I’ve loved all things Japanese since I was six years old. My best pal then was the daughter of Kunihiko Kodaira, the first Japanese mathematician to win a Fields medal in ’54.  They moved away when we were ten and he later became dean of the U of Tokyo.  My foray into music began with the violin and Mariko was an early role model. Rather than being able to ‘come out and play’, she practiced violin with her sister on piano. She now lives in Tokyo, plays with chamber groups and we’re still in touch. (and she married a mathematician)
Japanese film is another genre that draws me, probably because of that early association – it’s the visual framing and the deliberate pacing that I especially like. Yasujiro Ozu and Ikira Kurosawa are two favorite directors. Kagemusha, a film I watched again recently, is intensely colorful, and any painter will appreciate it. There are several spectacular interior scenes, the actors looking through large open windows to the sea, their beautiful silk kosodes fluttering.
Francis Coppola and George Lucas co-produced and leaned on Fox to get Kagemusha made. Akira Kurosawa began his life as a painter and he storyboarded all his films in watercolor paintings before beginning production. He gave a dozen or more of these to his co-producers as gifts, for their favors.
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October 16, 2008 – January 11, 2009Â
KUROSAWA, DESSINSÂ
Aproximately 90 storyboards by Akira Kurosawa will be displayed at the Musée Petit Palais, which was built for the Universal Exhibition in 1900.Â
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Ozu’s ‘AÂ Story of Floating Weeds‘ is another film I’ve watched over and over. The sheer beauty of the scenes with pouring rain through bamboo is worth the rental.
A mountain ryokan is my idea of the best of two worlds, ancient and modern.
From a blog commenting on organic farming in Japan; ‘Some towns such as Yufuin in Oita prefecture have expensive, rustic, classically styled old lodgings and you can tell that value is placed on a towns rural charms and see the effort made to preserve this air of authenticity and wholesome living, in sharp contrast to the concrete sprawl and neon of the cities.’
