Posted in life, architecture, art and photography, business, news 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 and photography, travel and places, temples, kyoto 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 and photography, 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 architecture, art and photography, 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 writing and poetry, movies, art and photography, news 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).
Kadokawa’s latest overblown epic film, Aoki Okami (Blue Wolf), about Genghis Khan, is found “somewhat empty and soulless” by Daily Yomiuri’s Aaron Gerow. Although there are […]
Posted in internet, food, culture, art and photography, travel and places, museums, news on Mar 15th, 2007 No Comments »
From March 20 to June 17 the Tokyo National Museum will host The Mind of Leonardo, an exhibition with as its centerpiece The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci. This exhibition is part of the Italian festival in Japan this spring called Primavera Italiana 2007. Not everyone in Italy was happy that this priceless work was […]
Posted in art and photography, museums, kyoto 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 internet, art and photography 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 and photography, 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 Japan, art and photography, religion and philosophy on Oct 26th, 2006 1 Comment »
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 […]
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