Back Issue - 1 September 2022 -
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image image Northern Exposure: Tohoku Art and Crafts from 1930 to 1945
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Jennifer Pastore
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Tokyo Station Gallery is showing Eyes on Tohoku 1930-1945, an exhibition of folk crafts and art affiliated with northeastern Japan during the prewar and World War II years. This was a period when, as the curators note, the country was at a crossroads, straddling divides of tradition and modernity and rural and urban life. Tohoku (Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, and Fukushima Prefectures) accounts for 30 percent of the land on Japan's largest island. For millennia it has sustained the rest of the nation as a vital source of food, transportation, military power, and energy. more...

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image image The Taste of Simplicity: Tea Utensils through the Centuries
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J.M. Hammond
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In the Japanese tea ceremony, the aesthetic aspects of the tea's preparation and presentation, and the design details of the tea room, are as important as the taste of the tea itself. For those unfamiliar with the etiquette, it can be difficult to know what to focus the eye on. Tea Ceramics -- Appreciating Scenic Kiln Effects, the current exhibition at the Mitsui Memorial Museum in Tokyo, is a good place to start for those wishing to hone their understanding of the visual side of tea culture. Since the Edo period (1603-1867) the Mitsui family has amassed a collection of over 4,000 items, many of them connected to the tea ceremony. more...

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image image Man with Two Hats: Toshio Iwai at the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki
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Alan Gleason
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Toshio Iwai began drawing his most famous book because his young daughter was struggling to memorize numbers from 1 to 100. As the artist recounts it, his solution was to create a picture book in which each number was represented by a floor in a 100-story house. Shown in cross section, the floors were populated by animals engaged in various amusing activities. Thus was born one of Japan's best-selling and most beloved picture books, A House of 100 Stories. The illustrations from this book and its four sequels to date are the big draw for visitors of all ages at an exhibition now up at the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki. more...

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Recent Articles
FOCUS
Northern Exposure: Tohoku Art and Crafts from 1930 to 1945
Jennifer Pastore
1 September 2022
FOCUS
The Taste of Simplicity: Tea Utensils through the Centuries
J.M. Hammond
1 September 2022
HERE/THERE
Man with Two Hats: Toshio Iwai at the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki
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FOCUS
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FOCUS
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