Friday, February 29, 2008

Marvellous exhibition

Utagawa Hiroshige, One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo: A Sudden Shower at Ôhashi Bridge near Atake

Night Views in Ukiyo-e
Exhibition at the Ôta Memorial Museum of Art, Tokyo

Night views can often be seen in ukiyo-e as a popular subject. Since old times, Japanese people have consciously captured the change between day and night, and that was written in some of famous poems [sic]. The developed light began to be easily used in the modern age moderated the fear of dark. Night enjoyments of the cherry-blossom viewing at night, fireworks, firefly catching, and moon viewing became popular among the people. We display pictures of enjoyments, the daily life at night in Edo, and night scenes of travels depicted by Kiyonaga, Kunisada, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and others. In spite of night-view pictures, most of those artists expressed objects as the houses and people brightly like the day time. The Western gas lamp was imported after the Meiji period, which affords people to get the bright lighting like the midday. The expression of night views became changed. In this exhibition, we introduce about 70 pictures made between the Edo period and the modern age to see how people spent their night or what the difference of the expression between the Edo period and after the Meiji period was. Please enjoy the taste of night views in the foretime.

(Text taken from the website of the Museum)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Plum blossoms at Tokyo Tech





Tokyo Institute of Technology
Ookayama Campus
27 February 2008

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Moon & Snow


Today, driving home at dusk, I found myself inside a landscape painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
Iizuna, Nagano
21 February 2008

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Ume-no-ki








Plum trees in blossom
Shikoku, mid-February 2008
(Photos by Erika K.)

Seascapes










Shikoku, February 2008
(Photos by Erika K.)

Local fauna








Shikoku, February 2008
(Photos by Erika K.)

Snow in Kyoto










Kyomizu Temple, Kyoto
February 2008
(Photos by Erika K.)

Monday, February 11, 2008

only just

Takayama, Nagano Prefecture
Autumn 2007

'A sense of being attached to the earth, but only just, like in a dream'... (Peter Doig)

Monday, February 4, 2008

Early morning walk













Imai, Nagano
4 February 2008