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This paper focuses on the dynamics of education in the interplay of power and seduction as creatively displayed in Takarazuka Revue's performances re-enacting the major players of the Cold War: USA and Russia (rather than former Soviet Union). "Oceans 11" (cosmos troupe, 2019) and "Once Upon a Time in America" (snow troupe, 2020), on the one hand, and "Land of Gods" (cosmos troupe, 2017) and "Anastasia" (cosmos troupe, 2020), on the other hand, lavishly display subtle interactions of longing and belonging, ecstasy and rage, love and betrayal, envy, hatred and passion, while painstakingly building up irresistible tensions between the instances involved in the performative process: actresses, administrators, audiences. The theoretical support is delivered by Robert Greene's pragmatic elaborations in his seminal works "The 48 Laws of Power" (1998) and "The Art of Seduction" (2001): education is never a linear process between a 'master' and a 'disciple', but an interactive game, governed by the pursuit of joy in overcoming challenges and finding ingenious solutions.

This article addresses the activation of aesthetics through the examination of an acute sensitivity to melancholy and time permeating the literary and pictorial arts of Japan. In medieval court circles, this sensitivity was activated through a pervasive sense of aware, a poignant reflection on the pathos of things. This sensibility became the motivating force for court verse, and through this medium, for the mature projects of the "ukiyo-e" "floating world picture" artist Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai reached back to aware sensibilities, subjects and conventions in celebrations of the poetic that sustained cultural memories resonating classical lyric and pastoral themes. This paper examines how this elegiac sensibility activated Hokusai's preoccupations with poetic allusion in his late representations of scholar-poets and the unfinished series of "Hyakunin isshu uba-ga etoki," "One hundred poems, by one hundred poets, explained by the nurse". It examines four works to explain how their synthesis of the visual and poetic could sustain aware themes and tropes over time to maintain a distinctive sense of this aesthetic sensibility in Japan.

Describes the author's Web site, which is devoted to the Japanese poet-painter Yosa Buson (1716-1784) and contains articles on Buson, bibliographic resources, and a pictorial catalog of haiku and paintings. This paper covers project purpose and background, subject area and materials, contexts of the development, structure of the Web site, pedagogical strategy and learners' responses, access trends, and evaluation. (MES)

This paper explores senses of ‘Japaneseness’ among Japanese musicians today by considering the words of 32 musicians—from koto and shakuhachi masters to jazz saxophonists, rock guitarists, and classical and electronic composers-in a provincial Japanese city. Their diverse senses of cultural identity are analyzed through three metaphors through which they express themselves: Japaneseness as a fence, walling off Japanese from change and foreignness, Japaneseness as a flavor to be enjoyed by anyone in the world who so chooses, and Japaneseness as a phantasm: Japaneseness obliterated, to be created anew if enough people can be convinced of the validity of such a recreation. This paper suggests that these metaphors may be useful in explicating cultural identity across a broad range of settings beyond music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese manga artist est em (esu to emu) is notable for blurring genre boundaries and subverting established conventions in various publications since her debut in 2006. Two of her works, Hatarake, kentaurosu! ('Work, Centaur!') and equus, focus exclusively on male centaurs in homosocial settings. Classified as shōjo (girls') manga and BL ('boys' love') manga respectively, these two works allow female readers to enjoy the pleasures of homoerotic subtexts and intertextual parody. This paper examines how conventions of sexuality and gender, particularly hegemonic masculinity and heterosexuality, are constructed/deconstructed in est em's centaur manga using the framework of intertextuality, with particular emphasis on parody, pleasure and play. By placing centaurs in realistic, everyday settings, these works present a critique of Japan's contemporary salaryman culture, while also highlighting issues of alienation and otherness that both female readers and gay men face in their daily lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the artworks of the artists in the Asia, Politics, Art Project (APA Project) from the perspective of "performative narrative of the people," a notion suggested by Homi Bhabha. The APA Project shows how the artworks of diasporic artists inscribe otherness within the otherwise homogeneous space of the nation. The participant artists, as the second and third generations of zainichi Korean, do not hold the memory of traumatic events suffered by the first minority generation. However, their works utilize postmemory based on dim images of memories inherited from their family histories. The elements, such as a grandmother's chimajeogori and the lyrics of an old Korean song, are woven by Oh Haji into unique narratives that are distinct from the "pedagogical narrative of the people," emphasizing unity and continuity of the nation-state. Kim uses chimajeogori in a multi-layered manner to reveal the existential conditions of students bounded by a violence that has historical roots, but she does not treat it as a simplistic oppositional sign against the dominant national ideology. These minority writers/artists and their works are illustrative cases of performative narratives that use and reconstruct images in the history and everyday life of a minority, splitting the homogeneous space of the nation and suggesting new public and diasporic spaces within it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reiko Tomii traces the legacy of the rental gallery system, which offered autonomy and support to artists in 1960s Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese noh theatre started out as a popular art form which originated among the lower classes of society. The noh master Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443?) refined it so that it conformed with the aesthetic preferences of the élite members of the audience. Within a century of Zeami's death, many members of the audience had crossed the boundary between spectator and performer, and had begun ardently to learn to perform noh. By this time, the performers were able to participate in defining the noh theatre, rather than being constrained by the aesthetic preferences of their patrons as in the earlier times. This paper argues that evidence of the changing social discourse about the noh theatre can be found in historical documents written by both the audience members and noh practitioners. These historical documents, ranging from noh treatises to diary entries, demonstrate how the noh theatre was perceived and related to by both the performers and the audience since Zeami's time. When the genre had successfully established itself as an officially sanctioned theatrical form during the late Muromachi period, noh practitioners were able to create a category of noh plays that were markedly different from the earlier ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which takes the form of a case study, focuses on the conflictual relations between two particular agents, the curator and the local artist, which became prevalent in public art museums in Japan from the 1970s. These two agents had affinities to different sets of culture, and their conflict was intensified over the use of regional museums. I discuss the most controversial example of such conflicts, which took place at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, and I show the complexity of these agents, their struggles and their outcomes. For this purpose of the analysis, I combine Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and the conceptual framework of transculturation. Field theory explains the mechanisms of ongoing struggles between the agents associated with different cultures over the boundaries of the field. The perspective of transculturation is useful as way of expanding Bourdieu's theory and as a means of understanding the complexity and fluidity of the field structure. Originally developed in relation to postcolonial studies, the concept of transculturation highlights both the hybridity of modern Japanese culture and the interactions between different cultures in the artistic field. The case of Tochigi shows that regional art museums in Japan have been developing not as 'frontiers' or 'fortress' of the curator but as 'contact zones' -- i.e. the sites where the curator and the local artist interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miyagi Michio ... (1894-1956), koto performer, composer, and educator, was a musical innovator who modified traditional instruments, incorporated new ideas into the body of work called sōkyoku ..., and adopted compositional and playing techniques from Western music and instruments. He was also one of the first Japanese composers to create pedagogical materials and entertaining works that were appropriate for children, and those works are still widely used today to teach koto-playing to beginners, particularly children. This paper will provide an introduction to the Miyagi school of koto playing, examine the traditional method of teaching koto to children, investigate Miyagi's motivation for creating a pedagogical method for children, provide a historical overview of Miyagi's dōkyoku ... (children's songs), and finally analyze several of these works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how artist Frank Lloyd Wright described the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan in the 19th century. Background on the encouragement of the former emperor Meiji with ties to Europeans and Americans; Operations of the hotel during the changes in tourism flow; Expansion of the hotel to address the needs of the tourism business.

In 1967, artist Keiichi Ikemizu established the avant-garde collective The PLAY in Osaka, Japan. Under the influence of Happenings, the group created ephemeral experimental performances in nature; "IE: THE PLAY Have a House" is one of their most significant works. The members designed a floatable wooden house with a red roof and white walls that they lived inside and used to travel down a river from August 5-10, 1972. The performance reached its ending due to an unexpected typhoon, and the artists destroyed the house. In 2015, IE was recreated during the Dojima River Biennale with a re-performance and a new name: "IE Picnic: THE PLAY Have a House." This recreation was later exhibited in the group's first solo museum exhibition, "The PLAY Since 1967: Beyond Unknown Currents," at the National Museum of Art, Osaka under the concept of re-historicization. Finally, in 2017, "IE Picnic" was re-performed during the Venice Biennale 2017 and displayed on the shore of the Arsenale Harbor as a representation of artistic individuality. This essay aims to observe how institutional and curatorial representations influence the recreation of the work and whether the contemporary restagings have a positive or negative effect on the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ars Longa is the property of Ars Longa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article explores Foujita Kimiyo, widow of Japanese artist Foujita Tsuguharu. Particular focus is given to her work as the executor of the Foujita estate. Additional topics discussed include how she kept tight control of the artist's estate, often resorting to litigation following writing and publishing on her husband, how she was Tsuguharu's fifth and final wife and the "widow" stereotype.

This article works to identify an intersection of the Catholic and Buddhist pictorial traditions with regard to the symbolism of the journey to the spiritual world. In both Christian and Buddhist traditions, the river/ ocean is a popular symbol that designates the border between this world and the other world. A work of western-inspired Japanese folding screens known as Yōjin Sōgakuzu (Europeans Playing Music) is an outstanding example that makes use of the symbolism of the river to allude to one's pilgrimage to the other world in the guise of a secular waterfront scene. The folding screens were painted in the seventeenth century by Japanese artists who were affiliated with the art studio founded by the Jesuits. An investigation of European sources of the painting will show how the painters modified the famous Catholic iconography of "The Ship of the Church" to match the taste of the Japanese patrons of the time. Further, comparisons with other Japanese paintings that similarly deal with the theme of the river will show that such secular scenes of waterfront leisure could demonstrate to the Japanese audience the life in the world beyond, as well as a journey to that world they anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the trend of new realism art as double projects in the Japanese postwar era. It highlights that artists began to paint realism art, motivated not only by communism but by the hopes of building a new nation. It further informs about some artists who joined the revolutionary act commanded by the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) in the rural areas in Japan.

The article explores a more complex picture of wartime art collectivism through the lens wartime artist groups namely the war artists collective, women's artists collective and nonexhibiting artists collective. These 3 types of collectives show the multiple ways in which alliances between state and artists collectives can be promoted under "art in the service of the war." It notes that the war had no significant change in the basic structure and function of art collectives in Japan.

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article celebrates the impact of Japanese artist Hokusai. It elaborates why Hokusai's work has been widely recognized and how he symbolized Japan as an originating nation. It looks at Hokusai's early career and how he blossomed into a professional artist. It explores Hokusai's 1834 project "One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji."

The article focuses on the works of Nara Yoshitomo that incorporates a thoroughly disciplined syntax of dreamlike associations, fairytale motifs from European sources and embodies a different relationship to the child and to the gaze. The artist has earned international attention with his exhibition entitled "Superflat" held in Japan in 2000. The eyes of the child depicted in the works of Yoshitomo are usually elongated, narrowed and a flattened ellipse.

The author discusses the art exhibition "From Space to Environment" held at the Environment Society in Tokyo, Japan. The author mentions visual art, music, design, and architecture in Japan. Also mentioned is the Japanese art world, the international world of art, the phrase "international contemporaneity," intermedia art, and cybernetic art.

This article explores the hit chart period of Japanese popular music between January and March in 1990 and in 2004, using the survival model, and examines the factors involved in producing a hit. First, the results showed that fame of the artist, ties with other media, and compilation albums featuring several artists prolonged the hits chart period. Second, the music's survival period on the charts was shorter in 2004 than in 1990. This means that more titles appeared on the charts in 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the paintings of Kawara, a Japanese artist. Analysis on the style and form of his art works; Discussion on the paintings; Samples of the paintings.

In order to complicate the opposition between Western modernity and Japanese tradition flint is often said m characterize the works of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, this essay explores the logic of synaesthesia in some of his works from the early Taisho period such as 'The mermaid's lament', 'The present and of motion pictures', and 'The tumor with a human face'. Synaesthesia in Tanizaki involves not only a decomposition and recombination of different perceptual modalities but also an erotic encounter with the foreign. It affords an intensification of the procedures of Japan's Orientalist history (tōyōshi), by allowing artifacts and ethnographic detail to swarm into the story as spectacle rather than fact. With its emphasis on the hybrid, the awkward and misplaced, synaesthesia Calls attention to the corporeality of perception, to what Jonathan Crary calls 'the emergence of the body as a productive physiological apparatus'. In TaniZaki, the emergence of such synaesthetic, corporeal modes of perception is also intimately linked m questions of race. It is in this way that Tanizaki's use of synaesthesia reminds us that viewers and readers are already deformed, already inscribed in fictive ethnicities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on "Monkey Performing the Sanbasõ Dance," a painting by Japanese artist Mori Sosen featured as the October 2012 cover of this journal. Sosen lived temporary in the mountains in a bid to learn how to paint the monkeys accurately. During his growing up years, Sosen was surrounded by artists including his father Mori Jokansai. According to the author, the painting highlights Sosen's favorite subject matter and his artistic style. The author also explains the metaphor represented by this monkey.

In this article the author discusses the perception of Japanese on natural worlds, which happens to be the subject of a thought-provoking exhibition at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum in Japan. He is critical on the suggestions of artists on the resurgence of traditional ideas about interconnectivity that could help in addressing environmental concerns. He also comments on the elimination of mental boundaries between humans, nature and technology, which does not ensure environmental protection.