There are a lot of young people these days who long to lead a rustic country life. Nanographica, a group of three people who have set down roots near Zenko-ji temple in Nagano City are doing just that. So, how do they feel about their unique activities and charming rural lifestyle?
Interveiwed by Takafumi Suzuki
Translated by Claire Tanaka
The Nanographica editorial office, the Kinto-un café, and a living space, all combined in one old Japanese-style building.
Nanographica publishes Machinami monthly, a lighthearted look at daily life in Nagano.
How long has it been since you started Nanographica?
Nanographica is going on five years as a publishing venture. It all just sort of came together over time. All three of us were students at Shinshu University together, but none of us are originally from Nagano City.
How did the three of you end up working together?
Ayako Takai is from Hakodate in Hokkaido, Takashi Shimizu is from Nara prefecture, and I (Tamami Masuzawa) am from Matsumoto City, Nagano. We are all in our thirties, and we all studied Education in University. Shimizu started looking for an unoccupied storefront to use as an atelier when he was in his third year of school. That’s when he was about 23. That place is mostly used as a music venue now, the Neon Hall. I’d say that was where it all started.
How many projects are Nanographica involved in now?
The members of Nanographica are mainly involved in three major projects. First is the publishing venture, and then there is the café. Then there’sShimizu’s music venue, Neon Hall.
Who was the one who first suggested forming a rural publishing venture?
Takai is really fond of magazines. She was the one who first said she wanted to get into publishing. She has always enjoyed writing and editing as a hobby, and she even went so far as to get a job at a monthly magazine called Nagano Komachi when she graduated from university.
What was the first thing you published?
About three years after we graduated, we started to feel like we wanted to do something, so we decided to make an annotated walking map of the neighborhood. If you go to Tokyo, especially around the Koenji area, there are lots of maps like that. We just took it upon ourselves to make one up and printed out about 1,000 copies of it. After we made the map, we got a really good response from people. A local publishing company just happened to find our map and asked us to make one for a book they were making about Zenko-ji Temple. We were so happy, we just skipped around town, making that map. That was the first published material that we made for money.
What kind of things are you publishing now?
Now, Shimizu and Takai are writing and editing as freelancers for newspapers and magazines, and we have an editorial office here at our café, Kinto-un. Other than that, we have a little monthly publication that we make with the help of a local printing company, called “Machinami” (since August, 2005) and we also produce a newsletter with information about the Nishinomon area called “Nishinomon Shinbun” which is printed on one sheet of B4 paper.
Ms. Masuzawa, what kind of role do you play in all this?
Basically, I run the Kinto-un café, and I do accounting and more or less everything else. I guess you could say it’s my job to personify the lifestyle. (laughs)
Kinto-un is the Nanographica editorial office, as well being the place where Takai and my son and I live. Someone has to weave all the different parts; the café, the editorial office, and everyday life together, so that’s what I do.
There also a gallery at the café, isn’t there?
Yes, that’s right. But, as a mother, I have to take care of Fukutaro here, and it’s where we spend most of our time. People who want to exhibit their work here have to accept that their art is going to be handled by a child
What! That’s got to be tough for an artist to have their work touched by children.
Yes, that’s probably true. (laughs) The customers have to put up with a noisy kid hanging around, and even though it’s a café it’s really hard to have a quiet, relaxing time here. But in another way, we’re not that picky about what kind of things we hang in the gallery and we don’t have many rules, so the people who come here wind up chatting with each other and becoming friends. It’s quite a fun space.
I think it must be hard to do such cultural work in a less cosmopolitan area like this.
We are all outsiders here, and moved here from somewhere else. So, I think we have a bit more freedom to try new things, in a way. It’s not easy to discover something new in the place where you were born and raised. But on the other hand, I think it’s important to try and bring excitement and fun to your own region by your own selves.
This kind of lifestyle and way of making a living, isn’t it looked upon with envy by people who live in the city?
Country living and LOHAS is getting really popular lately, right? And people who come to our shop say to me, “This is so nice, this lifestyle. “ But they don’t really understand. They imagine cute wooden chairs and dappled sunlight shining through the leaves of trees, but they don’t go so far to imagine the creepy crawly insects we get out here. But even in Nagano we’re experiencing the LOHAS fad.
The LOHAS fad has even hit Nagano Prefecture?
But the funny thing is, if you go out to a really rural area of Nagano like Togakushi or something, the people there can’t understand why young people like us are so enamored with the country lifestyle. They say, “Why do you eat that brown rice, millet, and stuff? You know white rice tastes better. Why are you trying to be a country hick on purpose when really you’re not?” They worked so hard, and I think their admiration of a glamorous city life is far stronger. So, I think that’s why people here put so much stock in what the Tokyo media has to say.
Does it take a while to get rural people to accept something new like what you’re doing?
I don’t think you can just do something for a year, and then say “OK, we did that” and be done. We have entered our fifth year of this now, and I think the key to gaining people’s trust is to stay in it for the long haul. If you keep it up, that’s when people finally start to accept you. At first everyone was really suspicious of our place (the Kinto-un café) and they said stuff like, “What kind of gathering is this? Some new cult?” but we kept doing it, and once we started making the Nishinomon Shinbun and handing it out, they could see what kind of people we were and I think they started to change their opinions a bit. Ideally, we’d just blend in with the local people, and it would be a nice “fusion of old and new” but that’s easier said than done. I have really felt for myself that only way to make it happen is to keep working at it a bit at a time.
Nanographica
930-1, Nishinomon, Nagano-city
*Nanographica is a unit made of three members, including Ayako Takai and Takashi Shimizu. Their activities so far have included a wide variety of cultural projects such as music, books, a gallery, and a café.
Tamami Masuzawa (Nanographica)
Born in Azumino City, Nagano in 1970. Nanographica member and café owner.
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PingMag MAKE is the sister site to PingMag. We use an interview format to put the spotlight on a wide range of people active in rural areas. We document the voices of these unknown heroes and broadcast them to the world. It’s the Japan-based magazine about people and making things, coming out once a week. We’re passing on the passion, ideas, skills, and life stories of people who are building today and exploring tomorrow: craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. Stay tuned!
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Another great post. I lived in Nagano 94-02. A wonderful place for the landscape painter like myself, or the landscape photographer. The people of Nagano are the kindest I have met in Japan. The people are very well educated and have an international view so I would be careful to use the word rural. In this prefecture there are many who are leading this kind of lifestyle, including many foreigners and just a little over one hour from Tokyo on the fast train.
I only left because I have a back problem so I could no longer deal with the winter snow. Since then, living in Kobe City.
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