29 June 2015
Berlin based artist Youki Hirakawa talked about his oeuvre to date in relation to the main themes that inspire his works. Time and place are two notions of special interest for Hirakawa. Reflecting on the expanded sense of these principal vectors of orientation, he creates poetic works of art that often move us in their singular beauty.
More info25 June 2015
The poems in One More Civil Gesture, the first full collection of poetry by C. E. J. Simons, were written in Japan, where he has lived since 2006. The book contains poems inspired by Japan, and also by frequent travel in Burma, China and Mongolia.The gestures of these poems are ‘civil’ in two senses: in their bold and exciting use of inherited forms, whether Western or Japanese; and in their aspiration to eschew self-expression in search of representations of the human capacity to engage with the other – to be civilised through immersion in the unknown.
More info24 June 2015
Bizen (named after Bizen in Okayama Prefecture, where it is produced) became the most popular type of ceramic in Japan during the Edo period because of its superior clay and durability. Many tea ware masterpieces were made in this period, and it became renowned for its red-brown hues and flourishes of melted ash.
More info18 June 2015
The Daiwa Foundation welcomed Taro Takeuchi back to perform in a concert of the early guitar and harp-lute.
More info17 June 2015
How ready is Japan to be a society like Britain, which accepts a diversity of races and cultures in society? And is British society really as accepting of diversity as it claims to be? Join us in the latest of our annual seminars on diversity in the UK and Japan to discuss this important topic.
More info4 June 2015
A. S. Neill, a Scottish writer and education philosopher, created a community in which children could be free from adult authority, which in 1927 became Summerhill School in Suffolk, probably the world’s best-known “free school”. The school and Neill’s “free school” ideas became famous through his writings and lectures. In Japan, Professor Shinichi Hori was impressed by Summerhill and translated many of Neill’s books into Japanese, later establishing his own schools in Wakayama, based on Neill’s educational philosophy of liberty and democracy exercised by children.
More info28 May 2015
Balancing care responsibilities and work is becoming increasingly difficult: a ‘sandwich generation’ is emerging, whose members are providing care both for their children or grandchildren, and for their elderly parents, often while continuing to earn and pursue their careers.
More info26 May 2015
This talk highlighted the curatorial concerns of Griffin Gallery Director Becca Pelly-Fry about the impact of cultural displacement on artistic practice. She moderated a conversation amongst the 6 Japanese artists from the exhibition Two Truths. Two Truths explores the Buddhist doctrine of the same name that differentiates between two levels of truth: conventional and ultimate (or, relative and absolute). Conventional truth is how we usually see the world; a place full of diverse and distinctive things and beings. Ultimate truth is empty of concrete and inherent characteristics; there are no distinctive things or beings.
More info11 May 2015
Keita Miyazaki, a young Japanese artist, works on creating sculpture series and installations which evoke a sense of the post-apocalyptic. He is an artist exploring the supposedly polar notions of orderliness and fantasy. His installations select materials for their capacity to suggest ambiguity: traditional like metal, light and fragile like paper, invisible like sound. These juxtaposing techniques avoid concrete description, instead suspending forms in a state of uncertainty.
More info7 May 2015
‘Galapagos Syndrome’ has become a term to describe Japan’s insular attitude to the outside world. Like the species on the Galapagos Islands, Japanese corporations did not adapt their business models to the outside world, consequently losing their competitive edge to businesses in China and the rest of Asia. Similarly, in the sphere of policy-making, diverse and external opinions were not taken into account, and rather the vested interests of insiders were prioritised within a cosy, closed community. With increasing insularity and nationalism in the UK, does it risk going the same way?
More info5 May 2015
The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation hosted a charity recital by Ms Lisa Ueda in aid of the children of Fukushima.
More info28 April 2015
The Japanese economy came out of its latest recession in the last quarter of 2014, but expectations of higher growth have been somewhat dampened. This recession is the sixth that Japan has experienced since 1997, and the past twenty or so years of tepid economic growth have been characterised as Japan’s “Lost Decades”.
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