Past Events

9 February 2016

The Missing Post Office UK by Saya Kubota

The Missing Post Office invites you to post a letter, like a message in a bottle, which will float on the sea of time. A letter to and from anyone, anything, anywhere and at any time, which will one day be washed ashore. This artist talk introduces its temporal UK branch, opened as part of Saya Kubota’s solo exhibition Material Witness. Mr Brian Payne, Missing Post Office UK, will be in conversation with the artist, where they will discuss the letters and postcards received at the UK MPO branch hosted at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation.

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8 February 2016

Miyagawa Ceramic Bowl

Traditional Pottery of Kyoto: Miyagawa’s Makuzu ceramics

Beautiful ceramic works of pottery from Kyoto have long encapsulated the unique elegance and culture of the former capital city. Join Shinichi Miyagawa as he recounts the history and practice of the Makuzu Miyagawa Kousai family, part of this Kyoto tradition of highly decorative, elegant and refined ceramics. The Miyagawa family have worked as ceramists producing tea ware for both the matcha used in tea ceremony and for regular leaf teas (such as sencha green tea). Miyagawa will be showing a wide variety of his, his father’s and his ancestor’s works from their family kiln in Kyoto, as well as demonstrating some recent creations from the kilns of the Bernard Leach pottery in St Ives.

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1 February 2016

Natsume Soseki’s London: A Literary Odyssey

2016 marks the beginning of two years of anniversary commemorations for Natsume Soseki, the greatest literary figure of modern Japan: 2016 marks the centennial of his death in 1916; and 2017 marks the 150th anniversary of his birth in 1867. Damian Flanagan will show us the boarding houses that Soseki lived in, located in different parts of the city, and introduce us to the people that Soseki met and lived amongst. Join us for a literary odyssey round London like no other, that will make you see the capital through entirely fresh, Sosekian eyes.

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28 January 2016

The Public Opinion Myth: Why Japan retains the Death Penalty

Japan, unbeknownst to many, retains the death penalty, and still executes criminal offenders to this day. The Japanese government’s official justification for preserving the death penalty is that the majority of the public is overwhelming in favour of this method of criminal punishment. Dr Mai Sato will screen a short version of the documentary film, “The Wavering Public? The Death Penalty, Justice and Public Opinion”, which explores what the death penalty means to ordinary citizens living in a retentionist state – one in which much of the practice surrounding the death penalty remains secretive and discreet.

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19 January 2016

Material Witness by Saya Kubota

“Material Witness” presents Saya Kubota’s new bodies of work around memory and physical traces of the past which, although they have seemingly altered in form or even to have disappeared, still persist in the present time and space. From modified paintings to an unusual postal service, they signal what their material existences might have witnessed. The solo exhibition at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation will present her two different bodies of works: “Material Witness” and the “Missing Post Office UK”.

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7 December 2015

Woman Who Brings the Rain: A Memoir of Hokkaido, Japan By Eluned Gramich

As precise and nuanced as Japanese calligraphy, this memoir of Eluned Gramich’s stay on the remote Hokkaido island in the far north of Japan, has at its heart the mountain, Yotei-San, the region’s iconic equivalent to Mount Fuji. Dan Bradley joins Eluned in conversation to discuss her experience of living in the shadow of the omnipresent Yotei-San, and how this time in rural Hokkaido inspired her writings of the natural world.

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3 December 2015

Mindful Design of Japan

Mindful Design of Japan: 40 Modern Tea-Ceremony Rooms

The Japanese tea-ceremony, or Way of Tea, is one of the most profound manifestations of mindfulness. The ceremony, with its roots in Zen Buddhism, dates as far back as the 15th century and takes place within a traditional tea-ceremony room. Author and acclaimed photographer, Michael Freeman, will give a talk about his experiences in visiting and photographing the modern tea ceremony rooms featured in his book “Mindful Design of Japan: 40 Modern Tea-Ceremony Rooms”.

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26 November 2015

SHIFT Presents: The DOTMOV Festival 2015

Japanese online magazine SHIFT presents the DOTMOV Festival 2015, premiering in the UK at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. We screened a selection of 12 short films to showcase emerging international talent in film and the visual arts.

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17 November 2015

Cool Japan? A Curatorial Practice after Fukushima

The Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011 had a devastating impact on the Japanese art scene. In this talk, Mizuki Takahashi, senior curator at Art Tower Mito, reflected on her experience and curatorial journey, addressing popular constructs of Japanese cultural identity in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

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29 October 2015

Wings, Paws and Claws by Keiji Ishida

Drawing away from the conventions of story books, Keiji Ishida’s works explore the significance of images when they are set free from the written word. The image, reconstructed as a new point of departure, invites the viewer into a space in which the decontextualised illustrations can narrate alternative stories.

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