Michael Dunn - The Japan Times

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Michael Dunn

For Michael Dunn's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 8, 2007

Momoyama luster slides into view

"In the houses of the lords and nobles these paintings and the doors of the rooms have a background richly painted in gold, and on this gold they paint the picture in various suitable colors.'' (This Island of Japon. João Rodrigues' account of 16th-century Japan. Translated and edited by Michael Cooper).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 25, 2007

A feel for beauty

English potter-artist-writer Bernard Leach (1887-1979) was lucky to have lived in Japan — during his early childhood and on later occasions — when, even though change was coming rapidly, many centuries-old traditions continued unaltered.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 11, 2007

Zen direct to you

Perhaps the most celebrated of the late-Edo Period Zen artist-priests, Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) left a large number of ink paintings on Zen-related subjects, of which by far the largest collection is in the Idemitsu Museum opposite the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 4, 2007

East and West in mists of gold

Most people outside of Japan demonstrate their wealth and success by living in ever-larger spaces and by accumulating more and more stuff to fill them. Contrast walls covered with paintings and every level surface cluttered with objects to the traditional Japanese ideal of an empty room in which artworks join furnishings just for a particular chapter in life's drama — and are then put away again.

CULTURE / Stage

Sep 6, 2007

The magic of noh by firelight

At this time of year — and also in April and May, when it is neither too hot nor too cold for performers or audiences — takigi (firelight) noh is performed throughout Japan. Preferred venues are outdoor noh stages in the precincts of shrines, but as these are rare, special ones are often built in other suitable locations.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 23, 2007

A rich repository of traditional Zen art

For a subject in which words are considered an impediment to meditative insight, it is daunting just how many words are needed to explain Zen. It uncannily dodges any attempt at definition, and at least some exposure to the practice seems necessary before embarking on any worthwhile discussion of the subject.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 9, 2007

The hidden treasures of Shikoku revealed in Ueno

Kotohira Shrine — popularly known as Konpira-san — is one of the main religious centers on the island of Shikoku. Until three bridges were built during recent decades to connect the island and the mainland — and ruin the previously magical scenery — Shikoku was remote and mysterious, a Shangri-La where time seemed to move at a different pace.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 31, 2007

A rare reunion of Jakuchus in a Kyoto temple

For the first time in 120 years, the 30 scroll paintings by Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800) known as "The Colorful Realm of Living Beings" are being shown together with the "Sakyamuni Triad" — three hanging scroll paintings of a central Buddha and two attendant bodhisattvas — at the Shokokuji Temple in Kyoto.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 10, 2007

Modern girls and outrage

The Taisho Era (1912-1926) saw young habitues of Japan's cafe society challenging and outraging their parents as they danced, smooched and smoked cigarettes, aping their idols of the silver screen. Emblematic of the age was the moga (modan gaaru, or modern girl) with her Western shoes, dresses, makeup and jewelery, and her stylish hair done in a marcel wave.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 8, 2007

Brilliant choices reveal seldom seen masterpieces

Despite oft-heard subversive remarks to the contrary, the Japanese have a very highly-developed sense of humor -- it's just different, that's all. While Westerners are baffled by TV comedy shows here, or -- at a higher level -- traditional kyogen stage performances, Japanese will blink through a Monty Python show wondering why on Earth we find it so funny.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 1, 2007

Chamber doors that shimmer with gold

Uuntil the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Kyoto's Gosho Palace, a rectangular compound of approximately 110,000 sq. meters, housed Japan's Imperial Family for more than 1,000 years. The buildings have been destroyed by fire on a number of occasions, but were rebuilt each time exactly in the original ancient style.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 9, 2006

Tokyo National Museum shows Buddhist masterpieces

Living in a land still largely covered with forest, it is not surprising that Japanese have a special reverence toward wood. We see this particularly in traditional architecture, where wood is not only chosen to reveal its best qualities, but is largely left unpainted so that its beauty improves with use and age.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 16, 2006

The difference gaman can make

THE ART OF GAMAN: Arts and Crafts From the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946, by Delphine Hirasuna. Berkeley/Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 125 pp., 2005, $35 (cloth). In Japanese, the word "gaman" means the display of calm forbearance and poise in the face of adverse circumstances beyond one's control. For all of us having had to deal with bureaucrats or large organizations, it is an unpleasantly familiar experience that often leads us to wonder why just a little applied common sense couldn't solve the need to gaman in the first place.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 13, 2006

'Individualist' achievements

When Joe Price visited New York at the age of 24 with renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright -- his father's friend and the designer of the famous Price Tower in Bartlesville, Okla. -- it had never crossed his mind to join the art world. But there in an antique shop, captivated by deft brushwork on an old Japanese scroll, he decided to use money he had earmarked for a sports car and buy the artwork instead.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 13, 2006

A stroll among the masterpieces

The Price exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum is divided into five sections, each devoted to a specific area of painting. The first sets the stage with examples of "mainline" painters -- members of the Kano school (which, from the late 16th century to the late 19th century, combined Chinese academic ink painting with decorative elements) who were in the service of Imperial and shogunate courts and regional warlords. Early Kano painters were certainly technically proficient and inventive but, with the odd exception, toward the end of the Edo Period their followers were churning out yawn-inspiring, painting-by-numbers, derivative work. But fine early works are to be seen here, including a 16th-century screen of a pine tree, birds and a waterfall by Kano Motonobu (1476-1559) showing his synthesis of Chinese painting methods with a Japanese sensitivity and sense of atmosphere. A pair of screens by Kano Ryusetsu (1729-74) represents an emerging interest in genre painting -- the colorful world of everyday life -- with scenes of the Wakamiya Festival that has been held in the Nara Deer Park each December for more than 1,000 years.

CULTURE / Books

Jun 11, 2006

Explore the beauty of stoneware

JAPANESE WOOD-FIRED CERAMICS by Masakazu Kusakabe & Marc Lancet. Iola, Wisconsin: Krause publications, 2005, 320 pp., $44.99 (paper) The art of making ceramics originated in Japan during prehistoric times, and over recent centuries has evolved to rank higher even than painting in the eyes of this country's connoisseurs. Most celebrated are the stonewares of ancient centers -- such as Tamba, Shigaraki, Bizen, Seto, Tokoname and Echizen -- that are prized for their robust shapes and the evocative, abstract quality of their surfaces. Fired in wood-burning kilns, the unexpected and seemingly haphazard quality of these majestic pots is often credited to the god of the kiln, who alone can make order from the crucible of white-hot flames and clouds of ash.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel

May 19, 2006

Mount Koya -- Japan's holy retreat

The young priest Kukai made his perilous journey to China as a member of a Japanese diplomatic mission in 804. Records indicate that he was already a master at dealing with bureaucratic superiors, not only by securing a place on the mission in the first place, but by negotiating (in accomplished Chinese) admission to study esoteric Buddhism at the esteemed Ximingsi Temple in Xi'an (then known as Chang-An), the Tang Dynasty capital and gateway to the Silk Road.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 4, 2006

Bridgestone museum celebrates 50th anniversary

During the past 130 years or so following the Meiji Restoration, many industrialists are remembered not only for having made huge fortunes, but also for using part of their riches to amass collections of art.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 20, 2006

As it was in Japan then, so it is now

Much can be learned about the factual bones of history by reading books, but the pictures that have survived the years flesh out better what life was actually like before the arrival of the electricity, running water and phones that we now take for granted.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 6, 2006

An art born of Saicho's syncretism

This year marks the 1,200th anniversary of the founding of the Buddhist Tendai sect in Japan, when Priest Saicho (767-822), posthumously known as Dengyo Daishi, received court permission to establish a school of religious study and training at Enryaku-ji Temple on Mount Hie to the northeast of Kyoto.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.

The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

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