Ryugu

Size : left 39.3″x141.2″(100×358.8)cm　right 39.3″x141.2″(100×358.8)cm
Material : graphite on traditional Japanese paper, rub on silver powder (URETHANE,ACRYLIC,GRAPHITE)
2014

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There is a Japanese legend of Urashima Taro.

The tale dates back to the earliest period of Japanese literature, appearing under different guises in ancient chronicles from 8th century “Tango no Kuni Fudoki,” to “Nihon Shoki” and “Man’yoshu”.

Later, in Otogizoshi, a collection of narratives spanning Muromachi and Edo periods, Urashima Taro emerges in his modern form. He becomes the subject of picture scrolls, No and Kyogen plays, a story known to everyone.

The fairytale goes like this

Long, long time ago Lived a fisherman named Urashima Once he saved a turtle It took him to undersea palace Ryugu There he met a beautiful Princess Night and day they frolicked among the fish It was time to return home He was given a jeweled box as a farewell gift Upon return, his village and home were gone All people he passed were strangers Dejected, he opened the jeweled box In a puff of white smoke, Urashima turned into an old man

In the few days that Urashima spent at Ryugu Palace, the world that he knew completely changed. Opening the jeweled box he became an old man in a flash, a sudden realization that many years have passed.

For an island nation like Japan, the sea is a source of many bounties. People living before the invention of submarine technology worshipped the bottom of the ocean was promised land, a rightful home for the unearthly beauty of Ryugu Palace. So for a thousand years this place continued to exist in folk stories, its flow of time different from that dictated by the Earth’s rotation.

Now to the present, and the impressive growth of Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. MMORPGs are home to many breathtaking vistas and improbably beautiful castle cities, a promised land created with the power of human imagination.

In games, chronology has an Urashima Taro quality. What should take days is accomplished in hours. The flow of time doesn’t match the external world and is experienced very differently.

So I captured this computer-generated world in the confines of a folding screen. Behold, the timeless landscape, 『ryugu』