Is it possible to look at a land through the crack–and as that crack? I am the quake that cuts through the flesh of the country. For a brief moment, I am formless, not the human who traversed Japan's mountains and skies and walked its urban lengths and spanned its countryside breadths—I am the hidden observer from the ground up, I am nature’s tremor, I am the Great Wave off Kanagawa painted by Hokusai (1831). The ways of mankind rouse my wrath, stirring me from a slumber 10 miles deep in the Noto Peninsula. I shudder at the havoc that humankind has created and my shivers start deep in the Sea of Japan, working their way up to the shores of the pristine Ishikawa Prefecture, where a celebratory spirit is dancing through the public places.

It’s time to make the land tremble with fear and despair. Let’s start with the shrines of Wajima, let’s rock their faith. With the power of a thousand armies, I work my splits at the shrines, but what do I see here…some kind of architectural brilliance that is 1500 years old seems to be guarding their gods. The tradition of Shinbashira, or core pillars crafted of cypress tree trunks, runs through the foundations of these five-storey pagodas, securing them for centuries.

I am going to try again, this time with even more force. I arrive at the capital of Ishikawa, Kanazawa, where at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, the DXP (Digital Transformation Planet: Towards the Next Interface) show is in progress. I rock the house a little and shatter a few glass panels; it’s a disruptive artistic intervention. As a result, the ongoing schedule is suspended but a greater curatorial resilience takes over. The team including Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has resolved to develop a more robust DXP2. I am surprised that the participating artists, architects, designers, scientists and programmers remain unfazed and are reshaping their perspectives spanning food, clothing and shelter, and exhibiting evolved versions in response.

One of the works that strikes me as I strike it is Turkish technologist Refik Anadol’s set of six AI Data Sculptures converging neuroscience, machine learning and aesthetics. [His Neural Painting is a “living painting” in collaboration with AI, where the electroencephalogram (EEG) data of diverse human emotions informs the shapes and animation speed]. While I strive with all my might to rattle the physical framework of the setup, these alternative realities redefining the functionalities of interior and external architectural elements are beyond my geophysical powers. Humanity continues to amuse me with its perceptive play. I see swathes of data rising and falling in huge waves much like the tumultuous tide of the tsunami, except that all of it is on a timeless cloud that my seismic strength cannot destroy.

This realm is different, invisibly networked and seemingly impossible to obliterate. I am astounded at the exhibit Morphogenic Angels, the global collective Keiken’s ever-evolving universe set 1000 years from now that explores a future where people have gained post-human capabilities through the organic reengineering of their cells, tapping into non-human consciousness. [In this future world, post-human entities are now considered “Angels” that can be directed by players, and they draw from all kinds of consciousness: ancestral, bodily, extraterrestrial, as well as animal, nature, cellular and the cosmos]. I shake my head in astonishment and move on.

I rumble through Kanazawa in the hope of ravaging built forms and unbuilt dreams, but argh, still nothing. Everything is vibrating, but nothing crumbles. What is this–an isolated base foundation–genius indeed! The buildings, thanks to seismic isolation bearings, move horizontally during earthquakes, minimising structural stress. Ah, I now realise that the Japanese people have learned long to be ready, to reinforce concrete frames, use dampers and invisibility cloaks with plastic frames, regularly retrofit older construction in keeping with a strict code, and use advanced techniques such as Menshin or base isolation and Seishin or vibration control, which have served as an ideal for the rest of the world. The buildings appear to swing along my rhythm rather than resist rigidly and I am reminded of a famous Tao saying—a drunken man falling from a moving carriage would not feel the injury as he travels at the same frequency, he goes with the flow and not against it. Very well.

The many layers of this mass are a challenge to slice open, but I am not giving up yet. I head up the Gifu Mountains, where the World Heritage Site of Shirakawa-go looks like a country village without many resources or advanced architecture, a perfect target. But alas, I am met here with the mystic architecture of the Gassho Houses that are built in the form of hands in prayer. These multi-level houses with not a single nail hammered in, stand unwavering on strong cedar pillars and beams knotted together with only hand-woven ropes. How in the wild world do they sustain this? Oh, wait, why is that man helping the other fix his thatched roof? It's not even his own house. Let me teach him to be selfish...but now everyone is helping them! Who are these people? For generations, the otherwise reticent villagers have come together in the collaborative spirit of ‘Yui’ to reconnect and sing over house repairs. I must retreat before I end up hurting these messiahs, the humility makes me change course.

The uninhabited areas are easier to ruin, perhaps. I enter the Edo-era Kenroku-en garden, considered one of the ideal gardens by classic definition, created with the rare and contrasting six attributes of a perfect landscape: spaciousness, seclusion, artifice, antiquity, waterways and panoramas. But alas, here too, I see humans at restoration work, making sure every tree is fortified like a sacred sculpture and supported by pillars or suspensions. The Japanese call it Mottainai (conserving and respecting resources). It isn’t easy for me to slither around those roots, which hold strong enough to break my momentum.

Enough of the countryside, the cities must be more fragile with their egos and greed. I travel to the other end of this cultural paradox that is Tokyo, teeming with hi-tech indulgence and futuristic fashions. I encounter teamLab Planets, an immersive interplay of man, nature, art, technology and cosmic life as a single concert in continuum. The experience, as much as I hate to admit, is calming.

Nevertheless, shaking the town just a little, I reach Azabudai Hills, where the new teamLab Borderless is emerging as an ‘Ultrasubjective Space’. [In contrast to space that is created through, or cut out by lenses and perspective, it does not fix the viewer’s viewpoint, and the artwork space is continuous with the space of the viewer’s body]. With such sensitisation toward environmental oneness, I feel the powers of my rage waning. Run, I tell myself.

Next, Osaka greets me in an audacious graphic language. An octopus waves menacingly from neon signage in blinding Dotonbori and a savage 3D infant devours meaty bites on another billboard. Fearless teenagers rule this world. Terrified, I make a quick exit. 

I am defeated, time and again, by the impenetrable foundations of living, reverence of nature and revitalisation of cities. I stand testimony to the simple Japanese architectural practices that prepare its places and people for calamities, areas that have long served as sanctuaries of safety and most importantly the all-pervading, minimalist wisdom of ‘Ma’—a pause in time or emptiness in space—that creates open channels for rescue, breath, feeling and human connection. When all places present a way to discovery, creativity and non-materiality, where is the obstacle, the object and its objectification to destroy on the way? The only presence is possibility.

I realise that Japan’s core strength—its building bones of architecture and pulsating nerves of design, rooted in cells of profound philosophy and housed in an awe-inspiring skin of art—is unyielding even with all of its challenges. A land that is shaken often learns to stay still at its centre.

The two governing Japanese principles—Mono no aware or the realisation of the beauty of ephemera and Gaman, which is the will to persevere and endure in the face of all vicissitudes—are what I believe will help the nation on the path of recovery after my catastrophic visitation, much like the golden repair of Kintsugi filling the fissures I leave behind.