THE STORY 26 SPRING SUMMER

When the morning sun arrives beneath a gray sky, the icicles hanging from the eaves begin to catch and scatter the light. Formed in the quiet of night, they fall one after another with a brittle clatter as the sun rises and the air softens.

The glass vessels of Kentaro Senuma possess a texture as if water has risen up from the earth itself; when filled with water, they glow from within. Winters in Akita are long and severe, yet rich in texture—he blows the glass with a breath as soft as a sigh, sealing that texture into its surface. The tiny air bubbles resemble scattered snowflakes; the flow of the glass remained on its surface recalls frozen puddles. "I want to place the landscape of water into glass.” He said. In the morning light, they can appear like meltwater dripping through a forest at the edge of spring. How wonderful it is that a single object can hold so many shifting scenes.

Glass is said to have been introduced to Japan around the first century BCE as ornament. By 18th century Edo period, full-scale production had begun in Nagasaki and Edo (later renamed Tokyo). There is a well-known story of a 16th century's most powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga was gifted konpeitō sugar candy enclosed in a glass vessel; it’s not hard to imagine how people of the time were captivated by glasses—these jewel-like forms. In the 19th century Meiji era, admiration for Western culture propelled glass into industry, and by the early 20th century Shōwa period it had become a material of everyday life. Pressed glass windows—cast into molds to create patterns—spread through domestic architecture. In my grandmother’s kitchen, where she stood each day, there were many panes of frosted and pressed glass. I remember, too, summer afternoons—shaved ice and slices of watermelon eaten atop a clear vinyl cloth. I loved the slightly iridescent, translucent ice cups.

Puddles, faintly clouded, were never perfectly clear but tinged with a blue-gray hue. On the walk home from school, I would jump again and again to break their thin skins. After school, I snapped icicles from the eaves and branches, playing with them like makeshift staffs.

In the morning sun, as I pour hot water into a glass and drink it slowly, gazing through the icicles beyond the window, a memory returns—clear and shimmering—surrounded by nothing but transparent things.