Jardins de rue au Japon (2010): Michel Butor and Olivier Delhoume Growing a Photo-text

In Jardins de rue au Japon (2010), colour photographs of community street gardens taken in major Japanese cities by Olivier Delhoume coexist alongside a long poem by Michel Butor. This paper explores this photo-text as an intermedial space where gardening is portrayed not only as a form of rebellion against urban encroachment but also as an act of care that nurtures communal ties.
After reviewing Butor’s relationship with gardening, horticulture and botany through a brief survey of his works dealing with those topics, I will examine how gardening is represented as a practice of resistance and care to sketch out the ethical potential of intermediality.
Furthermore, this paper explores the concepts of machizukuri (city-building) and kizuna (interpersonal bonds) and their treatment in Jardins de rue au Japon. I will show how the representation of such participatory approaches to urban development highlights the role of residents in shaping their environments to reclaim urban spaces and enhance community resilience.
Additionally, the paper addresses the motility of art forms, particularly how photography and poetry together “sow” temporal narratives, allowing past, present, and future to converge around acts of gardening. This reflects Butor’s view of photography as capturing moments that can later “bloom” through reflective engagement.
Lastly, the aesthetic dimension of the photo-text is considered within the context of Japan’s vulnerability to natural disasters like earthquakes, inviting a rethinking of aesthetics in terms of transience and transformation, in resonance with the cyclical nature of growth inherent in both gardening and life.