Posts by lucinda
Katsura Kan: Butoh Dancer
At 36, Kyoto-born butoh dancer and choreographer Katsura Kan has survived as an independent dancer, working outside the established butoh companies…
Read MoreSano Toemon: Gardener
In the center of Maruyama Park there is a very large cherry tree… It was cultivated by the grandfather of Sano Tōemon, the sixteenth generation of a line of Sagano gardeners.
Read MoreRemembering Beijing
A PHOTO GALLERY BY STEWART WACHS
In the autumn of 1994 I went to Beijing with several rolls of T-Max film. Later, in Japan, introducing the exhibition from which most of these pictures were drawn, I wrote, “Beijing, like Kyoto, has lately chosen to hurl itself into the future. Here is a handful of memories it may find waiting there when it arrives.” That time came swiftly.
Read MoreForgetting, Remembering
JAPAN-BRAZIL
BY TERRY CAESAR
Few countries appear to have less in common with each other than Japan and Brazil. Consider only the woman in which each country is personified…
The Mystery of Mastery
It is not a coincidence that disciples of Zen who have achieved an intuition that is spiritual and transcendental and yet strikes decisively at the very heart of the physical world, are referred to as Masters…
Read MoreThey Who Render Anew: Japanese-English literary translators reflect upon their calling
Literary translations, and translators, remain central to the spread of Japanese culture and thought — especially in the West, where Japan is seldom covered in the mass media.
Read MoreRed Pine: Dancing With Words
When I first saw Red Pine’s translation of “The Poems of Cold Mountain,” I remember thinking, “This is something important — who’s this Red Pine?”
Read MoreYellow Mountain
A Minute and 100 Metres
I arrived via train, 40 hours and just under 4000km in a hard-seat, from Beijing, where rumours were circulating about the extent of the military presence, needle attacks, Uighur and Han street gangs…
Read MorePico Iyer is Lost
Pico Iyer is lost. It’s a condition he uses to great effect in his increasingly internalised travel books as we find him on the road to somewhere he’s not sure of.
Read MoreGay Jakarta: Defining the Emerging Community
Watch any television channel in Indonesia for more than half an hour and it’s obvious that waria (male-to-female transvestites) are tolerated throughout the country…
Read MoreSex in the City and Memoirs of a Geisha: The Way of Tea(se)
Memoirs of a Geisha could have explored in good story-telling fashion the intimacy and fullness’s of one geisha’s life from the inside out. But no! The filmmakers fashioned yet another Orientalist representation of traditional Asian femininity crafted in the frozen imagination of a Western man…
Read MoreHost Clubs: Lessons in Language, Culture, and Power
Hosts are sort of heterosexual male sex workers, but they do not sell ‘sex,’ though it can happen outside of the club. It is more of a companionship…
Read MoreIndia’s Bandit Queen: An Interview with Phoolan Devi
Astonishing viewers at the Cannes Film Festival, the 1994 film “Bandit Queen” thrust PHOOLAN DEVI into the international limelight. But Devi criticized the film for being overly graphic and for leaving out major events…
Read MoreBehind the Brocade Curtain
In the early 1990s I unwittingly moved into a Gion Festival neighborhood…One day I literally stumbled upon the festival’s gigantic floats, some as high as downtown buildings, and marveled at their exquisite adornments of exotic textiles and carvings. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but it blew my mind.
Read MoreLearning from Pyongyang TV
“The thing I like best about Pyongyang TV is no commercials…unless, of course, you understand the programming for what it really is —one long political commercial!”
Read MoreI Sing the City Eclectic
Veteran resident John Dougill offers a peek behind Kyoto’s glorious façade to reveal the history and workings of a remarkable culture…
Read MoreHesitant Laughter in the Land of a Thousand Smiles
A duck barks, then croaks, then meows. Students of the Pattana Village School in Bangkok’s Klong Toey slum sit on the concrete floor of the schoolyard to watch the Nithan Caravan puppet show…
Read MoreA Princess Ever, an Empress Never?
These days, a woman probably has more prospects of flying to the moon than becoming a titled member of one of the few remaining royal families, whose duties are much less glamorous…
Read MoreIcing on the Cake: A Week in the Life of a Tibetan Sand Mandala
Every day, a team of three to four monks, each with a dust mask covering nose and mouth to prevent an accidental breath from destroying their efforts, drew the exquisitely complex image, from memory without the benefit of even a sketch.
Read MoreInsider Outsider: The Way of the Yakuza
During my first interviews, O-oyabun was particularly eager to talk about ideology: The ‘Way of the Yakuza,’ ‘violating the law’ or ‘doing wrong things.’
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