Archive for the 'Japan' Category

Issey Miyake (22 April 1938 – 5 August 2022)

Tuesday, August 9th, 2022
  • Issey Miyake an influential Japanese fashion designer, dies aged 84.

    BBC – see his fashion in pictures


  • Issey Miyake collaborated with the performance artist.. see him upside down wrapped in something.


  • (Joni Mitchell has been championing Issey Mayake for years.)


  • (Issey Miyake, 1982 Spring-Summer Collection, rattan bodice and nylon polyester skirt. The rattan is split, colored, and polished. It has been formed to follow the line of the body and bamboo has been woven in to hold the curve in place, and prevent the rattan from separating. Produced with the collaboration of the bamboo artist Kosuge Shochikudo. Photo: Eiichiro Sakata.)

  • “They Say Nothing Stays the Same”, Joe Odagiri, C. Doyle collaborated again.

    Saturday, July 2nd, 2022
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    They Say Nothing Stays Same (Aru Sendou no hanashi)

    Odagiri’s somber observations about transition within tradition make for a meditative, rewarding viewing experience.
    Ten years after his debut feature, Looking for Cherry Blossoms (2009), actor-turned-director Joe Odagiri‘s belated follow-up, They Say Nothing Stays the Same, was selected in a sidebar of 2019’s Venice Film Festival.

    Joe Odagiri

    photo by Masatoshi Nagase

    Immunodeficiency – MUBI (See photos of Chris Doyle, Tilda Swinton and Joe Odagiri.. future project?)

  • As an actor Odagiri joe was directed by Kim Ki Duk, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Koreeda.

  • Re visiting “Kamikaze Girls”

    Tuesday, May 17th, 2022
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    (Kamikaze Girls – singer Anna Tsuchiya as Ichigo – the biker girl, she was ferocious.)

  • Lolita Fashion, Biker Gangs and the Power of Friendship

    One thing about this film that really stood out to me is the stylish editing and cinematography.

  • Kamikaze Girls wiki

    Kamikaze Girls was awarded Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, and two other awards at the 26th Yokohama Film Festival.[8] It also won Best Film and Best Director at the 14th Japan Film Professional Awards.[15] For her performance in the film, Anna Tsuchiya was named Best New Actress at the Awards of the Japanese Academy, the Blue Ribbon Awards, and the Hochi Film Awards

    Mario Ambrosius Curated Guen Inokuma, Léonard Foujita at Gallery in Ginza

    Thursday, May 12th, 2022
  • Mario A

    Mario A curated paintings by Léonard Foujita and Guenichiro Inokuma at Chuo Gallery in Ginza

  • Guen I.
    Guen (this is how he signed his art) came to live in Honolulu in the mid 70’s after he suffered a stroke in NYC. He lived in Japan in the Summer and the Winter in Honolulu. Guen became a mentor to my sister Fung-Ching Kelling during his stays in Honolulu.

    (My sister Fung Ching Kelling sitting in front. Fung Lin Hall (myself) on the right of Guen Inokuma)

  • In My Resume (youtube only in Japanese)

    .. Inokuma and Foujita shared a house when they escaped wartime Paris. He talked about how Foujita bought the train tickets at the train station (today Musee d`Orsay) and that he only took a Matisse painting and left everything else in Paris. They stayed in the countryside more than month living in the same house.
    He showed us a special spot that Isamu Noguchi loved on the island of Oahu and showed us the beauty of natural rocks.
    In NY Guen Inokuma (sensei) and his wife Fumiko took my sister and I to Mark Rothko’s apartment and told us what he knew of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Yoko Ono and Isamu Noguchi were his good friends.

    Painting (via artnet)
    Title : City Composition (3)
    Medium : Oil on Canvas
    Size : 30 x 40 in. / 76.2 x 101.6 cm.
    Year : 1966 –
    Contemporary Japanese Art from the Collection of B.H. Rockefeller

  • Hinamatsuri – Girls Day in Japan, March 3, 2022

    Thursday, March 3rd, 2022
  • Happy Hinamatsuri Girls day in Japan

    37 Seconds Movie directed by Hikari

    A story of Cerebral Palsy and self-dicovery


  • (Moving Shinji Somai )
    Film review “Moving’ by Shinji Somai

    13-year-old Tomoko Tabata provides a great anchor for the film in her debut, as the narrative seems to follow her every whim. The plethora of feelings, behaviors, and psychological statues she depicts is the highlight of a naturalistic performance, which allowed her to begin a career in acting that continues until today.

    1acarSolar
    Girls building a solar toy car.

    See girls building Solar Car toy

  • Jakucho Setouchi – (15 May 1922 – 9 November 2021)

    Friday, November 12th, 2021


  • (Hagiwara Kenichi or known as Sho-Ken and Jakucho Setouchi – from the Magazine Jakucho 2009) Hagiwara Kenichi and Jakucho Setouchi were very close, she was his surrogate mother. In this magazine their trips to Yokahama and Kyoto and their daily conversation were recorded. Hagiwara Kenichi passed away a few years ago.


  • Mario Ambrosieus posted the sad news of the passing of Jakucho Setouchi at 99 years old.

    Distant Rain Jakucho Setouchi and Tess Gallahar
    (I would like to read this.)

    Distant Rain records a conversation between the eloquent American poet Tess Gallagher and the renowned Japanese novelist and Buddhist nun Jakucho Setouchi that took place in 1990 at Jakuan, Setouchi’s home temple, in Sagano, Japan.

    Gallagher had recently experienced the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, an internationally renowned short story writer. In a frank and at times humorous exchange, the two women trade observations about love and loss, and about the role of writing in coping with grief.

    Their words, reproduced in both English and Japanese, unfold accordion-style across the rich colors and striking imagery of artist Keiko Hara’s wood-block and stencil prints. Complemented by the exquisite lettering of typographer Maki Yamashita and under the guidance of master bookbinder Atsuo Ikuta, Distant Rain is not only a moving tribute to the sustaining power of love but also a stunning example of the art of book design


    (For Hagiwara Kenichi, the last time he visited Ten Ryu Mon in Kyoto was 25 years ago)

    Naomi Kawase – “True Mothers’ ( japanese title Asa ga kuru)

    Thursday, September 9th, 2021

  • A review of True Mothers

  • (Azu Makita was in “After the Storm” “The Third Murder’, “The Shoplifters” directed by Kore eda)


  • Juliette Binoche and Naomi Kawase photographed by Leslie Kee for Vogue Taiwan, 2018

    The Dvd of “True Mother”s offers Bonus feature discussion of Naomi Kawase and Juliette Binoche. Both ladies often became emotional and were in tears.

  • 1an-2kawase

    1ankawase
    Naomi Kawase
    Masatoshi Nagases previous post
    Naomi Kawase wiki

    She employs this documentary-realism to focus on individuals of lesser cultural status, challenging prevailing representations of women within the male-dominated Japanese film industry.[1] This theme is also connected to her own personal reflections on contemporary issues in the current climate of economic depression such as the declining birthrate, alienation, and the collapse of traditional family structures

    Anatahan – Josef Von Sternberg, working in Japan

    Saturday, May 29th, 2021
  • Anatahan
    Akemi Negishi played the Queen Bee.

    Decided to see Anatahan after learning that Dominique De Menil worked as a scriptgirl to assist Joseph von Sternberg.

    Land of the lost, Close Up on Josef Von Sternberg’s Anatahan (MuBi)

  • Mubi film lists – Josef Von Sternberg (May 29 – his birthday today)

  • Joseph Von Sternberg and Setsuko Hara

  • Ray Manzarek said.

    “I had a class with Joseph von Sternberg at UCLA, which changed my life, if not my attitude towards women, which has always been lustfully wonderfully beautiful, but in terms of style,” he says.

    Between 1959 and 1963, Sternberg taught a course on film aesthetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, based on his own works. His students included undergraduate Jim Morrison and graduate student Ray Manzarek, who went on to form the rock group The Doors shortly after receiving their respective degrees in 1965. The group recorded songs referring to Sternberg, with Manzarek later characterizing Sternberg as “perhaps the greatest single influence on The Doors
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_von_Sternberg

  • Enduring Charm of Hideko Takamine – (March 27, 1924 – December 28, 2010)

    Saturday, March 27th, 2021
  • 1aElvis

  • (Yumi Shirakawa, Hideko Takamine, Yoko Minamida, Misako Uji and Yumiko Hasegawa visiting Elvis.)

    Hideko Takamine was a Japanese actress who began as a child actress and maintained her fame in a career that spanned 50 years. She is particularly known for her collaborations with directors Mikio Naruse and Keisuke Kinoshita, with Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) and Floating Clouds (1955) being among her most noted films

    Hideko Takaminetakamine

  • A child actress on the right was Takamine Hideko .


  • (Kayama Yuzo and Hideko Takamine in “Yearning directed by Mikio Naruse)

    1mifuneDeko

    Mifune and Takamine Hideko in A Wife’s Heart

  • Takamine Hideko and Akutagawa Hiroshi in Mistress (film based on Ogai’s Wilde Geese)

    Ōgai’s most popular novel, Gan (1911–13; part translation: The Wild Goose), is the story of the undeclared love of a moneylender’s mistress for a medical student who passes by her house each day.

  • Click to see large 1mikioNaruse

    Takamine Hideko in Naruse masterpiece..
    (Wong Kar Wai was thinking of Naruse when he made In the Mood for Love.)

    Gesture and pose of cinema of M.Naruse

    Harvard Archive list of Naruse films

  • 1mikio3films
    Summer Clouds, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Floating Clouds (3 film stills)

    Toko Shinoda (篠田 桃紅, Shinoda Tōkō, 28 March 1913 – 1 March 2021)

    Sunday, March 7th, 2021
  • Azurebumble


  • (Michinoku)


    Focus art of Toko Shinoda

    Toko Shinoda wiki

  • Toko Shinoda (篠田 桃紅, Shinoda Tōkō, 28 March 1913 – 1 March 2021) was a Japanese artist working with sumi ink paintings and prints. Her art merged traditional calligraphy with modern abstract expressionism. A 1983 interview in Time magazine asserted “her trail-blazing accomplishments are analogous to Picasso’s”.[1] Shinoda’s works have been exhibited at the Hague National Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Cincinnati Art Museum, and other leading museums of the world.

  • See more from Artnet – Toko Shinoda

  • Shinoda Masahiro (retired filmmaker, husband of Shima Iwashita)is her cousin – (via Asahi )

    March 3, Happy Hinamatsuri – Girls Day in Japan 2021

    Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021
  • 37 Seconds Movie directed by Hikari

    A story of Cerebral Palsy and self-dicovery


  • (Moving Shinji Somai )
    Film review “Moving’ by Shinji Somai

    13-year-old Tomoko Tabata provides a great anchor for the film in her debut, as the narrative seems to follow her every whim. The plethora of feelings, behaviors, and psychological statues she depicts is the highlight of a naturalistic performance, which allowed her to begin a career in acting that continues until today.

    Kenzo Takada Fashion Designer, Portrait Painter Dies of Coronavirus

    Sunday, October 4th, 2020
  • Fashion designer Kenzo Takada dies of Coronavirus

    BBC obit


    (Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada posing during a photo session in his home in Paris on January 9, 2019. AFP)
    via

  • Self Portrait