With one foot on the ladder, Morio Nakajima reached out to paint the outline of Mount Fuji that will be visible from the separate baths set up for men and women.
With one foot on the ladder, Morio Nakajima reached out to paint the outline of Mount Fuji that will be visible from the separate baths set up for men and women.Below Mount Fuji, the public bathhouse artist--one of only two remaining in Japan--paints the snow-covered slopes of the Tateyama mountain range. He only uses four colors--white, red, yellow and blue.In late October, Nakajima, 67, was at work at the Matsubarayu public bathhouse in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward. He occasionally stopped and moved to the entrance of the baths to check on the balance of his painting. He used both brushes and paint rollers to work quickly, but accurately.On the section of the 15-meter-wide wall in the women's bath, Nakajima painted the ocean. On the section in the men's bath is an image of a waterfall from his hometown, Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture.While a depiction of Mount Fuji is still the mainstay of many of his works, Nakajima also includes images from Iitate, which has become a ghost town in the wake of last year's accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.Nakajima always felt it was important to include images in his wall paintings that would remind people of their hometowns, especially since so many residents of Tokyo moved there from somewhere else."I drew the rivers and forests that I painted together with Mount Fuji from my memories of Iitate," Nakajima said.In the past, there were many bathhouse artists in Japan. Nakajima at one time was so busy that he had to work on two public bathhouses in one day. However, from about 10 years ago he has worked at a cleaning job at a market and only goes to paint in a public bathhouse about once a week.As more Japanese homes were built with bathrooms already in place, the number of public bathhouses declined. According to the National Federation of Public Bath Industry Trade Unions, there were about 2,600 public bathhouses in Tokyo in the peak years of the 1960s, but that figure has now declined to 750.Nakajima was born in the Okura district of Iitate. Last year's Fukushima nuclear accident changed everything about his birthplace. Although the village lies about 40 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, radiation levels have been high and about 6,000 residents were forced to evacuate.While Nakajima watched TV reports about the unfolding nuclear accident, he thought, "It is mortifying that Iitate has become so famous only because of the radiation."He visited Iitate last autumn, his first trip back to his hometown in five years."All the homes had their curtains drawn and there were no people," Nakajima said. "It was like a ghost town."He went to a school in Kawamata where Iitate residents had evacuated to and met with village children who said, "I want to breathe the clean air of Iitate as soon as possible."That encounter led Nakajima to recall that when he was in his 30s, the Okura district where he was born and grew up became the site of a dam construction project. His family home and the riverside where he played as a child eventually were covered by water in the dam."While the place where one is born is the best, they cannot go back there and the places where they played are also gone," Nakajima said. "Such tragedies should not be allowed to happen again."When he was in the first grade, he painted a picture of the ocean for a summer vacation assignment. The teacher praised his work, and he became so happy that he began to draw more.He moved to Tokyo when he was 18 and began working at a machinery parts plant. That was when he saw a painting of Mount Fuji on the wall of a public bath.Nakajima thought that he would one day like to draw such a large artwork.At 19, he entered a company that subcontracted work to draw paintings and advertisements on the walls of public baths.Under the watchful eye of a mentor, Nakajima started out by drawing only the sky. He later moved on to clouds, trees and sandy beaches. He was only allowed to paint Mount Fuji about three years later.He also did research to be able to fulfill whatever request clients had for the type of Mount Fuji they wanted on the wall. Every week, he went to a location where Mount Fuji was visible and drew sketches and took photos to improve his depiction of Japan's tallest mountain.Today, while he continues painting images of Mount Fuji, he draws other memories from his childhood and his hometown.Nakajima participated in an event held on March 11, 2012, at Tokyo's Hibiya Park to support reconstruction of the disaster-stricken areas and commemorate the anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake.Gluing four sheets of plywood together, Nakajima drew the mountains and rivers of his hometown on a canvas measuring 1.8 meters by 3.6 meters.He said he painted with a feeling of wanting to return the idyllic scenery and air to its original state as soon as possible.Nakajima is now working with an acquaintance on a plan to take a photo of that large painting and create panels to distribute to Iitate residents who are still evacuated."I would be happy if people thought about retrieving the original Iitate village after seeing the drawing decorating the wall of the bath at the temporary housing facilities," Nakajima said.