The Reality Behind What We See: The Poet, Yoshimasu Gozo, in Kyoto (2018)

78-year-old Gozo Yoshimasu is Japan's most reknowned poet. Yoshimasu began composing in his twenties and has since been on the cutting edge of contemporary poetry for the past sixty years. Contemporary Japan seems to be hanging onto the back of a dragon as politics reeks of war, radiation, tsunami, and earthquakes. . . Yoshimasu, who witnessed the devastation caused by the massive tsunami of the Great Earthquake of 2011, was at a loss for words upon seeing the impact of "water" strip everthing away.After the earthquake, and as if dismantling his own "framework of the mind," Yoshimasu began to cut out words, ruled lines, and notes of all sizes and shapes he kept in his "diary." He then started to paste Japanese and manuscript paper together to make one large piece of paper, and with pencil and pen, words and colors, wrote whatever what was on his mind onto that paper, collaging onto the paper mailed letters he had received that day. By further adding more color to his work, a new styled diary was born. This was his new "poetry."Yoshimasu doesn't simply "write." He turns on a lamp, burns an incense, plays a cassette tape, and listens to himself "chanting" . . . At times he is blindfolded and at other times he listens to the sound of a rock, pouring ink onto paper. . .