IF ever in Japan, I would love to put together a creative review and narrative journalism style memory of the trip.
Would also like to try the creation of Video Haikus.
I am even tempted by people watching, like the French artist Sophie Calle in the streets of Paris; or create narratives from the photos shot as Ed van der Elsken in his exhibition, Love on the left bank.
Write in a manner like Ian Fleming about food. I think all this requires to be well prepared!
And eventually take everything and create something akin to the world and rules of Haruki Murakami in his novel Kafka on the shore.
“Imagination,” he says, “elevates people into escapism, and that leads you to visualise a better life”. Andrew Motion. And I think there is plenty of that In Japan.
“If Freud’s theory on the interpretation of dreams has anything in it,” Wittgenstein once pondered ,
“it shows how complicated is the way the human mind represents the facts in pictures. So complicated, so irregular is the way they are represented that we can barely call it representation any longer.”
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How many pictures will I find in Japan? New ways of seeing. From a Fine Arts training.
“If Freud’s theory on the interpretation of dreams has anything in it,” Wittgenstein once pondered,
“it shows how complicated is the way the human mind represents the facts in pictures. So complicated, so irregular is the way they are represented that we can barely call it representation any longer.”
The philosophical task of looking for the essence of truth, then, is unending, not because it is deep but because it is an example of the ways in which we can be captured by a picture.
the job as a philosopher not to argue for or against the truth of this or that proposition but rather to delve deeper and substitute one picture for another. conceived his task to make or to enable us, to see things differently.
How many pictures can we be captured by. Can I learn to capture like a Japanese.
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Fell in love with
http://www.akikohiraiceramics.com/
and want to see more.
Handed-ness or Maintenance might put it.
sea of handedness.
keen eye on that as a paint practitioner.
a single object or picture may spark off a piece of writing.
Note the potter. more of that sensitive . Perhaps as a painter I am taken by that.
how … a flaw
emerges. it is sought after. understood as a phenomena. as if everything has stopped for what was not intended bit the space was made to go after that and investigate. draw out… new qualities.
all things like this.
perhaps a metaphor for ones intention on any journey.
Going from One Island Nature to another!!!
Invent a new map. Possibly like the situations, cut up photographs. or Invention new treasure maps. Or Long walking Psycho-geographic adventures like the much-loved Will Self.
The joys of walking
disembodied, meditative aspect of walking
thoughtful and attentive, observing things, having lofty thoughts, combinatory.
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Wabi-sabi
Lisa Nobeta of Kyoto University, research into synaesthesia, compares the architecture of the Japanese tea ceremony with haiku poetry,observing both have modular organisation and related approaches to conveying ambiance and mood through a formalised sense of refinement and brevity, the Japanese aesthetic concept known as Wabi-sabi.
‘Structural elements in poetry and architecture are used to construct participatory spaces; formal devices that serve to manage and control readers or, in the case of tea ceremonies, guests,’ Nobeta. notion that architecture and poetry are disparate one might argue for the certain types of architecture can cross this division.
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Gardens
A priest in Kyoto
a temple garden is more than a green space: It’s a place to draw inspiration. But you don’t to experience the peace that comes from clearing your mind.
Sit on the temple’s tatami and focus on a rock, lantern or leaf in the garden, and let the rest of the world disappear.
The disappearing world
that happens do often. rare, where that may happen in a city. Holland park,
extraordinary.
Andrew Motion reads his poem A Garden In Japan
Is striking for is immediacy, presentness or thereness. While delicate.
Helps one enter ones own present. The materials currently by ones side. and allow then to be seen enlarged. The quietness of that object or to turn to its smallness.
Andrew motion Japanese Garden – YouTube
those are the sort of things I know. the trace, which I expect to find clues of its effect throughout.
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Haikus….
A single object or picture may spark off a piece of writing.
Haiku. Daringly simple. Remarkably expressive. You can do it too
This is appreciate in Japan. More of an audience. More of an up take, evident in the demeanour and openness to these qualities.
(silently) to ourselves. We reach for words to point out the things we see, to express the thoughts they stir up in us and the way they make us feel.
Looking for the right words and images takes patience. During this process it often turns out that a piece of writing changes
—-
In order to write well we must pay attention to our senses. We need to absorb the world around us intensely and in detail.
But how much do we take in of what we see? looking, Feeling and reflecting, Imagining. Shaping
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Sado, the way of tea
fresh picked flower in the Tokonoma, calligraphy scroll conveying a precise emotion, bowls and vases selected specifically for the season. It’s all about making the most of this one moment — it sounds very Zen. no cliché…
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Fusions
Certain Tokyo districts look like galleries of modern architecture. The five Japanese Pritzker Prize winners (the second most in Kyoto too. the world, after the U.S.
The shape of things to come. concerning Architecture.
the pop culture, the fashion, the cuisine, the tea, the traditional arts. reminders that something special lingers in this land—an ancient culture that still thrives today, and serves as a compelling witness that the world is more than a Western-centered.
8 fashion
graphics on the push buttons are adorable.
inspiring an entire clothing brand
might be a jumble but its all here.
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Theatre
Bunraku. japanese puppet theatre 2009 performance of Shun-kin
Complicite / Simon McBurney
Complicite, Setagaya Public Theatre, Tokyo
Kabuki — featuring Ebizo Ichikawa XIat sadler’s wells 2010
The remarkable ability to take away , poignant images from the performance.
Sculptural beauty at times. And to receive the remarkable atmosphere from the audience during at after the performance. That is the magic of theatre.
Tutor ones eye more!!!
two-and-a-half hour taster of the kabuki tradition: three scenes from the epic repertoire favourite Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura (Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees)
graceful, beautiful and admirably disciplined about kabuki and also all that is ponderous
astonishing effect. clarity and clarifying… allowing one to meditate and scene unfold rather than be rushed … through.. with action as in western theatre.
restraint
striking character, though, is Shizuka’s shape-shifting companion Tadanobu, a fox in disguise who answers to the call of a magic shoulder-drum made from his parents’ hides and journeys with the heroine through the cherry-blossom strewn landscape of Mt Yoshino
the bridge on which the actors enter. across through the audience. inside into the world portrayed.
Theatre Nō , Kibuki. Surrealist plays.
Shojeki- Little theatre. Angera – Underground Theatre.
I would expect to write reviews of the shows seen.
10 Food.
A galaxy of Michelin stars, more than anywhere else
& Countryside too
Japanese Farm Food. Wajima, inner Japan or Ura-Nihon (rarely seen by tourist) which many in Japan are nostalgic for it food and ways of life! Okimawa and the secrets of immortality! And good life. Famed for the longevity and good spirits. in beautiful country side. An ideal sense. and very interesting rebirth of local music culture!!! a fertile situation for local music.
Japanese have a reputation for being the most absolute gourmets. taking special trips just to saviour regional specialities. I like the idea that food tourism as a concept or cause to travel is a well developed and wide-spread idea, even if its is simply on the notional level.
I very much feel that you get to ‘ taste the land’ when you travel like that. and feel how the local produce creates and affect a character in itself. Here I hope to imbibe and thus learn an important ingredient of Japan.
eat the Landscape!
Food like polished cut jewels.
Restaurants that specialise in The freshest produce.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japanese-Farm-Nancy-Singleton-Hachisu/dp/1449418295
http://www.japanesefarmfood.com/
Food memories include, already having been bewitched by Japanese pizza! Okonomiyaki!! With Shaving of Dried Bonito!!
And very surprise to eat Japanese Tacos!!!
as well as the sublime Cafe Japan in Golders Green!!
Other places to visit Haikdo and Kunidate visiting the Samrai houses and village. (possible also a Japanese Castle) And Takachiho the epicentre of Mythical Japan.
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Ukiyoke!
I like how in Japanese culture, humble every day things are looked at and attend to. Like the prints at the British Museum. That take everyday working life as its subject. rare at the time in world art that subject a thing should be made into subject matter. Here is an example where the western distinction of high and low culture does not exist.
I’m hope to also find inspirational contemporary , modern touch and the ancient. Hoping to find those mix in the art.
Japanese Floating Worlds
Here’s is an inspiring quote from Katsushika Hokusai maker of the world-famous print The Great Wave off Kanagawa;
“…by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive…”
I would hope to take in the tiny Tiny galleries around Aoyama – as well as visit the big art Museums.
I hope to take in calligraphy particularly , Cursive script of sōsho style, delicious! The Zen influence is of great interest. It may very well Inspire me to make Antoni Tapies type works!!!
I have in the past attended classes by Rebecca Salter, who wrote this well received book on Japanese Woodblock Printing.
Constantly fusing past, present and future Tokyo into one space.
Edo-Tokyo Museum is the best place to relive the old traditional style of life in Tokyo, when it was called Edo
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Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers. Juri Ueno. interesting inflections. modulating … and Great humanising humour. In the everyday.
an ordinary housewife whose spouse is sent overseas on business
She dreams of being able to escape from her mundane existence one day.
Falling in with Spies, she is instructed, that her job is to remain completely boring and ordinary.
a bunch of locals who are far from what they seem. Left us with a huge smile on our face.
All about timing and expectations of character. Learnt a lot about Japanese humour and a set of daily concerns from here. This might be key to understanding a certain type of humour in Japan and hope to see much through this lens.
Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers (亀は意外と速く泳ぐ – Miki Satoshi, 2005) Trailer – YouTube
Turtles Are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers – Wikipedia
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The Hachiko Statue. This is a statue of an Akita dog, like the bear in Madrid or the Bronze Wild Boar of Florence Market. This statue sums up a city if perhaps a nation.
When Professor Ueno died in 1925, his dog, Hachiko, continued to show up at the station to greet his master at the exact time that the trains arrived for 10 years. So struck by this were the locals and famed was the dog that a statue was put up honouring Hachiko and the virtues he espoused. Possibly the most amazing story and in turn the most amazing landmark to meet in Japan.
This threw national spotlight onto the breed at which time they remained only 30 in number.