Saturday, December 21, 2013

Footprints and Propaganda

With a day off yesterday before the screening of 'A2-B-C' (WEBSITE) in Kobe, I spent the day walking around the gorgeous city of Kyoto.

My eye was drawn to the relationship between the natural and architectural beauty I was seeing and the impact made by the humans who also occupy this world of beauty: the wooden "geta" slippers that formed a perfect circle when placed together at the entrance to an old inn, a man hanging lanterns at a temple in preparation for the New Year holiday, a motorcycle parked inside the gateway to a traditional house...

The owner of a little shop I had wandered into was eager to talk.  In his seventies, he had lived above this shop for his entire life and had many stories about growing up in Kyoto during the war.  He pointed to a faded paper on the wall; "This is propaganda the Americans dropped from airplanes urging Japan to surrender.  It fell just over there," he said, pointing to the back garden of the house.  He gave me copy.



"And this was our bomb shelter," he said, lifting the floorboards.



The impact made by the humans who also occupy this world of beauty....

May we always remember that with every step we take we leave a footprint.

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