Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

No matter how banal a statement it is, I can never keep myself from commenting on how quickly time goes by. How is it already September? The past few weeks have been an even weirder vortex as my husband C. and I have been dealing with two bouts of COVID in a row, if you can believe it. I guess this is our comeuppance for marveling at how we managed to evade the virus for two and a half years. Besides a weeklong reprieve in late August, we’ve been homebound for most of the past month in Tokyo, with only our cats, our acetaminophen, and our government-sponsored care package of foodstuffs to fritter away the days.

At least it’s given me leeway to watch some shows and movies that have been on back-burner, including Joe Talbot’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco (beautiful and operatic) and Qiu Sheng’s Suburban Birds (engaging but obtuse). On the lighter end of the spectrum, we watched the anime Blue Period 『ブルーピリオド』 over the past few days, and it touched me enough to want to write a little about it.

Blue Period is about a high school student named Yaguchi Yatora who haphazardly falls in with the art club and ends up getting serious about pursuing a career, or at least further studies, in painting. The show is adapted from the eponymous manga series by Tsubasa Yamaguchi and follows Yatora’s arc from aimless underclassman to anxious aspirant to the hallowed halls of Tokyo University of the Arts, in Ueno.

It’s very much a slow burn and slice-of-life drama wherein most of the conflicts, apart from a few side plots, are internal. Blue Period reminded me of The Great Passage 『舟を編む』, an anime we watched in the early days of the pandemic, about an editorial team working towards the publication of new dictionary. Exactly what it sounds like. But this kind of content and pacing can truly be a balm in chaotic times.

Blue Period struck a chord with me for its portrayal of adolescence, particularly one’s susceptibility to the encouragement or inclinations of the people one spends the most time with, whether by choice or happenstance. And some of the earnest anguish that Yatora unearths in battling his own demons or nervously assessing his art school peers felt pretty relatable, as well.

It occurred to me halfway through that maybe the show also resonates with me because I went to film school. Funny how I tend to forget that nowadays, since I’ve maneuvered and adapted myself into other creative interests and career paths in my adult life. But that teenage desire or demand to understand oneself and one’s place in the world, or to express abstractions and philosophies by way of a specific medium, is very much an ongoing journey. A lifelong one.

I think this drive is what fundamentally informs our notion of a career, whether in an artistic industry or not. By doing something day in, day out, by devoting our time and energies to a particular set of tasks or long-term goals, we make sense out of the inherent senselessness of this worldly existence. That’s undoubtedly a huge motivating factor for me in writing fiction, at least. I’ve been struggling with pretty intensive edits to my novel manuscript lately, trying to distill my tangle of ideas and images into something clearer. For that reason, too, I felt sympathetic to Yatora’s monologues and equivocations about finding the essence of his painting practice. What we struggle to communicate in creative expression is singular to each of us; yet oftentimes it’s so simple that we overlook the answer staring us right in the face.

Anyway, check out Blue Period on Netflix if you’re looking for a leisurely stroll through the mindscape of a teenage slacker turned art baby. It’s a sweet series that balances the innocence of youth with desire for greatness or simply validation, and also features an endearing cast of side characters. For those of you who are familiar with Tokyo, you’ll find that the scenes on the university grounds in Ueno Park and at the JR station are immediately recognizable.

As someone who worked long years in art school administration in the States, I shudder to think of the chaos that would ensue if prospective undergrads had to do competitive live drawing and painting on-site, over the course of many days, in lieu of a portfolio submitted online. That said, there’s something nostalgic in the show even if you haven’t had these exact experiences. It’s the feeling of potentiality when you hit your stride while doing something, one door closing behind you, a new path snaking out before your eyes…

Just remember that you don’t have to be in high school to experience this. It can happen, and does happen, again and again. ✌️