Peach festival/ girls day

New painting for girl's day. 3/3/ now hanging in my house.

It is the first painting I have done for my house in many years.  My kids like the word on the scroll inside the picture.

butterfly joint

Yesterday the new pandas arrived in Ueno park, causing quite a stir.  Earlier that day I had time for a little tea at the tofu place off the main cherry blossom promenade.  The big main table was made out of a piece of an old ship or bath I think..  It was full of different sorts of connections and protections of wood.  It reminded me of my favorite American craftsman, George Nakashima, who made the butterfly joint famous in America.

And if anyone can tell me why the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York would put the work of a man who worked most of his life in Pennsylvania and was born in Spokane, Washington and graduated from MIT,  in the Japanese section I would appreciate hearing about it.

Japanese high school entrance test

There had to be over 1000 kids in line to get in to take that high school entrance test today, at over 200 bucks a head, 200,000 dollars easy, just to permit the best of them to enter.  Some racket this education biz.  Of course the best of them are using this school as a back up, and although the school got their 200, they will not see any tuition from the best of them.

New Cover

I am working on a new illistration for the next Cafe.

Anyone out there see these Cafe magazines?  Usually I use sumie and color.  But the last one I used western paint, and a chopstick.  Don't know why, it just felt like a good idea to paint it with a chopstick.

I am back to playing with ink and washi for the next one.

Department of Japanese Mathmatics

I was just listening to Neville Brody, the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art, on the podcast speak of all the influences that make up art in a modern society, Speaking of British art being made by so many cultures and influences from so very long ago.

Last week I enjoyed the masters degree art student's graduation exhibition at the National Art University.  It is funny to see, 8th floor,  Oil painting,  4th floor, Nihonga.

Yoda. Nihonga.  Foreign painting. Our Japanese painting.  And the only determinable difference now is that the pigment is stuck to the ground with oil or acrylic on the 8th floor.  On the 4th floor they use hide glue, mostly from the skins of Australian cows.

One of my students further blurred the line last semester when he, being a Nihoga student, starting to mix his "Japanese pigments," (imported from Germany, America, and China) with acrylic rather than with the standard animal glue.  Hey man, that is acrylic paint - 8th floor for you!  He relented and went back to using Australian animal glue as a binder.  Nihonga again.

I say to clear all this confusion the other great Japanese universities should start to separate their disciplines too, Department of foreign mathematics - building 5. Japanese Mathematics - building 7.  And the lot in building 7 still use soroban only.

yesterday's beans

It was such a delightful time yesterday afternoon at the local temple near my studio, little kids old folks, parents, priests and old style entertainers, Japanese box jugglers, local dignitaries and the like up on the temple stage, Then the throwing of the beans and some kids candy - caramels, that sail pretty good, and bags of potato chips that float.  Folks so excited to get some lucky beans.  Kind of a riot of happy.  A stark counterpoint to the Egyptians getting the government gun thugs in their faces this week.

It was just such a nice neighborhood thing, people behaving so well, special roped off area for the young kids from the local preschool, so they can get up front and not get trampled.

I made my own mask for coming home after teaching.  My family was ready. They heard me come in and started to shout in Japanese - "Devils out!"  and I got pelted with popcorn kernels.  The local market was out of beans.  I have to say corn hurts. But we cleansed our house of devils for another year.

Betwixt and between

Half way between the Solstice and the Equinox, a precarous position.  In America people stare at woodchucks, in Europe it used to be bears, as they comunicated with the spirits deep in the earth.  In Japan we throw partched beans at the devils, and call out loud for good luck.

Some shrines have events, sumo wrestlers and the like throwing beans to the crowds that gather to catch lucky beans.  In my old shrine they used to throw knives and scissors  at the visitors..  When one of the locals told me I could not believe it, "They throw scissors out into a crowd of people expecting to catch lucky beans?"

He said, "Oh yes.  And I was very luck last year!  I caught a kitchen knife!"

It took a while for me to untangle the story, but it turns out that that part of Tokyo was famous for knife and scissors makers, and as a special teat they throw folded up pieces of paper good for a new knife or scissors, a hand made kitchen knife, quite a treat.