From "A Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without Walls/Toshihisa and Junko Yoda and their son, Yoichiro, have been making art in a 4,000-square-foot space on Mercer Street for 35 years, each following their own muse" (NYT)(gift link, because there are cool photos of artwork and arty interiors).
It's a big living space, and right in a beautiful part of NYC. A 53-year-old man lives with his 85- and 82-year-old parents. And no walls! "In lieu of walls, the Yodas have divided the vast space into an eccentric warren of 'rooms' with hundreds of stacked canvases and boxes, some adorned with a Japanese moving company’s logo of a mother cat carrying a kitten in her mouth."
You can see that logo — and the children's drawings it's based on — at "The Cat that Carried a Nation/What Kuroneko Teaches Us About Brand Trust" (Medley): "A black cat carrying her kitten. No text. No slogan. Just a gentle silhouette, frozen mid-step. In Japan, you don’t even need to see the full image. A flash of yellow and black, the curl of a tail, and you already know — it’s Kuroneko. And your package is in safe hands. What makes it brilliant isn’t just recognizability. It’s emotion...."
You can see that logo — and the children's drawings it's based on — at "The Cat that Carried a Nation/What Kuroneko Teaches Us About Brand Trust" (Medley): "A black cat carrying her kitten. No text. No slogan. Just a gentle silhouette, frozen mid-step. In Japan, you don’t even need to see the full image. A flash of yellow and black, the curl of a tail, and you already know — it’s Kuroneko. And your package is in safe hands. What makes it brilliant isn’t just recognizability. It’s emotion...."
పోస్ట్లు
29 కామెంట్లు:
… and right in a formerly beautiful part of NYC.
Fixed it for you, Althouse. It may have once been beautiful before Mamdani took office.
...the Yodas divided the vast space into an eccentric warren of “rooms” with hundreds of stacked boxes and canvases.
"Do or Do Not. There Is No Try."
- Yoda
The picture of the front of the building was maybe art, the rest just seemed like competent photography.
Yes, Wince, I immediately thought "The Yodas" would be a great sitcom concept. Either these real-life people, or a family of the Star Wars characters - arguing with each other slowly, in terse random syntax. CC, JSM
Here’s a video tour of their apartment:
https://youtube.com/shorts/srt9uHfg1jc?si=9k1_IETF1zqYVy4M
A typical morning begins with Toshihisa rising around 6:30 to make tea, which the Yodas use in a prayer ritual at a Shinto shrine that sits atop an old dresser.
So the Yodas' Jedi Way is actually Shinto, with the Jedi knights as samurai?
A shrine to Melissa Gilbert? Right now she needs more help than she can give anyone else.
Well...my first reaction is that I love that the parents are still mentally active each and every day. I think there's a lesson in there for me, if only I could remember what it is.
Anyway, I would love to meet them and tour their loft. Just to talk to them and to see how they live and look through their art. I don't want to emulate their life, but...as someone who loves a good story right in front of him...this would be fodder.
Yet the one question my inner mind kept asking: Where's the bathroom? Given no walls, do you have a tub? A giant sink? Where or how to you wash? I guess they cook because there are parties there. I'd like to see it.
Yes, like Kurosawa, George Lucas makes movies, and they have samurai.
A lot of the plot of Episode IV comes from The Hidden Fortress. And in general the Jedi diaspora combine aspects of ronin and lone gunfighters (those genres certainly interpenetrated). Master Yoda issues cryptic koans like a Zen teacher.
An ep of Mandalorian was basically a retelling of Seven Samurai/Magnificent 7. And a story arc of Andor was an homage to French Resistance films. Lucasfilm as a whole is a great big derivative generator. CC, JSM
Temujin said...
Yet the one question my inner mind kept asking: Where's the bathroom? Given no walls, do you have a tub? A giant sink? Where or how to you wash?
Bingo. Where do you wash? Where do you poop? Do the males pee sitting down?
"No walls" is psycho
I've been told I'm too judgmental, but I can't help wondering how many other little critters live in that loft. And how anyone would ever get out in case of a fire. And what a 53-year-old man is doing still living with his parents. Does he have a girlfriend? Maybe it's just that I find clutter nervous-making.
Privacy.
4000 square feet will always have walls and rooms. Even if only in the mind.
So, artists are weird? Who knew?
Why would they need walls? 4,000 square feet is enough room for two entire spaces that are each bigger than my apartment, with another space in between that's also bigger than my apartment.
A basketball court is 4,700 sq.ft.
Do not try and bend the bedroom; that's impossible. Instead, realize the truth: there is no bedroom. Then you'll see it is only yourself that bends.
Communal organization.
This is an example of creative thinking inside the box
The words "Fire Hazard" come to mind.
How long before: a) the NYC Fire Department makes them clear it out; b) the NYC Housing authority evicts them for residing in a commercial zone; c) they get a large bill for recalculated property taxes?
Finally read the article. Interesting pull quotes:
"After the couple’s baby Yoichiro was born during a trip to Japan in 1972"
Hm - does Japan require you to be born on its soil, even if your parents are subjects? Per Wikipedia, apparently not. But there is a confusing para in there about being born in another country and living there long enough to lock in your nationality there - such people have to choose between Japanese or the other country's citizenship. Maybe the Yodas didn't want to take any chances.
"Yoichiro mak[es] drawings or oil paintings of .... the Hotel Pennsylvania, where he often rented a room before its 2023 demolition, sneaking into forbidden areas, dressed in 1940s attire, to make recordings he later incorporated into songs for his band, Maltese Falcon."
That is f'in cool. It seems like preserving the memory of forgotten NYC (ok, you know what I mean) is one of his main themes. CC, JSM
No bedrooms, no privacy, no opportunity to covertly perform Planned Parent... hood. Forward-looking.
I guess they don't sell many of their art works. Also, I couldn't see the cat logo in the pictures.
Speaking to the bathrooms - the normal loft in that type of building would have had two water closets with toilets - required by labor law for the workers - and a sink on the wall between them. For residential lofts in the late 70's early 80's, people pulled out one bathroom and replaced it with a stall shower and used the sink for both kitchen and bath. A later renovation when lofts for artists were made legal may have been more extensive but the bathrooms would still be somewhere near the kitchen sink unless you did something expensive.
I have a picture of the Kuroneko logo on my phone, taken in 2023 on an Express Mail package from Japan. I thought the logo was cool, which was why I took a picture of it.
Rent control?
And yes, this article will do them no favors.
Does the landlord have someone inspect that elevator?
Any other building would have to have an inspection certificate.
Correct about the fire department - I’ll give them a week before these folks have a visit.
Also, where do they get the $$ to travel to Japan?
Do they sell enough of their “art” to pay for that because the heating bill for that big of a space must be quite high.
"Yoichiro mak[es] drawings or oil paintings of .... the Hotel Pennsylvania, where he often rented a room before its 2023 demolition, sneaking into forbidden areas, dressed in 1940s attire, to make recordings he later incorporated into songs for his band, Maltese Falcon."
If it was the Hotel California, he'd still be there.
Too reminiscent of the conditions in the Ghost Ship warehouse prior to the fire there.
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.