クリスティアン ・オートン || Christian Orton || flux8 photography

KAMO

Kyoto’s Kamo river was divined to divide and protect. Designated the ‘’Blue Dragon,’’ one of the four guardian gods for the favorable geomantic layout of the proposed capital, it formed the eastern boundary of the city as it was defined in 794, giving the distinction between what lay properly inside or out of the ancient capital, present day Kyoto. But the river’s flooding was feared, after which followed disease, and so the Emperor Shirakawa included it in his list of ‘three unmanageables’ among the fall of dice and the unruly monastic armies of Mt. Hiei.

Efforts were made to bring the river under control. Tribute was paid in verse by the poet and literatus Yosa Buson; ‘’On the Kamo banks violets are blooming, thanks to Taiko-sama.’’ ‘’Peach blossom water,’’ was a euphemism for the spring melt that filled the rivers in the third month, washing away the violets beginning to flower. The violets remain, however, because of the remodeling of Kyoto initiated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, or ‘taiko-sama’ as the retired imperial regent was called, in the wake of the Onin Wars (1467-77). With the embankments rebuilt during the Bunroku era (1592-95), people feared the river less. But as in ancient times, the flooding continued through to the mid-1950s. A 1980s restructuring diverted the better part of the river’s flow into a drainage canal running parallel to the river as it passes through the city. This was how the people came to safeguard themselves from their protector.

Christian Orton’s photography follows the course of this domesticated blue dragon, tracing its movements in the dark of night from its entry into the basin of Kyoto in the city’s north, and its south-south-east course which angles south-west to the demise of its own identity when it becomes a tributary to the Yodo river that empties into Osaka bay. While the route is now of less cultural and economic importance, it was formerly a main artery for the transport of goods and people, and a journey could be made in less than a day during daylight or night. The Edo period painter Ito Jakuchu recorded in an ink print, ‘’Impromptu Pleasures Afloat,’’ just such a journey. Like the thrust of Orton’s photography, little attention is paid to conventional river motifs, such as poetic reference to Chinese Xiao and Xiang imagery such as an ‘evening sun’ or a ‘temple bell.’ Orton captures the river in its sloth and age, its serpentine writhing tempered by concrete and city surrounds, it’s reflections reflective, taking on the colors of the times which know it.

Matthew Larking

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(c) CR Orton 2006
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