Zen and the Roundabout Road to Enlightenment

In his classic book “Yen in the Art of Archery,” Eugen Herrigel makes it clear that trying too hard to hit the target is a sure way to miss it. This paradox struck me recently at the Suntory Museum’s exhibition of art and artifacts from Kyoto’s 800-year-old Kennin-ji Zen Buddhist temple; an exhibition that is surprisingly less about the didacticism and preaching of religion than the aesthetics of pure artistic enjoyment.

“For most Buddhist sects, the focus was to make people believe that Buddhism would save them,” museum curator, Nobue Mito explains. “The thing that distinguished the Zen monks from the other sects is that they didn’t think that directly saving people was the most important thing.”

Rather than the short route of proselytizing, Zen monks preferred to take a longer, more scenic route to spiritual redemption; one that involved intellectual, cultural, and aesthetic activities, like studying, writing poetry, performing the tea ceremony, and producing and collecting beautiful works of arts. All these aspects are in evidence with examples of calligraphy, poems, and other documents, as well as beautiful paintings executed on various surfaces.

The portraits of the Buddhist monks, like the 15th century hanging scroll depicting Kennin-ji’s founder, Myoan Yosai (1141-1215), characteristically depict Zen monks seated on chairs with their legs folded under their robes in the lotus position, and their empty shoes below on the ground as if they were levitating. These scrolls are now sadly much besmirched with incense smoke.

A portrait that has stood the test of time much better is the 14th century painted wooden statue of the monk Chugan Engetsu (pictured). Although most of the color has now faded, the hard, lifelike stare emitted by the crystal eyeballs and the tension with which the figure appears to hold the rod used to discipline monks during zazen breathing exercises, makes you almost expect a sudden admonitory thwack.

With its strong links to Sung Dynasty China, Zen Buddhism was a natural conduit of Chinese culture. This is seen in the Temmoku tea bowls on display. Although made in Japan, the name recalls a mountain in China famous for Zen monasteries and the growing of tea.

“During the Tang dynasty in China, the best tea bowls were celadon ware, as this made the tea seem greener,” Mito explains. “But in the Sung dynasty, foamy tea with a rather white surface became popular so tea bowls with a contrasting black glaze were preferred.”
Introducing Chinese fashions into Japan also helped to make Zen popular with the elites, who invariably viewed foreign culture with a sense of wonder and emulation.

The imagery in Buddhist art sometimes seems an amalgam of Oriental myths and legends. Among the fabled creatures on loan from the temple the most impressive is Kaiho Yusho’s series of eight vast hanging scrolls from the Momoyama period, depicting two enormous, brooding, storm-like dragons. While the motif of the most famous object on display, Tawaraya Sotatsu’s folding screen, ‘Wind God and Thunder God’ has more relevance to Shintoism than Buddhism. This astounding 17th-century national treasure will be displayed from the 25th of June, in the meantime being represented by a copy.

Westerners with their history of holy wars are often amazed by the apparent degree of tolerance and mutual acceptance in Oriental religion. A triptych of hanging scrolls from the 17th century by Kano Tan’yu shows the Buddha harmoniously flanked by Confucius and Lao-tzu. Mito suggests that the true reason for such tolerance was the fact that both Confucianism and Taoism were regarded more as philosophies than religions. This is symbolized by the fact that only the Buddha directly faces the viewer, while the two sages, like the portraits of the Zen monks, are all three quarter views.

Just like other religions, Buddhism was occasionally guilty of intolerance and sectarianism. Persecution by the established Buddhist sects meant that Myoan Yosai was only able to establish the temple of his new sect in Kyoto after he won the support of the shogun, Minamoto-no-Yori’ie. While a letter from Oda Nobunaga dated 1574 to one of Kennin-ji’s sub-temples, assuring it that it could still raise taxes on the land it owned, testifies to the continued importance of patronage.

By not aiming directly at the target of religious salvation, Zen Buddhism through its intellectualism and aestheticism greatly enhanced and enriched the spirit and culture of Japan. But the sect’s popularity with the political elite and the benefits it reaped leaves the suspicion that part of Zen’s mission, like that of other great religious sects, was to curry favor with the politically powerful.

Kennin-ji: the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto ran until July 7, 2002 at the Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo.

Japan Times
June 12, 2002

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The chrysanthemum and the rose

LONDON -- Anybody turning up at London's Hyde Park to walk their dog on the morning of Saturday, May 19, could have been forgiven for thinking they'd wandered into some kind of space and time warp. Instead of a few squirrels and strollers enjoying the pale, watery sunshine, they would have found a full-blown Japanese matsuri in progress. If they weren't surprised to see taiko drummers smashing open sake barrels, they might have been shocked by the sight of a group of bald, middle-aged Japanese men in traditional robes carrying a golden mikoshi around at an admirable trot with dozens of excitable British kids in tow, or a host of other events that have no real business being in your average London park.

If our hypothetical dog-walker had stopped to think, he or she might have remembered a few warning signs, such as the posters and TV programs announcing the countless events and exhibitions which, along with the Matsuri in the Park, are part of Japan 2001, a 12-month series of cultural events being held around Britain with the object of promoting and developing an awareness of Japan.

These events include everything the average person might expect, including Japanese gardening, kabuki, noh and martial arts. But, as Christopher Purvis, chief executive of Japan 2001, has planned it, the festival isn't merely perpetuating the stereotypes of Japan.

"The program is, I believe, a well-balanced mixture of the new and the traditional," Purvis said. "We thought it was important to have an element of the great traditional arts. It has been wonderful, for example, to have the great kabuki actor Ganjiro III here. What is happening is that people may first go to see something traditional and then be drawn onto something else in the program perhaps more contemporary."

Adding to the distinctly traditional hue of the Hyde Park events was the presence of Prince Charles and Japan's Crown Prince, who declared the event open and then joined in an Awa odori, a traditional rice-growing dance that hopefully won't disrupt the park's ecology too much. Afterward they stayed to watch the yabusame (traditional horseback archery).

However, the two-day event, which drew 215,000 people, also had contemporary elements to offer.

"Most of what I've seen today is traditional stuff that you'd associate with Japan," one 23-year-old English woman said, "but the street fashions and pop music were pretty cool. It's like they copy things from here but when you see it, it comes over as weird and funny at the same time."

The street fashions she was referring to were the cyberpunk threads sported by a group of Japanese female art students. Although spectators themselves, they became for a short time a kind of sideshow. Taking an excited interest in a quaint-looking Muji van, they circled round it squealing "kawaii" and snapping photos, in the process attracting a small crowd with their antics.

Much has changed since the last Japanese festival held 10 years ago. Funding, for one.

"There is less sponsorship freely available than there was then," Purvis explained. "That is not necessarily a bad thing, as we and other organizers have been concentrating on making an impact with lower-budget events. Also, so much has been initiated by enthusiasts around the country."

In fact this "bottom up" approach, in part dictated by the economic slowdown, contrasts nicely with the "top down" centralized corporate organization of the previous festival - which famously featured a sumo tournament at the Royal Albert Hall.

"Japan is undergoing dramatic change," Purvis observed. "But this is a positive change. The political and business model of the last 50 years served the country well after the war. But now everything is changing. Companies are changing. The political scene is changing. All this is reflected in lifestyle and culture."

If Japan 2001 achieves anything lasting then it could be to break the rather stubborn and preconceived notions about Japan and its inhabitants. The image of Japan needs updating. "An obvious myth is that all Japanese men wear blue suits and work for major Japanese corporations. In fact there is a huge diversity in occupations and lifestyles," Purvis said.

These themes of diversity are being explored at JAM: a Tokyo/London exhibition running at London's Barbican Centre from May to July. Presenting cutting-edge works from around 100 artists working in both cities in the fields of fashion, graphics, photography, the media, music and art, the exhibition delves into the creative synergy between the two metropolises to show Londoners that Tokyo is just as hip as the capital of "Cool Britannia."

The urge to show the modern Japan was also seen in the mascot used to promote the monthlong Tokyo Life exhibition held

at the majestic Selfridges department store on Oxford Street, London's main shopping drag, throughout May. Instead of a crowd-pleasing cliche of a samurai, sumo or geisha, a cartoon character of a funky Japanese teenager was used. The exhibition itself featured a kaleidoscope of Japanese fashion and other products, ranging from furniture and home appliances to traditional kimono and mini skirts, along with karaoke in the basement coffee shop.

Apart from the clear attempt to dismantle outdated notions inhabiting popular consciousness, Japan 2001 is also encouraging crosscultural exchange at many levels. The clearest example of this is Shakespeare in Japan, an event using the traditional Japanese theatrical forms of noh, kyogen and kabuki to reinterpret and illuminate the Bard's plays, set against the backdrop of the Globe Theatre built by the River Thames. Nakamura Ganjiro III took a break from playing in "Love Suicides at Sonezaki" at London's Sadler's Wells to appear on the Globe's stage for one night.

Although many Japan 2001 events are in London, Purvis is keen to point out that there are also 750 events outside the capital, including a mini version of the Matsuri in the Park traveling to 22 towns and cities throughout the land. Another major initiative is Homestay U.K., which will give British children a chance to experience life with Japanese families. This reflects the grassroots approach favored by Japan 2001, with groups all over the country spontaneously contributing and Japan 2001 acting as an umbrella organization.

Helping foster a modern and positive awareness of itself in other countries is vital to Japan's national interests. Compared to some other locations in Europe, it already has a head start in Britain.

"There is an enormous interest in Japan here," Purvis enthused. "I don't believe there are many other countries where such a Japan year could be held."

Reasons for this might include the fact that Britain has Europe's largest Japanese population (more than 100,000) and that about 1,000 graduates from British universities go to Japan each year to teach English.

Island states of roughly equal size, preserving tradition and monarchies, the U.K. and Japan appear to share a pulse of sympathy that reverberates between them. British fashion and music are as big as ever in Japan, from yesterday's mod and punk scenes to today's clubland DJs. In the other direction, Japanese style and cuisine have made big inroads into the U.K. Who'd have thought you could find sushi at a local supermarket or ramen shop on the corner? While no one expects the British to suddenly start bowing to each other, or the Japanese to take to Marmite and warm beer, mutual interest between the two countries can only grow as a result of Japan 2001.

Japan Times
(co-written with my brother Marc Liddell)
June 27, 2001

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Tohaku Hasegawa

The exhibition at the Idemitsu Museum, “New Discovery: The Beauty of Hasegawa Tohaku,” has quite a tale to tell, one that adds much interest to the stunning screen paintings on display. It is a tale of rivalry and skullduggery that stretches beyond the grave and has seen one of the great artists of Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568-1600), deprived of his full glory. Until now, that is.

As museum curator, Hirokazu Yatsunami, explains, recent scholarship is revolutionizing the way Hasegawa is regarded.
“This exhibition is to present these new views and the most representative works among these new discoveries,” he says.

Up until now, Tohaku Hasegawa has been considered primarily a sumi-e (monochromatic ink) painter, who suffused his screen paintings with an emotionalism absent from the work of rivals, like Eitoku Kano (1543-1590) with whom he competed for the favor of the great men of the day, like the Shoguns, Nobunaga Oda and Hideyoshi Toyotomi.

Although striving for emotion, Tohaku Hasegawa skillfully avoided sentimentality in his work by using animal subjects. This can be seen in “Cranes and Bamboo” (ca. 1590), a pair of screens, like most of the works at this exhibition. In one set of panels, the male crane appears to be crying out for his mate, while in the other the female crane looks coyly round, creating a subtle but powerful emotional impact.

Another pair of ink screen paintings, the smouldering “Tigers and Bamboo” (ca. 1590), is not only a testament to Hasegawa’s genius, but is also evidence of artistic chicanery, Yatsunami explains.

“This screen painting was damaged, therefore these two panels on the left were added by Tanyu Kano,” he mentions. “He has reattributed this work to Tensho Shubun, the grandfather of Japanese ink paintings. Because of the time difference, which is so close, it seems likely that he intentionally changed attribution.”

As the Kano family dominated the Japanese art world in the years following Hasegawa’s death, Yatsunami believes this is evidence of a concerted attempt by the family to erase Hasegawa’s legacy. Another example of reattribution is the atmospheric “Crows on Pine, Egrets on Willow” (ca. 1593) where Hasegawa’s seal has been crudely scraped off so that the screen can be reattributed to Sesshu, the most famous name in Japanese ink painting.

In addition to his ink works being reattributed, Hasegawa’s polychrome works were all but forgotten, except for one example “Cherry and Maple Trees” at Chishakuin Temple in Kyoto. So much was his reputation for color paintings forgotten that even a work that bore his seal, like “Japanese Bush Clover and Eulalia” (ca. 1602) was suspected to be by someone else. Partly, this was because traditional Japanese polychrome painting is more of a technique-based, craft-like art than the more expressive sumi-e, in which the personal styles of great artists tend to as unmistakable as signatures.

Due to close analysis of the one clear example of his polychrome work at Chishakuin Temple, scholars can now state for the first time that three large color screens are definitely by Hasegawa. The most impressive of these is “Willow Trees by the Bridge” (ca. 1603), an extravaganza of gold leaf and paint that is said to depict Uji Bridge, a symbol of the connection between this world and the next.

Such gorgeous works, using expensive materials, were a sign that an artist had truly arrived. While Eitoku Kano was alive, the two painters competed for the patronage of the greatest in the land, but after Eitoku's death in 1590, Tohaku stood alone as the greatest living master of his time, something the successors of Eitoku found hard to accept. The Kano family may have helped to suppress the legacy of their great rival, but this fascinating exhibition at least ensures that Hasegawa will have the last laugh.

International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun
March 18, 2005

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Book Review: Urayasu Tekkin Kazoku

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Art Brief: Jakuchu and the Age of Imagination

The good thing about this exhibition – centering on Japanese painting from the 18th and early 19th centuries – is that it presents art collected without an agenda. Most of the works on display come from the collection of Joe Price, an American collector who started collecting over 50 years ago. Rather than reading up on the subject or consulting ‘art experts,’ he merely bought whatever appealed to his visual sense.

In Joe’s case this was not the ‘wabi sabi’ or dull Zen stuff that was creeping into artistic respectability even back in the fifties, but rather the livelier, plebian art of Itoh Jakuchu (1716 – 1800) and other Kansai painters. These brightly decorated works, like Jakuchu’s astounding pictures of gamecocks and other animals, were snubbed by art cognoscenti until relatively recently. This exhibition presents 101 works chosen jointly by Joe and the museum from more than 600 works in his collection.

Ran to August 27, 2006, Tokyo National Museum.

Japanzine
(under the name Marius Gombrich)
August, 2006

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Art Brief: Shinji Ogawa

The great modernist cheapskate architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously said, “Less is more.” This is also the ruling principle in this exhibition of paintings by Shinji Ogawa, a 47–year–old Japanese painter who meticulously reproduces famous paintings from the canon of Western art, like Vermeer’s “Milk Maid” (ca. 1658) or Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” (ca. 1656), but with the people or some of them missing.

While this is a useful tool for deconstructing famous paintings, and highly enjoyable for professional art critics like me, who perhaps know these paintings rather too well, I suspect that it has less appeal for the general public, who like to have a good look at their milkmaids. For his next project I suggest Ogawa aims closer to home and attempts a “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” without Mt. Fuji.

Runs to Dec. 24, National Museum of Art, Osaka.

Japanzine
(under the name Marius Gombrich)
December 2006

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Art Brief: Asae Soya

Perspective, by its invocation of distance, divides things and people from each other. While such divisions help us to organize things on a mental and visual level, it can also deaden the sensuousness and warmth we feel for those things around us. This has always been the main drawback of the Western artistic tradition.

33-year-old Asae Soya, who recently earned a doctorate in art from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, paints in a style that uses elements of Western perspective, but seeks to overcome its drawbacks by, as she says, “employing the five senses to the full.”

In her first solo exhibition since 2003, she pursues this agenda in the 15 paintings and 10 drawing on show (two thirds sold on the first day) by employing a number of distorting factors that visually simulate at least two of the other four senses. Shimmering, rainbow-refracted colors and watery effects painted in oil on panel-mounted cotton give her works a warmth and wetness that you can almost feel, while her ripples seem to emit the sounds of water drops dropping.

Many of her works have hitherto focused on impressions from the bathroom, but the present exhibition reveals a growing ambition with a number of works based on airports. Here the motifs of water are used to bring distance closer and to make the impersonal intimate. The water droplets and the blurred lights of “Airport Eastgate” (2007) turn the soulless environment of these portals of distance into something resembling an inner psychic soulscape.

Japan Times
November 1, 2007

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Storyboarding the Worlds of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is the Sir Walter Scott of Japan. Just as the Scottish writer created a fascinating picture of Scotland, based on romantic figures of highlanders and windswept crags, that defined his nation for the rest of the world, so the Japanese director created a colorful vision of his country, employing feudal samurai and richly painted geisha, that has stuck in the international mind. How much this world was envisioned and imagined by Kurosawa was displayed at a recent exhibition of his storyboard illustrations held at the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo.

Although he may have been Japan’s greatest movie director, it seems that Kurosawa was also very much a frustrated painter as the artistic qualities of these stroryboards make clear. He also painted, sketched, and crayoned a great number, as Seiju Toda, the show’s curator tells me. For his 1985-movie Ran he reportedly created over 800 full-color storyboard images that meticulously worked out details of costume and armor as well explored the visual language of the period.

“Wherever he went, he always carried his painting instruments with him,” Seiju Toda points out, “even when he was staying in ryokans. I think it’s clear he intended these pictures to exist as paintings because he signed so many of them.”

While normal storyboard illustrations tend to be precise pictures, devoid of extraneous detail, drawn by professional graphic artists to assist camera location and actor positioning, Kurosawa’s illustrations are vivid, expressive, and rich in color and emotive details. These qualities give viewers a foretaste of the movie’s atmosphere, such as the lush hues of “The Field: A Rainbow Goes Away from Me” from his 1990-movie, Dreams, or the dramatic heroism of the soldier pierced by a tangle of arrows in “Fall of the Third Castle: A Hedgehog” from Ran.

As a young man, Kurosawa greatly admired Vincent van Gogh and dreamt of becoming an artist, but had to push his painterly aspirations firmly to one side as he worked his way up in the Japanese movie industry of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. In the beginning, it seems he relied little on storyboards, and there are no examples of storyboards earlier than Kagemusha (1980). It was this movie, however, that was to prove the catalyst in combining his youthful interest in painting with his mature career as a director.

“He painted many storyboards for this movie because it had a very big budget and, at first, the movie company didn’t agree with his ideas,” Toda recalls. “He used the storyboards to convince them it would work. Also, famous friends and admirers, like George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola in America, were so impressed by the storyboards that they helped to get American financing and distribution for the movie.”

Although the storyboards at the exhibition were produced when Kurosawa was already an old man, they retain the influences of his youth. “I Fly: My Shadow Calls Me” an illustration for a sequence that was later dropped from Dreams recalls the lyrical, dreamlike quality of Marc Chagall, while “Village of the Watermills: An Old Man of A Watermill” from Dreams shows much of the intensity and expressiveness of color for which van Gogh was justly famous.

A special feature of the exhibition was that many of the storyboards were enlarged to a ‘screen size’ of several square meters.
“Although these works became his paintings, they also served as storyboards,” Toda explains. “In his mind, they must have been screen-sized. That’s why we decided to enlarge them to screen size”

One of the most attractive of these enlargements is “The Roof of Ashinoya House: Starry Sky after a Storm” from The Sea Watches, in which two kimono-clad figures look up at the sky, while the dark flood waters lap at the eaves of the house. That this movie was successfully filmed in 2002, four years after the death of Kurosawa, is testament to the power these images have in communicating the vision of this great artist and director.

New York Arts Magazine
March, 2005

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Simple tea, the soul-soother

Japan, a hectic, densely-populated country, has always been guilty of overloading the senses. It is only natural that here too an ameliorating aesthetic should have developed. This is best expressed by the calmness and simplicity of the tea ceremony.

Although chanoyu, or the way of tea, leads out of the comfort zone of accessible Japanese culture, this path also brings us to a more profound understanding of that culture.

You know you are on the right path when you enter Tokyo's Gotoh Museum and experience that first feeling of anticlimax. Although it has an extensive and impressive Japanese garden hidden behind the museum building, the current exhibition markedly lacks visual fireworks.

That's the point.

The exhibition consists of 70 utensils used in tea ceremonies over the centuries, including bowls, vases, water pots, kettles and tea caddies. Many of the items actually belonged to the famous tea master, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591), who did so much to evolve this unique and mysterious ritual.

One of the most challenging pieces is "Yaburebukuro (Burst Pouch)" a 16th-century Iga-ware freshwater jar in natural-ash-glazed stoneware (pictured).

It has a comical shape, with a wide, top-heavy neck pressing down on a small body that seems to be cracking under the pressure. Despite looking like a potter's mistake, it is revered as an important cultural property.

Although there are several conventionally beautiful objects, such as the pale green celadon flower vase from the Southern Song Dynasty, whose form subtly hints at the shape of a gourd, many of the items reveal the tendency to construe imperfections as charms.

This is evident in the cast-iron Ashiya kettle with its hailstone pattern from the Momoyama Period (1573-1615). The fact that a large part of the lower surface has since cracked off has only ensured this piece's reputation as a unique work of beauty.

To understand why such unlikely works are so highly regarded, it is vital to understand the ideas behind chanoyu. Rules concerning the preparation and consumption of the humble beverage had already been formulated when tea masters like Murata Shuko in the 15th century started to incorporate Zen concepts and artistic ideas.

Sen no Rikyu completed the process by further formalizing the rules of behavior and identifying the tea ceremony's spirit with the four Buddhist principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquility, creating the highly evolved wabi-cha style of tea ceremony that is most admired today.

The aim is simplicity and serenity. With regard to the attendant ceramics, art, gardening and architecture of the tea ceremony, it is held that these objectives can best be achieved by suggesting nature.

This is done by the avoidance of symmetry and pretentiousness and by stressing the intimate and down-to-earth aspects. The aesthetic is clearly at work in another unassuming masterpiece from the exhibition: "Mine no Momiji (Maple on the Peak)," a gray Shino-ware tea bowl also from the Momoyama Period.

Although it is easy to understand how this austere aesthetic appealed to Zen priests and samurai warriors, chanoyu was also very popular among the rich merchant class, particularly in the commercial hub of Sakai. Sen no Rikyu himself came from such a background.

Merchants were renowned for their gaudy extravagance and wild parties, and it seems surprising that they had a penchant for such a rarefied pleasure. But, then, after a night of hedonism, what could be more soothing for a rich merchant with a hangover than the subdued colors, silence and reassuring ritual of the tea ceremony?

Japan Times
December 30, 2000

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Book Review: 'Out' by Natsuo Kirino

The best mysteries are those that reflect deep psychological and social tensions, and have a higher agenda. In fact, without these resonating elements, a mystery novel can so easily become just a shallow and superficial mechanism. Luckily, Natsuo Kirino's Out, now translated into English, is full of deep, dark resonances and - along the way of a thrilling and engrossing read - makes some profound points about Japanese society.

The novel opens the door on the lives some ordinary women, working part time on the night shift at a lunch-box processing plant, a dead end job that only emphasizes the domestic drudgery of the protagonists, and can be seen as a symbol of the frustration and subjugation of higher female aspirations.

Though their backgrounds and situations differ, the four women share a vague but potent desire to escape the confines of their daily lives. Out of this apparently humdrum situation, Kirino creates a real page turner, as one of the women is driven to murder her husband, and her colleagues decide to rally round.

Turning their job to their advantage, the women work together to cut the body up into small pieces and dispose of it. From that moment on, their lives begin spinning out of control, either towards destruction or liberation.

With incisive prose and telling descriptions, Kirino achieves a taut level of anxiety. She deals expertly with the motives that got the women involved in such a heinous crime, and maintains the suspense about what will happen next with unpredictable plot developments that make the reader want to finish the entire story in one sitting.

The characters deal with issues that are of real importance in contemporary Japan - domestic violence, the care of the elderly, the consumeristic allure of famous brands, and the silently impaired family ties that result in stolid apathy.

While the women in the novel wish to break their chains, there is no easy escape, and they have to tough it out, day by day, like so many people in Japan, caught on a complex web of obligations and expectations. It is these resonating factors that give "Out" its unique darkness and make it a Japanese mystery novel of the highest quality.

Tokyo Journal
July, 2004

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The Dutch in Dejima

During the almost two and a half centuries when Japan shunned the rest of the World, the one Western country that remained on nodding terms was the Netherlands. This year the two countries celebrate 400 years of continuous contact in what must be one of the strangest international relationships ever. The current exhibition at the Edo Tokyo Museum focuses on this connection through documents, artwork and items collected and prized by the Dutch traders, offering a miscellaneous time capsule view of Japan during its hermit stage.

Japan in this period is often portrayed as a country under the heel of a paranoid regime of xenophobic Luddites, stifling every innovation with ruthless efficiency, however, the Tokugawas retained a keen interest in the outside world. One of the exhibits is “News of the World Reported by the Dutch” (1797) one of a regular series of documents compiled to keep the Tokugawas up to date with World events. Also, throughout this period, there was a growing enthusiasm among the learned classes for “Rangaku” or “Dutch knowledge” as the quickly developing Western sciences were known.

The reason for the nation’s isolation was clearly not hatred of foreigners. Following the victory of the Tokugawas, Japan was controlled by a delicately balanced feudal system of clans affiliated with the Tokugawa family counterbalanced by those that only owed token allegiance, a system that could easily be toppled by foreign intervention. It was because of these factors that foreigners were distrusted.

One of the exhibits is a wood carving of the Dutch humanist philosopher Erasmus that decorated the De Liefde, the first Dutch ship to reach Japanese shores. The rationalist, humanist attitude symbolized by this relic, as well as the restrained, businesslike demeanor of the Dutch, was obviously more to the taste of the Japanese than the Catholic fanaticism of the Spanish and Portuguese or the piratical enterprise of the English.

First contact was made on the 19th of April, 1600, when the De Liefde, piloted by the Englishman, William Adams, ran aground in Kyushu. A few years later, the Dutch set up a trading station on the island of Hirado and were still there when other Westerners were expelled from Japan. A few years later, in 1641 they were asked to relocate to a tiny man-made, fan-shaped island in the bay of Nagasaki, about the size of a soccer field. Here, under the rule of their Kapitans, the Hollanders traded European wool, and sugar, spices, sharkskin, and sappanwood from Southeast Asia, for Japanese precious metals, camphor, ceramics and lacquerware, many of which are on display along with more exotic items designed to impress the local potentates, like the “Unicorn’s horn” from a narwhal.

Many of the items in the exhibition show good taste, however, it must be remembered that the bottom line was profit. The great cabinet covered in ray skins and gold lacquer, and the intricate mother-of-pearl inlaid desk with a flower and bird motif are clearly items of great beauty, showing touches of the rococo style which excelled at presenting exotic foreign influences to European taste. Nevertheless, both pieces are practical and seem intended to serve as show items, displaying the high quality of Japanese craftsmanship to the customers back home.

This prosaicness of the Dutch is nowhere more evident than in the great amount of artwork commissioned by the Kapitans, in particular, the hundreds of works on display by the extremely gifted Japanese artist, Keiga Kawahara. Although an artist capable of great delicacy – see his picture of a lady visiting an icebound well – he was instructed by the Kapitans who employed him to depict a wide variety of scenes employing accuracy of perspective and clarity of line more common to a European draftsman than a Japanese artist.

So numerous and detailed are Kawahara’s paintings, that he was obviously playing the role of a human camera. There are detailed representations of Nagasaki Bay, delineations of the various capes and headlands around the coast, and zoological pictures of Japanese sea life and wildlife. But perhaps his most interesting pictures are his precise color views of everyday life focusing on various economic activities, such as tea picking, and noodle making. He shows craftsmen at work, making tatami mats or cutting tobacco using techniques and tools that had disappeared before they could be recorded by camera. Although beautiful and charming, the beauty of these pictures is quite incidental with the focus being firmly on the economic aspects, as the Kapitans, sensing the country’s immense economic potential, strove to gather commercially useful information.

With such an unerring eye for detail and prodigious output it is no wonder that Kawahara was accused by the Shogunate in 1828 of being a spy and forbidden further contact with the Dutch. The influence of European perspective was not lost on such bright and impressionable artists, however, also leaving a mark in the work of Kawahara’s contemporary, Katsushika Hokusai.

The Dutch, apart from showing an interest in anything that smelled of money, such as lacquerware or porcelain, also had a keen interest in the grotesque. Jan Cock Blomhoff, Kapitan from 1817 to 1823, seemed to rejoice in his exotic posting by collecting all manner of oddities such as the heads of ‘Ogres’ and mummified ‘mermaids’ constructed by charlatans out of fish skin, animal bones, and washi paper.

One of the items that he collected is a ‘peeping box’ through which pictures could be viewed through a small aperture. This is exactly what Dejima was for over 200 years - a peeping box through which the outside World watched Japan and Japan kept its eye on the outside World.

Japan Times
18th Nov 2000

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20 Years of Tokyo Journal (1981 - 2001)

When the first thin and decidedly unglossy issue of Tokyo Journal was launched on the magazine racks of the city back in April 1981, Reagan was in power in America, Thatcher in the UK, and Brezhnev in the Soviet Union. The cold war was at its height with Soviet tanks having recently rolled into Afghanistan against protests from the West. Here in Japan, the prime minister was Zenko Suzuki, and those gaijins that you think have been here far too long were just starting to arrive.

Over 13 prime ministers later, Tokyo Journal is still here. In terms of British PMs or US Presidents, 13 takes you back as far as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Despite the minimal effect that most of Japan's leaders have had, this still represents an enormous amount of water under the bridge.

In that time TJ’s ever busy staff has covered just about every aspect of Tokyo life you would dare to mention, and a few others you wouldn’t. All this with a multinational crew of misfits, oddballs, and stowaways lacking in local language skills, journalistic training, or even the ability to read their own notes. Luckily they knew how to write. After twenty years on the loose, it’s time to round up the usual suspects.

In the Beginning

The first issue cost 200 yen, a veritable fortune in those days, and contained 24 fun-packed black and white pages. But even in those days this was a rag distinguished by its good taste and love of fine writing. Gordon Hunter's article from July 1982, "The Obama Connection," focused on the perpetual gaijin fantasy of sleeping with a Geisha. Of course, in those days, your average journalist still had a few hang ups about reporting racy stuff like this. Luckily Gordon wasn’t one of them. All he needed was a little warming up:

I forgot just who did what, but once we got down to ‘Business’ and were doing what we both did best, the situation eased considerably. I wasn’t out to make my quota, but I was determined to live up to my reputation as a gaijin, not to mention getting my benefactor’s money’s worth. For her part, it was her first time in the business to break ten minutes at a stretch, having been fed a steady diet of Japanese men, who are rated among the world’s worst lovers. (Ask any hooker in New York.) Anyway, we broke a lot more than the ten-minute mark. Between the two of us, we might have put an appendix on the Kama Sutra. She threw caution and professional ethics to the winds; in the end, she swore she wouldn’t be able to work for the next two nights. And if my claim to fame as the size king of Obama had been dashed that night, I soon became the undisputed top tekunishan. Not that I kissed and told, but apparently she was seen ambling bow-leggedly down the hall to her room the next morning and this story became the talk of Obama within the week.

The editor who let this thinly disguised piece of jism slip through was none other than Don Morton, who now writes film reviews for Metropolis magazine. Besides his editing duties, Don was also one of the top contributing writers in the early days of TJ. His article from July, 1983, ‘Take a Little Dandelion Root and Call Me in the Morning,’ shows the positive attitude to the Orient that has kept him here for so long:

Consider the Western doctor in a rowboat on a pond. By rowing, the doctor can effectively create movement and can eventually cross the pond. In contrast, the oriental doctor’s boat is beached by a river. With a simple, judicial push, the boat is launched into the river, here representing the body’s life force, and moves along with it.

This is also a fine example of the use of metaphor, a device which TJ writers have constantly fallen back on in a desperate attempt to get a handle on the often inexplicable nature of reality here in Japan.

But words are cheap. What the readers want is blood, sweat, and tears. Accordingly, Don felt he had to go the whole hog with Oriental medicine and have himself turned into a human pin cushion, visiting an acupuncture doctor, a sobering experience for most squeamish Westerners.
'That’s it. Your first sample acupuncture session.’ says Ron as he pulls out the last needles. ‘You may, during the rest of the day, think that I left one or two of the needles in. But tomorrow you’ll feel great!’ I did feel great the next day. But I often feel great.

The Bubble Years

By November 1986, when Maggie Kinser’s less complimentary article on Japanese medicine appeared, TJ had a different editor, Glenn Davis, and reflecting the optimism of the Bubble Years had swelled to a glossy 500-yen mag with 128 pages, some of them in color.

Kinser’s article ‘Getting High in ‘Drug-Free’ Japan’ had everything to do with the high costs of this economic success, comparing ‘pick-me-up’ drinks like Yunkeru and Lipovitan D to hard drugs:

Japan says 'No!' to doragus. But on their own terms, the Japanese are no innocents. If you want to get high in Japan, without getting busted, the only term you need to know is kusuri. It’s a convenient term, doubling as both the English word ‘medicine’ and the more sinister word 'Drug.'

But viewing small bottles with caffeine-charged vitamins as on a par with crack cocaine tells us maybe more about the writer than the phenomenon described. Perhaps Kinser’s problem was culture shock, the phenomenon of being unable to cope with what is considered normal in foreign environs. Robert J. Collins’ ‘More About Culture Shock’ from May, 1987, tried to introduce some scientific method into this fuzzy realm:

Now then, do people moving to Japan for the first time experience ‘culture shock’? Yes. How do we know? Because everyone says so. There you go. Proof.

Now, if only quantum mechanics or string theory could be so lucidly explained!

Collins broke the idea of culture shock into two factors - level of involvement and anticipation. The highest degree of his 10 levels of involvement would be a foreign wife of a Japanese husband, probably a fisherman. The weakest degree of his 3 levels of anticipation could be expected from someone who had never been outside their own hometown before:

The 5-B person, wife of a foreign businessman in residence who arrived in Japan with at least conceptual foreknowledge (or foreboding) of what to expect, will probably survive. The realities, compared to theoretical expectations, at least provide a standard for measurement. (‘I knew it would be crowded on the subways, but I’m now being fondled by eleven people.’) Yet, that’s only ten more than anticipated.

A complex and scholarly thesis, then, that could have stretched into an academic career. But ultimately, Collins spiked his own guns by focusing on the one factor we know cancels out all the others:

My grandfather, a wise and well-traveled man, put the issue in perspective for me many years ago: ‘If you can’t eat the food, go home.’ I find myself considering his advice more often than I care to admit. I’m still here, but I despise natto.

East was increasingly meeting West as Davis Barrager’s article in the August 1987 issue, ‘Love is a Many-Cultured Thing,’ explored the phenomenon of intercultural relationships and mixed marriages, and the way that some traditional parents try to stand in the way:

An educated young Caucasian of good family, for example, and the daughter of his Japanese landlord fell in love and went to his homeland, where they lived together. Discovering this, her parents sent her sister to persuade her to come home and care for her suddenly ‘Ailing’ mother. And home she went.

The Japanese film industry was also trying to muddy the waters of international romance. Jim Bailey’s ‘Lifting the Lid on Japanese Movies’ from November 1988, looked at, among other things, the way the movie industry consistently portrayed the Japanese as, willingly or unwillingly, a race apart:

Seen through Japanese eyes, World War II is but another link in a long chain of victimizations and misunderstandings, a chain which now lengthens to include kaigei rokei (foreign location) films depicting the modern, postwar Japanese as a naive people at the mercy of the outside world. In Kamisama, Naze Ai ni mo Kokkyo ga Aru No? (God, Why is There a Border in Love?), a Japanese photographer in love with a girl he meets in Switzerland, is deported from the country on trumped up charges. In Howaito Rabu (White Love). a Japanese woman goes to Spain to study flamenco dancing, bears a child out of wedlock, becomes a common prostitute, and meets a violent end. The photojournalist hero of Yoroppa Tokkyo (Trans-Europe Express) endures insults to the Japanese as ‘yellow monkeys,’ survives a roughing-up by a muscle-bound bouncer, and is even refused by a Parisian prostitute who tells him, 'No Asians.'

Old fashioned parents and the movie industry were not strong enough to hold back the flood of international love breaking down the borders of Japan. Gaijins, mainly men, were falling head over heels for Japanese women. The problem was the sweet, demure image Japanese females had overseas. The only way to combat this was to show Japanese womanhood in a new, brutal light. For the July 1989 issue, Don Morton decided to take a close-up look at the bone-crunching world of Japanese Women’s wrestling, running into the antithesis of Madame Butterfly in his article, ‘Bubblegum and Blood’:

Up the walkway came the lady wrestler you thought they’d stop short of. Hair done stylishly up in a razored lightning pattern on her bare head, and her trademark, a swastika ‘tattoo’ on her forehead, the legendary Dump Matsumoto. swaggered into the arena. Dump’s swagger makes Sylvester Stallone look like he’s in a ladies’ kimono.

About to Burst

Just when the Bubble looked like it was about to pop, TJ focused on another example of the Japanese female shuffling out of her demure, kimono-clad role. This time the rise, in the face of enormous opposition, of Japan’s career women.

In his article for the June 1990 issue, ‘The Pink Collar Noose,’ Richard Kaufmann painted a bleak picture of Japanese industry’s continued sexual inequality despite the fact of massive labor shortages for career-path openings:

Most women enter a Japanese company as ippan shoku: an employment umbrella that indicates less pay, shorter hours (8-5) and short-term expectations. It is virtually synonymous with OL-dom: the ubiquitous, uniformed Office Lady whose major tasks include serving tea and decorating the office (with her presence). She has an unwritten agreement with her employer to work for a maximum of five years and, when not otherwise engaged, to focus her energies on finding a husband.

To succeed as a career woman, Noriko Nakamura, the founder of the Japan Association for Female Executives, suggested habits of mind that flew in the face of Japanese society:

Put a high value on yourself, your own ideas and opinions; make eye contact; develop your own interests outside of work and family; cultivate your talents and skill, because if you expect the company to do it for you, you’ll never make it.


POP!

But rather than allow this to happen, Japan's male business elite decided to put women back in their place by having a massive economic coronary, thus increasing the pressure on womenfok to stay at home and leave the diminishing number of jobs to the menfolk.

January 1991’s TJ had Gregory Starr at the editor’s desk and the new logo with the backward 'K’ This issue also featured Rachel Swanger’s ‘Princess of the City,’ a look at the Miss Tokyo beauty pageant. Sanctioned by the metropolitan government, this was a confused beauty contest located somewhere in the no-man’s land of sexual politics. After fighting off an attempt to ban it by a socialist deputy in the Tokyo Assembly, the competition got into full swing. Instead of raw sex appeal, which was re-categorized as ‘Health,’ more civilized virtues, like ‘cheerfulness’ and ‘Internationalism,’ were required:

Miss Shibuya, a gutsy little Waseda student with shoulder-length hair and the support of the crowd, which seems composed primarily of her friends, heeds the call of internationalism: ‘I give you my speech in terrible English. I am so nervous. I am so glad to enter this important contest.’ But when the actress-turned-professor Eiko Muramatsu asks her for her favorite English proverb, her eyes squint and then widen with confusion. Hers is not high-tea English. It’s the English of Roppongi record shops. She nearly faints before blurting out, 'Don’t worry, be happy.'

Needless to say the poor wee thing didn’t win. But that didn’t stop internationalization. One of the greatest forces here, as usual, was sport. In the March, 1991 issue TJ carried an excerpt from ‘Slugging it out in Japan’ a book written by Warren Cromartie of Tokyo Giants fame with the help of TJ staffer Robert Whiting. Even in 1985 attitudes were changing:

Our best pitcher and coolest dude was the round-faced plumpish Suguru Egawa. He was a nice guy and his attitude was more like an American major leaguer than any other Japanese player I’d met. He thought that all the training and all the strict rules of the Giants – ‘no beards, no long hair, suits and ties on the road – were basically bullshit. He thought that words like ‘fighting spirit’ and ‘guts’ were nonsense. He was a real professional.

The glamour of baseball was seriously overrated, however:

I had a little chair in front of my little locker which I could hardly sit on. Guys were taking off their clothes a few inches away from my nose. A guy named Komada, a 6' 3" outfielder, had the next locker. He would be standing next to me, changing into his uniform; then, all of a sudden, he would bend over and moon me unintentionally. I’d be putting on my socks and there would be his big rear end six inches from my nose.

July 1992’s TJ was also interested in naked rear ends with Swede, Kjell Fornander’s expose on Japan’s porn industry, ‘Risque Business,’ in which he met Kenji Hayami a veteran of over 1,200 porno shoots:

"You meet each other in the morning," Hayami told Fornander, "Say hello, work, then say goodbye. They pass by like dolls. I’ve become a kind of Pavlovian dog: I know when it’s time, but otherwise I don’t think about it."

The article also tried to explain why women were gravitating towards the porn industry. Some even saw it as fashionable:

Yoshimura at CineMagic has a simpler reason for AV’s popularity as even a short-term career: he believes today’s youth have no morals. The desk in his Shinjuku office is thick with applications, each with a photo attached.
Many of the women are remarkably beautiful. A few show their breasts or pose in underwear. ‘These are from only the past few months,’ Yoshimura says. He holds up one of the applications. ‘This one is from a housewife with two children.

Bubble Hangover

Perhaps it was this decline in moral values that Kokichi Saito and Koji Kogo were concerned about, or maybe they just saw the economic downturn as an opportunity for their extreme brand of politics. The leaders of the Seishinkan – ‘Organization for a Clean Country,’ one of Japan’s far right parties, were however kind enough to allow Dan Papia to clamber aboard their sound trucks for his August 1992 article, ‘The Right Stuff.’ Keeping an open mind, Papia found, with true TJ journalistic integrity, that this wasn’t such a black and white story as you might imagine, but then again maybe he had other reasons for presenting both sides of the argument:

On one of my visits to the Seishinkan, I meet a member named Namiki, who wears a punch-perm and has only four and a half fingers on one of his hands. Saito introduces him as a Seishinkan member but his official title is ‘Adviser.’
“He used to be a yakuza, but he quit,” says Kogo. He pauses, apparently lost in some melancholic thought. “The problem is that even when you quit you can’t get your fingers back again.”

A different kind of fascism was on display in David Duckett’s ‘Animal House’ article from October, 1993. Going under cover for a week, Duckett reported on the living hell of a particularly bad gaijin house. You couldn’t get more blood, sweat, and tears than this.

Following the murder of Poncho, the former manager’s pet monkey, a new, tougher manager, Ken, was drafted in:

Ken is a real doll. A sturdy six-foot-four, he looks like Barbie’s Ken and was dubbed ‘G.I. Joe’ by residents. He likes the job title of ‘Fascist Troubleshooter.’ Ken is the very antithesis of his charges, most of whom are a Techno crowd who survive by hostessing, busking, or street selling, and have no qualms about living in a pigsty.

Ken, whose agenda, consisted of turning the house into ‘A home for good people with working visas’ had his work cut out for him with the kind of oddball characters the house was famous for. One girl tenant remembered a not untypical incident:

"A woman, four-foot-eight and blonde, knocked on my door at 3am. I opened it bleary-eyed and saw this woman with a blonde wig down to her knees, wearing rubber shorts with a massive dildo attached, high heels and a whip. She said, 'So, what does it take to get your attention?'"

Of course, critics might say this is merely muck-raking, sewer rat journalism, but in David Duckett’s hands such muck invariably turned to gold.

With Japan’s economy slowing down, Tokyo lost much of its appeal as the place to drop in and make a fast buck. As for Tokyo Journal, the tone became a little more serious, reflecting the changing times. One of the most serious and well-researched articles we ever ran was ‘Bad Blood,’ Philippa Bourke’s expose of the AIDS-infected blood scandal that blighted the lives of up to 2000 hemophiliacs. This article reveals how terrifyingly short-sighted and complacent medical professionals can be. Dr Takeshi Abe, one of the country’s top hematology specialists, was reluctant to admit that Japanese could even contract the AIDS virus at the Fourth International Symposium on Hemophilia Treatment:

Included in his report for the congress was the fact that there were no other reported cases in Japan, and an almost xenophobic statement. ‘It was suggested,’ Abe wrote, ‘As a possibility that this obvious difference between Western and oriental countries might be caused by some racial factors in sensitivity.’

After the Kobe Earthquake and Aum Shinrikyo

With the Kobe Earthquake and the Sarin Gas Incident striking Japan in quick succession in 1995, the flavor was definitely for serious news stories. In the March 1996 issue another hard-hitting article focused on the problem of Tokyo’s homeless. Joji Sakurai’s ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’ dealt with the City’s two-faced attempts to clear the homeless from West Shinjuku’s ‘Corridor 4’ tunnel, where dozens had been living in makeshift cardboard homes sometimes for over a year.

Instead of just brutally kicking them out, the Metropolitan government decided to build a 1.3 billion-yen moving walkway as a pretext for removing the homeless. Sakurai described the heavy-handed police action:

One by one, the protesters are dragged out of the passageway into the cold morning air, where a crowd of onlookers has gathered to observe a truly bizarre scenario: 850 battle-ready cops and security guards flailing at some 200 sick and aging homeless people.

Besides such in-depth reporting, one of Tokyo Journal’s main functions has been to enable our readers to get the best out of the city in cultural terms. Over the years, we have featured some fine musical and artistic events, such as the unlikely collaboration of the world renowned celloist, Yo-Yo Ma and the legendary kabuki dancer, Tamasaburo Bando performing Bach’s music for the film.

‘Flash of Genius,’ Martin Richardson’s article and pictures, in the December, 1995 issue, captured the unusual chemistry at work that day:

Roll camera. Action. The notes rose and Tamasaburo uncoiled. Soon the discussions, the interviews, the ‘hemming and hawing’ as Ma put it, made sense in the collaborative performance. Forgotten were Tamasaburo’s troubled musings on the Bach pulse: for the rhythmic ‘Gavotte’ movement, he actually made a virtue of the beat by wearing a drum and striking it with unbridled glee. In the poignant ‘Sarabande,’ the kabuki master was at his tragic best. Then in the ‘Courante’ he was a whirl of movement, snapping with his fan before finishing. ‘With a flash in his eyes,’ Ma recalls. ‘That was frightening as it should be. That was an amazing dramatic movement.’

One art that Tokyo Journal has supported perhaps more than anyone else has been the unique dance form of Butoh. In August 1998, Mayumi Saito investigated ‘The Changing Face of Butoh,’ talking to some of the top practitioners such as Ippei Yamada, as well as foreign collaborators like the Russian ballerina, Ksenie Ivanenko:

‘Butoh released me from the strict rules of classical ballet. Maintaining high tension on stage was a norm I had always taken for granted. However, as Yamada told me to relax, I started to reconsider the meaning of dancing and my definition of self.’

Someone else who can relax a lot more than before is yokozuna and sumo legend, Akebono, who recently retired from the game. When TJ spoke to him in October, 1999, he was still at the peak of his powers. James Nelligan asked him about the highlight of his career:

'The first time I wrestled Takanohana. I was new and guys in my stable said: 'You cannot beat him.' I went out there and one crack to his jaw and it was all over.'

To Infinity and Beyond

Blood, sweat and tears - and plenty of smiles - Tokyo Journal has seen them all. The English-speaking community in Tokyo may come and go, with people leaving and arriving every day of the week, but through 20 years of change, one thing has remained constant ‘Tokyo Journal’s mission to keep a handle firmly fixed on this, one of the World’s most exciting cities.

Tokyo Journal
April 2001

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Music Review: 'One Night Carnival' by Kishidan

I only ever watch the Japanese pop charts to see the videos of cute girl singers. But, just occasionally, among all the derivative pop fluff, something truly unique and Japanese stands out, like Kishidan.
Defined as 'Yank Rock,' you might expect them to be even more derivative, but somehow dressing in high school uniforms with giant 50s rockabilly quiffs and doing complex dance routines while singing “Can you master baby?” is as Japanese as sushi. Instead of trying to look like chain-wearing, baggy-trousered American hoodlums, Kishidan represent an indigenous bad boy image of high school delinquency and bosozoku. None of this would mean a thing if they weren’t any good, but musically Kishidan are a tight band with a lot of tricks. "One Night Carnival," the title track of this maxi single, is one of the catchiest songs you’ll hear, with some great, fluid guitar playing; while "Guri to gura" starts out sounding like Cream before funking out, revealing the complexity of their musical underpinnings. Also check out their major first album released back in April, "1/6 Lonely Night."

Tokyo Journal
July 2002

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Mean Beans

Everybody knows the story of cheese: a man put some milk in a leather bag, got on his horse, and rode a few hundred miles. When he got to the end of his journey, he was surprised to find that he had a bag of cheese. The story of natto is remarkably similar, except there was no leather bag to contain the soy beans. Instead, the rider placed them on his saddle and sat on them the whole way. In this way, by the end of his journey, the beans had been transformed into natto, with its distinctive, disgusting aroma.

So, next time someone asks you if you've tried natto yet, don't fidget and fumble and feel guilty that you haven't tried out another culture to the full. Just laugh in their face at the outlandishness of their suggestion, or scream hysterically at the horror of their indecent proposal. Natto is not culture. It is the essence of evil incarnate in food form, and the sooner everyone realizes this, the better.

Because it TASTES so bad and SMELLS so bad, and even looks, feels and sounds so bad, people harbor the view that it must have some redeeming features. Hence the notion that it must be good for you! Strangely enough, this theory isn't encouraged if you're drinking from a can of oolong tea that smells or tastes bad, especially if you've just bought it from a supermarket with inadequate surveillance equipment. For my own part, I prefer to stick to the simple rule that stops me eating soap powder, chewing erasers, and licking the bald pates of salarymen: if it TASTES bad, it IS bad.

The truth is that natto is popular by conspiracy. It serves a deeper, more sinister purpose. Like kanji and squat toilets, it is a device designed to exclude foreigners from Japanese society, making it virtually impossible for us to assimilate. It is a barrier dividing us from each other and isolating Japan from the rest of the world. So, in the name of international brotherhood and basic culinary decency, I call upon the inhabitants of Japan, foreign and native alike, to take to the streets and root out the evil that is among us. I will not rest content until every last festering bean has been consumed by the avenging flames. Remember, Mr. Natto, you can run but you can't hide—not the way you smell, anyway.

Tokyo Classified
October 17, 1998

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Superflat Paper Tiger: The Art of Takashi Murakami

Japanese art has two compartments. First, there is the art that exists largely within a Japanese context. Then there is the art that, somehow or other, finds its way onto the international stage, and, by so doing, becomes representative of the country. Interestingly, much of the art in the first category consists of a slavish though skillful cribbing of foreign styles, as well as traditional art created with little thought for a wider market.

Japanese art that has been able to transcend the narrow confines of the domestic market and achieve a wide foreign audience has also usually been traditional: Hokusai and Hiroshige for example. But in this category you can occasionally find examples of non– traditional art that, for one reason or another, has managed to make the transition from local to international.

Chief among these rare success stories is Takashi Murakami. Running to May 2009, “© Murakami,” a major retrospective of his work is now touring the US, with further stops scheduled in Germany and Spain. This exhibition will further strengthen the impression that here is a Japanese artist with mass overseas appeal who isn’t some 18th–century woodblock carver in a kimono.

A lavishly illustrated book–cum–catalog has been published to accompany this series of exhibitions. The five lengthy essays included in the text are designed to help you understand why Murakami has succeeded where so many others have failed, but only if you read between the lines, because exhibition catalogues are hardly disinterested and impartial documents.

This makes this book a delight for those who like deconstructing their language and looking for hidden subtexts. As with much art writing, there is plenty of impressive–sounding, but vacuous, open–ended language. The Director’s Foreword for example invokes the usual adventurous clichés about art that goes “beyond its traditional boundaries,” and praises Murakami for being “revelatory” and “transformative,” without bothering to hint at what he might be revealing or transforming.

Such laudations might prompt you to take a look at the art itself. As the pictures show, Murakami creates large cartoonish canvases in acrylic and plastic sculptures, both of which have a pristine manufactured look, as if the products of some Disneyesque production line.

This is no accident. One of the points made in the far–ranging essay “Flat Boy vs. Skinny: Takashi Murakami and the Battle for Japan” by British media theorist Dick Hebdige, is that Murakami has taken Andy Warhol’s concept of the ‘art factory’ and made it a reality. According to its website, Kaikai Kiki, the art production company that executes Murakami’s artistic visions, employs roughly 50 people in its Tokyo headquarters and 20 people in its New York office and studio. This has enabled Murakami to extend his ‘Business Art’ into many areas, including the manufacturing and marketing of figurines based on his art and designs for the international luggage brand Louis Vuitton.

But if Murakami’s art operates on an industrial scale that has more in common with Disney than Warhol, there is certainly nothing ‘Disneyesque’ about the centerpieces of the exhibition: the otaku–influenced “Hiropon” (1997), a 71–inch tall acrylic fiberglass figurine of a naked young girl, squeezing what looks like a skipping rope of milk from her enormous breasts, and the host–boy–inspired “My Lonesome Cowboy” (1998) a male equivalent that creates a lasso from his ejaculate.

In his essay “Making Murakami,” the exhibition’s chief curator, Paul Schimmel draws an analogy between the dynamic liquid aspects of these works and that of Hokusai’s “Great Wave” from “The Thirty-Six Views of Fuji.”

One of the problems of contemporary art is that it demands to be judged on its own terms, without any transcendent standard of excellence or taste. The problem becomes more pronounced in the case of an artist like Murakami as we are thrown off balance by its strangeness or get caught up in the enthusiasm with which it is treated by critics reluctant to tackle the complex interlinked phenomena of his ouvre by imposing familiar standards that might backfire. In essence, this is Orientalism applied backwards and often gives Murakami a critical free ride.

Murakami’s art may be ‘kawaii’ (cute), amusing, and even occasionally breathtaking, but there is also much to criticize in its artificiality, repetitiveness, smugness, and its distasteful reliance upon ‘otaku’ (geek) culture. The fact that it largely escapes more rigorous censure is a testament to Murakmi’s ultimate skill in understanding and manipulating the international art market and its intelligentsia. The key in this is his concept of “Superflat,” a variable concept that serves to mystify his creations and protect them from normal Western art criticism.

But just what is “Superflat”? Dick Hebdige’s essay nails down its defining characteristics. These include: (1) the flatness found in traditional Japanese painting; (2) “decentering decorative” effects, also from traditional Japanese art; (3) the lack of Western distinctions, like art/craft or high art/ low art; (4) the flatness found in digital imaging; and (5) “the ground-zero flattening of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the nuclear strikes of 1945.”

The last aspect is of particular interest. As we learn form Paul Schimmel’s essay, Murakami’s mother was living in the Western Japanese city of Kokura in 1945 when a B-29 bomber set out to obliterate it with the second A–bomb of the war. Only an accident of weather deflected the bomber from its original target to Nagasaki.

Looking at Murakami’s “Superflat” as Hebdige does, by specifying its salient features, is revealing. The demystified concept loses its power and we realize that it lacks any real aesthetic or philosophical merit. Instead, it emerges as a connotatative system designed to evoke a tolerant or even apologetic response from liberal Western collectors, curators, and art critics. It certainly has this effect on Hebdige himself. Despite providing a useful dissection of Superflat, his essay eulogizes the artist. But Hebdige does enough to show us how the machine works.

Points (1) and (2) arouse the veneration due to any traditional ethnic art style, but, as “My Lonesome Cowboy” so blatantly shows, this is not a veneration that Murakami himself shares, as this work would clearly horrify or embarrass any traditional Japanese artist. Point (3) makes a claim for moral superiority by contrasting the elite categories imposed by past systems of Western art with Japanese art’s apparent democratic lack of them. But the truth is that the Japanese arts have their own labyrinthine grades of distinction, forms of snobbishness, and exclusive in–groups that more than make up for the simple absence of a craft/art distinction. Point (4) makes the point that Murakami’s art is somehow cutting edge and futuristic by linking it to Japan’s high tech industries, although what exactly is high tech about acrylic paint and plastic is hard to see.

Point (5) is the most interesting, both because it is the most potent in its effect of creating an aura of critical invulnerability around Murakami’s art, and because, once looked at, it turns out to be artistically irrelevant. Like a quickly mumbled absurd non sequitur, it is slipped in, in the hope that it won’t attract too much direct attention. But Murakami comes back to it a lot.

In paintings like “Time Bokan – pink” (2001), one of many variations of a death’s head mushroom cloud ‘sampled’ from a 1970s anime series, Murakami is clearly invoking the spirit of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By doing this he seems to be addressing the West’s art intelligentsia thus: “Oh yeh, and your lot almost dropped an A–bomb on my mum, so cut me some slack, okay?”

Decoded in this way, “Superflat” is revealed to be a paper tiger protecting a lot of badly conceived and highly overrated art.

Kansai Time Out
March 2008

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Katsura Funakoshi - Going With the Grain

In our modern, high–tech age of synthetic materials and digital information, there is something very reassuring about wood with its dull, homely ability to age beautifully and embody traditions. These qualities also make it a perfect medium for art. While stone is cold and canvas flat, wood is warm and three–dimensional. No wonder, then, that ancient cultures used to fashion their idols and totems from it. Wood is perhaps the most soulful material an artist can use if he has the necessary skills as Katsura Funakoshi undoubtedly does.

The 52–year–old sculptor’s sensitively carved figures in camphor wood touched with paint, emit a very human warmth that is absent from so much contemporary art. It is this quality, found also in oil paintings by old masters, that makes Funakoshi’s works seem so traditional despite the obvious modernity of their sleek lines and detached expressions. This combination of the traditional and the modern casts a spell of timelessness that suddenly makes the wood look tragically fragile. After all, even wood doesn’t last forever. It is no surprise to learn that for Funakoshi art is something that transcends the generations.

“My father was a sculptor,” he explains as I visit him at his atelier to find out how he works. “He made figurative sculptures, from clay works to bronze, and even in marble.”

Funakoshi followed the same path, until the path forked.
“After I came to do my masters course, I was asked by a church to make a figure of the Virgin Mary in wood. My professor said that camphor wood is ideal for first time wood carving. This was my first real wood sculpture.”

Funakoshi soon became hooked and continued to use camphor wood, making a name for himself by producing life–like and life–sized human figures with no legs. Possibly the fact that they are legless strikes a deep chord with Japanese as ghosts in Japan are often depicted this way. However, this wouldn’t explain his growing appeal outside Japan, in countries like Germany.

While many artists change for the sake of change, the key to Funakoshi’s art is the slow, organic way it evolves. While all Funakoshi’s works have beautifully carved faces, the bodies of earlier works often seem rigid and stiff compared with the more flowing way he treats the body now. The gradual rate of change in Funakoshi’s work brings to mind the growth rings of tree, slow but ever expanding.

“I don’t want to change suddenly,” he tells me in his unassuming way. “I’m not a person who thinks and thinks and finds an answer. I always have to wait for my thoughts or ideas to mature. When I get an idea, I think about it, and sometimes it stays with me for 7 or 8 years before I realize how to use it.”

Or even longer in the case of one of his most impressive works, “Memory Being Supported Once,” inspired by a 20-year-old memory of an injured rugby player being helped by a teammate. This work was important as it was also his first two–headed sculpture, a form that Funakoshi seems keen to explore in the run up to a major retrospective of his work, featuring about 40 sculptures, to be held at Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art next year.

“This will be one of the key points in my career,” he admits, as I catch up with him later at Ginza’s Nishimura Gallery. “So I need to make some very special new pieces.”

The Nishimura Gallery which has represented him for most of his career is hosting an exhibition of some of his sketches. These give additional insight into his working methods.
“On this sketch I’ve written a note,” he points to a preparatory sketch for his first two-headed work. “Next to the picture, it says, Should I make two heads?”

As this article goes to press, Funakoshi will be in his studio at work on 8 to 9 new sculptures for next year’s show. But, unlike some artists who seclude themselves from the World and work feverishly, Funakoshi likes to work at a more leisurely pace.
“I like to keep my antenna open,” he explains. This includes listening to music, having the TV on, or accepting visits from friends while he works.

In our modern society an artist has come to mean someone who shocks and astounds with each new work. Does he ever feel pressure to change faster than he wants to?
“Yes, there is a kind of pressure. I don’t think my father’s generation had that kind of pressure. This gallery always wants new things. Sometimes Mr. Nishimura asks me what is the next plan or the next image. I think it’s good for me because I’m a very lazy man. So I need pressure – not everyday – but I need pressure.”

One effect of this pressure has perhaps been to speed up his inspiration-to-production cycle. Last November he visited the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia and was inspired.
“I saw an elephant figure in an old stone temple with an incredible trunk,” he recalls.
The trunk has already emerged as the arm of an extremely elegant two–headed sculpture called “Shadow on the Snow” which he recently made for a museum in Hokkaido.

“This is a mother and daughter image,” he explains, showing me preparatory sketches and photos of the finished work. “The face is from my mother when she was young. I wanted to give the sculpture a three dimensional arm when suddenly the Cambodian elephant trunk came to mind.”

As one of Japan’s top artists, Katsura Funakoshi is under constant and contradictory pressure to both maintain his artistic legacy as well as introduce new elements into his work. By remaining true to the inner grain of his artistic consciousness, he is nevertheless able to stay firmly rooted while sending his branches out in new directions.

J–Select
August 2002

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Artist: Kumi Machida

You will know when you have seen an exhibition of art by Kumi Machida, because your head will be full of odd impressions and ideas that don’t quite fit together. The 35-year-old artist's paintings are peopled by strange, androgynous beings, often viewed from unusual angles, and bizarre elements, like a baby riding a giant chicken, a rabbit’s paw being pulled out of someone’s ear, and people with extra, elongated, or displaced fingers. This surreal universe can now be seen at the recently relocated Nishimura Gallery in a show of the artists’ latest works, supplemented by a few older ones.

The Gumna-born artist was one of six young Nihonga-influenced artists featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “No Borders” exhibition earlier this year. The show also featured stunning works by Fuyuko Matsui and Hisashi Tenmyouya, among others. Machida was selected because she uses traditional materials, like kumohada linen paper, Indian ink, and mineral pigments, and because her sinuous lines and poetic use of empty space reflect the formal elements of Nihonga.

Despite these traditional influences, Machida’s art is far from traditional in its subject matter. Her painting, “The Postman” (1999 – 2006), which features an elaborately drawn rooster, is a clear tribute to the Edo-period artist Ito Jakucha, famous for his colorful and dynamic depictions of fowl. But Machida’s work, largely in monochrome except for the occasional touch of color, adds something new by setting a baby mailman on his back.

This work, however, is innocuous compared to the more unnerving surrealism in works like “Coming Home” (2005). At first glance this looks like a hand holding a ring on the train – a normal enough sight in Japan with its crowded commuter trains – until you realize that the ring is actually made up of one of the fingers that has become elongated.

“Each person has their own mental filter, and when they see my art it knocks that filter a little,” Machida explains. It is also possible to see her art as a world in which the restless spirits of her mind hover, creating mischief, strange distortions, and playing visual tricks, rather like unquiet or unholy spirits. The finger in “Coming Home” has a similar quality to rokurokubi, the long-necked woman of Japanese supernatural tradition.

This idea of her art as a wandering and restless spirit, expressing itself by creating surrealistic chaos, finds a resonance in her background.
“I don’t really have a spiritual or emotional home anywhere,” she confesses. “When I was born my parents didn’t want me. They wanted a boy. They always said to me, ‘women are useless.’ I always felt I was denying myself and my gender. These paintings are my only home and my voice.”

Some of the paintings clearly refer to her troubled relationship with her parents, like “Unit” (2003) which shows an outline of a father and a daughter holding hands. The key point in this picture is the bandage that binds the father and daughter’s hands together. This suggests that the natural connection has been brutally severed and inexpertly mended.

The largest work at this exhibition “Relation” (2006) is a development of this idea. As in the earlier work, a child holds the hand of an adult. But the fingers offered by the adult are seen emerging from the spherical bubble around the child’s head. Machida explains that this is because the child is mentally rejecting the relationship.

Such works use the theme of a naturally close relationship that has broken down. Such relationships can cause the most pain, a pain that Machida still seems to be fighting with.
“I have to get over it,” she admits. “I’m not a child anymore. I’m over 35 years but I’m still confused by it.”

For Machida the best relationships are those that retain some distance. The last picture to be completed for the exhibition “In the Room” (2006) captures this idea perfectly. It shows two people whose differences in sensory capability allow them to create a harmonious distance between each other.
“The person on the right doesn’t have any ears,” Machida explains. “The person on the left doesn’t have any eyes, but this means they can love each other without getting too close.”

International Herald Tribune Asahi Shimbun
June 16, 2006

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Hello, Anyone Home?

Japan is obsessed by high school girls. They dominate fashion and the media and initiate new trends. In short - they dominate the culture. For the Tokyo media, the fascination never seems to wear off. Everyone is familiar with the clichéd image of short skirts, dyed hair, heavy suntans, and vacant expressions; of girls only one loose-socked step away from the prostitution industry. Although the details of their fashion are sure to change, kogyaru are not about to disappear or relinquish their hold on the Japanese media.

To high school boys, they are an initiation into adult life. To office ladies they are objects of envy. I won’t bother to spell out what they are to middle-aged salarymen – just take a look down any sleazy side street in Tokyo’s entertainment districts around bonus time. To the wives of these same middle-aged salarymen, they are a subject of horror and fascination. To foreign men, they are exotic 'baby women' and quite often their excuse for coming to Japan.

Whatever the reason, everybody seems interested in them but also somehow ashamed of this interest. This forces the media to couch much of its coverage of kogyaru in terms of pompous social concern about the decline of contemporary mores. As for the late night jerk-off programs, this supposed moral decline is a cause for celebration.

Whether people love them or loathe them, there seems to be total agreement that kogyaru are incredibly stupid. I strongly disagree. If there is any stupidity, it comes from society. A girl with a good brain might shun hanging around Shibuya tanning salons and relegate make up and fashion to an ancillary role in her life. After years of study, she might even graduate from a top University and make it into an elite company, but here, of course, her talents will be poured down the drain like a cup of cold ocha.

While she wafts her way around the office photocopying and counting paper clips, her male colleagues will make all the decisions and get all the promotion. After a few years she will be expected to get married. Unfortunately, all the years of self discipline and trying to be professional have taken their toll. Now too dowdy to catch Mr Right, she will be condemned to a life of regret, while the kogyaru mop up all the eligible males.

In a male-dominated society, the path of success for most women lies in learning how to appeal to and manipulate men. Kogyaru are at least intelligent enough to understand this.

Tokyo Classified
(under the name Linda Hontoeniko)
March 13, 1999

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Culture Shock: The True Story

When Japanese people ask foreigners about their culture shock, they are always met by the same stock replies: natto, sumo, high school girls, futons, chopsticks, taking your shoes off in the house, etc. I hate to disillusion our hosts, but none of the above is in any way shocking for foreign people.

I pretend to hate natto as a kind of running joke with my eikaiwa students: If you eat natto, I tell them, all the English will fly out of your head. Other Japanese customs, I have greeted like parts of some long lost folk memory. Using chopsticks allows me to eat with only one hand, futons are good for my back, while actually wearing shoes indoors is now shocking for me!

When you next ask about culture shock, please don’t accept any of these answers. Then maybe you’ll learn the real reason. Culture shock is nothing more than the inability to cope with the density of life in this crowded island. Most foreigners find it hard to cope with a society where the concept of personal space is as unknown as Seiko Matsuda in America. It is the daily infringement of their bubble of personal space that creates the sense of alienation that renders the most common and natural things bizarre.

Bearing this in mind, I think it is advisable to ask all Japanese people to respect foreign people’s sense of personal space. If you feel something soft and crunchy under your shoe, please check to see if it’s a foreigner’s foot. Avoid inserting your nose in their ears unless they specifically ask you to. Try not to breathe their air until they have finished with it. Also, try to avoid jostling them too much at the edge of a crowded platform as the train pulls in, as this might be misunderstood. If you follow these simple guidelines, the next time you ask them about their culture shock, you might be surprised to find they have none.

Tokyo Notice Board
June 12, 1998

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Ero Manga

Comics are forever associated in the Western mind with the innocence of childhood. The same is true in Japan, but in more complicated way. While comics here cater, as elsewhere, to the undeveloped imaginations of children, there is also a vast market in ero–manga, the Japanese term for erotic comics many of which treat the innocence of children as a subject for sexual titillation.

Beyond its modern facade and imitation American skylines, Japan is a radically different culture from the West. The country’s most famous artist, Hokusai, when he wasn’t producing his famous views of Mt Fuji or portraits of Kabuki actors, was creating shunga (erotic prints), including one that shows an octopus performing cunnilingus on a woman. Indeed to understand this culture and its collective subconscious, it is best to ignore the thick, dusty academic tomes, and turn instead to the well–thumbed pages of manga. It is here that the Japanese are at their most natural and unguarded.

It is also, apparently a very good way to learn the language according to "Japanese Eroticism: A language Guide to Current Comics," translated and edited by Jack Seward. If you ever wanted an excuse to read kiddie porn, for example, then there’s probably no better cover story. However, it would be a bad idea to look up every word you encounter in the dictionary as many of them are gi–seigo (onomatopeia) and can’t be found in any dictionary. Seriously, however, ero–manga are a good way of delving deep into the heart of the Japanese psyche, a place that some people don’t really care to go.

The stories featured in "Japanese Eroticism" include tales of gang banging, sexual slavery and incest. “Tenshitachi wa Tomaranai” or Angels Can’t Stop features what appears to be two elementary or junior high school girls. Kana–chan, who can’t stop playing with her exceptionally large clitoris, and her friend Non–chan, who helps her in all kinds of ways.

Masturbation - manzuri (10,000 rubs) for women and senzuri (1,000 rubs) for men - as a kind of pre–sexuality, is of course a convenient way to introduce children into this kind of material. Jack Seward, who has received the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese monarch for his efforts to deepen understanding and friendship between Japan and America struggles to explain the Japanese predilection for depictions of underage sexuality: “Perhaps the girls are seen as easier to dominate in male fantasies. And perhaps because they are virginal but sexually curious, they incite in the male reader an urge to introduce them to the joys of sex with him exclusively.”

“Dorei Shitei,” Brother and Sister Slaves, also features very young–looking protagonists, a boy and his big sister who are forced to perform acts of incest to entertain a young mistress. The action takes place at a large, ersatz European stately home. In a country where family members live in cramped proximity, incest and incestuous desires are, of course, a great unspoken issue.
Another story, this one with the English title “All Is Vanity,” also features an ersatz European setting and seems to play off the Sound of Music with a young nun basically being gang–banged and humiliated by a group of soldiers and learning to love it. This clearly plays up to the sexist male fantasy that many women want to be raped and enjoy it. However, it should not be imagined that ero–manga are solely for men. Its origins are traced to the makura–e, or pillow books that doting parents used to place under their daughters’ pillows before their wedding.

Considering that ero–manga basically started off as how–to–guides for prospective brides, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that there is today a vast market in erotic manga designed for women. These are usually called 'Ladies Comics.' Kaoru Yoshida at Ai, one of the leading publications in this field explained the main difference between female ero–manga and the male variety.
“In mangas for women there is always a happy end for the lady. Stories are written from the woman’s point of view, which usually translates into more action by women and less passivity.”

The fact that they are written from the woman’s point of view doesn’t mean that they are only written by women.
“Our writers are very diverse, men and women, married and single, young and old. Generally they are professionals who also do other kinds of mangas. The interesting point, however, is the fact that male writers use female names.”

Unlike the old makura–e, however, 'ladies comics' are more of a post–nuptial than pre–nuptial aide. Most of our readers are females between the ages of 20 and 40, and mainly housewives. While hubby works late at the office, the neglected spouse is giving herself ‘ten thousand’ rubs often fantasizing about having sex with foreigners if some of the pages of Ai are anything to go by.

The latest edition features a foreigner with a long schlong and a cute cover shot of a blonde couple canoodling. So are Japanese ladies wild for foreign men?
“Not really. Like in commercials, we're creating a dream world, different from reality.”
No surprise - were just being used again!

With ero–manga Japan's vague and logically inconsistent censorship rules are even more unclear. Different from photo magazines, there are no concrete rules for porno mangas.
"It varies from prefecture to prefecture how mangas like this are judged and the censorship is handled. While something is OK in Tokyo, people in Asahikawa might think that it’s bad for the little ones, so there it will be banned."

One final difference between men and women's ero–manga is the way the protagonists are depicted. Men's ero–manga will often feature old, ugly, or fat men fucking beautiful young girls. In ladies' ero–manga the men, of course, are handsome and very attentive, but the women themselves are almost always depicted with beautiful bodies, especially with large breasts - more as the readers would like to be than they really are.

Tokyo Journal
April 2000

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