3rd place A Rainy Day in a Divided Society

 3rd Place  entry from City Life (Weekly Challenge #18)   |   Challenge Results Data

分割された社会に雨の日

This is a mosaic of Okaiken’s largest city, Okami, on a usual rainy day. This is a mosaic image so please make sure you are viewing it in full.

FULL IMAGE

Inspired by Japanese Art (predominantly the principle of Ukiyo (floating world) and Hiroshige’s woodblock prints), the picture captures the normal lives encountered by the citizens of Okami through space and conflict, creating a unique sense of what it is like to live in the City of Okami in Okaiken.

Like some floating world works that precede this photograph, the work can be easily divided into three tiers: The upper class, the middle class and the lower class. As you may have known, city life is more than just a building and a functional highway or rail line or showing off the beauty of the city. It should also see the relationship between different classes of people and their conflicts over a set space, the itty-gritty parts, the moving gears and nuts & bolts.

The upper class take the topmost parts of the image, with penthouses, yachts and huge parks present. It shows the exuberant spending that the wealthy classes have, and the presence of a tall, dark building (ORec Tower) symbolizes power and control over other city. The sheer scale of the building, emblazoned with glass, also contributes to the feeling of immensity and size.

Moving South of the moat of the former Okami castle lies another building that contrasts the ORec Tower. This is the CIX Corporation Towers. Built in a post-modern world it came also symbolize wealth and frivolity found in the wealthy classes. The buildings are then surrounded by three tall towers: Sagamihara Kaisha Tower (Brown building to the left), NTT Center (A-shaped structure to the left) and Sunrise Tower (white building). These buildings are much lower in ranking than the two previous structures but they can accurately portray the middle class. First of all, its proximity from the CIX Corporation towers can symbolize their dependence to the upper classes for their well-being. Okaiken is known to be a country that depended on hierarchy in order for things to work, and it developed a “salaryman culture” that is still very evident today.

The scale of the place also grows as we move out. As you may have seen the middle class is occupying a lot more space than the wealthy class found above the image. However, you also see the quality of the buildings go down from emblazoned glass to concrete. Our first place of worship, a Nichiren sect Buddhist temple, is located in the district, symbolizing the variety of ways dependence can be seen on the city.

We then see an almost-empty highway. For sure conditions are very dangerous for vehicles, but it also symbolizes the divide in social classes. People well-off (the wealthy) can use the expressway with ease, but others would need to find an alternative, which was the Parallel running avenue to the left.

Moving further down we stumble upon the shopping center. This is where the upper, middle and lower classes converge, as we see the diversity of buildings in regards to height and scale. Moving past through it, however, is the lower classes. Most people here live in apartments instead of condominiums, and we can see more traditionally built housing that hasn’t been repaired for years. In the center of it all is the iconic Tsutenkaku tower, a symbol of hope and reconstruction for the residents of Okami.

Graphically speaking, the rain and clouds mean more than rain and clouds. Clouds create the sense of ukiyo on the image, the floating world. Okami may have lost its districts for samurais, etc. but class hierarchy still exists. Clouds provide a single snapshot of one area and its correlation with other structures. The rain symbolized the blurred lines of class divisions in Okaiken.

In conclusion, city life is more than just highways and the uniqueness of the district, but also the interaction and even conflict between different classes in the city.