The Painter Who Swallowed the Wind

I returned in the end. I left this island at the age of six. To Osaka, to Tokyo, and then to Seoul. Forty years passed in between. People said I had risen in the world. I had won a great prize in Japan, made a name in the art world of Seoul, taught students at a university. I thought those things were the way. Then one day, looking into my own paintings, I suddenly knew. Nowhere in them was I. There were the traces of my teachers, the fashions of the age, the techniques of the West. Only I was missing. That night I could not sleep. Outside the window the lights of Seoul flowed past, and somewhere beyond them I seemed to hear wind. It was the wind of that day long ago, when I was carried away on my mother’s back. I packed my things. People tried to stop me. “What will you do on that remote island?” I could not answer. I knew only this: I was not going. Something was calling me back. When I stepped off the plane and met that wind again, I knew at once. The wind was not gentle. As if it did not recognize me, it shoved me hard, blew salt inside my clothes, and struck me twice on the shoulder from behind. And that rough touch, strangely, was not unfamiliar. It was the very wind I had felt as a child, on my mother’s back. My mother called that wind Halmang — the Grandmother. She said it came from the western sea on the first day of the second lunar month, stayed fifteen days, and left. She told me never to forget to steam rice cakes and set them out by the shore. A small dish of rice cakes, the salt wind off the sea, and the smell of my mother’s hands. Walking the streets of Tokyo, lifting my brush in a studio in Seoul, I never once recalled the name of that Halmang. Not once in forty years. I had been taught it was superstition. I had thought it a foolish old custom. But the moment I stepped off the plane, the name came back to my body first. What my head did not remember, my shoulders remembered. The wind touching my face called me in my mother’s voice. I had never left. I had only been, for a long, long time, on my way back.

I was empty-handed. In the first year after my return, I could paint nothing. I set up a studio, stretched a canvas, laid out my paints. I lifted the brush, and my hand would not move. I did not know what to paint. The techniques I had learned in Tokyo sat awkwardly on this soil. The landscapes I had painted in Seoul did not exist here. Everything I had was useless in this place. I was ashamed. A man who had painted for forty years stood before an empty canvas like a child. I closed the studio door and went out to the fields. Not to see anything. I only wanted to be there — on the soil of this land, in the wind of this Fūdo. The sun rose and set. The grass swayed, and a pony passed by. I did nothing. I only looked. There were days when I stood a long while before a single low thatched house. Before I saw its form, I saw its posture. Standing there, I slowly learned that a painting must not be hurried. So a year went by. People must have thought I had given up painting. Some days I thought so myself. But looking back now, that year was the most important of all. It took a year to lay down everything my hands were holding. It took a year to become empty-handed. I did not yet know that only an empty hand can receive what the Fūdo places in it. I only waited.

I saw the color of the grass. It was late autumn that year. Sitting out in the fields, I reached out without thinking and broke off a single blade of grass. I laid it on my palm and looked at it for a long time. It was a strange thing. I had painted for forty years, and I had never once seen the color of a blade of grass. I had called it green and passed by. I had called it a dead leaf and forgotten it. But the blade on my palm that day could not be called by any name I knew. It was a color that had lived out the green of summer. A color slowly dried in the autumn sun. A color swept countless times by the wind and cured in salt. A color shaped by time; a color steeped in the Fūdo. It was not gold. Gold is too splendid. It was not brown. Brown is too dark. It was the color of dry grass. There was no other name for it. That color was only itself. I carried the blade back to my studio and began to mix paints. I failed dozens of times. Mixed with earth it grew too heavy; mixed with yellow, too light. When I tried to call back the memory of green, it became a lie. When I pressed only the dryness, it became a dead color. Days later, when the color finally rose on the canvas, I stopped my hand and looked at it a long while. It was not something I had made. The Fūdo had borrowed my hand and painted its own color. That day, for the first time, I knew. A painting is not something I paint.

I stood face to face with the pony. The day I first saw that beast in the fields, I could not move for a long time. It was a small, thin horse with a tangled mane. Not large like the horses of the mainland, and without sheen. Neither a racehorse nor a carthorse. Only an old beast that had lived through all the wind and rain and sun of this land. It looked at me. I looked at it. And a strange thing happened. In its bent back I saw my own back. In its drooping neck I saw my own neck. In its wind-swept mane I saw my own hair, come home after forty years of wandering. I was ashamed, and I was glad. On the mainland I had wanted to paint a great horse. A horse with shining muscles and a streaming mane, full of majesty. The kind of horse the painters of the West had painted. But no such horse lived on this land. Here there was a horse that resembled me. One pushed aside, one made small — yet one who never left. That day I went back to my studio and painted a pony for the first time. I did not paint it large. I did not paint it splendid. Only as it was: the bent back, the drooping neck, the tangled mane. When the painting was done and I stepped back to look, I smiled. It was not the portrait of a pony. It was my first self-portrait.

I accepted the crow. One winter morning, a black bird sat at the window of my studio. An old crow, gaunt, one eye clouded. A bird left behind when the others flew off in flocks. I did not chase it away. I only looked at it, face to face. They said the crow was no bird of good omen. When I was a child, my mother would scatter salt when a crow cried, saying it brought misfortune. For a long time I, too, learned it so and believed it so. But the crow at the window that morning was not a thing to fear. It was only one who could not leave. One pushed out from the flock, one who saw the world with a single eye. And one who, in the end, did not leave this place. I recognized it. Something in that bird was in me as well. One pushed aside by the art world of the mainland. One who had seen the world with one eye — perhaps the wrong one. Yet one who, in the end, did not leave his place. From that day I began to paint crows. People wondered. “Why the crow, of all birds? There are magpies, there are egrets.” I could not answer. I only knew. The crow is neither a good omen nor a bad one. The crow is the face of those who have endured this Fūdo — the one who did not leave, the one who kept this place, the one who never lost his own color. The crow in my paintings is not sad. It only wears a face that has endured long. And I know that face comes, little by little, to resemble my own.

I stood in the storm. That autumn, the wind did not stop for three days and three nights. Roofs were torn away, fishing boats were broken, and the unease of the people ran in the wind. I could not stay seated in my studio. I do not know what pulled me. Holding only my staff, without even a straw cape, I went out to the cliff. The waves rose like mountains and collapsed. The wind pushed at me. One more step and I would have been drawn into that black sea. Strangely, I was not afraid. I spread my arms. The wind tore into my clothes, circled once through my body, and went out. For the first time, I knew what it was to be inside the Fūdo. On the mainland I had sheltered from the rain. I had blocked the wind and feared the storm. They were things outside me, things that threatened me. But that day on the cliff, I knew. The Fūdo is not outside me. The Fūdo is the only place in which I can exist. The storm was not a calamity. The storm was the moment in which the Fūdo shows itself most deeply. And in that moment, at last, I became part of it. I returned to my studio and began to paint the sea. My sea is not calm. My sea is always heaving. Black, rough, alive. People ask, “Why do you never paint a peaceful sea?” I answer, “The sea I saw was never calm.” That day on the cliff, I saw the sea I would paint for the rest of my life.

I gave up my colors. There were the paints I had brought from Tokyo. Cobalt blue, cadmium red, deep ultramarine, brilliant vermilion. Fine pigments carried over from Europe, every tube precious. For a long time I treasured them. I did not use them carelessly; I wiped them clean and put them away. But living on this island, I felt those colors growing more and more out of place. Cobalt blue could not paint this sea. This sea was blacker, rougher, deeper. Cadmium red existed nowhere on this island. Nothing here cried out in that voice. Ultramarine, vermilion — none of them spoke the language of this Fūdo. One day I gathered those paints in one place and looked at them a long while. They were the glory of my youth, the proof of my success, my pride. But they were not the colors of this Fūdo. I did not throw them away. I only laid them in a deep drawer and did not take them out again. In their place I set new colors. Earth, ink, and the color of dry grass I had made with my own hands. They were not splendid. There were only three. People wondered. “Aren’t these too few? Shouldn’t a painter use a richer palette?” I could not answer. I only knew. A painting is not made rich by many colors. Only when the colors are few does each color have its own place. On my canvas now there are three colors. But I know that within those three lies all the time of this island. And the space left between the colors — the empty space — weighed the most. The empty place was not empty. What was not said, what was not painted, and the time left over: these lived inside it. Letting go was the hardest work of all. But only after letting go did I, at last, begin to paint.

I wrote my name. It was not a special day. A painting had come to an end, and I was washing my brushes. Then I noticed that one corner of the canvas was empty. The place for a signature. My hand paused. For a long time, writing my own name had been difficult. The name of my Tokyo years carried a Japanese inflection; the name of my Seoul years carried the weight of the art world. Neither name suited this place, or this painting. I lifted the brush and set it down again. I sat that way for a long time. What led me then, I do not know. I dipped a small brush in ink and wrote a single character in the corner of the canvas. Ji (志) — will. I did not write it large. I did not write it proudly. Only as a mark that one man stood in this place, holding one will. It was not a pen name, and it was not my given name. It was a name I gave to myself. Not a name Tokyo had given me, not a name Seoul had given me. Not the name of a teacher, nor of a family line. In the place where I had become empty-handed, knelt before the Fūdo, and taken the color of dry grass into my arms, a single character rose up from within me. I looked at that character a long while. I was not ashamed. At last I could write my name on a painting I had made. But as time passed, I saw that the character was not only a name. Every painting I had made in my life held, in the end, one will. So the character was a signature, and it was a title. The name I had given myself became the title of all my paintings. It took forty years.

I lost my words. After the day I wrote my name, my words grew fewer and fewer. I no longer answered visitors at length. In letters I wrote only short sentences. There were days when I did not speak at all. Sometimes my wife would ask quietly, “Are you unwell?” I only smiled. I was not unwell. There was simply less and less that needed saying. It was strange. On the mainland I had been full of words. I had expounded theories of painting, argued with colleagues through the night, written essays on the movements of the West and the spirit of the East. I thought those words were my thinking. But coming into this Fūdo, I knew. All those words had not been thinking. They were words spoken out of fear of silence. Here, silence was not fearful. When I stopped speaking, other sounds began to reach me. The sound of wind brushing the grass. The sound of the pony steadying its breath. The sound of the crow folding its wings. The sound of the sea turning over far away. And beneath them all, the low voice of the Fūdo itself. By not speaking, I could at last hear that voice. One day a guest asked, “Teacher, is it not lonely here?” I could not answer. I only opened the window a little wider. Through the gap the wind came in, shook the guest’s coat once, and went out. The guest could not have known that this was my answer. Where words fall silent, the Fūdo settles in. And where the Fūdo has settled, a painting grows. From around that time, I stopped correcting even the shaken lines in my paintings. The tremor I would once have erased, I left as it was. It took me a long time to learn that being alive comes before being perfect. Now I answer with paintings instead of words.

I became Fūdo. This morning I opened the studio window. The wind came in and shook the hem of my clothes. I did not turn around. I only lifted my brush. When I first came here, I feared everything. I feared the wind, I feared the storm, I feared the silence. Above all, I feared myself. I feared becoming empty-handed, feared losing my name, feared being forgotten. Now I am not afraid. Because I became empty-handed, the Fūdo filled my hands. Because I lost my names, a name rose up from within me. Because I was forgotten, the Fūdo remembered me. On the mainland I painted pictures. In this Fūdo, I became one. My bent back came to resemble the pony’s back. My clouded eye came to resemble the old crow’s eye. My dry hands came to resemble the color of dry grass. My silence came to resemble the low voice of the Fūdo. In my youth I learned how to paint well. Only in old age did I learn what to give up. My painting came late, and so, at last, it became my own. Now I know. Life is exile. But art is blessing — a blessing that can be received only in the place of exile. On the mainland I had paintings. Here I had the Fūdo. And the Fūdo took me into itself. Someday I will lay down my brush. On that day the wind will receive my last breath and return it to the fields, to the sea, into the dry grass. I do not grieve over it. I have already become part of this Fūdo. I returned in the end. Now I have arrived. The Painting’s Monologue Silence · Empty Space · Remaining