Kyoto Journal Digital Issue 80

Culturally, the nations of East Asia are more or less extended family, but their relationships have long been fraught with political rivalries, territorial disputes and high-octane conflagrations fueled by short-sighted nationalism—among neighbors who should by now have simply learned to get along, for the common good.

In KJ 80 we observe today’s fractious East Asian neighborhood from the point of view of cultural commonalities, especially among younger people with a healthily borderless world vision. In particular, we celebrate efforts to create what might be called “Mindspace”—deliberate creation of shared physical and mental space for meeting, exchanging ideas, re-examining attitudes and beliefs.

We look at young communities in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, the Kyoto-based Peace Mask Project, a Japanese art museum dedicated to young artists whose lives were cut short by World War II, a college dream group based on a deeper interpretation of education, an international volunteer-based post-disaster project in the Philippines, and even the shared emotive space of enka fandom. Interviews include a photographer juxtaposing Korea’s past and present, internationally-minded typographers, and a world-famous former musical prodigy on music as transformative harmonization with the cosmos. And, as always, much more…

A magazine, too, is mindspace.
—Ken Rodgers

Contents:

Features:
The Man Who Looked for War – As told by David Greer
The Song of Loneliness – Kaneko Mitsuharu
Hope for the East Asian Peace Process -Jonathan Augustine
Pop, Politics & Modern Asia – Jonathan DeHart
A Shared Path – Egami Kenichiro
Mood Kayo Music – Hoei Meiling

Heartwork:
Peace Mask Project – An Interview with Kya Kim

Conversations:
Walking on Sound – Kathy Arlyn Sokol interviews musician Stomu Yamash’ta
Stepping into Metamorphosis – Lisa Allen interviews shoe artist Masaya Kushino

Poetry by Carolyn Locke, Purvi Shah, Bern Mulvey

In Translation:
A Vernal Planet – Kazuko Shiraishi

Eye:
Design Across Borders – Marlies Peeters
Connecting Past & Present: Japanese Art in New York – Robert J. Fouser

Encounters:
Reflections on Truc Bach – Dawn Starin
“This Picture Where?”- Sachie Banks
“It’s Magic” – William R. Stimson

Nature:
The Bantug Windship – Jon Craig
Farmer/Ethnologist Yoshida Saburo – Donald C. Wood

Fiction:
Sight – J.Y.L. Koh

Tribute to Shokei Harada

Ramble:
Light and Dark and Light – Robert Brady

Reviews

Cover Design by Eldwen Laurenzi
Published July 25, 2014; 220 pp