A friend of mine from the upcycling fashion sector in Hong Kong recently received funding to come to Japan to study creative reuse techniques for fashion design. My friend approached me for recommendations on where to go and what to see in Japan. The first place that I instantly thought about wasn’t the old stores that have been passed down and run for generations, but Shobu Gakuen, a special centre for people with physical and mental challenges in Kagoshima.

I first saw handicrafts from Shobu Gakuen in a selected shop called 22 in Nagoya. The owner of 22 is a dashing lady in her fifties or sixties, always dressed in fashion items from Italian fashion designer Daniela Gregis. Her store sells clothes from Daniela Gregis, ceramic works from Korean ceramist Hono Kim, and second-hand art books from all over the world. Among her collections, there are also handicrafts made by students at Shobu Gakuen, such as wagami (traditional Japanese paper), lacquerwares, etc. Originally, I didn’t know that these handicrafts were all made by people with physical and mental challenges. They looked rough but powerful to me, radiant with recklessness and free spirit. They don’t provide conventional functions that people normally expect. But they do provide appreciators with inexplicable entertainment. There was a stack of wagami with the size of a business card in the store. These wagami were so thick that you can’t even bend them. The rough surface of the wagami also made impossible for people to write on them. But these won’t make people walk away. Instead, the thickness stands for quality and is what makes wagami special. The lacquerwares from Shobu Gakuen are equally rough, drastically different from the delicate lacquerwares that Japan has. But wagami and lacquerwares are only small parts of the works produced by students at Shobu Gakuen. They also paint, do woodworking, ceramics, stitchwork and more. Their works are all vibrant with overwhelming energy.

Shobu Gakuen was established in 1973. The current president of the academy is Shin Fukumori. After taking over the academy from his father, Shobu Gakuen had gone through a series of major changes. At conventional centres for people with physical and mental challenges, the students are required to produce handicrafts that meet the conventional standards. While in Shobu Gakuen, it doesn’t require its students to stitch straight lines on fabrics or pack a fixed number of candies into a bag. There are no repetitive works such as putting disposable chopsticks into bags either. Fukumori was seen as a rebellious kid in the past. He strongly disagreed with the disciplinary management at conventional centres for people with physical and mental challenges. From his perspective, these centres should not just allocate repetitive works to their students and set a fixed schedule that tells them when to take a shower and when to go to bed. The rationale behind this is very simple: he himself cannot strictly follow that schedule either. He believes that the ideal lifestyle for the students is being able to do things they like and live freely. That’s why he gradually set up different handicraft workshops at the academy. For instance, there are now workshops on woodworking, ceramics, stitching, wagami and painting at the academy for students to attend. Apart from that, he also set up a gallery to showcase handicrafts made by the students, a bakery, soba place, pasta restaurant, and a handicraft store in the academy. In addition, a big grassland and animal farm are now available for public visitation at the academy. A centre for people with physical and mental challenges has since become a hiking destination for residents from the neighbouring communities and visitors from other cities in Japan.

Everyone will be amazed by the creative strength that Shobu Gakuen possesses when they first come here. The stitching workshop is the most impressive one for me and I can still recall how hard the overwhelming sensation hit me when I first visited there. Around 20 students of Shobu Gakuen were busy with their stitch work. Their stitching techniques do not follow any particular rules. They simply stitched however they liked. Some would use thick cotton threads and made raw stitching. Some were obsessed with tassels. They would caress the tassels while making small balls out of rags, calling them neko (kitties). When the students are making handicrafts, they don’t really have a particular vision for the production process. They are doing it simply because they are obsessed with the movements. They will just keep pulling the thread through the fabric, stitching threads of different colours. Through this process, they create works that are impossible to define.

In fact, there are also other centres in Japan that are dedicated to encouraging people with physical and mental challenges to establish characters and create freely. For example, there are the Nemunoki Academy in the Shizuoka Prefecture and the AtelierCORNERS, which was kickstarted by the mothers of people with physical and mental challenges in Osaka. Besides that, there is also Diversity in the Arts, an organisation focuses on helping people with physical and mental challenges publish their works. Diversity in the Arts has opened several galleries in Japan.

Works created by students from organisations such as the Shoubu Gakuen, Nemunoki Academy and AtelierCORNERS have been exhibited by galleries all around the world. For instance, works from Shobu Gakuen have been showcased at Tokyo’s Shishido Gallery, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, etc. Handicrafts from people with physical and mental challenges naturally attract visitors. But the most appealing elements here are the brutally genuine art expression and the personality radiated from those works. These are the characters that most artists and creators will gradually lose as they progress along their career path.