Four Decades of Anti-nuclear Activism
Part 2 of an Extended version of our Interview with Kyoto Activist Aileen Mioko Smith published in KJ 99, Dec. 2020.
Read MoreDocumenting Minamata with W. Eugene Smith
AN INTERVIEW WITH KYOTO ACTIVIST AILEEN MIOKO SMITH
Read MoreWhere tea stirs remembrance
In a current landscape dotted with fast-food hegemony and the rapid erosion of lazy afternoons, is nostalgia enough to carry forth the legacy of Irani cafés in India?
Read MoreSpring 2021 Reads from Tuttle
The roundup of new books on Japan food, culture and travel by Tuttle Publishing.
Read MoreA life of art and activism
The life trajectory of Japanese American artist, activist, feminist and “Modern Buddhist Revolutionary” Mayumi Oda is recounted in her new autobiography.
Read MoreThe Big Picture: Birds’-eye Overviews of the Japanese Archipelago
Yoshida Hatsusaburo (1884-1955) was known as “the modern Hiroshige” and created over 2,000 maps in his lifetime.
Read MoreAnother Pool Party in Saigon
The joke of it is that, like a lot of people out here, he has no home to go back to. You don’t move to Saigon if your life is going well. He doesn’t even speak to his family. He’s lost touch with his real friends in England.
Read MoreIn the Cave
The cave with the hidden Book of the Dead is a powerful metaphor for the pandemic interval we’re experiencing, a between-space whose teachings are accessible if we have the right perspective.
Read MoreKiro: Carving out the Future of Hakone Yosegi Marquetry
The name of Kiro, a workshop specializing in Hakone yosegi marquetry, rendered using the kanji characters for “wood” and “path,” seems fitting for an art form that has seen remarkable innovation over generations and whose artisans continue to forge a path forward into the future.
Read MoreTreasures
I felt clean for the first time in my life. That’s what Aldous Huxley said when his house and everything in it was destroyed in a fire. I admired the man and read everything he wrote. And I longed for this kind of non-attachment, too.
Read MoreShared “Vision”: KYOTOGRAPHIE 2020 in Review
“Vision,” the theme of this year’s KYOTOGRAPHIE International Photography Festival, seeks to highlight photography’s power to overcome barriers and satisfy (in the words of New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield) “that terrible desire to establish contact.”
Read MoreClimate Crisis Sparks a Revival of Youth Activism in Japan
Youth climate activists are faced with the challenge of engaging a relatively complacent student population on an issue that seems much less immediate and visible than the presence of the US military in the 1960s did: environmental pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases.
Read MoreA Rare Pleasure
The few translations that do exist of particular haiku poets have focused on male poets such as Basho, Shiki and Issa. For these reasons alone, readers should welcome the translation of the work of a premiere Japanese woman poet artist-calligrapher, Kaga-no-Chiyo.
Read MoreA Culture of Simplicity
The simplicity of wabi-sabi is best described as the state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence.
Read MoreSeeking Ma
“There is something magical about a torii gate floating in the middle of a lake or shoreline. Once I got more immersed in the study of Japanese culture and religions I developed a parallel appreciation and respect for the symbolism and cultural importance they have to the Japanese people.”
Read MoreSome Gravel, Some Stones: Nature, Art and Spirit in Japanese Gardens
Stephen Mansfield interviews Marion Poschmann, whose novel set in Japan, The Pine Islands, was winner of the Berlin Prize for Literature and shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
Read MoreNOTICE: Kyoto Journal is going digital til 2021
We have made the difficult decision to suspend our printing operation and sales of our subscriptions, until further notice. Back issues are still available and will be shipped to you if we can ship them to you!
Read MoreHidden Masterpieces
As canals are to Venice, gardens are to Kyoto, even if mostly concealed behind the walls of private residences, or within sub-temples that have not transformed themselves into tourist attractions.
Read MoreAshwini Bhat: The #claynomad at home
From India, Australia, Japan, to the United States, and elsewhere she pursued variety and experience, which for a time was recorded on her social media under the hashtag #claynomad.
Read MoreA Critical Moment for Japanese Art Curation
Morse warned that in 2020, over 75% of specialists in Japanese art would be at retirement age. She called on the museum community to focus on developing a new generation of curators in response to the impending exodus of experts from the field.
Read MoreThe Life and Times of Okada Torajiro and his Seiza Method of Self-Harmonization
To actually practice Seiza, one needs no group or leader, no visualization, vocalization, counting, or mantra repetition, and no special symbolic objects, apparatus, or vestments. Seiza is truly more zen than Zen.
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