Weekend Portfolio: Takako Kido
Skinship
Skinship is a Japanese word that describes the skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart relationship between a mother and a child or family. It includes various forms of physical closeness; holding hands, cuddling, carrying a child on the back, breastfeeding, co-bathing, co-sleeping and even just playing together, anything which builds intimacy. Through an experience of loving touch, a child learns to care for others. Japanese skinship is considered to be important for strengthening the bond of family and also for the child’s healthy development. Skinship usually continues until a child stops by himself/herself.
Because the idea of skinship was perfectly natural to me as Japanese, only after I was arrested in New York because of family snapshots of skinship, did I realize how unique and shocking it could be in other cultural contexts. Living in both Japan and America showed me a cultural comparison and paradox clearly.
Back in Japan, I gave birth to my son in 2012. Looking at my son growing up by my own milk which is basically my own blood was a powerful experience. Breastfeeding was also the best skinship for us. It was like the meditation time in the chaos. There was no boundary between our bodies. Instead, the feeling of oneness was there. I started making self-portraits somehow in the chaotic everyday flying by. Photographing my son growing up and enjoying skinship also enabled healing my old wound.
Child-rearing is new and nostalgic at the same time. As I parent my child, I re-experience my own childhood, which is both happy and sad. As I see my son grow, I accept my aging and realize it’s not long until I have to say goodbye to my parents. I can’t lose these moments. When I was a kid, my late beloved grandmother told me by looking at me crying for the idea of her death that you would be ok because we would go in order. I couldn’t accept it at that time. But now as a mother, I understand what my grandmother told me and the cycle of life and death.
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