July 20 - August 01, 2019 【The color that Jomon people like】

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Travelling Home-Binding Project to Shinshu, the Heartland of Japan’s Rope Culture

Home-binding is a new type of Jomon style art, where a home is bound crosswise with rope by the family who lives there and their friends, leaving memories and traces. It is a contemporary art expression with ancient roots that links different cultures and transmits the traditional Japanese spirit of coexistence to the wider world. This time, we will travel from Tokyo along the Koshu Kaido to the Suwa region, the heartland of Japanese rope culture, binding homes and creating memories and traces of rope along the way.

In Japan, rope is not only a tool but also has a symbolic significance that stretches back more than 10,000 years, from the characteristic rope mark decorations of Jomon pottery via the sacred shimenawa ropes at Shinto shrines to the present day. The Suwa area in the Shinshu region is a place where particularly many Jomon pots, dwellings and world-renowned dogu figurines have been excavated. Even today, the local people use hand-twined ropes to pull the giant logs of the Onbashira festival, and an enormous shimenawa is hung in front of the Suwa Grand Shrine. This is the sacred center of Japan’s rope culture, and our journey will take us from Tokyo to Matsumoto City, binding homes and connecting people along the way in a new Jomon style of art.
                                                                                                                                   Harutaka Matsumoto


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