Posted in Art, History, Kyoto, Museums on Jun 25th, 2008 No Comments »
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 […]
Posted in Art, Kobe, Society on May 30th, 2008 No Comments »
The Kobe City Government has been active in providing some pleasant diversion for its citizens when they walk the streets of this port city. In other words, it has done what so many other Japanese cities do: placed a number of statues along its streets. And as usual in Japan, when selecting these works of […]
Posted in Architecture, Art, Business, Food, Japan, Museums, Photography, Web on Mar 31st, 2008 No Comments »
Japan Newbie has a nice piece on a kushikatsu restaurant in Juuso, Osaka, run by an elderly couple. The cook wears berets and the wife is extremely forgetful, but the taste is great.
The New York Times features Mori Minoru of Roppongi Hills fame in The Builder Who Pushes Tokyo Into the Clouds. Yes, Mr Mori […]
Posted in Art, History, Kobe, Museums on Mar 31st, 2008 No Comments »
As suits an international city, the Kobe City Museum is devoted to the themes of “International Cultural Exchange” and “Contact Between and Changes in Eastern and Western Cultures.” It has been accommodated in a former bank building with Dorian columns from the nineteen-thirties. The museum opened in 1982 after the merger of two museums that […]
Posted in Art, Culture, Food, Japan, Nature, Religion, Web on Mar 21st, 2008 No Comments »
The Mitsukoshi Department Store has bought a small Buddhist wood statue carved by famous Kamakura-period master Unkei at Christie’s in New York for $12.8 million. The Dainichi Nyorai (Cosmic Buddha) figure brought in more than ten times the estimated price - this is the highest price ever offered for any Buddhist artwork in the world […]
Posted in Art, Kyoto on Jan 21st, 2008 2 Comments »
When walking through Kyoto, I always keep my eyes open and camera (or camera-mobile) in readiness… there are so many small things worthy of attention!
Take this antique doll, which I saw in a small antique shop in central Kyoto, south of Shijo (near Rokuhara). I never saw this type of doll before - […]
Posted in Art, Culture, Japan, Review on Dec 26th, 2007 No Comments »
The Way of Tea is going global and now a specialized tea dictionary has been published to help, and great are the mysteries it divulges. Did you know that the ashes in the brazier (used for boiling the tea water) must take twelve prescribed forms, neatly arranged, for example playfully depicting a mountain? […]
Posted in Art, Gardens, Kyoto, Temples, Travel on Nov 24th, 2007 No Comments »
Our walk through the Nishi Otani Cemetery was undertaken to avoid the holiday crowds on Gojozaka and Kiyomizuzaka, but it was in fact Kiyomizudera we were headed for. For many years, I had wanted to see the exquisite garden of its priest’s residence, Jojuin – only open for a few weeks in spring and autumn.
[Crowds […]
Posted in Art, Kyoto, Religion, Travel on Nov 24th, 2007 No Comments »
Along the path leading through the Nishi Otani Cemetery stand several small temples, one of them called Myokendo. Myoken Bosatsu was regarded as the personification of the Pole Star and worship was believed to bring prosperity, good fortune and protection from danger. He originated as an Indian Buddhist deity and in China picked up Daoist […]
Posted in Art, Religion, Travel on Nov 19th, 2007 No Comments »
Everyone who has visited a shrine in Japan has made their acquaintance, often with a smile: the pairs of funny stone guardians that are a cross between a lion and a dog and that often stand at the entrance to the sacred precincts.
[The right lion-dog in the Sudo Shrine in northwestern Kyoto (with the mouth […]
Posted in Architecture, Art, Business, News, Society on Apr 20th, 2007 No Comments »
With sadness we note the passing of Clifton Karhu on March 24 at age 79, the great American-born blockprint artist who made Kyoto his home. Karhu’s prints are known for their strong lines and vivid colors and his themes pay tribute to the beauty of Japan’s old capital. Norman Tolman, founder of the Tolman Collection […]
Posted in Art, Kyoto, Religion, Temples on Apr 5th, 2007 No Comments »
Many times I have been in the East Temple, Toji, to experience its mystic three-dimensional mandalas and enjoy its other wondrous statues. It is a temple of esoteric anger and benevolence at the same time, a temple as old as the city in which it stands. Unfortunately, it lies on the wrong side of the […]
Posted in Art, Kobe, Museums on Apr 2nd, 2007 No Comments »
In the Kansai, there are several small museums with great and rare collections, which are easy to miss as they are only open a few weeks each spring and autumn. One of these is the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Cultures in Nishinomiya. The institute was established in 1950 by Kurokawa Koshichi, a financier from Osaka, […]
Posted in Art, Museums, News on Mar 28th, 2007 No Comments »
Ai-mitsu is one of the most tortured (and fascinating) Japanese painters from the middle of the last century - he died in China during the war. He is undeservedly unknown outside of Japan, so the Ai-Mitsu Exhibition starting March 30 in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and lasting until May 27, is a […]
Posted in Art, News, Writing on Mar 17th, 2007 No Comments »
Earlier this month the Akutagawa Prize for new writers of literary fiction was awarded to Aoyama Nanae for Being Alone. Here she is interviewed by the Japan Times (registration required).
While art markets worldwide are soaring (and in Asia the Chinese one is setting new records), Japan’s restrictive and rather traditional market is not sharing in […]
Posted in Art, Museums, Osaka on Mar 12th, 2007 No Comments »
Although I made a special study of Japan’s art museums, it remained long hidden even to me that Osaka has a modern art museum. I am not talking about the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art (this Tennoji Park museum is anyway in the first place dedicated to ancient art forms, although it hosts temporary modern […]
Posted in Art, Kyoto, Museums on Nov 21st, 2006 No Comments »
Komatsu Hitoshi (1902-1989) is an interesting nihonga painter to whom a small gallery has been dedicated in Ohara, on the road leading to Jakkoin and Sanzenin, in the northern part of Kyoto. We visit on a cold day, when snow covers the fields.
[Winter scenery in Ohara. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]
Komatsu Hitoshi was born in Yamagata […]
Posted in Art, Web on Nov 16th, 2006 No Comments »
Yes, your read it right: Ukiyo-e and other Japanese paintings on medical subjects. The site is not very large (a series of yamato-e paintings and 30 ukiyo-e), and comments are not perfect or even totally lacking and replaced by question marks, but the whole is weird enough to mention here.
After all, what does the virtuous […]
Posted in Architecture, Art, Japan, Museums on Nov 14th, 2006 2 Comments »
Traditional Japanese houses, or minka, are something I am very fond of. My dream is to live in one in the future! For now, I have to do with open-air museums, and that is not so bad, as there are beautiful traditional houses in parks like the Japan Open-Air Folk-house Museum in Kawasaki, the Shikoku […]
Posted in Art, Museums, Religion, Tokyo on Oct 26th, 2006 No Comments »
Until December 3, the Tokyo National Museum is hosting an exhibition of Buddhist statues in the so-called ichiboku style under the title Shaping Faith. Sculptures in the ichiboku style have been carved from one piece of wood instead of being made by fitting a number of wooden blocks together (and pasting over the lines between […]
Posted in Art, Museums on Oct 21st, 2006 No Comments »
The Autumn Exhibition of the Miho Museum features art critic and book binder Aoyama Jiro (1901-1979). Aoyama was born with a silver spoon and collected antiques from his early teens. But the man who was in the envious position that he never had to work had a sharp and critical eye and was generally praised […]
Posted in Art, Religion on Aug 5th, 2006 No Comments »
Ema are votive plates dedicated to shrines and temples. Usually, they consist of a flat piece of wood decorated with a picture. People buy them during shrine and temple visits, especially at the New Year, inscribe them with wishes for a prosperous year and hang them on special racks as petitions to the gods. Common […]
Posted in Architecture, Art, Temples on Aug 4th, 2006 No Comments »
After writing my A New Victory about the Narita temple, I found the article Naritasan Shinshoji and Commoner Patronage During the Edo Period on the web, written by Patricia J. Graham of the University of Kansas.
I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are a few points I have picked up in addition […]
Posted in Art, News on Jul 31st, 2006 No Comments »
A lost sketchbook / travel diary by ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige has recently surfaced in the United States, as the Daily Yomiuri Online reports. Called Koshu Nikki Shaseicho (“Diary and Sketches of Koshu”), it is only one of two sketchbooks in existence by Hiroshige, so it is an important find. The sketchbook dates from November 1841 […]
Posted in Art, News, Tokyo on Jul 16th, 2006 No Comments »
This summer, two interesting temporary events in the field of Japanese art are held in Tokyo, both fitting in the category “restored art.” The first concerns a rediscovered mural by 20th century avant-garde painter Okamoto Taro called The Myth of Tomorrow. This work measuring 5.5 by 30 meters was created in 1968/1969 for the walls […]
