Land of the Setting Sun

Darkness unravels as the sun sets into the land.

The title Land of the Setting Sun is redolent of “Land of the Rising Sun”, the name given, in logographic letters of Chinese origin, to the artist’s country of birth. Japan, located in the Far East as seen from the West, has long embraced the meaning of the pulsating sunrise, regardless of its etymological origin or the Eurocentric geographical definition. From the national flag to the symbolic “Sunrise Red” colour of the uniforms designed for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, nationalist narratives favour the rising sun as a symbol of the country and nation.

In the vestige of its own light, the sun sets into the land depopulated.

In defiance of those epic nationalist, political and ethnocentric narratives around the sunrise, Land of the Setting Sun presents a filmic anti-narrative structure of subtle, passing moments in the vestige of the sunlight. In this political and filmic anti-narrative captivation, the sun sets into the land of Niigata, exploited for its energy and human resources by centralisation in the dawn of modernity. The sunset that this peripheral fertile land beholds remains a vestige of modernity.

The sun sets, looming over the details of hollow plants, leafless trees, and dormant rice fields. Allowing anonymous automotive sounds to reverberate, the land is a passing landscape for those who behold it from the car window, failing to stop.