Forever Forest Upper Field

Incisive and loving at the same time, Forever Forest Upper Field paints a portrait of Japan from a perspective that, like the elephant in the room, is almost never breached nor openly admitted, but rather felt through the bodies of the haunting and unnamed characters traversing through the lonely landscapes and vacant city squares in the prose-sketches, full of human warmth in the pockets of spaces remaining where the governing forces have not yet rendered them lifeless, glowing in the deep of the night, that read like the voice of a lighthouse in the uncomfortable silence.

About the Author :
Setsuko Adachi is an associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at Kogakuin University, Tokyo. She obtained her MA in Comparative Literature from Tokyo University. Her main research interests are identity formation and cultural systems analysis. Michael Kearney has a PhD in Literary/Critical Theory from the University of Limerick and is an associate professor in The School of Architecture, Kogakuin University, Tokyo. He has published numerous papers and chapters in books that examine cultural constructions and is the editor of From Conflict to Recognition: Moving Multiculturalism Forward. He writes poetry and is the founder of The Symbolic Order: a band that operates at, and examines, the intersections of Image, Sound, and Text. Lim Lee Ching is an associate professor of literature at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. He holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore, and a BA from the University of London. His recent publications include contributions to Global Encounters: Cross-Cultural Representations of Taiwan and American Modernist Poetry and the Chinese Encounter. He has published in several journals such as Moving Worlds and The Journal of English and American Studies. Lee Ching is also the founding editor of the Singapore Review of Books.

Review :
'The poet must not avert his eyes', Werner Herzog continues to scream at us. Both Setsuko Adachi and Michael Kearney not only refuse to turn away, to look elsewhere, they - unfazed with what lies in front of them - never even blink. And not only do they 'see everything, read everything', they make works in response to it. Kearney both zooms in and out simultaneously, elongating time itself, making us contemplate what should be familiar to the point it becomes strange again. And Setsuko, oh Setsuko, her words not only open worlds for us - to a Japan that unflinching stares back (beware the abyss) - they open us to a language, her language (Adachinese), which writes itself into you, henceforth never letting you see the world in the same way again. Read her with care; mostly because after Setsuko Adachi you might not be able to read and see without caring again. Jeremy Fernando Setsuko Adachi writes a rhythmic prose that steps across the pages to remind us of the inherent beauty of a way to use the language that can at once be universal and specific. It raises a unique voice that is simultaneously foreign but also recognisably naturalised - much like the webs of metropolitan thoroughfares that she describes and brings to life. Michael Kearney's artworks, which converse with Adachi's stories, further intensify their energy, provide the syncopations that befit the expansive story-telling. The images, narrating an extended vista, draw us deeper into an aesthetic that is not beyond subsuming the dystopic purely for the purpose of creating a better art, both visual and verbal. Lim Lee Ching