Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts

Songs of gratitude, Soil of peace
(Note: Large videos are embedded, please allow some time to load)

After arriving at the Von Sieboldhuis, we were ushered into the main exhibition hall, where Maki-san and Souken Danj-san sang a song together in praise of Von Siebold, for the advances in medicine he brought to Japan, and how this helped in saving the weakest members of Japanese society.


After the song, all gathered proceeded towards the Von Sieboldgarden in the Hortus Botanicus, to witness the planting of the Seed of Peace by the Japanese Ambassador. This story dates back to Hiroshima of 60 years ago, where a woman with the intent to commit suicide decided to live on after seeing how a tree, also a victim of the nuclear bomb, sprouted new leaves. Deciding that if the tree would live, so would she, the plans were made to spread the seeds of this tree, the "tree of peace" throughout the world.


The first of these seeds was planted in Italy, the second in France, and the third at the Hortus in Leiden, the Netherlands.


Sadly, the video is not the most clear, due to the amount of press active at such an event; I did the best I could but when you have to spend 20 minutes on the tips of your toes, arms stretched to allow the camera some view, you start to appreciate the sacrifices you have to make for your hobby. The press people truly took away the first-hand experience of 40 people in the back, in order to provide a watered-down, selected, second-hand reliving of the event for hundreds of others. For good money, of course. Sad, but it happens.

12:12 | Category: , , | 1 comments

Performance at the Lakenhal: Maki Ueda

Entering one of the small rooms of the Lakenhal exhibition, I suddenly found myself back in Japan of 400 years ago...a small room with tatami mat flooring, and a seating arrangement with a real live Geisha. The scent of incense and perfume pervades the area . The scene is so realistic, that my first instinct was to bow, excuse myself and leave.

It is then that I noticed the cabinets, designed to fit one's head, and the bottles of perfume arranged neatly by the mirror covering one side of the room. Each bottle and cabinet contains a fragrance of those times past, and in your mind you relive the old streets of Japan. It is interesting how without ever setting foot then and there, your mind still fills in the picture.


Placing my head inside one of these boxes, I smell the scent of camphor trees, and the Jinko incense of the old red light district.

Maki Ueda specializes in using natural materials to capture the scents (and with it the emotions) that people feel when they smell a certain smell. She captures local scents, of everyday things, and recreates them later to achieve a certain effect. The smells from another place, here.

If you want to learn more about Maki Ueda's work in the world of scents, you can visit her website. She also has a blog, where she records her work.
09:22 | Category: , , , , | 0 comments

Holland Mania (Netherlands)
Saturday, May 16th saw the opening ceremony of the Holland Mania event in Leiden. This event is part of the Japan@Leiden year, and as such saw the attention of a few notable characters from the Dutch-Japan relations scene. The 400th anniversary this year of the founding of the Hudson valley, by Dutch explorer Henry Hudson, made for a perfect timing to revisit the history our three countries have.

The opening of the event was performed by Edwin Jacobs, director of the Lakenhal museum and Scheltema, where the bulk of the exhibits are hosted. Jan-jaap de Haan, assistant-mayor of Leiden, expressed that Leiden was once again, like 400 years ago, a bridge between the east and the west. Mister Shibuya of the Japanese embassy, and Eric Niehe of the Hudson400 also made short speeches to express their gratitude and launch the festivities. They also received the first copies of the book "Holland Mania".












As a jump-start of the festivities, the children's choir "De Leidse Sleuteltjes" performed the song "I love Holland" in Dutch, English and Japanese. The Taiko Kids, Dutch youths performing on Japanese drums, provided more weight to the proceedings with pounding rhythms and coordinated, martial-arts like moves.


Finally, the group "Tafel 9" performed an American tapdance, using a Japanese Taiko rhythm, while wearing wooden shoes. This colorful parade then was guided by the Tafel 9 group to the Lakenhal, where the exhibitions were opened to the public.

The core theme of Holland Mania is to see how Holland, and the views and prejudices Japanese and American people have of the Dutch, have influenced contemporary art. Displaying these artworks allows a Dutch audience to be confronted by what other cultures think of us, and our influence in the world.

In a series of blogposts, I will give more detailed descriptions of the artists, art and exhibits that participate in Holland Mania.

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Japan@Leiden events (Netherlands)

Celebrating the 400th anniversary of trade relations with Japan, the Dutch city of Leiden has organized several events in the year 2009 to showcase the influence of Dutch culture on Japan (and vice versa). Collectively known as Japan@Leiden these events will occur throughout the year. More info can be found at http://www.japanleiden.nl/ (site available in Dutch, English and Japanese).


To participate in these events, Nippon○Rennaissance hopes to inform its readers of these events, as well as provide reports of the events as they happen. In the future, news items and posts of interests will be added. Doing so, I hope to transform Nippon○Rennaissance from a simple blog into a full-blown Webglossy.
On my part, I hope that the reports and information provided here will spark your interest in Japanese culture, and perhaps visit the many events held this year in Japan, the Netherlands and the United States.
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