How The West Was Hung: Foreign Representations In Japanese Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.