Suiseki Art

by Mas Nakajima

I was raised in a traditional wooden house in the countryside of Gifu, near the Japan Alps. Our house had three tokonoma (formal display alcoves) in various parts of the house. The tokonoma was a little space for sharing art with family and guests. This fit into the Japanese lifestyle of sitting on the tatami floor, perhaps enjoying the garden through the shoji or the paintings on the fusuma screens. My mother enjoyed her job of making the tokonoma displays, including selecting the seasonal flower arrangements, matching scrolls and other accompanying objects. This was part of the hospitality, along with serving the tea and cookies. Our family really enjoyed and appreciated her artistic displays.

I had been thinking to display this stone in a douban (antique copper suiban) as an isogata ishi or shore stone, perhaps accompanied by a scroll of birds flying. However, the house I built here in California did have a tokonoma, but in a western style living room, along with fireplace, couches and tables. There was no tatami floor and we sat on the couches instead. I tried suiban display and scroll in this contemporary tokonoma many times, and was never satisfied. Probably the atmosphere didn’t feel right and I couldn’t get the same joy and excitement that I used to share with my mother. In English there is the saying that “you can never go home again”, the reality never matches your memory.

At this time I had started feeling so lonely, living in the big house. My four children had all left home for college, and the distance was growing between my wife and me. I wanted to express my feelings through my art, but in a way that suited my American style of living.

Lonely guy sits with his memories in the darkness, struggling to move forward. The moon lights his way with a smile.

“Loneliness”, W 24″ x D 12″ x H 4 1/2″, stone and stain on poplar

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by Mas Nakajima

At about the same time that I was working on Looking Forward, I was also studying this beautiful piece of jade (jadeite) that I found in the Eel River. Neither the material nor the shape of the stone is particularly suited to traditional suiseki, but it is such a beautiful stone to just leave in the yard. I really wanted to finish it, and finally decided to try.

I chose the board and positioned the stone based purely on an aesthetic judgment of the composition. I kept it in my room after that and enjoyed watching it every day. Pretty soon I realized that I had started to share the feeling with the stone.

“Gambare”;W 24″ x D 11 1/4″ x H 12″ ;Eel River stone on walnut

In my imagination, this stone is standing on the seashore, battered and worn down by storms and waves. The bottom is so undercut that it is barely standing; it seems just one push will make it fall. But it is so strong, and hangs in there, enduring. That is exactly how I felt. During that time I was supporting my family: I had four teen-age children, and my wife had gone back to school to get her teaching credentials. It was during the recession of the early to mid-90’s and the housing industry was hard hit because of the real-estate slowdown. This meant that I had to work extra hard to compete for contracts and keep my crew working.

Every time I looked at this stone it gave me the energy and strength I needed to keep going and bear my responsibilities. I had no intention to show spirituality when I made this piece, and getting this spiritual energy from the finished work was totally unexpected. Stone appreciation is not only about representing nature and landscapes – at least as important for me is the ability to share with the stone the difficult parts of life and get the energy to live.

Title and attribution updated

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– by Mas Nakajima

I started studying suiseki in the late 1970s under Yukikichi (Keiseiki) Hirotsu, who was a popular suiseki artist and collector. Mr. Hirotsu was one of the people who introduced suiseki to Northern California. In 1963, he founded the first suiseki club in America, Kashu Suiseki Kai in Palo Alto, and in 1982 he and Mr. and Mrs. Iwasaki founded San Francisco Suiseki Kai, and I joined Suiseki Kai shortly after that.

For the first 15 years or so I concentrated on learning the techniques and traditions of Japanese suiseki. At first I was very busy running my general contracting business and raising four young children, but gradually I started going tanseki (stone collecting) more often and making daiza constantly. Eventually I had so many finished suiseki – way more than 100 – that I ran out of room inside the house and started storing the stones everywhere in my yard.

By the early 90’s I was quite a serious and crazy stone guy, and I started asking myself a new question: “what to do with these beautiful stones that just do not fit into the traditional rules and categories of Japanese suiseki?” Visiting many great national parks in the West such as Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia, Death Valley and especially the magnificent Grand Canyon made me realize that there are many great landscapes and scenes that are not seen in Japan. These scenes were way out of my imagination. I was also very much influenced at that time by my good friend Mr. Tei (Yu-Lin Chung), who was an established folk artist and antique collector from Taiwan. I used to visit his house regularly and exchange ideas about suiseki with him.

My mind started to open, and I found the courage to follow my own vision for each particular stone. Every stone is different and I realized that you cannot simply follow a rule. You have to pay attention to, and show respect for, the stones individuality.

Most of the stones that I collect fit well into the traditional suiban or daiza display – and that is always my first choice. I tried to approach some of these unusual stones by making daiza that showed them as abstract or figure stones. However, some of them were not happy to stay as suiseki – or perhaps I was not satisfied, so it seemed that the stone was not happy.

The first suiseki art piece I created was with this beautiful makuro-ishi (black stone) with a tamari (water pool). I thought about cutting the stone and making a daiza for it, but that would wreck the deep tamari. So I used large thick lumber to set the stone and tried to carve a daiza for a traditional kaburi-iwa (head cover stone) suiseki. Perhaps I would display it with a small boat to add to the scene. The more I carved however, the more the stone started losing its power and spirit and became just ordinary scenery, and the free imagination was going to disappear.

So I tried again, this time using a solid piece of birch wood. I carefully selected the location based on study of the wood grain, and I made a seat for the stone by carving deeply into the wood. After the stone was properly seated, I polished the wood to enhance the grain.

I like the simplicity and flexibility of this style, where the wood board gives the feeling of limitless space for the viewer’s free imagination.

“Looking Forward”; W 30″ x D 14″ x H 9″; Trinity River stone and birch

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