Notions of Home: Constant, Fluid, and Mobile

Abstract

I have spent more than a quarter of a century living outside my homeland of Japan. In recent visits to Japan, I have noticed that my sense of belonging is growing stronger. This has caused me to question whether this is simply nostalgia or something deeper. I wonder whether my prolonged exposure to other cultures has enhanced my appreciation of my own, or whether I am losing my cultural identity and the idea of home is becoming more attractive because it feels familiar and safe. Through my studio work, I seek to juxtapose the present with the past, to examine the role that memory plays in our notions of home, and particularly to discover how my memories influence my emotional response to geographical and cultural dislocation. In this exegesis, I examine the nature of memory and the idea that home is not merely a place on a map. My research investigates whether a particular material associated with a specific place—in my case, wood—can be fundamental to developing a better understanding of who we are, where we come from, and why we call one place home over another.