news from japan vol. 4

to be discussed in this article:
the floating world


so, i went to the hokusai exhibit at the tokyo national museum, which proved to be a very thorough introduction to japanese art viewing. hokusai was part of the ukiyo-e print making tradition, where art became a part of the middle class than solely the realm of the elites. ukiyo-e means floating world, a term that was supposed to describe the every day life of tokyo (edo)- it is also meant to describe the gestalt of the time. our friend who knows alot about japanese prints can tell us:

they store sake kegs at the temple

"The term 'ukiyo-e' is composed of three Japanese characters: The first two are shown on the left. The top character is read as 'uki', which means "floating," "cheerful," or "frivolous." The second character reads 'yo', which means "world," "generation," "age," "era," or "reign." The third character (shown at the right) reads 'e' and means "picture," "drawing, " "painting," or "print." Thus the standard translation of 'ukiyo-e' is "Pictures of the Floating World." In its usual sense 'ukiyo' suggested "transitory world," but it also had such connotations as "everyday world," "present reality," or "world of the here and now." In ukiyo-e prints and paintings there was a special, formalized reality, a combination of stylized artistic conventions shared by most artists and the personal reality of the individual artist, which constituted imaginative retellings of life in the Floating World.


There was another character used to write 'uki', which means "sorrow," "grief," "distress, " or "melancholy." When that alternate character was used in the compound "ukiyo" (shown on the left), it meant "sorrowful world" and thus had Buddhist or religious connotations. As with the earlier term for 'ukiyo', it also implied a "transitory world," but with the implication that the present "reality" was ephemeral, or an illusion, a preparatory stage before a more meaningful afterlife. Many writers have linked the two ways of writing 'ukiyo' as two opposites of the same perception of transitory reality, the religious emphasis being on the sorrow of daily life, the merchant emphasis on temporary escape and enjoyment. Neither view denied the pessimism experienced in an ephemeral world."

interesting. more interesting though, was going to the actual exhibition, where as i have found, japanese people swarm in massive numbers. ok, so imagine you are in one of those nature shows where the salmon are trying to swim against the current, up a rapid. this is kind of what it is like to go to a museum. to see exhibitions (this was confirmed upon multiple occasions) you have to wait in long lines outside the museum, and once in, you have to weave through thick crowds of people, most of the time 5 people deep, to see a painting. it's crazy. and this is on a weekday in the middle of the day- can you all believe how much these people love art? i mean, they are dedicated, becuase the only reason i could see anything was because i was a head taller than everyone else. anyways, that was pretty fun, especially the ghost pictures.

let's pray!

anyways, the museum is in this really cool park, ueno park. contrary to any preconception of japan that i had, crows seem to be the most common bird. wierd. i have spent more time in close proximity to crows in the past week than i have in my whole life. crows are actually really big, which i also forgot about, and they're really loud. but they are nice birds that like to hang out with eachother in the park. there are also alot of other things in the park, like temples,homeless people and this giant overgrown pond.

how to drink water from the fountain

this is a pond