Last year, I bought a very heavy and thick book at a secondhand shop in Australia. Titled Chronicle of the 20th Century, this book is a chronicle encyclopedia that compiles the major events of the 20th century, accompanied by a vast number of press photos. It was published in several countries toward the end of the 20th century.

I brought this book back to Japan with the intention of creating a small piece based on it. In August, I opened the book again. I then found a handwritten message from the children celebrating their father's 60th birthday on the front endpaper. It was dated March 28, 2000. When I flipped to the page for 1940, a number of horrific photographs jumped out at me.

If you compile a century's worth of topics into a single book, the pages are filled with nothing but war, slaughter, and disaster. The heartlessness of human affairs and the cruelty of repeating history overlap with the still ongoing wars, the days of the atomic bombings, and the anniversary of the end of the war, making me feel depressed. The struggle to create something is a trivial matter, but confronting history should not be easy. I, too, will turn 60 this month, just like the recipient of this book. So, I have decided to struggle with all my might during this milestone summer.

Even when looking at the articles and photographs, what we can know is not even a fragment of the historical facts, and we likely can't get close to the truth either. Still, I gently fit the small fragments of the 20th century gathered there into old objects and scraps. In doing so, the memories accumulated in history seem to quietly reside, not within the book, but in the lives of all of us, without being put into words.