KAMI (2001) is an installation made by attaching washi gohei to rough rope and stretching it for 204 meters around the gymnasium of Kanazawa College of Art. The ropes crossed stairs, exterior corridors, alley-like passages, and gaps between buildings at a height beyond reach. Rather than blocking circulation, the work added a line and fragments of paper above the body, changing how existing architecture was perceived.

The work was conceived for the group exhibition “Paper Salon.” Designer Kohei Sugiura wrote that through acts such as folding and cutting, washi could be transformed into a spiritual yorishiro, concluding that for Japanese people, paper (kami) had been god (kami). I received this statement not as a simple affirmation, but as a forceful assertion in which multiple meanings—paper, god, yorishiro, ritual, and boundary—are rapidly gathered into a single sound. From this came the caption “KAMI is KAMI.” The concern was not Shinto representation itself, but the speed at which meaning and symbol become fixed onto an object. A festival scene seen in Nagano was important for the same reason: a shimenawa could make ordinary streets and buildings appear as another kind of place simply by establishing a boundary.

A day or two after the exhibition opened, snow fell. The washi became wet, and many of the gohei fell under their own weight. What had acquired the powerful meaning of “KAMI” was returned by the weather to paper as matter—something that becomes wet, tears, and falls. Before serving as a yorishiro for the divine, paper is also a material that absorbs moisture, gains weight, and breaks. This event, in which a device for generating meaning was pulled back into matter by natural conditions, became an important experience in thinking about how meaning, material, space, and contingency interfere with one another.