A Kendama is a toy with which one plays on a worldly scale, against the very gravity of the earth. In extending one’s awareness towards the “earth” that exists beyond the Kendama as a medium, the red ball was remade in the shape of an apple in keeping with Newton’s law of gravity. The Japanese notion of “association” that connects two things such as the “moon” and an “apple” that are superficially quite unalike one another, also bears links to a scientific image of the world founded upon the continued discovery of perspectives that transcend human perception and imagination.
By making the red ball into an apple, one came to consider how perhaps Kendama’s roots could be traced back to the game of capturing an apple that could fall at any time from the tree on the tip of a stick, leading perhaps to contemplating this risky game of challenging an unpredictable entity that exists between oneself and nature. Perhaps mankind created Kendama in various parts of the world and has continued to practice playing with it as a means to confront the unpredictable phenomena of the future?
