Joyful paintings in "Japan Envisions the West"


A group of maps sets the stage for Part I of "Japan Envisions the West: 16th-19th Century Japanese Art from the Kobe City Museum." They demonstrate the distortions of scale and location lodged in people's minds when European interactions with Japan began in the late 16th century. The collection of painted screens and scrolls, woodblock prints and assorted decorative arts highlights the early cultural exchange between Japan and the West and celebrates the 50th anniversary of the sister-city agreement between Kobe and Seattle.

A lovely woodblock print by the great 19th-century master Hokusai stands as a perfect emblem of the show. "Two Ladies Looking through a Telescope," from a series called "Fanciful Presentation of Seven Useless Habits," shows traditional Japanese women in their kimonos and manufactured hairdos mesmerized by the magic of an imported telescope. That image may seem incongruous, but stranger things crop up.

From distortions of place, "Japan" goes on to document the odd (and occasionally monstrous) cultural hybrids born when European painting and decorative styles began mingling with their Eastern counterparts. Japanese artists dabbled in the strange medium of oil paint and pondered such curious Western inventions as hot-air balloons and locomotives, and the unfathomable behavior of a Dutch man and wife who walk together arm in arm down the street. And what about those weirdly assembled white faces, with their pale hair and curly beards? The net effect of the artworks is a floating sense of dislocation. Where are we?

A 17th-century "Comptoir with Landscape Design" survives as a kind of cultural battle-of-the-bands that takes furniture design to new heights of ostentation. The Japanese-made lacquered-wood chest begins sanely with a spare and lovely gold and black landscape image. But that gets gussied up with a regiment of golden metal hinges. Then some Dutch craftsman apparently got hold of the piece and added a carved wooden stand so over-the-top with curves, flowers, frills and gold that the whole thing ends up resembling Cinderella's fairytale carriage.

What's on display now is the first segment of a two-part show. It ends Nov. 25. Beginning Nov. 30, SAM will host a two-day international symposium with presentations by Dutch, Japanese and American scholars. On Dec. 1, Part II of the exhibition will open to the public.

Beckoning from the adjacent galleries is the joyful exhibition "Gaylen Hansen: Three Decades of Painting," spotlighting more than 30 of Hansen's big, exuberantly colored, tacked-to-the-wall canvases. The casual presentation, which moves chronologically from the 1970s to the present, is part of their charm.

Hansen, who has lived in Palouse, Wash., since 1957, is one of the state's most admired and original painters. In a recent interview with The Times, Hansen talked about his early interest in illustrated books and how a copy of the novel "Don Quixote" made a big impression on him as a boy. It's nice to keep that famously misguided Spanish adventurer in mind as you wander through Hansen's show. Kernal Bentleg, a recurring character, stands as a sort of alter ego for the artist and roams the Palouse countryside on horseback in very quixotic way. There's a mythological undertow to the work even at its most humorous. The Kernal often finds himself face to face with the overwhelming force of nature, embodied in plagues of grasshoppers the size of porpoises, or a buffalo built like a tank.

Even Hansen's recent simple still lifes resonate with some kind of subversive meaning. One of my favorites is the 2003 "Yellow Jar and Glove," which is just that. A yellow jar with a dark lid standing shoulder to hip with a nearly black work glove. Just a jar and a glove, in a pool of yellow light with a pale shadow extending straight right, and a darker yellow line, like an escaped part of the painted frame, underscoring the image — so tense and unfathomable, so hard to turn away from.

Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Fearing divorce, Japanese men learn to say 'I love you'

TOKYO (AFP) — Perched on a beer case serving as a makeshift podium in central Tokyo, a group of middle-aged men are standing up to save their marriages -- and, they hope, marriage in Japan generally.

In a country where reticence about one's private life is the norm, these men are trying to prove their worth to their wives by making their vows as public as possible.

"I'm sorry I always forget to put the toilet seat down," said one man in a suit and tie confessed as he balanced on the beer box on a recent Saturday in Shimbashi, Tokyo's hub of "salaryman" corporate workers.

"I hereby declare that I will stop going to the hostess bar, I'm sorry," said another man as his wife looked on amid a crowd of curious bystanders.

Said another man: "I love you, even though I don't really say it."

The 20 men taking part in the unlikely rally chant their slogan together: "Say 'thank you' without hesitating. Say 'sorry' without being scared. Say 'I love you' without being shy."
The gathering is the brainchild of Shuichi Amano, a magazine editor in the southern city of Fukuoka and founder of the National Teishu-Kampaku Association, loosely translated as the Chauvinistic Husbands Association.

He started the group when, in 1999, he felt the need for drastic action to prevent his own marriage of more than 20 years from falling apart. He was then in his late 40s and found that many of his friends were also on the verge of marital breakdown and divorce.
In a social phenomenon that has even been turned into a popular television drama, a growing number of Japanese women have begun suing their husbands for divorce once the men retire. The aim of the women is to bring an end to longstanding marital problems caused by the indifference of their husbands as well as their incompetence in the home.
"Many husbands are making a living managing risks at their businesses, but they neglect the ones at home," Amano, now 55, told AFP.

"The old ways don't work anymore and we husbands have to get out of our little fantasy of having ultimate power over our wives. We have to show our ability to change ourselves for the sake of our marriage," he said.

"Marriage is like a triathlon to love one person throughout the race. Winning or losing isn't important -- you have to overcome every bump on the way to complete the race."
Amano tried to devote himself to pleasing his wife by doing laundry and dishes and, he admitted, pretending to listen when she chatted even if the conversation did not interest him.
Through his own interviews with women, Amano said he found that everything boiled down to the desire of wives to hear their husbands say "three magic phrases" more often: "Thank you," "Sorry," and "I love you".

He describes his technique in saving marriages as "smileage" -- husbands accumulating the goodwill of their wives. Even in his own case, he said, the words seemed empty at first, coming as they did from a man who throughout his life had rarely displayed any emotion.
"My wife was pretty suspicious of my change at the beginning but after a couple of years, I believe that she has regained her smile," Amano said.

The association brings members together to exchange experiences about marriage, with public events that build confidence.

Teruo Manabe, a 67-year-old who recently joined in the hope of preserving "family harmony," said he had learned to compliment his wife in front of others.
"I believe people from the older generations like myself should take a lead in change," he said.
His wife, Shinko Manabe, said she saw the differences.

"He now easily says thank you, and has started saying sorry as well, but I still don't hear him saying he loves me," she said with a smile.

Divorce has steadily become more common in Japan, although the rate remains well below that in most Western countries. Middle-aged divorce is particularly on the increase, with more than 45,000 couples married for more than 20 years divorced in 2002 -- three times the level of three decades ago, according to the welfare ministry.

Japan's divorce rate is widely expected to rise as the baby-boomer generation prepares to retire.

A change in the law this year entitles divorced women to receive part of their former husbands' pensions. The pension system is under increasing pressure as Japan's population rapidly ages, with many young people choosing to delay starting families.

Amano said the root of the problem lay in the fact that many older men had been raised to be bread-winners and to believe their wives, like their mothers, should take care of the home without complaint.

More than 80 percent of married women, regardless of whether they work outside the home or not, say they do most of the housework, including cooking, cleaning and washing, according to a recent survey by the state-run National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
Amano said young people in Japan are increasingly growing up in school and work environments in which men and women are considered equal. But he said real change in society, including the declining rate of marriage, would not come about without a broader change in households, along with the workplace.

"Nowadays there's a sense in society that it's supposed to be gender-equal," Amano said. "But I believe that if husbands change, then families will change, and then Japan as a whole would change."

His association now includes some 4,000 members nationwide -- an astonishing number given that some of the things they pledge to do, such as publicly apologising for not replacing the toilet seat, are emasculating for even the most modern-minded Japanese male.

And none of the members, who vary in age from their 20s to their 60s, have divorced, Amano said, having learned to survive and overcome many problems -- from communication breakdown to nastier situations including fights in front of their children, a complete end to their sex lives and extramarital affairs.

The group has set up 10 levels to determine good husbands. The first level is the husband simply believing that he is still in love with his wife.

Amano, despite spearheading the group, acknowledged that he has only reached level five -- being able to walk hand-in-hand with his wife.

He said he is still working to get to level 10: not feeling shy when he says, "I love you."
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