January, 2010, began with a whirlwind of activities. A few days after joining tens of thousands of people celebrating New Years Day at various Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines, I began touring with a group of architects and artists. We visited all three Imperial villas in town: Katsura, Shugaku-in and Sento Gosho. We interviewed several Buddhist priests and drove out to see both I,M.Pei’s Miho Museum and the stunning Sagawa Museum of Art in neighboring Shiga Prefecture, with a gallery built under the large pond with dark, roughhewn, wooden walls and floors, and minimal lighting focused on raku teaware by master potter, Raku Kichizaemon IV. Yesterday, we spend the day in Osaka and Hyogo, seeing masterpiece architectural sites designed by world-renowned Ando Tadao, including the mystical Temple of Water–an esoteric Buddhist Temple built under the ground beneath a lotus pond. Today, we spent the morning at Daitokuji Monastery and the afternoon at the solo show of ceramic Artist, Takemoto Ikuo (http://www.japanlivingarts.com/?p=476). Photos will follow soon.

The work of a potter has traditionally been considered to be better suited for strong bodied men. Recently, however, the number of Japanese female ceramic artists has been steadily growing, with more entering the field by way of art universities than through apprenticeships. Sakurai Yasuko is one of the new wave of highly innovative female artists now grabbing a well deserved spotlight, both nationally and internationally. She was recently featured in the highly acclaimed exhibition Soaring Voices, currently touring the U.S., that surveys the work of 25 of Japan’s top female ceramic artists.

Born and raised in Kyoto, the 40 year-old artist worked at L’ENAD de Limogesa as an Artist in Residence supported by scholarship of the French Government in the late 1990’s. Her work is shown at the Joan B. Mirviss Ltd. gallery in New York. Sakurai-san focuses on white porcelain, creating both functional and non-functional pieces. Writes Mirviss of Sakurai-san’s work: “These dramatic objects engage the viewer by juxtaposing light and shadow, and challenging the perception of interior and exterior spaces. Sakurai’s stark white porcelain forms capture the simple beauty of light and shadow.”

Whereas I closely follow the work of established ceramics artists here in Japan, it is especially exciting to meet a young, talented person who is in the process of becoming recognized.  I met highly talented ceramic artist, Ogawa Nobuyuki, a few years ago, at the art gallery at Takashimaya in Kyoto.  Japanese department store art galleries are prestigious venues for artist solo shows.  While the inside gallery is used for named artists, Ogawa-san’s stunning work was displayed in the outer gallery that is set aside for solo shows of young, up-and-coming artists.  During that visit, my friends bought several pieces and we asked him if we could visit his studio.

On a visit later that year to Ogawa-san’s studio, I got to see the amazing breadth of his work.  Though he comes from a multi-generational family of potters working in traditional Kyoto-style porcelain, Ogawa-san’s work is both delicate and bold and very original.  His bowls sit on tiny bases and seem to float above the table.  His meticulous, repeated firings produce multi-surfaced pieces such as rich celadon with a black, rough-textured underside, or eggshell white porcelain striped with highly innovative bands of beaded, silver or gold contrasting with a rough textured underside with a raised, geometric pattern of bumps.

His cutting edge, paper thin, asymmetrical tea bowls and sake flasks are particularly exciting.  It is amazing how well his highly refined works blend so beautifully when placed together with rough-hewn stoneware on our dinner table.

Tucked away on a narrow street in one of Tokyo’s oldest and most interesting neighborhoods is the studio of Nihonga artist, Allan West. Allan and I met a few years ago, when we were fellow lecturers for an international conference in Kyoto.

Nihonga is a fascinating medium with strong roots in traditional Japanese painting and some western influence. Its development into a modern Japanese art form came about shortly after Japan opened up to the world following nearly 250 years of self-imposed isolation, in the 1800s, through the influence of art critics, such as Okakura Tenshin and Ernest Fenollosa. At a time of extraordinary fascination with western art by the Japanese, the concept of Nihonga was brought forward as a way of focusing attention on overshadowed traditional Japanese art. However, Nihonga was different from pre-modern Japanese painting in the breadth of the subjects portrayed. It also combined previously separate styles of Japanese painting, such as Kano and Rimpa, and incorporated western perspective, among other techniques.

Allan West discovered Nihonga during graduate school at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, located just around the corner from what is now his studio. After receiving an MFA in Japanese painting, he set up his studio in Japan, and has worked here, ever since. Allan’s innovative Nihonga is shown and collected throughout the world.

In Collaboration with Photographer, Helen Hasenfeld

© Photos by Helen Hasenfeld

Hase Hoju is thought by many Buddhist leaders in Japan to be one of the great statue carvers of our time, both restoring existing statues as well as creating new ones. He was born and raised near Nagoya, in Toyota City, famous for auto manufacturing. “There were almost no Buddhist Temples and almost no statues,” Hase-san recalls. “When I was in the sixth grade at the age of 12, I visited Kyoto’s Sanjusangendo repository of 12th and 13th century Buddhist statuary on a school excursion, and was touched and moved by the beauty and intensity of what I saw there. Especially when I saw the life-sized statues of the 28 attendant deities of the Kannon Boddhisatva, I felt a deep and extraordinary connection. It was because of that visit that I soon after decided to become a Buddhist statue carver. Even at the age of 12, I knew that I would not be a carver without also being a priest who was educated in Buddhism. So, rather than following the path of the lay craftsman, I chose the path of the priest.”

On his own at age 12, Hase-san began to carve statues. Then, at 15, he decided to go to high school far from home in the ancient Shingon Buddhist town of Koya-san, in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture. Though there are many scores of temples and statue treasures in the town as well as hundreds of priests, there were actually no Buddhist carvers working there from whom he could learn.

“Later, I went to a Shingon Buddhist seminary college in Kyoto before beginning my apprenticeship with a master Buddhist carver. I stayed with him for three years. It was much shorter than the usual apprenticeship time, but I already had received a commission to carve a statue and could not proceed with it while apprenticed to someone else. So I quit my apprenticeship and have been independent ever since.

“For me, the process of creating a statue begins when an image first comes slowly together in my mind. After making a sketch, I carve a wooden scale model. By using an engineering protractor, I am able to transfer the correct proportions of up to five times the size of the model, to the actual full sized statue. If, however, I use the protractor to make a statue that is more than 5 times the size of the model, the size of the head inevitably looks too large for the body.”

Most statues are made from hinoki cypress. The body of the statue is actually composed of a number of pieces of wood that have been bonded together, then, hollowed out. This technique dates back almost 1000 years and not only makes statues lighter and easier to handle, but prevents them from splitting, as do those carved from solid pieces of wood. After carving is complete the statue can be covered with a gauze-like cloth, lacquered and finally covered in gold leaf. Other statues are left in their natural color whereas still others are painted in a wide range of colors.

“You didn’t ask why I went to Orisa. I’ve actually traveled to India many times for research on ancient statuary at museums and archeological sites. I am very interested in the earliest period of Buddhist statues. I have recently edited my photos and data of my trips to Orisa and compiled them into a book. I eventually want to recreate the original statues of Buddha. Though most of them have been destroyed, by piecing together the remains from that time, I have already been able to reconstruct statues of that period. My dream is to do this, possibly using a kind of cement. Also, I would like to continue to repair some of the poorly restored statues in Indian museums.”

A SLIDE SHOW of HASE-SAN and his WORK

There are a few places in the world that are truly enchanting. One such place is a town of just 500 people that has touched my life and the lives of many people I have taken there. It is a town near the Sea of Japan in Shimane Prefecture, in a long narrow valley, tucked between forested hills. Omori-cho has a sweetness that continues to call us back for, yet, another visit.

According to the person who most helped inspire the town’s restoration, Matsuba Tomi-san, “this used to be a place that no one ever visited.” She moved here thirty years ago with her husband Daikichi. A new mother at the time, she began to make baby clothes for her own children. Neighbors and friends liked what she did and requests for her work increased. Eventually, Daikichi began selling her work to retail stores, and the Gungendo Company was born. Over the past 30 years, the Matsubas and the growing Gungendo family have restored the eyesore of a town into a superb combination of esthetics and consciousness. Also, by supporting local farmers, mom & pop spinners, dyers and weavers, Gungendo has almost single-handedly saved them from bankruptcy due to the influx of cheap imports. With the resulting fabrics, they have created a line of adult clothing of extraordinary quality and distinctively Japanese design in addition to fine home accessories. (My favorite item is their shifu sheets, woven with cotton and spun washi paper.)

Rather than sell their products in well located boutiques in the hottest shopping districts of Tokyo and Kyoto, they have chosen to place their shops off the hyper-consumer path. They are not just selling clothes and household goods– they are selling a life-style that values natural materials, human relationships and revitalized rural aesthetics. Rather than restoring an old town into a random set of cold, museum-like buildings, they have brought an old town up-to-date. Gungendo and the Matsubas are to clothes and home accessories what Chez Panisse and the Slow Food Movement’s Alice Waters are to food.

The wooden, thatch and paper town is at once old and traditional and, at the same time, modern and comfortable. Old fashioned architectural elements have been revitalized and unobtrusively combined with modern conveniences.

Years ago, when Gungendo built their new company offices there, the shiny white prefabricated building looked out of place amongst the soft, mud, wood and bamboo walls and fences of its neighbors. So, they covered the new building with old barn siding and it immediately blended with the old minka farmhouse they had previously moved and restored next door.   The thatched house became a place for company staff to eat lunch and take breaks. The concrete drainage ditch next door was naturalistically lined with river stones and was transformed back into a “real” stream again.

The master construction person responsible for much of the restoration work in town is Kajitani-san. He has repaired and built waddle and daub walls, installed windows, paved walkways with old ceramic roof tiles or kiln bricks, put in electrical wiring and plumbing, unobtrusively and aesthetically created modern toilet rooms and baths in 250 year old houses. He is as comfortable working with bamboo as he is bringing old discarded barn doors and furniture back to life in a way that compliments living in the 21st century.

Nowadays, when Tomi-san is not reintroducing old Japanese textile patterns into next year’s clothing line at Gungedno, she can be found cooking a wonderful “slow food” meal on the 150-year old wood stove at Abeke House. With fish from the local seacoast and vegetables from kitchen gardens throughout the neighborhood, she has thoroughly delighted the palettes of all of the guests I have brought to Omori-cho over the years. One vegetarian herbalist from L.A. surprised his fellow travelers by deciding on-the-spot to eat a beef dish that Tomi-san prepared. He said, “I gladly make an exception to my vegetarian diet with food prepared with this much love.”

The restoration of 250-year old Abeke House was one of Tomi-san and Daikichi-san’s pet projects. It cost about $1,000,000 to transform an abandoned and completely dilapidated old house into an Architectural-Digest-Quality house that sleeps 12 people. It was a very long and very tedious project, but the result was a dream house fit for an enchanted town. A visit each year to Abeke House, Gungendo Company, the people, the food and the aesthetic of Omori-cho feels like coming home.

If I knew nothing about Yoshida Shojun-san at all, I think that his smile and his energy would be enough for me to seek him out as a friend. That he is a Soto-Zen priest, a former high school teacher and an iron sculptor living in the most enchanting town on earth, Omori-cho, only confirms what his eyes, his smile and his energy were saying all along. I first saw his works just prior to meeting him, about eight years ago. It was on my first visit to Omoricho, a town that, over a 25-year-period, had been transformed from an eye-sore to a place that my old friend David Allen aptly referred to as, “…the finest combination of aesthetics and consciousness I have ever seen.”

Years ago, Yoshida-san and his wife came to live in Omori-cho (pop. 500), and it is here that they raised their three children. After restoring their own house in the center of the village, he became instrumental in the continuing restoration of the town, itself. His works of sculpture can be seen throughout Omori-cho, along the street, in the court yard of Abeke House, at the Gungendo company, in front of Bura House shop. Crafted in iron that he carefully chooses to produce the perfect balance of rust and longevity, his works are whimsical, unobtrusive, wonderfully fun. They add dramatic presence and they look as if they naturally belong wherever they are placed. They are surprisingly light, and he is able to easily ship them to anywhere in the world.

One place where Yoshida-san’s works show particularly well is in Omori-cho’s community Gungendo Candle House. This 200-year-old dwelling was purposely restored without the convenience of electricity, obliging all visitors to light candles for illumination. The Candle House has become the neighborhood meeting place, and the color of Yoshida-san’s works become richer by the golden light of the hand-made candles that are burned there.

A couple of years ago, Yoshida-san took an early retirement from school teaching to devote himself more completely to his art. Also, he makes regular trips back to his family Zen Temple to assist his father in various Buddhist functions. When he is not creating works of art, or at the temple, you can usually find Yoshida-san at Omori-cho’s spectacular Abeke House, a 250-year-old dwelling that has been restored as a guest house for the town. I have stayed there many times, and love to look out of the upstairs windows to the yard, where Yoshida-san’s sculptures sit, perfectly rusted and perfectly planted in the garden.

SLIDE SHOWS of YOSHIDA SHOJUN-san: METAL SCULPTOR

SLIDE SHOWS of YOSHIDA SHOJUN-san: METAL SCULPTOR

In Collaboration with Photographer, Helen Hasenfeld

© Photos by Helen Hasenfeld

Fujii Genjiro-san is almost 90 years old, yet he is clear, strong and full of warmth and energy.  He has been a Kyoto brush maker for most of his long life.  As Kyoto has been an arts center for 1200 years, there is a vast variety of brushes available here:  long hair fude brushes for calligraphy and painting, and, short hair hake brushes for textile painting, dyeing and mounting.

For years, Japanese art restoration experts visiting museums around the world—places like the Metropolitan, Boston M.F.A, Leiden in Holland, the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian, the British Museum–invariably saw magnificent brushes used for the restoration of paintings and scrolls made with washi paper.  When they ask where the brushes came from, the answer is always the same:  Mr. Fujii in Kyoto.

“I am the 6th generation brush maker, living in this same house in downtown Kyoto.  The first generation brush maker in our family made cosmetic brushes.  In addition to mounting brushes for screens and scrolls, he made brushes for the Imperial Family.  The second generation did the same, but also made brushes for bonding gold leaf to washi paper which is then slit and wrapped around silk thread for weaving.  I specialized in making brushes for mounting and restoration.

“In my youth, the first son never questioned that he would take over the house business.  But my progressive father did not push me.  My grandfather, on the other hand, wanted me to continue the family business and start learning the trade early, before my sense of self got too strong and my thinking became less flexible.

“When I was 21, I was drafted into the Imperial army.  My job was to calculate calories for nutritional menus.  Eventually our unit was sent to Manchuria, but as the war wound down, we just waited around until the war ended because we had no planes.  In 1945, we were captured by the Soviets and taken to Uzbekistan for three years to work in coal mines.

“There were 1500 of us who were shipped to Uzbekistan, crammed in 40 freight cars.  Sometimes the train would sit for a half day.  Young, strong men in their 20s, sitting in cramped cars—40-50 people in a car.  Couldn’t go to the toilet.  We were all afraid of dying.  We had to carry all our lice-ridden belongings that we used for sitting.  Once we began working at the mines, many men died, crushed when the cart ropes broke.

“The Soviets allowed the weaker ones go home.  Others among us were gradually released, but we could not figure out the criteria for letting people leave.  One day, I heard the name Fujii Genjiro being called.  I excitedly stepped forward, but they were calling a man named Fujii Kenjiro.  I was very disappointed.

“We were given big breakfasts so they could work us all day.  Dinner was just a lousy soup—lots of water to create volume.  Prisoners in American camps ate really well, but we ate frogs, snakes.  We were also sent to do labor for construction.  One day while on a work assignment, we saw a big scary looking dog.  It was dead.  The men in my group insisted that we take it back and cook it.  I told them no, but they did it anyway.  I did try a little.  It tasted like chicken.

“Then they asked for volunteers to go work on a farm.  (He is really laughing at this point.)  About 150 of us were sent to reclaim swamp land and slash reeds.  It was like walking on a mountain of needles.  The wet mud was frozen.  It was very hard labor.  If we didn’t finish the work, we weren’t fed.  While working, we picked and ate small watery tomatoes.  One could easily eat 20-30.  One man said he ate 100.  We all became good friends.

“People who joined the Communist party received preferential treatment.  Some Japanese became supervisors.  Some of the men among us were spies, so we needed to be careful of what we said.  We were made to sing Communist songs.  We tried to appear cooperative to get early discharge.  The resistant men had time added to their stays.  Some succumbed to the brainwashing and chose not to return to Japan.  I have almost never talked about this before.

“On one hand, we thought that most of the guards were incredibly dumb (he says while laughing hard.)  We were always looking for ways to outsmart them.  But they continuously upped our work quotas.

“I returned to Japan in December, 1948.  My family did not know where I had been for those three years.  All my friends, relatives and neighbors came to greet me at Kyoto Station, but my father was not there.  My mother said that he had caught cold and was sleeping at home.  When I finally got home and I walked inside, I saw his ashes, sitting in a box in the tokonoma alcove.  My grandfather had also died during the war as did my younger brother, in Okinawa.  Only my mother and sister remained.

“I had to learn brush making by myself.  I was 30 when I returned from the war after 10 years.  Although I had three years of experience before the war, it normally took 8-10 years to become a brush maker and no one was left to teach me.  My mother advised me the best she could, but I had to really figure it all out by myself.

“I eventually learned how to make uchibake (pounding brush.)  The year before last, I made my 1000th uchibake.  They have been sold all over the world to conservators who repair old works of Asian art.  Modern chemicals and bonds do not produce invisible repairs.  When a new piece of washi paper is applied to a hole in an old work, pounding my brush on the repair binds together the fibers in the old and new washi, leaving no seam at all.”

Please join an in-depth exploration of Japanese textiles here in Kyoto, next spring.  Access details here.

I just visited the west Honshu town (Hiroshima Prefecture) of Tomonoura for the first time. The centuries-old fishing village is set in a circular-shaped harbor facing the Inland Sea. I had heard about the town a few years ago from a Thai-based, Canadian social anthropologist, who asked me to assist in gathering names for a campaign to save the beautiful harbor from the prefectural government’s plan to build a bridge in the middle of the historic scenic area. They were able to gather 15,000 e-mails from around the world, and, so far, have been able to hold back construction.

The good news is that, in the process of gathering signatures for the bridge initiative, the local residents became activists in preserving this lovely little town.

I stayed in the newly restored, 150-year-old Iroha House that is run by the preservation enthusiasts group, now a non-profit organization. The restoration was made possible by a grant from American Express. The house, located less than a block from the harbor, has just four guest rooms. There is a café on the ground floor, open to the public. Watanabe-san, a young professional actor, is the chef and barista. The manager is a koto and shamisen teacher, and we were treated to an impromptu concert. The food was exceptionally good and was served on artist-made, contemporary-functional ceramics.

Overlooking the harbor filled with working fishing boats, the old town area is made up of narrow alleyways. Many of the buildings have been renovated and are being used as shops and cafes. Miyazaki Hayou, the academy award-winner anime producer has taken a special interest in the town. He has not only based the location of his latest feature film, “Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea”, on Tomonoura, but is responsible for designing the new Iroha House. The film is due to be released in the U.S. in August, 2009.

While I was staying there, the heads of several dozen grassroots social and environmental organizations located throughout the Inland Sea area had come together for a conference of mutual support. A few of them were staying at Iroha House and I learned a lot about their various causes.

SLIDE SHOW OF IROHA HOUSE

SLIDE SHOW OF TOMONOURA TOWN