On last Saturday, I waited five hours in line to get into a free admissions Museum that is said to be opened only seasonally. Each room was supposedly symbolize a different emotion by its color, lighting, and smell. It was really a rushed tour since there was only like seven rooms and entire tour only lasted about thirty minutes. However, I was glad I did go because I saw one of the most mesmerizing room I’ve ever been to. The room is called exhilarate, the entire room was framed by abstractly shaped mirrors and on the mirrors were the reflections of cherry blossom flowers. In the center of the room, there was a control panel that allows you to control the pattern and size of the flowers by swiping your fingers up and down.
The whole cherry blossom scene and its reflections on the mirrors reminds me one of the scenes in the Pillow Book. When Sei Shonagon states “if you break off a branch of splendidly flowering cherry and arrange it in a large flower vase, the effect is delightful….particularly charming if a gentleman … wearing a cloak in the cherry-blossom combination with under sleeves displayed” (The Pillow Book 1133). I can imagine Sei Shonagon having the same admiration at the perfect match between the cloak and the display vase of cherry blossoms just as I was admiring the projection of cherry blossoms on the mirrors. It was definitely a sight worth seeing and that was one of the most memorable moments of my trip.
That’s awesome! i’m actually planning on going to this same exhibit on Thursday!
I think that I will be visiting the museum too, hopefully the wait will be worth it.
This room definitely relates to the Pillow Book, but it also relates to some of the Kokinshu poems. “It’s their falling without regret I admire – Cherry blossoms: a world of sadness if they’d stayed” (Poem 71, Page 1112) . The room you visited reminds me that the uniqueness of cherry blossom trees isn’t the tree itself, but the beauty of the fall. The falling of the flowers is what triggers the ideas for these poems.