Come and see the works of local artist family!
The works of a very talented Kanzan family are on display/sale at Gallery Saika. This is the gallery across the street from K's Denki's parking lot (MAP) in Onozaki.
Kanzan Daisetsu, originally from China, his wife Maiko and their children Chigusa and Sota are exhibiting their sculptures and paintings. You can see what their exhibit is like in the Gallery Saika blog.
This family exhibit ends tomorrow. I apologize for the last-minute announcement. The gallery is open from 1pm to 6pm.
Kanzan's works are also currently on display at Gallery Galatea in Moriya City (MAP). His works are in the The 3rd Gallery Galatea Biennale, which is from April 16 to 27 (Sun).
Please drop in and see their artworks when you have a chance!
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Contemplate a Great Art History Mystery While Enjoying Some Iconic Japanallia at The Tokyo National Museum`s Comprehensive SHARAKU Exhibition
The Actor Otani Enoji III as Edobei by Toshusai Sharaku (1794)
By Avi Landau
The first thing you will learn as you enter the sensational new Sharaku Exhibition currently showing at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno is that scholars now break up the great 18th century woodblock print artist`s work into four distinct periods. The very surprising thing about this is that while most artists` PERIODS or phases last for years or decades, Sharaku went through all HIS stylistic phases within a period of only TEN MONTHS !
Yes, that`s right. ALL of the 145 extant prints which bear the signature Toshusai Sharaku (東洲斎写楽) were released to the public between the 5th month of the year Kansei 6 (1794) and the first month of Kansei 7 (1795), after having been produced at the workshops of the great Edo Period publishing impresario Tsutaya Juzaburo. In other words, his career lasted for less than a year!
The works for which Sharaku is best known, the 28 closeup portraits of kabuki actors, which are now some of the most recognizable JAPANALLIA in existence (often seen adorning souvenir sake cups, T-shirts, postcards, etc.), were all a part of his debut release of June 1794 ( and make up what is considered to be his FIRST PERIOD).
The Actor Ichikawa Ebizo by Sharaku (1794)
And since nothing is really known for sure about this person SHARAKU, with no mention of him before 1794, and very little mentioned about him after his last works were released ten months later, no one is exactly sure just WHO IT WAS that created the now iconic, strikingly original and powerful works ( by which I mean the first 28 works- the rest are so disimilar in energy that they seem to have been made by a different person).
For that reason, creating SHARAKU IDENTITY THEORIES has been a regular cottage industry in the world of Japanese Art History, and there have been several interesting ideas which have been put forth. The most widely accepted of these now (as attested to by a recent NHK special) is that these works were made by a Noh actor, who was apparently a neighbor of the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo ( this does not sound very convincing to me, as the very special world of Noh, a highly refined art favored by the warrior class is so different from the world of woodblock prints and Kabuki, beloved by the Edo townsmen).
A fascinating and novel theory about the creation of the works signed Sharaku has recently been proposed by the mystery writer Shimada Shoji, who has apparently been obssessed with the Sharaku question for decades. His intensive investigations have led him to believe that the Sharaku works were based on the sketches of a half-Dutch, half-Indonesian artist living at the trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki ( a tiny artificial island which was the only place that Europeans were allowed to reside within the Japanese Archipelago during the years of SAKOKU- national seclusion). The residents of this foreign concession were required to make a journey to Edo to pay hommage to the Shogun, and Shimada-San suggests that during the short time that these foreigners were in Edo, that Tsutaya Juzaburo arranged for them to secretly meet ( under penalty of death to all involved!) Kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, etc, characters that otherwise they would not have been able to see. At this meeting ( or meetings) the foreign artist would have been able to make numerous sketches which later could have been developed in prints by Tsutaya`s staff at the woodblock print workshop. That would explain why the work were so different from anything the Japanese had ever produced before.
A very interesting theory ( one I hope scholars will seriously look into), though not mentioned AT ALL at the National Museum`s Exhibition . In fact, there is no discussion at all there of Sharaku`s identity there.
The Actor Tanimura Torazo by Sharaku (1794)
What they do have at the current exhibition is almost ALL of Sharaku`s known oeuvre ( with the exception of a couple which due to the earthquake of March 11th could not make it to the show), as well as numerous works by Sharaku`s contemporaries, which after comparison, help to show just how special some of the Sharaku`s works are ( while in fact most of the works which bear the Sharaku name are just plain boring).
The Actor Otani Tokuji I by Sharaku (1794)
The best of these works ( the close-ups of the Kabuki actors) stand out as being truly distintive, with their special attention to gesture and facial expression ( especially in the eyes and mouths). The artist even took care to include the wrinkles on his subjects foreheads ( something unheard of at the time).
These most powerful of Sharaku`s works must have been what led the German art historian Julius Kurt ( more than 100 years ago) to rank Sharaku as being one of the three great portrait artists in world history, along with Rembtandt and Velazquez!
To tell the truth, it might be because of this recognition and appreciation by a respected foreigner that Sharaku`s works have been given special attention in Japan. That and the mystery!
Spending a few hours examining the works at this amazingly comprehensive exhibition was indeed enjoyable for me ( as the exhibitions at that museum usually are). A few of the works were truly vibrating with life.
Still I cannot agree with Kurt in saying that Sharaku`s works are great portraits, or even great art ( they were in fact printed and sold to fans of the kabuki stars in the same way that photoos of TARENTO ( tv stars) are sold today at stalls in Harajuku).
The works seem more significant to me for the history of pop culture and the later development of manga (comics) in Japan. They are certainly great charicature.
Well, who cares what I think! Go check it out for yourself. It will be on until June 15th.
For the practical details of seeing the exhibition look at the museums website:
http://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_free_page/index.php?id=706&lang=en
And as you can imagine, the souvenir shop has lots of great Sharaku motifed goods! Great presents for friends and relatives back home. Cheezy Japanallia!
The Actor Arashi Ryuzo II by Sharaku (1794)
Satisfied visitors leaving the Sharaku exhibition in Ueno
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Contemporary dance performances today and tomorrow
I’m sorry for short notice, but Contemporary Dance Performances by the members of Contemporary Dance Association of Japan will be held in Tokyo tonight and tomorrow night. One of the performers, Yuriko Arima teaches dance in Tsukuba. She offers lessons in English for those who don't speak Japanese. It doesn't look like it's been updated for a while, but here's her dance studio website: R Dance Club
2007 時代を創る 現代舞踊公演
(Direct translation would be something like “Contemporary Dance Performances that shape the time 2007” )
September 4, Tuesday and 5, Wednesday
Doors open at 6:30pm, and performances begin at 7:00pm
Venue:Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space Medium Hall (English)
Tickets: 3500yen
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Contemporary Japanese Art With A View (of the City)
By Avi Landau
As a rule, whenever I find myself in Tokyo on a clear day, I check to see what's going on at the Mori Art Museum. There, high above Japanese Gotham, in the upper-echalons of the Roppongi Hills Building, I can enjoy not only the first-rate exhibitions put together by the trusty and innovative curators, but also my continuing birds-eye explorations of the ever-so-hard-to-get-a-grasp-of capital. When I found out that a show called "Roppongi Crossings 2007: Future Beats In Japanese Contemporary Art" was on, I had a hunch that if I went I would be in for an especially rewarding visit. I've always had a soft-spot for contemporary art, which if not always beautiful in a traditional sense, could at its best be eye-opening, exciting, disturbing and extremely funny. It can also get you to look at life and the world around you in a new way. Such an exhibition would be a perfect accompaniment to the views of Tokyo, that sprawling cubist-study-of-gray-on-gray, and most contemporary of first-world cities (if Jackson Pollack were an urban planner, might not he have conceived its crazed concrete mayhem with his random drippings?) which can be had from the observation deck just a floor below (by escalator) the museum. I enthusiastically suggested to the friends I was with that we make our way toward the elevator (we were conveniently lunching at Roppongi Hills) and head up to the 52nd floor. We were not to be disappointed.
We purchased our combination ticket for 1500 yen (didn't it used to be more expensive?) giving us access to the museum as well as to the observation deck. Our ears popped as we were whisked with surprising speed up to our high altitude destination. When the doors opened we walked out into a dazzlingly clear view of the megalopolis, which turned into a full panoramic view as we slowly made our way around the glass-lined periphery of the building. From up here, we can try to put the puzzle of the city together. As we are accustomed to shuttling underground between our favorite districts, emerging out of subway stations or walking down from trestles makes it nearly impossible to form a mental picture of the city. My geographical understanding improves with each trip up to this floor and I would recommend it as a perfect starting point for a first trip to Tokyo (just as I would suggest starting a Kyoto tour off at Enryaku-ji Temple on top of Mt. Hiei). For Tsukuba-ites it is especially interesting (and moving) to gaze out in a straight line beyond the green oasis of the Imperial Palace, at the irregular M-shape of Mt. Tsukuba. It can be seen how the Chuzen-Ji Temple, now Mt Tsukuba Shrine, was the protector of the unlucky North-Eastern Direction of Edo Castle, mirroring the way Enraku-Ji protects the Kyoto Imperial Palace's unlucky direction. You can come back to this floor again and again to try and pick your favorite haunts out of the confusion. In the distance are Mt. Fuji, Tokyo Bay, Boso Peninsula, and Haneda airport. Trying to find Meiji Shrine, Tokyo Dome, Budokan, etc. can be much more difficult than finding Wally.
Just as the view calls for repeated visits, I find myself usually coming back again and again to each of the exhibits I've seen at the Mori, which occupies the interior of what I guess is the 53rd floor (access is one floor up from the observatory by escalator). The Crossroads exhibition will have me back again as well. The curators have selected works in various media by 36 artists/collectives to represent the Japanese art scene of the past few decades. Before showing your ticket and taking the escalator, you might not be able to pass up giving Kohei Nawa's musical fountain a turn. What can be more irresistible than making music and water flow at the same time?
At the top of the escalator you can check your bags and coats and maybe pick up one of the free audio tour contraptions, which provide explantions and interviews with some of the artists. Then you head into the thick of it. For the next 2 hours I found myself surprised, puzzled, amazed, and even tearing uncontrollably with laughter. Let me walk you through the exhibit for a brief tour of my favorite works.
You are greeted first by Tatsumi Yoshino's bronze dog-head, followed as you turn the corner by his larger, Christ-like, twisted and emaciated hounds. No-one can be sure what these can represent (even the artist), but for me they were moving tributes (bronzes are usually reserved for people who have made significant contributions to society) to dogs and other animals who have suffered and died for the sake of mankind in medical and other scientific experiments.
In the same room are Tiger Takeshi's surreal trips to Mt Fuji and his spacey comic strips. Opposite this is a very large and sharp photo of a garbage dump in what appears to be a Middle Eastern country. Many visitors stood around it,scouring it for details.
Entering the next room, the lights comes slowly up and down on Chu Enoki's terrifying and beautiful city, or planet, of scrap metal. It can be viewed from within or from a separate viewing platform. From either, it is unforgetable.
Another room has Shinichi Hana's bizarre white marble sculptures which contain enough details to elicit lengthy (and puzzled) viewings. They certainly get you racking your brains for possible meaning ( I must admit that I came up with nothing).
You then enter a room with what is possibly my favorite work, Takahiro Iwasaki's Out Of Disorder installation, which at first appeared to be a large room strewn with several pieces of dirty laundry. On closer inspection, however, and then by actually getting down on hands and knees, you can find tiny sculptures made out of pencil lead, mounted strategically on the socks, T-shirts, and underwear. Just as the stones in a zen garden can represent islands, mountains, or countries, you can see whole worlds in the laundry lying on your floor!
I had always associated the modern art movement in the West with Japan and Zen. Of course, the impressionists are well known to have been interested in and impacted by Japan, especially by Japanese woodblock prints. The later modernists' use of the aesthetic principles of simplicity, sudden inspiration, and stream of consciousness seemed to me to also have been a result of Western contact with Zen. The Roppongi Crossings exhibition, however, shows many works which depend NOT on simplicity, but on great detail, and what must have been a tremendous amount of tedious labor. This reminded me more of Chinese works such as those miniature masterpieces found at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which inspire oohs and aahs from viewers who wonder how many decades it would take to create such a work
I had such a feeling when I came to Yoshino Yoshimura's corner. The wall seemed to be adorned with sheets of newspaper. A closer examination seemed to confirm this. Checking the explanation plate however, I realized the impossible (and possibly ridiculous) fact that these were hand penciled, exact copies of newspapers! I had the same feeling again with Yoshio Sagishi's tiny ceramic constructions which were painstakingly made, drop by drop. Koichiro Tsukikawa's video works also shows fabulous intricacy and detail.
I will mention one more work which left an impression on me, and this installation surely pushes the definition of what art is to the limit. With their Arithmetik Garden, Sato Masahiko and Kiriyama Takashi have created a mathematical puzzle which the visitor tries to solve by passing through various gates. I was completely stumped, and had to let my friend's young daughter finish things off.
When I soon found myself at the exit of the exhibition, I was overcome with disappointment. I didn't want it to be over. But it will be on until January 14, 2008, so I'll be going back. Especially on clear days, when I can enjoy the exhibit, and the view.
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Daruma Dolls- the Evolution of Japan`s Longest Selling CHARACTER ( and tomorrow`s DARUMA MARKET in Joso City)
Cartoon characters have become Japan’s most important cultural export, and I’ve heard that the total sales abroad of anime, manga and their related merchandise have grown to surpass even those of the automobile industry. Anpanman, Doraemon, Ultraman, Pikachu and their friends have become hugely popular, even household names, not only in Japan, but in many countries around the globe, as Japanese artists continue to prove that this Land of the Cult of the KAWAII (cute), is THE major comicbook and cartoon character powerhouse in the world. In addition, nearly every major event, sports team, train line etc, has its own mascot character.
If you ever visited a temple or shrine during the first few days of the new year in Japan, you will have surely seen stalls set up for selling what are probably Japan’s longest continuously (and probably best) selling CHARACTERs of all time – the (usually) red-robed, bearded, arm-less, legless and eyeless, Humpty-Dumpty-like dolls, offered in various sizes and prices (usually for 500 to 10,000 yen): the Daruma-San. Though these iconic, paper-mache figures are not specifically O-Shogatsu (New Year’s) decorations, they are considered to be highly auspicious (engi-mono), and are often bought on appropriately auspicious days. They are used in this way. If you have anything important you’d like to wish for, or even better, if there is something that you are really willing to make an all-out effort for, you buy one, paint in the right eye and then set it in your home (company, office etc.). If your wish comes true, you paint in the other eye! It is common to see scenes of this being done by politicians who have just won an election or by the manager of the baseball team that has just gone all the way.
What symbolic connection do these figures have to the power of achieving one’s wishes? Well, the Daruma dolls are a standardized caricature, which took on its basic current form in the Edo Period (1600-1868), of the great 5th century AD monk, and supposed founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma. The story of this South-Indian (who according to ancient Chinese sources had bright blue eyes!) who is also said to have brought TEA and new, powerful forms of martial arts training to China, first reached Japan in the Kamakura Period (along with Zen itself), and many Japanese artists, under the influence of that Buddhist sect, which the samurai found so appealing, drew many images of him. These, of course were all based on Chinese reports of Bodhidharma having been a big, large-nosed, and very hairy barbarian.
The most impressive point for the Japanese who heard the legends of bodhidharma, was the man’s (and his disciple Eka’s) super-human determination. To be specific, after having travelled to China, the monk settled in a cave near the Shaolin Temple, and proceeded to meditate, with the hope of achieving SATORI (enlightenment), for the next nine years! When Eka (Hui K’o, in Chinese, Dazu Huike in English), was refused repeatedly to be allowed to become the master’s disciple, he finally resorted to cutting off his arm and presenting it as a powerful petition which could not be refused! (Years ago in Southern Nepal, my friends and I crossed over to an island at a spot where three rivers met to meet with a holy-man who had been cutting off bits of his arm every year!) It is not strange that the Japanese warrior class found these stories to be inspirational, especially given the additional stories of BODIDARUMA having been a great martial arts teacher.
Today’s Daruma Dolls are a detailed reflection of these early Bodhidarma legends, and we can find the roots of today’s dolls in medieval Japanese paintings. The reason that the dolls are red is that red was the color of the robes worn by the Zen monks of the highest spiritual attainment. We can see the red robes in some of the earliest Japanese depictions of DARUMA, for example, the 14th century Daruma-Zu, by Minchoh (明兆).
Even in the paintings, the monk’s arms and legs were never clearly shown, as his body is usually portrayed in a seated zazen position. The Edo Period creator of the Daruma doll did away with arms and legs altogether. This represented the loss of these limbs due to lack of use for the nine years of meditation. This might have also made them like toy punching bags that always pop back up on their feet, symbolizing die-hard determination (and who, if not the Japanese, as a nation, are good at getting back up after being knocked down?).
Of course, the beard and mustache are in accordance with the story of Bodhidharma being a hairy, non-Chinese. More interesting, however, is the matter of the eyes.
As I said earlier, Chinese sources stated that the monk’s eyes were blue. In early Japanese Zen painting this was usually executed by making the irises light brown. The creator of the present doll form, however, did away with the eyes completely, creating only disproportionately large white circles (COULD THIS BE THE ROOT OF THE STRANGELY ENLARGED EYES OF ALL MANGA AND ANIME CHARACTERS?). This also is in accordance with Bodhidharma’s legend, in which he supposedly nodded off for a bit sometime into his seventh year of meditation. Disgusted with himself, and determined not to do so again, the man with the will of steel ripped off his own eye-lids. It is said that tea bushes first sprang from the spot where the bloody lids landed. The tea would help future monks stay awake during their own meditations.
The Japanese were obviously deeply impressed by the story of Bodhidharma, and came to associate him with a fierce determination to accomplish one’s goals. He was also revered as a martial artist and as the man who was said to have brought forth what would come to be a great elixir in Japan, green tea. Daruma-San was clearly someone to be appealed to when you made up your mind that you REALLY WANTED SOMETHING.
Since the Daruma dolls as we know them today were created and popularized, the meanings behind the doll’s features have been forgotten by most. Still these dolls remain one of the most recognizable, and beloved CHARACTERS in Japanese culture. At shrines and temples this week you will see them on sale at stalls. Nearby you will see booths selling the DARUMA’s descendants, Anpanman and Ultra-man (amongst others), in blow-up doll or mask form.
A diversity of Daruma Dolls!
More Daruma Dolls!
Various Darumas, including some unusual TENGU shaped ones, awaited their fate at the Tsuchiura DONDOYAKI (2011) at which they were burned in spectacular fashion
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