Kappa Senoo is a renowned and awarded Japanese theatrical designer, alternative artists and travel writer, and the ultimate Kappa.
Kappa (河童, “river-child”) is the legendary water sprite in Japanese folklore. With the size of a child, scales on the back, webbed hands and feet, the Kappa lives in the river and is seen as the mischievous troublemaker, occasionally even kidnap and eat human being. But the Kappa is curious of human civilization and will befriend with polite and respectful people when been subdued. In one sentence, Kappa is an imp or a trickster than a monster.
Kappa Senoo got his name as his friends saw the spirit of the river child in him. Indeed through his curious eyes Kappa sees art in every aspect of daily real life, what fascinate him are the space people live in and the things people make use of, from picked radish in Japan to paper ghost currency in Hong Kong, from Indian chai wallah to French chestnut uncle, from artists’ studios to friends’ toilets. And he conveys his observation through his sketches of market and street scenery, train compartment interior, instant noodle packages and all fifth languages on an Indian rupee.
Kappa is humble, he just loves life and loves to share through his pen and pencil. As a boy grew up during the war, he expressed his disgust of the war through the drawing of the bombed and burnt city of Kobe. In search of the Japaneseness through diet, he travelled all over Jan and different continents just to taste the pickled daikon. To show the working environment of his fellow artists and scientists, he dived to the coral reef in Okinawa to draw the marine biologist.
Kappa is humane, he could be serious and thoughtful. Just a bit older than Totto-Chan, he was a teenager when the war ended. Born in a Christian family in the war years in Kobe, with a tailor father frequent contacted with foreigners, Kappa was also a child loved to ask questions not supposed to be asked in that dark age. In his memoir Kappa questioned the leadership of the government and the justice of the war from the viewpoint of young boy, whose family, school, society were badly impacted by the war, who refused to sing the national anthem when Japan surrounded.
Kappa is HUMOROUS! He would call to make appointments to visit people’s toilets and published the drawings of his peeping to the toilets of novelists, cartoonists, actors, celebrities, historians, anatomists, artists, chefs, musicians, sportsmen, and the spaceship… And he interviewed the hosts about their toilet experience. The logic is simple: if indeed toilet is the most intimate corner and the host is willing to open to Kappa, then he might also be able to get the humane side of the celebrity through unshielded intimacy. It is one of funniest books I have read – once in a blue moon kind…
The world is beautiful with Kappa.
{Image from Kappa ga nozoita TOIRE mandara toilet)
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