Exhibition: Shinto Gods and Buddhist Deities

One aspect of the Orient that Occidentals often find baffling is the ability of most Orientals to believe in several gods and religions at...
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Exhibition: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto made his name photographing stuffed animals and waxworks. OK, this sounds like a dumb thing to do, but th...
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Designed to dazzle: a lacquerware celebration

The quintessential Japanese aesthetic is that of wabi sabi, a beauty associated with things that are simple, rustic, unpolished or even pla...
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Kennin-ji: Zen and the Roundabout Road to Enlightenment

Tawaraya Sotatsu's Wind God and Thunder God In his classic book Yen in the Art of Archery , Eugen Herrigel makes it clear that trying...
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Exhibition: Tomatsu Shomei

No doubt, you're all familiar with the monochrome look of early 60s Japan that is rolled out with TV clips or magazine photos every time...
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The Ballad of John & 'Yono'

28 years after he was gunned down outside his New York apartment block, John Lennon is still with us. Here in Japan, he is with us even mor...
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Hello Clitty: "Toys ‘Arse’ Us" Japanese style!

Perhaps due to other deficiencies, sex toys play a disproportionately large role in the erotic life of the Japanese. From the " An...
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Katsura Funakoshi: Going with the Grain

In our modern, high–tech age of synthetic materials and digital information, there is something very reassuring about wood with its dull...
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