Still Life

400 years ago, a quarry at Cape Manazuru, a headland on the south-western edge of Kanagawa Prefecture, provided stone for the walls of Edo Castle (now the Imperial Residence). The remnants of the site have been left undisturbed by human hand. The headland was created hundreds of thousands of years ago by lava from an erupting Mount Hakone. Here, in the time of the shogun Hidetada Tokugawa, stone hewn from the naturally formed rock was cut, loaded onto ships and carried to Edo Castle. This kind of scene, if it included stonecutters, samurai and sailing ships moored on the beach, might feel as quintessentially Japanese as the ukiyo-e of Hiroshige Utagawa. What I focused on, however, was the shapes given to the rocks, traces left by stone-cutting, rocks washed by the waves and other aspects of the geological environment. These may not seem specific to this or any other country, but they can give us a sense of human activities at that time. There do not seem to be many sites in such an undisturbed state as this quarry left in Japan. And today, in the area around Edo Castle, rows of buildings stand like walls, as if symbolizing the centuries-long urbanization of Edo-Tokyo.