IN THE HEART OF UENO PARK

Around 2:30 p.m.,I arrived at the station at Ueno and took the exit leading to the park. In the park,
gentle, bright sunbeams shone into the intermost reccesses of the woods,and quite a few people
were walking with a careless step, even though this wasn’t vacation day.
I followed the movement and passed some students from a school of foreign languages, as well as
some office wakers who were taking a walk. The National Museum of Western Art was having an
exhibition of paintings from the Muees Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and in front of the
entrance, you could see an enlarged reproduction of Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus, looking like a film
poster.The painting showed such a surprising skill that I stayed for brief moment to take it in.
I went past the museum and arrived in front of the zoo.On my right strecthed the square with a
fountain in the center, and the water was sparking in the sun.
On the other side of the square with streched a deep undergrowth, where here and there you could spot some structures that looked like little blue huts.
For a while I walked around the square,which was full of people. Hearing some faint laughter. I
realized that all these people bunched together were watching a performance:a practically naked
man whose body was powdered white and who was slowly assuming the pose of Rodin’s THINKER,
or that the Buddha,or else a javelin thrower from ancient Greece.
TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE BY CORINNE ATLAN