tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39577484116377490482024-02-20T12:49:46.357-08:00Art In JapanLearn about art in Japan, art schools in Japan, art colleges in Japan, music in Japan, modern Japanese art, classical Japanese art and all other things art in Japan!Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.comBlogger163125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-27003183870446686962013-03-11T08:45:00.000-07:002013-03-11T08:46:33.065-07:00Onsen in WinterThis beautiful photo is from the Takaragawa Onsen. Enjoying a hot, relaxing soak in the onsen while snow piles up around you is a "must-do" when in Japan. Don't you agree?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5ikuX-N4-V9T1-GH6Oqm9bkkRH2ZXDCzO_1pMLxaUmr2NWTt2_YewjROS32o8h5LHpKmL1-K82OjER6QffvIjCpus4QgKyLJtrvxLCwDkTAwN7vwgDQrH0mu-TLOkDRgzUlQwGTNtSp1/s1600/Onsen+Hot+Spring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Onsen" border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis5ikuX-N4-V9T1-GH6Oqm9bkkRH2ZXDCzO_1pMLxaUmr2NWTt2_YewjROS32o8h5LHpKmL1-K82OjER6QffvIjCpus4QgKyLJtrvxLCwDkTAwN7vwgDQrH0mu-TLOkDRgzUlQwGTNtSp1/s400/Onsen+Hot+Spring.jpg" title="Onsen in Winter" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-60531328876748300882012-11-08T09:07:00.000-08:002012-11-08T09:07:46.734-08:00Taking A Look At The Classical Fighting Art Of Yabusame<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.kasama.or.jp/english/yabusame/img/yabusame01.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://www.kasama.or.jp/english/yabusame/img/yabusame01.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
It is a little known fact that before the samurai of ancient Japan incorporated the sword into their martial arts training, the samurai practiced the classical fighting arts of the bow. The Japanese martial art of shooting a bow with incredible accuracy while on horseback became known among the samurai as "The Way of the Horse and Bow". In the true fashion of the Japanese culture, they no doubt took a cue from the Mongolians and improved what another culture had to offer.<br />
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The bow has become a ritual rather than a practical instrument in Japanese martial arts training. Introduced to the culture in ancient times, it was different from the European bow from which it was derived. The main difference is the handgrip.<br />
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In Japanese classical fighting arts, the handgrip of the bow is placed closer to the bottom of the bow tip rather than halfway in between. This makes the top section of the Japanese bow slightly longer than the bottom for a different type of feel.<br />
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Up until the 4th Century, archers were considered infantry and traveled on foot. It wasn't until much later, during the 10th Century, that the bowmen took to horseback and martial arts training in the bow became an elite sport of the samurai.<br />
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From 1192 to 1334, the Kamukura Period, archery on horseback was used as a part of the samurai's martial arts training to keep them in shape during peacetime.<br />
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Over time, this form of archery went from a form of martial arts training to a highly ritualized Japanese martial art: the art of Yabusame. It was believed that each time the arrow struck its target, the energy of the hit and the courage of the rider would be transferred to the audience, and most of all, the gods.<br />
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Yabusame today is a very serious ritual among the Japanese. The classical fighting arts of Japan all have something to do with ritual. In fact, there is not one aspect of Japanese culture not bound to tradition or ritual.<br />
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Yabusame takes the Japanese martial art of archery and sets it above all others, even that of the sword. This ritual is so sacred it is frequently performed on special occasions reserved for visiting dignitaries, royalty or presidents. At one time only the most skilled warriors were chosen to be Yabusame archers. This was, and still remains, a great honor.<br />
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Yabusame, one of the classical fighting arts, is still recognized in Japan. While only two schools in the country continue to teach Yabusame (Ogasawara and Takeda), there are still many skilled students carrying the tradition.<br />
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This Japanese martial art training skill still manages to entertain people during festivals and celebrations throughout the country. Though its use is considered more ritualistic and impractical, it will continue to have an appeal for many decades to come.<br />
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Knowing the art of <a href="http://martialarts.micronicherecommends.com/" target="_new">martial arts</a> is an asset for protection. Get more useful information about <a href="http://martialarts.micronicherecommends.com/Classical-Fighting-Arts.php" target="_new">classical fighting arts</a> from Mike Selvon's portal, and leave a comment at his <a href="http://www.mynicheportal.com/recreation-leisure/" target="_new">martial art</a> blog.<br />
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-4269368002320000842012-10-29T08:08:00.002-07:002012-10-29T08:08:39.394-07:00Japanese Historic Woodblock Prints<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsA4BSKsingkAYS-T5KbKPwT4wHg56ZwWQ4L25VuAW1YeggMSLt-xlR5lOIpE2Fa6t4vAPd7oI5uxLu6XpXPxL6GYNyG3CWwiR-rBmhOXMOhQJJm0ILaHzXFtHvWLshYVzIrGjg3TJLqCT/s1600/Japan-woodblock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Woodblock Print" border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsA4BSKsingkAYS-T5KbKPwT4wHg56ZwWQ4L25VuAW1YeggMSLt-xlR5lOIpE2Fa6t4vAPd7oI5uxLu6XpXPxL6GYNyG3CWwiR-rBmhOXMOhQJJm0ILaHzXFtHvWLshYVzIrGjg3TJLqCT/s320/Japan-woodblock.jpg" title="Japanese Woodblock" width="320" /></a></div>
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Unknown woodblock print from the 19th century</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPUMBpF92_YxSNScV4ZNN2ulNX72g7Z36AMg5WeyVOVubS5z1HMyD1eZutKb9VJDLzOboTuG8-4AXPnGDsmHjLx7Jig5P8I2b9HcvR64jo9JqWtY02oq_puoyNAu0dLojAR4qRGZMzdtNd/s1600/Tamamo-no-mae-woodblock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="japanese woodblock" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPUMBpF92_YxSNScV4ZNN2ulNX72g7Z36AMg5WeyVOVubS5z1HMyD1eZutKb9VJDLzOboTuG8-4AXPnGDsmHjLx7Jig5P8I2b9HcvR64jo9JqWtY02oq_puoyNAu0dLojAR4qRGZMzdtNd/s320/Tamamo-no-mae-woodblock.jpg" title="tatamo no mae" width="217" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: left;">Tamamo-no-Mae, the evil kitsune of Japanese legend. Woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, from </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: left;">New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: left;">. (1889-1892))</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_iejhyphenhyphenDuI_27hVHbQBwQLGIeWjDSyh5lR85NqE_I2_R8f12M_Se8BhGf8ve4GsJflocrw66lVoHdDNJ6I2hFeDwTZ30l66sJci33gqTZTVSOWyATvsXT1CHkQXpVz3-jkb-AxgOdUnHQj/s1600/Kitagawa_Shikimaro_ukiyoe_woodblock_print.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_iejhyphenhyphenDuI_27hVHbQBwQLGIeWjDSyh5lR85NqE_I2_R8f12M_Se8BhGf8ve4GsJflocrw66lVoHdDNJ6I2hFeDwTZ30l66sJci33gqTZTVSOWyATvsXT1CHkQXpVz3-jkb-AxgOdUnHQj/s320/Kitagawa_Shikimaro_ukiyoe_woodblock_print.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: start;">Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Kitagawa Shikimaro, </span><span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Japanese Edo era: 1600s-1800s</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkz3P3ixV8we_rIELf4s5ufLtAkg4CFiNTzhiE3r8HDwwze0mUMEHuc5KTfxP6IAYujxldBU_mC9abLTel1BAFvAqjZQfybLBqHs8DllEr0C0criE5e1f2nrNunZLgwti4S7-5FFjeUOl3/s1600/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Woodblock_Print_-_Utagawa_Kuniyoshi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkz3P3ixV8we_rIELf4s5ufLtAkg4CFiNTzhiE3r8HDwwze0mUMEHuc5KTfxP6IAYujxldBU_mC9abLTel1BAFvAqjZQfybLBqHs8DllEr0C0criE5e1f2nrNunZLgwti4S7-5FFjeUOl3/s320/Brooklyn_Museum_-_Woodblock_Print_-_Utagawa_Kuniyoshi.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px;">Woodblock print from the mid-1800's by artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi, original currently located in the Brooklyn Museum</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMwzLp1MdAcBlubNfm01eX8R7tx9dq15CUgF1fNpsUjM5ahtxpPNCvBgkgwwAW4V2Bh3SzAbhl1GwbQbEO-yH9pC2anI8abH7QKi_H5IZNt2ac883OPCDWhpyc1I1nzTZgL9JExty6q6V/s1600/Utagawa_Toyokuni_ukiyo-e_woodblock_print.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMwzLp1MdAcBlubNfm01eX8R7tx9dq15CUgF1fNpsUjM5ahtxpPNCvBgkgwwAW4V2Bh3SzAbhl1GwbQbEO-yH9pC2anI8abH7QKi_H5IZNt2ac883OPCDWhpyc1I1nzTZgL9JExty6q6V/s320/Utagawa_Toyokuni_ukiyo-e_woodblock_print.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.200000762939453px; text-align: start;">Utagawa Toyokuni's Edo period Ukiyo-e woodblock print</span></div>
Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-37682444129684854392012-10-23T07:45:00.000-07:002012-10-23T07:45:15.008-07:00Dominic Walsh Choreographs to Japanese Mythology in Uzume<strong style="background-color: #fcfcfc; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The set-up:</strong><br />
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This past weekend, Dominic Walsh Dance Theater presented the world premiere of <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Uzume</em>, a collaboration with Asia Society Texas Center that showcased the talents of taiko master Kensaku Satou and DWDT staples Domenico Luciano and Hana Sakai.</div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The execution:</strong></div>
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<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Uzume</em> is inspired by the Japanese myth of how light was brought back into the world. When the storm god Susanowo wreaks havoc on the earth, his sister, the sun goddess Ameterasu, becomes distraught and hides herself inside a cave. There is no convincing Ameterasu to leave her sanctuary until she is captivated by a strange noise. The sound is Uzume, the goddess of the dawn, dancing madly on a wooden tub. Intrigued, Ameterasu leaves her cave, thus bringing light to the world of darkness. It's no wonder that Walsh has turned to this story for inspiration; in this narrative, it is dance that brings light to the world.</div>
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The movement is spellbinding. Luciano and Sakai emerge from the <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">washi</em> set design as if they were breathing life into inanimate matter. Their bodies in the opening sequence are mangled and disjointed, each gesture accented with force, each turn of the head punctuated by a spasmodic pulse. Luciano's long body is perfect for the classical maneuvers and familiar poses of ballet that make up half of <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Uzume</em>'s choregraphy. But his magnetism is also a result of his superb attention to detail; what he conveys with his fingers and hands is more than what many dancers are able to convey through their whole bodies.</div>
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One of the most exciting sequences is a solo by Sakai that requires her to <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bourree</em> to the crescendos of the drum. While her feet move in rapid torrents, her upper body contracts and extends in unnatural, yet beautiful, shapes. She dances with verve and supernatural purpose, a swan possessed. The costume design intensifies the ballet/Japanese dance fusion of both Luciano and Sakai and masks the inherent strength of their performance. Moving across the tissue-papered stage, they give the impression of origami dancers set loose on restless wind.</div>
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Attention must be paid to the other half of this flawless equation. Taiko drummer Kensaku Satou is a whirlwind of a performer. Having no previous experience with taiko, I was under the assumption that a percussion form from Japan would be a meditative, zen-inducing affair. On the contrary, Satou drumming was an invigorating, life-giving force that not only accompanied the dance, but shaped it.</div>
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Taiko, at least Satou's performance of it, encapsulates beat, rhythm and melody. During one pulsating sequence, his drumming had an almost jazzy, funky flair, and he played directly to the audience. In this supremely enjoyable moment, Satou could have been a New Orleans street performer. He certainly has the swagger to match, and a smile bright enough to power the entire Asia Society complex, and then some.</div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The verdict:</strong></div>
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Mesmerizing. Even if the particulars of the Uzume myth are forgotten, the performances of Luciano, Sakai, and Satou will not be. <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Uzume</em> is like every other Dominic Walsh production: not just a dance concert, but an experience to be cherished forever.</div>
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<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The performance took place this weekend at the <a href="http://www.voiceplaces.com/asia-society-texas-center-houston-2928871-l/" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #3333cc; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Asia Society Texas Center</a>.</em></div>
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<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack/2012/10/dominic_walsh_choreographs_jap.php</em></div>
Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-3295528627037751292012-10-17T06:58:00.002-07:002012-10-17T06:58:21.941-07:00Matsuri celebrates Japanese culture<br />
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LIHU‘E — Matsuri translates to mean festivals, and during the Kanyaku Imin, or 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawai‘i, the Matsuri Kaua‘i was born.</div>
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“Last year, we didn’t have a Matsuri because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan,” Kaua‘i Film Commissioner Art Umezu said. “This year, the Japanese people vowed to return and the Matsuri, the 27th, was again held.”</div>
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Saturday, a steady throng of people flowed through the Kaua‘i War Memorial Convention Hall, hosted by the Kaua‘i Japanese Cultural Society, eager to experience the Japanese culture, including the familiar bento, Japanese dance, crafts, and this year, a newly-introduced Kendama skill contest.</div>
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The Kanyaku Imin was celebrated in 1985 and the Matsuri seed was nurtured by a group of dancers and karaoke singers to perpetuate the Japanese culture and strengthen Kaua‘i’s bond with the people of Japan, states a mayoral proclamation celebrating the Matsuri Kaua‘i 2012.</div>
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Mayor Kazuhiro Miyamoto of Moriyama City arrived with a dozen visitors, stopping to enjoy the ‘ukulele classes with the Lihu‘e Senior Center before joining Tsugio Kawashima in a tree planting ceremony at Kaua‘i High School to reinforce and solidify the Rotary Exchange Student program started by Kawashima who was one of the first people to call and offer help to Kaua‘i following the destruction of Hurricane ‘Iniki in 1992.</div>
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These sister city relationships between the County of Kaua‘i and Japan are also part of the Matsuri celebration, Mayor Miyamoto, enjoying his first trip to Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i, offering his greetings to Matsuri guests followed by a program of song and dance by its visitors.</div>
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The County of Kaua‘i currently enjoys sister city relationships between the City of Oshima-Gun, Yamaguchi Prefecture, the City of Ishigaki, Yaeyama Gunto, Ryukyu Islands, the City of Moriyama, Shiga, and the City of Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture.</div>
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In addition to the presentations of karaoka, dance, martial arts, taiko drumming, kimono kitsuke for adults and children, chado, or tea ceremony, origami, oshibana, mochi pounding, bonsai demonstrations, and a mini bon dance, two films were offered for free.</div>
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“Dale Rosenfeld just saw one of the films and was almost moved to tears,” said Sue Kanoho, executive director of the Kaua‘i Visitors Bureau.</div>
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Joyce Takahashi expressed a similar sentiment, referring to “Can You See Our Lights,” a chronicle of the efforts by residents of three northern Tohoku towns, Rikuzentaka, Soma and Minami Soma, as they repaired and rebuilt their lives following the earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan last year.</div>
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Despite the challenges the people faced, the townspeople banded together and continue to host their annual summer Obon festivals to honor the souls of the departed.</div>
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“Fukushima Hula Girls” follows a troupe of hula dancers from the Spa Resort Hawaiians, a large, Hawaiian-themed park in Iwaki City, as the dancers travel to the devastated areas in Japan, providing encouragement, joy and smiles.</div>
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Both films were offered at no charge to Matsuri Kaua‘i guests through the Kaua‘i Film Commission, the Office of Economic Development, and the Honolulu Japanese Consulate.</div>
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Matsuri Kaua‘i 2012 is brought to the people of Kaua‘i through the Kaua‘i Japanese Cultural Society, the county’s Office of Economic Development, the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority and the County of Kaua‘i to showcase the island’s different groups’ talents and to perpetuate the Japanese culture.</div>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-46139581695666430062012-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:002012-10-09T11:52:13.727-07:00Gardens in Japan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Arima Grand Hotel of Arima Onsen in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan</div>
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Enjoji in Nara, Nara prefecture, Japan</div>
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Byoodoo-in's Pheonix Hall in Uji, Kyoto prefecture, Japan</div>
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"Sorakuen" in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Japan</div>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0Japan36.204824 138.25292423.145487000000003 118.03808000000001 49.264161 158.467768tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-77534429049107118482012-09-19T12:01:00.000-07:002012-09-19T12:01:30.798-07:00Transient Salt Art Exhibits<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-UM782_JRTSAL_G_20120910050415.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-UM782_JRTSAL_G_20120910050415.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left;">Motoi Yamamoto’s salt installation called Floating Garden on display at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, S.C. in May 2012.</span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5em;">Most art gallery visits are more about don’ts than dos: Don’t touch, don’t lean too close, don’t use flash photography, don’t talk loudly, don’t run and so on. But Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto has a very different view about his exhibits. He doesn’t just want people to touch his delicate installations of salt, he wants people to sweep them up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">It’s all part of the creative art process, he says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Mr. Yamamoto’s monumental salt installations are delicately composed constructions that take hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds of salt to create. And at the end of each exhibit’s run, visitors are invited to literally get to work with a broom and collect salt for returning to the sea.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-UM788_salt1_HV_20120910054840.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-UM788_salt1_HV_20120910054840.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #242425; color: #e2e2e2; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px; text-align: left;">"Labyrinth" at the Bellevue Arts Museum during an exhibit from March to May 2012.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">This will be the case when Mr. Yamamoto’s exhibit at the Laband Art Gallery, which opened Sept. 8, in Los Angeles, closes in December. The exhibit is his first show on the U.S. West Coast. He has also held exhibits in Tokyo, Kyoto, Milan, Hamburg and Paris.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">It hasn’t always been this way. Mr. Yamamoto had been creating salt-based installations for nearly a decade before the idea crystallized of a formal ceremony to return the salt to the sea, back in 2006.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Before then, I resisted the idea of my art work getting broken up at the hands of other people. That’s probably because the inspiration behind the work – the reason why I use salt – is directly tied to my sister’s death,” said the Kanazawa-based artist. “Because of this connection, in my heart, I was reluctant to let other people intervene.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In 1994, the artist’s younger sister passed away from brain cancer. They were very close as she was the person who most understood his art, and her death, coming in his early years as an artist, had a huge impact on his work, he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">To cope with her death, Mr. Yamamoto turned his grief into elaborate art pieces made of salt, an item traditionally used in Japanese funeral rituals. His art has gone on to soothe his grief to the point where he felt able to invite the public to get involved in his installations and help return the salt he uses to the ocean. In this way his art has evolved into something that isn’t only about his sister’s death, but also celebrates life, he says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In creating his installations, Mr. Yamamoto transforms several tons of salt into intricate wonders of tiny detail: twisting crystalline labyrinths or unlikely canvases of cherry blossom petals. The detailed and mammoth scale of his work conveys vulnerability and a sense of loneliness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">His piece “Utsusemi,” recreated several times since its debut in 1998, is an architectural construction of a crumbling staircase. “It represented how much I missed my sister. I wanted to see her again, but it was impossible no matter how much I felt that way,” he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Working with salt in this way is a grueling process. During a previous exhibition this year at the Halsay Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Yamamoto spent about 100 hours hunched over with his salt-filled plastic bottle to create the installation on site. It took 10 hours a day for about as many days to make a swirling whirlpool-like image for the exhibit. “It’s like running a marathon,” he said, describing the exhausting process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Looking ahead, Mr. Yamamoto says he’s not ready to give up his penchant for salt just yet. “I’m not tired of it yet. But at the same time, I don’t think my medium has to be salt in the future. I’m open to other things,” he said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Mr. Yamamoto has experimented with photography and sketching, but is most widely known for his salt installations.</span></div>
<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/09/10/transient-salt-art-exhibits-sweep-up-when-you-leave-please/" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/09/10/transient-salt-art-exhibits-sweep-up-when-you-leave-please/</a>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-66306369462333916852012-09-05T12:53:00.000-07:002012-09-05T12:53:30.005-07:00Salaryman shares art collection tips<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Art collectors might be generally perceived as aristocrats who have amassed enormous wealth, but Daisuke Miyatsu breaks this stereotype. As a self-confessed "salaryman collector," the Japanese art addict has spent over 2 million yuan ($315,000) on more than 300 artworks including some by Olafur Eliasson, Nara Yoshitomo, Koki Tanaka and Paul McCarthy.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">On Saturday, Miyastu gave a lecture at the CAFA Art Museum detailing his personal experiences and offering advice to budding collectors.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Miyatsu, born in 1963 and a native of Ichikawa outside Tokyo, has collected art for the past 18 years. He told an eager, dozens-strong audience at the lecture that his fascination with contemporary art began when he saw works by American pop art pioneer Andy Warhol in high school. A chance encounter with famed Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in college fueled his desire to become an art collector. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Miyatsu, who works in public relations, is like many salarymen in Japan in that he rarely has time away from the office to indulge in hobbies, such as art. "Everyday I have to get up at 5 am and work until 9 pm. I use my free time for art research and collection," he explained.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Miyatsu is a pragmatic art collector, primarily because he knows his tastes must fall within his budget. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Patience is also a key virtue, he noted, explaining how he once waited 11 years to secure a window art installation by Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Miyatsu, who has never sold his collected pieces and finances his purchases from his salary, makes a point to always purchase certification of artworks. He has even built what he calls his "dream house" filled with books and art he has collected. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">As for his artistic philosophy, Miyatsu advises people to collect art that reflects society. Young artists' works hold the greatest appeal to the savvy salaryman, who in recent years has taken a particularly keen interest in video and new media from Taiwanese artists. "As a collector, I want to create something with artists," he said.</span>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-46607740914822087802012-08-27T06:48:00.001-07:002012-08-27T06:48:49.559-07:00Japanese floral arranging art features practical and spiritual aspects<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Whether hailing from East or West, people around the world don't hesitate to meditate on the beauty and spiritual power of flowers.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Ikebana, Japanese floral arranging with its emphasis on shape, line and form, has had an aesthetic secular appeal in the West.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">It's probably because of its simplicity and airy spacing of colorful blossoms, tiny ferns, palm fronds and dried twigs in vases or other containers.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">But Ikebana also has roots in Buddhism, a religion of the Far East. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">And that aspect may be harder to grasp or appreciate in a workshop.</span></div>
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<a href="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230043828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230043828.jpg" width="201" /></a></div>
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Artist Tamiko Laincz, a native of Japan, demonstrated that recently while creating floral arrangements for senior citizens at an art class workshop at the Heritage of Green Hills, a retirement community in Cumru Township.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">In a lecture and demonstration, it wasn't easy to convey both the practical and spiritual aspects of the floral art, but Laincz managed well either by studious intent or unself-conscious default.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Her handiwork elicited admiring comments from the seniors who witnessed her designing three distinct arrangements: one straight or upright, a second slanted or curvy and the third low and horizontal.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">When asked to pick a favorite arrangement, the more than dozen observers gravitated to different ones depending on whether they preferred large, colorful flowers; simple leaves and smaller flowers; or a more naturalistic look of plants and dried branches, twisting in nature, appearing to bend in a breeze and then forever frozen as if captured in a photographer's snapshot.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">For Laincz, 51, of Wynnewood, Montgomery County, there were practical artistic challenges in forcing stems to stand erect in needle bases or massaging leaves without breaking them, so they would more easily flow in certain directions.</span></div>
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<a href="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230041512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230041512.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">She was sometimes forced to prop up her artistic vision with green tape or wire hidden underneath low-lying leaves to achieve the natural look for which she was striving.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">All the while, she explained how the art of Ikebana in Japan is about 500 years old and was connected to Buddhism with monks using flowers to decorate altars.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">"Flowers have always been associated with spiritual enlightenment: the Buddha on the lotus, for instance," Laincz said. "But they also served as beautiful offerings."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Later in history, Laincz said, it became common for the Japanese to designate a sacred alcove in the home where a vase of flowers and sometimes incense and candles were prominently displayed.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">"Simple Ikebana (which means life flower or giving life to flowers) has certain rules, but is based on one simple vertical line, up and down," Laincz said. "And you always look at the arrangement from the front, not the back. While there are pretty flowers to see, eyes also are drawn to stems and leaves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">"There are not so many flowers filling all the space as is often the case in the Western style of arranging. Three, five or seven flowers maybe, with plenty of air between."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Laincz said water fills the bottom of containers, which also can be decorated with marbles or pebbles.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Over time, more freestyle forms of Ikebana developed such as horizontal and slanted, she said, and that led to associating the floral arranging more broadly with a meditative exercise, requiring concentration and silence, uniting body, mind and soul in a creative endeavor.</span></div>
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<a href="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230043826.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://readingeagle.com/REnetImages/2012/08/25/230658908/500x500_230043826.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">And that was Laincz's challenge, explaining Ikebana to others while actually doing it and experiencing its most personal requirements for individual creativity.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">What was required was to carefully study each leaf, twig and flower, to take the measure of their shapes and angles before carefully placing any of them in an arrangement.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">But Laincz seemed to achieve that goal when undertaking her second arrangement, the slanted design, where all her movements indicated she was doing what she felt. She was immersed in an artistic, meditative moment.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">How could one tell?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">The room was quiet. Laincz stopped lecturing. The minutes seemed to stretch.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Those who required talk looked away or whispered among themselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">And Laincz, suddenly self-conscious behind a floral delight, looked up, broke her concentration and politely apologized for a spiritual silence.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b3847; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Contact Bruce R. Posten: 610-371-5059 or bposten@readingeagle.com.</span>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-1678704756863518462012-08-22T09:17:00.001-07:002012-08-22T09:19:25.145-07:00This Awesome Robot Art Was Built With Broken Toys and Old Electronics<br />
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Andrea Petrachi is a sculptor. He doesn't use clay or marble. Instead, he creates with broken toys and discarded electronics, from electric shavers and audio connectors to old doll heads and figurine parts. His work is a mishmash of plastic and metal, joined in their common bond: they've been tossed aside for trash.</div>
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His work looks like the coolest mecha and robots Japanese anime never saw. With titles like "Otaku", the Japanese influence is undeniable—even if he doesn't always use Japanese electronics or toys—and it's no wonder his art is making its way through Japanese cyberspace.</div>
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For Petrachi, however, he thinks his work symbolizes our insatiable consumer appetite. From the vicious cycle of buying, breaking, and trashing, his art emerges.</div>
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Check out more of his work in the link below. Giuseppe Fogarizzu took all the wonderful photos in the above gallery.</div>
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<a href="http://www.andreapetrachi.com/portfolio________________________.html" style="border: 0px; color: #f6005c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Himatic</a> [Andrea Petrachi via <a href="http://gigazine.net/news/20120818-andrea-petrachi-robot/" style="border: 0px; color: #f6005c; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">GIGAZINE</a>]</div>
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<a href="http://kotaku.com/5936149/this-awesome-robot-art-was-built-with-broken-toys-and-old-electronics/gallery/1">http://kotaku.com/5936149/this-awesome-robot-art-was-built-with-broken-toys-and-old-electronics/gallery/1</a>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-32677737828791326412012-08-13T06:33:00.000-07:002012-08-13T06:33:18.895-07:00Japanese artist Kusama strikes deal with Louis Vuitton<br />
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Tokyo —<br />
Polka dots are Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama’s lifelong inspiration, obsession and passion.<br />
And so they’re everywhere — not only on canvases but on installations shaped like gnarled tentacles and oversized yellow pumpkins. As part of her retrospective on exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, they also sparkle as “firefly” light bulbs reflected on water and mirrors.<br />
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Kusama’s signature splash of dots has now arrived in the realm of fashion in a collection from French luxury brand Louis Vuitton — bags, sunglasses, shoes and coats.<br />
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“Polka dots are fabulous,” Kusama said in a recent interview with The Associated Press, looking much younger than her 83 years in a bright red wig, a polka dot dress she designed herself and one of the new Louis Vuitton polka dot scarves.<br />
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Dots aside, Kusama cuts an odd figure for the fashion world. She has lived in a psychiatric institution for decades, battling demons that feed her art.<br />
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Still, in her Tokyo studio, filled with wall-sized paintings throbbing with her repetitive dots, Kusama said the collaboration was a natural, developed from her friendship with Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs.<br />
Louis Vuitton had already scored success 10 years ago by collaborating on a bag line with another Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami. The latest Kusama collection is showcased at its boutiques around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo and Singapore, sometimes with replica dolls of Kusama.<br />
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“The polka dots cover the products infinitely,” said Louis Vuitton, which racks up 24 billion euros ($29 billion) in annual revenue, a significant portion in Japan. “No middle, no beginning and no end.”<br />
Dots started popping up in Kusama’s work more than 50 years ago, from her early days as a pioneer Japanese woman venturing abroad.<br />
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Like most middle-class families in Japan those days, her parents, who ran a flower nursery, were eager to simply get her married. They wanted to buy her kimono, not paints and brushes. She knew she had to get away. And she chose America.<br />
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Dots may be fashionable today. But when Kusama arrived in New York in 1958, the fad was “action painting,” characterized by dribbles, swooshes and smears, not dots. She suffered years of poverty and obscurity. But she kept painting the dots.<br />
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She put circles of paper on people’s bodies, and once a horse, in “happening” anti-war performances in the late 1960s, which got some people arrested for obscenity but helped get media attention for her art. While in New York, she befriended artists like Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe and Joseph Cornell, who praised her innovative style.<br />
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Since then, the times have caught up with Kusama.<br />
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In 2008, Christie’s auctioned her work for $5.8 million. Her retrospective at the Whitney Museum was previously at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London. Earlier this month, a major exhibition “Eternity of Eternal Eternity” opened in her home town of Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture, complete with polka-dot shuttle buses.<br />
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“I’ve always been amazed at Kusama’s ability to pick up on and meld current trends in thoroughly original ways,” said Lynn Zelevansky, Carnegie Museum of Art director.<br />
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“During her New York years, her work fused Abstract Expressionist, Minimalist and Pop art elements, with an added dash of sexuality and the baseness of bodily functions. She was a precursor of feminist art of the 1970s and much of the work that was produced in the ‘80s around the AIDS crisis,” she said.<br />
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Dots had a rather sad beginning for Kusama. Since her childhood, she had recurring hallucinations. A portrait of her mother that she drew when she was 10 years old shows a forlorn face covered with spots. Immersing herself in her art was a way of overcoming her fears and hallucinations.<br />
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Since her return to Japan nearly 40 years ago, Kusama has lived in a psychiatric hospital and remains on medication to prevent depression and suicidal drives. But she commutes daily to her studio and works viciously on her paintings.<br />
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Kusama, who has also made films and published several novels, acknowledged she doesn’t know where she gets her ideas. She just picks up her brush and starts drawing.<br />
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“I think, ‘Oh, I drew that? I was thinking that,“’ she said in her characteristic unsmiling matter-of-fact style of speaking.<br />
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Over the years, Kusama has made quirky but stunning works like “Macaroni Girl,” a female figure plastered with macaroni, which expresses the fear of food; “The Visionary Flowers,” giant sculptures of twisting tulips, and “Mirrored Corridor,” a room with mirrors that delivers an illusion of a field of phallic protrusions speckled with dots.<br />
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The works are triumphant, humorous celebrations of potential, vulnerability and defiance — like Kusama herself, who at one moment, declares herself “an artistic revolutionary,” and then, the next, mumbles: “I am so afraid, all the time, of everything.”<br />
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Her latest project is an ambitious series of paintings with whimsical motifs such as triangles and swirls, along with her trademark dots, in vibrant, almost fluorescent colors.<br />
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As Kusama worked on No. 196 in the series, the look of concentration was childlike yet fierce as she painted red dots inside white dots, one by one.<br />
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“I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw,” she said. “I will keep painting until I die.”<br />
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By Yuri Kageyama<br />
<a href="http://www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x1602170822/Japanese-artist-Kusama-strikes-deal-with-Louis-Vuitton" target="_blank">http://www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x1602170822/Japanese-artist-Kusama-strikes-deal-with-Louis-Vuitton</a>
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Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-31251442491677953942012-08-08T06:22:00.000-07:002012-08-08T06:32:06.789-07:00A stopover to soak up some Japanese culture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We're a couple in our mid-60s who will be returning from a trip to Britain in September, and stopping over in Japan. We arrive at Narita on a Sunday at 2.20pm and leave the following Wednesday at 7.50pm. We would really like to stay in onsen/ryokan accommodation and soak in the hot springs for that time. Do you have any suggestions as to how that might be achieved, with recommendations for train travel?<br />- D. Grainger, Canberra.</strong></div>
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Japan has about 3000 onsen - natural hot springs - and the Japanese were enjoying the soothing effects of communal soaking for many centuries before it occurred to Californians to do likewise.</div>
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<a href="http://japaneseguesthouses.com/db/gunma/chojukan.htm" target="_blank"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hoshi Onsen<span id="goog_2065249337"></span><span id="goog_2065249338"></span></strong> </a>could be just your cup of green tea. Bathing at Hoshi Onsen takes place at just a single ryokan, Chojukan, which is a beautiful, traditional ryokan in mountainous country about 2½ hours from Tokyo by train.</div>
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">Built in 1875, the ryokan sits on both sides of the narrow Nishi River, joined by a covered wooden bridge. The detail in the 37 guest rooms is refined and exquisite, and scrupulously maintained by the Okamura family, the sixth-generation descendants of the original builders.</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At its heart is an indoor mixed-gender bath. From 8pm to 10pm the bath is reserved for women. There is also a smaller women-only bath, open all hours, and an outdoor hot-spring bath with separate bathing times for women and men.</span></div>
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Scroll down the webpage mentioned above to find directions from Tokyo. If you want a window on the Japanese soul, nothing beats a skinny dip.</div>
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<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/travel/traveller-tips/a-stopover-to-soak-up-some-japanese-culture-20120713-21zr1.html">http://www.smh.com.au/travel/traveller-tips/a-stopover-to-soak-up-some-japanese-culture-20120713-21zr1.html</a>
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<span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-89253098347742393382012-07-31T07:31:00.002-07:002012-07-31T07:31:31.316-07:00Japanese potter infuses her culture in her craft<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">PEQUOT LAKES – A chance encounter at a Japanese shopping mall in 1996 changed Midori Marcum’s life forever.</span></div>
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The Pine River mother of two never considered she’d ever live anywhere other than in Japan; she was born and raised in Akita, Japan. She had majored in fashion in college and had studied to become a master traditional Japanese dancer. She had danced since she was 4.</div>
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After her college graduation, she took a job managing a clothing store in the local mall where she kept seeing this intriguing American college student. One day they struck up a conversation.</div>
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This was not easy since she and Jason Marcum, a Pequot Lakes High School graduate, spoke very little of one another’s languages at the time. They initially had to carry a dictionary with them on dates.</div>
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Jason Marcum was in Akita studying at St. Cloud State University’s sister university for a year.</div>
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The couple hit it off and in 1997 she packed her bags for what was supposed to be a three-month trip to Minnesota to meet his parents and get married. She ended up living here for nearly seven years. It took more than two years for her to get her Green Card.</div>
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The couple then moved back to Akita in 2003 when their daughter, Misato, now 12, was 3, and their son, Kyosuke, now 9, was just 6 months old. They lived and worked in Japan for about four years and then moved back to Pine River in 2007. Jason owns Grove Homes Inc., group home in Pine River. Their children, who are bilingual, attend Pine River-Backus Elementary School.</div>
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After moving to the United States, Midori Marcum was unable to finish her apprenticeship and become a master dancer. Not finishing her apprenticeship is one of her biggest regrets. Dancing brought out her creativity.</div>
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When she moved to Pine River, she needed to find another creative outlet. She had always wanted to try her hand at pottery and took a four-day crash-course pottery workshop at the Franklin Arts Center in Brainerd, a birthday present from her husband. She was immediately drawn to the art. Her grandmother, who raised her while her mother worked, enjoyed pottery so Marcum grew up with an appreciation for the craft.</div>
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In Japan it isn’t easy to become a potter; you have to study under a master potter as an apprentice. “It is a much more closed world there,” Marcum explained of becoming a potter in Japan. “There is more freedom here to just pick it up.”</div>
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Three years ago she started Midori’s Peace, her own pottery business, and last year she opened her own pottery studio on Highway 371 in Pequot Lakes, where she has her own kiln. She sells her work at her studio and at arts and crafts shows throughout the Brainerd lakes area. Her next shows will be at the Chokecherry Festival in Pequot Lakes Aug. 11, the Hackensack Art and Book Festival Aug. 18 and the Arts off 84 Art Crawl from Pine River to Longville Sept. 1-2.</div>
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Marcum said her pottery toad houses are a popular item but so are her coffee mugs and bowls. She tries to infuse her Japanese culture in her pieces while creating functional art.</div>
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“I like people to actually use it,” she explained of her pottery. “I don’t want it to sit on a shelf and collect dust.”</div>
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She named her studio Midori’s Peace because she said she has to be at peace in order to create her art.</div>
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“You have to be at peace to make something beautiful,” she said with a smile.</div>
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For the past two years, Marcum also has decorated ice cream cakes at the Dairy Queen in Pequot Lakes. It’s another way for her to use her creativity.</div>
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She also enjoys oil painting and would like to work in leather craft someday.</div>
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<a href="http://brainerddispatch.com/news/2012-07-29/japanese-potter-infuses-her-culture-her-craft">http://brainerddispatch.com/news/2012-07-29/japanese-potter-infuses-her-culture-her-craft</a>
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</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-42712368478765263332012-07-24T07:11:00.000-07:002012-07-24T07:11:33.970-07:00Science meets art: Japanese artist turns preserved animals into masterpieces<br />
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Those preserved animals you dissected in science class are now also artwork that prices up to $20,000 yen or $250. Iori Tomita, a 28 year old Japanese artist, transforms dead animal carcasses into colorful art through a long and tedious scientific process that can take him months, even a year.</div>
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<a href="http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/15095/iori-tomita-new-world-transparent-specimens.html/" style="border: 0px; color: #015660; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_top">Designboom</a> reports that Tomita removes the skins of animals preserved in formaldehyde then soaks the creatures in a mixture of blue stain, ethyl alcohol, and glacial acetic acid. He then breaks down the protein and muscles through the enzyme trypsin to give them a ghostly transparent look. The bones are then soaked in potassium hydroxide and dye and preserved as stained masterpieces in glycerin.</div>
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Tomita first learned his trade as a fisherman and has cultivated a niche where science meets art and skeletons meet artistic immortalization.</div>
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“People may look at my specimens as an academic material, a piece of art, or even an entrance to philosophy,” Tomita said on <a href="http://www.shinsekai-th.com/en/profile.php" style="border: 0px; color: #015660; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_top">his website</a>. “There is no limitation to how you interpret their meaning. I hope you will find my work as a ‘lens’ to project a new image, a new world that you’ve never seen before.”</div>
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Tomita’s art is apart of a long line of <a href="http://www.designyourway.net/blog/inspiration/strange-examples-of-art-that-youll-love-80-photos/" style="border: 0px; color: #015660; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_top">strange and unusual art </a>including <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/05/business/la-fi-tn-stuffed-coptercat-sparks-global-outrage-20120605" style="border: 0px; color: #015660; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_top">a cat that was transformed into a helicopter</a>. Tomita’s art is not sold outside of Japan yet but has caught on with 20 to 30 year old Japanese women. Tomita plans to branch out to “art centers like Paris, London, and New York,” according to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/iori-tomita-dead-animal-art_n_1660612.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news" style="border: 0px; color: #015660; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_top">Huffington Post</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2012/07/23/science-meets-art-japanese-artist-turns-preserved-animals-into-masterpieces/">http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2012/07/23/science-meets-art-japanese-artist-turns-preserved-animals-into-masterpieces/</a>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-64988575871475131972012-07-18T06:28:00.002-07:002012-07-18T06:28:38.495-07:00Atomic Lollipop brings Japan's youth culture to Toronto<br />
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This past weekend saw the second annual iteration of <a href="http://www.atomiclollipop.ca/" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #093550; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Atomic Lollipop</a>, an ambitious event somewhat loosely based on Japanese youth culture that's presented by <a href="http://www.newmindspace.com/" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #093550; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">newmindspace</a> and a few co-conspirators.</div>
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The turnout appeared to be better and perhaps a little bit older on average than last year. There was definitely a much higher ratio of cosplayers to ravers although there are boundaries being crossed between these two groups these days with plenty of partial costumes being worn by the dance crowd--think partial furry gear like full tails and ears along with the more fashionable furry boots and lots of beads.</div>
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There were events for pretty much any inclination, with surprisingly large turnout for crafts workshops, which made sense once you realised just how much cosplay was going on. There were also plenty of vendors on-hand selling posters and other decor--figurines, manga and comics, makeup and accessories, candy, and caffeinated "Atomic Lollipops." There were even live snakes and other reptiles on display for people to touch and feel.
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Out in the "playground"--for those willing to brave the heat and glare of the sun--there were deejays pumping out tunes from the big colourful Otakubaloo stage and some fun fair activities to take part in including a mechanical bull, bouncy castle, bouncy jousting, a big ferris wheel, and even cotton candy. For those who prefered to stay in the dark there was a games room (done up like a giant rec room) with all sorts of electronic and board games.
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From what I could see this was a big success and will continue to grow in importance as an altternative to the more mainstream and established cons battling it out in the convention centre.
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Find more photos here:</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogto.com/arts/2012/07/atomic_lollipop_brings_japans_youth_culture_to_toronto/#">http://www.blogto.com/arts/2012/07/atomic_lollipop_brings_japans_youth_culture_to_toronto/#</a>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-53408274749489547942012-07-05T07:45:00.000-07:002012-07-05T07:51:58.286-07:00Speaking stones - Suiseki<br />
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Hobby Suiseki is the art of viewing stone. It can be as beautiful as music or poetry, says M. Ponnuswami as he shows his collection to K. Jeshi</div>
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In the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805310138/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=podvpl-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=4805310138" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“The Japanese Art of Stone Appreciation”</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=podvpl-20&l=as2&o=1&a=4805310138" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
, authors Covello and Yoshimuro describe how during the reign of the Japanese Empress Regent Suiko (AD 592-628), Chinese emissaries presented the Empress with a landscape stone. The Chinese, during their travels to Korea and Japan, are credited to have introduced the art of stone appreciation or Suiseki (Sui meaning water and seki meaning stone). A stone worthy of enjoyment, very similar to a painting, songs or poems. “A viewing stone invites you to introspect,” says M. Ponnuswami.</div>
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LOVE FOR BONSAI</h3>
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A person, who admires and appreciates bonsai (a life member of Bonsai Club International, he is recognised as an international consultant by the World Bonsai Friendship Federation, U.S.), he also collects unique stones. “Suiseki was introduced as a complementary art to Bonsai. Now, it’s recognised as a separate art. Even as a small boy I was fascinated by the unique shapes and figures of<i style="outline: none;">gonthu</i> (gum) you find on the trunks of trees,” says Ponnuswami, who is Advisor (Soya) of Sakthi Sugars Limited.</div>
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His soon-to-be published coffee table book “Suiseki- The art of Stone Viewing” features images of 200 stones from his collection, all hand picked from streams, deserts, river beds, rocky mountains, sea shores and crater sites. The stones are usually displayed on carved wooden bases or on trays of sand. Ponnuswami’s collection of more than 500 stones have come from places as far as Jaipur, Udaipur and from the banks of the Yamuna, and the Cauvery. He also has a collection from the mountainous sites in Erode, Coimbatore, Karur, and Vavipalayam, a crater site near Palladam. Some of his semi-precious and crystal stones have come from quarries in Kangeyam.</div>
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Awareness in Suiseki is picking up in India, he says. The Bonsai clubs in Mysore and Bangalore give demos on how to collect stones. In 1998, Ponnuswami travelled all the way to China to show his collection. “I had to travel business class, because the stones alone weighed around 20 kgs! It’s an expensive hobby,” he jokes.</div>
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<b style="outline: none;">Magical shapes</b></div>
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The stones that lie on river beds and ocean shores are eroded into interesting shapes with holes and hollows. The surface of these stones suggest great age and evoke the grandeur of nature. You find rhythm and harmony in the patterns on these stones, he says. Pointing to a ‘Colorado Rock, intact with a multitude of layers, Ponnuswami explains, “It takes thousands of years for a single layer to form. So, imagine how old the stone is. It is possible to determine the age of stones from the marks on them.” The process of imagination is akin to meditation. When you start looking at it deeply the stone begins to reflect an image, he says. Some times the rocks represent mountains and natural wonders of the world; and at other times they may evoke ancient people, animals, and mythical creatures. He calls a green and white marble stone from Rajasthan a ‘Scenic Mountain’, with the white miniature lines on it representing waterfalls. “I came up with the names after a lot of contemplation,” he says.</div>
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While a rugged stone depicts ‘two friends in deep conversation’, a shiny yellow stone looks like a shoe. Most stones from his collection fall somewhere between fully explicit and totally abstract. Some are subtle, quiet, elegant and sedate while others are uncertain, vague and often puzzling.</div>
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He has a pre-sunset collection made up of beautiful stones in flaming yellows and oranges. He got them from Rajasthan. “You should have an eye for the stone, spot its unique structure, and formation, and appreciate its beauty, in order to be a collector,” he says. Some stones throw up interesting shapes when viewed from different angles. The shiny black stone that stares out of the cover of his book is shaped like an otter. There are also formations that look like the sphinx, a penguin, a loon bird of the U.S., and even bulls!</div>
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<b style="outline: none;">Meditative</b></div>
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A ‘saint’ rock in green and white is meditative. There is a stunning cheetah (a sea coral) that he found at Rameswaram. Another semi-precious yellow stone was picked up at Vavipalayam. An ‘Island stone’ is reminiscent of a chunk of cake. ‘Mountain full of streams’ is artistic and depicts the vastness of a mountain range. There is even a stone that looks like an old lady with wrinkled lines.</div>
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Suiseki is open to interpretation. A bright purple semi-precious stone looks like a flower in bloom to me, but Ponnuswami explains how to him it looks more like a mother and baby. Another stone in hues of pastel pink, violet and white represents the face of an eternal beauty (Elizabeth Taylor?). Turn the same stone around and it looks like a person with a haystack on his back. Ponnuswami believes every stone is priceless and awakens your soul. He says, “that is the beauty of Suiseki.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article3594933.ece?homepage=true">http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/metroplus/article3594933.ece?homepage=true</a>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-529964123267507452012-06-20T11:24:00.000-07:002012-06-20T11:25:17.010-07:00Folding paper: Origami as contemporary art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Vincent Floderer's gorgeous construction Boom! assails the retina like a burst of intergalactic activity frozen in time, not the work of a contemporary origami artist. Instead of folding, the<a href="http://www.le-crimp.org/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">French artist's</a> technique involves the application of watercolors and Indian ink to Wenzhou calligraphy paper, which he dampens, stretches and crumples to form jagged three-dimensional corals, sponges and other organic and abstract creations.</div>
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Boom! is among the many highlights of The Japanese American National Museum's <a href="http://www.janm.org/exhibits/foldingpaper/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami</a>, the first major exhibition to look at origami as a contemporary art form. Featuring 150 works by 40 international artists from 16 countries, it is also a survey of the explosion in global origami art over the past fifty years.</div>
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Some of the show's exquisitely beautiful origami forms are the works of artists with backgrounds in sculpture, architecture or design; others trained as physicists, mathematicians and engineers. Many have turned their childhood passion for origami into complex explorations of tessellation (the creation of repeating abstract and textured patterns), modular origami and sculptural animal, insect and flower shapes. The work of the scientifically based artists has given rise to "origami math," "computational origami," and algorithms that map the way for artists to fold increasingly intricate shapes from a single sheet of paper. The exhibit also includes examples of origami's infiltration into the worlds of fashion, design, architecture, medical research, astronomy and manufacturing.</div>
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"Folding Paper" will be on view in Los Angeles through August 26, then travel to museums in Sacramento, CA; Portland, OR; Keene, NH; Peoria, IL, and Wasau, WI through August 2014. Organized by independent curator, author and educator Meher McArthur for the traveling exhibit service of the non-profit organization <a href="http://artsandartists.org/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">International Art & Artists</a>, the show, which opened on March 10, has been the hit of the season for <a href="http://www.janm.org/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">JANM</a>.</div>
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McArthur, who specializes in Asian art, compares origami in Japan to woodblock prints in the late 19th century, when Japanese treated them so casually they would pack pieces of porcelain in them to send to Europe. Or to Japanese bamboo baskets, which only recently gained the status of an art form in Japan. "There was never a distinction between art and craft," she explains, although today the Japanese have adopted the Western distinction. <br />
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One artist represented in the exhibit, physicist and full-time origami artist and educator Robert Lang, has designed and catalogued over 500 original origami patterns, created origami algorithms, and invented a revolutionary new technique that allows for the addition of multiple appendages using a single sheet of paper. Lang has also applied origami techniques in his designs for a folding glass lens for a giant space telescope at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and an automobile air bag. The algorithms, he says, involve the principles of both algebra and geometry, and "a lot of manipulating squares and rectangles, like packing shapes in a box."</div>
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Yet Lang notes that the "growth and interest in origami preceded the heavy involvement of math," with the real renaissance occurring in the mid-20th century. Pioneer Akira Yoshizawa was responsible for turning what had been considered a children's pastime in Japan into a form of sculptural art. On March 14 of this year, Yoshizawa's birthday, Google asked Lang to design (after signing a non-disclosure agreement) the origami shapes that became <a href="http://blog.janm.org/index.php/2012/03/13/googles-origami-logo/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">this logo</a> on Google's Web site.</div>
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The architectural portions of the exhibit include <a href="http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/specials/building_switzerland/The_Temporary_Chapel.html?cid=29760928" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">this short documentary</a> on an origami-inspired temporary chapel, St. Loup, in the foothills of the Jura in Switzerland, and a reference to another origami-based building, the Klein Bottle House in Melbourne, Australia. Origami fashion is represented by Linda Tomoko Mihara and L.A. fashion designer Monica Leigh, and the exhibit's one installation is a menacing swarm of origami locusts made from sheets of U.S one dollar bills, by Swiss-South African artist Sipho Mabona.</div>
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<em><a href="http://www.nancymatsumoto.com/" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Nancy Matsumoto</a> is a New York City-based freelance writer who writes frequently on Japanese American issues and culture.</em></div>
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<a href="http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2012/06/folding_paper_origami_as_art.php">http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2012/06/folding_paper_origami_as_art.php</a></div></div></div></div></article>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-81107708443974897242012-06-13T08:00:00.000-07:002012-06-13T08:00:03.934-07:00A celebration of Japanese food, art, music and dance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.japanesefoodreport.com/photos/salmon%20raw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="http://www.japanesefoodreport.com/photos/salmon%20raw.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">This Japanese meal goes beyond sushi.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">The NorthWest Language Academy (in Washington) is inviting guests to an immersive evening into Japanese culture that kicks off with sushi then continues into a celebration of other Japanese food, art, music and dance.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">One of the highlights of the event is watching Chef Kotaro Kumita of Seattle's Shiro's Sushi in action.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">This latest installment of NorthWest Language Academy's Language of Food event, "The Riches of Japan," is to be held June 23 in Langley.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">The event begins with an afternoon cooking class, from 2 to 5 p.m., that will demonstrate the techniques of sushi and other traditional favorites. The class will be led by Chef Kotaro, who studied under Shiro Kashiba, founder of the iconic Seattle restaurant, Shiro's Sushi, according to a press release. </span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">Chef Kotaro will prepare a traditional Japanese dinner, served family style on the language academy's garden terrace. Guests will be served appetizers, sake and Japanese beer.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">While dining, guests will be entertained with traditional koto and shakuhachi music, and a performance by the Sound Singers Japanese Chorus. Kimonos, Japanese quilts and other fiber arts will be on display. Guests can ask the artists questions or take a lesson in wearing a kimono, according to press material.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">The goal of this event is to have guests explore Japanese cuisine while soaking in other aspects of Japanese culture, which includes learning past traditions.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">Featured artists on the program include One World Taiko Drummers, Kabuki master Mary Ohno and the Kabuki Dance Academy.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">"The Riches of Japan" is from 6 to 9 p.m. June 23 at the NWLA cultural center, 5023 Langley Road, Langley, WA. Cost is $75 for dinner and performances, $45 for the cooking class.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">Seating is limited; reserve your place early by calling 360-321-2101 or go to info@nwlanguageacademy.com.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">NorthWest Language Academy is a nonprofit organization that promotes cultural enrichment through the study of language and culture.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">To learn more about NWLA and upcoming programs or classes, visit</span><a href="http://www.nwlanguageacademy.com/" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #990000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;">www.nwlanguageacademy.com</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">. Overnight accommodations are available in the cultural center's guesthouse.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20120612/LIVING/706129926">http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20120612/LIVING/706129926</a>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0Langley, WA 98260, USA48.0400945 -122.40625748.018861 -122.445739 48.061328 -122.36677499999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-9238426960420897012012-06-11T07:14:00.000-07:002012-06-11T07:56:19.341-07:00A Guide to Japanese Onsen<span style="font-size: xx-small;">By <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Paul_Symonds">Paul Symonds</a></span><br />
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Japan is a country which sees a great deal of volcanic activity. This being the case, there are also a lot of hot springs that have cropped up around the countryside, giving to rise to the concept of Onsen. Onsen, singular and plural, are bathing places that are based on hot springs.<br />
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Onsen bathing is a variant of the sento baths; however, the distinction is very clear: Sento baths are communal bathing places that use heated water, while the water in onsen bathing places must be of volcanic origin, even if the water has to be reheated for the bath.<br />
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Onsen baths, like sento baths, were used to equalize the people in Japan, where traditionally the society had an extremely rigid, defined hierarchy. In addition to this, the onsen baths were considered to cure ailments because of the different minerals that are present in the water. In fact, waters that have different mineral contents are separated into different bathing places.<br />
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Initially, onsen attracted mainly domestic traffic, but of late it has started receiving international fame due to the relaxing nature and the healing properties that are associated with the waters. Although recently there has been a controversial ban in some onsen areas based on race and only Japanese have been allowed to enter.<br />
There are a few famous onsen in Japan, with most of them in Hokkaido, since the area has a high concentration of volcanoes. Some of these resorts are Toya, Noboribetsu and Yunokawa. Additionally, Aomori is considered to be heaven for the true onsen lovers, with its high volcanic activity. Aomori is situated in the mountains and has every imaginable sort of onsen available.<br />
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The Hakodate Yunokawa hot springs is one of the oldest onsen in Hokkaido, dating back to more than 300 years. It is easily accessible by air through the Chitose airport. The facilities provided are comfortable and luxurious, ensuring pleasurable experience all around.<br />
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As with all Japanese traditional activities, etiquette plays an instrumental role; the original onsen baths did not allow garments of any kind inside the bathing area. However nowadays, a concession to modesty has been permitted and a swimsuit is allowed inside the waters. It is considered completely unacceptable to enter the waters when unclean or even soapy after a shower.<br />
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Advanced booking at any of the more famous onsen is a sensible course of action to follow, although the smaller ones will accommodate walk-in visitors.<br />
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Paul Symonds writes about <a href="http://www.wellnessandsauna.co.uk/Country/Japenese-Onsen.htm" target="_new">Japenese Onsen & Sauna</a> and <a href="http://www.seoulkoreaasia.com/teaching.htm" target="_new">Teaching in South Korea</a><br />
Article Source: <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Paul_Symonds" target="_new">http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Symonds</a>
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<a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Guide-to-Japanese-Onsen&id=1248867" target="_new">http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Guide-to-Japanese-Onsen&id=1248867</a>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-21585779428040588012012-06-07T08:17:00.000-07:002012-06-07T08:21:03.222-07:00From Hiroshima to Hawaii, artist Teraoka looks to Asia<br />
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SYDNEY (June 5, 2012)</strong>: Japanese-born artist Masami Teraoka remembers the bombing of Hiroshima as the day when he saw two suns rising -- one in the east as usual, the other an orb burning eerily in the west.</div>
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"Two suns, that's for sure. That's my memory," he explained from a Sydney gallery where his confrontational images of geishas ripping condom packets open with their teeth and naked women frolicking with priests are being exhibited.</div>
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"I'm not looking at the mushroom cloud at all, but from a distance it looked like the sun. The diameter was the same size as the sun," he said of the massive atomic explosion he viewed some 45 miles (70 miles) from Hiroshima.</div>
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Teraoka has thought a lot about the reliability of his schoolboy recollection since that day in August 1945, but he believes it is possible that his memory, even then highly attuned to the visual, is genuine.</div>
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"So I may not be totally crazy, I think this is totally right," the chatty, long-haired artist said with a laugh.</div>
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Teraoka left Japan when he was 25, after studying at Kobe's Kwansei Gakuin University, and while he credits his move away as crucial to his development, he now sees Asia at the forefront of the contemporary art scene.</div>
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Back then, moving to the United States allowed him to follow his passion rather than run the kimono shop owned by his father and grandfather.</div>
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He believes his move to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, where he studied at the Otis Art Institute, allowed him to develop.</div>
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"Actually if I stayed in Japan, I would have become a businessman," the artist, now in his mid-70s, said.</div>
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"Japanese culture is very much a conformist culture and I kind of doubt I would have blossomed the way I have blossomed and matured as an artist in the States."</div>
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More than 70 solo exhibitions later, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution and San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, Teraoka said China is now tackling art on a scale unseen elsewhere.</div>
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"I think Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai are leading contemporary arts scenes from now on," he said.</div>
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His art has also reflected the changing times -- beginning with traditional Japanese ukiyo-e "floating world" drawings and prints, admittedly with a modern take such as his 1974 "Burger and Chopsticks" about creeping western influence.</div>
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Since his move to the US in 1961, he has continued to marry East and West, with his paintings sometimes reminiscent of Northern European work from the late 15th century.</div>
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His latest pieces, which focus on sex abuse among the clergy, feature full-figured nude women and bishops and priests in large-scale paintings that subvert traditional religious iconography with modern symbols such as traffic lights, gyms, and IVF equipment.</div>
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"The themes that I am dealing with are pretty tough themes: religion and sexuality and ethics and human rights and also power against powerless people," he explained.</div>
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"So all these issues are underneath my clergy sex abuse issue paintings.</div>
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"What I am focussing on in my series is something that is not even recorded and documented but the more I kind of look into my references and historical books there are so many records ... that there are many women who were abused."</div>
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Based in Hawaii since 1990, Teraoka's work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, London's Tate Modern, and the Singapore Art Museum.</div>
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His pieces on display in Sydney command prices of up to US$385,000.</div>
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But he says Japanese geishas are now making a return to his work -- including in an AIDS series in which they can feature as ghosts.</div>
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"I haven't really used the geisha image for a while," he says.</div>
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"But recently geisha is becoming part of the scenario or narrative, in a sense I might be coming back to Asia, or Japan, if you would like to say that. That might be part true." – <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">AFP</em></div>
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</em></div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-88464109740847153242012-05-30T08:06:00.000-07:002012-05-30T08:06:42.953-07:00For famed sculptor, life has been a work of art<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120529f1.html">http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120529f1.html</a></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By MIWA MURPHY</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kyodo</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">BOSTON — Among the more than 100 pieces of art displayed in New York's Rockefeller Center by figures such as Diego Rivera, Isamu Noguchi and Lee Lawrie, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s, a glowing piece named "Light and Movement" by a Japanese-American artist blends into its surroundings, despite its size.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which is exactly what its creator intended.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"My goal is always for the art to integrate successfully with the architecture," Michio Ihara said in a recent interview at his home-cum-studio in Concord, Massachusetts, near Boston.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The 83-year-old, who describes himself as an architectural sculptor, implies his hobby is work, or vice versa. He creates artistic structures both small and large, including the 3-ton "Wind Wind Wind," which was installed in central Boston earlier this year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"When the sun shines on this, it creates a very good effect," Ihara said, looking up at the 8-meter-tall structure made with about 200 sheets of kinetic stainless steel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This new installation and the 1978 wall sculpture at Rockefeller Center are only part of his large collection of works that decorate various buildings and public spaces not only across the United States, but also in cities around the world, including Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Auckland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Born in Paris in 1928 to a painter father who was on a trainee program to study Western art and an accomplished pianist mother, Ihara returned to Japan with his parents the following year, settling down in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ihara said he was an "ordinary middle school kid" during World War II, just barely young enough to avoid being drafted. He spent much of the final year of the war recovering from a pneumonialike condition brought on by malnutrition and damp bomb shelter air.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The eldest of four children, Ihara said he tried to become a painter soon after the war just as "a carpenter's son becomes a carpenter."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But by the time he completed four years of study of European oil painting at the predecessor to Tokyo University of the Arts in the early 1950s, he knew the craft was not his calling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"I began to look for my own direction. . . . Like any young graduate thrown into the real world for the first time, I was trying to establish myself, and the only way to do so was to find my own field, like finding a narrow crack in the wall," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ihara said his lifelong fascination with architectural space started around this time, even though he was not clearly conscious of it. He created an experimental group focused on stage design with a few budding artists. "There is an organic connection — playwrights, audience, performers and the stage."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ihara then attended a lecture hosted by art critic Kazuhiko Egawa, who introduced him to the art theory of Hungarian painter Gyoergy Kepes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Egawa talked about a light mural Kepes installed at Manhattan's KLM building, stirring Ihara's interest in new architecture. The Japanese landscape at the time, after all, was "not that far from a bombed-out field," Ihara said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Inspired, Ihara applied for a Fulbright scholarship in 1959 to study mural art in the U.S.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To his surprise, Kepes, who was teaching at the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, invited the young Ihara to come to study with him, even though his grant was intended for the art category.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"That was a turning point in my life," Ihara said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After one year at MIT, Ihara was hired by the university as a research associate. As he broadened his artistic horizons, work started to flow in, including a 1963 commission to create and install a wall sculpture in an office building in the Massachusetts city of Waltham.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">With the expiration of his visa, Ihara returned to Japan in 1964. He continued to get commissions in the Tokyo area and also taught three years at Musashino Art University's newly established Department of Architecture. At the same time, Japan's postwar economic growth kicked off, with a milestone reached at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka Prefecture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">While Ihara kept himself busy with the expo-related work, the "megasize experience" also felt to him like a "bubble inflated beyond Japan's actual scale," he recalled. He also began to feel fatigued about the cliquish culture in Japan's art world, with its heavy emphasis on personal connections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As he was repeatedly called by Kepes to join his newly established Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT as a fellow, Ihara decided to move to the United States in 1970. The Hungarian pioneer of visual design became a lifelong family friend.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ihara got the Rockefeller Center commission through a New York art agent, George Staempfli, who ran a Manhattan gallery known for a variety of European and American paintings as well as sculpture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"His refined taste reflects that persistent Japanese craving for the cleanest possible design, for the simplest possible functional form of any given object," Staempfli wrote of Ihara's works in 1984.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Asked if traditional Japanese designs inspire him, Ihara said he has "always consciously tried not to bring Japan to the surface" of his mind, so if viewers detect Japan in his works, it is only because it exists in him "naturally."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even after spending nearly 50 years in the United States, Ihara says he is still as Japanese as he has ever been.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"There is no problem to keep heritage alive because it's within."</span></div>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-78980278800915917162012-05-24T09:39:00.001-07:002012-05-24T09:39:08.486-07:00Morikami Museum Gets Spooky With “Ghosts, Goblins and Gods” Japanese Art Exhibit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In Japan’s native religion Shinto, people share the world with spirits that inhabit humans and animals along with inanimate objects such as rocks and lakes. The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens will open explores these spirits in “Ghosts, Goblins and Gods: The Supernatural in Japanese Art,” which opens Tuesday, May 22.</div>
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Consisting of paintings, woodblock prints, masks, sculptures and folk toys, “Ghosts, Goblins and Gods” explores the thousands of spirits in Japan’s legends and myths. Some are regarded as gods while others are seen as harmful demons and tricksters.</div>
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The mythical spirits live on today through literature, art, film and philosophy, shows such as Pokémon use the Japanese monsters as inspiration for its many characters.</div>
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Along with Pokémon, the exhibit, which runs until Sept. 16, features deities of happiness, good fortune and wisdom, including Ebisu, the god of fishermen, Daikoku, the god of agriculture, Hotei and his feminine duplicate Okame, the gods of cheerfulness.</div>
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The museum didn’t forget about the pranksters of Japanese myth, on view are the tengu, half-man half-bird creatures who abduct children and anamorphous foxes and badgers in the forest.</div>
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Source: <a href="http://www.pbpulse.com/events/2012/05/17/ghosts-goblins-and-gods-at-morikami/">PB Pulse</a></div>
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Photo Source: <a href="http://jameelcentre.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/collection/6980/6981/0/all/per_page/25/offset/0/sort_by/seqn./object/7287">Eastern Art Online</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.hauteliving.com/2012/05/morikami-museum-gets-spooky-with-ghosts-goblins-and-gods-japanese-art-exhibit/">http://www.hauteliving.com/2012/05/morikami-museum-gets-spooky-with-ghosts-goblins-and-gods-japanese-art-exhibit/</a>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-33429107321445464122012-05-16T06:03:00.000-07:002012-05-16T06:05:21.235-07:00Privacy is lacking in this Tokyo glass homeI saw this interesting article on Yahoo yesterday, fascinating stuff:<br />
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In a connected world where privacy is a valued, but diminishing part of daily life, home remains a reliable refuge. But here’s one home that intentionally strips away even that illusion for its inhabitants. In this nearly transparent <a href="http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Anz2tVKUU5flCt_xfTj941nxkdEF/SIG=119oj423b/EXP=1338323683/**http%3A//yhoo.it/v1uifQ" rel="nofollow" style="color: #89bbce; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Tokyo</a> home, known as House NA, outsiders can see everything and everyone inside.</div>
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Tucked into a quiet residential neighborhood, this three-story, 914 square-foot home was created by an award winning Tokyo architect named Sou Fujimoto. His unusual design, with high glass walls and varying sized modular tables, contains 21 “floor plates” for residents and guests to sit, work, cook, eat, sleep, or play. Some of the floor plates are heated to provide comfort in the winter.</div>
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Surprisingly, Fujimoto’s multi-level home design wasn’t inspired by stacked phone booths but rather by the concept of a tree with perches on both high and low branches. “The intriguing point of a tree is that these places are not hermetically isolated but are connected to one another … “ said Fujimoto, a lecturer at Kyoto University, in a statement explaining House NA.
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Though the home is almost entirely transparent, there are curtains that provide some modicum of privacy for occupants. Still, living in a fishbowl might make residents think twice about climbing down to breakfast without first getting dressed.
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By Rusty Weston, Yahoo! Real Estate</div>
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May 12, 2012</div>
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<a href="http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/privacy-is-lacking-in-this-tokyo-glass-home.html" rel="nofollow">http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/privacy-is-lacking-in-this-tokyo-glass-home.html</a>
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<br />Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0Tokyo, Japan35.6894875 139.691706435.483143999999996 139.3758494 35.895831 140.00756339999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-35423679357925228642012-05-14T07:00:00.000-07:002012-05-14T07:01:48.151-07:00Asian Art Museum's 'Phantoms of Asia' connects<br />
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That giant red lotus that sprang up in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza on Saturday - a 24-foot-tall "Breathing Flower" of kinetic fabric in the form of the ancient Asian symbol of spiritual illumination and renewal - is the most visible artwork in an exhibition that explores the invisible energies and forces summoned by artists in 200 B.C. - and just last week.<br />
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Created by the Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, the monumental lotus stands across the street from the Asian Art Museum, where 60 other contemporary pieces play off and connect with the museum's prized historical objects in "Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past," an expansive and ambitious show that opens Friday.<br />
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Ancient Chinese and Indian devotional sculptures, created by anonymous artisans to access the divine, and 19th century Tibetan thangka paintings depicting the cosmos share space with contemporary works such as the sublime-seeking minimalist abstract paintings and light boxes of Tibetan-born artist Palden Weinreb. A section of the show about death and the afterlife brings together the 17th century Korean scroll painting "A King of Hell" - which portrays the underworld and the cyclical Buddhist view of death and reincarnation - and a seriocomic video by Thai artist Araya Radsjarmrearnsook called "The Class." It shows the artist talking about death to a group of shrouded corpses.<br />
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"We're trying to create a dialogue between art of the past and art of the present, and look at the way in which artists today are exploring many of the same concerns of artists throughout time," says Allison Harding, the Asian Art Museum's assistant curator of contemporary art. "Where do we come from? Where are we going? How is the universe structured? What is the nature of the universe, and what is my place in that unknowable expanse?"<br />
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The museum chose to delve into those big questions in its first large-scale exhibition of contemporary art. Over the years, the museum, whose vast and priceless pan-Asian collection spans 6,000 years, has put on many fine solo shows by living artists. With "Phantoms of Asia," which features the works of 31 prominent artists from Japan, Indonesia, Iran, China, the Philippines, India and elsewhere, the museum is trumpeting its intention to focus seriously on contemporary art - and connect it to the impulses and traditions that inspired the treasures in its permanent collection.<br />
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Open-ended idea</h3>
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Harding and her colleagues tapped Mami Kataoka, the chief curator at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum, to curate "Phantoms of Asia." She was chosen over 24 other international curators who submitted proposals. Unlike others who suggested merely juxtaposing old and new pieces and talking about stylistic affinities and influences, Kataoka "created a more open-ended idea, setting up a condition for new resonances to occur, not only between the contemporary and traditional art, but between different objects in and of themselves," Harding says.<br />
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Kataoka is a contemporary art expert who'd never been to the Asian Art Museum until she took on this project. She became fascinated by the objects in the museum's collection. Looking through its database of images, she had several pieces brought out of storage and put on view, including a magnificent Indian cosmological painting, circa 1750-1850. It's alive with Hindu gods, demons, serpents, and a pair of humans linked by black lines to the celestial and earthly realms that encompass them.<br />
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Macro and micro</h3>
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"It's one of the most important pieces I selected for the show. It just blew me away," says Kataoka, who knew many of the contemporary artists she tapped for the show and met others while doing research in India, Thailand and other locales. "I was very much interested in this fundamental understanding of cosmology, and the relationship between the macro and micro, how your body relates to a large cosmos, and how you feel another cosmos inside your body."<br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px; text-align: left;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px; text-align: left;">Kataoka began to mull these things deeply in 2010, when she put on the show in Tokyo called "Sensing Nature." It explored the perception of nature and space, "some sort of invisible forces, and how we understand nature in Japan and Asia. I really wanted to explore the sensory understanding of the whole cosmology. The spiritual essences."</span><span style="font-size: 13px; text-align: left;"><br /></span><br />
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Although Asian countries are all different, and changing in different ways, she adds, they share certain ways of thinking. "I was really looking for what could be interconnected. ... We think now because of all the science and technology that we understand what the world is. But there are so many things we still don't understand. I wanted to go back to the time of ancient people who shared our desire to understand how the universe functions."<br />
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Unseen forces</h3>
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Kataoka asked the museum's various curators to highlight pieces that dealt with unseen forces, among them ritual vessels, masks, and incense burners with dragons and birds made to communicate with deities. She sought out contemporary artists whose work gives off its own spiritual hum.<br />
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One is the esteemed Japanese-born photographer and sculptor Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose "Five-Elements" installation consists of seven small crystal pagodas, sitting on thin wooden plinths. They were inspired by the 13th century Japanese Buddhist stupas whose geometric shapes symbolize the five universals of the cosmos (earth, water, fire, wind, emptiness). Each glass pagoda encases a photograph from the artist's famed "Seascape" series, letting the viewer look at sea and sky through an ancient Buddhist prism.<br />
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"The light comes through the crystal pagoda, and you can imagine how ancient people looked at the landscape," Kataoka says.<br />
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Swirling black drawing</h3>
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Walking into the museum's light-filled north court, visitors will see a swirling black drawing that wraps around the columns and climbs skyward along the wall. It's a pulsing space drawing by New York-based Korean artist Sun K. Kwak, who was creating the piece last week. Loosely working from a sketch she made in response to the light, architecture and feeling of the sky-lit space, the artist laid wide strips of black masking tape on the wall, skillfully ripping them back to form the curves and angles of the flaming, flowing shapes she envisioned.<br />
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"I'm interested in orchestrating the energies in the space, and transforming it into a new pictorial reality," says Kwak, 45, a diminutive woman wearing blue Korean sneakers, black pants and shirt. The lyrical drawing, which she describes as full of longing and powerful movement, "is dealing with the invisible energy and the ephemeral quality of it."<br />
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After the show closes, the drawing will be taken down and thrown away. "For me, it's a life. It's going to be alive in this space for a limited time then disappear. Just like us. But for people who interact with it, it will be embedded in their minds, so it's not really gone. It's emptiness we're talking about, but in a very positive way."<br />
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'Sweep you away'</h3>
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While the drawing still exists physically, "it should sweep you away," says the self-critical Kwak, who will be pleased if 70 percent of what she intended comes across. "Less than that, it's a disaster," she adds with a laugh.<br />
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Elsewhere, you enter two small connected rooms - one harmonious, or auspicious, the other not - designed by the American artist Adrian Wong using Korean ceremonial objects from the museum's collection and the advice of local feng shui experts. Up in the Chinese ceramics gallery, surrounded by pieces adorned with mythological creatures and other traditional imagery, you find a vivid and grotesque painting by Hong Kong-born Canadian artist Howie Tsui. It draws on everything from ancient Chinese mythology and Edo-period ghost paintings to contemporary Japanese anime. Among other fantastical figures, there's a headless guy with a hatchet dancing on a two-headed elephant.<br />
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"The artist goes back to all these traditional stories and mythologies and characters and reinterprets and reshapes them his own way," Harding says. "He uses those characters to comment on how in our culture today, storytelling is used more to incite fear, rather that teach moral lessons."<br />
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Intricately decorated</h3>
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Then there are the Han Dynasty bronze mirrors, some dating back to 480 B.C.E. The backsides are intricately decorated with cosmological symbols, deities and constellations. The mirrors reflected not just face of the person holding it, "but also the whole universe," says Kataoka, who found a similar resonance in the work of Filipino artist Poklong Anading. In his "Anonymity" pictures, nine of which are in view in light boxes, he photographed people holding mirrors to their faces to reflect a round flash of sunlight that obscures their image</div>
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Kataoka has some advice for viewers, who don't need to know the backstory of these pieces to experience them fully.<br />
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"What you have to do is take a big breath and try to feel the invisible energy. Then you begin the show." {sbox}<br />
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<strong>Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past: </strong>Fri.-Sept. 2. $7-$12. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, S.F. (415) 581-3500. <a href="http://www.asianart.org/"></a><a href="http://www.asianart.org/" rel="nofollow">www.asianart.org</a>.<br />
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Jesse Hamlin is a freelance writer. <a href="mailto:sadolphson@sfchronicle.com" rel="nofollow">sadolphson@sfchronicle.com</a></div>
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This article appeared on page <strong>P - 14</strong> of the San Francisco Chronicle<br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px; text-align: left;"><br /></span><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/13/PK4C1OCP8V.DTL" rel="nofollow">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/13/PK4C1OCP8V.DTL</a>
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<span class="fn"><a class="email fn" href="mailto:jhamlin@sfchronicle.com" rel="nofollow" style="color: #015660; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jesse Hamlin</a></span></div>
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Sunday, May 13, 2012</div>
</div>Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3957748411637749048.post-77109597083995294722012-05-07T11:39:00.000-07:002012-05-07T11:39:42.112-07:00In the shadow of the great wave<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<strong>THE ocean has been a motif in Japanese art for centuries. Hokusai's woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, of a rearing breaker bearing down on two fishing boats, is perhaps the most famous artwork to emerge from this archipelago.</strong></div>
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Now, through last year's tsunami, the power of the sea has reasserted itself as a key influence on the country's artists.</div>
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The wave that tore into the coast of northern Japan and the ensuing nuclear disaster washed away the Japanese people's faith in a benevolent government and benevolent corporations.</div>
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Japan's art world is focused not just on the disaster but on the more cynical world-weary Japan that is emerging from the rubble. These grim times -- with rising fears over radiation and atomic energy, the economy and the ever-present possibility of another devastating quake -- seem almost tailor-made for six-member activist art group Chim Pom. The young provocateurs who make up Chim Pom (the name alludes to the Japanese slang for penis) got their start with works they say symbolised the battle for survival of youth (such as them) who didn't fit Japan's rigid corporate and social structures. They already had an anti-nuclear bent to their work, so it's no surprise that what happened at Fukushima is one of the key influences on their latest exhibition, Turning Around.</div>
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Chim Pom's Ryuta Ushiro shows us through the exhibition at Tokyo's Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo's hip Shibuya area. He brings us first to a piece comprising several stuffed rats dyed yellow-green and mounted in glass cases in heroic poses. Ushiro says it's a reworking of Super Rat, a video work the group did in 2006 that involved catching rodents on the streets of Shibuya. Chim Pom viewed the rats as a mirror of itself back in 2006, but in the later piece Ushiro says they represent survival.</div>
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"This time around they were much harder to catch. It just goes to show they are great survivors," he says "We wanted to present a vision of how Japanese people will have to go on living surrounded by radioactivity."</div>
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Soon after the tsunami, and at the height of fears about the nuclear plant, Chim Pom produced another typically subversive piece combining shock value and a political message. It painted a panel depicting the wrecked Fukushima reactors with black clouds styled as demons hovering above them in the same style as Japanese painter Taro Okamoto's anti-nuclear, post-atomic bomb mural The Myth of Tomorrow.</div>
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The mural is displayed in Shibuya station and is notable for the small rectangle cut out of the bottom right corner, a legacy of the space for which it was originally designed. At 9pm on April 30, Chim Pom entered the station and placed their panel into the gap in the original work. It took less than minute but people in the station saw it happen and snapped pictures on their phones.</div>
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"The rumour exploded on social media as soon as we installed our painting, and the following day the police came to remove it," Ushiro says. "But ever since we did our installation, people have come to view The Myth of Tomorrow with our piece on Fukushima attached."</div>
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Other works in the exhibition shaped by the tragedy on March 11 last year, include a mural depicting an emergency exit burned on to a wall with gasoline fumes and an installation with a falling</div>
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glass arrow. Both relate to the heightened quake risk in Tokyo.</div>
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Since the disaster, Chim Pom's members, like many Japanese artists, have visited affected areas and met victims. Red Card (2011), the piece used on the brochure for the group's Turning Around exhibition, took this a step further.</div>
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Chim Pom's Toshinori Mizuno got a job among the thousands of day labourers toiling at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant. He used the opportunity to photograph himself dressed in a radiation protection suit, holding up a red card against the backdrop of a mangled reactor building.</div>
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Ushiro believes the March 11 disaster will shape the group's art for a long time, and says Chim Pom is planning new versions of one of the more moving pieces in the exhibition, Destiny's Child. The work consists of a doll of a child in a gas mask and nuclear protection suit that sits in the corner of a lift, fingers locked in the V pose young Japanese adopt in pictures.</div>
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Ryuji Enokida's volunteer project, the Recovery Assistance Media Team, sought to directly involve the victims of the disasters in the creation of art.</div>
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Enokida, a musician and visual media lecturer, gave cameras to children in tsunami-affected areas, where tens of thousands of homeless victims were staying in evacuation centres for months after the tragedy, to document their experiences.</div>
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"I thought by giving the children the opportunity for interaction and the chance to tell this story to people outside, it would lessen their mental burden," he says. He expected to experience despair when he first visited northern Japan, but came away with admiration for the strength of character of the victims.</div>
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Sixty of the images shot by the children, including those from Kamaishi East Junior High, will be displayed in Messages for Our Children -- 3/11: a New Beginning on display at the Japan Foundation Sydney's gallery from this week.</div>
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The pictures will be displayed with comments that Enokida says make for a form of visual haiku. "By combining picture, caption and title, it gives us a very interesting sensory effect," he says.</div>
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This is the first time the pictures have been shown outside Japan.</div>
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Just as budding young artists have been moved by the tragedy, so too have some of the big names of the Japanese art world.</div>
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Yoshitomo Nara lives near Fukushima and spent the months after the disaster volunteering with relief organisations. He told The Wall Street Journal that he abandoned art for a time as the whole enterprise felt "superficial" after what had happened.</div>
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Nara says he had to go back to his old art school in Aichi prefecture and work alongside students to rekindle his enthusiasm. He has returned to the fray, albeit with a slightly new style.</div>
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His trademark pastel-hued comic-style portraits, according to the WSJ, have also changed, with the recent work featuring children with softer and more natural facial expressions.</div>
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"It's weird to admit this, because I'm already an adult, but I feel I've just grown up," he says.</div>
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<em>Messages for Our Children -- 3/11: a New Beginning is at the Japan Foundation's Sydney gallery from Thursday.</em></div>
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<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/in-the-shadow-of-the-great-wave/story-e6frg8n6-1226349190804">http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/in-the-shadow-of-the-great-wave/story-e6frg8n6-1226349190804</a>
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<br />Craighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14445907166620209202noreply@blogger.com0