What sort of change in scenery did you experience on your way from KINARE to NOHBUTAI? This place with its marked rural lifestyle will continue to enrich your travel.
There is a total of an astonishing 50 artworks in just NOHBUTAI and Joyama alone, and can be seen across the river. There is no need to rent a car to reach NOHBUTAI, as it is directly connected to the Matsudai train station. You should be able to cover the area in about 2 hours by foot. Even within a limited timeframe, you can get a basic sense of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field and Echigo-Tsumari region by just visiting NOHBUTAI.
Naturally, the building of NOHBUTAI itself is also an artwork. There are actually no pillars in this building. The white structure and its rooftop bridge are supported by 4 feet that allows it to be suspended above ground.
The sprawling space on the first floor is not only used as shade from the sun and snow of the changing seasons, it’s also used as an event hall.
The second floor contains rooms that are each an artistic creation. Even the toilets are uniquely constructed.
There is also an observation deck for viewing a representative artwork of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field, “The Rice Field” by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Before NOHBUTAI was constructed, there was already a platform to view “The Rice Field” in this location. Its function was incorporated into the building.
There were many conditions that complicated the construction of NOHBUTAI such as the existence of high voltage power lines and the snow plows used in the winter that can disturb the snow. Pulling off this construction in spite of all those barriers is a true sign of the architect’s prowess.
And here, the art poses a question to you.
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale was first held in the year 2000. The origin of the creation of the festival goes back further however to The Great Heisei Consolidation. During this time there was a movement towards the merging of 6 munici palities in Niigata (Tokamachi, Kawanishi, Tsunan, Nakasato, Matsudai, Matsunoyama) .
“Can we build a town using art?” some in Niigata voiced. That was the beginning of the project, says Fram Kitagawa, who later became the General Director of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale.
What he gathered from this land was that the residents of Echigo-Tsumari had a sense of community and sincerely wished that these traditions could continue to exist. That is why Kitagawa thought to start a deep-rooted initiative in each city.
At that time there was a public policy push for the construction of community centers. However attention was called to the fact that the buildings, although magnificently constructed, were not made with long term usability for residents in mind. Therefore, each of the six municipalities utilized train stations as a starting point to craft their own identities in the community centers.
Matsudai as a snow-land agrarian culture village, Tokamachi as the city of Echigo-Tsumari, Kawanishi as a garden city, Tsunan as a Jomon experience, Nakasato as the story of Shinano River, and Matsunoyama as the school of forests. Using these themes, each district constructed their stages.
As the very first stage, there was a project called “80,000 residents discover something unique about Echigo-Tsumari”. This helped rediscover the region’s charm through pictures and words. Another project entitled “The Way of Flowers” linked all regions through the planting of flowers along roads and in gardens. There is a platform for announcing the achievements of these initiatives every 3 years through art, which the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale was designated as.
However, “building a community through art” was not an easy idea to convince the residents to agree to. There was no precedent. Some also thought there was no value in investing in incomprehensible modern art. More than 2000 meetings and briefings were conducted, all the while facing endless opposition. Even when the budget was not yet fixed, Fram Kitagawa was prepared to shoulder the costs himself and preceded with the preparations.
And then the first annual festival came around. At first no local citizens attended. But when the session was more than halfway through, people started to appear, and by the final week there were lines formed on the footpath between rice fields. Although this turnout was in part thanks to news coverage by television and newspapers, most of the local attendance was due to word of mouth.
In the same way the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale became more and more exciting with each passing year, and eventually the 6th Triennale was held in 2015. Incidentally, there are still many artworks from the first Triennale amongst the Joyama collection. When you walk around Joyama, you’ll probably end up totally agreeing with the positive comments and reception of the residents.