Posts by johneinarsen
Remembering the 2004 Tsunami
My friends and I fled the approaching wave in a mad scramble up a dense jungle hill, and during the hours that followed it seemed that the world as we knew it had ended.
Read MoreThe Nature and Experience of Sumi Arts
“The sense of liberation among participants is almost palpable, there are no expectations, no ‘shoulds,’ no senses of inferiority, the baseline for everyone is the same.”
Read MoreKaresansui and the “inelectable and illuminative thread”
“To begin with a chawan in the palm of one’s hand and end up imagining a garden, poem or painting reveals the richness inherent in Japanese culture.” — Allen S. Weiss
Read MoreExcerpts from Whisper of the Land
“Let the photo-taking sessions be a ballet instead of a military-style attack or a grueling marathon. In the garden, drink the sun, sweep with the wind, sing like a bird, and dance with a shovel and a rake.”
Read MorePicaro Rising
n China’s major cities there is an elite one percent or so that drive nice cars, eat in nice restaurants, and generally live pleasant lives. They do so thanks in large part to the ninety-nine percent…
Read MoreThe Unexpected Delights of Brushed Black Ink
“Meditative playfulness and thoughtful experimentation are continually encouraged as the author takes us step-by-step through the process of learning the sumi arts.”
REVIEW BY Michael Lambe
Read MoreWe All Have Our Own Truths: An Interview with Gwendolyn Hoeffel
“As the years passed, I was very aware of Japan becoming more prosperous, more accepting of Western values and customs, which has been detrimental in certain ways. Obviously we have to move on, and the traditional, gracious way of living that I experienced in 1964 is going to move on.”
Read MorePoetry and Prose, Mirrors and Distance
Poems of a Penisist by Mutsuo Takahashi. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Twelve Views from the Distance by Mutsuo Takahashi. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. [T]he University of Minnesota has recently published two remarkable volumes of Japanese literature in translation by one of Japan’s most significant contemporary poets, Mutsuo Takahashi: Poems of a Penisist, and the…
Read MorePeace Engineering at Pangaea
“Would we be able to decrease the incidence of dangerous generalizations, based solely on one’s background, if there were a place where children around the world could meet and get to know each other? How could we make that possible?”
Read MoreNature and Spirit Reunion
There is much work to be done—not only in “saving the Earth,” as the mantra of the environmental movement goes, but also in saving ourselves and our own souls in the process.
Read MoreFar From Home
“The novel hinges on Rashomon-like multiple takes on the hellish circumstances in which one individual prisoner was beaten to death”
Read MoreOrigami Lion
He asked, “Are you really going to fight?”
“Yes,” I answered tentatively. He looked at me askance, then nodded dismissively. The wrestlers hustled me out of the room.
Artworks have Actions
“If you are the type of person who is sure that you know what art is then Ai Weiwei is probably not for you.”
Read MoreEye-witness News, Revisited
Memories have inevitably faded during the 25 years that have passed since the tragic end of the 1989 Tiananmen student protests, and for the younger generation in China, it’s hardly even a blip in the country’s historical flow to present-day prosperity.
Read MoreThe Unyielding
Okamoto began to write prose of lyrical and, at times, hyperbolic intensity, exploring modernist concepts of the artist and/or the individual in collision with society, spiritual alienation, and the moral, ethical, and political dilemma of the abandonment of tradition.
Read MoreMishima: Creation, Love, Patriotism, Death
Persona is like a flashcard pastiche, much of it based on interviews and private correspondence fused with the historical events through which Mishima moved. Mishima’s lifelong obsession with death and suicide and his sensational death by seppuku at forty-five, haunts the biography.
Read MoreArticle 9 and Japan’s Future
Article 9 can also be seen as a gift to humanity, simply denouncing war. Simply doing that.
Read MoreTeahouse Renaissance in Taipei
Wistaria was the first intellectual style teahouse, and created a quiet, clean place to focus on drinking tea. Outside the wood and paper walls of the two-story Japanese house was a garden with bamboo and a koi pond.
Read MoreThe Name Game
For the Chinese understand that without nature, man is inherently insignificant. It is therefore understandable that of all of the thousands of teas in China, none were specifically named after a person, not even after any of the many emperors who were often responsible for naming them.
Read MoreDMZ Diary: Surviving the Future Past Tense
by Lauren W. Deutsch
How does one casually “visit” such an area as a tourist? Should I be afraid of potential for armed attack? Is there a protocol of safe, reverential behavior? Isn’t it more a place of pilgrimage? I had 50 kilometers in Seoul traffic to think about it.
Read MoreEdo Expansion in Hokkaido
The sheer lack of general information in English on the indigenous peoples of Hokkaido (formerly known as Ezo) and this book’s focus on two endangered intangible aspects of human survival – ecology and culture – attracted me. But this is no travelogue of pretty pictures and nifty rituals.
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