Fura Kitamura
General Director of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale
Born in Nigata Prefecture in 1946. Graduate of Tokyo Geijyutsu Daigaku.
Mr. Kitamura has been a director of the Anthony Gaudi exhibition （1978‐1979), the Print Exhibition for Kids (1980‐1982), Against Apartheid International Art Exhibit (1988-1990) and many others.
In 2000 he helped start the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, which helped demosntrate the potenial of this type of festival which lead him to also developed the Art Setouchi Festival where he serves as the General Director.
He helped spread art festivals all around Japan.
What do artists feel when they visit the place, Echigo-Tsumari? The Echigo-Tsumari Art Field is the encapsulation of a person’s feelings in the form of art. That is why we would first like you to know about the place’s backstory.
The Echigo-Tsumari region during the Jomon era is where people journeyed through as they followed the path of what is known today as the Shinano River. Here, they caught salmon, gathered acorns and hunted bears. It is the place where the practice of hunting and gathering first began.
1500 years ago, people began cultivating rice in the region. However, they did not choose this land because it is particularly flat, nor because it receives long hours of sunlight. In fact, seasonal winds from the continent absorb water vapor from the Sea of Japan and collide with the Echigo mountain range, which is within visible distance. There is heavy rain during the summer and tremendous snowfall during the winter, often causing floods and landslides. Despite these challenging conditions people have produced rice on this land for over a millennia.
That is why some clever adjustments had to be made. Sites where landslides took place were turned into rice terraces, and meandering rivers were turned into paddy fields. Tunnels known as mabu that are used to draw water from the mountains are numerous in this region. An extreme amount of effort was, and still is, expended in order to turn this area into arable land.
The character Koshi (越) of the characters Echigo (越後) means “all the way over there”. Furthermore, the latter half, of the name Tsumari (妻有), which is the name of this region, Echigo-Tsumari (越後妻有) translates to “dead end”. As the name suggests, there is nowhere to escape to in this region surrounded by mountains. Here is where the Japanese Buddhist priest and monk, Nichiren and Shinran, were forced to flee to during their lives; inhabitants of this region are thus very accepting of travelers to this area.
Locals often adopt the same open attitude towards nature, evidenced by the history of the rice terraces and paddy fields. Their hard work turned land that was completely unsuitable for farming into one that produces Japan’s best rice. We think that this is Echigo-Tsumari’s biggest virtue. Overall, the Echigo-Tsumari region is considered a place that contains clues as to how in the past man interacted with nature in the pursuit of survival.
Next, we will introduce the relationship between cities and Echigo-Tsumari.