One Thousand Pots, One Thousand Thoughts

Not beaten by rain

By Kenji Miyazawa

Not beaten by rain
Not beaten by wind
Neither snow, nor heat of summer
Such good health

No greed
Never aroused by anger
Always smiling in a peaceful way

Content with four cups of brown rice
Small quantity of miso and vegetable per day

Looking and listening to everything, without personal bias
And remembering it well

Living in a small thatched hut in the shadow of pine woods in a meadow

If there was a sick child in the East
He would go and nurse him

If there was a tired mother in the West
He would go and take the bundle of heavy rice off from her shoulders

If there was a dying man
He would go and comfort him saying ‘do not be afraid ‘

If there was a quarrel and court case in the South
He would go and let them see the triviality

In the time of long drought, he would shed hopeless tears
In the time of cold summer, he would pace up and down in despair.

No praise given
Yet no hostility from others

People might call him a good for nothing
But that is the kind of person I would like to be

One
 thousand
 pots, one
 thousand 
thoughts
 is
 an installation by artist and ceramicist Yozo Hirayama that commemorates the victims of the Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami of
 11th
 March
 2011.

Over 
a 
period 
of 
a 
year, 
Yozo 
has made one thousand pots as this number has a symbolic meaning in Japan, as it represents infinity or eternity.

One 
thousand 
pots thus stands 
as 
a 
marker 
and 
a memory 
of those
 who
 died
 in the disaster. Each pot is individually
 crafted 
in 
his
 palm, 
so 
they 
are 
all
 slightly different 
in size 
and
shape. They are symbolic of all living beings across 
time 
and
 space, with the end result being a 
kind
 of 
ritual
 appeasement 
to 
the savagery of nature.

The 
inspiration 
for
 this
 work is
 the
 land, the
 mountains and
 the
 seas
 of 
Japan.
 As 
a child 
Yozo
 would
 fill
his
 pockets 
with 
pebbles, and now, as 
a 
Japanese 
man living 
for 
many
 years
 in 
London, 
his 
pots 
re-link
 him
 to 
his 
native 
land 
in
 grief.

One Thousand Pots, One Thousand Thoughts

Contact email: gallery@soas.ac.uk