Takashi Kuribayashi’s Oya Genkiro No. 6, 2023
TUCKED AWAY IN THE TOCHIGI COUNTRYSIDE north of Tokyo, with minimal signage from the road, Takashi Kuribayashi’s most recent permanent outdoor installation is drawing art audiences out of the metropolis. Those with reservations for Oya Genkiro No. 6 must first enter a decommissioned stone quarry; I tentatively drove along an overgrown pathway until I arrived at a small timber house, where staff greeted and briefed me for the artwork ahead.
Countless planks of raw hinoki (cypress) trees, which once were cleared at this location, have been stacked and shaped by the artist into a fifty-nine-foot-tall structure that at first glance resembles a majestic, ancient tree trunk. The narrow passage into the structure’s “core” is lined with hundreds of mirrors that refract the light streaming from above, creating the sense that the sky has been brought down into the deep cavern. Once inside, visitors realize this core houses a multi-floored, wood- and glass-lined sauna, built around a stack of thirty-eight jumbo quarry stones. Visitors are welcome to rest while soaking up the herbal steam of local plants with medicinal or aromatic qualities; all that can be heard is the sound of dripping condensation and the crackling fireplace underneath the outdoor wood-fired cauldron.
The artwork’s function as an outdoor sauna obscures the artist’s conceptual intentions. The title Genkiro is a Japanese neologism that blends the words for “nuclear reactor” (genshiro) and “healthy” (genki) while sounding similar to “bath” (ofuro). As the title suggests, the work alludes to the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in the neighboring prefecture. On March 11, 2011, tsunami waters knocked out the reactor’s emergency power; without power, its water pumps could not run coolant over the hot nuclear cores, causing radioactive materials to leak into the atmosphere and ocean. Fourteen years on, there is no end in sight for the ongoing disaster mitigation efforts; residents of Fukushima and its northern neighbors continue to suffer social and environmental damage and carry the burden of radiation-related stigma, which even affects the sale of local produce.
Born in Nagasaki, Kuribayashi has for decades made it his practice to explore the boundaries of the political and natural worlds. The vertical tower of Oya Genkiro No. 6, for example, draws on both the shape of trees and the repeated broadcasting on international news programs of aerial footage of the reactor’s round funnel, which he observed while watching the disaster unfold from abroad. “After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, I felt a sense of emptiness that I could do nothing as an artist. . . . At that time, I seriously considered the significance of the existence of artists and the meaning of what I was doing.”1 As if an answer to that question, Genkiro counters the destruction and harm associated with March 11 with experiences associated with health and well-being: The sauna concept no doubt draws upon Kuribayashi’s international experiences, resembling a timber Scandinavian-style social space while integrating the medicinal use of Korean-style yomogi steam baths. In the Daiichi reactor, steam threatens more meltdowns; but in Scandinavian sauna culture, Japanese bath culture, and other contexts, steam is both a restorative element and a shared social activity.
Kuribayashi dreams of many more Genkiro installations to come, to “surpass the current number of reactors [in Japan],” with each responding to its site’s specific resources and needs.2 Like many regional Japanese towns, Oya faces a dwindling population of young people, who typically leave for larger cities to pursue education and employment—a reality exacerbated by the town’s decommissioned digging sites being vulnerable to illegal dumping. Kuribayashi and the young people who were part of the creation of Genkiro No. 6, which they now staff, consider their actions a form of caretaking, both conceptually and practically supporting the site and its community, from clearing trash to recycling site-specific materials. If some discourses emphasize that experiencing art is akin to a form of therapy—a treatment for what ails us—Genkiro No. 6 literalizes the metaphor, drawing upon the traditionally held healing powers of steam to alchemize the trauma of March 2011.
