS receives money from the national (50%), prefecture + town (50%) governments, every month (??), this money is the same regardless of how sick or well the person is. This will change in three years which Iwayasan expects will bring about radical changes in the kind of care for elderly people here. From what I could gather the changes will be in the amount of money paid to the home for the person, the more sick they are, the more money the home will receive. Care for those who are not that sick will really suffer he says, because you can't make any money on them. In addition, in three years all persons 40 or older will have to start paying into a fund that will pay for the care of the growing elderly population.
* It costs about 300,000 per month to live there (about $2700) This is in the country.
* In order to get into KS, you have to meet the prefecture’s requirements. There are many formulas for figuring out if you qualify, but the bottom line is how much income do you have and who ever you live with. If you have too much you can't get in. If you make it then you pay depending on what you have, like a sliding scale. (This I am not sure about, the government pays but so does the resident or family, I think it is related to an insurance).
* KS is considered a tokubetsuyogorojin home - which means special, protective/nursing (big difference can't figure out which one yet) old person’s home, there is another place in the same town called a rojinhokenshisetsu which means old persons health establishment/ facility/service. According to Iwayasan, this is for curing ill people and for short stays, but it really has evolved to keeping people there permanently because there is nowhere for them to go.
I felt like a lot of what he was saying was really pointing to some kind of big issue in the not-so- distant future. Here are some facts:
1. There is a waiting list at KS of 10 people,
2. Almost half of the population of Kawabe town is over 50 with 25% over 65 (it should be noted that this statistic is projected for 2025 for all of Japan),
3. Another 10% are between 45 and 49,
4. Men outnumber women in seven out of nine age category below 45, exceptions are 30-34 and 15-19,
5. But over 45 women outnumber men in 9 out of 11 age categories (women live longer).
Swiss Cheese
In the afternoon, I had two meetings with professors from the University of Minnesota up the hill. Both of them are anthropologists and I left more informed than when I came. The second meeting proved more useful than the first. It was with John Mock. I have met with him before. This time he was much more approachable and I dare say friendly. I showed him the images I had scanned so far and talked with him about the project. His mother was also a documentary photographer which gave him the added insight of knowing a little bit about the field plus how to think through such a project. I told him I felt like my ideas were not really flowing together and that it seemed that this project was a little like Swiss cheese. He said really every project like this is like Swiss cheese, it is up to you to decide how fine the holes are. He said he uses photographs to string words together, and that I should use words to string photographs together if for some reason there is something that needs to be included but is not. From what he saw of the nursing home photos he said he would like to see more of the mechanics of the place, what the building is like. He also mentioned showing some kind of tension to indicate there really are no options here. How the heck am I going to do that? I am still thinking about this. I think I have it in one of my bathing shots and I think the shot of the moth also points to the tension that there is no going home.
I asked him to talk about what he is studying here. Kawabe happens to be one town that he is doing population research on. He mentioned that in the last 40 years, Japan's population has explosively changed. Before WWII, the life expectancy was lower than the US or Western Europe. Now Japan has one of the higher life expectancies. He said that means the country has had/ and will have to completely change its structures to accommodate these aging citizens. Kawabe is just starting to become a bedroom community of the large city nearby so it has both growth and areas that have had to suffer because of the flight into the city.
I also talked to him about the organization of this project. I was confused because I have all these nice images from the nursing home, but also I am continuing to work on the farmer as well as images from the festivals and rice harvest among other things. I told him I wanted to do a small essay but wasn't sure of how to integrate the two things. He gave me a great idea. He said that for any anthropology work, he had to set the context in words. He suggested that I use the mini-essay to set the context in which the nursing home exists (and farm if the work is strong enough). Choosing certain elements of change to feature, like the Taiko group which is really a reinvention of tradition, festivals which are maintenance.
Friday, September 12, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Respect for the Aged Day
Kawabe So had a big ceremony honoring the elderly people who were over 80 and 70 today. I don't think we have anything like this in the States. They all put on their finest clothes, about five put on kimono, and went and sat for an hour and a half listening to heads of the town come and tell them forcefully to be genki (healthy) and thank them for all the wisdom they bestowed on the town. Boring. The best part was the getting dressed. I got some nice shots of this I think.
I also was fascinated with these four students dressed in blue. They seemed like little fairies to me for some reason. I hope the photos convey this. And I took a bunch of photos with my long lens of all the old people's heads and one or two young people in the group. I was thinking maybe this could point to the demographic issue, and liked the look of all the white hair and wrinkles. I also wasted a bunch of film trying to photograph the mechanics of the place. The changing of the diapers seemed like a pretty mechanical thing. I did not want to photograph some old man naked being rolled and changed, but rather the diapers being taken off of this cart. Don't think it worked. They served special food to the residents today too. I took some photos of all the nice colorful food bentos lined up as they were putting the celebratory rice into them. But this got me thinking about how this isn't really what they eat everyday so I may scrap this photo.
Came home after lunch. Kazuko, the woman I am staying with, and I were going to a release party for a friend of ours who is a well known writer here in Akita. He is on TV a lot and has recently written two books on the Akita dialect. The release party was boring, but the nijikai (second-time-party) was good fun. Me, once again bringing the average age down by about 30 years. I met some very interesting folks in the "art" and advertising scene. One man owns a gallery and wants to show my photographs. I am going to send them to him at the beginning of next year. Another guy owns an advertising agency and wants to use some of my photos for his farming clients if he likes them. Plus he said that he also has clients that are in business related to aging so he may use my photos there too. Whatever.
Saturday, September 13, 1997 - Kawabe, Japan
Kusuri, medicine
I had nothing to do this morning so I went with my homestay grandmother (she is the Obaachan of the homestay where I am staying and we have become close buddies) to her Rojin Club (translated as old people's club) outing. Obaachan always teases me and I call her OObaabaasama which is like Your highness Grand Grandmother. I always go and say goodnight to her and usually catch her singing to herself in bed. She always listens to my conversations and knows exactly what I am doing, but asks anyway where are you going today. I tell her she has big ears and she laughs covering her mouth like so many women here do. She can say two English words, Bye Bye and Gudo nighto. She gets up at 5:00 and goes to the family garden all day where she tends to the garden. I am going to go with her and photograph some time soon. Today they cleaned the shrine in this neighborhood. The neighborhood gives the club money two times a year to clean the Shrine which basically means cut the grass, weed, and sweep. Then everyone goes to the neighborhood community building and eat snacks and drink sake, beer, or juice for the ladies. My Obachan drinks sake. It is her kusuri, medicine.
The cleaning scene was out of a fairy tale. Old women wearing white bonnets and rubber gloves on their hands and knees cutting weeds with sickles. Men holding twig brooms standing around and watching the women work. There were these Tori gates and they were all cleaning under them. Nice. Then we all went back and drank sake at the community center. Obachan started to drink her sake. Then she started to dance and sing laboriously trying to get her friends off their behinds and dance with her, loudly complaining that she was the only fun BaBa. She is quite a character and loves her sake. She was getting everyone up dancing and then I said something funny and she dropped to the floor laughing. She is 72. It was quite a rare moment. She finally talked some one from the audience to come into the middle of the tables and dance on the tatami with her. Two old ladies holding hands dancing, a man and woman singing Karoke looking at a huge TV. Once again nice. At Japanese gatherings, all the tables are set up in a square. People of course sit on the floor and eat drink and talk, then as the time goes on people begin to move around the room to pour beer or juice for people they want to talk to, or to show respect, say thanks whatever.
I have been thinking a lot about a title for this work and for some reason nothing is coming to mind. The word "adapt" keeps popping into my head though and something about an almost completed circle that hints of aging. But so far that is it. I have three weeks left and I am not totally confident that I am going to be able to do good things with this farming story. I am going to try but I am dealing with a totally different scale. The nursing home works because I can move around and not focus on any one person. People get very self conscious. Although they like the attention and they like the photos they don't like being the center of the camera for too long.
The way I see it, I am going to continue to look for photos that hint of this adapting and the fading out of tradition, but I also must look for photos that show what is being adapted. I keep trying to think in terms of themes that run through the work. There is the cleaning theme, the caretaking theme, the bathing theme, the working theme, the farming theme, the gardening theme, socializing theme, the praying theme. Man that seems like to many themes. I need to condense them.
Care taking seems to be a big one among the elderly people both at the home and then the old grandmother who visits her husband in the hospital to do his laundry once a week. Gardening also seems to be a big theme as well for the older people both in the home and at the farm, as well as all the other photos I have of the older people weeding. For the older people there is a sense of consistency surrounding their roles both in the nursing home and at home in the community. For the younger people I have not found this consisitency. I am definitely leaning more and more to looking at older Japanese. It has taken me a while to get here.
Looked at a bunch of my film and I have a few things to kill myself over.
1. Watch the edges of the frame!! Ugh. I get so caught up in what is going on or some cool looking composition that I forget about fingers or tops of heads. I am trying to figure out a way to get in the habit of moving my eyes around the frame before shooting.
Monday, September 19, 1997
Real Gold: deck yet to be determined but the working title of my essay right now.
I keep a pad of paper on the floor next to my futon. It is so that as I lie in bed and think I can jot down ideas about this project. Today I decided to sleep in for me that is until 8:15. I have been thinking about this project non-stop for weeks now, and I am sorry that these field notes have been reduced to ramblings as I slowly untangle my thoughts and ideas in an effort for formulate some kind of coherent outline. But today as I lay in bed listening to the three yappy dogs across the street bark at Obaachan because she likes to aggravate them, the next few weeks of work came together.
First of all the photos of the nursing home are actually life in this nursing home, not all nursing homes, not all old people, just this nursing home in this town. So my idea is to show life similarities and differences outside the nursing home. Using John Mock's idea of an essay to show context, I will contrast scenes from the community that are similar or emphasize differences to scenes in the nursing home. This can be done by looking at the work, the rituals, the activities, and daily life of older people. It all really centers around daily life and how daily life is adapted in the context of an institutional environment.
Time to get busy. I want to ask Obaachan if she will let me photograph her in the Ofuro, and while she is working in the garden. I also want to find an older woman who is caring for her young grandchildren.
And now I would like to take a moment to outline what I am doing right.
1. Access. I have figured out the access issue here in Japan, and figured out when no means yes or OK or I am embarrassed. I really think this is where I am strong. Someone mentioned that I should think about how to develop relationships. I am good at doing this fast. I cannot take good pictures without the access. And I cannot get the access without opening up myself. I often help out the care workers at Kawabe So by walking a resident back to their room, or cooking dinner for the farming family on their sons birthday because they forgot about it, or driving my Japanese grandmother to the hospital because it was raining. I do these things naturally and in the end they really help the photography. Of course, I keep in the forefront of my mind my role in the place.
2. I have figured out the film thing. I still hate color neg., but this Kodak film is actually working out nicely for this project. It has a kind of cool cast to it, and the colors aren't that strong. I shoot the 1600 at 1000 and the multi-speed at 400. Don't recommend it any other way.
3. My shooting is getting better. I can definitely see the difference by comparing the first stuff I shot in Tokyo at the birth center to the stuff now.
4. I can see the light. I wrote a long time ago about how I wanted to try and make the light kiss these people at Kawabe So. I have successfully done that in many photos.
5. I am getting better about not getting pissed off if I miss a shot. It happens and will always happen. In the words of Fred Blocher at the Star, it (the scene) will happen again and if it doesn't, so what. Try again next time.
6. Trusting myself. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this project. I am not making decisions about what to photograph blindly, there is something at work in my head. At times I am not sure why I am photographing certain scenes, but then I realize later why.
7. I am getting more confident shooting. Several times when I had connections to a place or people, I just went in shooting and no one seemed to bat an eye. Of course people will let you know if they do not want to be photographed. And if it is a hospital or place like that I get permission and make my purpose clear. One old woman explained my purpose as I wanted to take back presents from Japan and the presents I was going to return to America with were the photos I was taking of all the people in the hospital waiting room.
That's it for this week. Sorry it is so boring.
xxoo jen
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