13 May 2015
This is a translation of Ayako Kurosawa’s piece for Sankei News, 9 May 2015. The original article in Japanese can be found here.
Why is it not possible to hold exhibitions of shunga in Japan – their country of origin – despite a series of exhibitions in Europe and the US, and ongoing research into the impact of shunga on Western art?
Read on29 April 2015
The Faculty of Letters of the University of Tokyo, in conjunction with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, invites applications from undergraduate students who are not of Japanese nationality and interested in Japanese archaeology and heritage to take part in a two-week Summer School program in Japan from 1st to 15th August 2015. Participants will spend the whole period with undergraduate students from the University of Tokyo and learn together about Japanese culture and history. Application deadline: 15 May 2015.
Read on15 April 2015
This workshop welcomes people from all backgrounds and levels of experience. It will begin with an integrative warm-up, combining methods from floor techniques to breath control, designed to relax the participants’ bodies fully. Kae will then introduce students to Hijikata Tatsumi’s method of butoh* and lead them through a number of Hijikata’s choreographic sequences (butoh-fu), such as ‘pollen’ and ‘nerves’.
Read on9 April 2015
Japan’s Yusuke Suzuki broke the 20km race walk world record at the Asian Race Walking Championships in his home town of Nomi on Sunday, 15 March, exactly one week after Yohann Diniz set the previous mark.
Read on4 April 2015
Former Daiwa Scholar Eluned Gramich has won the inaugural New Welsh Writing Award which celebrates the finest non-fiction writing (in short form) on the theme of nature and the environment. Her winning essay, Scenes of a Hokkaidan Life, was about her homestay in Hokkaido while on the Daiwa Scholarship programme. It will be published in the summer edition of the New Welsh Review.
Read on31 March 2015
Jason James, the Director of the Daiwa Foundation, gives us an account of his travels through Tohoku in March 2015. Weaving through the region in a worryingly small car, Jason finds locals determined to stay despite the slow progress of reconstruction. — The Shinkansen was packed when I got on at Ueno, but after Sendai –
Read on16 March 2015
As part of the Barbican’s major new exhibition on artists as collectors (Magnificent Obsessions: The Artist as Collector), former Daiwa Scholar, Edmund de Waal is showing the first collection he ever made as a child, containing shells, fossils and architectural fragments, alongside sixty-five Japanese netsuke from the collection given to him by his Uncle Iggie. To draw these historical collections together, Edmund is also exhibiting a work he made in 2011, from the collection of a private man, a biographical work of fifty-seven porcelain vessels held within a vitrine. All three collections will be on public view for the first time. The show is on until 25 May 2015.
Read on13 March 2015
This exhibition at Covent Garden’s Poetry Society Café, from 2 March to 25 April, is a collaborative show of drawings and poems by Isao Miura & Chris Beckett, exploring the legacy of Matsuo Basho’s masterpiece Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), its enduring power as a model of travel-writing, and the influence of haibun and haiku in British poetry today.
Read on2 March 2015
The dynamic Yamato Drummers of Japan will return to the UK this Spring with their brand new show BAKUON, embarking on a 20-date UK tour opening at Bristol Hippodrome on Monday 20 Apri 2015, with a press night on Tuesday 21 April at Woking New Victoria Theatre.
Read on27 February 2015
RNIB Music Advisory Service – Japanese Koto Concert on 7 March 2015, 13:00-14:00. Discover the Koto with the Kakehashi Koto Ensemble.
Read on