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Michael Dunn
For Michael Dunn's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / Kateigaho International Japan Edition
Jan 18, 2020
A toast to mingei: The significance of unknown craftsmen
What is so special about mingei (folk crafts)? For Muneyoshi Yanagi it was significant that ordinary, unknown and largely uneducated craftsmen used natural materials to make objects that were sublimely beautiful.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / Kateigaho International Japan Edition
Jan 4, 2020
A toast to mingei: 'The finest assemblage of Japanese folk crafts outside Japan'
Today, Jeffrey Montgomery's mingei (folk crafts) collection is well-known among international dealers and many of his pieces are of a quality rarely seen today, even in Japan; some are unique.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2009
The beauty of subtle deceit
More than in any other country where the lacquer tree grows, the art of working with its hard-drying sap has excelled here in Japan. Two leading exponents were Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747) and Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), who both stand out not only for their inventive sense of design in decorating three-dimensional objects, but also for using the medium of lacquer to imitate other materials such as corroded iron, patinated bronze or rotting wood.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2009
Imperial treasures shown in full glory
Few objects have surfaced from early Imperial tumuli as, being graves of an extant family, excavation is at present prohibited by the Imperial Household Agency. Nevertheless, the occasional object has come to light in the course of repairs following damage by natural disasters, and one of the most beautiful is the head of a haniwa terra-cotta figure from the gigantic tomb of the 5th-century Emperor Nintoku in Sakai City, Osaka.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2009
Fresh direction for the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum
A long with other great collections accumulated by early industrialists such as the Goto, Seikado Bunko, Mitsui and Nezu museums, the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art is a hidden gem where only the very best is to be seen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2009
Well-armed to protect Buddha
Like a visitor from some remote part of the universe, the deity Ashura of Kofukuji Temple in Nara appears with six spindly arms frozen in motion and three faces on a single head that is crowned with a perfectly groomed hairdo. The body is slender and graceful and little imagination is needed to see the numinous figure spring into action like those brilliant deaf Chinese performers who visited Japan last year and amazed all with their synchronized interpretation of the 1,000-armed Kannon bodhisattva.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 24, 2009
Netsuke: delicate treats for the dandies of Edo
Until modern times, Japan seems to have been almost unique in having no tradition of jewelry, apart from the stone beads and gold accessories found in burial mounds from the last few centuries of the prehistoric period until circa seventh century. Elaborate necklaces, bracelets and diadems could be seen on images of Buddhist deities, but these were modeled after works from mainland Korea and China that in turn reflected those of the Indian subcontinent, and so were not born of native culture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 10, 2009
A taste for the unusual leads to excellence
Since the Heian Period (794-1185), landscapes have served as the inspiration for generations of Japanese painters. Many followed the standards and styles of a particular school, while other — often encouragingly eccentric — individuals broke with all conventions to wield their brushes in a completely new manner. The Fuchu Art Museum is now hosting "250 Years of Edo Landscape Paintings," an exhibition showing Edo Period (1603- 1867) landscape paintings that have been selected with a flair for the unusual that we have been used to seeing at that other mecca of Edo culture, the Itabashi Art Museum in north Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 6, 2009
The explorers' cargo
Before the age of discovery, Europe had been separated for hundreds of years from the Indian Ocean by an impenetrable crescent of territories largely hostile to Christians. The Venetians — always more interested in commerce than proselytizing — controlled whatever trade there was with Asia through their network of outposts in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2008
Japanning for southern barbarians
During the 16th-century age of exploration, Portuguese traders landed in Japan looking for exotic goods to sell in markets back in Europe and their newly founded colonies. Lacquerware was high on their list, not only for its decorative beauty but also for its more prosaic quality of being the only waterproof agent known at the time that could be applied by brush in a liquid state.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2008
Golden glories
One of fall's annual pleasures is the Big Autumn Exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum, and this year the organizers have pulled out all the stops with "Treasures by Rinpa Masters," a breathtaking show of Rinpa art in celebration of the 350th anniversary of Ogata Korin's birth. Korin (1658-1716) is considered the leading exemplar of the school of decorative art that was later named after him: Korin plus ha (school of). This exhibition is divided into three sections devoted to the works of Rinpa — as the school is now known — artists from the early, middle and late Edo Period (1603-1867) and includes masterpieces of painting, lacquerware, ceramics and textiles selected from Japanese and foreign collections.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2008
Sri Lanka: isle of earthy delights
Although Sri Lanka has been long-renowned for its natural beauty, the art of the island seems to have been far less celebrated — or even studied — than that of other South Asian countries that share Theravada Buddhist culture, such as Burma or Cambodia. Though Sri Lanka was obviously greatly influenced culturally by neighboring India, its art — at least that from the well-known temple ruins on every tourist's agenda, and the objects in Colombo's National Museum, that was still intact — has tended to be lumped together by foreign scholars with art from South India. This has changed as archaeological work systematically carried out during the past three decades on the half-dozen major sites in the center of the island has brought many outstanding treasures to light.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2008
Katsura Funakoshi's sphinxes of suggestivity
The figure is nothing if not startling: Truncated just above the knees and suspended on four, bark-covered sticks sprouting from the body, sculptor Katsura Funakoshi's "The Sphinx Floats in Forest" is a muscular hermaphrodite with full, female breasts and male genitalia, an elongated neck and leather-strap "ears" draped over each shoulder — a part-animal, part-human being visiting from what might be a parallel universe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2008
Traditional delights
In a summertime exhibition to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Kokka, the authoritative Japanese journal on pre-modern Asian art, and the 130th anniversary of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the (TNM) has taken an interesting change of direction in its curation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2008
Boston museum's ukiyo-e celebrates Japanese merchants' taste
Until recent years, ukiyo-e were regarded as somewhat declasse by Japanese art connoisseurs — and they are still sniffed at by many whose taste is informed by Zen and the tea-ceremony. But these colorful paintings and prints of what was then a truly exotic world did catch the eyes of foreigners who came to Japan after the country opened to the West in 1868. As a result, most of the best examples are now in Western museums, with the largest number of all — some 700 paintings, 50,000 prints and several thousand printed books — to be found in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (MFA).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 17, 2008
Up close with images of faith
W ith its current exhibition of National Treasures from Yakushi-ji Temple, the Tokyo National Museum is offering a not-to-be-missed opportunity to see masterpieces of ancient Buddhist and Shinto art. For the first time ever, they are being displayed in a museum so that they can be studied much more closely than they can in their usual temple setting.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 20, 2008
Photos preserve architecture that's disappeared with time
Unless blessed with unlimited time and resources, visiting all the buildings around the world that you would like to see is rather unlikely. Even if you do manage to reach some of them, entrance inside may still be prohibited or restricted.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 31, 2008
A steady hand in the culture
For more than 700 years until the modern period, members of the Konoe family have been prominent among the nobles of the Imperial Court. Descended from Fujiwara Iezane (ca. 1179-1242), whose own elite clan can be traced back to the beginnings of written Japanese history in the seventh century, the Konoe were chosen to become kanpaku — the chief advisers, and occasionally regents, for the emperor — and to provide the brides who would become empresses. Though lacking military power, they ranked higher than all the daimyo warlords, who lobbied them from time to time to intercede for an Imperial nod of legitimacy on political matters.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 16, 2007
Unlocking the mysteries of Japanese culture
A TRACTATE ON JAPANESE AESTHETICS by Donald Richie. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 79 pp., $9.95 (paper) In the preface to this new, much-needed book on Japanese aesthetics, Donald Richie points out, "In writing about traditional Asian aesthetics, the conventions of Western discourse — order, logical progression, symmetry — impose upon the subject an aspect that does not belong to it." By doing so he underscores a suspicion that we must have all had — while wondering why so much attention can be given to a cracked tea-bowl, for example — that there must be a lot more to Japanese culture and how it is perceived than is immediately apparent.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 22, 2007
A taste for blood, arts and culture
One haunting image that lingers in the mind after seeing the exhibition "Legacy of the Tokugawa — The Glories and Treasures of the Last Samurai Dynasty" at the Tokyo National Museum is a carved-wood statue of Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first of the Tokugawa shoguns, now the deity of the Shiba Tosho-gu shrine next to Tokyo Tower.

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