I first came to Kanagaso Quarry 3 in 2015.
An open quarry yielding a beautiful yellow ochre stone, I was bowled over by its beauty, and the vast scale of the 150 metres high cut face created over generations of work.
The relationship between man’s endeavour and the natural stone.

In 2019 Hashimoto san, the quarry owner, kindly gave me permission to work here.

On my first day of drawing I understood I wanted to create an ascending line taking the eye up to the great wall of stone by making steps that appear to come from out of the rubble and waste stone of the quarry.
From the lower level of the quarry it simply appears like a realignment of the material cutting through the chaos of stone but on closer encounter you can walk up them.
There is a space between the top step and the wall but for our eye it appears to go all the way up to the wall.

I began making the steps on my own first by moving some of the big blocks of stone by means of levering and rolling and monumental effort, finding stone from the waste heaps.
As the steps rose I began using more manageable pieces that I could lift up the steps.
More recently I sought assistance from the Takigahara community and have been very lucky to be helped by Tsujimoto san who is from Kanagaso.

It is slow and painstaking work but satisfying when we have a good day and get 3 steps done.

Increasingly the local people began coming to have a look and share the work which is exciting.

Two weeks into my beginning the work I was taken around the village by two local guides to be shown and told about the history of Kanagaso. I learnt then that Taicho, a famous Buddhist monk had come from China over the sea to Ishikawa and brought Buddhism with him. He had made a sacred place in a cave on top of the mountain in Kanagaso and placed a wooden statue there of Buddha.
They took me to this place which is just beyond the quarry and I discovered it is a series of 583 steps made of stone going all the way up the mountainside of the quarry mountain leading to this cave.

My heart was beating with amazement that I could conceive of my idea completely independently of these steps but there be such a powerful link between the two.
We climbed all the steps seeing Buddhist statues all the way up and halfway you can ring a bell so the bears are aware of our presence and stay hidden. There is another bell right at the top. To ring them feels both an entirely natural ritual as well as a practical one. We descended a few more steps and arrived at the cave. The guide told me that caves represent rebirth and renewal and are very sacred in Japanese culture. There is now a more modern statue of the Buddha in a wooden casket in the same cave. It felt a profoundly moving place, embodying our human relationship with nature and our spiritual compass with the vast geological time of the landscape. That need in us to transform the indifference of nature into an active reciprocal connection.

We followed a path to a high clearing where we could see the sea. It was a small flat plateau also animated by stone Buddhist statues. And this lies just above the great cliff of the quarry.
It felt like you could experience a physical manifestation of history looking out to sea and being able to appreciate Taicho landing on these shores similar to what I experienced in Selinunte, Sicily seeing the Greek temples there and imagining the Carthaginians invading the coastline, or St Columba coming to Scotland.
All my senses were tingling with an alertness and powerful sense of how everything is connected. Naiki was with me, who films with me from time to time and he understood completely my excitement and was able to translate these thoughts to the guides. We descended the steps, a marvel of exquisite building into the contour of the ground.

It is a great privilege to work in Kanagaso Quarry and I hope the work will be continued to be enjoyed by the local community and visitors.

I would like to warmly thank:

Kanagaso:
Hashimoto san, Tsujimoto san, Noviko san, Mishichita san

Takiagahara:
Ryo, Chocolat and Ofri Ogawa
Yoichi Naiki, Miuru Yukinaka, Yoko Nakoaka, Masa Takamori, Kentaro chan, Shunsuke chan,
Kurosaki san

Komatsu City Council:
Ms Yukari, Hashi san, Hui Min, Jessica, Maya

And all the people who have shown me great kindness throughout my time here in Takigahara and Kanagaso.

Julie Brook October 15 2019