My Childhood Friend And The Art Museum

According to my childhood friend, “When it comes to art, the way I see it, you don’t need to know all the background going in — the era it came from, the techniques, none of that. Long as you can enjoy it, that’s plenty. That’s how I see it.”

Sure, fair enough as far as it goes… but going after a big illustration board in a lottery draw, for a card game she doesn’t even play, no less, is another matter entirely, isn’t it? That’s how I see it. And sure enough, blind random draw that it was, she pulled one she’d never even wanted.

And so we come to this childhood friend of mine, Sakura Ayuri, who trots out “art” and the like as cover to feed her own otaku cravings. As for what she’s up to at this very moment…

“We’re almost at the museum!”
“You’ve had me walking a good while already — we’re still walking?”
“It’s only been like ten minutes from the station!? That’s less than your usual walk to school!!”
“Getting hauled all over a town I don’t know on my day off is exhausting on its own, and that’s before you even count the train ride out here.”
“Mmgh… what an unhealthy, self-indulgent girl.”
“The nerve, coming from someone with even less stamina than me.”

True, my usual commute is nothing more than the walk from home to school… but today I’d hoofed it to the station, boarded a train, spent a good while getting rattled around, and then walked some more on top of that. The mental toll was on another level entirely, and this girl just didn’t get that.

Anyway, one thing had led to another, and today, with Ayu leading the way, we’d changed trains and ended up in a town a fair distance off. As far as how built-up it was, the place wasn’t much different from back home, but it had an art museum ours didn’t, and Ayu had apparently taken an interest in an exhibition running there, so I’d tagged along.

“Ayu, were you ever into art and stuff? Actually, what did we even come to see again?”
“I don’t know the first thing about it, but I like just spacing out and looking on my own. This time’s genre is… well, not really my taste, though.”
“Ehh…”
“That’s my line… why’d you tag along without even remembering what the exhibit is…”
“I was bored…”

Our part-time days off had finally lined up, so I’d figured we’d laze around at Ayu’s place and mooch some tea and snacks off her. But the girl herself announced she was heading out. In that case, well… I’d already planted my flag on camping out in Ayu’s room and hadn’t thought a step past that, so I reckoned I might as well come along.

“…So, what’s the exhibit, in the end?”
“Uhh, what was it again… you know, that one, that…”
“Hey. The whole point of the trip.”
“How do I put it… I know it’s NOT the person I’m thinking of right now, at least…”
“I don’t know who you’re thinking of, but isn’t that just way too rude?”

That’s definitely not a nice way to put it.

“So, um… he’s a ukiyo-e artist famous enough to be in textbooks, and—”
“There are lots of those…”
“He did The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, and…”
“…Utagawa Hiroshige?”
“Someone who looks like he’d be a Hiroshige hater.”
“That’s Hokusai, isn’t it!”
“I’m the one who said it, but the fact that that even got through to you is kind of something too… I don’t know history, but — was he a hater…?”
“No idea, honestly.”
“Ehh…”

Still, they were from the same era, near as I could tell, and if the two of them were commercial rivals, then there was probably at least a little of the ‘hater’ element baked in somewhere, right? Not that I’d actually know.

“Actually, wasn’t it Utagawa Hiroshige who did The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō?”
“That’s just the collective name for the fifty-three post towns along a road called the Tōkaidō. Lots of different people painted it… I’m pretty sure.”
“Huh.”
“You can go ahead and be impressed with my historical knowledge, you know…?”
“I already knew the first half, and the second half won’t ever come up on a test, so — meh.”
“How very clever…”

If I were going to cram trivia like that, I’d sooner memorize the line of Tokugawa shoguns. And honestly, how did this girl know a thing like that when she was hopeless at history class?

“So basically, we’re going to see Hokusai’s art.”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Why, well… because it’s a name I recognize?”
“You bandwagon-hopping name-worshipper.”
“That’s mean!”

I mean, come on. She’s the one who decided to come, and she’d completely blanked on the artist’s name; on top of that, she’d just admitted herself, a second ago, that this genre (ukiyo-e, in this case) wasn’t even to her taste. And after that sorry showing she still went and hopped a train to come all the way out here for it, so if that isn’t fad-chasing name-worship, then what would you even call it?

“Now now, hear me out, Ginko. There’s a whole story behind this, you see…”
“It’s definitely some dumb reason…”
“This was a while back, but… there was a Katsushika Hokusai merch lottery going, see?”
“Ah, I’ve already figured it out, so I’m good.”
“Hear me out! …So, right? If a nearby museum’s putting on a Hokusai exhibit at such a timely moment… then, well — ‘let’s go see it as part of my life experience!’ Don’t you kinda end up there?”
“I can’t say I don’t get it, but I also think you just have too much time on your hands.”
“That’s rich, coming from someone who was gonna laze around in my room…”

The nerve. People carry stress just from living an ordinary life, so wanting to rest somewhere that waits on you hand and foot is a perfectly legitimate wish, if you ask me.

“Anyway, look at this — this rubber charm here’s actually pretty well-made… huh?”
“What’s up?”
“Huh, that’s weird… I still had it back at the convenience store by the station… did I drop it?”
“Well, if it’s not there… then you probably dropped it.”
“Ehh… but I really liked that one…”

Ayu cast around, glancing back the way we’d come, hunting for wherever she might have dropped it. I looked too, for what it was worth, but it didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight.

“It’s not here… my Great Wave off Kanagawa…”
“Doesn’t look like it’s around here.”
“…Well, if I dropped it, nothing to be done.”

She narrowed her eyes for one last look into the distance, apparently concluded it still wasn’t there, and turned on her heel to start walking toward our destination again.

“…Wanna go look for it?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t mind just backtracking the way we came, at least.”

She’d won it in a lottery, apparently, which meant she couldn’t just go buy another. And I’d only tagged along with no agenda of my own, so if Ayu was game, we had all the time in the world.

“Can’t it just wait till we head home? The museum’s right in front of us, y’know?”
“Somebody might pick it up, right? Especially if you dropped it near where they’re running that Hokusai exhibit.”

Someone might pick it up and hand it in somewhere, sure, but we didn’t know the area, so we’d have no way of guessing where a lost item would end up; if losing it would bother her, better to look right away.

“Mmm… then… I guess I’ll take you up on that.”
“Do that, do that. Come on, let’s go.”

If nothing else, the two of us were in a town we’d never set foot in, so this time we could take an interest in the shops around us and mull over whether to swing by any of them on the way back.

…In the end, the dropped rubber charm turned up sitting in front of a vending machine along the way. Come to think of it, this girl had been fussing with her bag when she bought that melon soda.

◆◆◆

“Quiet in the library, please.” It’s a line just about everyone’s heard at least once. Maybe that’s why the solemn hush of an art museum leaves you doubly conscious of not making a sound.

“…Look, Gin, it’s Mr. Hokusai’s Tōkaidō.”
“Oh, you’re right.”

…A quick search turned up that no museum really spells out an explicit no-talking rule, at least not as far as I checked.

“Basically, it’s one of those unspoken rules we Japanese all just go along with, so as long as we don’t make a racket and keep to swapping our impressions, it’s fine, right?” …or so my childhood friend beside me had put it, just a moment ago.

“There’s so many…”
“Well, it’s fifty-three post towns’ worth.”
“There’s also the thirty-six Mount Fujis, and yokai, and tons of other stuff too, right.”
“Well, he’s someone big enough to make the textbooks.”

But even with no rule spelled out, you couldn’t go wrong staying quiet, so in the end both Ayu and I wound up whispering, our voices pitched a good deal lower than usual.

“Huh…”

(…She’s kinda closer than usual.)

Since we’d fallen to whispering, the gap between us had narrowed to less than usual; our shoulders kept brushing, and our faces were pretty close too. It was near enough that the usual Ayu would probably have gotten flustered, more or less, or so I figured.

“When you think this was what Japan looked like back then, it’s actually kind of interesting, maybe.”
“It was the entertainment content of its day, so there’s probably some exaggeration mixed in, no?”
“Well, maybe so, but.”

The fact that this Ayu wasn’t reacting in the slightest to how close we stood probably meant that, for all her talk, she was absorbed in the ukiyo-e and enjoying the exhibit.

…Which was all well and good, but… somehow it felt like proof that I was the only one aware of it, and that stung a little. I kept it off my face, though.

“Ah… look, Gin, it’s the Great Wave off Kanagawa — the one on the back of the current thousand-yen note, the one dangling off my bag right now.”
“I know that much. It’s the most famous one, after all.”
“When you think he painted something like this in an age without even photography, it’s amazing, huh.”
“I’d think there are plenty of other amazing things about it too, though.”
“I’m an amateur, so it’s fine, Gin.”

Keeping our voices low, the two of us traded whatever impressions we pleased and took in one print after another.

Honestly, before we came I’d braced for some pretentious sort of day off… but I ended up enjoying it in our usual rhythm more than I’d expected, and if anything, having come all the way out to a town we didn’t know lent the whole thing a fresh sort of feeling.

Doing something out of the ordinary once in a while might not be so bad… so long as it was with a friend, I caught myself thinking. And that was the kind of day off it turned out to be.