Notes
这篇剧评可能有剧透
Japan is a society that has the capacity to turn everything into Art - not just the gardens and sculptures, but the way you drink tea, or the way you look at cherry blossom.
(*林语堂 《生活的艺术》*李渔《闲情偶寄》)
【E01. Nature】
Shinto 神道教
-believes the world is inhabited by spirits known as Kami (神) all around us,
-Netsuke (挂坠): nothing in nature is too small to deserve our respect
-we can be incarnated into anything: wind, rock, water…
Zen 禅
-apart from meditation, also put emphasis on practical tasks such as tidying the garden, cooking, etc
Splashed Ink Brush Painting 泼墨山水画
-an aesthetic that prefers ambiguity to clarity, absence to presence, and the hazy mysteries of nature
-emptiness/留白 as a visual metaphor for the silence of Zen meditation
Dry Landscape (枯山水)
-you can never see the complete set of stones, a reminder of human imperfection that one mind can never understand everything
-just like the paintings, garden is a blank canvas that enables the mind to wander in any direction it pleases
-"The answer isn't important, but the search for understanding. That's why we value the unknowable and the mysterious."
-You can't understand Japanese culture until you begin to embrace the beauty of mystery.
Bonsai
-a desire to capture a fragment of nature around us as decoration
-Goyamatsu: 500 y/o as Michealangelo's David. A paradox of creation both by human and nature.
Cherry Blossom
-fleeting beauty/cycle of life
-It is celebrated because of its transience. It is beautiful precisely because it does not last.
Seasons
-explicit
-a measurement of time, naturally and humanly
Mount Fuji
-its silhouette alone has become a metonym(转喻) for and entire culture
Thoroughness 彻底性
Naoshima 直岛
Hiroshi Sugimoto 杉本博司 - 海景\重复构图\极致\与古远的联结
And his shrine
"We've destroyed so much of nature, now it is a turning point-to think about how to live with nature."
【E02. Cities】
The constant flow of disasters have forced the Japanese to rebuild and reimagine their cities, turning them into one of the most dynamic in the world.
1.)Kyoto
-Inspired by Chang'an, every part of it carefully planned.
-In Kyoto, "style" was emphatically substance.
-Myabi (雅) 作为这座城市的核心美学
Sen no Rikyo (千力休) turned tea drinking into an art form.
-tea as revelation, elevating ppl's conciousness
-a ceremony to express modesty, imperfection and impermanence (无常)
-seeking an alternative of utensils, simple and undecorated: Raku pottery 乐烧, an art work to be held, touched, felt and used.
-Wabi-Sabi: the Japanese reverence for the imperfect, the unfinished, the worn-out
2.)Edo
-"Ukiyo", the pleasure district, the floating world, wasn't only a physical place, but also a state of mind.
"Living only for the moment,
turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves,
singing songs, drinking wine,
diverting ourselves and just floating, floating,
caring not a whit for the pauperism,
staring us in the face,
Refusing to be disheartened,
Like a gourd floating along with the river current -
This is what we call the 'floating world'."
-Kabuki (歌舞伎)
-People's passion and enthusiasm for life reached a peakin the Edo period.
Wood Block Printing 木刻版画. illustrator + carver + painter
Ukiyo-e 浮世绘, pictures of the floating world
-Kitagawa Utamro: 1/3 works fascination of women at redlight districts
-The Poem of the Pillow, 1788
"Its beak caught firmly in the clam shell, the snipe cannot escape of an autumn evening."
The nape of her neck was considered more sexual than the genital
-Shunga (春画): spring pictures
-Hiroshige 歌川広重
They established the basis of a new visual grammar: bold, graphic, and economical, which later influenced the western modern art.
3.)Tokyo
-Rebranded from Edo, a new identity and new name.
Akasaka Palace: An attempt to represent Japan as a European power, a brazen act of cultural appropriation
Golden Gai: "an arena of human desires, a labyrinth, a myth"
Moriyama Daido 森山大道:
-father of street photography in Japan
-captures the rootless and hedonistic inhabitants in Tokyo's underbelly
-"An unkepmt stray dog glances at the photographer in the winter sunshine, a proxy for Moriyama himself - a loner scavenging the streets for scraps. It's also a symbol of Japan - a country that hadn't yet found its identity in the turbulence of the 20th century."
"We are used to recovery here. Just as trees grow back, life goes in a circle. Maybe it's in our spiritual make-up."
【E03. Families】
Carpentry
-In the case of the way of using tools, we pull, you (europeans) push. We care for the others.
-Your architects go against nature, we co-exist with it. We thought of ourselves living under a great tree-that's our attitude toward architecture.
-Respect is a cornerstone of his philosophy.
-spirit of shokunin 职人/匠人，absolute concrentration & precision on the work at his hands
"Ma" 间
-the negative space in between, the interval, the pause, the void, is just as full as what's surrounding it
”Length of time depends upon our ideas.
Size of space hangs upon our sentiments.
For one whose mind is free from care,
A day will outlast the millennium.
For one whose heart is large,
A tiny room is as the space between heaven and earth.” --菜根谭
Houses
-open-plan living, minimalist interiors, clean simple lines
-modernist architecture of hundred years old
-tokonoma 壁龛, heart of the home : a scroll of calligraphy+ ikebana
Ikebana: a domestic art, a highly personal expression.
-"It's about arranging the space around them (flowers).
Seasons are changing. Through Ikebana we learnt it's the same with humans: to be alive means constant change."
Shodo 书道
-守，破，离: to learn, to break away, to transcend
Zenimalism: Zen+Minimalism
-a trademark of contemporary JP architects, a major national style of architecture
-Tadao Ando 安藤忠雄
-Toyo Ito伊东丰雄
-Kengo Kuma 隈研吾
-though it started with the rich, commercial brands like MUJI packaged and launched it to the mass market.
Mujirushi = no brand
-Image is what MUJI is all about
-a pack of "stones": an epitome of the tradition and stories behind
The artfulness of people.
There's a precision and elegance in so much of what they do.
A culture caring profoundly about details, about getting little things right. That's why even in the most ordinary places, beauty can be found.
