Vitro Nasu

Nobuo Sekine
Artsy Obit

Nobuo Sekine (1942–2019)
Conceptual artist Nobuo Sekine—whose ephemeral, site-specific sculptural and installation works were associated with Mono-ha (the School of Things), the postwar Japanese art movement active in the late 1960s to the mid ’70s—died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was seventy-six years old.(Artforum Obit)

(Historical Photographs)

(Phase of Nothingness – Cloth and Stones)

Nobuo Sekine and his Phase of Nothingness (1969) installed at the Japanese Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale, 1970. Photo by Yoriko Kushigemachi. © Nobuo Sekine.

(Kyo Machiko in Floating Weeds directed by Ozu Yasujiro)

Kyodo news obit

Machiko Kyo, internationally acclaimed Japanese actress, dies at 95

Kyo Machiko (wiki)

Kyō continued to act through her 80’s. Her final role was as “Matsuura Shino” in the NHK television drama series Haregi Koko Ichiban in 2000. In 2017 she was presented with an award of merit at the 40th Japanese Academy Awards.[1] After retiring from film, she moved back to Osaka, where she resided until her death.
Kyō never married, although her romantic relationship with Daiei’s president Masaichi Nagata was well-publicized in her native country.
Kyō died from heart failure on May 12, 2019. She was 95

(Kyo Machiko with Marlon and Glenn Ford from the Tea House of the August Moon)

Her sole role in a non-Japanese film was as the young geisha Lotus Blossom from The Teahouse of the August Moon opposite Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa)

(Rashomon – Kurosawa, cinematography by Miyagawa)

(The Face of Another, Kyo Machiko directed by Teshigahara)

Street of Shame
Kenji Mizoguchi and actresses on the set of his film “Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai)

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Photo by Fung Lin Hall (Scottsdale, Arizona)

The Dolls – (Directed by Takeshi Kitano, Poland gave this the best film award – costume design by Yoji Yamamoto)

Name these girls – Happy Hinamatsuri album

Google Hinamatsuri

The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, lit. “doll floating”), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them.(via wiki)

Japanese Literature Scholar, Translater Donald Keene died at 96.

Akutagawa Hiroshi, Mishima and Donald Keene
Mishima (his final performance)

His autobiography is an excellent read.. what an amazing life.

Keene Observation (On his 84th birthday)

Donald Keene

Interesting review of his book by Colin Marshall.. Donald Keene on Familiar Terms.

Enigmatic Emperor

Kiki Kirin

Josh Parmer posted on FB a sad and shocking news that Kiki Kirin (樹木 希林) passed away. (See a great photo of Kiki there)

May your body rest and your soul soar Kiki Kirin. You have been one of my favorite actresses since I first saw you back in Still Walking.

Japan times Obit

Interview with Kiki
Kiki Kirin’s response here.

Regarding the afterlife, there is the Buddhist idea of rebirth. Right now, my soul is in this body and this body is Kirin Kiki. After this body is used up and death comes around, that soul and spirit moves on and reappears. I don’t see death as an end.

Kiki with Nagase (Previous post)

Koreeda and Kiki (Shoplifters won Palme’dor at Cannes – 2018)

Still Walking

Previous Cannes festival.

Kiki, for whom After the Storm is her fifth Koreeda film, described the director as among one of the most observant she has seen in her 55-year career.

(Franco Zeffirelli, Olivia Hussey and Akira Fuse)

Olivia Hussey and Fuse Akira

Olivia Hussey in Japan

Building Bloc -積木の部屋 (積木の部屋 / 布施明)

Flamenco guitar and hear him singing (Youtube)

Akira Fuse wrote the song and lyrics and Olivia Hussey appeared toward the end of this video.

My way in Japanese.

1)Cyclamen Fuse’s early hit song.

2)
Playing Oboe..
Cyclamen his early hit.

Fuse’s interpretation of Aznavour song in Japanese

Doukoku

(An elegant calligraphic note is a poem written by Fuse Akira)

Fuse Akira’s Novel: Daddy

Happy birthday Leonard Berstein!

Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa (made history with Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Ikiru)

Obit – shinobu-hashimoto-dies-at-100

Screenwriter for Rashomon dies – (deadline)

(Samurai Rebellion directed by Kobayashi, screenwriting by Hashimoto)

Mainichi obit

via Gojira fan

See youtube here ..

How to Marry a Millionaire – (2015 Acrylic by Tomoo Gokita)

Chloe Sevigny, Kazumi Hayashi, Lily Ludlow, and Tomoo Gokita)

via

Tomoo Gokita “PEEKABOO” exhibition opening and after party at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo

On view until June 24th, 2018 at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 3 Chome-20-2 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Tomoo Gokita Mary Boon Gallery

Artnet

Bathing Beauty Sculptures

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The Shoplifters wins Palme d’Or.

Japan Times – Kore eda, Master of Humanism

Winners at Cannes here.

Palme d’Or: “Shoplifters,” Hirokazu Kore-eda

Grand Prix: “BlacKkKlansman,” Spike Lee

Jury Prize: “Capernaum,” Nadine Labaki

Special Palme d’Or: “The Image Book,” Jean-Luc Godard

Best Actress: Samal Yeslyamova, “Akya”

Best Actor: Marcello Fonte, “Dogman”

Best Director: Pawel Pawlikowski, “Cold War”

Best Screenplay (tie): Alice Rohrwacher, “Happy as Lazzaro” & Nader Saeivar, “Three Faces”

Camera d’Or: “Girl,” Lukas Dhont

Short Film Palme d’Or: “All These Creatures,” Charles Williams

Queer Palm (Feature): “Girl,” Lukas Dhont

Queer Palm (Short): “The Orphan,” Carolina Markowicz

Kore eda Films from previous posts.
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Still Walking

Nobody Knows
Film Quiz + Nobody Knows + Cities & Neglected Children

Previous Cannes festival.

Kiki, for whom After the Storm is her fifth Koreeda film, described the director as among one of the most observant she has seen in her 55-year career.

Kiki, Kore eda, Nagase etc

Ike no Taiga

Met Museum (Click on + to see Meng Jia Loses His Hat (left); The Chinese Poet Su Shi (right))

Ike No Taiga:Influence of the Middle Kingdom and humble background

Ike No Taiga :True View (Japan Times) travel painter.

‘The Genius of Ike no Taiga: Carefree Traveler, Legendary Painter,” at Kyoto National Museum, is magisterial. Edo Period (1603-1868) Kyoto teemed with big name painters, but Taiga (1723-1776) was superlative.

Yojimbo -( Kurosawa, cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa )

Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa)

Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa)

At MoMa calendar
Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s
Greatest Cinematographer
Through April 29
The Museum of Modern Art

Kazuo Miyagawa (Japan Society)

Born in Kyoto on 25 February 1908, he was introduced at the age of 12 to the art of Sumi-e, a style of ink wash painting in which the dilution of the ink and the mastery of the brush allows the artist to obtain every possible shade of grey. Miyagawa would later state that “it was my training in ink wash painting that really taught me how to see.”

See more AFCinema

Kenji Mizoguchi (on the chair), Miyagawa (behind) and actresses on the set of his film “Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai)

Ayako Wakao
with Michio Kogure..from Sisters of Gion.

Irezumi
(Directed by Yasuzo Masumura)
Miyagawa filmed Ayako Wakao in Ozu’s Floating Weed, Gion’s Sisters.

Floating Weeds

Ozu Yasujiro and Kazuo Miyagawa

Anonymous source

Another of Miyagawa’s masterful achievements was on Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad (1965), where he supervised 164 cameramen, who used 234 different lenses to capture the dramatic intensity of competition in extreme close-up.

Tokyo Olympiad – Kon Ichikawa

Yayoi
Yayoi Kusama with one of her Infinity Net paintings in New York, c. 1961 (repost)

(via)
George Clooney was customized by Yayoi Kusama

Photographed by Emma Summerton, Clooney is decked out in a Giorgio Armani suit, shirt, bow tie, and shoes that are all customized by the artist Yayoi Kusama. According to the accompanying W article, the Japanese artist admitted to not being familiar with who the Hollywood star was.. (2013 – old news)

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Kusama and Joseph Cornell New York 1971

In 1972, American assemblage and collage artist Joseph Cornell died. Twenty-six years her senior, Cornell had been Kusama’s closest friend. New York was by this time home to a community of Japanese artists, but Kusama had avoided the associations many of her compatriots formed with groups such as the anti-art happening bunch in the neo-Dada group Fluxus.
“I had gone to New York to be independent,” she says, “Not to join a group.”
Cornell’s death left Kusama dangerously isolated, and her mental condition began to deteriorate. She experienced frequent hallucinations and bouts of severe depression and developed heart problems. Heeding her parents entreatments, Kusama returned to Japan. Her father died two years later, and despite out-patient psychiatric treatment, Kusama’s anxiety neurosis was now unmanageable. In 1977 she entered the psychiatric institution.
Kusama has lived in the same hospital for over 20 years. There is no furniture, save a bed. Her 12 square-meter room has a big, French-style bay window that looks out onto a small garden. Kusama sometimes watches people playing tennis in a court that lies behind the garden.
Every morning after breakfast, Kusama walks five minutes up Gaien Higashi street to her studio to paint. She walks back to the room for lunch, then returns to her studio and works through the afternoon. Kusama takes her dinner at the hospital before retiring each evening.
“It’s very comfortable, very private” says Kusama, “And very simple, I like it.”

Yayoi Kusama loves pumpkins and polka dots