Japan Navigator

Yesterday, when the weather cleared a bit, I went out towards the middle of the afternoon. As I could not go far, I visited the (free) Sawanotsuru “Traditional Brewery” Museum, the only sake museum in the Kobe area I had not yet seen. It stands south of Oishi Station on the Hanshin line, in one [...]

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It seems to be out of print now, but perhaps it will bounce back as it has done so many times since it was first published in 1964: Gouverneur Mosher’s Kyoto: A Contemplative Guide. This was my first guide to Kyoto when I arrived there as foreign exchange student of Kyoto University in 1982. There [...]

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Ottmar von Mohl (1846-1922) was a German diplomat who from 1887 to 1889 was advisor of the Japanese government. Together with his wife, a countess, he was stationed with the Imperial Household Ministry to introduce European court ceremonials and protocol to the new Meiji court. In 1904 he wrote a book about his experiences in [...]

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The Tatsuuma Collection of Fine Art, next to Koroen station on the Hanshin line between Osaka and Kobe, is an interesting example of a museum set up by a sake brewer: Tatsuuma Etsuzo, the man who in 1862 founded the Hakutaka Brewery by splitting off from the main Tatsuuma family and its Hakushika Brewery [...]

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The last weeks I have been introducing regional sake from the Kansai area: from Kyoto, Hyogo, Osaka, Nara, Shiga and Wakayama (I have recently fine-tuned all articles, for example by adding more information about individual breweries as well as translations of the sake label names, so you may want to have another look!).

[Miyamizu wells, Nishinomiya]
Kansai [...]

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Visitors to Kyoto’s Heian Shrine may have noted a building with Chinese style yellow glazed roof tiles standing just to the left of the great torii gate. This is the roof of a small tower that sits on top of a huge storehouse of Chinese collectibles, ranging from Shang bronzes to Buddhist statues, furniture, paintings [...]

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It is time for a modern writer and we start with Murakami Haruki. I have been reading his books since the early eighties, from the first novels Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 73. I bought the Japanese pocketbook-size Kodansha translations by Alfred Birnbaum (for Japanese learners of English), and at the same time read [...]

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In 1949, the Dutch Sinologue and diplomat Robert van Gulik translated an 18th century, anonymous Chinese crime novel under the title “Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee.” He found the original novel in a second-hand bookshop in Tokyo and hoped it would teach Japanese and Chinese authors of detective fiction something about their own rich tradition. [...]

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One year in June I wanted to see irises in bloom – Japan’s famous shobu, sung about in poetry and depicted in paintings and ukiyo-e. I opted for Horikiri Shobuen in the northern part of Tokyo, in what proved to be an eyesore neighborhood, but when I finally reached the garden, I felt happy seeing [...]

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Wakayama is the warmest prefecture on Honshu – the place where spring arrives earlier than elsewhere. That does not make it very suitable for sake brewing, for which a colder climate is necessary. On top of that, 80% of the prefecture consists of forests and mountains (my favorite Kumano area in the south, as well [...]

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