The barn named "nBox" has been standing on this land since about a century ago, long before we were born, changing hands from generation to generation. But until we set about its restoration about 2 years ago, everybody had remained idle onlookers and it had gradually become worn down in the course of such a long time, doomed to go the same way as other similar structures throughout Japan.

We started working on it in the spring of 2002. We had to begin by clearing the inside of rubbish or disused articles stacked up for the past 100 years. We felt that all the things there were the castoff skins of memory, which had been brought in there one after another and buried in oblivion over a long period of time. While at work identifying the things one by one, we felt somewhat irritated as well as sad all the time.

The process was continued as the season changed from spring to summer. It was not until autumn that we could empty the barn at long last. This allowed us, finally, to set about repairing damaged parts. Renovating the roof and exterior was beyond our powers and had to be entrusted to professionals. To tell the truth, it had been decided that our new family (my younger son's) would move in there in the winter of that year. We had barely had the exterior finished, leaving the interior untouched, before the time came when my son's family would move in there. We intended to take our time to renovate the interior by ourselves, proceeding little by little with whatever technique we have and by the sweat of our brow. We were kept busy working on it all the time from the year-end through the beginning of the New Year. And finally in the spring of 2002, we managed to complete the office section. Part of the ground floor of "nBox" started functioning as an office for digital design.

The renovation had been interrupted for about half a year before it was resumed for the purpose of the "Artists' Books Exhibition" we held there in May, 2003. It was too tough for us to take up the toil again in order only to make the old barn nice-looking. We needed something to aim at there. Various ideas were crossing our mind while we worked and we felt something like the thoughts of people flowing in this space from the past into the future. On these grounds, we came to regard it as the very role imposed on us to make this place not a solely private space, but a space where many people can get together and enjoy themselves. Thus an idea occurred to us for holding an "Artists' Books Exhibition".

Deeply as I had been involved in art myself, the theme, bookmaking by artists and their books show, was something I was immensely attracted to. We can see the artistsﾕ way of thinking and feeling, by its taking the condensed form of a book. The works shown at this exhibition were from within and without Kochi Prefecture as well as Australia and it turned out that we could appreciate a variety of expressions.

In order to be in time for the exhibition, the renovation was resumed with intensive hard work at the beginning of the year 2003. After we spent days going through an extremity of toil, it was finally brought to completion right before the exhibition.

The 2 years starting from 2001 meant to our family a long continuation of days of hard work. But concerned with the barn all the while, we were feeling an exchange of consciousness, as if we had been having a dialogue with our ancestors from long ago. We realized that it might mean a linkage of consciousness beyond time, "love" in a large sense. As we went on working, this endeared to us the lives of those people who lived in this space in the past. And we believe that people of future generations will think of "nBox", which we have just restored, as important to them and with love.

On the other hand, considering what we had experienced so far, we came to think that this might be the problem of not our family simply, but the general state of mind in today's Japan. The Japanese people who have lived through the 20th century have worked single-mindedly aiming at economic high growth, gone toward cities, abandoning the countryside, and seeking new convenient things, trying to leave many old things full of memory behind and forget all about them. How many things we have lost while running on at full speed!

Such thoughts of ours seemed to communicate themselves to many people who turned out for the opening of the "Artists' Books Exhibition" at nBox. We were grateful that many more people than we had expected visited nBox, which is an old structure located inconveniently on the countryside, and were moved by the fact that we could share our feelings with them.

"n" of nBox signifies various possibilities. We think that revival will have been accomplished in a true sense when this restored barn becomes a new place of cultural transmission. We should be able to obtain richness of not material overflows, but our heart. And this, we believe, makes the 21st century the times of happiness. "nBox" has just made a start.