Tag Archives: Hakodate

Lehan Winifred Ramsay

10 Sunday Jul 2016

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Lehan Leaving

Pig’s Arms Envoy, Lehan Winifred Ramsay

A tribute by Algernon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUWYdaXwWcQ

Part of a documentary about Mt Hakodate, interviewing Lehan Ramsay about her project; an exhibition of large black-and-white photographs of people and places in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan. Winter 2008-9.

I found this youtube video a while back. While it’s entirely in Japanese it does give us an insight into some of her work when she was living there. We also hear her speak as part of it.

Emmjay met Lehan in Sydney between her visits to Japan but I didn’t know Lehan personally, other than by her writings here and at The Drum and her artwork she so freely shared with us at the Pig’s Arms. We all know of her struggles with depression. Her time in Japan and return to Maclean where she had trouble settling back in, going back to Japan then returning again.

Depression and mental illness has touched some of us either directly or with family members. I’m distressed that she has succumbed.

I will miss her artwork, some of which can be found here http://lehanramsay.blogspot.com.au/ and the conversations where she would write a a stream of consciousness.

I will miss having her with us at the pub and the richness she provided to all of us.

Rest in peace Lehan.

Lifeline: https://www.lifeline.org.au/ Ph.13 11 14

Beyondblue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ Ph. 1300 22 4636

 

 

Machan

23 Monday Jul 2012

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Story and Photograph by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

My friend came to visit me in Hakodate. He thought he would write a travel story for an inflight magazine while he was there. He called the City Hall to ask them about local artisans or people of interest, but the City Hall pointed him in the direction of a souvenir sausage shop, which he wasn’t really interested in.

I want to meet some Ainu people, said my friend. But it was common knowledge in Hakodate that there were few if any people in the town calling themselves Ainu. Then I remembered Machan. I’d heard from a journalist friend that he was Ainu. Machan was a little-bit-wild looking man who I often saw around riding his bicycle with his dog following along. We had talked a little bit a few times without any particular connection. He had a shop across the road from the International Hotel. So we went along to Machan’s shop.
Machan’s shop had a kind of log-cabin look to it, and inside it was a bit dark and a bit shabby. There were certainly some carvings of bears and owls, but they looked a lot like the mass-produced carvings you find in all the souvenir shops, and the recycle shops, just a bit dustier. Other than that there really wasn’t much you could buy. Mostly when it was warm enough Machan sat with his dog on the front step of his shop, which looked out on to the lobby of the International Hotel.

My friend asked Machan a bit about the Ainu. Did he know any Ainu people living in the town my friend could talk to? Not really. Did he know of any Ainu artists? Not really. Did he know of anything interesting he could write about? Not that he could think of. Anyone who made things? Nah. Machan’s shop is gone now, but it was there quite a long time.

Somehow the response we got that day did not surprise me. I used to see Machan around a lot, riding his bicycle, with his dog following along, one time he gave me a CD he had in his basket; The Beatles, for no particular reason; I took it and said thankyou. I like to see Machan’s life as a complicated and contradictory act of civil disobedience, of social education. Somehow I must have been prepared by the people around me to understand that. But here – I am speaking for him again. I will stop.

The Radishes

07 Thursday Apr 2011

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Radishes

Photograph and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

This house was just across the road from the park, and I used walk past it all the time. I say I used to because this week when I walked my dog there it had been demolished.

I used to think that houses like this were the spirit of my neighbourhood. It looked like such a lovely house, and there were chickens, you could hear them in the mornings. Not only was it a breath of old Hakodate, but it had a garden, there were always delicious looking things growing there in the summer. Here, they are hanging out their daikon radishes to dry in late autumn, in preparation for pickling.

It was a fine old wooden house with a verandah and glass doors along one side, looking out onto that fine garden, and at the front was a sturdy stone fence and solid gates. Just up the road from the post office. The post office is a new building built to look a little antiquey. Soon it will be the most authentic old building in this neighbourhood.

Shedding

01 Tuesday Feb 2011

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Hakodate Shed 01

Story and paintings by Lehan Winifred ramsay

Sometimes I paint a picture, and after I’ve finished I pull up another canvas and paint it again. No looking at the original object or photograph this time, and sometimes I paint straight on without drawing anything first. It bends the picture in a direction. Of colour or shape, some kind of warp. It’s always easier to start something with something. It gives you what you want. Then as you go along you figure out what you don’t want. I don’t want a shed like this, that’s clear to me. I want some other kind of shed and in my second picture I’m sliding a little over to it.

People call up to ask about classes. They’ve read a little about them in the paper. But then if they start describing the classes they want on the phone, they don’t sound anything like my classes. They sound like – they sound like that second shed. I offer to send them a flyer, and smother my exasperation. No I am not going to make an individual shed for each student who walks in my door. I don’t have enough hours in a week to do that. It is not possible to provide customized and attentive entertainment. What I want to do is to have each of them walk in here for an hour, and walk out again having expanded their learning and their capacity to learn a tiny fragment, in reasonable comfort. I want to know not that they are having a good time, but that they are picking up a skill. And that is all.  Sheds are complicated, different things for each of us. I provide the shell. Four walls, a roof, a floor and a door. And they can make whatever they want out of it.

Hakodate Shed 02