In this special feature of Griffin State Of Mind, artist Takako Kido speaks to Vicente Cayuela about touch, intimacy, and motherhood of her heartwarming project Skinship.
In the opening sentence of ‘Too Much Mother Love,’ a chapter in his bestselling parenting book, Psychological Care of Infant and Child, the “father” of behaviorist psychology John B. Watson asserts that “there is a sensible way of treating children.” However, some of his views on love and affection appear rather unconventional. “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap,” he says, emphasizing the remarkable disciplinary impact of emotional detachment. His advice culminates with the suggestion to limit physical touch to a single goodnight kiss on the forehead. And even this gesture is suggested only if absolutely necessary.
Watson’s stringent child-rearing techniques set the standard for much of childcare literature in the US during the peak of scientific parenting in the early 20th century.1 They influenced the upbringing of numerous generations of children, including his own. Raised in a disciplined environment lacking physical warmth, two of his children made suicide attempts, and tragically, one of them lost their life. On her autobiography, Watson’s granddaughter, Mariette Hartley, would later recall how her grandfather’s theories on childrearing permeated her mother’s life, her life, and ”the lives of millions.”
Today, our understanding has deepened regarding the critical role of tactile interaction in every aspect of human development. We have come to recognize the profound and potentially devastating consequences of the absence of physical touch and affection. Stemming from a deep concern for generations that endured a deficiency of this vital intimacy, Takako Kido’s Skinship project emerges as a compassionate endeavor. Its primary goal is twofold: to restore more affectionate child-rearing practices in her own home and to act as a safeguard against the erosion of skin-to-skin cultural traditions in Japanese families at large.
Drawing attention to our prejudices around parenthood and home-making, Kido’s work holds tremendous significance. Not only is it a call to foster a deeper appreciation and cross-cultural comprehension of the human significance of skin. Touch, which taps into our most primal senses, also opens up a warm pathway for social change and, in the long run, nurtures emotionally healthier homes and individuals.
Takako Kido was born in Japan in 1970. She received a B.A. in Economics from SokaUniversity in Japan in 1993 and graduated from ICP full-time program in 2003. She has exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions internationally including Foley Gallery in New York, Sprengel Museum Hannover in Germany, Noam Gallery in Korea, Newspace Center for Photography in Oregon, Sendai City Museum in Japan. Her work has also been featured in publications and web magazines internationally. She was one of a Photolucida Critical Mass 2021 Top 50 photographers and also a finalist of GommaPhotography Grant 2021. In 2022, she received a grant from Women Photograph and was awarded the LensCulture Summer Open 2022 winner. She is currently based in her hometown, Kochi in Japan.
Griffin State of Mind: Takako Kido (2023 Arnold Newman Prize For New Directions In Photographic Portraiture Finalist)
Vicente Cayuela: Takako, congratulations for your well-deserved recognition as a finalist in the 2023 Arnold Newman Prize. Could you share with us the emotional motivation behind Skinship?
Takako Kido: I see so much beauty in ordinary everyday life. I want to safeguard those moments in my photography, much like collecting treasures in a box. I began taking self-portraits and family portraits constantly after my son was born in 2012. My motivation was to preserve these moments and document the growth of my son, the changes in my parents and us, and the emotions we shared when we were together. My son is growing up day by day. We all are getting older. We will never be able to have the same moment again. I felt I couldn’t lose those moments.
VC: Skinship captures these emotions beautifully. The word “skinship” is very interesting, too. Can you elaborate on its history and why it’s so significant for family bonds and child development?
TK: In 1953, during a World Health Organization seminar on maternal deprivation, an American teacher introduced the term “skinship” to describe the physical closeness between working mothers and their children. The teacher emphasized the vital role of skinship in nurturing children’s mental well-being. Dr. Nobuyoshi Hirai, a pediatrician and developmental psychologist in attendance, found this lecture about skinship inspiring. At that time, traditional Japanese parenting practices emphasized maintaining intimate physical bonds, and Dr. Hirai had no immediate concerns about Japanese children.
However, with the post-war introduction of Western parenting styles in Japan, these traditional practices gradually lost popularity. By the 1970s, the deterioration in mother-child relationships and the rise of mental illness in children became evident. Dr. Hirai and other experts recognized the need to restore intimate communication within families and reintroduced the concept of “skinship” as a means to foster these connections. Eventually, the term found its way into the Japanese language.
Before World War Two, Japan was a nation with a strong tradition of breastfeeding. Families traditionally co-slept and maintained intimate physical bonds. However, the rapid economic growth and westernization after the war had a significant impact on childrearing practices . . . Hospital births became mainstream, and formula feeding became widespread, discouraging mother-baby co-sleeping.
Dr. Hirai observed a connection between the lack of skinship and the deterioration of the mother-child relationship. . . . These changes brought about confusion, a generation gap, and the remnants of a colonial legacy. Even today, younger generations in Japan are less likely to practice co-sleeping, highlighting the importance of appreciating Japanese traditions and the benefits of skinship. Without this appreciation, the practice of skinship may continue to diminish in Japanese society.
VC: Can you share a specific moment captured in your work that holds special significance for you in terms of skinship?
TK: I really like this image because this is a very honest skin-to-skin moment for me and my son. This is called “twiddling”. My son was a twiddler when he was breastfed since he was little. So, this can be a kind of breastfeeding picture for us. I carefully considered whether to include it as part of my “skinship” series. I questioned if this image might be deemed unacceptable in Western culture, even as a work of art. Answering this question was a challenge for me because of my Japanese perspective. While capturing images, I tend to preserve everything I see. However, during the editing process, I deliberate extensively. I grappled with the dilemma of finding the right balance. If I reveal too much, it might be too overwhelming for Western audiences, yet if I reveal too little, I fear that the essence of “skinship” may not be effectively conveyed. So, this image is a kind of parameter for me.
Also, how Westerners and Japanese perceive this image differs significantly. Western observers tend to concentrate on the child’s nudity and the intimate skin-to-skin connection between the child and an adult, which is a common concern, as you’re aware. In contrast, for Japanese viewers, the sight of a naked child is unremarkable as it’s a part of everyday life and nothing extraordinary. Instead, their focus shifts to my own exposed body.
In the context of Japanese society, which is traditionally patriarchal, it might be considered scandalous for a wife and mother to display nude self-portraits. Some individuals have questioned me, asking, “Is it appropriate to depict your nudity in the image?” My response has consistently been affirmative. However, the underlying concern often revolves around whether my husband is comfortable with my decision to exhibit these images. This image holds a unique place in my project “skinship” because there is such a different response from both cultures.
VC: You mention in your project statement that skinship was natural to you as a Japanese individual. Would you be willing to share personal experiences or cultural influences that have profoundly shaped your understanding of this concept and its significance in your life?
TK: I had never given much thought to the concept of “skinship” until I was arrested in New York due to these family snapshots. In Japanese culture, practices like co-bathing and co-sleeping were second nature to us. When I was a child, my mother would place our futons side by side. My sister and I would sleep between our parents, a practice known as “kawa no ji” in Japanese, which literally translates to sleeping in the shape of the letter “川” and is akin to spooning in English.
Additionally, co-bathing was a daily occurrence in our household. Due to the depth of traditional Japanese bathtubs, it was considered unsafe for a small child to bathe alone, so I would bathe with one of my parents or grandparents. This practice of co-bathing is a significant responsibility for parents in Japan. While bathing together, a child and a parent would sometimes wash each other’s bodies, and we would immerse ourselves in the hot water, leading to natural skin-to-skin contact. When these practices are part of everyday life, the idea of nudity within the family and skin-to-skin contact becomes commonplace. We cherish both intimate communication and hygiene during our bathing rituals.
I remember I stopped co-bathing with my father when I was 10. A friend of mine asked me, “Are you still co-bathing with your father?” and I suddenly felt embarrassed about it. There is no certain age limit for co-bathing or co-sleeping. It depends on the children. Sometimes high school kids still share the bath with parents in Japan.
VC: You mention that the arrest in NYC really made you think about how alien skinship might be for people from other cultures, especially in the West.
TK: [When] I dropped off the color film at the drugstore . . . there were images of family nudity and skinship. My husband’s son from his previous marriage visited us in New York during his summer break from Japan. He was 10 at that time. He was daddy’s boy but they had lived separately since his son was 3. After spending a month with us, he wanted to live with us in New York. His mother and us agreed and we became like an instant family.
My husband and his son often played naked together after taking a bath. I thought they were catching up the days they couldn’t see each other by doing skinship. When my husband had to work late, I co-bathed with his son because he didn’t want to bathe alone. For us, nakedness within our instant family meant we were getting closer as a family.
I and my husband’s son took pictures with my point-and-shoot camera in our everyday life just for fun. At that time, I was working on my black and white project with my Rolleiflex. So, the pictures we made were different from my artwork. They were just family snapshots for us. But the drug store called the police and they didn’t care about the intention. What they insisted was that taking pictures of a naked child itself was a crime.
Love of the family is the same. It is universal. Trying to protect children is also the same. When I was arrested, everyone was trying to do the right thing, I believe. But how we viewed skin-to-skin and nakedness was very different. We didn’t know each other because it was something going on at home privately. Mothers and motherhood as well as child-rearing, those domestic things had been overlooked and unseen until recently. So, I want to show my project as much as I can for a better understanding of these differences.
By photographing skinship, which might be an unfamiliar or unacceptable relationship in western society, I am trying to capture the universal feeling through skinship; love, intimacy, warmth, softness, tenderness, peacefulness, the feeling of security, which is essential to everyone. How and when you feel those feelings could be different depends on the different cultures and backgrounds. Through my work, I really hope we could understand and accept our differences and similarities. Also, if my work could give people the opportunity to think about how they view skin-to-skin and the benefit of it, I would be very happy. The benefit of touch or skinship is for everyone.
VC: How did that experience alter your creative process and the way you documented skinship withing your family?
TK: After the arrest, I carried unfamiliar discomfort within me. Though I didn’t know why at that time, I discarded all my dresses and lingerie that could possibly be perceived as provocative. Back in Japan, I gave birth to my son in 2012. Motherhood liberated me from constraints and the sense of shame for my body that I got from the arrest and the hypersexualization of the female body. It allowed me to start making self-portraits and definitely affected how I made them. I think I became more honest and straightforward.
While breastfeeding, when my son looked at me, it felt as if I were being observed by myself. I felt a feeling of oneness that I never experienced with another person. The act of nourishing a human being from my own body and watching him grow was an experience that awakened a primal power within me as a mother. I breastfed him whenever and wherever necessary, without any sense of embarrassment of exposing my breasts to others. As I protected and nurtured my child, all feelings of shame and ego were washed away.
VC: May I ask how photographing these moments has served as a source of healing for you, especially in the context of your old family wounds?
TK: My mother was not very much a skinship person. She was always busy and didn’t seem to have time for her kids. Though I remember we co-bathed and co-sleeped when I was small, I don’t remember any cuddling or hugging. She never said she loved me. She said she didn’t like a crying child when I was crying, and didn’t hug me to comfort me. Discipline was the most important for her, so we were not very close. I can tell now she was not good at expressing her love. But at that time, as a child, I misunderstood. I thought I wasn’t loved by my mother. That idea had made me suffer for a long time until I had my own son and understood motherhood. That is why I think skinship is very important. I am trying to give my son what I wanted but was not given. My son knows he is loved so much and that is very important for his emotional stability and happiness. Working on this project as I look at my son growing healthy and happy is like proof or confirmation for me that skin-to-skin relationship is the right thing for us and that skinship works. He knows he is loved, he has the place to come back whenever he feels uneasy or sad. He can get some rest and go out to his world again with love and energy. Skinship can give a child that kind of place. Also, the busy days of taking care of a child and being a photographer at the same time made me not focus on the memories which could depress me. I didn’t have time to stop and look back. I just tried to do things in front of me that I had to do for both child-raring and working on the project, and tried to move forward. That became my custom.
VC: You mentioned your late grandmother’s wisdom about the cycle of life and death. How has becoming a mother provided you with a deeper understanding of this cycle, and how does it inform your artistic work and perspective on life?
TK: As I raise my child, I learn how to accept my aging and mortality. I got gray hairs, wrinkles, and my body is not like it used to be anymore. By giving birth to children and raising them, I think mothers are giving some of their years to them. But it is ok, if my son is growing up healthy and happy. I can get old, I can die. He is more important than my life. When I photograph my son and my parents being so close, I am so happy but at the same time, I realize it’s not long until I have to say goodbye to my parents. But it is also ok. I cannot die before them because it makes them too sad. Because we all will die some day, if we can die in order, from an older one, and the new one can be born and grow healthy, it would be a happy cycle of life and death. That is what my grandmother meant and I understood it by becoming a mother. Memento Mori makes me keep working.
VC: What future directions or themes do you foresee exploring in your work?
TK: As I researched about skinshp, I realized the culture of bathing in Japan was also very unique. Japan opened the door to western countries in 1854. Around that time, there was the widespread practice of mixed-gender bathing in public bathhouses. It was a huge surprise for westerners. They came to look at “Konyoku” (mixed bathing) like sightseeing. At the same time, they told governments to prohibit mixed bathing in public bathhouses and public nudity because they thought it was such a promiscuous behavior.
In response to complaints from foreigners, the Meiji government prohibited mixed bathing in public bathhouses and public nudity. However, the Japanese tradition of co-bathing at home continued. We still hold onto the practice of “Hadaka-no-tsukiai”(naked association), where we engage in activities like visiting onsen (hot springs) with family, friends or colleagues as a means of nurturing stronger bonds. Also, there are still some mixed bathing hot springs. So I want to explore the culture of bathing in Japan.
Vicente Cayuela is a Chilean multimedia artist working primarily in research-based, staged photographic projects. Inspired by oral history, the aesthetics of picture riddle books, and political propaganda, his complex still lifes and tableaux arrangements seek to familiarize young audiences with his country’s history of political violence. His 2022 debut series “JUVENILIA” earned him an Emerging Artist Award in Visual Arts from the Saint Botolph Club Foundation, a Lenscratch Student Prize, an Atlanta Celebrates Photography Equity Scholarship, and a photography jurying position at the 2023 Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in the Massachusetts region. His work has been exhibited most notably at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, PhotoPlace Gallery, and published nationally and internationally in print and digital publications. A cultural worker, he has interviewed renowned artists and curators and directed several multimedia projects across various museum platforms and art publications. He is currently a content editor at Lenscratch Photography Daily and Lead Content Creator at the Griffin Museum of Photography. He holds a BA in Studio Art from Brandeis University, where he received a Deborah Josepha Cohen Memorial Award in Fine Arts and a Susan Mae Green Award for Creativity in Photography.
- Gregory, C 2011, ‘Skinship Touchability as a virtue in East-Central India’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 179-209. ↩︎
