6 September 2012
Tokyo University of the Arts staged back-to-back performances of the Noh play ‘Sumidagawa’ and Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Curlew River’, in London and Suffolk on 7 and 9 September. The Daiwa Foundation is pleased to welcome Professor Tomotaka Sekine and Dr Daisuke Mukai for an evening of discussion about Britten’s encounter with Noh theatre and the making of ‘Curlew River’.
25 June 2012
Professor Hitoshi Abe gave a talk entitled “Living in Sendai” in which he introduced an overview of what has been happening in Tohoku since the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011, introducing a series of specific projects and responses initiated by various architects and organizations. This talk was organised in association with the Embassy of Japan and the Architectural Association School of Architecture.
2 July 2012
In this event organised in association with the Hayward Gallery, Japanese artist SHIMABUKU spoke about his recent works and the philosophies behind them.
14 June 2012
‘Before and After Superflat: A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art, 1990 – 2011’ (Timezone 8, 2012) tells the true inside story of the Japanese art world since 1990, as Japan has stumbled through a series of economic, social and ecological crises since the collapse of its “Bubble” economy. In this talk, author Adrian Favell discussed the Japanese contemporary art scene with Jonathan Watkins, Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
2 November 2005
Katsunori Hamanishi, born in Hokkaido in 1949, is one of a group of Japanese artists who have explored and developed the rich, three-dimensional effects achievable with the centuries-old European mezzotint (literally “half tone”) technique. ‘Out of the Darkness’ follows the artist’s development from his characteristically dark and elegant early works, featuring natural objects emerging from shadows into stark twilight, to his recent more colourful abstract and geometrical compositions
19 September 2005
Woven from silk, ra is a delicate material and was highly prized in ancient China; few examples of it have survived. The ra garment was included in a touring exhibition of Chinese artefacts in Japan and one of the people to see it was Takeshi Kitamura. He was profoundly moved by it and began his own experiments to rediscover the lost knowledge of how to weave ra. After several years of study and experimentation, he finally succeeded. For this achievement, he was honoured by the Japanese government as a Living National Treasure (Important Intangible Cultural Property) in 1995.
1 September 2005
This exhibition displayed actor prints from a different Japanese city, Edo (now modern day Tokyo). Prints by members of the UtagawaS chool illustrated the distinct differences between the artistic styles and traditions of Edo and Osaka.
6 June 2005
In this particular series of photographs Tomoko Yoneda questions and intrigues us with the images behind our collective memory. They reveal the incredible hidden past behind the everyday and the ordinary.
5 April 2005
“These traces, or fossils, all have a unique story to tell and a continually developing life of their own. My works tend to begin as collages that blend everyday imagery and ephemera, exploring this no-man’s land where the present becomes the past and the historical record is made.”
22 March 2010
Former Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hitoshi Tanaka, shares his views on the changes in Japan’s foreign policy since the DPJ came to power.
