Events January - December 2018
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Events January - December 2018 Arts & Culture Business & Government Education Lectures Lifestyle Special Events @JapanSocietyLondon japan.society.london @japansocietylon The Japan Society The Japan Society, 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, London NW1 4QP tel: 020 7935 0475 email: [email protected] www.japansociety.org.uk A company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 3371038 Registered Charity No. 1063952 VAT Registration No. 241 5505 89. Japan Society Book Club: An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro Monday 8 January 2017 7.00pm The Japan Society 13 / 14 Cornwall Terrace London NW1 4QP Free for Japan Society Members – booking recommended The book club is held on the second Monday of every month An Artist of the Floating World is the second the Day. His work has been translated into novel by the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning more than 40 languages and adapted into author Kazuo Ishiguro. The novel is set in highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro’s other work Japan after the end of the Second World War includes A Pale View of the Hills, Never Let and is narrated by Masuji Ono, a respected Me Go, and The Buried Giant. artist who is now retired. Struggling through the rapidly changing environment of the The book club is held every month. There post-war society, the mature painter looks is no restriction on the nationality of the back on his life reflecting on his past actions authors read, but books should be available and artistic work in support of the imperialist in translation in both Japanese and English. movement that led Japan into the war. The discussion is conducted mainly in English, but you can choose the language in which Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the you read the book. The intention is simple: Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in to explore the themes of the book, express Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England personal opinions on the style and content, with his family in 1960. He has received four discuss how the book has changed (or not) in Man Booker Prize nominations and won the translation and to have a relaxed discussion 1989 award for his novel The Remains of with others who have similar interests. Grass Poets: Japanese Baskets, 1845-1953 – with Joe Earle M o n d a y 15 J a n u a r y 2 0 18 6 : 4 5 p m The Swedenborg Society 20-21 Bloomsbury Way (Hall entrance on Barter St) London WC1A 2TH Free – booking recommended For thousands of years, Japanese farmers bamboo, in particular through his use of the and artisans have plaited tropical woody ara-ami (‘rough weaving’). His innovations grasses of the bamboo family into practical helped pave the way for the extraordinary containers, but it is surprising to discover that and varied achievements of Iizuka Rōkansai basketry as a self-conscious art form is little (1890–1958), widely regarded as the greatest more than 150 years old. of all bamboo artists. Based on the recent research and Joe Earle was Director of Japan Society knowledge gained through cataloguing a Gallery in New York until 2012 and has held major European collection, this lecture will leadership positions in Asian art departments explore Japanese bamboo art’s origins in at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, sencha, a supposedly Chinese manner of and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Over tea-drinking with Chinese-style utensils that the past 37 years he has curated, organized, or became popular during the eighteenth and written catalogues for numerous exhibitions nineteenth centuries. of contemporary Japanese art, craft, and design, including “Contemporary Clay: Joe Earle will illustrate his talk with a wealth Japanese Ceramics for the New Century” of previously unpublished works from two (Boston and New York, 2005 and 2006), “New of Japan’s greatest bamboo dynasties, the Bamboo” (New York, 2008), “Serizawa: Master Hayakawa Shōkosai line in Kansai and the of Japanese Textile Design,” (New York, Iizuka line in Kanto. Hayakawa Shōkosai I 2009), “Bye Bye Kitty!!!: Between Heaven and (1815–1897), the first basket-weaver to sign Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art” (New his work, started by making almost direct York, 2011), “Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile copies of Chinese baskets but gradually Pioneers” (New York, 2011), “New Forms, New developed a distinctively Japanese idiom. Voices: Japanese Ceramics from the Gitter- Yelen Collection” (New Orleans, 2017). He His younger son, the little-known Hayakawa is now based in London, and has recently Shōkosai III (1864–1922), played a critical role completed a catalogue of 323 works of in broadening the expressive potential of Japanese bamboo art in the Naej Collection. Meiji at 150: Meiji Japan and Victorian Britain in dialogue Saturday 27 January 2018 10am to 5.30pm (Doors open at 9.30am) The Art Workers’ Guild 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury London WC1N 3AT £65 including buffet lunch and tea/coffee Booking essential - Booking deadline: Wednesday 24 January 2018 Please note that tickets are booked directly with the Victorian Society. Please visit our website or phone the Japan Society for a booking form. On the sesquicentennial anniversary of the exposure to the West, culminating in the 1910 Meiji Restoration in 1968, the Victorian Society Japan-British Exhibition in London. and the Japan Society are coming together to discuss how life in both Japan and the West The consequent fashion for Japonisme which changed during the Emperor Meiji’s reign which emerged in the later 19th century was very coincided, almost exactly, with the second much a result of these exhibitions. In the third half of Queen Victoria’s reign and Edward VII’s session, dedicated to visual arts, Professor subsequent monarchy. Toshio Watanabe of the University of the Arts, London, will consider Japonisme in Britain while Martin Dusinberre, Professor of Global History Dr Monika Hinkel of SOAS will explore the work at the University of Zurich, will start the day with of woodblock print artists in early Meiji Japan. an overview of Meiji Japan, bringing together a Strong painting, an Armstrong ship and shows In Japan, the house and garden cannot be of strength in the late-nineteenth century world. separated either physically or conceptually. Both Britain and Japan are island countries and The first panel will focus on diplomacy. Sir David quite wet ones at that. Thus the presentation on Warren, former Ambassador to Japan and Japanese-style gardens in Britain and Ireland by Chairman of the Japan Society, will introduce Dr Jill Raggett of Writtle University College should the scholar, diplomat and Japanologist, Sir come as no surprise, although the examples of Ernest Satow. Satow’s language skills made Meiji-era houses and gardens in Japan, shown him indispensable to the first British Minister by Professor Neil Jackson of the University of Plenipotentiary, Sir Harry Parkes, on whom, as Liverpool, might raise some eyebrows. well as the Japanese Ministers to the Court of St James, Dr Andrew Cobbing of the University of The Study Day will end with Natasha Pulley, Nottingham will be speaking. the author of the international best-seller and award-winning novel, The Watchmaker In the second panel, Dr Angus Lockyer of SOAS of Filigree Street (Bloomsbury, 2015), talking and Dr Ayako Hotta-Lister, an independent about writing historical fiction set in Victorian scholar, will investigate the international London and Meiji Japan and, possibly, about a exhibitions which so facilitated Japan’s clockwork octopus. Co-organised by: Meiji at 150: Meiji Japan and Victorian Britain in dialogue Afternoon Tea and Film Screening with Screenwriter Kosuke Mukai Friday 2 February 2018 3:00 pm – Afternoon Tea at Cinnamon Soho, 5 Kingly Street, London,W1B 5PF 6:15 pm – Screening of Gukoroku at Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH £29 per head for afternoon tea and film screening Priority for Japan Society members Booking deadline: Wednesday 24 January 2018 The Japan Society is pleased to offer a select (v), Hyderabadi caramelised onions and group of members the opportunity to meet mint samosa (v), Tandoori chicken and and discuss screenwriting and film making chutney sandwich Bhangra lamb slider. with Kosuke Mukai over an Indian style high – Malabar Plum Cake Bitter chocolate tartlets, tea. Award-winning screenwriter Kosuke dates and ginger. Mukai will be in London for the screening of Gukoroku – Traces of Sin (2016), which opens * A vegetarian option is also available. Please the Japan Foundation’s 2018 touring film inform us of any food allergies when booking. programme (Un)true Colours. Kosuke Mukai is a Japanese screenwriter, Based on a novel by acclaimed crime writer, cinematographer and editor. He is a long- Tokuro Nukui, Gukoroku is the debut feature time collaborator with director Nobuhiro of up and coming film maker, Kei Ishikawa. Yamashita in acclaimed films such as Linda This informal session will provide the perfect Linda Linda (2005) and Tamako in Moratorium opportunity to discuss the often overlooked (2013). Mukai has also worked with Japanese screenwriter’s art with Kosuke Mukai, the man directors Yuki Tanada and Toshiaki Toyoda who helped translate the written page to the and participated as screenwriter in the TV screen. Mukai will share thoughts from his series Midnight Diner (2009-present). In experience working with different directors 2007, he was awarded the Ryuzo Kikushima and within different genres, and there will be Award by the Writers’ Association of Japan plenty of time for questions before we move and in 2016, he was also the winner of the to the ICA to watch the film. Best Screenplay Award at the 71 annual Mainichi Film Concours, one of Japan’s most Afternoon Tea Menu*: prestigious film awards.