If on a cold Tokyo afternoon you happen to take the Chuo line out to Nishi-Ogikubo, to wander around the small back streets past the secondhand clothes shops, the quaint curry shops, and old book shops; you may have the good fortune to find yourself standing, somewhat puzzled, outside what may be another shop, but could also be a junkyard.
A simple white facade and a wood and glass panelled door, the side of the building a tumble-down wire enclosure piled with old twisted metal and rusted broken things slowly becoming more rusted and broken. A rickety chair and an old go-kart sit out the front. No shop name or fancy sign, just a small metal dustpan hanging on the wall that says, promisingly, “OPEN”.
You may also have found yourself earlier up the hill a little at an old coffee house, pointing at a hand drawn wall menu, thinking you were ordering a boiled egg but actually ordering coffee jelly with ice-cream, to go with your coffee. Perhaps that helps to explain your disorientation and sense of astonishment as you step through the entrance door into a silent space where objects sit quietly spaced on shelves and tables. Light falls across a small room. A young man dressed in black sits in a corner by a stovetop and kettle, seemingly absorbed in mending a teacup. He looks up briefly and nods, then returns to his task.
Poubelle means trash-can in French and indeed the shop holds many items that others may have thought worn out, used up, finished. But here in Yazawa-san’s carefully curated, spare and minimal shop, his collected, mended and handmade items each seem to wait, holding their breath, demanding close examination, whispering stories.
If the day is right and the mood is right you may be offered a cup of tea and a chance to talk to Yazawa-san about his work. He mentions that he is particularly interested in talking to people who don’t seem to understand his work, as they often give him a new perspective.
Originally thinking he would become an architect, then training in design, Yazawa-san almost unintentionally opened Poubelle four years ago when the shop he was working at in the same space closed. It was already an antique shop, but Yazawa-san’s strong minimalist aesthetic and unusual fascination with unobtrusively mending old objects and giving them a second life, has lifted his shop more into the sphere of a fascinating gallery or art space. Using self-taught traditional mending techniques with urushi and tin that take days to complete, Yazawa-san’s understated mends to his collected antique tea cups, plates, light shades and bowls lend them a subtle magic that many find irresistible.
He says if a mended cup is next to an unbroken one, customers will always choose the mended one. The snaking silver lines or rusty rivets and hammered metal strips make their own, entirely uncontrived art forms. Yazawa-san states that he simply does the mend that is required, wishing the object to be unaffected by his design, to remain itself and contain no trace of him. He also makes original metal works, again stunning minimal functional pieces, as well as art pieces and paintings.
A humble, quiet man, Yazawa-san is gaining an increasing following. A recent exhibition in Shanghai was a sell-out success and later in the year he will present his artworks at the modernist masterpiece Moriyama House by famed architect Ryue Nishizawa, which has only exhibited work to date by luminaries Taka Ishii and Wako Works.
Yazawa-san reports being an avid art reader and secondhand book buyer, heavily influenced by modernist and minimalist artists and expresses deep admiration for the artistic style and curation of the reclusive collector Moriyama-san himself. His paintings and installations reflect his simple but quietly sophisticated approach, one is a collection of old soap pouches arranged into a captivating montage, another is an aluminium canvas he has lightly drawn line work on.
Yazawa-san returns again and again to the idea of keeping himself out of his work, of keeping things plain and unaffected. He says that he doesn’t wish to be romantic about his shop or about the things he mends.
Yet there is an undeniable feeling of careful curation, of deep respect and clarity in his small shop. It is a place where you want to pick up each and every item and marvel at how the everyday has become magical in his eyes and hands.
As you walk slowly back up the hill to the station it’s hard to shake off the spell of Poubelle. You are still turning over Yazawa-san’s words in your mind, “The thing about things is that they are everywhere. Even nearby where we are here, there are recycle shops in places like Koenji – and many objects don’t look like they have much value. But I’ll think about them and buy them when I sometimes feel that I can add something to them”.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what it is that Yazawa-san adds to his pieces, even those he does not alter but simply places in his shop, in the place that is right for them. Although Yazawa-san himself likes to keep things matter of fact, the closest thing I can come up with to describe what he adds is magic. It may be a minimalist and deliberately restrained modernist version, but it is magic just the same.
