36 Views of Mount Fuji and Coquet Island
Introduction to a collaborative arts project
Back in the strange days of lockdown, I started to learn Japanese and immersed myself in many things from Japan: writing, art, music, ceramics, calligraphy, language, culture, fashion. This research took me back to Hokusai and his 36 Views of Mount Fuji.
When I was in my thirties and living in London, I attended an exhibition at the British Museum that displayed Hokusai’s 36 Views (plus the additional 10 he produced later). I fell in love with their variety, precision, and cartoonish sense of humour so bought a print of ‘The Coast of Seven Leagues’ (Shichiri-ga-hama) in Soshu province, which hangs in my study now.
On daily lockdown walks along the coastline, I gazed at the sea and wondered how 36 Views of Coquet Island might look - thinking of a View as being an idea, opinion or memory as much as a visual representation. Seeing it, while immersed in Japanese, helped me consider the island as being of equivalent importance to Fuji. It has a cultural, spiritual and visual significance for Amble and this part of the Northumberland coastline.
During lockdown, the coastline was empty of tourists so the island was clearer and brighter than it might otherwise have been. In the unaccustomed silence, I heard seals, seabirds and, it seemed, waves lapping on the island’s shores. In this imagined landscape (or seascape) I tried to understand what the island might be telling me and then made notes when I got home.
At the same time I was learning and repeating Japanese words and phrases. Trying to understand and decipher Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji by saying these new words out loud in a voice I’d never used before. My mind was lulled by a beguiling confusion of language while I tried to comprehend both Japanese and Coquet Island.
I read Rashomon by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (later made into a film by Kurosawa) in which four witnesses give contradictory interpretations and descriptions of what happened in the story. I started to see Coquet Island as the beginning and ending of a story about itself in which the sum of its parts combine to create an unexpected narrative. By allowing time to hear this story, I played around with its meaning, watching it float, submerge and sail beyond my locked-down comprehension. The island was going somewhere I was never going to reach. Mountains are always walking, according to the Zen master Dogen, to which, in my lockdown reveries, I added the idea that islands are always sailing.
In telling his story from multiple viewpoints, Akutagawa questioned concepts of truth and validity. Daily broadcasts from politicians about Covid were also providing plenty of reasons to question notions of honesty and certainty at this time.
Hokusai started to draw Views of Mount Fuji around 1831. He was 72 at the time and was already a well known artist with a reputation for accessible and popular prints. He’s reputed to have said: ‘Until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice’ which might be good news for us ancient types.
Hokusai’s prints look like a compromise between two styles - the Japanese approach, which suggests an imagined, abstracted landscape and Western painters with their realistic representations of certain places at specific dates and times.
He wanted to show how Fuji changes form depending on the place, time and season from which it’s viewed. He was interested in ways the landscape varies with the seasons and how rain, sun, and snow constantly change the depiction of the mountain.
He was also interested in geometry: the simple triangle of the mountain’s peak is the main motif of each print. Sometimes, Hokusai echoes this shape with the slant of house roofs, while elsewhere he contrasts it with the circle of a round barrel, waterwheel, bridge curve or a ship’s hull. In other cases, there are strong diagonal and vertical lines from tree trunks, fishing lines, and (my personal favourite) kite strings.
Coquet Island is about 6 hectares (15 acres), situated 1.2 kilometres (0.75 mi) off Amble, in Northumberland, in the parish district of Hauxley. The Historic England website gives extensive details of a monastic cell and medieval tower on the island, with references to St Cuthbert being there in AD 684.
The island is owned by the Duke of Northumberland and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds manages it as a bird reserve, because of its important seabird colonies. From the RSPB website: ‘Coquet Island is home to 40,000 breeding seabirds and is the only place in the UK where Roseate Terns breed. It also supports breeding Puffins, as well as Common, Arctic and Sandwich Terns and is protected under international and UK law. In recent years a few pairs of Mediterranean Gulls have nested.’
Due to its importance for Roseate Terns, Coquet Island is a dedicated wildlife sanctuary and is not open to the public but boat trips from Amble pass close to the island.
Coquet Lighthouse was built by Trinity House in 1841. James Walker designed the lighthouse, which is a white square tower of sandstone, with walls more than one metre thick, surrounded by a turreted parapet. The first keeper at the lighthouse was William Darling, the elder brother of Grace Darling.
I can’t draw or paint so I tried to write 36 Views of the island, only getting as far as 24. And then the end of lockdown came and I forgot all about islands talking to me and the spirit of sacred mountains.
About a year later, our writing group was compiling an anthology so I dug out the 24 views and submitted them. I asked if other writers would be interested in adding to the views and some said they might. Phil Griffin suggested I contact Paul and Isabel Morrison, who have a longstanding connection with the island.
After months of procrastination (accompanied by gentle encouragement from Phil) I overcame my doubts and made contact. Paul and Isabel were enthusiastic and encouraging so I began to think maybe this wasn’t such a daft idea. Another Amble writer, Ali Rowland, had written a lovely poem about counterfeiters on the island as well as words to accompany a short film she and her husband Phil had made. We talked about how to move the project forward and she suggested taking it to the Dovecote Street Arts, a group of local artists convened by Jim Donnelly and Luke McTaggart. We did a presentation and were greatly encouraged by the fantastic contributions we’ve received from artists, writers, photographers, musicians and other creative people in the area. I’m pleased to say all the aforementioned people have contributed to the project so you’ll hear more from them later.
This is an arts-based project and, as such, is not designed to tell the history of the island. If you’d like to read more about the history then an excellent starting point is the website of Amble and District Local History Society. Some contributions are based on historical events associated with the island, in which case context and explanations will be given.
The next six weeks of Mirror Writing will be devoted to six views per week from this talented and diverse group of local artists. Please subscribe (it's free!)! and share as widely as possible so we can see and hear how these views of this essential island reveal themselves.
Hi Allan I really enjoyed reading this. I was struck by how the lockdown period gave us all time to slow down enough to contemplate life in a different way and was sad when you said that when it ended you 'forgot all about islands talking to me and the spirit of sacred mountains.' I noticed this in my life too - how quickly we can revert back to our 'normal ways'. Your writing inivites me to reconnect again with the spirit of the lockdown period and the need to contemplate and embrace the sacredness of life. I look forward to reading the 36 views of Coquet Island.....what a great project you have created.
It was fantastic to meet you and I'm so inspired by this project. Let's put something together - an exhibition or readings or performance at the next Alnwick Story Fest.