Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: Well, what’s known as the Night Parade of 100 Demons is an ancient Japanese folktale about supernatural beings taking over the night.

At an art museum in Boston, artist Masako Miki is bringing the tale into a colorful and even cuddly present day.

Geoff Bennett: Jared Bowen of GBH Boston takes us there for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jared Bowen: In the silvery hue of night, a gathering of characters. At first glance, they’re curvy forms standing on their own and dappled with rainbow colors. Look longer and the shapes come into being, like an all-knowing oak tree.

Masako Miki, Artist: The trees, they’re transparent. They have witnessed everything that has happened and that we have done and I feel like this is the character who observed everything in our histories.

Jared Bowen: Each of these needle-felted sculptures here at the MassArt Art Museum in Boston has a reason for being, says artist Masako Miki. They are characters she has conjured and crafted to take their place in her own contemporary mythology.

Masako Miki: It’s human nature to make stories and narratives. And if you believe in the same story, there’s a sense of trust and we actually believe in that stories and we act on it.

Jared Bowen: In creating what she now calls Midnight March, Miki was prompted by a Japanese tale more than 1,000 years old. It tells the frightening story of the Night Parade of 100 Demons, where paranormal beings called Yokai, who range from the monstrous to the mischievous, rampage through the streets and the wee hours of the morning as villagers hide in their homes.

Masako Miki: They’re very upset. They’re being discarded by humans and they want to reclaim their existence.

Jared Bowen: But as Miki returned to the tale in her adult life, she began to dissect the demonization of the Yokai, thinking they were less perpetrator and more misunderstood, vilified because people couldn’t look beyond the Yokai’s otherness.

Masako Miki: I think the first thing in a human sort of reaction is, they’re not like me. We come from different places and different cultures, but we’re always just seeking for a new home which is safe.

Jared Bowen: So, in her telling, Miki’s Yokai are shape-shifters, discarded things like an umbrella or a string of prayer beads, that become all things adorable and inviting.

Masako Miki: You don’t rationally understand what they are, but they’re drawn by the colors and patterns and the shape. It’s very important that the people feel invited and have this affinity. I think affinity leads into the empathy.

Lisa Tung: When I first saw these wonderful colorful creatures, I thought, this is amazing. Everyone’s going to love them. And they do. But then you start to dig in a little deeper.

Jared Bowen: Lisa Tung is artistic director of the MassArt Art Museum and says beyond their huggable charm, Miki’s characters represent an intersection many have navigated, especially immigrants.

Lisa Tung: Masako is trying to figure out her background, her culture, how does that fit with this new culture that she’s come to? And being a child of immigrants, my parents came here. I have been living here with the past 50 years. There’s always that, what is the culture?

Jared Bowen: Miki was raised in Japan and came to the United States as a young adult to study art. She cherishes her Japanese heritage, she says, but embraces, especially as a woman, the independence life in the U.S. has afforded her.

Masako Miki: I really felt like I had to choose, do I have to become more like Americans or, like, what is — but then I’m Japanese. I became almost obsessed with these characters, because here I am trying to figure out how I live my life.

Jared Bowen: Giving the Yokai life requires a rigorous, even painful process of needle felting, where she repeatedly stabs mounds of rubbing wool covering armature.

Masako Miki: I just have a love and hate relationship.

(Laughter)

Masako Miki: It’s so labor-intensive, because you can only felt so much, because it hurts your shoulders and arms. Also, I love that part of art making. You can’t have a shortcut.

Jared Bowen: The repetition of making is akin to prayer, Miki says, so that, by the time each sculpture is finished, a transformation occurs beyond the act of creation.

Masako Miki: You just repeat the same thing for so long and then like you’re like so focused and intense in your head, and at the end it becomes like its own thing. It has its own spirit.

Jared Bowen: Like these Yokai finding their way to a new dawn.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jared Bowen in Boston.

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