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Photographs by Masahisa Fukase
Atelier EXB, 2021. 192 pp., 7¼x10¼".
Everything she does is done with the seriousness of a grape juice stain. She’s never been to the zoo or on a train (Sasuke had experienced both). She thinks kisses are bites or that bites are kisses; I kiss her nose, she bites my nose. She has several names: Littlest, Xyla, Spidermouth — these are interchangeable, and she is just as happy to reply to one as to another.
After about 6 months Littlest never got any bigger, so she’s called Littlest. She’s got wood-hued splotches, so she’s called Xyla. Spidermouth… that name needs no explanation.
This is what it is to have a pet, in this case a cat. It’s a personality in the house. A character in your life different from other characters, but not by species — rather by choices, actions, the endearments of time and interpersonal relations, observations: joy, fury, sleepiness, and, even, sorrow, anger etc. Littlest is no laughing matter.
Character might be something built purely by interaction, just as much as it is of coding or upbringing. We seldom, if ever, speak of the ‘character’ of those who are strange to us; strangers are somehow neuter — characterless; and this is an aspect of their stranger-ness. We often imagine strangers as something easy to guess at, transparent bodies that we can see right through; while those we know are more likely to be mysterious by choices we never could have guessed them to make.
Spidermouth/Xyla/Littlest is mysterious and exact both, because she’s familiar.
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So, why ramble about a cat who is, after all, in no book whatsoever? Because I want to talk about two cats who were infuriatingly and endearingly close to the photographer who brought them up, loved them, and ultimately captured something of their spirit and of his own; are we not reflections of those with whom we have invested our time? Human or other form of animal; living or dead? I think very much that — yes, we are.
Sasuke and Momoe. Siblings by upbringing. The book Sasuke covers both cats’ lives. We see them daringly climb to impossible heights. We see them attacking pencils. We see them yawning. We see them stuck to the window screen like an odd bat. We see them with a routine of human-inspired faces: angry, confused, sleepy, overanxious, frightened, complete passed out. Fukase, like a loving parent, captures all their moments. And, that’s just what’s curious about the series. Curious and wonderful. The cats aren’t presented like animals, but like children; their every moment a development, a movement forward, a memorable experience — an annal of the family Fukase.
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We anthropomorphize our pets. We lay our emotions about them as if they will seep into their intelligence, and then demand that they exhibit aspects of our way of thinking and expressing. But, this is senseless — senseless as trying to understand anyone: dog, crow, person, or even entities like schools, communities, and companies. We see them as we are, making the choices we’d make or defying those choices and weigh them constantly against our own selves (or, perhaps, our presumed selves).
I am reminded of Montaigne who I paraphrase, Do people ever appear more insane than when talking about their pets or their kids. Sasuke is a book of paternal mania. A chronicle of obsession. A printed form of talking too much. But, this is a good thing. Sasuke is two very rich character sketches. It is also, and I’ve seen so so so many of them, the best cat-as-subject photobook in memory.
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Christopher J Johnson is a poet and writer living in Santa Fe. He is the author of &luckier, from the center for literary publishing. He is currently manager of photo-eye’s Book Division.