The Surface of Time and Space: On the Collection of Keiko Miyamori's "Tree Rubbings"
Reiko Kokatsu (Art History & Art Criticism)
The practice of artist Keiko Miyamori, who began placing thin Japanese paper against the surface of trees in the places she visited and rubbing them with charcoal to capture the texture of the tree bark, dates to around 1997. This technique, known as "frottage" in art terminology, is referred to by Miyamori as "tree rubbing."
In 2011, Miyamori covered a wooden canoe with "tree rubbings" collected from her travels across four continents—Africa, the Americas (both North and South), Australia, and Eurasia—and presented this work, titled Amasia, in a solo exhibition at New York's Ise Cultural Foundation. The name "Amasia" was inspired by a theory that the continents, once part of the supercontinent Gondwana, will again coalesce into a single landmass named Amasia in 200 million to 300 million years. Miyamori was greatly fascinated by this future projection, and the small wooden canoe may be seen as a manifestation of this distant future world.
Miyamori, who pursued her master’s degree in Japanese painting at Tsukuba University, found herself unable to create conventional, beautiful Japanese paintings after her graduation project, Spring of the Forest. During her time in graduate school, she engaged in trial and error by tearing and painting over her own works. In 1994, she held a solo exhibition titled "Denial of Denial" at Tsukuba University. One of the collages from this exhibition won the TAMON Award in 1995, which included a prize of a six-month study stint in New York. Subsequently, she had the opportunity to study at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia as part of the Agency for Cultural Affairs' overseas artist training program in 1998-99. Perhaps due to her affinity for living in the U.S., Miyamori continued her artistic career in New York after spending time in Philadelphia and has since married an American.
Keiko Miyamori's connection to America through her lineage was expressed as part of the 2023 solo exhibition "The Sea of Memories, Rose's Pride." Her maternal grandmother, Matsuno (1905–1988), played a significant role in this connection. Matsuno was a Nisei born in Hawaii, holding American citizenship. However, due to her parents' circumstances, she returned to Japan with them at the age of 17. After working as a simultaneous interpreter, she married the eldest son of an old family in Yamaguchi Prefecture in a love marriage, which was unusual at the time. She had three children, and the eldest daughter of these three was Keiko's mother. The same year that the eldest daughter turned seven, Japan and the United States went to war.
Although Matsuno lived in cities such as Osaka, Ashiya, and Shibuya, she struggled with the significant cultural differences between her American upbringing and the traditions and customs of her Japanese in-laws. Her daughter, Miyamori’s mother, also felt the clash of these differences as a Japanese person. Additionally, the outbreak of the war exposed Matsuno, born in America, to considerable prejudice and discrimination. However, Miyamori, as a grandchild, did not hear of these inner conflicts from her grandmother. Even when living on her grandparents' property, her grandmother was a kind presence, teaching her the delightful tastes of American pancakes, jelly, guava juice, and other treats. Yet, after her grandfather’s passing, Miyamori vividly remembers her grandmother’s later years, sitting alone in a rattan chair and reading English newspaper. It was only later that Miyamori learned that her grandmother continued to renew her American passport until her death.
Reflecting on her grandmother’s life, Miyamori contemplates the inner struggles of someone who lived between two countries but was accepted by neither. This sense of unstable belonging affected not only her grandmother but also her mother, who struggled with alcoholism, and Miyamori herself. This sentiment is embedded in Miyamori’s work, which layers Japanese paper through her "tree rubbings." According to Miyamori, she aims to "carefully peel away the layers beneath the surface, striving to understand the complex relationships that underpin our human social and cultural structures."
Let’s return to Miyamori’s work. After settling in the United States in 2000, Miyamori returned to Japan in 2018 to care for her aging parents. In 2020, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, she held a solo exhibition titled Surfaces of Time – The Accumulated Surfaces of Time and Space, which served as a comprehensive collection of her previous works. This exhibition showcased Miyamori’s unique method of "tree rubbing," capturing the traces of time and space she had experienced or passed through, as recorded on thin Japanese paper that had been rubbed against tree surfaces.
In this exhibition, the surfaces of everyday objects such as baby bottles, hourglasses, globes, reindeer antlers, cassette tapes, roofless birdcages, and typewriters were covered with these paper fragments, sealed within the time and space of the paper. Additionally, a monumental planar work was created using layers of Japanese paper adhered to a large frame, in a piece titled Rewinding the Time of Life (2019, 195×395 cm).
One of the most striking features of the exhibition was an installation set up in a spacious area immediately upon entering: two cribs, one turned upside down, set against a massive planar work covered in layers of Japanese paper. The cribs were adorned with an abundance of rose petals (Imagine Here and There (transformed), 2020). Initially, the petals were a fresh pink, but over the course of the three-week exhibition, they faded to a whitish hue and dried out. This transformation—fading color and disappearing scent—was also a representation of the passage of "time" embedded in the artwork.
Above this installation, a telescope covered in Japanese paper with tree rubbings was set up on the second floor. Looking through this telescope, one would see rose petals. Next to the telescope was a typewriter, also wrapped in Japanese paper with tree rubbings, typing out the word "ROSE." What does this signify?
The mystery is unraveled in the subsequent exhibition, Sea of Memories, Rose’s Pride (2023). The term "Rose" refers to the rose flower, symbolizing love, but it also alludes to "Tokyo Rose," connecting to Miyamori’s grandmother Matsuno. Tokyo Rose refers to Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) women who were forced to participate in anti-American propaganda as announcers for overseas radio broadcasts during World War II. Among them, Iva Toguri (1916–2006) became a scapegoat and was prosecuted and convicted of treason in a San Francisco federal court after the war. Miyamori framed the lives of these Nisei women, including her grandmother Matsuno, who returned to Japan before the Pacific War and was unable to return to America, their love and pride, as the story of "Rose."
The centerpiece of this exhibition is a project that Miyamori began on October 1, 2021, deciding to remain in Japan for the long term rather than return to America to care for her parents. In this project, titled TIME, Miyamori collected two tree rubbings every day at her destinations, placing one in a glass case. As of August 19, 2024, TIME consists of 1,043 pieces, with numbers 1 through 1,000 displayed at Gallery MoMo in both countries, and numbers 1,001 and beyond exhibited at Gallery Camellia in Ginza. The project began in October 2021, at a time when the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan was still uncertain. The collection of tree rubbings represented Miyamori's life during this period: visiting her estranged parents almost daily in their care facility, losing her mother’s beloved cat and acquiring a new one through a friend's referral, continuing her artistic work, holding exhibitions, returning to New York, visiting Hilo in Hawaii with her husband on a journey through Japan, and more. Miyamori’s life itself is preserved and recorded in the form of tree traces.
Miyamori posts daily photos of the two tree rubbings and brief records on Facebook and Instagram, allowing her global friends and acquaintances to glimpse a part of her life. According to Miyamori, this accumulation of tree rubbings aims to "capture the fleeting, ephemeral surface of the moment and show a part of the eternal layer." Though deeply personal, it transcends Miyamori, her parents, and her grandmother Matsuno, reaching out to the many "Tokyo Roses" and living beings from the past to the future worldwide. It represents a moment of living that is shared across generations.
This reflects the struggles of women in an era when asserting one's rights and pursuing desired careers was difficult, overcoming cultural and customary differences between America and Japan, various disruptions caused by war, and regulations. Even in Miyamori’s and her mother’s times, freedom was not fully achieved, and the difficulty of self-realization often became a matter of personal responsibility. This ongoing struggle connects to the present, where women around the world, despite facing hardships, continue to seek paths to a more livable existence.
Additionally, Miyamori’s father's life reflects another aspect of these struggles faced by men.
1. See https://forbesjapan.com/articles/detail/50867.
2. "Artist Relay Dialogue, Volume 5: Keiko Miyamori × Noriko Ambe," p. 1 (no page number), catalog of Keiko Miyamori's exhibition "The Sea of Memories, Rose's Pride," Nakamuraya Salon Museum, 2023.
3. The trigger for this reflection came from learning about poison gas research and the Unit 731 from a Waseda student met during a teaching practice in the fourth year of undergraduate studies, which led to a consideration of the darker aspects of humanity, including visits to the site of the Unit 731 facilities in Harbin. From a message by Keiko Miyamori, August 24, 2024.
4. The TAMON Prize Exhibition began as an open call exhibition judged solely by Tamon Miki, aimed at nurturing young artists in contemporary painting, and was held until the 6th exhibition in 1990-95. It was organized by Kashiwa City Cultural Forum 104 (venue: Kashiwa Takashimaya, Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture). https://www.tobunken.go.jp/materials/bukko/995696.html. Subsequent exhibitions were judged by different jurors every two years, and the 6th exhibition, where Miyamori received the award, was judged by Shin Tani and had Tetsuya Noda as a special judge.
5. Keiko Miyamori's exhibition "The Sea of Memories, Rose's Pride," Nakamuraya Salon, Artist Relay Dialogue Volume 5, Nakamuraya Salon Museum, March 1 - April 9, 2023.
6. Japanese translation of the English text in Keiko Miyamori, "A Portrait of a Novelist ~ Between the Living and the Dead ~" (introduction), KEIKO MIYAMORI, A PORTRAIT OF BEING, Edited by Rose Lee Hayden, 2019.
7. "Keiko Miyamori: Surfaces of Time - The Surfaces of Gathered Time and Space," Gallery Toki no Wasuremono, September 25 - October 17, 2020.
8. The 2024 exhibition will feature rose petals that had dried and partially crumbled into powder from the 2023 solo exhibition.
9. For information on Tokyo Rose and Aiba Toguri, refer to the "Tokyo Rose" brochure, New National Theatre, 2023. https://www.nntt.jac.go.jp/play/tokyo-rose/
10. Keiko Miyamori Exhibition at Gallery Camellia, September 13 - 28, 2024. "Hiroko Masuko & Keiko Miyamori | Cultivating Time: Two Practices" at GALLERY MoMo Ryogoku, September 14 - October 19, 2024.
11. Same as Note 4.
Photo by : Tatsuhiko Nakagawa