by Alice Gordenker Entry on Noguchi Shōhin in Bunbu kōmeiroku 文武高名録, a compilation of famous people and important literary figures published in 1893. Private collection. Image used here with special permission. Are you familiar with the painter Noguchi Shōhin? If not, you’re hardly alone. Even when famous in their day, female artists are more likely to…

                        NUNO Textile Design Studio presents “suke suke” fabrics,  by weaving sliced strips of metal with conventional yarns to create a shimmery mirage. Japanese Weavers have traditionally used metallic foils in brocade obi sashes and other formal wear. Thin sheets of gold and silver were affixed to washi handmade paper with sulphur or lacquer, then cut into lomg slender…

by Elizabeth Andoh ODEN おでん Japan’s iconic ODEN is a slow-simmered, hodgepodge: fish sausages, daikon radishes, octopus, potatoes, boiled eggs, konnyaku (a broth-absorbing, speckled aspic processed from a tuber vegetable), and all sorts of tōfu. On the first chilly nights of autumn, oden is welcomed back to the family dinner table, pub-like izakaya menus and…

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…

Interview by Brian Covert LARRY KORN was a 26-year-old farmhand from the United States living and working at a communal farm in rural Kyoto in 1974 when he decided to go and see for himself an enigmatic farmer-philosopher he had been hearing about through the grapevine in Japan. The buzz among farmworkers was that this…

Ando Saeko, Japanese lacquer artist Since relocating her studio from Hanoi to Hoi An in 2016, Saeko has been immersed in the energy of Nature which is ‘so powerful here that I have become just one of the creatures in the middle of it’. Vietnamese lacquer has long been the perfect material for her creative…

Some work is infinitely more exciting than other jobs. Watanabe san, an enthusiastic and insistent customer at Blue & White urged us to take part in the Hatoyama Jinja/ Shrine market that he was helping to plan on the 15th and 16th of September. With scant enthusiasm, we agreed to bring Blue & White to…