Posts by lucinda
Emperor Meiji’s Clock Poem
When Emperor Meiji, 122nd Emperor of Japan, reigned from 1868 to 1912, Japan was beginning its modern explosion towards the modern world.
Read MoreWorld Heritage and Kyoto: An Interview with Muneta Yoshifumi
Kyoto’s conservation should be determined by residents’ quality of life, not for tourists. We have temples, shrines, forests, and small parks — we can have a good quality of life drawn from Kyoto’s traditional cultural heritage, and we can show the rest of the country what the modem Japanese way of life can be…
Read MoreInto Dasht-e Kavir: Notes From the Great Salt Desert
I stare at the barren oatmeal, forbidding life, eroded by the elements, its own self-loathing nature…
Read MoreAspirin
You want to know all about aspirin then you just go get yourself a good case of sciatica, nothing will teach you about aspirin better than a good case of sciatica…
Read MoreZen & the Art of Rejuvenation
Taizo-in launched its groundbreaking ‘Fusuma-e Project’ in the spring of 2011. The Zen temple is commissioning a young, unknown Kyoto-based artist to compose large sumi-e ink paintings on 64 new sliding doors, or fusuma…
Read MoreBlessings of the Dragon Gods
The moves of a master calligrapher resemble those of a dragon in flight. The calligraphy is so alive and vigorous that it seems to contain a dragon’s spirit flowing in the brush strokes…
Read MoreMedia Critic: Asano Kenichi
Former Kyodo News Service correspondent Asano Kenichi was expelled from Indonesia in 1992 for his investigative reports on shady deals between Jakarta businessmen and Japanese politicians.
Read MorePoetry, Love, Enlightenment
Eight hundred years ago, in a northeastern town of the Persian kingdom, a boy was born. When he was twelve years old, he chanced to meet the great Sufi master and Persian poet Attar, who told the boy’s father: “The fiery words of this boy will kindle the souls of lovers all over the world.”
Read MoreAlone With Your Self: The Hermit Experience
Edward A. Burger found his teacher, Master Guangkuan, in the Zhongnan Mountains in the winter of 1999. He completed his first documentary, Amongst White Clouds, about Zhongnan Mountain hermits in 2005…
Read MoreThe Wrong Paradise
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize, is widely considered the greatest Bengali poet of all time. He is certainly one of the finest writers of the world in the past century….
Read MoreGion Geisha: Interview with Yoshida Teruko
Yoshida Teruko is a former geiko (often called geisha outside of Kyoto). She is the proprietor of a bar in the Gion district whose clientele includes corporate leaders from Kyoto, Tokyo and other countries.
Read MoreStories of Forgetting, Remembering and Ritual
How do you deal with trauma until this or that civil society organization and tribunal comes to you with promises to heal your wounds? Mãnoa’s Maps of Reconciliation is a compendium of writings and images that grapple with this very difficult question.
Read MoreTea Tourism and Trade
In addition to promoting stunningly beautiful rows of tea bushes and romantic “exotic” peoples, there’s money to be made welcoming eco-tourists to stalk wild tea plants, visit plantations, gardens, processing facilities, markets and auctions.
Read MoreAll the Times in the World
Time…is one of those currencies we exchange every time we cross a border. An hour in Japan (where everything is clockbound, and even televisions show the hour) is equivalent to a day in laid-back India…
Read MoreGoing Geisha
After returning from Japan, I was surprised to see that the States was in a lather over “geisha chic.” Chopsticks were stuck in heads fair and dark. Fashion magazines urged women to “Geisha-ize”…
Read MoreBright Road
In the beginning was the yearning — to seek what could be sought, find what could be found, learn what could be known — to go beyond mountains, know beyond deserts, discover beyond oceans…
Read MoreDear Leader
They met one afternoon in February twenty-three days after she left North Korea. An ethnic Korean marriage broker named Bong-il drove her to her new home near Yanji… “If you run away, we will find you, understand? He is paying good money for you, and we are men of our word…”
Read MoreSynthetic Dreams: The Art of Mariko Mori
Mariko Mori’s themes are eclectic, embracing the fantasies of post-everything Japan and its extreme experimentation while recontextualizing traditional customs, mannerisms, and trends…
Read MoreFuruhashi Teiji and Dumb Type
“It’s more difficult to do creative theater in Tokyo. There is less pressure in Kyoto so we can be more free, more adventurous. Kyoto people are more open to something experimental…”
Read MoreShakuhachi and Zenga
ART, MUSIC
BY PRESTON HOUSER
The player of the Japanese bamboo flute seeks to display his spirit through musicianship—even if only in a single note, a single exhalation…
Read MoreThe Joy of What’s Fleeting
The area in which I make my home, doing its best to approximate to the San Fernando Valley, has no temples or shrines or narrow winding streets of the kind, when young, I associated with the “real Japan.“
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