autumn viewing at enkoji temple

08Nov09

Enkoji temple (圓 光寺) is one of the nicer places to go for autumn maple-leaf viewing.  The temple was founded as a place for scholarship and learning in 1601 by Tokugawa Ieyasu.  It was originally in Fushimi, in the southern part of Kyoto, but in 1667 the temple was moved to its current location near the base of Mt. Hiei.  Enkoji has several gardens featuring beautifully sculpted maple trees and there’s a walking path that will take you through the temple graveyard and then up a hillside behind the temple complex where you can find some stunning views of Kyoto.  The buildings and gardens at Enkoji are perfectly laid out with the idea of ‘the view’ in mind.  At every corner, everywhere you turn, there’s a bit of framed visual splendor ready to catch your mind and slow it down.  It’s a place that, finally, demands that you notice everything — and everything you notice is quiet, beautiful, and somehow absolutely to the point.

(All photographs featured were taken during November of 2007.)

Photo information, by order of appearance, including camera, lens, and film type:

1) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, Kodak 400UC.

2) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

3) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, Kodak 400UC.

4) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

5) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, uncertain film type.

6) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

7) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

Filed under: Japan, Kansai, culture, history, nature, photography, religion, travel   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: maple trees, 紅葉, Kyoto, 京都, temple, Buddhism, autumn, maples, 秋, fall colors, 35mm Ultron, rangefinder, Voigtländer, Tokugawa Ieyasu, 徳川 家康, photography, 15mm Heliar, Japanese garden, Buddhist, garden, Bessa R2A, Bessa-L, autumn colors, maple leaves, Enkoji, Enkoo-ji, 圓 光寺, brilliant color, beautiful views, film camera

autumn swordsman

06Nov09

Hachidai shrine (八大神社) is right next to Shisendo, and is most famous because of it’s association with Miyamoto Musashi, one of Japan’s most famous swordsmasters. Supposedly he came here to pray before the epic battle with the Yoshioka school in which he single-handedly consigned an entire branch of the school to oblivion.  Here’s how Wikipedia tells the tale:

Musashi challenged Yoshioka Seijūrō, master of the Yoshioka School, to a duel. Seijūrō accepted, and they agreed to a duel outside Rendaiji in Rakuhoku, in the northern part of Kyoto on 8 March 1604. Musashi arrived late, greatly irritating Seijūrō. They faced off, and Musashi struck a single blow, per their agreement. This blow struck Seijūrō on the left shoulder, knocking him out, and crippling his left arm. He apparently passed on the headship of the school to his equally accomplished brother, Yoshioka Denshichirō, who promptly challenged Musashi for revenge. The duel variously took place in Kyoto outside a temple, Sanjūsangen-dō. Denshichirō wielded a staff reinforced with steel rings (or possibly with a ball-and-chain attached), while Musashi arrived late a second time. Musashi disarmed Denshichirō and defeated him. This second victory outraged the Yoshioka clan, whose head was now the 12-year old Yoshioka Matashichiro. They assembled a force of archers, musketeers and swordsmen, and challenged Musashi to a duel outside Kyoto, near Ichijoji Temple. Musashi broke his previous habit of arriving late, and came to the temple hours early. Hidden, Musashi assaulted the force, killing Matashichiro, and escaping while being attacked by dozens of his victim’s supporters. With the death of Matashichiro, this branch of the Yoshioka School was destroyed.

Because of the association with Musashi, Hachidai has — in addition to a very prominent statue of Musashi — a variety of Musashi-related paraphernalia on offer, including a special goshiun stamp that features Musashi in full attack mode with both katanas blazing.

In any case, Musashi aside, Hachidai is a small but beautiful shrine and is well worth a side trip on a visit to the more famous temple sites of Shisendo and Enkoji; the autumn colors are lovely and it’s a good place to take a break from the aesthetic purity of Buddhist gardens for a moment and take in a bit of swordsman-style kitsch.  Hachidai itself is dedicated to Susano-o no Mikoto, god of storms and the sea, though it really does emphasize the Musashi connection above all else.  Here’s the English text of the sign out in front of the shrine:

This shrine was established in 1294, with “SUSANOHNO-MIKOTO” as the main diety.  Known as “Northern Gion,” people pray here for Happiness, Success in business, studies and marriage etc.  Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s greatest Swordsmaster defeated the Yoshioka school nearby at “Sagarimatsu” after praying at this shrine.  Preserved here is a section of the famous “Sagarimatsu” pine, under which they fought.

You can see Musashi standing under the Sagarimatsu here, in this dashing portrait of the swordsman in all his youthful vigor.

On a trip to Kyushu several years ago I also had the opportunity to visit Reigando, the cave where Musashi completed the famous Book of Five Rings just before his death.  It’s a much more solemn spot than Hachidai, and also well worth a visit.

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Tags: defeat of Yoshioka school, duel, 須佐之男命, god of storms, god of the sea, Hachidai, Kyoto, Miyamoto Musashi, Musashi vs. Yoshioka, Reigando, Sagarimatsu, samurai, Shinto, shrine, Susano-o no Mikoto, swordsman, Yoshioka Matashichiro, Yoshioka School, 八大神社, 宮本 武蔵, 京都

autumn leaves at shisendo

05Nov09

Since autumn is here and the maple-viewing season is almost upon us, I thought I would drop a few seasonally appropriate posts.  These shots were taken a few years ago on a trip to Shisendo temple (詩仙堂) that was taken together with the lovely Ohta Ikuko.  Shisendo is especially famous for its maple trees, which flame on in the most amazing colors in late November.  The temple was established in 1641 by Ishikawa Jozan, a poet, scholar of Chinese classics, and a landscape gardener.  Apparently Jozan fought alongside Tokugawa Ieyasu in his battle against the Toyotomi clan, which then held Osaka Castle.  The name of the temple — which can loosely be translated as “great poet temple” — is associated with the 36 portraits of classical Chinese poets (painted by Kano Tanyu) that were displayed in the main room of the temple.

Photo information, by order of appearance, including camera, lens, and film type:

1) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, Kodak 400UC.

2) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, Kodak 400UC.

3) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

4) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

5) Voigtlander Bessa-L, 15mm Heliar, Kodak 400UC.

6) Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Velvia 100.

Filed under: Japan, Kansai, culture, history, literature, nature, photography, poetry, travel   |  2 Comments
Tags: 紅葉, Kyoto, 京都, temple, Buddhism, autumn, maples, changing of the leaves, fall colors, fall, poet, Buddhist temple, Shisendo, 詩仙堂, Chinese classical poetry, Ishikawa Jozan, Kano Tanyu, autumn colors, 狩野探幽, maple leaves, 石川丈山

a nickle bag of animation

29Oct09

Here’s a selection of five videos that have caught my attention recently, all of which are well worth watching.  It may only be a nickel bag of animation, but as far as I’m concerned there’s so much sugar here it might as well be a dime.

This is the first decently reproduced Tabaimo video that I’ve been able to find on line.  It was presumably aired on Vermilion Pleasure Night, a Japanese television show that combined comedy and animation.  This short video is called “Japanese Kitchen” and I’m not sure whether or not it’s a segment from Tabaimo’s larger installation piece, also called Japanese Kitchen, or whether it simply has the same title and deals with the same themes.  Tabaimo has a way of making everydayness seem deeply uncanny, and this piece is no exception.

History of the Main Complaint is a piece that examines the question of white culpability in relation to the violent history of apartheid-era South Africa.  It was made shortly after the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and it thematizes not only the act of excavating the submerged memories of South Africa’s violent history but also the question of what might constitute the proper cure for a state that has such a history of a violence and repression engraved literally into the body itself.   The pun on “complaint” is key here — a complaint is not only a physical ailment, but also the voice of those repressed South Africans who had been denied treatment for their suffering during the long reign of the apartheid state.  William Kentridge employs an animation technique that is perfectly in keeping with the thematic claims that he materializes in this work; using only charcoal he sketches a primary scene and then erases and overlays this primary scene in order to create motion.  However, the marks of the previous stills are never completely rendered invisible and their presence functions as a persistent trace of origin that can never be completely forgotten.  Just as the traumatic history of  apartheid-era South Africa can never be fully suppressed, so the marks on Kentridge’s pages never fully disappear under the onslaught of new production.

This OOIOO video was made by Shoji Goto, an incredible graphic designer and the husband of founding OOIOO member Yoshimi P-We.  Shoji, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few times, is an incredibly nice guy and is responsible for most (if not all) of the cover art for OOIOO’s releases.  It’s art that matches the OOIOO aesthetic well — a kind of imaginary cosmic pre-Jomon tribal pantheism as filtered through a dozen psychedelic effects circuits and viewed through a thousand-sided prismatic crystal ball.  I’ve seen OOIOO live several times now, and each time was an experience of total transportation.  You can download a more high-fidelity version of this video here.

I don’t know much about Metric, but this particular song sounds like the most fantastic Breeders number that never made it to wax.  I also don’t know much about Deco Dawson, except that he’s a young Canadian filmmaker and the director of this video.  There’s nothing particular new, startling, or revelatory about this video, but somehow all the elements cook together perfectly and I have to admit to being more than a little smitten with it.  Check out the Deco Dawson site for information about his films, as well as links to a vast library of fantastic early work that’s suspiciously reminiscent of Guy Maddin’s style.

Finally, here’s a little rarity that I stumbled upon entirely by accident.  It’s a Tadanori Yokoo version of the ChimChimChiree song from Mary Poppins, apparently from 1966.  I don’t know any more about it than that, but it’s pretty early Tadanori and it actually reminds me a lot of the work that Heinz Edelmann did for Yellow Submarine.  Of course, Yellow Submarine came out in 1968 so there couldn’t have been any direct influence on this animation.  Maybe it was something in the water.

Filed under: Japan, animation, art, cinema, culture, film, history, music, scraps and bones, video   |  2 Comments
Tags: animation, apartheid, たばいも, チムチムチェリー, charcoal animation, charcoal drawing, ChimChimChiree, chimney sweep, chimney sweep song, Deco Dawson, History of the Main Complaint, Japanese Kitchen, Mary Poppins, Metric, OOIOO, Shoji Goto, South Africa, Tabaimo, Tadanori Yokoo, video, video art, William Kentridge, 後藤 章治, 横尾忠則

masonna

28Oct09

Masonna (マソナ) is the name that Yamazaki Maso uses for his incredible one-man noise attack unit.  Along with Merzbow, Incapacitants, and Jojo Hiroshige (of Hijokaidan fame), Masonna is one of Japan’s most famous noise artists.  Masonna uses a variety of electronic devices and instruments to create shrieking walls of feedback and violent waves of distortion as he yelps and screams over the top.  In interviews Maso-san has said that what he’s trying to do with his noise unit is to summon the most extreme intensities of rock music and release them all at once in a single sonic attack of enormous magnitude.  The photo at the top of the page was taken at Alchemy Records, where Masonna works, during a tour of America-mura’s vast horde of underground record stores that I took with Andee, of San Francisco’s Aquarius Records, and his friend Josh.

Masonna’s live performaces are famous for the incredible energy that he releases as he jumps around the stage wildly, screams and stamps on his equipment, and rolls around as if possessed.  He often hurts himself during his performances, which are so extreme that they often last only a few minutes.  The special solo performance show that I saw as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations at Namba Bears lasted all of four minutes because Maso-san ended up injuring his knee as he was leaping through the air while swinging his microphone in circles.

The show may only have been four minutes long, but it was a four-minute monument of all-out sonic assault.  Listening to Masonna’s music is like hearing the screaming sounds of circuits as they die in a fiery conflagration, or perhaps the sounds that a wildly screaming coven of witches would make were they all somehow speaking through shorted microphones channeled through mixing boards stuffed solid with cyclotrimethylene trinitramine.  Or perhaps like the shouts of a cosmic alien intelligence beamed straight into your head, but too fast and intense to comprehend.

In addition to his numerous side projects and his work with the psych-garage group Acid Eater, Masonna often plays collaboratively with other musicians.  I saw a great show at Osaka’s nu-things featuring Mani Nuemeier of Guru Guru fame on drums playing with an all-star cast of Alchemists including Masonna (on analogue synthesizer), Jojo Hiroshige on guitar, Kakinoki (from Garadama), and Yoko Takano on bass.  One of the very best collaborative shows I’ve seen, however, had to be the duo of Masonna (on analogue synthesizer and vocals) andKawabata Makoto (of Acid Mothers Temple fame).  Makoto’s ripping, psychedelic guitar work and Masonna’s tripped out space-synth and shouting worked together to create a beautiful warped forest of sound that distributed itself as a slow motion explosion.

Listening to Masonna at home, on headphones, is a totally different experience than seeing Masonna perform life.  The disortion, feedback, and sonic intensity is all the same, but without the energy of the live show I find the noise attack to be strangely calming, almost trancelike.  After a while, Masonna Vs. Bananamara, an album that Masonna recorded in his room while he was still living at home, almost comes to sound like chattering insects shrieking in a language that might be piercing at first, but then starts to become familiar, as if with just a bit more exposure it might soon be possible to understand exactly what they’re saying.

Masonna’s Spectrum Ripper at UbuWeb

Kawabata Makota at the Japanese New Music Festival

Filed under: Japan, Kansai, Osaka, music, performance, video   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Alchemy Records, ジャパノイズ, マソナ, collaboration, harsh noise, Japanese noise, Japanoise, Makoto Kawabata, Masonna, music, noise, noise musicians, performance, show, Yamazaki Maso, 山崎 "マゾ" 卓志, 河端 一

garbage quintet: a suite of images featuring flotsam, jetsam, and dead fugu

22Oct09

Photo information, by order of appearance, including location, camera, lens, and film type:

1) Himeji coast, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 75mm Color-Heliar, Fujifilm Superia 400.

2) Himeji coast, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 75mm Color-Heliar, Fujifilm Superia 400.

3) Takarazuka mountains, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 35mm Ultron, Fujifilm Provia 100.

4) Himeji coast, Voigtlander Bessa R2A, 75mm Color-Heliar, Fujifilm Superia 400.

5) Toyonaka-shi, Voigtlander Bessa-T, 50mm Nokton, Fujifilm Natura 1600.

Filed under: Japan, Kansai, daily life, photography, scraps and bones   |  3 Comments
Tags: 35mm Ultron, 50mm Nokton, 75mm color-heliar, aerosol, analogue film, ふぐ, baseball, Bessa R2A, Bessa-T, can, casette gas sun, coast, dead fish, fugu, garbage, ocean, photography, pond, rangefinder, rope, trash, Voigtländer, waste

CARDBOARD and アホな走り集

19Oct09

It seems like I’m stumbling across all kinds of great video objects lately.  The first of today’s features include an amazing piece of animation in which strange creatures and robots painted onto cardboard come to life and inhabit the Dutch cityscape.  The video itself is the graduation project of Sjors Vervoort, and the soundtrack is by Steven Aerts.  Originally gleaned from Boing Boing, and a nice bookend to the pieces by BLU and David Ellis that were featured on this site yesterday.

The second video is called アホな走り集 (basically “Collection of Idiotic Running”) and I don’t know much about it except that it features music by Nujabes and incredibly slow motion silly-running (including a cameo by a sumo wrestler).  It kind of reminds me of a much more entertaining version of some of Bill Viola’s more recent work.  Passed on to me via my cousin, the brilliant Annelise DeVore.

Filed under: Japan, animation, art, culture, funs, music, scraps and bones, video   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: animation, アホな走り集, CARDBOARD, cardboard animation, Nujabes, robots, Sjors Vervoort, slow motion, slow motion running, stop motion, strange creatures

COMBO and MUTO — revolutionary urbanism with a spraycan

18Oct09

BLU, the Bologna-based street artist and wall-art animator, has recently teamed up with David Ellis, a Brooklyn-based “motion painter,” to produce the animated work COMBO, an amazing piece of urban re-inhabitation that imaginatively brings dead urban space back to life through the use of paint and stop motion.  In the opening sequence of COMBO, a pile of scrap wood is dropped into a well, which then becomes a mouth.  The mouth digests the wood, a face appears, and twin spires of fire exit from recently opened eyes.  This is clearly a visual representation of a kind of imaginative awakening, an awakening fueled by the detournement of the non-space of everyday urban existence into an artistic space of play and encounter.  BLU and Ellis are like the mouth of the well, digesting the raw material of the space around them and converting it into a dreamspace that overwhelms the dead container from which it has originated.  In a way, the work of BLU and Ellis fits right in with Guy Debord’s idea of revolutionary urbanism:

Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to the circulation of things and of human beings trapped in a world of things. They will try to break these topological chains, paving the way with their experiments for a human journey through authentic life.

COMBO and MUTO (an earlier wall-animation by BLU) are nothing if not experimental works that have the aim of bringing the city back to life by breaking open spaces for a new awareness of the urban order that surrounds us.  In both MUTO and COMBO there are moments where bricks are pushed out of walls and animated life pours from the holes that are left behind.  This is reminiscent of the famous Situationist International slogan, “Sous les pavés, la plage!” (“Beneath the paving stones — the beach!”), except that in this case the beach is the imagination unleashed in order to turn spaces of alienation into spaces of procreation.    

Filed under: animation, art, culture, funs, society, video   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: alienation, animation, Beneath the paving stones — the beach!, BLU, COMBO, David Ellis, dead space, detournement, Guy Debord, imagination, la plage!, motion painting, MUTO, non-space, revolutionary urbanism, Situationist International, Sous les pavés, stop motion, street art, urban geography, video, wall-art animation

cabinet of wonders: Namahage demon sweets in Akita

13Oct09

I picked up a few packs of these Namahage (生剥) demon sweets while I was in Akita for a conference.  In Akita Prefecture, especially in the Oga Peninsula area, Namahage appear on New Year’s Eve and make their visits to local houses where they scare the children and accept handouts of the local sake.  Here’s a great description of the festival from Hideo Haga’s 1970 book, Japanese Folk Festivals Illustrated:

In Japan kami [deities] visit villages at each seasonal festival.  Many celebrations are held for kami who visit between the last day of the year and the dawn of the 1st Day.  On the Oga peninsula in Akita red and blue demons come to farmhouses.  The demons groan frightfully, pound on the door, and enter, shouting, “Are there any spoilt cry-babies or lazy brides here?”  Then they search the house.  Dressed in his best, the farmer greets them and declares there are no spoilt cry-babies nor lazy brides.  He serves them sake [rice wine] and food.  After the refreshments the demons go next door.

Since it wasn’t New Year’s Eve, I didn’t get a chance to see the Namahage running around pounding on doors, getting drunk, and making the children cry.  However, I did get to take home a couple of packs of these traditional demon-faced sweets, which are simply made up of grain and sweetener, formed into a hard cake.  The flavor is kind of like a delicious cereal, perhaps like Weetabix if it came pre-sweetened and was hardened into the form of a toothsome miniature biscuit.

Although it wasn’t New Year’s Eve, some friends and I did end up encountering this pair of Namahage in the streets of Akita city after downing plenty of Akita nihonshu (日本酒, i.e. “sake”) at a local izakaya.  I think that they were there to promote Akita culture and crafts to visiting tourists who had come to Akita for the long weekend, but it’s a bit hard to be sure since I’m not very fluent in demon, as it turns out.

I’d love to come back to Akita for the New Year celebrations and run around drunk and loony in the snowy night with demons, get a very mild case of frostbite in the big toe on my left foot, spend a few days recovering in a warm farmhouse with a lazy bride, and, once recovered, join the Namahage in a bit of wild taiko drumming.

Filed under: Japan, cabinet of wonders, culture, drinking, eating, festival, matsuri, music, religion, travel   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Akita, お菓子, candy, costume, 生剥, 秋田県, 秋田市, demon, festival, folk tradition, Hideo Haga, Japanese Folk Festivals Illustrated, Japanese traditional festival, lazy brides, Namahage, New Year's Eve, nihonshu, Oga Peninsula, sake, spoilt cry-babies, sweets, taiko drumming, tradition, 日本酒

typhoon melor

08Oct09

Typhoon Melor blew through Japan last night, killing three people and injuring 64.  A few typhoons a year usually make their way to Japan, but for some reason the main force of the typhoons almost always seems to bypass the Osaka area where I live.  My very first experience with a typhoon warning came on the day of Osaka’s Tenjin Matsuri festival.  My friend Richard and I were trying to decide how serious the typhoon warning was, and what the likelihood of Tenjin Matsuri being canceled might be.  As it turned out, there wasn’t a hint of a typhoon and Richard and I had a great time at Tenjin Matsuri.  After that, every time there was a typhoon warning there would — at most — be some strong winds and a little extra rain, but nothing to write home about, really.  The photograph above was taken during one of these mini-typhoons, but the wind looks a lot stronger than it actually was because of the long exposure time; in fact, all of the trains were running as normal and nobody was closing up shop and battening down the hatches.

I did have a pretty harrowing experience one time getting caught in a typhoon while riding the shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka.  The train came to a halt at one of the smaller shinkansen stations along the route and promptly parked there for four hours until the winds began to subside.  The woman next to me told me that one time she had been on the shinkansen when it had to be stopped during a typhoon and they ended up spending the night at the station.  “Hotel Shinkansen,” she called it.  Luckily our train didn’t become an impromptu hotel, but it did take over eight hours to get to Osaka rather than the usual two and a half.

Last night’s typhoon was definitely the real deal.  The strong winds began kicking up around midnight, and by two in the morning there was a general tumult of howling and clattering while huge gusts of wind literally shook the walls of the house.  I had to sleep with earplugs in to block out the sounds from outside, but even so the wind was so strong that sometimes I woke up because an exceptionally loud thump  or shake made itself known despite the earplugs.  At one point I decided to go out on the balcony (the lee side of the house) to watch the storm outside.  Through the grey of the night I could see the tall trees down at the local junior high school bending and swaying in the heavy wind, while sudden gusts shot through my back yard twisting the branches and vines in every direction.  What was intense about the bending trees and flying branches wasn’t the strength of the wind, but rather the speed of the forces involved and the rapidity with which they would change direction.  Standing on the balcony it was easy to feel the different pressures and densities of the winds as they moved over and between the houses, and it was easy to remember that air is a liquid with currents that can be as violent and dangerous as the most vicious ocean tides.  Alone on the balcony, in the middle of the night, it felt almost like my house was a ship, anchored in the vastness of the ocean, standing completely still in the middle of a tossing sea.

Filed under: Japan, Kansai, Osaka, nature, personal   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: air is a liquid, bullet train, Hotel Shinkansen, nature, Osaka, Shinkansen, storm, tropical storm, typhoon, Typhoon Melor, typhoon warning, wind, 台風, 台風18号