Purple Magazine
— Purple #43 S/S 2025
The Tokyo Diary Issue

announcement to humanity

essay

by RYOKO SEKIGUCHI

Japanese poet and writer Ryoko Sekiguchi began publishing in 1988. She moved to France in 1997 And has been writing in French since 2003.

Presented here in an excerpt, her journal Ce N’est Pas Un Hasard (Éditions P.O.L., Paris, 2011) was written in the days following the March 11, 2011, tsunami and nuclear disaster, reflecting on themes such as the ephemeral nature of life in Japanese culture.

In her most recent book, L’Appel des Odeurs (The Call of Odors, 2024), the narrator keeps a notebook documenting how smell influences our relations with space and memory.

March 13

The Japanese poet Tatsuhiko Ishii arrives in Paris. Exhausted.

He’s come to give a few talks and participate in a roundtable discussion on March 15, where I’ll also be present. His flight was confirmed, but since the airport shuttle seemed out of service, we thought until the last minute that he wouldn’t make it.

Ishii teaches me the etymology of the word “disaster,” from the Italian disastro, meaning “under a bad star.”

A French newspaper article wonders how the Japanese can continue living on an island so prone to natural disasters. And I wonder if the journalist would dare say something similar about the inhabitants of regions with challenging climates, such as some African countries or Iran, where earthquakes are also common.

March 14

Cécile Sakai, a specialist in Japanese literature, and I had prepared a translation of a series of Ishii’s tanka in anticipation of his reading. The selection was made in January, and the translation was completed on March 2.

On March 12, Cécile Sakai messages me, surprised: “I keep thinking about what Mr. Ishii wrote…” I had been thinking the same. He has a triptych on disasters entitled “Announcement to Humanity.” The first section opens with “The day the sea foams and the earth shakes,” followed by a quote from Voltaire on the Lisbon earthquake.

Ishii is concerned about tomorrow. He doesn’t want people to think he chose this text on purpose.

The press speaks of Japanese discipline. Some try to find an explanation in the Japanese concept of “impermanence,” others in our religion. Still others call it resignation. It’s true, I wouldn’t want to experience an earthquake in France. It would be total chaos, although maybe the government would respond faster than ours. In any case, if there is a difference, it’s not a difference in mentality. Rather, it’s a learned habit, a very pragmatic lesson that all Japanese people have internalized. After all, we know natural disasters happen. It’s not fatalism; it’s a proven fact. We know this well because we’re taught about it in school. We are trained to respond to earthquakes. Every Japanese child knows what to do in a tsunami or an avalanche in mountainous areas. But preparation can’t prevent everything. Every year, there are typhoons, sometimes causing power outages and blowing rooftops or antennas away. That’s just how it is.

True, there isn’t a major earthquake every day, but minor tremors are felt at least once a month. The pedestrian map of Tokyo is a bestseller because it helps people navigate the city if needed, to return home on foot. Every home is equipped with a large flashlight and a radio in the entryway. This is part of our daily life, and no one is spared. That’s why we have the sense that “what was bound to happen has happened,” that “it could have been me,” that one day, “it will be my turn.” Hence the feeling, not of resignation but of always being involved. This, too, perhaps explains the solidarity that prevails with every disaster. Because we know that life will resume, even if we have to start from scratch, and that it’s not the end of everything. Except, of course, for those whose lives have been abruptly cut short.

March 15

Tatsuhiko Ishii gives his reading. Here’s an excerpt:

“How simple it is to decimate men! All it takes is for the Earth to move (just a little bit).

To live humbly and die like a worm — barely enough time to utter a little cry

But you know yourself! It’s humans who are to be most feared (oh yes!)

Has humanity (already) perished? The sea foams. The earth shakes. For a moment…”

Why does such chance occur? And anyway, is it really chance? I don’t mean that poets can predict catastrophes — quite the opposite. There’s no cause-and-effect link. Only that catastrophes, innumerable, natural or human-made, arise in the world, and in this sense, if we’re not coming out of a disaster, then we’re on the verge of another.

As for writers and artists who grapple with this theme, it’s not surprising that their work, their thoughts, might immediately precede or coincide with a catastrophe.

The crucial point when we ask, “What’s possible after a catastrophe?” — a question often raised worldwide — is to bear in mind that we’re also on the eve of future catastrophes, so we should ask what we can write before or between catastrophes, the permanent state we live in.

Ishii says he couldn’t write a tanka about an earthquake. This makes me understand something: maybe one can write about catastrophes — but only afterward.

Perhaps one can write a poem afterward, but not during. I would be incapable of writing a poem during.

I understand him, too; what I’m writing isn’t literature.

It’s a “report.” I’m drafting a report, as honestly as possible.

March 17

I could never have imagined writing about “our” catastrophe.

I also think of the unique temporality that belongs to narratives of disaster, as a literary convention, that golden rule that dictates they always be described retrospectively.

One cannot arrive the day before.

Yet, when multiple catastrophes overlap as they do today, we find ourselves simultaneously before, after, and even during the disaster. Especially because, as the philosopher Osamu Nishitani says, a nuclear accident, once it occurs, is only the beginning — the beginning of a desolation that itself spawns catastrophe.

So now, in what grammatical tense should one describe this succession of catastrophes? And in what tense should one complete the description? To this difficult question, I still have no answer. By opting for the form of a chronicle, I submit myself to a specific time frame, perhaps valid only in this particular case: the present. There is also the prevailing feeling that we are always “within” the catastrophe, even if it mingles, as I have already written, with retrospective visions and projected anxieties about a future that may or may not come to pass.

For a writer aiming to narrate a catastrophe, what temporality should they choose? And before even arriving at a narration or description, in what tense does one experience the moment?

All discourse on catastrophe is inevitably bound to, even haunted by, the question of time. Since discovering this, the incessant link between time and disaster appears to me in nearly all writings on catastrophes, regardless of the genre.

END

[Table of contents]

editor’s letter
Read the article
empire of signs
by Roland Barthes
Subscription
coming soon
cover #1 takashi murakami
interview by Jérôme Sans
Read the article
takashi murakami
interview by Jérôme Sans
Read the article
ryoko sekiguchi
interview by Mark Alizart and Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
cover #2 motoko ishibashi
Subscription
coming soon
motoko ishibashi
interview by Aleph Molinari
Subscription
coming soon
atsuko tanaka
Subscription
coming soon
sexual assault breaking the silence
by Karyn Nishimura-Poupée
Subscription
coming soon
juergen teller and nobuyoshi araki
Subscription
coming soon
chiho aoshima
Subscription
coming soon
hajime sawatari
Subscription
coming soon
suwa nagano
by Stéphane Sednaoui
Subscription
coming soon
fetish magazines
by Katerina Jebb
Subscription
coming soon
tadanoori yokoo
text by André Michel
Subscription
coming soon
kazumi asamura hayashi
Subscription
coming soon
keiichi tanaami
Subscription
coming soon
fumihiro hayashi
text by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
nobuyoshi araki
portrait by Chikashi Suzuki
Subscription
coming soon
tomoo gokita
interview by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
cover #4 tomoo gokita
Subscription
coming soon
loewe s/s 2025
photography by Suffo Moncloa
Subscription
coming soon
hajime sorayama
Subscription
coming soon
my father
by Rick Owens
Read the article
announcement to humanity
by Ryoko Sekiguchi
Subscription
coming soon
cover #3 katerina jebb
Subscription
coming soon
cover #5 loewe s/s 2025
photography by Suffo Moncloa
Subscription
coming soon
masahisa fukase
Read the article
hajime kinoko
interview by Olivier Zahm
Read the article
raiki yamamoto
Subscription
coming soon
cover #6 masahisa fukase
Subscription
coming soon
kunichi nomura
text by Aaron Rose
Subscription
coming soon
aya takano
Subscription
coming soon
tomoyo kawari
Subscription
coming soon
masaru hatanaka
interview by Aleph Molinari
Subscription
coming soon
why japan?
by Urs Fischer, Ramdane Touhami, Stéphane Sednaoui
Subscription
coming soon
cover #8 esther rose-mcgregor in valentino s/s 2025
photography by Hart Lëshkina
Subscription
coming soon
why japan?
by Helmut Lang
Subscription
coming soon
minoru nomata
Subscription
coming soon
in praise of shadows
by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Subscription
coming soon
best of the season s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
purple beauty nails
by Mei Kawajiri
Subscription
coming soon
ryūichi sakamoto
Subscription
coming soon
valentino s/s 2025
photography by Hart Lëshkina
Subscription
coming soon
nobuyoshi araki
Subscription
coming soon
cover #10 bottega veneta
photography by Nikolai von Bismarck
Subscription
coming soon
balenciaga s/s 2025
photography by Juergen Teller
Read the article
kazuo ohno
Subscription
coming soon
cover #7 prada s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
butoh the dance of darkness
photography by Nikolai von Bismarck
Subscription
coming soon
cover #9 balenciaga s/s 2025
photography by Juergen Teller
Read the article
tomihiro kono
photography by Joe Lai
Subscription
coming soon
cover #12 comme des garçons s/s 2025
photography by Ola Rindal
Subscription
coming soon
comme des garçons s/s 2025
photography by Ola Rindal
Read the article
cover #11 nobuyoshi araki
Subscription
coming soon
chanel s/s 2025
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
Subscription
coming soon
the japanese lessons we refuse to learn
by Daido Moriyama
Subscription
coming soon
dualité by brioni and lalique
photography by Olivier Zahm
Read the article
pink eiga
Subscription
coming soon
cover #18 sakura andō in chanel s/s 2025
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
Subscription
coming soon
noritoshi hirakawa
Subscription
coming soon
tomo koizumi
photography by Chikashi Suzuki
Subscription
coming soon
trails
by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
koji kimura
by André Michel
Subscription
coming soon
cover #13 dualité by brioni and lalique
photography by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
daido moriyama
Subscription
coming soon
erotica
by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
purple story
Read the article
takuro kuwata
Subscription
coming soon
cover #16 saint laurent by anthony vaccarello s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
Read the article
setsuko klossowska de rola
Subscription
coming soon
cover #15 paul & joe
photography by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
why japan?
by Coco Capitán
Subscription
coming soon
alejandro garcia contreras
Subscription
coming soon
casablanca s/s 2025
photography by Keizo Motoda
Read the article
why japan?
by Stefano Pilati
Subscription
coming soon
saint laurent by anthony vaccarello s/s 2025
photography by Takashi Homma
Read the article
why japan?
by André
Subscription
coming soon
best of men s/s 2025
Photography by Kejichi Nitta
Read the article
kei ninomiya
interview by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
anders edström
Subscription
coming soon
zen gardens
by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
wabi-sabi spiritual values
by Leonard Koren
Subscription
coming soon
wim wenders
interview by Olivier Zahm and Aleph Molinari
Subscription
coming soon
miu miu s/s 2025
photography by Coco Capitán
Subscription
coming soon
ruth asawa
Subscription
coming soon
kazuyo sejima
Subscription
coming soon
waves
by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
jun takahashi
interview by Aleph Molinari
Subscription
coming soon
cover #14 casablanca s/s 2025
photography by Keizo Motoda
Subscription
coming soon
kumiko
by Anna Dubosc
Subscription
coming soon
yōko yamanaka
interview by Olivier Zahm
Subscription
coming soon
mariko mori
Subscription
coming soon
cover #17 miu miu s/s 2025
photography by Coco Capitán
Subscription
coming soon
the tokyo toilet
by Koji Yanai
Subscription
coming soon
ann lee in anzen zone
by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Subscription
coming soon
young designers s/s 2025
Photography by Dasom Han
Subscription
coming soon
kenshu shintsubo
Subscription
coming soon
why japan?
by Setsuko
Subscription
coming soon
the original hotel okura
by Valerie Sadoun
Subscription
coming soon
kyoto international conference center
by Sachio Otani
Subscription
coming soon
tadashi kawamata
interview by Aleph Molinari
Subscription
coming soon
purple beauty make-up
photography by Eamonn Zeel Freel
Subscription
coming soon
self-portrait
Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
kids
by Takashi Homma
Subscription
coming soon
hideaki kawashima
Subscription
coming soon
yoshitomo nara
Subscription
coming soon
yasujirō ozu
Subscription
coming soon
the isamu noguchi garden museum
Subscription
coming soon
yoko and john in karuizawa
by François Simon
Subscription
coming soon