London-based artist and perfume designer Kentaro Yamada has returned to his family home in Auckland to farewell his father.
In Japan, people traditionally follow Buddhist ceremonies when someone dies. Because we were living in New Zealand, we had to DIY a Buddhist funeral for my mother. For 14 years,there was just her photo on the altar. Now my dad's photo is there too.
I was lying on my bed in London when I got the call to say my father had died very suddenly. I was like, this can't be real, you know? After a week of struggle, I was able to get an emergency slot and spent two weeks in Rotorua in MIQ. My friends were worried I might get depressed. It turns out I'm an artist who's used to spending time alone in studios, but it was very strange — smelling sulphur everywhere and walking around the car park like a zombie.
Yesterday, we hosted a ceremony at our family home in Auckland on the 49th day after my father's death, so the altar is covered with flowers. In Buddhism, that's how long people believe it can take for the spirit to leave. It also gives you time to process [the loss]. I couldn't be at the funeral or see my dad before he was cremated but I feel like I'm part of it now.
On the other side of the room, across from the altar, there's a window with an amazing view out to Bucklands Beach and right up to Browns Island. Sometimes I'll just sit for a while, working on my laptop. I feel quite close to them here.
Yamada at the pottery wheel completing a new work his father had begun the day before he died. Photo / Alyx Duncan
I'm not scared of death. I'm sort of friendly with it, because of my mum. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was in my mid-20s and had just finished [a fine arts degree] at Elam. She wanted to die at home, so I moved back in — my younger brother was there too — and we looked after her for about five months.
Mum really thought about it a lot before she died. She'd been to a temple in Japan to organise where her ashes would go. We designed her funeral brochure together and she chose her coffin colour. My dad's death was the complete opposite. But although it's very sad, there are no unexpressed feelings. Now, I have to take his ashes back to Japan.
We're quite a creative family — Mum taught tea ceremony here and Dad has been making Japanese pottery for 40 years. He was working on a new piece the day before he died. But when I came to New Zealand, by myself at the age of 16, it was actually for the sailing.
I grew up in Fukuoka by the sea and my grandad loved boats, which was unusual for a Japanese man of that generation after the war. There were no boats he could buy, so he built one. My brother came over for school a few years after me and eventually my parents applied for permanent residency.
The Buddhist altar at Yamada's family home in Auckland, where his father Kenju and mother Yoko are remembered. Photo / Supplied
In 1997, I went to the world championships and came 50th, which was not very good, so I quit completely. I didn't sail at all for 20 years until I picked it up again in England. There's a little yacht club at Canary Wharf in London where all these bankers sail and suddenly this Asian guy turns up and starts winning all the races!
Coming from Japan at an early age, I realised there are often completely different perspectives on the same thing - and I'm definitely interested in that. Sometimes those challenges are quite exciting when you find someone who thinks very differently from you, and you want to try to understand them.
I'd been reading about Neanderthals and realised they were pretty sophisticated people who made cave art, were using fire and could communicate with language. And when Homo sapiens came, they must have met somewhere because we all have some Neanderthal DNA.
Neandertal dark and light. Photo / Nicolas Mazzei
Scent is a powerful way to connect with people. You can take a bus and know someone was there before you because their scent is left behind. People think about Neanderthals as grunty, wild beings and I thought it would be interesting to create a perfume that was more like the elegant person who has just left the bus. It's also a way to think about not just the past but the future because one day we might disappear like them too.
- As told to Joanna Wane.
Kentaro Yamada is a London-based artist and the creator of Neandertal unisex perfume. Sold in selected boutiques worldwide, including three Auckland outlets, the bottle design, in black or white porcelain or handblown glass, is based on the shape of a knapped flint hand axe, one of the oldest tools used by mankind (neandertal.co.uk). He was also co-producer and co-writer on New Zealand film-maker Tu Neill's documentary Ayukawa - The Weight of a Life, on a whaling community in Japan.
