A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

I’m reading a book right now called Norwegian Wood. It’s a book written by a Japanese author named Haruki Murakami. A Japanese teacher at my school recommended it to me. I’m really enjoying it so far. It takes place during the 60’s in Tokyo and Kyoto, and involves a Holden Caulfield-type character and his relationship with his dead friend’s girlfriend.

One of the characters in the book mentions that her mother was originally from Fukushima. Normally, my eyes would have skimmed past this word, “Fukushima,” quite quickly. It would have registered as a place in Japan, maybe in the North, maybe to the South; it could have been big, or small, but mostly, it would have only been a place that I knew was quite removed from the story and quite anecdotal. I probably would have forgotten later on that this place was even mentioned.

Having lived in Fukushima for four months now, this word is not just a word anymore. It is a place with many people that I know; it is also a place where I ride my bike to school, where I’ve memorized bus and train schedules, where I walk into the supermarket to buy tofu for breakfast, where I put my garbage out, where I brush my teeth, where I keep my underwear. It is where, every once in a while, I’ll stop at in the middle of a bridge, or beside a river, or by a window, and say, “this is where I live.”

Seeing this word on a page from this book, for me, it builds a part of the story – both inside the covers and outside of them.

I used a well-known cliché as the title for this post. I also included a photo of the word “Fukushima,” as it appears in the novel. I like the idea of blurring the boundaries between text and image. Despite being a photo of a word, does it still carry within it a thousand others? For me, there are probably more; this photo brings more to my mind right now than any other photo that I’ve taken in Fukushima.