Events category: Special event

Gallery Tour: SECOND LAW

Join us for a free lunchtime tour of Reijiro Wada’s first solo exhibition in the UK, SECOND LAW, led by Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation staff.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that the universe is always tending towards disorder. Ultimately all structures disintegrate and no system can withstand the flow of time. This is the fundamental direction of nature. How then is it possible that life, as we know it, can give rise to things that are beautiful, sublime and have profound meaning for us?

How far does the glinting light of life reach in a chaotic cosmos?

Gallery Tour: SECOND LAW

Join us for a free lunchtime tour of Reijiro Wada’s first solo exhibition in the UK, SECOND LAW, led by Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation staff.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds that the universe is always tending towards disorder. Ultimately all structures disintegrate and no system can withstand the flow of time. This is the fundamental direction of nature. How then is it possible that life, as we know it, can give rise to things that are beautiful, sublime and have profound meaning for us?

How far does the glinting light of life reach in a chaotic cosmos?

Gallery Tour: Lines, Gazes, Landscapes

Join us for a free lunchtime tour of Hikaru Fujii’s first solo exhibition in the UK, Lines, Gazes, Landscapes, led by Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation staff.

Fifteen years after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011, this exhibition brings together several works by Fujii and offers a space to reflect on the ongoing questions the catastrophe continues to raise about memory, landscape, and how we look at history today.

360° VR Documentary: Eight Million Gods

Niall Hill, Lecturer in Immersive Factual Storytelling at UCL, will introduce Eight Million Gods, a new 360° virtual reality documentary, which attendees will have a chance to view. This immersive film is an encounter with people, places, and spirits of Shinto, introducing them to English-speaking audiences unfamiliar with the tradition, and tracing them into contemporary culture. The project forms the basis of a new inquiry into sacred experience in immersive media.

Gallery Tour: Lines, Gazes, Landscapes

Join us for a free lunchtime tour of Hikaru Fujii’s first solo exhibition in the UK, Lines, Gazes, Landscapes, led by Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation staff.

Fifteen years after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011, this exhibition brings together several works by Fujii and offers a space to reflect on the ongoing questions the catastrophe continues to raise about memory, landscape, and how we look at history today.

As the number of participants is limited, we urge you to sign up quickly.

Gallery Tour:
ひろしま/hiroshima

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, this exhibition, comprising work by three acclaimed Japanese women artists, shifts its gaze to another side of the city and its people – the changes, the things that remain, personal and genuine memories, as well as the everyday, the ordinary and contemporary society. This exhibition encourages us to see Hiroshima differently, as a city that was once traumatised but is now teeming with life. This exhibition features multiple different series of artworks: ひろしま/hiroshima by Ishiuchi Miyako, Here Goes River by Fujioka Aya and PARK CITY by Sasaoka Keiko.

Gallery Tour:
ひろしま/hiroshima

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, this exhibition, comprising work by three acclaimed Japanese women artists, shifts its gaze to another side of the city and its people – the changes, the things that remain, personal and genuine memories, as well as the everyday, the ordinary and contemporary society. This exhibition encourages us to see Hiroshima differently, as a city that was once traumatised but is now teeming with life. This exhibition features multiple different series of artworks: ひろしま/hiroshima by Ishiuchi Miyako, Here Goes River by Fujioka Aya and PARK CITY by Sasaoka Keiko.

Special Video Screening:
SCARLET RIVER by Reijiro Wada

In a reflection on the current intensification of geopolitical conflicts, the Daiwa Foundation invites visitors to view the video work SCARLET RIVER by Reijiro Wada. It was filmed in 2023 at the Motoyasu River, which flows through the centre of Hiroshima City. The landscape’s associated tragedies are captured through a double-glazed window filled with red wine, creating a scarlet scene. An image of the water surface is inverted horizontally and vertically and reconstituted crosswise to create a vision of the moment the atomic bomb exploded. The river now flows calmly as if nothing had happened in the past. The ripples of the sightseeing boats passing by transform the reflections of the A-bomb Dome and the present-day city on the water surface into a hallucinatory loop.

An Evening Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Newly revised and staged for live performance, ‘The Priest’s Tale’ by award-winning British actor/playwright Michael Mears is his adaptation of one of the atomic-bomb survivors’ accounts from John Hersey’s remarkable book ‘Hiroshima’. Father Wilhelm was a German Jesuit priest living in Hiroshima, who survived the blast but witnessed much of the destruction. Told with compassion, warmth and flashes of humour, ‘The Priest’s Tale’ is a clear-eyed depiction of the pity of war… and of the terror wrought at the start of our nuclear age.

Enjoy Homemade Sushi!

Do you like sushi? Would you like to make sushi yourself? Well, in that case, join us! We will show you how to make delicious and healthy nigiri-sushi at home. Erika Henderson from Café Yukari will give you a brief history of sushi and show you how to prepare sushi rice. Cooking proper rice and mixing it with the right amount of vinegar, sugar, and salt is the first step in making successful sushi. Then Erika and Yukari Henderson will show you some good sushi recipes with easy-to-obtain supermarket ingredients, including vegetarian varieties. You can also try some samples of their nigiri-sushi at the event.