Chef Yuri Nomura and florist Yukari Iki have worked side by side for the twenty years since they set up their adjoining businesses—eatrip and the little shop of flowers—on a parcel of land in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. Food and plants... As they worked with living things day after day, their attention turned to the soil that gives rise to the cycle of all living things. They continue to ponder how they can be part of this cycle through their vocations—chef and florist—in this day and age. This enterprise is reflected in the title of this exhibition, “Life is beautiful.”

It has been two years since the “clothing, food & plants” exhibition where their discovery of taima-fu, a once treasured cloth in Japan, along with “majotae”, a resurrection of taima-fu through modern spinning/weaving technology called their attention to the “clothing” that makes up “clothing, food, and shelter”, the essentials of human livelihood, and had visitors think about a time when plants served as both food and clothing. In the midst of a pandemic, climate change, and an inexorably changing environment, the two women confronted the question of where they could find a truly safe place to live.

This exhibition, on the theme of “food & plants, shelter,” is a sequel to “clothing, food & plants.” From an encounter with thatcher Ikuya Sagara, it depicts the process of rediscovering rice, a plant that had been used in various ways over the history of Japanese dwellings. Cultivation of the rice that people ate was indivisible from cultivation of the rice plants used for shelter. The exhibition gives its visitors a place to imagine the past and explore the future of the cultivation of a crop that protects life in the form of both food and shelter within the context of Japan’s climate and nature.