Kamakura

I had always dreamed of visiting Japan, and especially the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha of Kamakura. That dream took root when I was a kid, leafing through Roland Gööck’s the Wonders Of The World. Among the pyramids, cathedrals, and ruins, it was the image of the gigantic Buddha, silent beneath an open sky, that stayed with me. In 2008, I finally stood before it. After leaving the site, I drew a brief comics, a travelogue of sorts, in an attempt to hold onto what could not be captured in words alone.

To a western mind, Japan often feels like another planet. Its rhythms elusive, its meanings layered, its contradictions somehow harmonious. It is a world that seems to breathe differently where opposites coexist: the sacred and the mundane, tradition and innovation, silence and noise. The noodles, humble yet ubiquitous, become a metaphor for this coexistence, the binding substance in a vast and intricate broth of culture. Within the Buddha’s ancient belly, everything seems to be digested, transformed into something homogenous, new, and strangely comprehensible.