Wrapping Rap by Gail Rieke ’Tis the season… so perhaps you are thinking about gifting and wrapping… I first learned about the Japanese art of packaging from a wonderful book called How to Wrap Five More Eggs by Hideyuki Oka from which I quote ”…the art of Japanese packaging has been disappearing almost as fast…

Sake: This Year’s Rice Report by Sake Expert John Gauntner Sake Rice Survived a Couple of Typhoons, But How Did it Fare Otherwise? In late October, the National Research Institute of Brewing in Japan released their annual rice report, loosely translated as the Suitability of This Year’s Rice to Sake Brewing Report. In short, the…

Contemporary glass artist Etsuko Nishi Specialist in the Pâte de Verre Technique By Dasha Klyachko Etsuko Nishi is a leading expert in the pâte de verre, one of the oldest and more difficult forms of glass making. This is a form of kiln casting, which involves first the preparation of a mould. Finely crushed glass…

By Alice Gordenker There was a Japanese female artist active in Paris in the early decades of the 20th century but chances are you’ve never heard of her. It doesn’t help that most of her work remains in private hands, or that she called herself by several different names. But the carved bowls, vases and…

A Man of Intelligence by Ian Pfennigwerth A review by David Morton A Man Of Intelligence is an excellent book about the life of Captain Eric Nave, an Australian Codebreaker and the basic founder of Australian cypher breaking against the Japanese during World War II. Eric Nave is no James Bond type, but in his…

Commentary by Charles Bernstein, A.I.A. Japanese architect Kengo Kuma won the international design competition in 2010 for a new design museum in Dundee Scotland. Eight years later its doors are about to open. It will undoubtedly become a symbol of the city’s attempted renaissance. The soon to be opened museum was conceived as a catalyst…

Between Heaven and Earth After recovering from three somewhat harrowing days driving a rental car on the road in Japan, we learned , despite the high points of the trip, not to do it again. I also relearned that there is a very small margin of error between life and death on a snake like…

Kusama and the Compulsive Visionaries by Gail Rieke Perhaps this sounds like the name of a band, but it is not. Yayoi Kusama may currently be the most appreciated international woman artist of this time. Some of you may have seen her polka dot pumpkin in Naoshima, or her mirrored installations, or the Forever Museum…

Contemporary glass artist Miya Kitamura Valuing beauty in the everyday object By Dasha Klyachko Miya Kitamura was born into a family of traditional ceramic artists in Kyoto and was making ceramics from an early age. Though she studied ceramics in high school and college, and was expected to take over the family business, Kitamura felt…

By Marc Peter Keane In Japan there is a highly sculptural and enigmatic form of garden known as karesansui that evokes a scene of the natural world — a landscape or seascape — through the restrained use of boulders, some plants, and at times raked gravel. The word karesansui is written with the three characters…