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.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Zen and the Roundabout Road to Enlightenment
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.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
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 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.
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.
Friday, May 16, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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