Back Issue - 1 February 2021 -
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image image Rising Sons: The Bunriha Architecture Group
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Christopher Stephens
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Just over a century ago, as the Spanish flu was raging across Japan, the Bunriha Kenchikukai emerged as the country's first architecture movement. The 100 Years of Bunriha: Can Architecture Be Art? exhibition (running through 7 March at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) traces the group's short but influential career through a wealth of documents, blueprints, photographs, models, and films. more...

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image image Mind Travel to Jomon Times: A Trio of Archaeological Sites in Aomori
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Susan Rogers Chikuba
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The northernmost prefecture on Japan's main island of Honshu, Aomori has some 3,000 Jomon-period archaeological sites -- even its capital city lays claim to a whopping 400. The prefecture is home to half of the 17 sites in northern Japan that are now under review for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list. In fall 2020 I visited three of these and their affiliated museums, as well as the excellent Aomori Prefectural Museum. There is a staggering body of material still coming from these excavations, which curators and other scholars continue to study and debate for insights into the Jomon: a prehistoric, pre-agricultural society that subsisted across Japan's islands for more than 12 millennia, and whose people created some striking art along the way. more...

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image image His Own Private Minka-en: Sankei Hara's Fabulous Garden
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Alan Gleason
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Japan boasts plenty of open-air architectural museums, those mini-villages of historical buildings moved from elsewhere. Many go by the moniker of minka-en, literally "folk-house park," and feature authentic thatched-roof farmhouses, rustic tea huts, and hoary temples anywhere from a few decades to over a millennium old. Cities all over Japan have their own locally-sourced minka-en. Rarely, however, has such an assemblage of traditional architecture been the work of one man, and this is what makes Sankeien, a park-sized landscape garden in Yokohama, such a remarkable place. more...

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Recent Articles
FOCUS
Rising Sons: The Bunriha Architecture Group
Christopher Stephens
1 February 2021
FOCUS
Mind Travel to Jomon Times: A Trio of Archaeological Sites in Aomori
Susan Rogers Chikuba
1 February 2021
HERE/THERE
His Own Private Minka-en: Sankei Hara's Fabulous Garden
Alan Gleason
1 February 2021
PICKS
traNslatioNs - Understanding Misunderstanding
1 February 2021
FOCUS
When Bad Things Happen to Good Artists: Ill-Starred Painters in Arashiyama, Kyoto
Colin Smith
15 December 2020
FOCUS
Yokohama Legacy: A City Pays Tribute to Two Visionary Architects
James Lambiasi
15 December 2020
HERE/THERE
End of an Era: The Hara Museum's Last Show
Alan Gleason
15 December 2020
PICKS
Artist in Residence 2014-2019
15 December 2020
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