Japan Society

Japan’s Hunt For Former Glory: Recommendations From A Leading East Asia Expert

2011-12-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

Via.

It is hard to imagine that Japan, the nation many look to for cutting edge technology and pop culture coolness, may be waning as a world power. The revolving door of a government saw six different Prime Ministers in five years led to what some view as unstable domestic politics, and the recent natural disasters devastated the northeast coast of the country and caused a major meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant that is still affecting the city. Japan held the distinction of being an economic powerhouse second only to the U.S. for decades until China surpassed them this year, and the country now faces its third “lost decade” its bubble popped. While tensions surrounding the U.S. base in Okinawa eased a bit this year as a result of Operation Tomodachi, some believe South Korea is becoming a more viable strategic ally for the U.S.

In Losing Its Edge? Evans Revere on How Japan Can Remain a Leader & America’s Closest Partner in East Asia, former diplomat and revered East Asia expert Evans Revere tackle these issues. Sitting down with ForeignAffairs.com editor Andrew Bast on December 1 at Japan Society, Revere draws on his experience to offer insights on how Japan can return to its former glory.

Evans J.R. Revere is a Princeton University graduate, a U.S. Air Force veteran and has gone on to become a top foreign affairs specialist, with 35 years of government service under his belt and being fluent in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. He is currently the Senior Director at the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group and specializes in advising clients concerning Korea, Japan, and China. From 2007 to 2010, he served as the President and CEO of the Korea Society in New York and notably was part of the “New Beginnings” policy study panel that came up with recommendations for improving Korean relations with the U.S. before President Obama met with South Korea President Lee Myung-bak. He has negotiated between the U.S. and North Korea and was responsible for the State Department’s effective response to the tsunami disaster that hit Indonesia and other parts of South Asia in December 2004.

--Sean Tomizawa

Nissan's Carlos Ghosn: Steering Through Crisis, Driving Into The Future

2011-11-28T10:59:00.000-05:00

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. Via.

Carlos Ghosn has a laundry list of crises that he has faced as the President and CEO of Nissan. Recent events including the post-Lehman collapse, the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Thai floods and European economic turmoil have all presented huge challenges for the automaker. However, according to Ghosn, the yen’s rise is exacerbating the impact of all the other crises and is forcing even profitable companies to stop investing in Japan. Endaka--or strong yen--is affecting the long-term future of Japan and it needs fixing immediately.

“The yen is appreciating at the worst moment for the Japanese economy,” Ghosn told a packed auditorium at the Japan Society recently [full video here]. “The problem is we are making money, everywhere except Japan,” he said.

Ghosn said that the appreciation of the yen means that Japan cannot compete on cost, despite the “indisputable” quality of goods, skilled workforce and wealth of talent. “We are surrounded by countries who are making sure the exchange rate is competitive, how can we face a tsunami, a flood, a financial system collapse and on top of this have to have a re-evaluation of the currency of 35 or 50 per cent? We can’t.”

Ghosn has taken his concerns about the yen right to the top. When the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited the Nissan plant in Yokohama recently, Ghosn said he decided not to overwhelm him with a long list of problems.

“When the Prime Minister said, “What can I do for you?” I said, “One thing, fix the exchange rate.”

But Ghosn clearly subscribes to the school of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Carlos Ghosn was brought in to Nissan in 1999 to save the company. And he did. He quickly implemented the Nissan Revival Plan and the carmaker returned to growth and profitability--it now ranks third behind Toyota and Honda in the U.S. car market. In 2005, he was also named CEO of Renault and the combined companies have 350,000 employees and global sales of 7.2 million units in 2010. Nissan’s latest innovation is the Leaf electric car, the market leader in 100 per cent gas free cars with about 15,000 units sold worldwide.

His prescription for crisis management starts with a clear assessment of the scale of the problem. The next step is to make a plan that selects a few priorities to get through the crisis but also maintains some longer-term projects. In Nissan’s case, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, everything except electric car production and expansion in China was put on hold while the company concentrated on maintaining cash flow.

Ghosn also emphasized the importance of empowering the workforce to deal with adversity. “There is no way, you’re going to get through a crisis alone,” he said. “The one key which explains why we recovered faster than our competitors after the tsunami and the Thai flood is because we empower people.” Naturally for empowerment to work, top management also needs to be committed to and engaged in the plan.

Ghosn does however believe that Nissan has an “anti-crisis” weapon in the form of the electric car. Some predict that electric cars will be 10 per cent of the market by 2020. “Everybody knows I am the most optimistic,” he joked. “Which is obvious because we’re the only one with the car.”

With oil prices still at high levels despite the economic crisis in Europe and the faltering U.S. economy, he believes demand for electric cars can only increase. He also sees other uses for the technology powering electric cars. Indeed, Nissan will unveil a house at the next Tokyo Motor Show, which is powered by an electric car battery. “Batteries will get smaller and soon you’ll have a personal battery which you can use in your house, in your car or in your office,” he predicted. “There’ll be no need for a central system for power, so the evolution of the battery is extremely important for the economic development in the 21st century.”

Such innovations might have been useful in post-earthquake Japan. The country faced a shortage of power caused by the shutdown of nuclear reactors. But Ghosn said the way the Japanese people dealt with the crisis is reason to believe that Japan still has a bright future. “Inside Nissan outside Nissan I can witness the fact that Japan is a great economy and a great country because of this capacity to face challenges in way that is always very simple, straightforward and very constructive without whining.” He gave as an example the way Nissan helped reduce the demand for power in the summer months by switching the weekend to Thursday and Friday from the usual Saturday and Sunday. “There was not a protest, we just did it. This willingness to help society and help the country is a major strength.”

The resilience of the Japanese people was one of the major lessons from the March 11 crisis. And learning according to Ghosn is the final component of successful crisis management. He said that after each challenge it is vital to review the company’s response and look at the successful systems and processes used and even which people responded well and which “melted down”. It is sound advice for unpredictable times. “The only thing we know for sure about a crisis,” he said, “is there’s going to be another one.”

--Juliet Hindell

Hindell was BBC Tokyo bureau chief and Daily Telegraph Tokyo correspondent and is now based in New York. Her previous posts from Japan Society events include The Power of Tomodachi: U.S. Military's Humanitarian Efforts Cemented An Alliance, Joichi Ito: Open Networks And Hacker Spaces Can Save The World, Lawson's Business Strategy and Response to the Quake, and Why Japan May Surprise the World: Rebirth after the Tohoku Quake.

The Power of Tomodachi: U.S. Military's Humanitarian Efforts Cemented An Alliance

2011-11-21T13:37:00.003-05:00

Adm. Walsh salutes a Sendai base during Operation Tomodachi. Via.

When the March 11 earthquake struck Japan, the commander of the 7th fleet of the U.S. navy was off the coast of Singapore. Without orders, he set a course for Honshu and within a short time every U.S. naval ship in the region was under way for Japan.

As U.S. Navy Admiral Patrick M. Walsh told a standing room-only audience at the Japan Society recently [watch the full video], it was the beginning of Operation Tomodachi--or Operation Friend in English.

“The real story here is in the power of the idea, the idea of tomodachi, the idea that represents who we are, where our relationship is and what it could be,” Walsh said.

As 59th Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Walsh oversaw the mission. For him, Operation Tomodachi went way beyond providing help to a nation in crisis; it cemented the U.S.-Japan alliance and highlighted the importance of understanding the geo-political challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region.

To appreciate the scale of Operation Tomodachi it helps to list a few numbers: there were 20 U.S. naval ships and 140 aircraft deployed to the area, and 19,703 U.S. marines and sailors took part. Many of the U.S. bases in Japan from the disputed Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa, to Yokota Air base just west of Tokyo and Misawa Air base in Aomori were involved. They provided humanitarian aid including 246 tons of food and 21 million gallons of water. They also helped to contain the nuclear disaster and deal with the “emotionally debilitating” aftershocks. It was an operation that called upon all the U.S. armed forces’ logistical and technical skills but that also required immense compassion and diplomacy.

“From the Japanese perspective, it was very important that the Self Defense Force be the face that deals with the immediate concerns of the people in the region,” Walsh said. “What they needed the U.S. to do was be in support whether providing water or supplies or clearing ports or roads.”

Walsh conjured an emblematic image of how this worked on each side. “A U.S. Marine that’s pushing a broom, cleaning a school, while the Self Defense Force, 100,000 mobilized, is out looking for the missing and dealing with the remains.”

The Operation also required what Walsh called “consequence management” in the light of the “game-changing” information about the spread of radiation from the nuclear disaster. This meant U.S. forces were not only dispensing aid but were dealing with a contaminated environment. What or how much information to give the public had a much larger significance than in a natural disaster. “We had to prepare the population so that people knew whether or not to be excited or whether or not the crisis was getting worse.”

All this collaboration took place against the background of an ongoing discussion of the future of U.S. bases in Okinawa. The Admiral deferred to U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John V.Roos, to assess whether that process would now be easier following Operation Tomodachi. The Ambassador said that the approval rating of the U.S. in Japan jumped to nearly 95 per cent after Operation Tomodachi. “Wherever I travel in Japan people are very appreciative, but we’ve never been under the illusion that that would solve all problems.”

Admiral Walsh meanwhile was keen to stress that Operation Tomodachi was never perceived as being linked to the base issue. “Wouldn’t that be awful in that we come to help and yet there’s a quid pro quo,” he said. “We wouldn’t be genuine friends.”

Walsh said that the collaboration exhibited in Operation Tomodachi is essential to face challenges in the Asia-Pacific region. The mission’s success depended in part on the U.S. armed forces deep knowledge and experience of the region.

To deal with the ever-changing horizons, the U.S. has a secret weapon – its diverse staff. Admiral Walsh proudly told how Lee Kuan Yew had asked if the navy brought translators on their missions in Asia. “I answered yes we do, but these are native speakers who wear our uniform.” He said U.S. ships now have commanders who were born in India, Cambodia and Vietnam. Indeed, Japanese-speaking U.S. military staff suggested the name Operation Tomodachi.

During his presentation, Admiral Walsh showed an aerial picture of a stretch of coast in Japan where someone had etched the message “Thank you U.S.A” in huge letters. Walsh was humbled by this gesture and felt rather that the U.S. should be thanking Japan. “We grow from this experience, we learn from this and I think we become better friends.”

--Juliet Hindell

Hindell was BBC Tokyo bureau chief and Daily Telegraph Tokyo correspondent and is now based in New York. Past reports include, Why Japan May Surprise the World: Rebirth after the Tohoku Quake, Lawson's Business Strategy and Response to the Quake, and Joichi Ito: Open Networks And Hacker Spaces Can Save The World.

Joichi Ito: Open Networks And Hacker Spaces Can Save The World

2011-11-17T11:43:00.000-05:00

Icono clash. Via Fast Company.

Juliet Hindell reports form Japan Society's November 10 event Innovation in an Open Network with MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito. Watch the full video here.

Joichi Ito is the ultimate iconoclast – a college dropout who now heads an academic institution, the MIT Media Lab. He is also the Chair of Creative Commons, the open network organization, and founder of Tokyo-based Digital Garage.

And he recently became involved in Geiger counter production. Six months after partial nuclear meltdowns at three Tokyo Electric Power reactors, skeptical Japanese took nuclear measurement literally into their own hands. And Ito was there, doing what he does best – finding opportunity in chance.

Home-monitoring of radiation is just the latest venture of one of Japan’s foremost entrepreneurs. Ito is most famous for helping usher Japan into the Internet age by cultivating and connecting a generation of angel investors and hungry young Internet entrepreneurs eager to replicate the energy and success of Silicon Valley.

Ito didn’t plan much of this; in fact planning is something he thinks is overrated.

His own Internet career began when he realized that nobody really achieved anything in Japan before the age of 45. In the new virtual world, he discovered it was better to be young. There were no rules and things moved fast and fluidly.

“If you plan everything you can’t be lucky and you need a lot of luck,” he said at a recent talk at the Japan Society. Ito was describing how many great Internet ideas started through chance connexions.

“Nearly every internet company starts out as what sounds like a stupid idea,” Ito said. But a willingness to try things out has resulted in companies like YouTube, which began as a dating site and morphed to become the biggest video site on the Internet. Chance over planning is a foreign concept in Japan. He recalled proposing an idea to a Japanese company, which he estimated would have cost about $100,000 to implement. But the company embarked on a feasibility study at a cost of $3million. “So they spent $3miillion dollars trying to decide to eventually not do something that would have cost $100,000.”

Today with the Internet’s Open Software protocols, anyone can start a company quickly and easily, a process he sums up with the word “agile”. But it’s not a process that lends itself to too much planning. While he thinks the Japanese talent for such business strategies as just in time delivery should sit well with this open architecture, he also warns that when the process is institutionalized, it gets bogged down in over-planning. “You have what I would call a compass, but how exactly you get there you figure out as you go,” Ito said.

Figuring things out is where open networks and hacker spaces have a crucial role to play according to Ito. He believes they are at the forefront of the democratization of knowledge.

An example of crowd sourcing in action that Ito is very proud to be a part of are the detailed maps of radiation readings surrounding the Fukushima nuclear reactors, damaged during the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami. The maps were put together with a little help from Ito and his hyper-connected world including the world expert on Geiger counters and clever engineers at Tokyo Hacker Space. No governments or institutions were involved. It was the fruit of collaboration between loose groups of diverse experts helping each other. This kind of collaboration is how Ito believes we will be able to solve the world’s problems, “This started from nothing and was able to move very quickly, and we now have the best people to build the best Geiger counters to measure radiation in real time. That’s what the net is capable of.”

This kind of serendipitous line of inquiry is what he wants to foster at Media Lab. He thinks the best developments in information technology are made by people who will be the end users– in other words get the end users to work with coders to make the tools they need to do their jobs whether in journalism or medicine.

Ito also wants to bring the freedom of open networks to education. He believes that open networks could represent a direct challenge to the “artificial scarcity of academia”.

“I’m completely self educated, I educated myself through the Internet.” he said. He is now aiming to make much of the work done at the Media Lab available in an open network of knowledge. “I want everyone to be able to learn from us,” he said. “At the Media Lab we’ve figured out that important stuff can happen if you bring a bunch of misfits together and give them the freedom to try things.” Leave the plan at the door.

Juliet was BBC Tokyo bureau chief and Daily Telegraph Tokyo correspondent and is now based in New York. Read her reports from the Japan Society talks Why Japan May Surprise the World: Rebirth after the Tohoku Quake and Lawson's Business Strategy and Response to the Quake.

United We Stand As Friends: U.S. Aid To Japan's Earthquake And Tsunami Victims

2011-11-14T11:25:00.002-05:00

Via.

In the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disasters in Japan, the U.S. armed forces mobilized immediately to assist the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to provide relief for victims. The mission, Operation Tomodachi (tomodachi means “friend” in Japanese), not only saved lives during devastating times, but helped cement good relations between the U.S. and Japan, where tensions have flared due to base relocation issues in Okinawa.

Vice President Joe Biden called Operation Tomodachi the “largest humanitarian relief effort in U.S. history”, when he stopped at the Yokota military base to thank the thousands of personnel who participated. In her talk at the U.S.-Japan Council Annual Conference in October, Hillary Clinton recalled seeing firefighters sent from Japan to aid Americans during the 9/11 attacks, and said she was proud that America could return the favor.

This mission’s leader Admiral Patrick M. Walsh, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet who most recently was active in leading the Combined Maritime Forces in Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and various maritime security operations, believes Operation Tomodachi demonstrated “forward presence in the region to support humanitarian crises and deter aggression.”

Walsh appears at Japan Society on November 15 in Operation Tomodachi: Support, Compassion, Commitment. He discusses his experience leading the large joint relief operation, and shares what he personally witnessed during the monumental collaboration. Japan Society Chairman Wilbur Ross moderates.

--Sean Tomizawa

Otomo Vs. Marclay: Heavyweight Turntablists Reunite For NYC Concert

2011-11-11T13:17:00.003-05:00

Before it was a standard in early rap, hip hop and DJ sets, turntablism—the purposeful manipulation of records against the phonographic needle—was long part of avant-garde music making. Two modern day masters of the genre, Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide, bring the artform to new heights, spinning, looping, skipping and scratching a wild combination of free jazz, noise rock, sound collages, and controlled cacophony.

Hailing from Yokohama, Japan, Otomo played around with electronic devices as a teenager thanks to his engineer father. His interest in music started with creating sound collages out of tape recorders, playing guitar in a high school band and eventually falling in love with free jazz. After graduating from Meiji University studying ethnomusical history, he performed throughout Japan with a wide range of musicians and formed his most well-known group, Ground Zero, in the early 90s. Since then, Otomo has gone on to work solo and with many other artists to create sound experiments, and was most recently involved with Project Fukushima!, a performance festival supporting of the victims of the nuclear disaster affecting the region where he grew up.

Marclay is widely accepted as the progenitor of turntablism as high art. In early experiments, he broke vinyl records and assembled the different parts, forging mashed up music accompanied by rhythmic noises from the physical imperfections. More recent work includes Guitar Drag, consisting of a hooked up electric guitar dragged across the ground by a pickup truck and its consequent sounds blasted out of a large amp, and the epic, internationally acclaimed 24-hour long video, The Clock, winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award.

Otomo and Marclay perform together in NYC for the first time in over a decade in a one-night-only concert jam at Japan Society November 19 (part of Performa 2011). Before taking the stage, the two artists take part in a pre-concert discussion with musician, writer, and curator Alan Licht and ethnomusicologist David Novak.

In addition, Otomo exhibits his installation piece Without Records, an homage to Marclay’s album Record Without a Cover, on view for the first time outside Japan November 17-20.

There are many samples of Otomo’s and Marclay’s work on YouTube. Some highlights:

--Sean Tomizawa

He's On The Hunt, He's After Hues: Fashion Pioneer Mines Colors In Central Park

2011-11-10T11:48:00.001-05:00

Does Sunglow, Jonquil or Goldenrod dominate Central Park? Via.

In 2008 fashion and design pioneer Dai Fujiwara and his creative team took to the vast tropical lands of the Amazon to color hunt, matching thousands of cloth swatches with the surroundings to find the color palette they eventually used for the ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer 2009 collection. According to ColourLovers, "To test the veracity of their choices, they strung strips of cloths over open spaces like the river. If the colours 'melted away' and did not stand out from the background, they knew they had chosen the correct ones."

In contrast to what most would think to find in such a rich, vibrant rainforest, Fujiwara discovered that earth tones were the most common matches, and, surprisingly the rivers bent more towards skin tones. One wonders what Fujiwara will find this month when he goes on a color hunting expedition in Central Park, where the leaves are at the height of fall change.

Japan Society welcomes Fujiwara November 16 in Mastermind in Textile: An Evening with Dai Fujiwara. He’ll discuss his Central Park findings, his tenure with ISSEY MIYAKE, and The Sun House, his foray into eco-friendly architecture in the early 00s, featured in the ongoing Fiber Futures exhibit. Cara McCarty, Curatorial Director of Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and an art and design expert with over 25 years of experience, moderates.

Graduated from Tama Art University in 1994, Fujiwara joined fashion mogul Issey Miyake as a member of the design studio Paris branch a year later, and was appointed creative director in 2006. One of his biggest accomplishments was the award-winning and museum-featured A-POC (A Piece of Cloth) project where clothing meets craftwork. On huge rolls of special fabric, shirts, pants and the like can simply be cut out with a scissor and put on in a flash with customizations easily made when needed. In 2006 Fujiwara was named creative director of ISSEY MIYAKE. He left the position in 2011 to pursue his own projects.

--Sean Tomizawa

Fujiwara sayonara. Via.

Avant Zen: Today’s Japanese Architecture

2011-11-09T16:24:00.000-05:00

The Tod. Via.

Purity, clarity, calm. Much of Japan’s contemporary architecture exudes such feelings with wave-like curved walls and deceivingly simple stacked box structures. These buildings inspire awe, break beyond the expected and strive for ecological mindfulness--hand-in-hand with Zen concepts.

On November 10 Japan Society hosts New Japan Architecture: Recent Works & New Trends with celebrated architect Edward Suzuki and Dr. Geeta Mehta, professor of architecture at Colombia University and author of New Japan Architecture: Recent Works by the World's Leading Architects.

Inspired by Design published arresting highlights from this “new magnum opus of Japanese design”, featuring 42 established and fringe architects and 48 major projects from Kisho Kurokawa’s Tokyo National Museum (awesome interview in that link), to Toyo Ito’s Tod building, to Shigeru Ban’s Tokyo headquarters for Swatch. From the book's introduction:

When it comes to contemporary house design, the Japanese can be fearless and willing to forego comforts dear to most of us in order to live in a work of art. Shigeru Ban once remarked that he loved working for clients in Japan because they were willing to take a design further than any Western client.

Edward Suzuki, one of the featured architects in the book, has created a wide range of impressively designed homes, schools, and train stations, as well as the unlikely koban in Shibuya and a parking area out in Chiba. Born in Saitama in 1947, he studied at the University of Notre Dame and worked at various design firms in Tokyo and New York before starting his own in 1977. His works invoke a simultaneous sense of openness and structure through his use of large glass pane windows and repeated squares, rectangles, and the occasional curve to form the framework of a building. Interior greenery like large trees and potted bamboo add to the fresh, breath-taking feel of his designs.

Geeta Mehta has spent much of her life in Japan, graduating from the University of Tokyo, and is partner with Jill Braden at the interior design firm Braden & Mehta Design. Her harmonious blend of Western and Asian influences appear in work throughout U.S., Vietnam, and India as well for various corporations and private homes. Among her humanitarian efforts, she founded the the Mumbai-based Urbz think tank and the nonprofit Asia Initiatives. Along with the publication of New Japan Architecture, Mehta has penned several books on Japanese architecture and design.

--Sean Tomizawa

Earth first in much of Japan’s new architecture. Via.

We Are Legion: Decentralizing The Internet For Innovation

2011-11-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

The general attitude among netizens is that with all the data that comprises the Internet, sharing is caring. Or is it the other way around?

In terms of file sharing, many are familiar with the concept of direct downloading as a means of getting music and videos, and its web of legal issues. An alternative method is BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer system where users simultaneously download and upload pieces of an original file which get shared around the Internet to complete the download. Instead of receiving data from a single source, multiple owners of the file chip in to help others claim their own.

BitTorrent is one example of free and open-source software (FOSS), in which anyone can take available software, make changes, improve, and redistribute it for free as long as they allow others do the same. There is no copyright concern, which can slow or even prevent openly sharing valuable information and knowledge that leads to innovation and breakthroughs. Ultimately FOSS exists to help “individuals and organizations reduce cost, increase use, improve standards compliance, enhance security, and avoid vendor lock-in.”

The philosophy and practical applications of FOSS can help solve impossibly complex problems and even have life-saving ramifications.

In Japan, in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunamis that led to nuclear crisis at Fukushima, little information was made available for people concerned about radiation levels. Safecast, formerly known as RDTN, took matters into hand by aggregating radiation data from various sources. In the spirit of FOSS, the team makes all data available to everyone after planting static radiation sensors around Japan, as well as utilizing portable Geiger counters that work with mobile devices.

As a forefront advocate for internet freedom and global technology policy, Joichi Ito, director of MIT Media Lab and former CEO of Creative Commons , argues we no longer live in a world of central control but rather in ecosystem of "small pieces loosely joined" with innovation on the edges. The ubiquity and low cost creation and distribution of information has fundamentally changed the way we collaborate.

Ito shares his ideas in Innovation in an Open Network at Japan Society on November 10. Drawing from his work at MIT, he’ll look at startups like Safecast, use of citizen Geiger counters, and other examples of 21st century practices that are bettering the world. Michael Zielenziger, McKinsey Global Institute senior editor and author of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its Own Lost Generation moderates.

--Sean Tomizawa

Art Alive On A5: Inspirational Postcard Pieces from Tohoku Artists

2011-11-04T11:33:00.002-04:00

When the Great East Japan Earthquake hit on March 11th, power went out in most of the Tohoku region, impeding communications for weeks on end. The postal service turned out to be a godsend for families and friends. “In many cases, the first news that loved ones were safe was by postcard,” notes Joe Earle, director of Japan Society gallery.

Kate Thomson and Hironori Katagiri, two sculptors who divide time between Edinburgh, Scotland, and Iwate, Japan, curated work by 22 Tohoku-based artists in Postcards From Japan, a mini-exhibition free to the public at Japan Society’s A-Level until November 27.

Down by Japan Society's auditorium are two opposing walls lined with numerous tiny framed art pieces. They consist of beautiful photographic, acrylic, and ink work as well as some unusual media such as ruined remains of a school textbook, broken seashells, and even a small dried out fish.

The small-size artwork--fitting Japan’s standard A5 brochure paper--expresses a huge range of emotions. Abstract pieces stand out due to their use or lack of color while old photographs showing better times. Found objects from the aftermath wordlessly describe what has been lost. The conveyed feelings of whimsy, grief, and, most importantly, hope is incredibly powerful.

In the words of the wall text, Postcards from Japan is “a meditation on nature’s power to challenge us with no warning but it also reassures that life is indeed continuing in devastated Tohoku.”

When most funds are going directly towards relief efforts, the curators feel that creating art goes one step further to help “boost morale and stimulate hope for the future and enthusiasm to rebuild”. Sales from the exhibitions’ accompanying catalogue benefit artists living and working in the Tohoku.

--Sean Tomizawa

Images (top to bottom): Megumi Honda (1972–), Tono, Iwate Prefecture, Tenshin 2011, 2011, shells collected from hometown of Higashi-Matsushima, and paper , 5 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (14.8 x 21 cm); Shigenobu Yoshida (1958- ), Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, Light Bird, 2011, acrylic on acrylic board, 5 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (14.8 x 21 cm).

Cucumbrage: A Japanese Folktale Halloween Encore

2011-10-28T13:07:00.000-04:00

What's that smell? Via.

It’s Halloween time and Japan Society once again has something spooktacular in store: Meet Japan’s Mystical Folktale Creatures& Ghosts through Theater Performance is back Sunday to treat families to all the creatures and ghosts unique to Japanese culture. Among many activities, kids can put on their best oni face with mask-making, or take the guise of other yokai as they enjoy the song and dance of an original play by Kanako Hiyama created just for the special day.

In the tradition of storytelling before the event (remember the zashiki warashi and bakeneko?), here’s a little introduction to a certain water-dwelling monstrosity…

One summer vacation, instead of hanging with his friends back in the city, a young boy is dragged by his parents to his grandparents’ home in the middle of nowhere.

The boy decides to walk through the nearby woods for a little adventure following a spat with his parents. Venturing deep into thick rows of old, gnarled trees and deepening piles of fallen leaves, the boy finds little amusement until he comes across a wooden signed nailed to one of the trees.

“ALWAYS BE POLITE.”

A strange sign to have in the middle of the woods, he thinks, then is distracted by a river peeking through a clearing in front of him.

He rushes over, marveling at the wide expanse of water. He delights in its shore, throwing rocks in the reiver every so often, until he trips over a basket of cucumbers. Without a thought--they look so very delicious--and having left the house with no lunch, the boy picks one out and digs in.

As soon as he bites into the cold, fresh cucumber goodness, the river bubbles and a slimy green arm with a thin webbed hand reaches out for the boy’s feet. He slowly backs away gripped by fear as a short creature with a beaked face, giant turtle shell on its back, and a disgusting stench emerges from the water, approaching with menace. The boy drops the cucumber and without thinking starts bowing deeply while profusely apologies. He looks up to see the creature stopped dead in its track. With vague look of comprehension on its unnatural face, the creature bends in a slow, low bow. Just as its beak touches the ground, water pours from a shallow hole in its its head. Realizing what has happened it falls to the ground in panic and weakly stares at the boy, who takes the opportunity to escape back home to the arms of his worried parents.

That day, the kappa has shown the boy that a little bit of politeness (and luck) goes a long way.

--Sean Tomizawa

Stray Dog Homecoming: Daido Moriyama Returns To NYC

2011-10-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

Black-and-white, high contrast, rough grains, askew, out of focus. Daido Moriyama’s thought-provoking photographic pieces--exhibited in Stray Dog at Japan Society in 1999--brought to light the dark, raw reality of Japanese city life when the nation struggled to reclaim its cultural identity in the midst of Western influences.

Moriyama was born in 1938 in the city of Osaka and started his photography career at 21, apprenticing with the famed Eikoh Hosoe, as Japan was still building from the occupation years. Some see in his work echoes of Japanese photographers Seiryu Inoue and Shomei Tomatsu as well as American artists such as Andy Warhol and William Klein, but for six decades his work has been quintessential Moriyama. From shadowy images of nude figures in the seedy underground to close-ups of seemingly random objects in Tokyo alleys, the work is an abstract of modernity taking hold of postwar Japan.

On November 4 & 5 Moriyama appears in Aperture Foundation’s PRINTING SHOW—TKY. Part of Performa 2011, this re-creation of his‘74 performance piece invites gallery patrons to suggest and arrange duplicates of Moriyama’s prints, photocopied onsite by the artist himself, to create a series of photobooks on display through November.

The day before the performances, Moriyama returns to Japan Society in An Evening with Daido Moriyama, discussing his many ventures into the photography world with a focus on his series 71 New York and PRINTING SHOW. Moderated by International Center of Photography curator Christopher Phillips, the evening offers fans and photographers alike insight into the life, work and high-contrast technique of the modern master.

--Sean Tomizawa

A Tale Of Two Conventions: New York Comic Con & Anime Festival 2011 Wrap-Up

2011-10-20T11:57:00.000-04:00

Comic Con/NYAF 2011 activate! Via Brooklyn Vegan's awsm photo collection.

This year marked the fourth time I have been to New York Comic Con and Anime Festival and its magnitude and depth never ceases to amaze. From October 13 to 16, the Javits Center housed the biggest New York gathering of comic enthusiasts, anime diehards, and pop culture geeks of the world.

Reed Exhibitions, the event’s producers, once again outdid themselves by adding an extra day to the usual three, bringing even more special guests both new and returning, providing hours of fascinating panels, and cramming tons of exhibitors throughout the Javit’s 675,000 square feet of space with rare comics, one-of-a-kind merchandise, goods imported from Japan, and objects of nostalgia.

Close to a 100,000 people over the four days roamed the Center, many creatively costumed as characters parading around all four floors of the building. The amorphous mass of comic crusaders shuffled and huddled through the mammoth exhibitor halls, the theater, dealer’s showroom, autograph signing area, and artist alleys--all filled to capacity.

We waited hours in lines for panels featuring special guests such as Mark Hamill (the actor who played Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, who has gained an even bigger following as the voice of Batman’s eternal enemy, Joker), exclusive screenings such as the upcoming Avengers movie hosted by Captain America star Chris Evans, and discussions around every conceivable facet of comics, anime, and video games.

We saw big names such as Tony Moore, original artist for the Walking Dead comic series, and Pendleton Ward, creator of the incredibly wacky Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time", got their autographs, and brought back plenty of freebies and purchased action figures (signed by the previously mentioned artists!

Riding side car to New York Comic Con’s behemoth, New York Anime Festival (NYAF) roosted in the Javit’s incredible fourth fourth floor (imagine Cloud City from Empire Strikes Back combined with BSG's hangar deck). Populating this celestial haven were talented amateur artists displaying prints, buttons and all sorts of crafts, while the maid café gleamed with fancily dressed maids and butlers handing out candy. Opposite superheroes of every incarnation and valuable vintage comics was everything kawaii cute (heavy on the animal ears).

As always, the Japan element was in full force. NYAF flew over a slew of prolific industry names from Japan such as Makoto Shinkai, prodigy director (hailed to be the next Hayao Miyazaki) of feature anime films such as 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Place Promised in Our Early Days; screenwriter Dai Sato (Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell); Katsuhiro Harada, longtime producer of the venerable Tekken fighting game series; and Junko Takeuchi, voice of popular manga character, Naruto, from the original anime dubbing. Other anime and manga-focused panels were hosted by industries like FUNimation and VIZ Media, who provided updates on acquired licenses and their release dates.

For the fourth year running, Japan Society had its own booth thanks to the organizers of NYAF.

"Maybe it’s the closeted otaku in me, but I live for the Comic Con and New York Anime Fest," said Japan Society’s Shannon Jowett, who volunteered at the Society’s booth. "The sense of community—by sheer number as well as connectivity—is overwhelming and infections. Everyone gets along, has fun and shares passions and creative interests that they may not able to express everyday.”

Recognizing anime and manga fans’ inherent love for all things Japan, NYAF invited Japan Society to take part in the festival in 2008, offering convention goers exposure to many different kinds of Japanese culture.

“When we first started attending the cons in 2008, very few people knew about Japan Society,” said Jowett. “Now people run up to our booth, eager to sign up for language classes we offer and find out what we have coming up. They share stories from exhibits and concerts they’ve attended here and try out the Japanese they’ve learned from our language center. On a couple of occasions people have told us about the Japan-appreciation organizations they’ve started at their schools because of their experiences with us. Next to the guy that dresses up as a full-fledged Transformer, there is no greater joy at the Con.”

--Sean Tomizawa

Bumble be real. Via.

Cibo Matto: Reunited And It Tastes So Good

2011-10-14T12:30:00.000-04:00

Putting the mmmmm in matto. Photo by Valentine.

After a 10-year hiatus, NYC’s delicious downtown duo Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda take Japan Society’s stage for the first time ever as the iconic band Cibo Matto on October 20.

"Japan Society has long been an important bridge between Japanese culture and the American audience,” the twosome told us. “We are very excited to play here".

Their style has been described as sharp, whimsical, and irreverent, with lyrics that buoy a vibrant spectrum of sounds influenced by hip-hop, trip-hop, jazz, rock, pop and African and Brazilian beats.

“We are known as the band that sings about food,” Honda told MTV’s “House of Style” in the mid-90s . In fact, the phrase cibo matto is Italian for “crazy food” or “food madness”. The pudding proof of their moniker is in a smorgasbord of songs, from the sweetly smooth grooves of “Sugar Water” and tug-and-pull funk of “Beef Jerky”, to the avant spice of “Sci-Fi Wasabi” and the wack-a-doodle-doo-wop of “I Know My Chick”.

In addition to classics their set will be peppered with new, never-before-heard songs from their forthcoming reunion album, which NPR teased when the band began their tour this summer. An exciting roster of guest stars at the Japan Society concert includes Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Yuko Araki, bassist Jesse Murphy, instrumentalist Doug Wieselman and vocalist Jared Geller.

Opening for the band, silky-voiced J-pop sensation Yu Sakai marks his international debut. The Tokyo native keyboardist/singer-songwriter broke out in 2009 and won iTunes’ 2010 Best J-Pop Album of the year award with his debut album, Only Yu. His music is a blend of R&B beats, jazz-fused J-Pop melodies, self-mixed instrumentation and multi-layered vocals.

In what has been called a one-night-only music mashup of downtown New York and modish Shibuya, the concert is Cibo Matto’s first headlining NYC show since their highly acclaimed, sold-out Bowery Ballroom set in July and is the band’s only currently scheduled East Coast show.

CIBO MATTO and YU SAKAI: J-Music Ride takes place Thursday, October 20 at 8:00 pm. Doors open at 7:00 pm, and there is a cash bar open before and after the show, and during intermission. Tickets are $25/$20 Japan Society members and may be purchased by calling the Japan Society box office at 212-715-1258, visiting www.japansociety.org, or in person at the Japan Society box office.

--Shannon Jowett

Secretary of State Clinton: Friendship Cornerstone To U.S.-Japan Relationship

2011-10-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

Secretary Clinton at the U.S.-Japan Council conference. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta via.

Last Friday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made remarks at the U.S.-Japan Council's annual conference. The crux of her speech was common experiences that have built a strong, lasting friendship between the U.S. and Japan, a relationship that "has been tested by time and tragedy, by rivalry, and by the natural push and pull between two proud nations... And each time, it comes back even stronger." She continues:

Ten years ago, as a senator from New York, I saw firsthand what our friendship meant. When Japan sent firefighters from 7,000 miles away to help with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I was moved, but I wasn’t surprised. That’s just the kind of friend that Japan is to America and to many countries around the world. Wherever there is famine, disease, poverty, wherever there is a young democracy struggling to take root, from the frontlines to the forgotten corners, Japan is there, working hand in hand with America to build a safer, more prosperous world.

The generosity that moved us after 9/11 we sought to repay after 3/11. After Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, our governments launched the largest joint military operation in our history. More than 20,000 Americans from our military and other agencies took part in what we called Operation Tomodachi. Now, this was more than just a search and recovery mission; this was a demonstration of our deep ties, because as you know so well, tomodachi means friend, and that’s what we want it to be.

Americans who remembered the red and white flags on the jackets of Japanese volunteers at ground zero flew to Japan to return the favor. Across our country, in small towns and large cities, people raised money. Springfield, Illinois, for example, raised $32,000 selling blue jeans for their sister city in Japan. Nebraska corn growers donated nearly 9,000 bushels of grain. Japan-America societies across this country raised over $20 million for relief efforts in Japan. And the ambassador is passing out these white wristbands, which I’m very proud to wear. And as you might guess, he’s very persistent. So again, just say yes when he approaches you. (Laughter.)

Via the National Association of Japan Societies.

Generation Mobile: Kids Change The World One Cellphone At A Time

2011-10-11T15:36:00.001-04:00

"Games should be played only in game arcades." Via.

Something that never ceases to amaze me is how far ahead Japan is in the cellphone industry. Japanese cellphones, or keitai denwa, had the ability to scan QR codes years before any other country had access to the technology, receive and send emails with unique addresses that have practically no character limit, and even watch local television shows with decent quality.

Their uniqueness even inspired the christening of a sociological phenomenon: Japan’s Galapagos Syndrome, "a phrase originally coined to describe Japanese cell phones that were so advanced they had little in common with devices used in the rest of the world”. The U.S. has played catch-up in the last decade with the advent of the smartphones like the iPhone and Droid series, both of which have gained popularity in Japan.

While the proliferation of cellphone culture seems to know no age boundaries, young people especially make up a large portion of mobile media culture in both Japan and the U.S. Some fear kids are becoming consumed by their handhelds and more and more prone to distraction. In Japan, where cellphones are practically given away as very fancy toys to those as young as middle school age, there is concern about children’s susceptibility to cyber-bullying and, worse, internet crimes. It is no wonder these devices are shunned and disallowed in the classroom.

But as technology becomes increasingly more handheld and integral to social engagement, what does the future have in store for educators, their students, and generations of youth?

Tonight’s panel Keitai Kids: Youth, Culture and Social Media in the USA and Japan looks at how mobile social media can be used to better education. The discussion features Tomi Ahonen, former executive for Nokia and a leading consultant on the mobile market, and the University of Tokyo media studies profoessor, Shin Mizukoshi, a proponent of cellphones in education, whose focus is anthropological as opposed to the more common technological stance. Trebor R. Scholz, the summit chair of the Politics of New School's Digital Culture Conference moderates.

The panels is part of The New School's MobilityShifts: An International Future of Learning Summit, a week-long conference bringing together great minds from different backgrounds to showcase how mobile media can be used to effectively teach and learn from outside the classroom.

The event is also a precursor of Japan Society Education Program’s new Going Global initiative, which will connect thousands of school children from Japan, America, and Pakistan through social networking activities and share ideas with each other to work towards a better world.

--Sean Tomizawa

Destination JS: A Conbini-ent Truth

2011-10-06T12:42:00.004-04:00

Dainobu's Authentic Japanese Grocery Experience In Midtown East

Destination JS explores the sites, shops, and eateries surrounding Japan Society.

One of the many things I miss about living in Japan is being near the convenience stores -- conbini -- that lined almost every street sometimes right next to each other. Whether it’s to stock up on a wide range of drinks, gorge on inexpensive and delicious bento, or do some minor grocery shopping, conbini are indeed the greatest convenience.

Fortunately for those with a hunger for the genuine Japanese conbini experience, Dainobu on 129 East 47th Street between Lexington and Third Avenue is only a short walk from Japan Society.

From beneath a striking orange and white awning, Dainobu’s bright and colorful interior invites passersby to either sensory overload or a nostalgia trip. Aisles of wet and dry goods provide even the most discerning Japanese food shopper with just about anything they need.

Dainobo also serves as a lunch spot for Midtown Manhattan's working urbanites. Visitors crowd around the large and varied selection of bento boxes and sushi rolls, while some wait in the back for a hot bowl of ramen, udon, curry, and much more. These authentic meals are less than $10, allowing satisfied customers to make off with authentic Japanese fare like bandits.

A place like Dainobu would not be complete without all the unique baked goods, such as the ever-popular imported melon bread. I was ecstatic to see my favorite Ginza Kimuraya steam cake. Those with Pocky on their mind may be more inclined towards the snack section, where all sorts of chocolates, gummies, potato chips, and other interesting products await.

Dainobu stems from several generations of grocery store owners, and the current head, Yasuaki Dainobu, expanded into New York in 2008. Meanwhile, the company has properties other than supermarkets, ranging from coin laundromats, floral shops, and internet cafés in the prefecture of Kumamoto where it all began.

After getting a fill of Japanese culture at Japan Society, Dainobu is a one stop shop for Japanese treats and staples that fill the stomach.

--Sean Tomizawa

The Rise And Fall Of The House Of Mario: Can Nintendo ‘Leave Luck To Heaven’ Anymore?

2011-09-30T12:46:00.001-04:00

Nintendo once held the undisputed position as the king of video games thanks to its long-living handheld Gameboy series as well as early consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System and its many successors. The company has captivated the gaming audience ever since the mid-70s when they decided to look to electronic games to turn around their fading fortunes as a playing card company. Now the likes of Donkey Kong, Link, Samus Aran, and, of course, Mario, are recognized names worldwide for casual and core gamers alike.

Today, however, things are different as competing gaming consoles with superior technology from Sony and Microsoft and numerous smartphone games threaten to bury the venerable video game mainstay.

In 2006 the Wii jump started Nintendo’s resurrection from the failure of its predecessor, the Gamecube. Many bought into the Wii’s unique motion controls, which led to it completely leapfrogging the PS3 and Xbox 360 in sales for years, even remained in short supply for a awhile. However, the gimmick kept the console popular only briefly as gamers realized the other consoles provided more mature, engaging content and not just family-friendly fare that Nintendo is known for.

The 3DS, the latest in Nintendo’s handheld line which launched this year, has suffered disappointing sales and in a few short months resorted to a large price cut to encourage stragglers to purchase the glasses-free 3D gaming experience. With the announcement of the Wii U over the summer, fans were confused by the unclear purpose of the controller-console hybrid that finally seemed to have caught up with the level of current generation consoles. Investors were also unconvinced as demonstrated by a severe drop in shares following the reveal. Another negative change in their stocks occurred following a string of announcements at the recent Tokyo Game Show, though the drop is hotly contested.

Though uneven, there is urgency behind these sudden changes. While core gamers are over the various gimmicks and casual players have plenty of options in the saturated mobile games market, how can Nintendo secure their future in the industry?

Japan Society’s panel Nintendo: What’s Next for the House of Mario? on October 6 features two experts who look at the Nintendo’s “ups-ups, downs-downs”, as one Japan Society Facebook fan so cleverly put it, and how the company can compete in today's market. Dan Sloan, author of Playing to Wiin: Nintendo and Video Game Industry’s Greatest Comeback, leads the discussion, and Jamin Warren, founder of Kill Screen Magazine, moderates. Whether attending as a concerned shareholder or an anxious fan of the Big N, the discussion promises insight into the now and future of the once undisputed gaming system king.

--Sean Tomizawa

Wilbur Ross: Ups From The Market’s Downs?

2011-09-29T11:38:00.001-04:00

Wilbur Ross. Via.

Yesterday Wilbur Ross, chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co. and chairman of Japan Society, sat down with Council on Foreign Relations’ Benn Steil to talk Greed vs. Fear: Making Sense of the Market Crash (watch the full video). The discussion used the August 2011 crash as a springboard to look at the economic situations of the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan, and how they can improve and fix their respective problems.

Reporting from the event, The Wall Street Journal noted that "Ross has to squint to see the bright side":

Wilbur Ross isn’t optimistic. He says he’s not totally pessimistic, but the financier is short on happy thoughts.

Over the course of an hour-long talk Wednesday afternoon at the Japan Society in New York, Mr. Ross voiced just about only one view that was in the not-totally-depressing camp. Stock markets, he says, “have priced in a very bearish scenario. Unless things get truly bad, the worst is probably over for the markets,” he said.

While WSJ goes in-depth about the more pessimistic points, there were several observations and key takeaways for overall improvement from the discussion:

● The U.S. has gone two years with practically no budget. The lack of Democrat and Republican consensus on what needs to be cut is due to both sides aiming at each other’s "sacred cows". The resulting political inertia is the U.S. economy’s worst enemy. It prevents strong leadership and a lack of bold responses to various crises. The preoccupation with presidential and congressional elections, along with the Tea Party phenomenon, further polarizes the political structure doing little to help the economy.

● Greece has been at the brink of default for some time. The European Union never had preparations if a member leaves voluntarily or is forced to leave, which belies that a single currency means a cohesive political and fiscal union. European nations need to stop applying small fixes to crises and instead apply big changes to the point of overkill as soon as they come up.

● China is doing fairly well for itself despite a major housing shortage. The nation’s recent high economic growth means housing demand can be supplied without too much worry of a crash. Ross said that because of the economic success China is having, he would rather bet on their banks than the European ones.

● The U.S. and Japan both have cash rich economies, but they are not as liquid as they could be. True liquidity should be attained to help stimulate their respective economies.

● Japan, while the response to the recent earthquake was incredibly quick, needs to continue focusing on rebuilding the Tohoku region in order to help revitalize the economy. The cultural avoidance of change is also not helping progress, leading to further depression and low growth. Due to the labor shortage, Japan needs to incorporate more women and immigrants into the workforce.

● It would be most logical for Japanese companies to make more foreign investments especially while the yen is so strong. However, there is seemingly no push for that move, unlike in China where natural resources are in small numbers so they have dipped into Africa, South America, and even the U.S.

● Finally, there is a self-correcting mechanism in the economy that will only activate when governments decide to be more decisive with their actions, be more willing to invest, and generally be much bolder.

--Sean Tomizawa

Destination JS: Digging Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

2011-09-26T19:18:00.000-04:00

Destination JS is a regular series exploring the sites, shops, and eateries surrounding Japan Society’s landmark building.

Across from Japan Society is the cozy, tree-lined, avenue-length Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, a Midtown park where weary business folk, diplomats from all nations, and curious visitors find rest. Known as the "Gateway to the United Nations", the plaza is an oasis in the Turtle Bay neighborhood.

A steel gazebo at the Second Avenue entrance opens onto a brick promenade lined by light fixtures that take after old-fashioned gas lamps and benches modeled after those made for the 1939 World's Fair. Several fountains surround the plaza imbuing calm, while public sculptures and memorials stand in fascinating contrast to the urban, monochromatic surroundings.

One historically charged piece is Good Defeats Evil by Zurab Tsereteli, which is a sculpture of Saint George Slaying the Dragon comprised of parts from Soviet and American ballistic missiles.

Further in, one can stroll through the Katherine Hepburn Garden where the late movie great’s image and memorable quotes decorate stepping stones that form a path through seasonal flowers and vegetation.

For those who don’t speak Swedish, learning to correctly pronounce the plaza's name is easier than it looks. It comes from the plaza’s esteemed honoree and namesake, Nobel Peace prize recipient Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld, who served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations throughout most of the 50s and traveled all over the world for missions to end disputes and work towards world peace. Tragically, a plane crash while on the way to oversee the United Nations Force he established in Congo took his life 50 years ago this month. The city has preserved his legacy through the beautiful Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.

While most visitors to the plaza come to find peace from hectic everyday life, many come during the course of a year to fight for peace in their own country. Given the proximity to the United Nations and various consulates, public demonstrations are a regular occurrence. As a man who vigilantly aimed to progress world peace, Hammarskjold would have it no other way than to have the people of all nations freely speak their minds.

In addition, designated areas allow for a variety of performances and community events throughout the year, there is a constant rotation of public art, and every Wednesday fresh foods are available at a farmer's market beginning at 8:00 am.

Whether attending a film screening, performance, exhibit, discussion, or language class, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza is a memorable stop whenever you make Japan Society a destination.

--Sean Tomizawa

Top photo by Sean Tomizawa; bottom photo by This Week in New York.

Japan’s Textile Pioneers: Weaving Threads Of The Past Into The Future

2011-09-16T14:32:00.001-04:00

When visitors climb the stairs to Japan Society’s new exhibit Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers, they are greeted by Kyoko Ibe’s Requiem, created specifically for the show. The large, dark purple, net-like weave adds mystery to the Society’s typically calm lobby, and yet engulfs the garden pool from above in an almost protective manner. Japan Society gallery director, Joe Earle, notes that the piece is:

a memorial to victims of the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. The fluidity of water is one of the miracles of nature, yet all of us were shocked and saddened to see how it could destroy so many lives and livelihoods. Ibe created Requiem from ancient indigo-dyed paper, made in a pristine natural environment and originally used for Buddhist scriptures. Sensing that our uncertain times cry out for the qualities of peace and stability embodied in this lovingly preserved material, she has twisted and worked it night and day for many months as a prayer for divine protection.

The piece is just one of 35 featured textile artworks that combine the beauty of tradition with eye-popping experimentation. The use of color and incredible shapes are the first things that may strike visitors, but upon closer inspection, the impossible textures and intricate techniques stun the imagination. Each installation, ranging from soccer ball size to meters wide and tall, is imbued with personality and a story. Those that hang on the walls cast equally striking shadows, subtly adding to their mystique.

Fiber Futures runs through December 18th. You can view more photos from the exhibit here and here. Related programming includes an exhibition talk, a day with family activities, an evening with former Miyake creative director Dai Fujiwara, and individual workshops on weaving, dyeing and embroidery.

If you can’t make it to Japan Society, you can check out the gorgeous catalogue or download the free app for iPhone or Android, and wrap yourself with Fiber Futures wherever you are in the world.

--Sean Tomizawa

Landmark Birthday for Japan Society’s Building

2011-09-15T16:47:00.003-04:00

"I have tried to express in contemporary architecture the spirit of Japan." --Junzō Yoshimura

Days before the opening of its 104th gallery exhibition, just after turning 104 years old, Japan Society celebrated the 40th birthday of its building, recently designated New York City’s youngest landmark.

It was shortly after Japan Society launched the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund to aid recovery after the devastating tsunamis struck Northeast Japan when news broke that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved four new landmarks, including Japan Society.

“We’re very proud of our building,” Japan Society gallery director Joe Earle told HyperAllergic at the time, adding, “It’s a remarkable place to walk into every day.” The article continues:

As a manifestation of the relationship between the United States and Japan, Earle points out, the design and construction of the Japan Society building came at a very interesting time. In 1971, “New York was just becoming aware of Japanese architecture. [The building] represents the rebuilding of the relationship between the two countries after World War II.” As a combination of Brutalist severity and Zen simplicity, the structure crosses artistic cultures.

“Looking out of my window now,” Earle describes during a phone conversation, “the long horizontal bars that filter the light give the whole front [facade] this kind of horizontality that was associated with Japanese domestic architecture … It’s a suggestion of Japanese architecture without actually being a copy of it, that’s what strongly appeals to me.”

Completing a circle of great Midtown East architecture including the United Nations headquarters, Tudor City, the Ford Foundation building and Grand Central Station, Japan Society’s 5-story, charcoal gray building on 333 East 47th St. overlooks the cozy Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza Park.

The building is a smartly designed, geometrically playful edifice that contains warmth and reflective quietude—as useful for solitary thought as it is for intimate conversation and coming together to share ideas. While some might dismiss it as a “modernist box”, for most who visit, the brooding boxiness is a dark chocolate square with a liquid caramel center. It is the architectural incarnation of the quintessential New Yorker—austere and brusque perhaps at first blush, but warm, storied, and endlessly fascinating once you break the surface.

Known for infusing traditional Japanese elements in his modern works, architect Junzō Yoshimura used a much subtler blending of Japanese sensibility with contemporary materials in Japan Society’s building. The slats mentioned by Earle above, running horizontally on the second and third floors of the façade, are meant to evoke amado (Japanese storm windows used during typhoons). Hinoki (Japanese cypress) louvers in the exterior entry continue into the lobby ceiling, diffusing light and warming shadows. (Initially, the heat from light bulbs would release the wood’s fragrance, but regulations now require they be flame retardant, which masks the scent.)

Although the building has undergone two campaigns of adaptation and extension over the years, its original atmosphere is especially well preserved in the lobby area with a low, modular, precast concrete ceiling; extant original slate floors and walls; a large river stone near the entrance positioned as a foundation for seasonal floral arrangements; bamboo pond and waterfall; and stairs leading invitingly up to the gallery spaces, which encompass the entire second floor.

And while the building also contains a sub-level language center, a 262-seat state-of-the-art theater for lavish performances, pop concerts, film screenings and more; and three floors of administrative space, almost everyone who enters comments on its quiet beauty and remarkable stillness, welcome relief from the tireless energy of the city’s streets.

History

A brief history of the Turtle Bay neighborhood, home to Japan Society, the United Nations, missions of foreign governments and many private organizations including the International Institute of Education and the Ford Foundation, has been included in the Landmark Preservation Commission Japan Society Designation Report (PDF).

The area had remained little developed until after the Civil War, when residential and commercial development followed the opening of the Second and Third Avenue Elevated Railways around 1880. The large waterfront site along the East River between 42nd and 48th Streets was acquired by the Rockefellers, and John D. Rockefeller 3rd later donated the 47th street site to Japan Society in 1968.

“From the start, Japan Society was characterized as ‘the first building of contemporary Japanese design to be built in New York City’”, notes the report. Designed by Junzō Yoshimura in partnership with George G. Shimamoto during 1967-68, Japan Society, earlier called Japan House, opened in 1971.

Gabrielle Birkner in an article in The Real Deal refers to Japan Society as one of the notable exceptions to have been designed by a Japanese architect as it was not until much later that the architectural community in New York was receptive of design talent from abroad. According to the landmark's report, Yoshimura was “likely the first Japanese citizen to design a permanent structure in New York City.”

Shortly before the opening, Leah Gordon, an arts columnist for The New York Times on September 5, 1971 wrote:

In an area replete with UN Missions and consulates, this building has no seals, no mottos and is distinguished only by a slanted, 3-foot iron fence . . . It is soon apparent that this is no customary New York architectural atrocity but a sedate, jewel-like structure that, in its quiet way, commands attention.

Similarly, The Architectural Record in 1973 commented that the building:

...adds quite a dollop of civility to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. Its exterior is quiet, nicely scaled and guardedly transparent: fleeting glimpses of the interior are afforded through bronze anodized aluminum screens, and the glass entrance doors.

In Yoshimura’s own words:

People the world over used to build their houses with local and traditional materials. Today, however, contemporary buildings all over the world use the same basic materials – concrete, steel and glass – yet different characters and nationalities can still be perceived amongst them. In designing Japan House I have tried to express in contemporary architecture the spirit of Japan.

--Anu Tulachan and Shannon Jowett

Nuclear Blues

2011-08-18T12:06:00.000-04:00

Via.

August 6th marked the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, where a solemn commemoration has marked the years since 166,000 men, women and children lost their lives, tens of thousands of them to the lingering effects of radiation. This year, with Japan suffering in the aftermath of another nuclear disaster, the Hiroshima ceremony saw Prime Minister Naoto Kan deliver a speech in which he expressed contrition for believing in "the security myth of nuclear power". Mr Kan also promised an investigation into the incidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which are fast becoming a source for much public criticism of his administration and the state of Tokyo bureaucracy and the Japanese nuclear industry in general.

Such hostility to nuclear power is nothing new in Japan, but the events in Fukushima have raised popular antipathy to its highest level in decades, with about 70 percent favouring a comprehensive overhaul of Japan’s energy policy according to a recent poll. Japan is already avowedly anti-nuclear in the area of the military, having voluntarily banned nuclear weapons from its territory since the 1950s, but many anti-nuclear groups have, until now, failed to equate the horrors of nuclear war with the peaceful development of nuclear power. Now, with the mayors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki calling for a sea change in Japanese energy policy for the first time in decades, the Prime Minister himself is addressing Japan’s reliance on nuclear power before his political life draws to a close.

However, with nuclear power supplying about a third of Japan’s energy needs and the prospects of toughening economic times ahead, it is unclear exactly how any putative shift away from the atom might move forward without severe disruption to Japan’s infrastructure, to say nothing of the jobs that would be lost. As the U.S. and by extension the world brace for another possible recession, it would be a rude shock to the system for Japan to invalidate tens of thousands nuclear industry employees, particularly following the selfless heroism many of them displayed at the height of the crisis.

Yet, with popular anger on the rise, it is possible that even moves to establish an unprecedentedly high level of oversight of the nuclear industry will not placate the Japanese public, particularly as more details of the bureaucratic errors surrounding the catastrophe come to light.

The New York Times' recent report provides an example of such: the citizens of the town of Namie, close to the stricken Fukushima Daichi plant, are the latest to protest Tokyo’s handling of the disaster after they failed to receive any information on the dispersal of radiation, despite the accurate predictions from a government-commissioned computer scenario of radioactive release paths conducted far in advance of the meltdown. According to the town’s mayor, Tamotsu Baba, the failure to provide the scenario data to local residents lay with the unwillingness amongst senior officials to significantly enlarge the zone of the expensive and disruptive mass evacuations or to subject the Japan’s beleaguered nuclear industry to even harsher public scrutiny.

However, it is precisely the latter that the people seem to want. With the passing on August 3 of a law to allow the use of public funds to keep the operator of the Fukushima Daichi plant afloat, it is difficult to imagine that the Japanese populace will accept anything else.

--Tobias Voss

JAPAN CUTS 2011: Peeps & Parties

2011-07-14T13:40:00.000-04:00

Can we get a what-what for our 1, 2, … 3 Points after party?

This year’s JAPAN CUTS film festival exceeded expectations opening weekend, selling out 7 of 10 screenings and hosting the wild Yakuza Weapon Party with appearances by co-directors Tak Sakaguchi and Yudai Yamaguchi.

Along with a multitude of screenings through July 22, there are several more special guests attending this year’s fest, including some of Japan’s top filmmakers and actors and actresses who take part in exclusive Q&A’s and post-screening parties.

Following the international premiere of Three☆Points on July 15, director Masashi Yamamoto and actress Sora Aoi will take part in a post-screening Q&A and and may stick around for the rockin' 1,2...3 Points after party.

Yamamoto’s career has spanned a period of almost three decades since his debut film Carnival in the Night (1983). Aoi is an internationally renowned celebrity whose roots in the Japanese AV industry propelled her career to pinku eiga then to television dramas, and finally to mainstream entertainment. She has even branched off into the music industry (namely pop). Her performance in Three☆Points can be seen as her branching into more dramatic and serious films

Following the North American premiere of The Seaside Motel on July 16, director Kentaro Moriya will take part in a Q&A session. Since Moriya began his career in music videos it is no surprise that his films reflect the same essence of flash and style that encapsulated his earlier career. The Seaside Motel stays true to this ideal as it fully embodies Moriya’s signature flair.

Also on the 16th, the international premiere of A Liar and a Broken Girl will host director and writer Natsuki Seta and actor Shota Sometan, who introduce the film and take part in a Q&A. The film is characteristic of Seta’s stylistic audacity as it boldly fuses teen romance with serial killer horror.

Directly prior to the New York premiere of Haru’s Journey on July 20, director and writer Masahiro Kobayashi will make a special statement paying homage to the victims of the recent earthquake in Japan (the film was shot in the Tohoku region prior to devastation by the 3/11 tsunami). The screening will be followed with a reception that includes the appearance of his regular co-producer (and wife) Naoko Kobayashi. Half of all ticket sales for this screening will go to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.

In addition to the 1, 2, … 3 Points after party, the festival will conclude with the festival concludes with the JAPAN CUTS Loose Closing Night Party following the final film Into the White Night. Details will be announced next week, so stay tuned and hope to see you there!

--August Dinwiddie

Echoes of Devastation: Japan Four Months After The Quake

2011-07-13T17:33:00.000-04:00

Sendai before and now. Via.

The recurrence last weekend of a powerful earthquake followed by a small tsunami in the same regions of Japan which were hit four months ago briefly brought Japan back into the news, although there was fortunately little damage and no reported injuries or deaths this time.

It was a reminder that the current situation in the tsunami zone remains a grim one for many. The slowness of the government’s provision of basic relief to those affected by the catastrophe has forced many locals in the affected areas to fend for themselves and roused private industries to take action.

Matters have not been helped by such occurrences as the resignation of Japan's disaster reconstruction minister within a week of his appointment (after his threats to withhold aid to boroughs which did not have good ideas for reconstruction) and the government’s difficulties implementing a program of stress tests for nuclear plants. With potentially decades remaining for the cleanup of nuclear materials within Fukushima alone, it is quite possible that we may see an increase in local citizen initiatives as a matter of pure necessity.

Fortunately, changes to the laws governing the tax status of Japan’s non-profit organizations (NPOs) are due after the flood of over 480,000 volunteers into the earthquake zone was met by a confused and often obstructive response from some local officials, many of whom were unprepared to accept help from outside official channels. Where the impetus from the Kobe earthquake of 1995 led to the first explosion in NPO numbers after new legislation was introduced in 1998, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami appears set to make Japan’s 80,000 or so civil society organizations more effective.

This cannot come soon enough for residents at the Shizugawa High School Evacuation Center in Minamisanriku, Miyagi Prefecture. Four months after the small fishing port of Minamisanriku was virtually wiped out, the survivors live in a 3,000-aquare-foot location housing 40 families with no running water. Supplied by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces with food and medicine and still going into work or school where possible, the evacuees face an uncertain future, as the government has yet to decide whether or not the residents can rebuild in the tsunami affected area or if they must relocate. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that victims such as the former inhabitants of Minamisanriku will require significant assistance in the short and possibly the long term.

Reporting Recovery Now and Ahead

One hopes that the potential for another disaster so soon after the first may refocus world attention from the economic costs and high-level political effect of the quake to the plight of the individual Japanese at ground level.

While media coverage has dwindled in comparison to the struggles facing many in Japan’s northeast, there has been a surge of optimistic stories amid dire situations coinciding with the four month anniversary.

The New York Times profiles Sendai’s steady recovery and examines how Japan is solving the problem of approximately 27 million tons of debris created by the tsunami. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal profiles the hard-hit city of Rikuzentakata, which lost a tenth of its population.

EastAsiaForum looks at the crises’ impact on the U.S.-Japan alliance, focusing on synergy between Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the U.S. military.

Asahi reports on the outpour of support from the Japan Expo in Paris; and the touching story of a father’s desire to restore his daughter’s piano—the only thing left in their home after the tsunami.

The Times also carried related technology and sports coverage, profiling Google's responses to disaster stricken Japan, and showing how baseball has brought stability to students displaced by the tsunami.

We’ve recently begun receiving updates from the organizations that have received support from the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.The Japan NPO Center announced support to six local NPOs in the Tokohu region, and JEN reports from their work in Ishinomaki.

These personal stories are absolutely necessary to aid and illustrate the revival of the devastated regions of Japan. As much as possible, this blog will balance major events in Japan’s recovery with individual accounts from those experiencing and taking part in reconstruction first-hand.

--Tobias Voss

JAPAN CUTS Lands + Under-The-Radar Gems

2011-07-07T13:35:00.005-04:00

Japan Society’s fifth consecutive JAPAN CUTS film festival (July 7-22) is the world’s largest festival of Japanese cinema, featuring 33 screenings, 32 films, 31 premieres and an array of special guests and exclusive parities.

Highlighting the wild diversity and extreme artistry of Japan’s newest movies and encompassing “the hard, rough, sharp, smooth and soft edges of today’s Japanese film scene,” the selection ranges from eye-popping blockbusters to jarring genre flicks to heart aching indies.

Samuel Jamier, Japan Society’s chief film programmer who curated the festival, said “a substantial number of titles this year can’t be easily categorized or confined to strict genre boundaries.” In a video interview (below), he also hoped the festival gives audiences “the most original and creative” examples of what’s coming out of Japan today.

As with years in the past, JAPAN CUTS 2011 includes several co-presentations with the New York Asian Film Festival, including the sold out July 7 opening film Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha: The Great Departure, an animated adaptation of Tezuka’s spectacular and philosophically deep manga of the Buddha (also screening July 10); the “almost impossible to define” Milocrorze: A Love Story July 10; and JAPAN CUTS’ first sell-out Gantz, a grindhouse adaptation of a popular Japanese manga that pits teenagers in trendy black leather costumes with advanced war gear against aliens hiding on Earth.

Opening weekend also contains some not-to-be-missed gems, such as Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano (July 8), an intricately plotted tale of an introverted, shy office worker who does part time in the porn industry. The noiseful Ringing in their Ears (July 7) revolves around a rock group competing with managers, obsessed groupies, shut-ins, single parents and kindergarten teachers as they prepare for a concert.

Firefox News’ Peter Gutiérrez, who has been writing about the festival since its inception in 2007, featured some of his favorite under-the-radar fare (including Sword of Desperation, A Night in Nude, Torso and Birthright), and Steve Dollar writing for The Wall Street Journal had this to say:

The series also offers less easily characterized films. The 4½-hour "Heaven's Story" marks a serious turn by director Takahisa Zeze (known as the "King of Pink" for his softcore sex comedies), who maps a sprawling revenge drama about a little girl who comes of age obsessed with the serial killings of her family. Sora Aoi, the AV idol (sex star) turned mainstream actress, stars in Masashi Yamamoto's "Three Points," an episodic drama that surveys the lower depths in three Japanese cities. Likewise, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's "Sketches of Kaitan City" brings a realist eye to the working-class struggles described in the fiction of the late Yasushi Sato.

--August Dinwiddie

Note: JAPAN CUTS opens today. Tickets can be purchased online, through the box office at 212-715-1258, or in person at Japan Society. Members receive $3-$4 discounts, and if you purchase five tickets or more, you get $2 off each ticket (only for orders made by phone or in-person). Also, we’re testing out a new screen so enjoy the new view!

Sayonara 'Kitty': A Last Look At Japan Society's Hit Exhibit

2011-06-10T17:51:00.002-04:00

Bye Bye Deer! Photo by Richard Goodbody.

Since the time when Japan opened up to the outside world, its people and culture have often been scrutinized through the lens of kawaii aesthetic, or the fondness for all things small and cute. Laying the background for kawaii that has dominated not only the cultural phenomena within Japan but also how Japan is viewed from the outside, David Elliot, curator of Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art, writes in the exhibition catalogue:

The paternalistic outsider’s view, equating lack of Western modernity with premodernity, feudalism, and by extension, a state of immaturity, was founded on the notion that Japan was essentially “different” from other countries, and Japanese “childishness” could easily be proven by a perceived taste for miniature versions of things or a preference for natural beauty and materials.

It is not rare that views regarding Japanese contemporary art take a trajectory quite similar to how Japan was viewed from the outside and as result, render Japanese contemporary art devoid of maturity and originality. Elliott continues:

Since the early twentieth century, Japanese art has developed in conversation with Western modernism, but Western commentators have too easily dismissed Japan’s recent and contemporary art as a derivative reflection of its own image (some children are very good at copying) or embraced it as quaintly traditional, otaku, or kawaii – a stereotypical expression of childlike grace that the simply drawn, mouthless features of Hello Kitty epitomize in their bland inscrutability.

Hello Kitty, a character developed by Sanrio and marketed with huge success far and wide epitomizes the dominance of kawaii. A 2004 Japan Times editorial entitled "Time for Goodbye Kitty", highlighted, albeit with reservations, the reign of Hello Kitty in commercial as well as non-commercial spheres. Calling Hello Kitty “the expressionless icon celebrating its 30th anniversary [in 2004]” the editorial cited its appearances on a MasterCard debit card in the United States and as a UNICEF “special friend of the children” to raise funds for girls’ education programs.

Takashi Murakami, the curator of Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, an exhibition presented by Japan Society in collaboration with the Public Art Fund in 2005, argued that Japanese art forms showed a “retreat from the adult world into an infantile, ‘superflat’ universe” owing to “Japan’s political emasculation” following World War II. Bye, Bye, Kitty!!! is an attempt to present the work of artists who have, in Elliott's words, “produced work that indicates a more complicated, adult view of life, melding traditional viewpoints with perception of present and future in radical and sometimes unsettling combinations”. The artists featured in the exhibition were born between mid-60s and early 80s (with the exception of one) and have been witness to rapid, and at times, drastic and overpowering transformations in multiple facets of the Japanese society.

This hybridity, one of the essences of Japanese pictorial creativity, has created a fertile seedbed in which the struggle between extremes of heaven and hell, fantasy and nightmare, ideal and real take place. There is no room for Kitty’s blankness here. But the boundaries between the extremes are often unclear. In a fiercely critical, socially rigid, and historically loaded environment, where irony is used as a weapon, one element may be unveiled to reveal its opposite.

Bye, Bye, Kitty!!! presents the work of 16 artists, half of them women. Among over 40 objects, three new works were unveiled including Kohei Nawa’s taxidermized deer covered with a skin of plastic beads to form an irregular, globular skin that confounds expectations of sight and touch; Tomoko Shioyasu’s large-scale installation, employing a version of the decorous Japanese art of stencil cutting to snip, slit, cut and slice a ten-foot sheet of paper into a membrane-like form that animates surrounding space with projected light; and Chiharu Shiota’s installation Dialogue with Absence, recently unveiled in Paris, which combines a painted wedding dress with pumps, tubing, and red-dyed water to create an umbilical network of linked veins that suggests a dreamlike, unconscious state of anxiety.

While the exhibit closes this Sunday, it will live on online, in apps (for both iPhone and Android), and in the catalogue published by Yale University Press as part of their Japan Society Series.

--Anu Tulachan

Earthquake Survivors And Lawson: More Than A Marriage Of Convenience

2011-06-09T11:57:00.001-04:00

Lawson's vans mobilize to reach those in need. Via.

When Takeshi Niinami, CEO of Lawson convenience stores, first agreed to talk at Japan Society he expected to speak about Lawson’s expansion overseas. The company is opening stores in China, India, Indonesia and perhaps Vietnam. That changed on 3/11.

Those earth-shattering events brought new meaning to the important role convenience stores play in Japan's economy. To the surprise of many, when relief first came to some of the devastated areas, it was with a Lawson’s delivery truck, not a self-defense forces vehicle.

Stepping in after the tsunami where the government failed, Lawson's found itself in a highly unusual role of feeding and supplying hundreds of thousands of affected Japanese. “The public sector was of no help at all in the first ten days,” the CEO of Japan’s second largest convenience store chain told an audience at Japan Society recently. “We supplied aid more smoothly and systematically.”

Lawson’s nimble reaction is a telling indicator of Japan's rapidly evolving private sector economy.

Lawson took immediate action despite facing major disruption to its own business. While 20 Lawson Stores, many factories and distribution centers in north eastern Japan were destroyed or damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, the company’s supply chain in other parts of Japan remained in tact. Lawson's decentralized structure made it nimble enough to allow the company to move supplies quickly to the affected area.

Niinami's intense focus on the disaster required him to make unorthodox decisions with a speed unusual in Japan. “I took the executive decision to send supplies from Tokyo to Tohoku; this action brought a shortage of inventory to Tokyo causing complaints from customers there. I still believe that decision was correct though we lost some sales in the Tokyo area.”

And while Niinami was making key and quick decisions in Tokyo, he wasn’t trying to run the show from the capital. From the first day, he delegated authority to the regional head office in Tohoku where the general manager had more first hand knowledge of what was needed.

The devolution of authority led to some surprise requests including 20 motorbikes. “The Tohoku general manager needed the motorbikes because the roads were destroyed and there were no express ways,” said Niinami. Motorbikes were the most efficient way to get around and helped the company gather information on the ground. “I think the information we got was more correct than the information the public sector was collecting.”

Lawson was able to do this because the company has a well-established management culture where local managers exercise a great deal of autonomy. After the earthquake this proved invaluable. “In irregular times they had to make decisions,” Niinami said. “ They did a good job.”

In the first days of the crisis, a priority was to restore fuel supplies to the affected area. According to Niinami, most fuel supplies were being controlled by the government, which commandeered some commercial fuel tankers. Resupply was slow.

Niinami urged Lawson franchisees to not wait, but to drive their own fuel tanks to the area with or without government approval. Business partners also lent vehicles and shared their limited stocks of fuel. “Do not talk to the government,” Niinami said they told him. “So we sneaked in to some hidden places anyway.”

When Niinami heard that some truck drivers supplying Lawson stores were reluctant to go to areas with high levels of radiation, he took matters into his own hands and contacted some of them directly. “I will go with you, I told them,” he said. “Then one of the drivers said, “Okay I will go, I understood your guts, we don’t need you to come.”

Lawson’s rapid response to the disaster is proving to be much more than a marriage of convenience. Survivors were grateful that Lawson was quick to arrive on the scene, as other aid was slow to materialize.

The halo effect of its response is having surprising results in Japan and, Niinami hopes, soon overseas. The company has seen changes in consumer behavior following 3/11, some of which may influence the kind of stores it runs in the future.

After the quake, more people are shopping at local stores because they have no gas to drive to larger supermarkets. Housewives and senior citizens, who are not typical convenience store customers, are now seen much more often. As a result, Lawson is offering more fresh produce in small portions to meet their needs. Niinami hopes these groups will now become regular customers.

Overseas, Niinami feels that other countries will not only benefit from stores themselves but also from learning from Lawson’s record as a good corporate citizen as demonstrated by its response to 3/11.

Niimani's bold actions come as no surprise to those who know him. The Keio University and Harvard Business School graduate has earned a reputation for being a straight talking man of action, firing people when he arrived as CEO at Lawson and changing vendors.

Niinami has been President and chief executive officer of Lawson since 2002, after a career that started at Mitsubishi Corporation’s sweetener products division. Under his leadership, Lawson has increased operating profits for eight straight years. He is also vice chairman of Keizai Doyukai (Japan Association of Corporate Executives).

Reflecting on his recent experience, he understood the importance of not taking for granted what seems so normal and routine - operating a 'conveeni'. “We transported essential things, prepared foods, baked goods, water and blankets from as far way as Western Japan. I am proud we could provide some comfort and relief to the survivors.”

--Juliet Hindell

Hindell was BBC Tokyo bureau chief and Daily Telegraph Tokyo correspondent and is now based in New York. Read her article about the Japan Society panel Why Japan May Surprise the World: Rebirth after the Tohoku Quake.

The Cats Of 'Bye Bye Kitty!!!'

2011-06-08T13:11:00.011-04:00

With magnifying glass in hand, I was scouring the mind boggling detail of Manabu Ikeda's History of Rise and Fall (which Japan Society gallery director Joe Earle discusses in detail in this video), when I nipped a glimpse of a Cheshire-ish cat peeking slyly from some overgrown castle curtain.

Ikeda is one of the 16 artists featured in the exhibit Bye Bye Kitty!!!, which closes Sunday June 12, but not the only one who injected some feline felicity into their art. The show is littered with them.

Makoto Aida's bakeneko-esque beast looks on hungrily (or warily or indifferently--so catlike!) at the playful, psychedelic carnage of Harikari School Girls.

In the Bye Bye Kitty!!! catalogue, curator David Elliott comments on the "feral expression of fighting spirit" of Hisahi Tenmyouya's Defeat at a Single Blow, Robust and Magnificent Feature. But this dressed-for-success white tiger is giving a Cringer-worthy, over-the-shoulder smeyes that would give Tyra a runway walk for her money.

Finally, a basket of bob-tailed beauties preen at the foot of a pet tomb in Yoshitomo Nara's iconic untitled photo.

And while there are plenty more animals in the exhibit (some astoundingly crafted, others dangerous or dripping blood), "the show is less about Hello Kitty and the cult of supercuteness than about reasserting the relevance of an anxiety that has always been present in Japanese art" and so much more.

That said, if there are any dog lovers who have made it this far:

Woof.

--Shannon Jowett

Image Credits: Manabu Ikeda (1973-), “History of Rise and Fall (detail) 2006. Pen and acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board, 78 3/4 × 78 3/4 in. (200 × 200 cm). Photo: Kei Miyajima. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Takahashi Collection. Copyright © IKEDA Manabu. || Makoto Aida (1965-) "Harakiri School Girls" (detail), 2002. Print on transparency film, holographic film, acrylic, 46 3/4 × 33 3/8 in. (119 × 84.7 cm). Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Photo: Kei Miyajima. Watai Collection. Copyright © AIDA Makoto. || Hisashi Tenmyouya (1966-) "Defeat at a Single Blow, Robust and Magnificent Feature, Gallant and Brave Behavior" (detail), 2008. Acrylic and gold leaf on wood, 70 × 231/2 in. (178 × 60 cm), 70 × 34 in. (178 × 86.2 cm), 70 × 231/2 in. (178 × 60 cm). Photo: Kei Miyajima. Collection of Katsumi Nozawa. Copyright © TENMYOUYA HISASHI. || Yoshitomo Nara (1959-) "untitled" detail, 2008. C-print, 10 1/2 × 7 7/8 in. (26.6 × 20 cm). Courtesy Tomio Koyama Gallery. Copyright © Yoshitomo Nara. || Yamaguchi Akira (1969-) "Postmodern Silly Battle: Headquarters of the Silly Forces" (detail), 2001. Oil and watercolor on canvas, 72 3/4 × 30 in. (185 × 76 cm). Photo: Keizo KIOKU. Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery. Takahashi Collection. Copyright © YAMAGUCHI Akira.

What The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Means for Japan, U.S. And The World

2011-05-26T10:29:00.002-04:00

The triple disasters that hit north-eastern Japan on March 11—a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, followed by devastating tsunami and nuclear crisis following the failure of cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant—have given unprecedented spotlight and momentum to debates surrounding the safety and the very use of nuclear power in Japan, the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Nuclear energy accounts for close to 14% of electricity generation globally. While nuclear power has very high start-up costs, once up and running, it can provide relatively cheap power without producing carbon emissions (The Economic Intelligence Unit). According to Economic Intelligence Unit, Japan had 54 operable nuclear reactors before the March 11th disaster and nuclear power generated approximately 27% of electricity in Japan in 2010. In France, which has the second highest number of nuclear reactors (58) after United States (104), electricity generation through nuclear power accounts for a much higher 77%. In the U.S., the 104 operating nuclear reactors account for 20.2% of electricity production. (An overview of number of nuclear power plants in operation throughout the world and electricity generated is available via an interactive map at Npr.org)

As Japan continues the battle to bring the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to a stable state within six to nine months, Prime Minister Naoto Kan on May 6th called for a temporary closure of Hamaoka nuclear plant, “an ageing facility on a tectonic fault line that would pose a tremendous risk for Tokyo if it suffered the same fate as the Fukushima Daiichi plant.” As additional details trickle in regarding the series of events that unfolded at the Fukushima nuclear plant, efforts are underway to assess Japan’s handling of the nuclear accident. According to The New York Times, the nuclear oversight body of the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with its 18 member international team, has started its investigation into the accident. Furthermore, the Japanese Government itself is undertaking an independent inquiry into its response to the disaster.

Announcements of evacuation in Japan more than 10 weeks into the disaster, this time around a greater radius surrounding the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant only add to the gravity of the crisis surrounding Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The BBC that the no-go zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant had been extended and that the residents of towns of Kawamata and Iitate were being sent to evacuation centers.

The disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and its far-reaching aftermath have significantly altered the landscape in which nuclear power plants operated. The Economist notes that in an opinion poll conducted by Asahi Shimbun, the percentage of those opposed to nuclear energy in Japan had risen to 41% from 28% in 2007, with women being the strongest opponents. As more details are made available regarding the contributing factors towards the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan and the rest of the world will learn lessons far too costly to ignore. As Japan’s own efforts towards reviewing energy use, Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced on May 10th “his intention to rewrite from scratch a blueprint, scarcely a year old, that planned roughly to double nuclear power’s contribution, accounting for half of Japan’s energy mix by 2030.”

In the U.S., the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent body created by Congress in 1974, implemented a 24-hour monitoring of the nuclear crisis in Japan until as recently as mid-May. NRC is the primary body responsible for regulating nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials. Following the disaster in Japan, the NRC launched a two-step reiew of U.S. reactor safety: a 90-day review to be completed in July and an in-depth evaluation of emergency operations and procedures to be completed by the end of the year. A summary of findings from inspections conducted at U.S. nuclear power plants and individual Inspection Reports have been made available at NRC website. An article published in The New York Times highlights some of the key findings included in the NRC inspection report and notes that “something under one-third of the 104 U.S. reactors were found to have some vulnerabilities to extreme emergencies, according to the NRC” but that “all issues have been fixed or put on schedule for correction, and that the safety of the reactors was not compromised.”

Today, Executive Director of Operations of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Bill Borchardt speaks at Japan Society on the various approaches being taken by NRC for a systematic review of nuclear power plant safety in the U.S. The discussion is moderated by Gal Luft, Executive Director of Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

--Anu Tulachan

Optimism And Hope Glimmer Behind Gloomy Realities Of Post-Quake Japan

2011-05-19T17:37:00.000-04:00

Detail from Nikmak's "Japan is Arising". Via.

Two months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami, which unleashed a nuclear crisis in the Tohoku region of Japan, the enormity and complexity of the problems the country now faces are daunting. More than 14,000 people lost their lives and nearly 200,000 have been evacuated from the region and remain in emergency shelters. The Japanese government now estimates that the cost of the damage could reach $310 billion.

In a discussion on Japan’s prospects after the Tohoku earthquake entitled Why Japan May Surprise the World: Rebirth after the Tohoku Quake?, a panel of leading economists at Japan Society did not sugar coat the challenges the country must now overcome. “It will have a pretty darn big effect on GDP,” said Bruce Kasman, Chief Economist at JP Morgan. The panel however, said the economic outlook for Japan, like the people, shows signs of resilience.

The immediate impact of the disaster was serious said Bruce Kasman, with a 15% drop in production in March. Retail sales fell 8% and car sales were down 40% for March and April. Overall he estimated a drop of 4% of GDP on an annualized basis over the second and third quarters of this year. But he predicted that after all the “sound and fury” had died down, Japan would be back at 90% of production capacity by the end of the summer and back on a growth path by the end of the year in part because of fiscal stimulus programs launched in response to the quake.

Paul Sheard, Global Chief Economist with Nomura said the quake had been a huge blow to Japan’s national confidence. Many had been waiting for the next “big one” to strike Tokyo or Tokai not Tohoku. The result was that many now feel another earthquake could still hit elsewhere. However, he suggested the negative impact of the crisis could also have a positive outcome. While the supply chain disruption caused by the earthquake, could lead companies to shift production offshore, it also reminded the rest of the world just how crucial Japan’s technology sector is to the global economy. Reconstruction not just by the government but also by the private sector looking to protect its own infrastructure from future disasters, could create a major economic boost for Japan. He estimated that while GDP would shrink by 0.5% this year, next year Japan’s economy would grow by 3.1%.

The panel saw the crisis as an opportunity for Japan to address some hard questions. Mr Sheard said now was the time for Japan to grapple aggressively with its deflation perhaps by issuing bonds. He also recommended that Japan look at its immigration policy in the face of its ageing society. He said opposition to immigration might diminish and the government should draw up a new structured, strategic immigration plan. It is also a time when strong leadership and continuity would be essential, he said.

The impact of the earthquake will have ramifications in all sectors of the economy but Kyohei Morita, Barclays Capital Chief Japan Economist, felt that problems the economy is facing were there long before the earthquake struck. He predicted that while Japan now enjoys a healthy current account surplus, the ageing society and an outdated tax policy which relies too heavily on corporate tax, will mean that the surplus disappears by 2018. "A current-account deficit would change completely the way the Japanese economy looks," he said. Companies facing expensive power supply and a weaker yen could take their business overseas resulting in what he described as “hollowing out” of the economy. Mr. Morita said that the nuclear crisis would spark a debate in the near term about electricity production in Japan. He said use could be made of thermal and hydroelectric power but in his opinion it would be “impossible” to shift way from nuclear power completely.

Much has been made of the reduced capacity for electricity production with predictions of a shortfall of 20% by the summer months. But the panel felt this was being overplayed and that Japan would rise to the challenge and find ways to make sure that power could stay switched on.

The panel agreed that there was much to overcome and that strong policy initiatives would be essential to Japan’s success. Jeffrey Shafer, a former Citigroup executive, who chaired the event, said the panel had pointed out some gloomy realities but that there was “optimism and hope glimmers”.

-Juliet Hindell

Hindell was BBC Tokyo bureau chief and Daily Telegraph Tokyo correspondent and is now based in New York.

Concert For Japan: More Than The Music

2011-04-08T11:46:00.000-04:00

All ages enjoy making origami. Photo by George Hirose.

Earlier this week we detailed 12 hours of music highlights, but Japan Society’s April 9 CONCERT FOR JAPAN is so much more: origami instruction, washi lantern-making, shodō calligraphy, basic language instruction with the theme “Reach out to Japan,” kamishibai storytelling for children, a scavenger hunt, food and drinks, and unlimited access to the exhibit Bye Bye Kitty!!!

Admission for the day is $5, with all proceeds going to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.

Designed for people with no previous knowledge of Japanese, the language classes teach how to reach out to Japan through basic Japanese phrases to show support and offer help in 30 minute sessions led by teachers from the Society’s language center.

Master calligrapher Masako Inkyo introduces the basics of shodō – traditional Japanese calligraphy art using a brush and charcoal ink on paper. Participants are invited to create messages of peace and hope to take home, and also enjoy Brush, an exhibit of Inkyo’s latest work displayed near the language center.

From easy yet beautiful flowers to challenging cranes, everyone visiting the Society has the chance to make origami paper art, in workshops led by volunteers form Origami USA.

Original work from the language classes, shodo workshops and origami instruction with messages of support for children affected by the earthquake will be shared digitally with children through the Kids4Japan Facebook page, facilitated by Japan Society’s Education Program.

Inspired by traditional rice paper lanterns typically found at Japanese festivals, participants transform Japan Society’s atrium into a giant washi lantern and send well wishes for earthquake relief in Japan. Designed by architect Aki Ishida's students at Rhode Island School of Design, who run a paper-folding workshop for visitors, the collective sculpture grows over the course of the day.

Kamishibai storytelling transports children and families to a world of mythical creatures and folktale heroes. Lively stories in both English and Japanese combine visuals, song and movement and promote themes of cooperation and generosity. Stories are told by Teri Gindi, Keiko Sawaguchi and Kumiko Yamakado.

CONCERT admission includes unlimited access to the Society popular exhibit Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven & Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art, highlighting some of the most incredible and darkly breathtaking contemporary art from Japan. The gallery will be open an extra three hours on this special occasion.

Throughout the day, visitors are invited to explore Japan Society’s recently landmarked building, from top to bottom, capturing digital images to redeem a gift from Gifu Prefecture or MUJI.

Finally, people can grab specialty beverages from Japan, such as beer, sake, plum wine, green tea, canned coffee, juices and sodas. Soft drinks are $2 and alcoholic beverages are $4. There will also be food to purchase from area vendors ranging from $3-$8.

The full CONCERT FOR JAPAN schedule of performances and activities can be found at http://www.japansociety.org/concertforjapan.

Language classes, shodō lessons, and kamishibai storytelling take place over several small group sessions; ticketing opens at 11:00 am for sessions between 11:45 am-2:15 pm and at 2:15 pm for sessions scheduled 2:30-5:30 pm. Reservations are on a first come, first served basis.

The origami and washi latern workshops are continuous 11:00-6:00. Reservations are not required and participation is on space-available basis.

Those wishing to donate to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund can go to www.japansociety.org/earthquake or mail a check to Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, New York 10017; Attn: Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. Checks should be made payable to Japan Society and indicate “Japan Earthquake Relief Fund” on the check. One hundred percent of tax-deductible contributions to the fund go to these organizations. For additional information, email japanrelief@japansociety.org.

Joseph Nye, The Power Guy

2011-04-06T11:03:00.003-04:00

Joseph Nye. Image via.

"Power is one's ability to affect the behavior of others to get what one wants. There are three basic ways to do this: coercion, payment, and attraction. Hard power is the use of coercion and payment. Soft power is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes through attraction. If a state can set the agenda for others or shape their preferences, it can save a lot on carrots and sticks. But rarely can it totally replace either. Thus the need for smart strategies that combine the tools of both hard and soft power." --Joseph Nye, Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug 2009

A survey conducted amongst international relations experts placed Joseph S. Nye Jr. amongst the top of the list of those who had most shaped U.S. foreign policy in the last 20 years. It was Nye, a leading theorist of power, Dean Emeritus of the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard University Distinguished Professor of International Relations who coined the term “soft power” in the late 1980s. He later also went on to develop the idea of “smart power”.

In an article in The Atlantic, Nye wrote: “In an information age, success is not merely the result of whose army wins, but also of whose story wins. Hard military power is not enough. We need the soft power of attraction as well. Their successful combination is smart power.” Similarly, in an op-ed article in Foreign Affairs, Nye referred to the many official instruments of soft power such as public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster relief, military-to-military contacts and wrote that they were scattered across the U.S. government with “no overarching policy that even tries to integrate them with hard power into a comprehensive national security strategy.”

In addition to holding academic positions, Nye’s experience combines several positions serving for the government. He has held numerous senior positions in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council including serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1995. As an Assistant Secretary of Defense, Nye played an instrumental role in developing Pentagon’s East Asian Strategy Report issued in February 1995, officially called United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region. It was in the context of implementation of the strategy that Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of Japan and President Bill Clinton reaffirmed in 1996 that the “U.S.-Japan security treaty was no longer related to the cold war but was now a reassurance for stability in the region” (An Alliance Larger Than One Issue, op-ed, The New York Times, January 10, 2010). In 2010, Mr. Nye was conferred an honorary doctorate from Keio University, the oldest institute of higher education in Japan "in appreciation of his significant contributions to the advancement of Japan-U.S. relations, and his outstanding achievements in academics and education."

Putting power in context and shedding light on the complexity of the environment in which power operates today, Nye notes in Foreign Affairs:

The United States can influence, but not control, other parts of the world. World politics today is like a three-dimensional chess game. At the top level, military power among states is unipolar; but at the middle level, of interstate economic relations, the world is multipolar and has been so for more than a decade. At the bottom level, of transnational relations (involving such issues as climate change, illegal drugs, pandemics, and terrorism), power is chaotically distributed and diffuses to nonstate actors.

In his latest book, The Future of Power, Nye addresses fundamental questions including “what will it mean to wield power in the cyber world of the twenty-first century?” and “[w]hat resources will produce power?,” questions that have become ever more pertinent today in the context of evolving foreign policy challenges in an information age. ….In a note for the book, Nye says:

Most current projections of a shift in the global balance of power are based primarily on one factor- projections of growth in the gross national product of different countries. They ignore the other dimensions of power that are discussed in this book

Today Joseph Nye takes the stage at Japan Society to discuss world power dynamics emerging from changing relationship, innovation and global challenges and what this means for U.S.-Japan relations and the world at large. Joseph Nye on the Future of Power is moderated by Fred Katayama, Anchor, Thomson Reuters, and a member of Japan Society's Board of Directors.

Registration: 6:00 pm, lecture and Q&A; 6:30 pm, reception: 7:30-8:15 pm. General admission is $15. Half of Japan Society’s admission sales through June 30 go to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. To register or for more information, please visit www.japansociety.org/corporateevents.

The event is part of the Japan Society’s Corporate Program’s Yoko Makino Policy Series.

--Anu Tulachan

Concert For Japan: Music Heard Around The World

2011-04-05T18:40:00.001-04:00

Me & Mars performs at Japan Society in 2010. Photo by Naomi Ramirez.

As Japan copes with the devastating aftermath of the earthquake and tsunamis of March 11, voices of solidarity and acts of generosity have helped bring a glimmer of hope to many who have been affected.

In New York, a chorus of deep concern and willingness to help expressed by performers, volunteer organizers and many well-wishers, inspired Japan Society’s CONCERT FOR JAPAN on Saturday, April 9--a 12 hour long series of live performances and special events offering a wide range of music and fun for people of all ages.

John Zorn helped put together two ‘gala’ blocks: at 1:00 pm Philip Glass & Hal Willner, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Zorn perform; and at 6:00 pm Ryuichi Sakamoto performs with special guests followed by M.O.D. Technologies, Bill Laswell, Gigi, Bernie Worrell, Hideo Yamaki and many others.

Though these two blocks of the concert are sold out, people at Japan Society will be able to watch and listen via screens and speakers throughout the building, and everyone around the world can watch live courtesy of Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/japansociety.

In addition to the gala are 10 hours of open concerts, culminating at 8:00 pm with rock, punk and electro music by female-led J-rock bands from the U.S. and Japan, including riff-heavy, post-punk, crowd-rousing, all-Japanese girl band Hard Nips; the punk pop rock of all-girl band The Suzan; the groovy rock of Me & Mars; and the smooth, chilling, electro-rock groove of Echostream, with members from both the U.S. and Japan. Traveling all the way from Japan, SALMÉ unleashes their wild “Ozashiki Revue”—a unique revue-style performance based on geisha entertainment infused with an urban Tokyo vibe.

With the help of guests organizers James Nyoraku Schlefer and Hayden Brereton (Superglorious), other CONCERT FOR JAPAN participating artists, ranging from Japanese traditional to Western classical and contemporary musicians, include: James Schlefer (shakuhachi), Masayo Ishigure and koto/shamisen ensemble “MIYABI” (koto and shamisen),Yumi Kurosawa (koto), Taikoza (taiko), New York Suwa Taiko Association led by Hiro Kurashima, Mutsumi and Masumi Takamizu (koto duo), Sadahiro Kakitani (ryuteki), Mari Kimura (violin), Lisa Bielawa (soprano), Makoto Nakura (marimba), Taka Kigawa (piano), and Cocolo Japanese Gospel Choir. Plus DJ Aki spins in the j-Lounge where people can sip drinks, snack treats and move their feet.

The full schedule performances can be found at http://www.japansociety.org/concertforjapan. A range of activities will be available throughout the day that we will detail in a future post. Admission for the open concert blocks and full day of activities is $5.

All proceeds from CONCERT FOR JAPAN go to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund, established by Japan Society on March 12 to support organizations on the frontlines of disaster relief and recovery in Japan. In addition, Japan Society will give half of all ticket and admission sales made March 14-June 30, 2011, from all Society events to the fund. To date, $1,000,000 has gone to four Japanese nonprofits: the Tokyo Volunteer Network for Disaster Relief, JEN, Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities (ETIC), and the Japan NPO Center.

Those wishing to donate to the fund can go to www.japansociety.org/earthquake or mail a check to Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, New York 10017; Attn: Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. Checks should be made payable to Japan Society and indicate “Japan Earthquake Relief Fund” on the check. One hundred percent of tax-deductible contributions to the fund go to these organizations.

For additional information, email japanrelief@japansociety.org.

--Anu Tulachan

SALMÉ unleashes their wild “Ozashiki Revue”.

What Comes Next For Japan, Panel And Webcast

2011-04-04T12:09:00.003-04:00

The scale and power of Japan's devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe are horrific, and the news coming out of Japan is heart-breaking. As the country grapples with the aftermath of the crisis, the world community is exploring what it can best do to help. Inside Japan, questions are only beginning to be asked about what comes next.

Japan Society and Asia Society co-present Japan Town Hall Meeting: Looking Ahead to Recovery tonight at Asia Society. Free tickets can be reserved here, or tune in to the live webcast, 6:30-8:00pm ET at http:www.asiasociety.org/live.

This town hall dialogue explores the crises in Japan, the national and international response, and the short and longer-term political, socio-economic and cultural implications for Japan's future.

Speakers include three members of the Society's Board of Directors: Gerald Curtis of Columbia University, Carol Gluck of Columbia University, and Fred Katayama of Reuters Television.

In addition, participants include: Gary S. Moriwaki, President of The Japanese American Association of NY; Mitsuru Claire Chino, General Manager fo the Legal Department of ITOCHU Corporation (via teleconference); Toyoo Gyohten, President of the Institute for International Monetary Affairs, Japan and Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd. (via teleconference); James Kondo a co-founder of Japan Healthcare Policy Institute (via teleconference); and Yukio Satoh, the Vice Chairman of The Japan Institute of International Affairs (via teleconference).

Questions for the panelists can be submitted via email: moderator [at] asiasociety [dot] org.

--Devin Stewart

Japan Earthquake Relief Fund

2011-03-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

Japan Society has created a disaster relief fund to aid victims of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Over the years, Japan Society has partnered with several Japanese and American non-profits working on the frontlines of disaster relief and recovery. 100% of your generous tax-deductible contributions will go to organization(s) that directly help victims recover from the devastating effects of the earthquake and tsunamis that struck Japan on March 11, 2011.

MAKE AN ONLINE DONATION

You can also contribute to the Japan Earthquake Relief Fund by sending your check to:

Japan Society
333 East 47th Street
New York, New York 10017
Attn: Japan Earthquake Relief Fund

Please make your checks payable to Japan Society and indicate “Japan Earthquake Relief Fund” on the check.

For additional information, please email japanrelief@japansociety.org.

The Greatest Samurai Film You've Never Seen

2011-02-18T15:05:00.001-05:00

Geoffry O’Brien in his Criterion Film Essay notes:

In an era of Japanese filmmaking marked by such masterpieces as Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, and when even the most routine samurai pictures tended to look very stylish indeed, The Sword of Doom stands out for the rigor and calligraphic pictorialism of its widescreen compositions.

The Guardian in 2005 published an obituary in honor of Director Kihachi Okamoto recalling him as “one of the least known of [Japanese] postwar directors in the west” despite being one of the “leading exponents” of the “most celebrated genre [of films] to come out of Japan.” Calling the neglect as “unwarranted”, the obituary highlighted the The Sword of Doom (1966) as one such movie that “gained a following” and “is still highly regarded.”

Incidentally, Wendell Jamieson of The New York Times recently recounted his long time fascination with Japanese movies depicting swordfights. Sword of Doom not only happens to be Jamieson’s favorite but one that his Kendo teacher Noboru Kataoka holds in high regards “as the greatest sword fight film of them all.” Jamieson portrays the action in the movie as follows:

Nakadai’s fluid and catlike movements seem hardly human — his maniacal grin adds another level of malevolence — but are almost balletic in their elegance. He completes his strokes with graceful upward arcs even after they have done their damage.

If the beautifully captured art of sword fighting have profoundly captivated many, the Zen-like portrayal of the human condition depicted through the protagonist of the film, Ryunosuke, remains yet another source of fascination. O’Brien, brings to our attention the juxtaposition of opposites in Ryunosuke:

Ryunosuke is at once hero and villain, demon and potential bodhisattva, and Tatsuya Nakadai’s stunning performance incarnates perfectly the paradox at the heart of the character: Does he act or is he acted upon? In what sense does he choose his destiny? He seems at times the spectator of his own destructive course, alternately anguished or blackly amused but essentially powerless to change what happens.

Similarly, Bruce Edgar’s take on Sword of Doom encapsulates wonderfully the portrayal of contradictions and Zen-ness in the film:

His Ryunosuke (“a man from hell,” as one character puts it) is one of the screen’s more memorable psychopaths, a passive-aggressive whose bloodlust is portrayed with dead calm, revealed by the tiniest motion of an eye, the trace of a smile, or the tense position of his body as he ponders killing.

Tonight, Japan Society concludes its Zen & Its Opposite: Essential (& Turbulent) Japanese Art House film series with the [sold-out] screening of Sword of Doom at 7:30pm. The movie illustrates the Realm of the Asuras or the realm of anger, jealousy, and constant war in the “Six Planes of Existence”- a Buddhist concept commonly referred as “Six Paths” or (Rokudō or Rokudō-rinne) in Japan—within “the realm of Birth and Death” (Samsara).

Directed by Kihachi Okamoto, Sword of Doom is based on the novel Daibosatsu Toge or The Pass of the Great Buddha by Kaizan Nakazato which first appeared as a newspaper serial in 1913. After being published for forty-one volumes spanning three decades, the novel was left incomplete due to author’s death. Okamoto, on the other hand, has had direct experience of war being drafted at the age of 19 as a student at Meiji University. His encounter with war and violence is said to have influenced his film making career deeply. After coming back from the war in 1947, Okamoto joined the Toho studios and worked with several directors until his directorial debut came in 1958 working on melodramas. Later, he specialized in action films and joined Toei to become the “undisputed star of Toei’s ninkyo eiga yakuza films.”

A.T.

Social Entrepreneurs And Youth in Japan: Agents Against A Return To Isolation

2011-02-17T17:44:00.003-05:00

When Ashoka, a leading American nonprofit that supports social entrepreneurs, opened an office in Japan recently, founder Bill Drayton noted at the press conference that Japan was the first country in over 80 countries where Ashoka is active, “where someone from that country came to us first.” [Full video here.]

That someone was Nana Watanabe, the author of two Japanese bestselling books (in Japanese only) on social entrepreneurship, Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurs are Changing the World (2005) and Changemakers II: Working as a Social Entrepreneur (2007).

Active with the Japan Society’s Innovators Network, Nana’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of social entrepreneurs and serving as a Leadership Group Member to Ashoka in Japan comes as no surprise to us. This past summer, Nana and her colleagues organized the first Youth Venture project in Japan, where approximately 80 youth, ages 12-20, from all over Japan, including those whose families are originally from Mongolia, China and Korea, gathered and presented their ideas [PDF download] for positive change in Japan.

The Ashoka Japan office is headed by Kashiwa Maki, a former Bridgestone executive and the founder of a social business in Southern California that worked with Japanese children with disabilities and their families.

Given the current national concern that young Japanese are more and more inward looking, studying abroad in smaller numbers, and less interested in working overseas for their employers, could Ashoka’s efforts in Japan contribute to reversing this trend among young Japanese? Will it help them think differently about how they approach their work and careers? Can it influence the way they relate to the outside world and how they might contribute to its betterment?

These questions and more will be address at Japan Society’s upcoming March 23 panel, Is Japan Returning to Isolation?, with Peggy Blumenthal, Senior Counselor, Institute of International Education (IIE); Robert Dujarric, Director, Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan; George Packard, President, The United States-Japan Foundation; and Masaaki Tanaka, EO for the Americas, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd; Director, Japan Society. We hope to see you!

B.B.

East Asia 2011: Measuring Perils, Managing Risk

2011-02-14T17:00:00.001-05:00

Perils as persistent as time. Via.

A spotlight shone brightly on tensions in the East Asian region last year with the sinking of the South Korean warship, Cheonan, in March followed by collision of a Chinese trawler with Japanese coastguard vessels in the disputed waters of East China Sea in September, and shelling of South Korea controlled Yeonpyeong Island by North Korea in November. More recently, revelation of a new nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon, North Korea’s main nuclear plant, has only added fuel to the growing tension in the region and beyond.

The collision of a Chinese trawler and two Japanese coastguard vessels in 2010 around uninhabited Senkaku islands disputed between Japan and China (called Diaoyu Islands in China) propelled actions such as Beijing banning exports to Japan of rare earth minerals that are crucial for electronics and auto parts manufacturing and others including suspension of high-level contacts, Chinese travel agencies canceling package tours to Japan and withdrawal of invitation from 1000 Japanese youngsters who were going to attend the World Expo in Shanghai. While tensions continue, further damage was halted with Japan’s release of the trawler captain amidst growing pressure from China.

Within Japan, recent developments hint toward a shift in focus with regards to defense in face of changing geopolitical risks. In December 2010, Japan’s cabinet approved new guidelines that refocus its defense strategy on the rise of China rather than the “cold war threat of Russia”. The guidelines “also call for a stronger alliance with the US – Japan's biggest ally – and expanded security networks with partners such as South Korea and Australia.” The news report also states that “Japan will acquire new submarines and fighter jets, upgrade its missile defence capabilities and make its ground forces more mobile so that they can quickly respond to emergencies in south-west Japan.”

Military might is also on the rise in China. The Economist notes that “China’s army is planning to add impressive new capabilities—an aircraft-carrier, a “carrier-killing” anti-ship ballistic missile, and a “stealth” jet fighter—without offering much clarity about its strategic intentions”. China reportedly tested the J-20 stealth plane during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s visit to China earlier this year in January.

Gideon Rachman notes in Foreign Policy that Fortune's latest ranking of the world's largest companies has “only two American firms in the top 10 -- Walmart at No. 1 and ExxonMobil at No. 3 while there are already three Chinese firms in the top 10: Sinopec, State Grid, and China National”. With unfaltering economic prowess and resulting power, China’s stance in the matters of regional security and stability has become as critical as in the matters of economics and trade. As South Korea, U.S. and Japan condemned incidents thought to be provocations by North Korea, i.e., the sinking of Chonan and the shelling of Yonpyong Island, China held a much softer stance on North Korea. It was only during President Hu Jintao’s visit to the U.S. last month that he agreed to a joint statement that emphasized the importance of North-South dialogue and expressed concern for the first time regarding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) uranium enrichment program.

In a report titled "China and Inter-Korean Clashes in the Yellow Sea", The Crisis Group notes the “growing power and foreign policy confidence” as being important factors influencing China’s stance and underscores one of the complexities as follows:

In the past, Beijing’s willingness to at least calibrate its responses to North Korean provocations was seen by the West as essential for moderating Pyongyang’s behaviour. Over the past year, however, Beijing has not only escalated its claims to disputed territories in the South China Sea and Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, but also increasingly resisted external pressure over Iran as well as North Korea. It feels under less pressure to yield to external demands and increasingly expects quid pro quos from the West in return for cooperation on sensitive third-country issues.

In cooperation with the National Committee on United States-China Relations and in honor of the launch of a new book on China-Japan tensions, Japan Society presents Perils of Proximity: Managing Risk in East Asia, a panel of three regional experts featuring President, Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies Director Richard C. Bush, III, and Johns Hopkins Center for East Asian Studies Director Kent Kaldor. Moderated by Jan Berris, Vice President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the [sold out] panel takes place at Japan Society on Monday, Feb 14, at 5:30pm.

A.T.

'Design Difference' in Review

2011-02-10T12:28:00.003-05:00

In November 2010, Japan Society’s Innovators Network convened 20 designers, architects, nonprofit leaders and the media from Japan, the U.S., Vietnam and Thailand. The three-day program, The Design Difference, looked at design as a tool for social change. For this project, we partnered with three incredible organizations: Common Ground, The Designers Accord and GOOD.

The program began with a visit to Brooklyn's Brownsville, which has the highest concentration of public housing in the U.S., and where more than half of the residents live under the official poverty line. What we saw and learned is described by Alissa Walker in the first of a three-part series she wrote for GOOD. The article, “The Design Difference: In Brownsville, Enormous Urban Challenges, and Hope” highlights the challenges facing Brownsville, some of the incredible work already underway, and why Japan Society organized the project. Walker notes in her conclusion:

Solutions tested in this community could be replicated anywhere if they work. The question now became, how could design make a difference? And how could we—outsiders, with only a tenuous connection to the neighborhood—help in a way that was meaningful?

This was followed by “The Design Difference: Using Design to Conduct a Problem-solving Workshop”, which explains the process and tools developed by designer Valerie Casey for the workshop. Material is available for anyone to use for their own brainstorming sessions through links in the article. Rich Streimatter-Tran, an artist who teaches RMIT Vietnam and a participant in the project, has already put the materials to good use in his design class in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The final article in the series, “The Design Difference, How You Can Propose Ideas for Brownsville”, focuses on five priority areas and solutions that came out of the project. Designers, architects, and others who want to volunteer or have resources to donate, were asked to take up the challenge and contribute pro bono work for the proposed solutions. (How to go about this post project is all laid out in the article.)[UPDATE: Added volunteer details below.]

In addition to a thorough recap of the project, Walker touched on the evolution of design making a difference:

In many ways, the charrette highlighted the way that designers have shifted from creating things to creating ideas, which Casey has also seen through the Designers Accord's work. "Three years ago we focused on evolving our design practices by applying the principles of sustainability to the objects we were creating," says Casey. "Now we are applying our craft to create the kind of content and change in a way that supersedes 'design,' and is utterly more connected with society at large."

B.B.

--UPDATE--
Here's how to help: If you're a design firm and want to contribute pro bono work for Brownsville, register with The 1% and send an email to designdifference [at] japansociety [dot] org with the subject line "Design Firm" alerting our team that you're ready to be matched with a Brownsville client.

If you're a designer or architect and you want to submit a design proposal for one of the five priority areas, send an email to designdifference [at] japansociety [dot] org with the subject "Design Proposal" and include a brief summary of your idea for Brownsville, as well as a link to your work.

If you'd like to volunteer or if you have resources to donate for an upcoming workday to help implement one of the ideas, send an email to designdifference [at] japansociety [dot] org with the subject "Volunteer" and you'll be added to a future email list with more information about how you can get involved.

For more great photos from this event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifecinematic/sets/72157625358726662/show/

Photos by Ayumi Sakamoto.

Rockin’ Ramen

2011-02-08T13:22:00.000-05:00

10% noodles; 90% love. Via.

To compliment today's SOLD OUT ramen discussion and tasting (featuring Masahiro Nakano from the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum and Serious Eats' J. Kenji Lopez-Alt), Japan Society staff put their hungry heads together to highlight a caboodle of the best noodles in NYC. Spoon, sip and slurp away!

Donburiya: 137 East 47th Street (212-980-7909)
Go for the tonkotsu ramen—a solid, simple rendition of the style, and all ingredients are cooked to perfection.

Hide-Chan Ramen: 248 East 52nd Street (212-813-1800)
Hide-Chan’s floating globules of glistening fat overwhelm even the most hardened rameniac; authentic, native-approved fare.

Ippudo NY: 65 4th Avenue (212-388-0088)
One of the best executions of tonkotsu style ramen in NYC. Warning: the restaurant’s popularity makes getting a bowl quite an ordeal.

Ise: 151 East 49th Street (212-319-6876)
Delicious standard Japanese dishes fill this restaurant with expats. Try their niboshi (dried fish based) ramen, but call ahead because it’s not always on the menu.

Izakaya Riki: 141 East 45th Street (212-986-5604)
The 45th St. restaurant has a wealth of great noodle dishes. Try the su-ra-tanmen (noodle in Chinese style hot & sour broth.)

Kambi Ramen House: 351 East 14th Street (212-228-1366)
At least one JS staffer says their soy tonkotsu is the best anywhere.

Menchanko-Tei Midtown East: 131 E 45th St # 2 (212-986-6805)
Great ramen, but guests can expand their noodle horizons by trying the sumo-wrestler-in-training specialty, menchanko—giant cast-iron bowls of noodles with a wide selection of add-ins.

Menkui Tei: 60 West 56th Street (212-757-1642)
A tiny, cozy restaurant with hearty, filling ramen. Great stop after a visit to nearby MoMA or the American Folk Art Museum .

Naruto Ramen: 1596 3rd Avenue (212-289-7803)
A small, bar style ramen shop like you see everywhere in Japan, with good gyoza and solid miso and tantanmen. The service is fast and presentation is simple.

Rockmeisha: 11 Barrow Street (212-675-7775)
A late-night rockabilly izakaya haunt offering much more than Chinese noodles—including a jukebox, friendly staff and a host of creative appetizers.

Ramen Sanshiro: 249 East 49th Street (212-355-7722)
Japanese businessmen, nightowls and ramen enthusiasts know that after 11pm, the upscale restaurant SEO transforms into Ramen Sanshiro. The late-night limited menu includes two ramen choices - shio (salt) and shoyu (soy sauce). Cash only.

Souen (East Village): 326 East 6th Street (212-388-1155)
Vegetarian ramen with extras like kale and yuba that win over meat-eaters. The black sesame ramen is the best, but all worth trying, including seasonal offerings such as seafood ramen.

A.M., C.J., D.S., J.N.A, R.Y., S.J.

The East Asia Equation in American Monetary Policy

2011-02-01T09:00:00.002-05:00

As developed economies including the United States try to crawl out of the effects of the financial crisis, China’s increasing influence on the global sphere has become a critical consideration in the equations of trade and finance. Daniel Franklin, Editor of The Economist’s World in 2011 opens his editorial with the following:

In a year that will delight numerologists (especially on November 11th, or 11:11:11), the most notable number will in fact be two. It will be a tale of two economies: a rich world struggling with a weak and jobless recovery, and an emerging world growing four times as fast.

At home in the U.S., the Federal Reserve introduced a monetary policy called QE or quantitative easing in 2008 in an effort to revive the ailing U.S. economy. QE involves the government buying bonds to increase the money supply in the economy in order to stimulate lending and spur economic activity. A second round of pumping money into the U.S. economy ($600 billion), commonly known as QE2, was announced in November 2011. More recently, on January26th of this year, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reaffirmed its position to continue with the QE2.

While critics of QE2 point toward, among other things, Japan’s experience of implementing quantitative easing from 2001 to 2006 and whether or not it had any impact on the economy, there has also been a build-up of voices from abroad expressing concerns against the policy. Central to the concerns of China and the emerging world is the notion that a policy such as QE2 is an attempt to drive the dollar down.

Depreciation of dollar with respect to floating-rate currencies as a result of increased supply of dollars is a predictable result as the “rise in the volume of dollars [causes] the value of each dollar to fall relative to the floating currencies, whose volume has remained constant or risen more slowly”. Such an outcome worries China which has so far allowed only a slight appreciation of its currency (Renminbi, unit=Yuan) keeping its exports cheaper. The Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao explicitly mentioned that China does not want more rapid appreciation of the Renminbi keeping in mind the potential adverse impact on Chinese exporters.

While the centrality of economic concerns in policy making is of the utmost importance, countries in Asia including Japan face an equally dominant concern. A special report on China’s place in the world published by The Economist links the twin concerns of Asian countries, namely economics and security, to the dual need that many Asian countries face, noting “naturally, Asian countries want to have it both ways: to resist China’s power but to continue trading with it; to benefit from American security but without sacrificing Chinese commerce.” The report also says China has risen as a chief trading partner for most of Asia and in the eyes of the economists and businesspeople, China getting richer means gain for everyone – the rest of Asia finding a bigger market in China and vice versa. However, from a security standpoint, the report states, “In a troubled continent like Asia, countries therefore look to America to save them from an increasingly powerful China—to ‘the water far away’ for protection from ‘the fire nearby’”.

In the specific case of the relations between Japan, China and arguably, the U.S., Professor Hugh Patrick, Director of Columbia’s Center on Japanese Economy and Business, notes that rapid growth in export has played a key role in Japan recovering from recession and that the increase in exports, for the most part, come significantly from “renewed growth and increase in demand of East Asian economies, especially China”. Patrick also notes that one of the major challenges Japan faces is how to deal with China. He states that the “two pressing issues that will define the relationship [between Japan and China] will be “[t]o what extent do Japan’s economic interests align with those of China?” and “[w]ill the two countries be able to agree on a common set of East Asian regional rules for trade, [Federal Direct Investment], or exchange rates?” The above questions, he argues, “raise issues that extend beyond economics, and, inevitably, the United States will be involved in trying to answer them”. On a much broader international level, the interconnectedness and interdependence between currency exchange rate, export and monetary policies such as quantitative easing are now culminating into a fear that a currency war may be imminent.

Akira Kojima, a Senior Fellow at the Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER) and Visiting Professor of National Graduate Institute For Policy Studies (GRIPS) articulates the current tensions and the resulting sentiment in Japan as follows:

In 2010, China overtook Japan as the second largest in the world in terms of total GDP, a position that Japan has held since 1968. How to come to terms with a rising and more demanding China will be an issue of increasing importance in Japan in 2011. Tension on the Korean peninsula is another of Japan’s worries, which, together with the China issue, is forcing Japan to reconsider the nature of its alliance with the United States.

Echoing the changing dynamics of U.S.-East Asia relations in Davos at the World Economic Forum on 29 January was Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan. In his speech, Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan welcomed China overtaking Japan as the world’s largest economy and said, “the world faces major changes that can be likened to a tectonic shift both in the national security and economic fields”. Recognizing the importance of Japan’s relationship with China, he also noted that Asia is “the centre of major tectonic changes” and against this background the Japan-U.S. alliance “is becoming even more important” and should continue to play a key role in the Asia-Pacific region.

This Thursday, February 3, Japan Society presents the expert panel What Impact Will Monetary Easing Have on U.S. & Global Economies, featuring Nomura Securities’ top bank researcher Brian Foran and chief U.S. Economist David Resler, Columbia Business School’s Alicia Ogawa, and Financial Times’ U.S. managing editor Gillian Tett, the award-winning author of Fool’s Gold and Saving the Sun. Moderated by Bloomberg News anchor and reporter Kathleen Hays, the event is free to the public with pre-registration required.

A.T.

If You're Hungry And You Know It, Eat Japan

2011-01-27T17:10:00.000-05:00

With all of the Sabu craziness this week, we almost forgot that it was Restaurant Week, when dozens of New York City's top restaurant come together to offer diners irresistible meal deals. With a nice Facebook reminder from the trusty New York Japanese Cultural Examiner, it looks like many of the Japanese restaurants taking part were included in our exhaustive breakdown of last year's fête. Here's the full list for 2011, and we advise you to grab a seat while you can. Itadakimasu!

BondSt

EN Japanese Brasserie

Hatsuhana Sushi Restaurant

Inakaya New York

Japonais

Matsugen

Megu Midtown (menu)

Megu New York

Morimoto

Nobu New York

Nobu Next Door

SushiSamba 7

SushiSamba park

Tanuki Tavern

Going To "Hell"

2011-01-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

Enjoy a steaming bowl of "Hell" at Japan Society. Photo (c) Everett Collection

"Jigoku is more than merely a boundary-pummeling classic of the horror genre—it’s as lurid a study of sin without salvation as the silver screen has ever seen," notes Chuck Stephens in his wonderful essay for Criterion.

Regarded as a seminal cinematic depiction of Hell, Nobuo Nakagawa’s Hell (1960), or Jigoku is far less known outside Japan. Serving later as the basis for two remakes, one by Tastumi Kumashiro in 1979 and the other by Teruo Ishii in 1999, Nakagawa’s original was "[b]orn from some unholy union of Goethe’s Faust and Genshin’s Ojoyoshu, a tenth-century Buddhist treatise on the various torments of the lower realms."

Depicting sin, suffering and punishment, Hell brings to screen beautifully the complexities of human intentions, choices and their consequences. Stephens continues:

Resolutely unafraid of incomprehensibility, Jigoku proves ultimately less an articulation of the moral and postmortal consequences of sin than a free-associative head-on collision of righteously motivated evil intentions and well-intentioned innocents who capriciously lose their souls.

Nakagawa started his film making career in 1924 and made some 90 feature films by the time of his death in 1984. During his tenure at Shintoho, he earned a distinction as the "master of Japanesque horror" in addition to his earlier reputation as "the Japanese Alfred Hitchcock". Hell was the last in a "nine-film string of innovative and deliriously eccentric horror films" made by Nakagawa during the 1950s at Shintoho and given the backdrop of the studio going out of business, the film was subject to budget-saving strategies.

In anticipation of Japan Society's screening of Hell, Steve Dollar at The Wall Street Journal wrote that the movie "sits very near the foundations of the Japanese horror film." He continues:

[Director] Nakagawa's stark and gripping imagery has the punch of a surrealist noir, hypnotizing with poetic visual flourishes before diving into the fiery, forsaken pit of the title—which is realized with an extreme flair for the grotesque and hallucinatory.

The U.K’s Eye for Film comments on the movie's capacity to shatter reality:

Jigoku is a beautiful film. Its play with lighting effects, colour gels and jarring camera angles makes everything - both on earth and below - seem an off-kilter nightmare, while the soundtrack of jazz, wood percussion and theremin only adds to the sense of disorientation. Realism this is not, but Nakagawa is nonetheless concerned with depicting a society that has lost its moral balance, at a time when memories of war-time horror were still fresh in the Japanese mind, while post-war modernisation was engendering its own anxieties about over-permissiveness and the dissipation of traditional values.

Hell plays today, Friday, January 21, as part of the monthly classics series Zen & Its Opposite: Essential (& Turbulent) Japanese Art House. Tickets are $12/$9 Japan Society members, students & seniors. The Zen & Its Opposite series concludes February 18 with Okamoto's Sword of Doom.

T.D.

CelebrASIA: 3 Months of New Year’s Festivities For Families

2011-01-14T12:16:00.000-05:00

My oh shishi-mai! Photo by George Hirose.

A lively lion dance performance in China, families in Japan making trips to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, families in Central Asia clamoring pots and pans to drive away evil spirits of the past year, or Persian families creating beautiful altars honoring their ancestors—all provide a glimpse into the rich and festive sights and sounds of New Year’s celebrations in Asia. As countdowns, champagne and cheers reverberate throughout the Western World, many cultures in Asia welcome the New Year calling it by diverse names such as Norouz (Persia), Oshogatsu (Japan), Losar (Himalaya), and Sollal (Korea) with unique and sometimes intriguingly interrelated practices.

This year Asia Society, China Institute, Japan Society, Korea Society and Rubin Museum have come together to bring the joys of celebrating New Year’s across Asia. In the first of hopefully a regular series, CelebrASIA NYC: New Year’s Festivities for Families encompasses six pan Asian events at five esteemed New York City cultural centers.

On Sunday, January 16, Japan Society’s Japan’s New Year’s Day Celebration: Oshogatsu kicks off the series with fun-filled traditional Japanese New Year’s activities, including mochi-tsuki (rice pounding), shishi-mai (lion dancing accompanied by live taiko drumming), gogaku court music, kakizome (special New Year’s calligraphy), kite-making, fukuwarai (funny-face game), karuta (card matching game) and kamishibai story telling. Children of all ages are invited to participate and activites fill every nook and cranny of the Society's landmark building.

The series continues with Family Day: Korean New Year, Saturday, January 22; Moon over Manhattan, Saturday, January 29; Chinese New Year's Day, Sunday, February 6; Family Day: Himalayan New Year Celebration, Saturday, March 5; and Spring into Norouz, March 12. Full details at http://www.celebrasia.org/.

Japan Society's Oshogatsu fest takes place in two sessions at 2pm and 3pm. Tickets are $5 for members, $12 for nonmembers, and free for children under ages 2 or under. More at http://www.japansociety.org.

A.T.

Cuts Like A Knife: The Rock Art of Yoshitomo Nara

2011-01-02T12:19:00.001-05:00

I first came across the work of Yoshitomo Nara at Manhattan's Kinokuniya Bookstore. The thing that stood out for me as I was flipping through a book of his artwork was its simplicity. A raw, color pencil drawing of a child on what appeared to be graph paper, holding a small blade in its hands with the caption “Slash with a Knife!” kick started my fandom from that day forward.

So I was thrilled to visit Asia Society's enormous, all encompassing Nara retrospective entitled Nobody’s Fool featuring his drawings and paintings as well as work in mediums not often associated with him such as ceramics and sculpture -- all exuding Nara’s defining style.

Nara’s paintings typically have no backgrounds, or if there is a background it is on a small scale, thrusting the subject center stage. Often the subject is complimented by edgy, profane (often grammatically incorrect), yet somehow endearing slogans that appear to jump at the viewer.

Nara grew up in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan and speaks about his childhood as a period of isolation (one of the three central themes of the exhibit). It was not uncommon for Nara to come home and find an empty house. He also lived and studied art in Germany for a number of years which was another period of isolation for him. As such, the majority of his work features children or dogs as the main subjects due to his belief that they are the loneliest and most isolated beings in society.

Nara’s other main themes are rebellion and music. His love of 60’s and 70’s rock and punk and 90's grunge is prevalent in his work, with some pictures featuring song lyrics or titles lifted directly from his favorite artists' songs. Unlike the punk movement that inspired him over the years, Nara's idea of rebellion is not political. Rather, he encourages the viewer to follow his/her hopes and dreams even when the larger elements in society would have it otherwise.

Nobody’s Fool closes today, unfortunately, but much of the work and commentary is featured on Asia Society's micro site. You can even get a panoramic view from the middle of his three giant, adorable, somewhat terrifying puppy sculptures without leaving the comfort of your home!

The Asia Society Museum is located at 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street). Tickets are $10 for general admission, $7 for seniors, $5 for students with ID, and free for members and persons under 16.

T.D.

Image: Make the Road, Follow the Road, 1990. Acrylic on cotton. H. 39 3/8 x W. 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 cm). Aomori Museum of Art, 2678. Image courtesy of the artist.

The Hollow Fires

2010-12-11T16:05:00.000-05:00

The sound of dried plants and drier voices greets us, nothing but wind and the slow jerky movements of creatures that where once . Watching the scene unfold, I cannot help to think of the first section of TS Eliot’s "The Hollowed Men": "We are the hollow men ... Our dried voices, when / We whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless / As the wind in dry grass / Or rats’ feet over broken glass".

Kon Ichikawa's Fire on the Plains, part of the ongoing Shadows of the Rising Sun film series, takes place during the last throws of the Japanese Imperial Army's hold on the unforgiving landscape of the Philippine island of Leyte in February 1945. We follow Private Tamura, a sunken-eyed, tubercular straggler; his army of walking skeletons with tattered clothes barely fitting their wasting frames; and other unfortunate beings Tarumua meets while traveling.

There is nothing triumphant or sentimentality patriotic in their situation--only the silent battlefield where triumphs and defeats mean equally nothing. The slow procession of the walking dead mirrors their agonizing craving for the nectar of life, but they merely suffer the eternal starvation brought on by their own barbaric, hollow and feeble attempts at glory. Their voices and gestures are as nonsensical as the wind through the dead grass. They are stuffed with hollow shadows of their former self. Again, they are Eliot's hollow men on the hollow plains:

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men

Shadows of the Rising Sun continues tonight with Caterpillar, and Devils on the Doorstep and
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence on Sunday, December. Tickets are $12 for general admission and $9 for Japan Society memebers, students & seniors.

Falls The Shadow

2010-12-10T13:46:00.001-05:00

There is a scroll hanging in Japan Society’s Gallery for The Sound of One Hand called Nin. It is a simple calligraphic painting showcasing Hakuin's quick, fluid kanji stokes. In the middle is the distinct yet abstract impression of a person sitting in contemplation. The wall text simply gives the name of the scroll, its date of completion, and the translation: “Become the Master of your own Heart, and do not let it master you.”

This scroll has had profound meaning for and impact on me and the events around me, and I hasten to add that it goes perfectly with Japan Society's ongoing film series Zen & Its Opposite: Essential (&Turbulent) Japanese Art House, which explores the frailty of the human condition and the monstrosity that can manifest within our own hearts. The image also sings true for the latest film series Shadows of the Rising Sun: Cinema and Empire opening today through Sunday at Japan Society.

'Shadows' encompasses the full manifestation of a unmastered heart. Set in the particularly heinous Pacific campaign of World War II and told by keen eyes of filmmakers from Japan and China, the four films collide with Japan’s ambition for Empire and the harrowing descent. The films are not pretty, there is no honor, and no glory but madness. They show the truth of war, a particularly prickly subject to talk about and properly envision on film.

The four featured films are Kon Ichikawa’s Fire on the Plains (1959), Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jiang Wen’s Devils on the Doorstep (2000), and the New York premiere of Koji Wakamatsu’s Caterpillar (2010). Each film demonstrates the consequences of untamed ideals loose in an unforgiving world. Some use dark humor, others use the bare and broken flesh as their medium, and others use the Greek tragedy formula to express when humanity falls into a shadow realm. Issues are dealt with utmost honesty, care and courtesy to all parties in these stories.

A resounding collection of anti-war war films, I'm reminded of the song "Our Solemn Hour" from the band Within Temptation and leave with the words:

Are they themselves to blame, the misery, the pain?
Didn't we let go, allowed it, let it grow?
If we can't restrain the beast which dwells inside
it will find it's way somehow, somewhere in time
Will we remember all of the suffering
Cause if we fail it will be in vain

S.H.

Carnegie Hall's Passport To Japan

2010-12-03T13:53:00.000-05:00

Seiji Ozawa infuses New York with Japan.

Everyone knows how to get to Carnegie Hall (practice!), but who knew once you got there it would be a trip around the world!

A true New York institution, Carnegie Hall is what people think of when they dream of the world's finest Western classical music and its best performers. Carnegie Hall has also taken on the role of cultural ambassador, presenting stimulating series of world music. Last year they gave us the inspired Ancient Path, Modern Voices Chinese series, and this year they've outdone themselves with a staggering feast of Japanese culture.

JapanNYC is a citywide festival that "explores the Japan of today, where newfound artistic sensibilities continue to transform and revitalize the cultural landscape." The festival features some 65 Japan-related events, including several Carnegie Hall produced concerts featuring world renowned artists, traditional and new Japanese theater, manga workshops, film, butoh dance, pop art exhibitions, and a variety of music genres.

Sprawling from December through April, JapanNYC was spirited by the legendary conductor Seiji Ozawa, who conducts two main event concerts with Japanese ensembles he has established. On December 14, he officially launches the festival with the Saito Kinen Orchestra. The program features a U.S. premiere co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall from composer Gondai Atsuhiko, Mitsuko Uchida performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, and what is sure to be a luscious performance of Brahm's first (there will be an encore performances of this program on December 15 and 18). Maestro Ozawa delivers another cornerstone concert in the second half of the festival March-April with a rare overseas appearances by the Seiji Ozawa Ongaku-juku.

Honored to be part of the festival, Japan Society's contributions include the classic Zen painting exhibit The Sound of One Hand (through January 9), the contemporary Japanese visual art show Bye Bye Kitty!!! (opens March 18), and rare performances of ancient noh and kyogen theater (March 24-26.

While the full schedule is wonderfully overwhelming, December highlights, in addition to those mentioned above, include:

Takemitsu Film Festival – A 14 Day film fest showing films that were scored by famed Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu presented by Film Forum. Begins December 3.

Calligraphy and Manga Education Events – The New York Public Library hosts teen manga-drawing workshops with Misako Rocks. December 9, 16.

Peter and the Wolf – Guggenheim Museum presents contemporary performance of the famous Russian tale featuring an installation inspired by contemporary Japanese anime and features a newly commissioned visual concept by Japanese artist Rei Sato. December 11, 12, 17, 18.

Winds and Strings of Change: Glories of the Japanese Traditional Music Heritage – Another tribute to Toru Takemitsu featuring the use of traditional Japanese instruments such as the Biwa, the Shakuhachi and the Koto presented at the Miller Theater. December 16.

A Tribute to Toru Takemitsu – Held at Zankel Hall, this performance will feature some improvisations on Takemitsu’s film scores. December 17.

Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool – Asia Society's acclaimed exhibit featuring tons of work one of the world’s most cutting edge artists. Through January 2.

On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1922–1960 – The Noguchi Museum highlights the relationship between famed Japanese landscape artist Isamu Noguchi to other artists during his time period. Through April 24.

T.D., S.J.

Japan & Korea: Decades Of Geopolitical Musical Chairs

2010-12-02T12:54:00.001-05:00

This is not the sound of silence. Via.

Up and down--one chair pulled and the music continues. The players are Japan and South Korea, playing for decades in an international arena with their neighbor who has had an amazing growth spurt, China, and their cantankerous cousin North Korea. The music is the never ending (and often dissonant) song of diplomacy.

If we chronicle Japan and Korea’s quandary from 1990s to the present, it has been a continuing game of musical chairs. 720 miles apart, Seoul and Tokyo have faced economic strife and regional security detriments. Although many of the crises were similar, the two countries chose different paths with different geopolitical and domestic consequences.

South Korea, historical and regionally, has always been at the mercies of their neighbors and the international community. Currently they are rekindling their relationship with the U.S. and cooling to China since the sinking of the South Korean Cheonan. They faced many of the same economic, political and demographic problems Japan now faces. They made strong and bold reforms, created a robust economy, strengthened a vigorous and interactive democracy—all to enhance their geopolitical weight so they are no longer at the mercies of the world. Yet despite these accomplishments, they remain at an impasse with North Korea, where things have heated up of late.

Japan’s game change happened in 2009, when the Democratic Party of Japan defeated the more conservative Liberal Democratic Party, ending the latter's near unbroken rule since World War II. This was celebrated as a major step in Japan’s democratic system, but has so far created risks in every level of Japanese life: political, bureaucratic, economic and public. The situation now threatens the efforts of Japanese leaders and their allies to promote economic recovery and ensure stability in the region.

On December 8, Japan Society welcomes Harvard University Kennedy School of Government’s William Overholt to lead the hard-hitting discussion Japan & Korea: Domestic Reform & Geopolitical Shifts. Overholt is a one-time investment banker who has become a prominent Asian policy expert over the last few decades, planning studies at one time for the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, National Security Council, and Council on International Economic Policy, as well as penning six books (most recently Asia, America and the Transformation of Geopolitics).

In the discussion, Overholt poses the question: can Japan revive without crisis amidst unstable internal power structures and with such alarming international security issues unfolding in East Asia? He also addresses Japan's importance for Asia and South Korea’s management of a deteriorating North Korea.

The lively and timely discussion is presided by Robert Fallon, a professor at Columbia Business School, who also serves on the boards of Japan Society and Korea Society. Chairs will be provided, and the music has already begun to play.

S.H.

Dance Duo Bends Beyond Butoh, Makes Movement For Everybody

2010-11-29T12:12:00.002-05:00

"You connect to their world not by watching, but by imagining that you are living inside their bodies."

Percussion pounds in the distance as identical, scantily clad figures with snow white faces move together through time in a slow, fluid motion—an odd combination of spiritual ritual and martial art. The slowness is gripping, the stillness is suffocating, and a sense of awe emerges from the twisting and tangling of limbs and faces.

Butoh, Japan's inimitable form of modern dance was founded in the post war period by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Hijikata felt dance in Japan following World War II was merely a copy of Western dance and wanted to create a form uniquely Japanese. A sense of rebellion permeated butoh performances, which emerged from a backdrop of student riots and protests. The movements were incredibly raw, as though animal instinct and sexual desire governed the dancers. This was intentional, as Hijikata and Ohno sought to tackle taboo ideas regarding human sexuality and challenge authority by showcasing the human body’s untamed movements.

Two contemporary artists who tamed the untamed are the legendary husband and wife choreography/dance team Eiko and Koma. Though they met at Hijikata's studio in 1971 and studied with Ohno, they don't consider their dance butoh out of respect to the masters. Nonetheless the influence manifests itself in their style. In her fantastic recent New York Times profile of the "king and queen of slow", Gia Kourlas describes Eiko and Koma's movement:

While the moving-painting quality of their choreography is profoundly arresting, both theatrically and visually — they find the beauty in ugly — there is another layer that gets to the essence of nature. You connect to their world not by watching, but by imagining that you are living inside their bodies.

Japan Society, which debuted Eiko and Koma in 1976 and has presented them many times to great acclaim, hosts Eiko & Koma: Delicious Movement Workshop. The venerable duo hopes that anyone who takes their workshop—no matter what level of dance experience—find a renewed sense of focus and coordination, as well as take a primal pleasure in the simple act of moving one’s body.

The one-day workshop is held on December 4. Tickets are $40 or $32 for Japan Society members.

Kids: Sumi For A Sunny Sunday

2010-11-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

Beware the sumi-e dragons! Via.

There is an ancient story that a monk was working on a sumi-e painting of dragons. When he finished his painting, he went to the head monk to seek his approval. The head monk was very pleased with the young artist’s work but asked why there were no pupils in the dragons' eyes. The young artist shyly looked down and expressed that if he added pupils he feared the dragons would come alive. The head monk scoffed and asked him to put pupils in the dragons' eyes to prove he was wrong. The young monk walked over, lightly dipped his brush in the ink and placed the pupils in the two dragons' eyes. Once he finished and moved away from the paper, the two dragons blinked their eyes, slowly rose out of the paper and with one swift movement flew away. The head monk looked on astonished and then understood why the young monk was reluctant of placing the pupils in the dragon’s eyes. He did not just draw dragons but he captured their essence.

In Composition Arthur Wesley Dow describes the nature of sumi-e painting:

the painter…put upon the paper the fewest possible lines and tones; just enough to cause form, texture and effect to be felt. Every brush-touch must be full-charged with meaning, and useless detail eliminated. Put together all the good points in such a method and you have the qualities of the highest art...

A gorgeous description for adults but one wonders how this expression of sumi-e painting can mix with kids. Gather around and I will tell you sumi-e ink painting is very easy and fun for children. First off, the tools are only ink, a brush and a piece of paper. Secondly, the process is not painstaking reproduction of the subject, but rather a brisk and concentrated capturing of its essence.
Thirdly, sumi-e paintings have made their mark in contemporary culture through the Playstation 2 and Wii consules video game called Okami. The action-adventure game allows the player to control the main character in an interactive storyline, accomplished through the unconventional use of animated sumi-e illustration with other traditional Japanese art forms.

On November 21 Japan Society’s Education Program hosts Art Cart: Sumi Ink Painting. Led by a Japan Society educator and artist Linda Malhauser, a member of the National Sumi-e Society of America, children learn basic painting techniques, and create original works of art in reaction to the wonderful art in our current exhibitions, The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin , which features an array of kid-friendly figures such as ghosts and demons, dragons, acrobats, dancing mice, and monkeys!

Hakuin's hanging monkey. Via.

S.H.

Inside Your Zen Side

2010-11-18T13:48:00.000-05:00

We think 60,000 thoughts per day, notes photographer Dana Lane. Via.

This season we've brought you Zen through art, food, films, writing, painting, theater, and literature.

Now we're bringing you to Zen.

Japan Society hosts its first-ever meditation workshops, Zen For Everyone, with renowned Buddhist scholar and priest, Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara. Enkyo Roshi currently serves as Co-Spiritual Director of the Zen Peacemaker Family, a spiritual, study and social action association. Her focus is on true self-expression, peacemaking and HIV/AIDS activism. She holds a Ph. D. in Media Ecology and taught Multi-media at my alma mater, New York University for over 20 years.

In three separate workshops on November 21, December 12 and January 8, Enkyo Roshi discusses the spiritual side of Japan Society's Hakuin exhibit, and instructs on proper zazen (sitting meditation) technique. According to Village Zendo, where she teaches, here are several key points to remember:

Whatever position you choose, sitting in a chair, full lotus, half-lotus, Burmese, or kneeling with a cushion or bench, choose a posture you can hold comfortably for 30 minutes.

Once seated, roll your hips slightly forward, allowing your belly to relax and your breath to move freely.

Center your spine by gently swaying from left to right in decreasing arcs.

Push the crown of your head toward the ceiling, straightening and extending your spine. Then relax your shoulders.

We've already discussed the benefits of meditation in one’s daily life. It’s a great stress reliever, guides practitioners to a higher state of consciousness, and instills a greater sense of focus, which can be applied in any real world situation. But one question remains: how exactly does one truly meditate? Zen for Everyone is destined to enlighten all involved .

T.D.

Diversity In East Asia: The Value Of Women And Foreign Workers

2010-11-17T11:29:00.000-05:00

Chickens reframing diversity. Via.

At the just-concluded G20 Summit in Seoul South Korea, 20 of the most powerful economic countries and unions discussed geo-economically issues. The news focused on the hot button "Currency Wars" pushing aside other important issues deserving discussion. One of those issues important to many of the world leaders was urging global co-operation. President Obama stated, "no one country can achieve our joint objective of a strong, sustainable, and balance recovery on its own". World leaders don't want to solely address import, exports and currency; they also want to reframe diversity in the global market.

Major European and American companies have realized that diversity in their markets and employments increase healthy competition. Within the Asian region "BBC Newshour reported that South Korea is a global success because although they honor their roots, they realized the need to diversify their workforce.

Today Japan Society and Asia Society co-host Reframing Diversity Management for a New Global Economy (taking place at Asia Society). The program is twofold, addressing gender equality as outlined by Commission on the Status of Women (sub-commission under the Commission on Human Rights, UN), and the use of using different cultures, languages and values to reforge a the global workforce.

The CSW succinctly states it goal:

to raise the status of women, irrespective of nationality, race, language or religion, to equality with men in all fields of human enterprise, and to eliminate all discrimination against women in the provisions of statutory law, in legal maxims or rules, or in interpretation of customary law

This underscores that women are one of the key agents of change in aspects of life, social, political and economical. Reportedly there are 6 million more women than men in the world. In that standing we are a pretty affect of change, so global heavy hitters should find it invaluable to have women on the field with them.

The other fold of diversity addressed in the discussion is using the huge cache of knowledge and experience from foreign workers. In 2003 Japan Times stated “It is important for Japan to introduce talented foreign workers in the fields of management, research and technology”, and referenced the METI paper [PDF] that reinforced the notion that Japan needs to think like South Korea and make it easier for foreign workers to live and work in the country. The exchange of ideas would feed innovation and support a better collective standard of living.

Taking on these topics and offering insights, participants in the symposium include: Philip Berry, President of Philip Berry Associates, LLC and Co-Chair of the Corporate Diversity Council for the Asia Society ; Kathryn Komsa, Vice-President, Chief Diversity Officer of Marsh and,McLennan Companies, Inc ; John F. McNulty, Executive Director for People Focus Consulting and Ceo of PFC Asia Pacific; and Moderator Natsuyo Nobumoto Lipschutz, Managing Principal of ASPIRE Intelligence LLC.

S.H.

Midnight Moonlight Reads

2010-11-15T17:07:00.002-05:00

Look into my… um. Via.

We're still finding empty candy wrappers in hidden corners of Japan Society from our OBAKE! Halloween party, and we've barley recovered from the exquisite psychological turmoil of our Onibaba screening last Friday. With no further frights in sight on the calendar, what better way to start a week than with a list of incredible horror/supernatural/thriller manga and manga-based anime!

I've compiled my 13 top personal favorites, ranging from delightfully spooky tales to extremely disturbing paranormal lore. There's lots of ways to pick up these titles (libraries, conventions, trading etc.), but a great source to learn more is Anime News Network. Enjoy a good ghoulish read, and I would love to hear about your favorites in the comments! Without further ado and in no particular order:

Death Note, Tsugumi Ohba
For fun, Shinigami (Death God) Ryuk drops his Death Note in the human world. When high school student Light figures out how to use it, he realizes he has tremendous power to shape the world into a Utopian paradise. But when the government notices mass death in the criminal world, they hire detective “L” to hunt down the culprit. This is a perfect psychological and supernatural cat and mouse game with deadly consequences.

Drifting Classroom, Kazuo Umezu
A strange earthquake engulfs an elementary school and drops it into a barren wasteland. As the whole school descends into macabre pandemonium, the survivors try to figure out what has happened and stay alive in the process.

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (When they Cry) Series
Something is rotten in the village of Hinamizwa during the Watananagashi festival. Every night one person goes missing and one ends up dead, and the next day it seems as if nothing's happened. Can the village's newest member, Keiichi escape its dark secret? A well written, psychologically and visually intense novel.

Jigoku Shoujo (Hell Girl) Series, Miyuki Etoo
Do you desire retribution for a wrong that has been done to you? Enma Ai will ferry your tormentor straight through the gates of hell... for a price. Enma Ai's evolution to Hell Girl is fascinating, and Takahiro Omari's anime brings greater depth to the manga.

Shiki (Corpse Demon), Ono Fuyumi
The once peaceful village of Sotoba is struck with an epidemic of strange and unnatural deaths. Fed up, Natsuno Yuuki investigates, discovering that the village is becoming a haven for the undead.

Doll, Mitsukazu Mihara
Ever get that creepy feeling when you look at a doll: how human and “life-like”they are--for a moment, perhaps, you think they are alive. This is a series of short shorts about androids called Dolls and their effect on their owners’ lives. Great traditional Gothic tales that linger in dreams forever after.

Portus, Jun Abe
Portus is an old videogame with a deadly secret—a hidden level that leads to certain death. Young Asami and Keigo search for the truth behind the legend, and hopefully don't get killed in the process. If you enjoyed the movie Pulse, this is the novel for you.

Uzumaki, Junji Ito
This infectious story follows Kirei's decent into chaos and horror as her town succumbs to an obsession with… spirals.

Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror
Anime based on a collection of ancient Japanese horror stories: “Yotsuya Kaidan” (wife seeking revenge against husband), “Tenshu Monogatari” (forbidden love between goddess and human), and “Bakeneko” (one angry cat with a vendetta).

Mononoke, Kenji Nakamura
This is a continuation of the Ayakashi series through the medicine seller from the “Bakeneko” arc, who faces various ghosts, spirits and demons that walk this world.

Blood: The Last Vampire, Mamoru Oshii
In the prequel to Blood+, Saya’s life and mission gets deeper treatment as she investigates the dark secret of a gang and a certain victim of the gang. Could the two be related? I also recommend Asuka Katsura's Blood+-, another version of Saya’s life with a touch of romance.

Elfen Lied, Lynn Okamoto
This manga is based on the titular German poem (literally “Elf Song”), exploding the themes of social alienation, identity, prejudice, revenge and the value of humanity and compassion. This very intense series will make you wonder which are the greater monsters: those imagined or we.

Ergo Proxy, Shukou Murase
Gothic sci-fi set in a post-apocalyptic future, we follow Re-l (pronounced like "real") Mayer through darker side of a fantastical Utopian world. With a manga spinoff by Yumiko Marao, the full series won't disappoint.

S.H.

Also: Japan Society staff's favorite Japan-related reads.

How The West Was Hung: Foreign Representations In Japanese Art

2010-11-14T11:20:00.000-05:00

A Russian couple visit Japan in 1861. Via.

The Tokugawa Era in Japan was an extraordinary period in Japanese History, marked by cultural renaissance, prominence of the samurai class and most notably, almost total isolation from contact with the world outside of Japan’s borders. Save for one port at Dejima in modern day Nagasaki prefecture, Japan during this period had extremely limited contact with foreigners, especially those from the West. Then in the mid-19th century, due to the efforts of Admiral Perry, Japan began to open up its borders to people of different nationalities. This ushered in a new era of diplomacy, and unsurprisingly, an influx of foreigners in Japan. Most Japanese people at that point had never seen a foreigner, so this rapid increase of the foreign population in the port city of Yokohama caused Japanese people to reflect on their views of foreigners. One of the ways foreign peoples manifested themselves in the eyes of the Japanese was through art.

The Philidelphia Museum of Art hosts Picturing the West Yokohama Prints 1859–1870s -- an exhibition showcasing Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world portraits) woodblock prints with foreigners as the main subject. When one looks at these paintings, the subjects are not caricatures as one might expect. Rather, one gets the sense that the artists were driven by excitement and curiosity than fear and xenophobia.

Lee Lawrence's excellent profile of the exhibition in The Wall Street Journal discusses the various quirky new technologies and customs that came flooding into Japan all at once, and describes the work of Sadahide, one of the exhibition’s most prominently featured artists:

The map is by Sadahide, in many ways the star of the show. Of the 15 artists featured, he is the best represented and the one who most successfully offers both beauty and information. His vivid and dynamic compositions convey the hustle and bustle of Yokohama's markets and thoroughfares. And his Sales Room in the Foreign Mercantile Firm (1861) accurately introduces Yokohama's cast of characters in two cleverly crafted scenes. On the right, Caucasian and Japanese men conduct business with the help of a pig-tailed Chinese assistant, while one of the Europeans in the foreground is shown writing horizontally. The left half of the print is a more domestic scene—foreign women preparing food and an Indian servant plucking a duck.

Sadahide and other artists variously highlight the novelty of pocket watches, hot-air balloons and horse-drawn carriages, the luxury of large windowpanes and chandeliers, and the oddity of elephants, camels and a woman on horseback.

Often in the field of Japanese studies, there tends to be a lot focused on how Japanese people are represented in the West without seeing it from the other side. Thanks to this exhibition, which closes today, one can get a new perspective on history, art and cultural understanding, like a Japanese fisherman seeing a hot air balloon for the first time.

T.D.

Image: Russians (A Russian Couple) (Detail), 1861. Utagawa Yoshikazu, Japanese
Color woodcut. Sheet (Öban tate-e): 14 3/8 x 9 5/8 inches (36.5 x 24.4 cm). Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund and with funds contributed by Lessing J. Rosenwald, Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hauslohner, Dr. Emanuel Wolff, the Derald and Janet Ruttenberg Foundation, Mrs. Edward G. Budd, Jr., and David P. Willis, 1968.

Beyond The Cult Of Kawaii: Breaking The Otaku Effigy

2010-11-12T13:17:00.001-05:00

Kitty-chan looms on Park Avenue... in protest? Photo via Shawnhoke.com.

Awareness of Japanese art is diametrically opposed. People tend to either appreciate reverent mediums like ukiyo-e paintings, uki-e, kano, kyoto, nanga, rinpa, tosa, etc., or relish the populist mass media production of anime and manga art. With this edification, what emerges is a culture that is either an idiom of traditionalism or predominantly an expression of a pubescent child that fetishizes the most mundane event as an oblique sexual manifestation masked by cute innocence.

Japan Society has covered the range, with the former represented by the current Hakuin exhibit and recent shows focusing on the art of Kuniyoshi and Zeshin. The latter phenomenon was sumptuously articulated in Japan Society's 2005 exhibition Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture curated by Takashi Murakami.

Well, Japan Society is about to inject a new piece to the proverbial puzzle of Japanese art.

Opening spring 2012, Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art is a deliciously titled exhibit that goes far beyond stereotypes of the latest Japanese art and ideas. Curated by David Elliott, founding Director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum and hot off the 17th Biennale of Sydney, the show features 16 emerging and mid-career artists whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future.

Japan Society Gallery Director Joe Earle notes the exhibit "celebrates the 'beyond cute' generation, introducing a group of younger artists whose work marks a clean break from the kawaii orthodoxy of the last decade. The show will offer a feast for the senses, demolishing preconceptions about contemporary Japan."

Why are we talking about this now, when there is plenty of time to catch the current exhibits The Sound of One Hand and oxherding? Joe Earle gives a sneak peek of Bye Bye Kitty!!! on November 16 at FIT’s Katie Murphy Amphitheatre. The lecture is part of an amazing range of programming concerning contemporary Japanese culture in conjunction with FIT’s exhibition Japan Fashion Now. Admission is FREE, though a reservation is required. Hope you can stop by and hope you are ready to get beyond cute!

S.H.

Max Gimblett: The Pop Artist Of Sumi Painting

2010-11-11T11:52:00.001-05:00

From Max Gimblett: The Language of Drawing.

Max Gimblett, a bespectacled, mild mannered New Zealander, walks over to his drawers of Asian paint brushes, lifts one and gently places it back into its resting place. He is in no hurry, and simply picks brushes up one by one, feels them and, it seems, silently communes with them. Once he has found the right one--a long instrument, with a careworn wooden handle and a bulbous head--he walks over to his workbench, places a stark white sheet of handmade paper down and looks at it for a moment. With a sharp cry and one furious and fluid movement, he forms a perfectly imperfect black "O", ink splattering a wonderfully concise counterpoint design across the page. The act itself is what he calls "Poetics with meaning" ex nihilo. If you look closely there is a smile—not of satisfaction as one might imagine would follow such a masterful stroke, but a smile of clarity and peace.

When Gimblett was interviewed for Japan Society's Nihon New York video series during the opening of his oxherding exhibit (running in conjunction with the Sound of One Hand Hakuin show), he laughed when he recalled, "Thomas McCelvey wrote if I had got to New York ten years earlier, ten years younger, I probably would have been a pop artist."

Well I am sorry to be contradictory to a master painter, draftsman and Rinzai lay monk, but Max Gimblett: you are the pop artist of the sumi ink painting world.

Think about the powerful, deceptively simple and accessible contemporary translation Gimblett achieves with oxherding, or the fusion of Western and Eastern thoughts, philosophies, desires and symbols. He takes these things out of context, isolates them, remixes them, and creates something completely new but steeped in the familiar for the individual to contemplate and enjoy. That is pop art in my book.

What can be affecting and transforming for the viewer can have a similar effect on the artist. When asked about how creating the oxherding paintings affected his life, personally and artistically, Gimblett recalls a time when he was stuck. He remembers telling one of his teachers that he was having trouble with drawing the later parables of the "Ten Ox Herding Pictures". Her response was "Anybody in their body will have trouble with seven through ten. They are not meant to be experienced alive. Act on good faith, and [when] you have done the first six, just proceed. Don’t expect to know the results."

That is what he exactly Gimblett achieves and welcomes the viewer to do the same. The point is not to know but to understand. In Gimblett’s words "You empty the mind and you have no mental activity. You operate out of your body, in the space, in relation to your soul where you are poetic and soulful…HRUMP! And you let it come."

Geared for painters of all levels, Gimblett offers three sumi painting workshops at Japan Society November 13 [UPDATE: Sold Out], December 18, and January 9. The workshops begin with an exhibition talk and feature a studio session using traditional handmade paper, sumi ink and Asian brushes. The cost is $65/$60 Japan Society members, seniors & students and includes all materials.

S.H.

Limbus Limbo: How Low Can You Go

2010-11-10T13:54:00.002-05:00

We are greeted by swiftly swaying reeds, a deep pit and silence. No sounds comes out but clearly words are printed across the screen:

Deep & Dark, Its darkness has lasted since the ancient times, Onibaba

Onibaba is a film set in 16th century Japan. With the land ravaged by war and famine, men and boys are taken from the fields to be pawns in the chess game of the elite--clan against clan, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. Those left behind must fend for themselves against the beasts that conspire to wipe them from their small existences.

Two women cling to each other and solemnly decide to live the unscrupulous life of marauders, taking the valuables from wandering samurai. Surrounded by wilderness they pillage corpses and throw them into a pit. They have been alone for years, waiting patiently for their loved ones to return and end their hell. But only their boorish neighbor returns, setting into motion conflicts between their most primal desires and their bleak reality.

Onibaba is a cinematic masterpiece that is intensely erotic but steeped in the Buddhist mythology. Part of Japan Society Zen & Its Opposite series, Onibaba represents one of the paths of the "Six Paths of Existences", the Realm of the Animals. In this realm, you are a servant to your desires and instincts. You have no sense of morality and you have a devil-may-care attitude about life and people. If that sounds like nihilism, Onibaba goes far beyond and pierces deep into the human psyche.

The film is an exploration of Sigmund Freud’s concept of das Es--literally "the It" but better known as the Id. Freud stated in his study of "The Interpretation of Dreams (1900s)", later republished in Modernism: An Anthology of Sources and Documents:

It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know we have learnt from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of this is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast the ego. We all approach the id with analogies; we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. It’s filled with energy reaching it from instincts, but has no organization, produces, no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.

The Id is in control of Onibaba's three main characters; their daily existence is governed by finding life's 'pleasures' (shelter, food, water, sexual gratification) and extinguishing anything that gets in the way of attaining them. In wonderfully intoxicating, 60s Japanese cinematic form, Onibaba exemplifies how the Id can dehumanize us to mere beasts and keep up from attaining our ideal life--a valuable lesson for the world's weary wanderers.

Onibaba screens at Japan Society Friday, November 12. Tickets are $12 general admission, and $9 for Japan Society members, students and seniors. You can read more about Onibaba in The Wall Street Journal's recent article "Haunting Films of Japan" or check out the Criterion Collection DVD.

S.H.

Japan's Shifting Generations, The World's Shifting Wealth

2010-11-09T12:38:00.001-05:00

Reuters: Japan expects over 1/4 of citizenry to be 65+ by 2015. Via and via.

From Japan's lost generation to their estimated 41,000 centenarians, age disparity profoundly affects Japanese society, culture and economy.

Traditionally, Japanese people who graduated from university would generally be hired by a company and stay there until they had to retire. Stability has always taken precedent over upward mobility. With current changing global economic and social trends, the individual is beginning to take more responsibility for his/her financial future by resorting to new online brokerage accounts and non-traditional investment vehicles. This is coupled with the rapid retirement of the baby boomer generation who are in need of asset management services to help them for their remaining years.

The old vs. new debate is as relevant as ever, especially for financial professionals and the general investing population when considering Japan, one of the world’s largest economies and consumer societies. In Japan Society's Wealth Managers Grapple with Japan's Shifting Generations, experts discuss major shifts in Japanese wealth management, how participants around the world are affected, and examine a host of financial planning implications for current and future Japanese retirees.

The panel includes Monex Group President and CEO Oki Matsumoto; Alicia Ogawa from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs; and Walter Altherr, executive director of equity research at Mizuho Securities USA. Moderated by Reuters' Anchor Fred Katayama, the discussion takes place Wednesday, November 10.

T.D.

Katana To Kitchen Knife: The Samurai Origins Of Japan's Unparalleled Cutlery

2010-11-08T11:11:00.004-05:00

Japanese knives: cuts above the rest. Via.

The Japanese sword, or katana, was considered an inseparable accessory of the samurai warrior class. Today the sword is almost never used for its intended purpose, but the design and composition that made samurai’s katana so feared on the battlefield is now being used to give chefs extremely high quality knives in kitchens across the world.

Why the shift from katana to kitchen knife? According to the professionals at New York's Gohan Society, after World War II General MacArthur banned Japanese sword making, forcing the skilled artisans who had honed this craft for centuries to look towards the world of professional cooking for clientele. Japanese cuisine is often marked by clean flavors and preciosity. The sword makers sought to elevate their craft to help Japanese chefs achieve an extraordinary level in their cooking. Their work has paid off as Japanese knives and Japanese cuisine are highly regarded across the world.

On November 9, Japan Society partners with the Gohan Society to host Chef Says: Japanese Knives are the BEST, in which James Beard Award-winning chef and avid collector of Japanese knives, Michael Romano discusses his love for Japanese cutlery. Romano, from the multiple award-winning Union Square Café in New York City and Tokyo (check out his great essay "Diary of an American Chef in Tokyo"), advocates Japanese knives for their strength, durability and sharpness. He also talks about how Japanese cuisine has influenced his own cooking style and how that influence is currently reflected by his restaurant’s menu where there are a number of selections tailored for the Japanese palette.

The discussion at 6:30 pm, and concludes with a knife-sharpening demonstration and reception. Tickets are $12 for the general public and $8 for Japan Society members, seniors, and students.

T.D.

You Better Workshops: Manga & Anime In The Classroom + Some Hakuin Help

2010-11-05T19:54:00.001-04:00

Manga and anime can color classroom doldrums. Via.

The influence of anime and manga (Japanese animated films and comic books respectively) in America has grown beyond its cult status of the last decades of the 20th century. Anime conventions in the U.S. draw thousands of participants rocking out in costume and taking part in readings, demos, panels, collecting, workshops and screenings. Major chain book retailers like Borders and Barnes & Noble have shelves of manga, and our traditional comic book stores are filled to the brim with Japanese imports.The rise of manga and anime as entertainment in the U.S. is ever growing, but there’s another area where it increasingly brings people together and makes a difference:

The classroom.

When I attended Japanese high school, the only manga I saw in class was sneakily hidden behind my friend’s textbooks during the occasional boring lesson. These days manga serves as a teaching tool to provide a fun and interactive way to expose American students to art, social sciences and foreign culture.

"For teachers of Japanese Studies, Asian Studies, or any kind of diversity studies, the rising popularity of anime and manga among young North Americans seems an opportunity too good to miss," writes Toni Levi, in her excellent essay "Anime & Manga: It's Not All Make-Believe" at our About Japan teachers website. Levi discusses introducing the material to students:

There are basically three ways to approach anime and manga in the classroom: 1) to focus on the content using approaches drawn from the social sciences, 2) to focus on the content using analytical methods drawn from literary and dramatic criticism, and 3) to focus on the anime or manga as a cultural document in its own right. Each of these has something different to offer and all in all, this is a great way to bring exciting, entertaining, and culturally relevant works into the American classroom.

Various manga and anime have Japanese cultural references that can enlighten American children about foreign customs. For example, the classic Hayao Miyazaki children’s film, My Neighbor Totoro has a scene where the father takes a bath at night with his two children illustrating the importance of bath culture in Japan. Much manga and anime contains great coming-of-age stories suitable for young adults or teenagers. English teachers may like to know that there are also many references to old forms of Japanese storytelling such as kamishibai, bunraku and kabuki, whose influence is clearly seen in modern works literature.

On November 8 & 10, the Japan Society Education Program presents the two-session workshop What’s With Japanese Comics?: Bringing Manga Into the Classroom, introducing educators to the art of manga and anime and how to utilize them as powerful teaching tools.

The November 8 session features Brian Camp, Programming Manager for CUNY TV and co-author of Anime Classics Zettai! 100 Must-See Japanese Animation Masterpieces. He introduces seminal works and themes as well as Japanese concepts of storytelling with special attention to popular animated cartoon shows that have sprung from manga. He'll discuss sources of manga’s appeal to American readers today, showing how trends in the comic book genre in the U.S. from the 60s-90s reflects what's happening today with manga, using the recent explosion of shoujo (girls’) manga as an example.

November 10 features artist and professional mangaka (comic book illustrator) Hiroki Otsuaka, who created the original manga Samurai Beam for our spring 2010 Kuniyoshi exhibit. Otsuka introduces manga from the creative side, and shows participants how to turn themselves into a manga character and create a manga-esque storyline from their life.

Because the classics are as valuable as modern fare to inspire learning, the Education Program recently wrapped up a sister-workshop called Integrating Art and Social Studies Using Paintings by Zen Master Hakuin, showing how Hakuin's lessons towards enlightenment can enrich a child’s educational experience. K-12 educators took a guided tour of The Sound of One Hand: Paintings and Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin and collaborated to create teaching ideas and materials to bring back to their classrooms.

According to Education Program staff, the workshop cleared up a number of misconceptions about Zen (a Google search for “zen” brings up an insane amount confusion), outlining three basic characteristics: the master/disciple relationship; opposition to the use of idols; and meditation on koans, "verbal paradoxes with no answers aimed at encouraging unorthodox approaches to self-reflection by the Zen believer," according to presenter Frank Felten. They discussed the simple formula of the "3 Hakuins": the playful Hakuin + the serious Hakuin = Hakuin the Zen monk, and Felton outlined Hakuin's major themes:

Hakuin chose themes that were in some way or another directly related to himself. Supreme deities (Kannon/Avalokitesvara), sages that he admired or that interested him (Hotei, Yen t’ou), everyday objects as an important part of religious practice, elements of folk belief that he was accustomed to and that he considered an important part in life, calligraphy.

Concluding the workshop, Linda Mulhauser led a sumi ink painting lesson, where participants had a lot of fun working the brush and discovering that bamboo looks deceptively simple to paint. We're lucky to have Linda return November 21, to lead a sumi ink painting workshop for children ages 8-12.

T.D.

Shifting Shades of Gray

2010-11-05T10:11:00.003-04:00

Raise your hand if you think global cooperation is the future of int'l policy! Via.

Life is not black and white, and the international arena can be one of the biggest planes of shifting shades of gray imaginable. In an age of great interconnection and even greater competitiveness, foreign policy is in a constant state of re-correction to avoid massive global disaster.

Lately grumblings have risen in Northeast Asia (China, Japan, the Koreas), where relations have continued to rock and roll after World War II. There have been constant shifts in the region’s political parities, rising tides of economic stagnation, and lately aggression between the region and the allied U.S.

When thinking of Japan specifically, there have been territorial altercations with China in regards to jurisdiction over the disputed land and seaways, lack of consistent leadership, foreign policy that does not agree with the domestic situation, and the controversial presence of U.S. military and its unknown future .

All of these challenges have affected Japan’s attempts to re-establish its position in East Asia, and even upset the very core of the U.S.-Japan relationship. Only 50 years after the seminal security alliance brought our nations together, some wonder if the pact can stay in tact these days.

On November 8, Japan Society and Asia Society gather top Japan and East Asia experts for Twists & Turns in Japanese Politics: Implications for Japan, the U.S & the Region to discuss these issues and more.

Tobias Harris shares his sharp, inside acumen as seen on his site Observing Japan or his blog for Newsweek Japan.

Jun Saito from Yale's Department of Political Science breaks down the impacts of Japan’s recent elections and the rise of Prime Minster Naoto Kan (hear him discuss Japan's domestic politics with us back in May).

Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, takes up the sensitive subject of the U.S.-Japan relations on security and defense, including the issues of military instillations on Futenma and the continuing dispute of Senkaku Island.

Yinan He from Seton Hall University's John C, Whitehead School of Diplomacy reveals the recent politic fluxes in the Asian perspective.

Finally, Edward Lincoln, director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies at New York University's Stern School of Business moderates the discussion. (Lincoln was here in May to discuss 150 Years of U.S.-Japan relations and collaboration: full recap here.)

Expect a lively, illuminating and impacting discussion of the global ramifications of Japan's current politics and policies!

S.H.

No Brands Land

2010-10-28T12:49:00.000-04:00

Across the world there are growing movements advocating that companies do more to encourage sustainability, waste reduction and recycling in order to rein in their environmental impact on our world. In Japan, the Kabushiki-gaisha Ryōhin Keikaku has been doing just that for 30 years. Americans and non-Japanese would probably recognize this company by a much more compact name: MUJI.

MUJI, meaning “no brand” in Japanese, was started in 1980 as an offshoot of the Japanese supermarket chain Seiyu and focuses on producing cheap, high quality goods for the average middle-class family. It achieves this by streamlining its manufacturing process, minimizing packaging and making use of various sustainable processes such as "using recycled cardboard in many of its products, using unbleached cotton and practicing sustainable forestry."

Currently, all of MUJI’s U.S. stores are located in New York New York City, including one branch at MoMA and one at JFK airport. MUJI’s sustainable practices and unique "no frills" way of doing business have gotten considerable press attention including The New York Times, Time Out New York, and the TAXI design network.

Japan Society hosts the discussion America Meets MUJI November 3 (currently SOLD OUT), featuring three internationally acclaimed designers from the Muji Corporation, Naoto Fukasawa, Kenya Hara and John Maeda, who discuss the concepts behind the creation, design and essence of MUJI. Fukasawa is a product designer who has won countless awards for his work designing products for MUJI as well as companies across the globe. Hara is a graphic designer and was the brains behind the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies at the Nagano Winter Olympics. Maeda is a Seattle native known for his philosophy of humanizing technology. He is a world-renowned designer, served as associate director of research at the MIT Media Lab, and was named by Esquire magazine as one of the 21st century’s 75 most influential people.

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the store, the discussion is followed by a signing of the newly released coffee table book MUJI that gives an intricate look at MUJI’s rise and the inner workings of the company--a fascinating read for anyone interested in sustainable business practices.

Some describe MUJI as the Japanese IKEA, but perhaps its best described by a quote from the book (reviewed recently in The Times), "Muji exists in a category all on its own."

America Meets MUJI is just one of several Japan Society events focusing on smart design.On November 2, The Design Difference looks at sustainability in architecture and shares lessons from Tokyo on how to build better city housing projects, and Chef Says: Japanese Knives are the BEST looks at the samurai origins and global appeal of Japan's incredibly durable cutlery.

T.D.

A Movie Too Insane To Resist

2010-10-27T09:30:00.006-04:00

Welcome to our Hausu… if you dare. Via.

Imagine if Beetlejuice, the classic Alice in Wonderland, Evil Dead II and the Terry Gilliam cartoons from "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" collectively decided to conceive a child with Japan as surrogate mother. The freakish, hybrid spawn would be a film alternately frightening, funny, absolutely bewildering… but never boring.

The movie in question is the 1977 self-described (and purely Japanese born) "fantasy horror" film Hausu--House as it's called in America. The plot is surprisingly simple. Annoyed that her father plans to bring his new fiancée on their yearly family vacation, Oshare (which can be translated as "fashionable" or "gorgeous") decides to abandon the trip and takes seven of her friends to her aunt’s house. The aunt, unbeknownst to the group, is actually an evil spirit who feasts on young girls. The spirit possesses Oshare and begins to hunt the women.

At its foundation House sounds no different than countless unsuspecting-teenagers-meet-gruesome deaths-at-the-hands-of-an-evil-antagonist horror flicks. Where House differs from typical slasher fare is its use of over-the-top surrealist imagery: killer lampshades, blood-spewing cat wallpaper, nefarious floating heads and man-eating pianos—all splayed against 70s retro, psychedelic animation that enchants just as much as it horrifies. Janus Film's trailer alone is a work of art:

"A fear too beautiful to resist!"

Nobuhiko Obayashi made his film directorial debut with House after a celebrated run in television commercials (remember those Charles Bronson MANDOM ads?), and in 2009 was awarded the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government for his stellar career in the entertainment industry.

House was success in Japan during the 70s (though never a "Jaws-size success" notes Chuck Stephens in his great essay "House: The Handmaindens"). The film has only recently gained the cult status it deserves in the U.S., thanks in part Janus Films distribution efforts, and savvy art house presenters across the States.

Japan Society screens House at our October 29 its OBAKE! costume party, and yesterday the Criterion Collection released House on DVD and Blu-Ray. Wherever you see it, you're in for a cinematic treat you won’t soon forget. But don't take it from us...

"Meow." Via.

T.D.