japanese

The first edition of this book was published five months before the writer, Lafcadio Hearn’s, death in September 1904. Kwaidan was part of a group of publications about the culture of Japan that began to appear in the West in the late 19th century. These publications helped to introduce the riches of Japanese aesthetic and artistic heritage to artists and designers in the United States and Europe and fueled public interest in all things Japanese.

The late-16th century was the golden age of Japanese screen painting, both literally and figuratively. The Momoyama period (1573-1615) was also an age of monumental architecture, with feudal lords building forts and castles of a size unprecedented in Japan. The great masters of the art of screen painting who were called upon to decorate the interiors of these large buildings filled them with screens of bold and innovative aesthetics, some with gold leaf covering their entire surfaces. Japan had a well-established tradition of incorporating gold leaf into art and decorative work.

"'Yumechigae.' According to the dictionary, this means: A charm to divert misfortune after experiencing a nightmare." Thus opens the essay to this exquisite exhibition catalog for a solo show of Japanese artist Tabaimo’s work at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in the summer of 2003. Tabaimo is a contemporary Japanese artist whose immersive video installations evoke Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e), manga, and anime to express the anxieties underpinning Japanese society in an age of globalization.

This wonderful book is about the history of the famous Japanese flowering cherry trees in Washington, D.C. It’s co-authored by Roland Jefferson, the first African American botanist  at the U.S. National Arboretum (USNA), hired in 1956.  Mr. Jefferson began his career studying crabapple trees, but eventually became an international authority on flowering cherries, making many plant collecting trips to Japan.

Shunkyū Higi Zukan [勝川春章肉筆春宮秘戯図巻 (Secret erotic play)] is a set of erotic paintings produced by Katsushika Shunshō (1726-1793), one of the most important ukiyo-e painters of the Edo period (1600-1868).