沼影市民泳池 Numakage Public Swimming Pool

For over 50 years Numakage, a public swimming pool complex called the “ocean” within a landlocked city in the suburbs of Tokyo, has served as a much-loved place for the elderly to improve their health, as a leisure facility for children and families, and as a meeting place for gay men. However, the urban development plan forces the pool to be demolished, ignoring the opposition of many residents and generating a sense of loss in the community. With Numakage Public Swimming Pool, Shingo Ota explores the nature of grief by using five psychological processes of denial, anger, negotiation, depression, and acceptance, as examined by the psychiatrist Kübler-Ross, and questions the importance of loss usually associated with human death only.