...says Japanese are lousy at shapes but good at surfaces/textures. I am not sure that this is true about all Japanese art, but it certainly is true about Hiroshi himself. Here. Right click on the images then select "View Image" to see the details.
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
6.3.10
Hiroshi Suzuki
...says Japanese are lousy at shapes but good at surfaces/textures. I am not sure that this is true about all Japanese art, but it certainly is true about Hiroshi himself. Here. Right click on the images then select "View Image" to see the details.
1.3.10
Some Japanese enamels
Cloisonne enameling was not a traditional art in Japan and its birth is owed to just one fellow, Kaji Tsunekichi who, apparently bored out of his wits in the small provincial town of Toshima, in Owari, began to make reproductions of Chinese cloisonnes sometime around 1830. After 15 years he was joined by another, then another, then another; then the practice moved to bigger cities: Yokohama, Kyoto, Nagoya and cloisonne production became big business: both for export and domestic production. As the business grew, Japanese experimented with the technique ceaselessly, introducing new breakthroughs. Among the techniques they invented was musen ("no-fret") technique (in which wire is glued to the object, enamel applied to the spaces in between and the object then fired, but the wire is then removed while the enamels are still not fully dry). This creates clear color boundaries without the fret outlines. In a variation of the technique, enamels can be applied without fret at all, in which case the neighboring colors blend along a gradient, which creates the impression of wet on wet ink wash. Another technique is nagare-gusuri ("running colors"), in variation of which a dab of one enamel is applied in the center of another prior to firing. Here are a couple examples of effects which were made possible by these techniques.
22.1.10
Some thoughts upon the reading of Tanizaki
Tanizaki's life doubles up on itself, in the shape of the letter U. He started out as a Westernizing Young Turk -- from Tokyo, too: through which all foreign ignorance and diseases enter -- the fish rots from the head, don't you know. But he ended up as a back-to-our-(Japanese)-roots cultural conservative -- and even moved to Kyoto -- the delicious Hana no Kyoto, the cultural capital, away from the Tokyo head-rot.
How very moving, say the critics -- a Damascus like conversion. They point to Some Prefer Nettles as the inflection point. They point to the Bunraku in it as the beginning of Tanizaki's interest in Japanese traditional arts.
Too bad about the Bunraku in it, though: I could have written those bits. Why, I could have written them better: to write them better would not have been very hard.
For instance, Tanizaki's discussion of the art form (through the father-in-law's lips) proposes that puppets are to be appreciated in proportion to their life-likeness. Thus, he argues that western marionettes are inferior to Bunraku because they are not as lifelike as Bunraku. (Tanizaki must not have seen good western marionettes).
But any seasoned puppet-theater connoisseur knows that a puppet's excellence lies precisely in its puppet-likeness; that is to say, in the ways in which it explores puppethood; in all the wonderful and surprising ways, in other words, in which puppets are unlike men. Indeed, this is puppet theater's whole -- and only -- aesthetic rationale -- to be unlike the life it depicts. It would have no business existing otherwise (since live actors will always be more lifelike than puppets). Was it Grotowski? Theater which pretends to be life is not a theater, it is a pretense.
Nettles' other traditional bit -- Tanizaki's comparisons between the Osaka and Tokyo singing styles -- is mere obfuscation, too. But let us not be harsh: it is extraordinarily difficult to think about music even for those who understand something of its structure. (It may seem to the speaker to be weighty and meaningful to say, as Tanizaki does, that a certain song sounds vulgar but, in fact, what needs to be observed is that it is unusually low-pitched, for instance).
And so, while I had hoped that Nettles might be an interesting discussion of Bunraku, set, like stones in a bracelet, in any old narrative, treated as a mere excuse for taking up Bunraku, Nettles' best bits turn out -- disappointingly -- the central love story, after all. But these bits read autobiographical, and autobiographical in the worst of all autobiographical ways: they read like the autobiography of a writer whose greatest claim to interest was that -- he was one; which isn't much interest really. (How interesting is a guy who sits all day at his desk, writing?) The autobiography is dull and the character uninteresting. Sorry.
Perhaps the problem lies in Tanizaki's productivity. Perhaps he was too busy writing to have any time left to experience, learn and digest; as a result, there is not enough content in the words. Try to do less, young man, they should teach at the school of creative writing. (Do they?) "Do not try to write thirty novels in your lifetime, young man; only God and Thomas Mann could write more than one good novel in their lifetimes, and both are dead."
Why, when one studies a foreign language, it is safe to assume that one needs to do at least four hours of homework for every hour of classwork; when one writes about art, the ratio has got to be even greater: one needs to spend a year at a minimum studying an art-form before one can hope to write an intelligent page about it; if then.
I would dearly have loved to read a good novel about some traditional art of Japan, but Tanizaki's isn't it. Kawabata's Old Capital is far more successful in this regard. Perhaps because it is Kawabata's last novel: he'd had fifty years of art appreciation behind him at the time of writing. He'd done his homework.
We should be glad of Tanizaki's U-turn, of course: he spent the last 25 years of his life rewriting Genji Monogatari into modern Japanese (the tenth century classic is too archaic for anyone to read today). This is, arguably his greatest contribution to civilization. But it does him little credit that his U-turn simply tracked state policy: Tanizaki westernized when the government policy called for westernization; and he began to go "native" just as the state propaganda turned nationalist. I am not saying he was slavishly following party-line, but he certainly wasn't going against the grain. Kawabata's (and Mishima's) Japaneseness is more convincing: they embraced it against the (again) westernizing policies of the post-war state.
To me, Nettles' only convincing section was Tanizaki's discussion of how Japanese cities rapidly uglified during modernization. This isn't a Japanese phenomenon alone: cities uglify everywhere equally, as if following some universal law of nature: all corpses rot, all cities develop. Development, it seems, necessitates ugliness. (De Soto, a Peruvian economist, explains why: they grow too fast to stay pretty. He promises hope: what are today relatively pretty parts of central London were as recently as 1840 god-awful slums. Just wait 170 years, it'll get better, it might seem. Why even Tokyo might look OK by the year 2080).
It occurs to me that the longing for the past which men like Tanizaki and Kawabata experienced was perhaps not the longing for national roots or authenticity but a flight from the ugliness of development.
Why should development be ugly? Why was the past so much prettier?
One could think up a million ad hoc theories. But -- are they? Were they? Is it possible that what survives of the past comes down to us as it were through a sieve, filtered; only the good survives, the bad having been eliminated and recycled? Has the past, so to speak, been censored for us by our ancestors?
Perhaps. If so, I wish we were censoring the present more actively.
How very moving, say the critics -- a Damascus like conversion. They point to Some Prefer Nettles as the inflection point. They point to the Bunraku in it as the beginning of Tanizaki's interest in Japanese traditional arts.
Too bad about the Bunraku in it, though: I could have written those bits. Why, I could have written them better: to write them better would not have been very hard.
For instance, Tanizaki's discussion of the art form (through the father-in-law's lips) proposes that puppets are to be appreciated in proportion to their life-likeness. Thus, he argues that western marionettes are inferior to Bunraku because they are not as lifelike as Bunraku. (Tanizaki must not have seen good western marionettes).
But any seasoned puppet-theater connoisseur knows that a puppet's excellence lies precisely in its puppet-likeness; that is to say, in the ways in which it explores puppethood; in all the wonderful and surprising ways, in other words, in which puppets are unlike men. Indeed, this is puppet theater's whole -- and only -- aesthetic rationale -- to be unlike the life it depicts. It would have no business existing otherwise (since live actors will always be more lifelike than puppets). Was it Grotowski? Theater which pretends to be life is not a theater, it is a pretense.
Nettles' other traditional bit -- Tanizaki's comparisons between the Osaka and Tokyo singing styles -- is mere obfuscation, too. But let us not be harsh: it is extraordinarily difficult to think about music even for those who understand something of its structure. (It may seem to the speaker to be weighty and meaningful to say, as Tanizaki does, that a certain song sounds vulgar but, in fact, what needs to be observed is that it is unusually low-pitched, for instance).
And so, while I had hoped that Nettles might be an interesting discussion of Bunraku, set, like stones in a bracelet, in any old narrative, treated as a mere excuse for taking up Bunraku, Nettles' best bits turn out -- disappointingly -- the central love story, after all. But these bits read autobiographical, and autobiographical in the worst of all autobiographical ways: they read like the autobiography of a writer whose greatest claim to interest was that -- he was one; which isn't much interest really. (How interesting is a guy who sits all day at his desk, writing?) The autobiography is dull and the character uninteresting. Sorry.
Perhaps the problem lies in Tanizaki's productivity. Perhaps he was too busy writing to have any time left to experience, learn and digest; as a result, there is not enough content in the words. Try to do less, young man, they should teach at the school of creative writing. (Do they?) "Do not try to write thirty novels in your lifetime, young man; only God and Thomas Mann could write more than one good novel in their lifetimes, and both are dead."
Why, when one studies a foreign language, it is safe to assume that one needs to do at least four hours of homework for every hour of classwork; when one writes about art, the ratio has got to be even greater: one needs to spend a year at a minimum studying an art-form before one can hope to write an intelligent page about it; if then.
I would dearly have loved to read a good novel about some traditional art of Japan, but Tanizaki's isn't it. Kawabata's Old Capital is far more successful in this regard. Perhaps because it is Kawabata's last novel: he'd had fifty years of art appreciation behind him at the time of writing. He'd done his homework.
We should be glad of Tanizaki's U-turn, of course: he spent the last 25 years of his life rewriting Genji Monogatari into modern Japanese (the tenth century classic is too archaic for anyone to read today). This is, arguably his greatest contribution to civilization. But it does him little credit that his U-turn simply tracked state policy: Tanizaki westernized when the government policy called for westernization; and he began to go "native" just as the state propaganda turned nationalist. I am not saying he was slavishly following party-line, but he certainly wasn't going against the grain. Kawabata's (and Mishima's) Japaneseness is more convincing: they embraced it against the (again) westernizing policies of the post-war state.
To me, Nettles' only convincing section was Tanizaki's discussion of how Japanese cities rapidly uglified during modernization. This isn't a Japanese phenomenon alone: cities uglify everywhere equally, as if following some universal law of nature: all corpses rot, all cities develop. Development, it seems, necessitates ugliness. (De Soto, a Peruvian economist, explains why: they grow too fast to stay pretty. He promises hope: what are today relatively pretty parts of central London were as recently as 1840 god-awful slums. Just wait 170 years, it'll get better, it might seem. Why even Tokyo might look OK by the year 2080).
It occurs to me that the longing for the past which men like Tanizaki and Kawabata experienced was perhaps not the longing for national roots or authenticity but a flight from the ugliness of development.
Why should development be ugly? Why was the past so much prettier?
One could think up a million ad hoc theories. But -- are they? Were they? Is it possible that what survives of the past comes down to us as it were through a sieve, filtered; only the good survives, the bad having been eliminated and recycled? Has the past, so to speak, been censored for us by our ancestors?
Perhaps. If so, I wish we were censoring the present more actively.
5.4.09
53 Stations of the Tokaido
This picture belongs to the instantly recognizable series of 53 Stations of the Tokaido, published in 1832, which made Hiroshige Ando famous (and, eventually, immortal). These woodcuts are horizontally oriented, dramatic landscapes with brief inscriptions, in the style of Chinese literati landscapes. Hiroshige apparently also made a vertical series, referred to as Upright Tokaido, (published in 1855). The style is the same:
The author of this website has set out to visit, sketch and woodcut all the 55 locations of the series as they appear now. (And to try soba noodles at each location while he is at it). The contrasts between now and then serves well to illustrates the postwar Japanese enthusiasm for reinforced concrete. It is quite sobering.
The website also contains very interesting discussion of each of Hiroshige's paintings (from the horizontal series) showing how Hiroshige intentionally misinterpreted the views in his pictures -- made some angles appear steeper, or some heights higher than they were in reality, in order to add drama to the resulting picture.
Eventually, many different editions of the 53 stations of the Tokaido were created (see all of them here) some by Hiroshige and some by many different authors. The woodcuts assembled at the Gulbenkian exposition in Lisbon (which you can view here), though the introduction ascribes them to Hiroshige, are an entirely different kettle of fish.
Look at this picture:
Name of the Station is given as "Akasaka" (No. 37); the print's title is "The appearance of the goddess of water to the famous biwa player Fujiwara no Moronaga as a sign of appreciation of his genius". This mythical event is supposed to have occurred (under falling maples leaves) to the historical figure of Fujiwara no Moronaga (1138-1192), a musician, poet, and a high ranking imperial official, at location near the Akasaka station.
This series is sometimes referred to in English as "The 53 Parallels for the Tokaido Road" (or just "Pairs") and is reported as being mixed work of Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, and Hiroshige and published around 1845 by different printers.
These prints are not landscapes. Instead, they bear resemblance to the modern American knowledge cards (e.g. baseball cards). At the upper right corner of each is the title of the series ("53 stations of the Tokaido"). To the left is the name of the particular stop and the particular local lore represented in the print. Below is an illustration of the story. The lore consists of various stories from mythology, history, and literature as well as information concerning famous local "products" (embroidery, courtesans...) It represents a kind of encyclopedia, or dictionary, arranged not according to the order of the alphabet, but in order of the order of the places along the famous road.
It reminds me of Pausanias who described his travels across Greece in the second century A.D. At each point where he stopped, he tired to report =the ancient lore of the place: there, too, knowledge was organized by geography. (In the now lost, very learned Thebaid of Antimachus of Colophon, full of encyclopedic information, the organizing principle of knowledge was the epic story Seven Against Thebes). The Touring Club's guide to Rome reads somewhat like this (this island mid-course Tiber was formed by the bodies of the dead bodyguards of king Tarquinius fleeing the city; on this corner Cinna was assassinated; in this house the architect Borromini committed suicide by plunging a sword in his gut and took the next 48 hours to die, etc.) Google tries to do something similar with its google maps which include links to websites and pictures; but google isn't literary.
I find the idea that one could read the landscape absolutely fascinating; I am not sure why.
*
The stories told in Pairs were well known at the time of their publication. Modern Japanese don't seem to know any of them. It somehow seems a loss. Is it?
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