A friend of mine who lived in Okinawa said something once that has never left my mind. Apparently, a lot of concrete in Okinawa is quickly created by mixing it with sand from the beach, but this has the drawback of it quickly becoming weak and brittle in the rain. My impressions of Naha are colored in a concrete gray. I’m sure that the roofs of traditional buildings capture the unique colors of Okinawa’s landscape, but there is something about unforgettable about the gray, Tetris block-like buildings of Naha which seem to depict their own histories of the city.

While I was exploring the exhibition of artist Tsutomu Makishi (1941-2015) at Circle the Gallery in Kyoto, I found my thoughts wandering to the blue sky that peeps out from in between those gray buildings. Or perhaps the clouds illuminated by the evening sun. It seemed to me like it was the color of the natural world, shining down to prevent us from despairing at the gray world around us.

Makishi, who was lovingly known as “Tom Max”, was born in Okinawa shortly after the end of WWII. After graduating from university, while being based in Okinawa, he studied in the United States and explored American culture. His works, filled with techniques that are reminiscent of pop art, utilize collage to create a depth to the canvas. Whereas some create a landscape that could be anywhere, some also have a tenseness to them as if fighter jets were cutting right across the canvas.

Makishi witnessed era-defining moments, such as when Okinawa was returned to Japan in1972, and continued to capture the realities of his homeland, which was caught in between the United States and Japan, upon his canvas. Makishi never belonged to any sort of artistic movement and continued to hold an independent position in the art world. He was a tireless artist and managed to hold an exhibition each and every year.

A few years ago, I visited the Naha Civic Hall. Designated in 2024 to be demolished, it was a work of contemporary architecture that represented Okinawa. A singular banyan sapling, so slender yet dazzlingly green, sticks out as if it had burst out of the brittle concrete on the building’s roof.  The seed must have blown here on the breeze. It reminds me of a Tom Max collage in its delicate combination of nature and the manmade.