Kyoto Journal Issue 34

¥880

(US$880 ex shipping)

Food, Water, Power, People
Ignored Impacts: Japan’s Sagami Ozeki
Beneath Rock & Wood: Poetry by Edith Shiffert and
Photography by Everett Brown
The Non-Existence of Japanese Meditation Gardens

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‘Development’ is a universal goal. Achieving it depends on solving the basic needs of food, water, and power, and beyond that, creating the more intangible, but no less crucial, sense of identity, community, and affluence. Commonly in Asia, the model of development and affluence, as perceived by the media and reproduced in various ways in popular culture, is Japan. The direction of growth, GDP expansion, and affluence is towards a Japan-type goal. This does not necessarily mean any conscious commitment to ‘Japanize,’ often far from it, but modernity, especially the patterns of consumer life by which modernity is commonly defined, often seems more accessible, more realistic, in its Japanese mode.

But while China and Southeast Asia consciously or unconsciously set their sights on replicating the Japanese economic development ‘miracle,’ the immense distortions and unnecessary costs paid to accomplish it are either little appreciated or are seen as part of the necessary price to be paid to achieve national greatness. Food Water Power People —Gavan McCormack

Japanese meditation gardens. A nice idea, but do they really exist? Gardens are one of Japan’s great cultural assets. Perhaps best known among the gardens are the rock-and-sand compositions found in Zen Buddhist temples and some private residences. The proper term for these gardens is kare-san-sui, which literally means dry-mountain-water, revealing the essence of the garden as a representation of a scene of mountains and water without the actual use of water. Kare-san-sui gardens are usually thought of as being used for meditation and are thus often called meditation gardens. A line of priests seated in the lotus position in deep repose, on the veranda of a temple overlooking a garden, is the classic scene. In truth, this rarely happens. On the Non-existence of Japanese Meditation Gardens – Marc P. Keane

 

Contents:

Food Water Power People – Gavan McCormack
Ignored Impacts: Japan’s Sagami Ozeki– Maggie Suzuki
A Vision for Rivers in the 21st Century – Declaration of ’96 Dam Summit, Nagaragawa
Poetry:
Beneath Rock & Wood – Photographs by Everett Brown; poems by Robert Brady
Under the Trees, Transcendentalist – Edith Shiffert
Fiction:
Hara’s Mackeral Pike – Michael Fessler
On the Non-existence of Japanese Meditation Gardens – Marc P. Keane
Ramble:
The Most Different Country – Robert Brady
Reviews:
Haiga: Takebe Sochu and the Haiku-Painting Tradition, by Stephen Addis & Fumiko Y. Yamamoto — William Corr
Old Ways to Fold New Paper, Poems by Leza Lowitz — Donald Richie
The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, by Gavan McCormack — William Corr
Japanese Garden Design, by Marc p. Keane — Ken Rodgers
Kyoto Gardens: A Virtual Stroll Through Zen Gardens, CD-ROM by Lunaflora — Ken Rodgers
Swedenborg: Buddha of the North, by D.T. Suzuki, trans. Andrew Bernstein — Morgan Gibson
Mountains and Rivers Without End, by Gary Snyder — Preston L. Houser
Obata’s Yosemite: The Art and Letters of Chiura Obata from his trip to the High Sierra in 1927, Ed. with essays by Janice T. Driesbach & Susan Landauer — Preston L. Houser

Cover Image by Edward Levinson
74pp
published April 8, 1997

 

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