Vanessa Hudig

Outside a used-bookstore in Jimbocho under the dripping rain screen, a pile of old soft-cover books is exposed. The pages show endless signs seemingly written in an elegant style, but when you take a closer look you recognize that these are all woodcuts, even the most complicated kanji are cut out most precisely. For me, this language is a riddle, I need my translation device to see what is meant, but each forms on its own looks as an interesting drawing.

I bought some of the books, unknowing of their content. The pages, sometimes even eaten by bookworms, were soft and smooth, outwardly fragile, but difficult to cut or tear; the structure was strangely solid, the fibers seemed like little hands that held on to each other. Spellbound I sometimes noticed a dark black hair caught in the shear sheets. It resembled a skin, warm and alive. KAMI in Japanese has three meanings each with its own kanji: hair on the head, paper and ghost or god. There is an almost staggering logic to this.