Yamada Kamachi, a well-known Japanese poet and painter, died in the summer of 1977. It was an extremely hot and humid day. He was playing an electric guitar in his Japanese style tatami room up on the second floor. When his family found him, he had been electrocuted by the guitar. The humid heat in the room made his hands sweat. That caused the tragic accident. He had just turned seventeen.
After his death, an enormous number of his notes, poems, sketches, and drawings were found at his home. He had never shown his work to the public. No one but his parents and teachers cared about his work at that time. Then 1989, Kamachi's school teachers displayed his work at a small gallery in his hometown in memory of him. At that exhibit, Mr. Hirose, a picture dealer, happened to see Kamachi's work for the first time. Kamachi's work inspired Hirose to build a Kamachi museum next to Hirose's own gallery. Then he made it shortly afterwards. Kamachi attained nationwide fame soon after this museum opened.
Seventeen years after his death, I picked up one book at a bookstore. It was Kamachi's poetry book. It included some of his drawings. This was the first time I had seen Kamachi's works. when I took a look through the book, one poem caught my eye. It was for his lost love, Mayumi.
Mayumi, Mayumi, Mayumi...
Why are you indifferent to me?
Why don't you understand me?
I'm deeply in love with you...
This poem deeply influenced my mind on that day. I could feel a sixteen-year old boy's suffering and passion from that poem. I knew it would have been hard on him because I also lost a love when I was sixteen. My loved boy had had beautiful teeth and was a volley ball player. I couldn't say anything but "hi" to him. It was too embarrassing for me as a sixteen-year girl to reveal myself to the loved one. He left my town to go to a different school without realizing my love for him. An unaccepted love passion had made me suffer.One day, I saw the ad saying Kamachi's exhibit would be coming to a nearby town. I wanted to go not only to see his work but also to grasp a sixteen-year boy's expression of suffering and a passion that I had also experienced. Then I decided to visit there.
Taking an elevator up to the exhibit room, I was thrilled. I had already read some of his poems in his book the previous day. As the elevator door opened, my heart heard a silent voice from the entrance, "Welcome."
A big hallway led me to Kamachi's world. I found more than fifteen water color paintings on the wall in the first section. an explanatory note told me those paintings were drawn within one hour as a part of Kamachi's assignments in his third grade. Each one had a different animal on a sheet of drawing paper. The illustrations included an elephant, a giraffe, a lion, a lizard, a gorilla, a fox, and a crane. Each animal looked as if it were ready to jump out of the paper. They were lively and powerful looking. I couldn't believe one third-grader had drawn these paintings. It hadn't even taken him an hour to get them done. I sensed his extraordinary talent from these pictures.
As I went on to the next room, a big piece of paper caught my eye. It was Kamachi's enlarged handwritten note for his love, Mayumi. This was the one I had read at the bookstore. It hurt my heart again, maybe because it was handwritten and enlarged. I could tell how strong his passion had been by the pressure he had put on the pencil.
They displayed his handwritten notes in sections of different themes. There was another note that caught my eye. It was about his devoted rock music.
Aero Smith is significant to me.
They inspire me a power of creativity.
I want to express myself by rock music.
...
He was a teenager of the 1970s. He had gone through the same era as I had gone through. Aero Smith, Japan, TOTO, Style Sticks..., all these rock bands had been significant to me. My cassette radio player had always been busy playing noisy music. (Though for me, it never had been noisy.) Rock music can give a person courage. I could imagine how important rock music had been for him.
Kamachi's pictures were powerful. They consisted of mostly thick lines with lively movement, vivid and dark colors. These images gave me a vivid sensation. Every single picture looked as if it were ready to jump out of the paper even if they were not animals. Drawings such as trees, buildings, rivers or lovers seemed ready to leap.
This exhibit was organized according to Kamachi's age. As I got to the section at the age of fifteen and sixteen, I didn't see animals any more. All I could find there were sketches of naked women and dark colored drawings. There was one dark picture called "Myself with a Knife." This figure was filled with various colors such as red, blue, brown, black, or green. I could barely tell it was a human figure by its contour. There were no facial features, no eyes, no nose, mouth, or eye brows. On its right hand, it had a purple knife pointing at its face. I felt this boy might have wanted to kill himself to escape from his sufferings.
An explanatory note told me some of his stories. He had felt unbearable pressure from the Japanese school system and society. He had failed to be accepted at the high school that he had chosen. One day at his junior high school, he had thought it was absurd to be graded by test scores, so he had made a paper plane with an exam paper and had thrown it out of the window. That had caused him to fail to be accepted at the high school. Also, though he had had outstanding talent at drawing, the Japanese school system hadn't approved his talent. They had only valued exam scores. Kamachi had once sent his pictures to a famous art school, but they had ignored his talent. They had only appreciated the established way of drawing. Kamachi's way had been different to him. Their rejection had broken his confidence and put him into a despair.
When I stepped over to one picture, I found this was the last piece of his exhibit. It was called "The Last Work." Unlike the other pictures, this drawing's tone was light. The center of the picture had been filled with pale blue watercolor. There were some red vertical lines at the bottom of the blue area. At the four corners, some figures were scribbled by a pencil. I couldn't figure out what this picture stood for. While I was looking at it, I felt a strong power speaking from the picture. I could feel his strong passion and suffering. also, I felt as if this picture had pointed to his coming death in a short time.
Then it was time to leave this exhibit. I realized Kamachi had felt the same way as I had felt when we both had been about sixteen years old. He had felt unbearable social pressure, so had I. Letting that social pressure ease, he had expressed himself by drawing pictures and writing poems. Then he had listened to the rock music. I hadn't drawn pictures, but I had written some poems and listened to rock music like crazy at sixteen or seventeen. I had wanted to escape from my teachers' demanding, "Study hard, otherwise you will be a loser." Thinking of these matters, I came up with embrasing feeling for Kamachi and wanted to say, "You were the same as me."
I left that place with a happy and calm feeling. Then I went out to the hot and humid street as Kamachi would have experienced in the summer of 1977.