Jungle Cruise
August 16, 2009 / Yokohama
August 16, 2009—a summer night. From a pier near the Red Brick Warehouses in Yokohama, a boat glided out onto the dark water. Known as the “Jungle Cruise,” this route follows a canal that winds through the Keihin Industrial Zone, carrying us right into the heart of a cluster of factories we would never normally set foot in.It lasted about an hour and a half. It was a time not just to “gaze at” the night view, but to immerse ourselves completely within it.
On my commute home along the Yokohama Line, the lights of this industrial area always stretch out to my left as the train moves forward. I’ve taken to calling those lights “cider-colored lights.” They have a slight bluish tint and sparkle like fine carbonation bubbles, floating in the darkness. That night, for the first time, I stepped right into the very heart of those lights I’d always watched from afar.
Viewed from the water’s surface, the factory was enormous—beyond anything I could have imagined. Layers upon layers of intertwined piping stretched to every corner of the structure, like blood vessels or plant roots. Though it was an inorganic structure built of steel and concrete, it gave off an aura reminiscent of a living organism—breathing, pulsing, and circulating heat. The boundary between the inorganic and the organic seemed to dissolve into the darkness of the night.
And in the areas where the light does not reach, a gigantic shadow looms. That mass, which remains silent with only its outline visible, resembles a monolith that seems to have flown in from the far reaches of the universe and stood there since time immemorial. An overwhelming mass that neither asks questions nor gives answers, but simply continues to exist.
Light is a wave. Just as light emitted from distant stars travels across time and space to reach us, the factory lights, too, cross the canal as waves that stir the darkness, shatter into ripples on the water’s surface, and reach my eyes as countless particles. They flicker, undulate, reflect, and flicker again.UNDULATION—My fascination with the fundamental “undulation” that shapes the world was clearly alive and well within this nocturnal scene.
Darkness is not a void. It is a profound space that sets light apart, brings forms into relief, and gives existence its contours. Darkness, cider-colored light, and a massive structure—inorganic yet teeming with life. What stretched out before us was another universe, known as the industrial zone.
