Nostalgia

In early May 2024, I embarked on a field recording journey to Hengchun, the southernmost town in Taiwan.
My desire to visit this small town stemmed from two things: first, the name itself struck me as strikingly beautiful when I happened upon it while casually browsing maps on my computer; second, I was drawn to its unique character, a town existing entirely within the confines of ancient city walls built in the late 19th century.
Around the end of summer 2023, I created a piece based on sounds recorded while wandering freely for a week in Hoi An, an ancient city in central Vietnam, which was included on my previous album.
This time, I introduced a slight structure to the field recording: I set up microphones at nine locations. These included the gates installed on the city walls (eight points: north, south, east, west, and the midpoints between them) and the central market, which became the focal point when connecting these gates with lines. During recording, I rang a small handbell at each location to create a common element confronting the changing spaces. Simultaneously, I aimed to encircle the town sonically through fixed-point observation, attempting to make its contours emerge.
I endured the blazing sun to capture these sounds, brought them back to Japan, and after clockwise wanderings through the town, arranged the audio data to culminate at the central public market. Using this as a foundation, I layered instruments and vocals while recalling Hengchun's winds, scents, heat, streetscapes, and the people I encountered.
The resulting work, contrary to my initial academic intentions, turned out to be decidedly pop.
I've been familiar with the feeling of nostalgia since childhood. It's odd to say "since childhood" (since nostalgia is often an emotion held by those who've accumulated time to look back), but it's that feeling of letting your thoughts wander through certain scenes or things to the time you've lived and the flow of time before that, cherishing the fleeting transience that can never return.
As I wandered this town in a daze, glimpsing the lives of its people, I felt a sense of having arrived at a distant place I could never return from. It felt less like a geographical shift and more like a temporal one. Simultaneously, the soft, comforting light spilling from dim alleyways and small windows seeped into my skin, mingling with the warm breeze that had crossed the sea.
In that town, there was indeed a nostalgia I had somehow lost along the way.