Japanese woman studying Lithuanian culture: “Now S.Nėris is controversial, but in 20 years she will be forgotten” | Culture

This is not A. Kimura’s first visit to Lithuania. She came to Vilnius in 2016 and studied the digitization of museums. Today, its main topic is the liquidation and reformation of Lithuanian memorial museums.

“I came as part of the equality and diversity program initiated by my university. This was necessary because there are only 17% of female scientists at our institution, and all the rest are men. So, I am one of those scientists who received funding for their research in Lithuania”, said the interviewee.

A. Kimura is also a translator who translates S. Nėries’ poetry into Japanese.

During the interview, the scientist and I talked about why she became interested in Lithuania, the fate of memorial museums, de-Sovietization and S. Nėri.

Photo by Greta Skaraitien/BNS/Japanese scientist Aya Kimura and journalist Monika Bertašiūtė-Čiužienė

– Why did you become interested in Lithuanian culture?

– I came to Vilnius for the first time at the end of July 2016, after receiving state study support for foreigners who want to learn Lithuanian. I found this information on a website. Japan also has such support funds, but the possibilities are very limited. I realized that I absolutely do not want to go where there are many Japanese people, because they start to group into Japanese villages (laughing). Such as Malaysia and Cambodia, where I had to live as a child because my father got a job there. It might be a good survival strategy, but communicating in a narrow circle does not broaden your worldview.

In addition, there are various language courses in our universities – English, French, Spanish, Danish, Hungarian, but there is no Lithuanian language. So I thought I could discover something new. Thus, in 2016, I started studying Lithuanian at the Lithuanian University of Education. I was just a master’s student: I visited museums, studied cultural policy.

Once I had to attend a ceremony in which the Deputy Minister of Culture also participated. I thought this would be a good opportunity to ask him to meet with the museum experts. That’s how I got the vice minister’s e-mail, I got his letter, and soon I visited the Ministry of Culture, where I talked with one of the museum experts for about three hours. This was my first interview in Lithuania.

– What surprised you the most in Lithuanian culture policy?

– Every year, the Ministry of Culture of Lithuania publishes very detailed statistics of museums: how many exhibits they have, how many visitors come, how many people work. In Japan, which has almost 5,500 museums, there are no such things. Everything is very open in Lithuania.

– Perhaps you managed to find some connections between Lithuanian and Japanese cultures? Are things very different?

– When I was a graduate student, the most popular exhibition in Japan was about European and American art. Works from the most popular Western museums were exhibited there (although, interestingly, the exhibition was financed by huge Japanese media companies). However, there are a lot of such exhibitions in Japan and eventually I realized that I know a lot about Western art, but not Japanese art: after going to the Louvre in Paris, I had already seen some of the works in Tokyo. At that time, even the small, big-budget museums in Lithuania usually represented the art of their country. Here, good exhibitions are created using your own archive. So if the big media will no longer fund Japanese museums and they will no longer be able to bring exhibitions from abroad, will there be experts who can create an exhibition from the works in their archives?

Photo by Greta Skaraitiene/BNS/Japanese scientist Aya Kimura

– You wrote about the situation of Lithuanian memorial museums, which you included in the guide for Japanese people. In mid-May, information came out in Lithuania that three memorial museums – the Venclovs’ house, the memorial apartments of Putin and Kreves – could be closed, although the municipality later denied this. However, it raised the question of what is the function of these museums in Lithuanian culture. What do you think? Are they necessary? What do they give you as a foreigner exploring these museums?

– Before answering about their function, I would first like to tell you about my first visit to them. In 2018, I did research on the mobile app “More Than You See”. This is Augmented Reality technology, which helps to find out more information (through 3D images, videos, photos) in exhibition halls. As a researcher, I was interested in the fact that in large museums, the concepts of the exhibition are described in the app, while in small museums, images simply appear and disappear. I wanted to document it all.

So, I visited the house-museum of the Venclovs and Beatričė Grincevičiūtė, the memorial apartments of V. Mykolaitis-Putin and V. Krevė. Generally, foreigners do not have the opportunity to visit someone’s home, they usually choose touristic places such as Gediminas Hill or Cathedral Square. And such museums become a great opportunity to visit a more private, authentic and chamber space. V. Krėvė’s apartment is mainly focused on information, while the apartments of V. Mykolaitis-Putin and Beatričė Grincevičiūtė are real homes. Magical and special.

Also, since I look like an Asian (laughing), the museum staff welcomed me very warmly: “Oh! A female scientist from Japan? Come here for tea or coffee!” They happily gave me tours of the bedrooms and living rooms of those apartments, and showed me the books stored there. Therefore, I can say that the purpose of these museums is very human. Here you don’t need to buy a ticket, come to a huge exposition where security guards look at you with an angry face. These memorial museums are very close to the visitor, they tell the narrative of the state through the story of one person, so they must be preserved. Every size museum has its value.

Pauliaus Peleckis/BNS photo/Vincos Mykolaitis-Putin memorial apartment

– As the municipality stated, they will not be liquidated, but they will have to reform. How do you think they should change?

– This is one of the questions of my current research. First of all, like many people in Lithuania, I did not understand what happened – will the museums be liquidated, closed or reformed? Since I was researching the educations of Vilnius municipality museums during the quarantine, I thought it would be a good opportunity to examine this situation. First of all, the survival of museums is a political decision. An ordinary museum worker cannot decide this, but it is an important element in the discussion and communication between the municipality and museums.

– What was the most interesting thing you had to talk about in Lithuanian museums?

– In V.Krėvė’s memorial apartment, I met Vladas Turčinavičius, a museologist. He is a real living encyclopedia.

– You are also interested in Salomėja Nėrimi, one of the most controversial poets in Lithuania. Why are you interested in her?

– When I read her poems for the first time, it seemed to me that her work is related to the Japanese language. Other classical Lithuanian poets, such as Maironis, write about Lithuania, and S. Nėris writes about nature and himself. It is close to haiku. However, I bought her first collection of poems because it was recommended to me at Eureka bookstore (laughing).

– Does it bother you that in the Soviet era she turned to the left and drove “to bring back Stalin’s sun”? True, it should be borne in mind that at the end of her life she regretted it through her poems.

– When I first published the translation of her first collection of poems “Anksti ryta” in 2020, I gave this book as a gift to friends, libraries, etc. The circulation was small, but random people told me: “Hey, do you know that S. Nėris is very controversial, problematic a poet.” But for me, she is a writer of great talent.

However, many people are now watching TikTok or Netflix instead of reading poetry. A lot of people don’t have a collection of poetry at home either, unlike mine and my other half (he’s also a scholar) who have hundreds of books at home. I personally think that reading poetry is very important. But returning to S. Nėris, I believe that she will be forgotten in the future: now she is controversial, but in 20 years she will be forgotten. Then it will be a good time to read it again. Just like people did in the 20th century. in the forties, when no one knew who she was and that she is currently a kind of symbol of de-Sovietization.

Maironis Lithuanian Literature Museum photo/Salomeja Nėris

– I have heard such a story before. You wanted to illustrate your collection with poems by S. Nėris with paintings by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, but the MKČiurlionis Museum in Kaunas did not agree.

– I wanted to publish six poems dedicated to MKČiurlionis, from her cycle “From MKČiurlionis’s paintings”. I then asked the museum for high-resolution images that I found in the LIMIS system. At first, I received a positive answer, and soon a second letter flew in, which said that the museum does not want to associate S.Nėries with the upcoming MKČiurlionis exhibition in Tokyo. Maybe they thought I was somehow related to that exhibition (smiling). I told them that I was not the curator or manager of that exhibition, but just a simple scientist. Then they agreed to give the images. However, I notice a tendency that public institutions are afraid of public criticism.

– How did people in Japan react to S. Nėris’s poems?

– Just like beautiful poems. It is difficult for the Japanese to understand the local context. Yes, we learn world history, but let’s say about the Chinese empire, the history of Western Europe, and Lithuania is a very small part of all that. After all, throughout the Soviet period, your country was behind the Iron Curtain.

– How do you view the process of de-Sovietization? Is it necessary?

– I understand that many people want to do something, especially after Russia attacked Ukraine. This is an extraordinary war, and terrorism in the true sense of the word. However, de-Sovietization in Lithuania is taking place out of fear. In the same way, after September 11, 2001, everyone in the United States was afraid to fly. But running away from fear is very difficult, fear seems to linger in our heads and we need to overcome it in order to feel at least somewhat safe. However, I maintain that this answer is not easy.

Photo by Greta Skaraitiene/BNS/Japanese scientist Aya Kimura

– If you could choose a writer or an artist from among all Lithuanian cultural figures, who would you like to have tea with?

– Personally, I really love Aušra Kiudulaitė, the artist of the book “Happiness is a fox”, but yesterday I already had tea with her (laughing). We already had lunch with Jurga Vile, the author of the book “Sibiro Haiku”. Anyway, I would like to meet with S. Nėrimis.

“What would you ask her?”

– Why did she write poems? Not prose, not literature of another genre, but poetry.

– How is poetry in Japanese?

– 詩 – this word has the same phonetics as the words “poetry” and “death”.