The Japanese artist Teppei Takeda creates abstract portraits seemingly composed of bold and audacious brush strokes with globs of paint forming lines and contours of the face. However, step closer and you’ll discover that each and every glob of paint is a meticulously painted illusion and the work is as flat as the original canvas it was painted on.
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Riffing on the word yutanpo, which is Japanese for hot water bottle, tetanpo is an adorable bird-shaped ceramic hand warmer. Maybe you’ve been working on your computer on a cold day and your hands (and eyes) need a break? The tetampo was developed for just that type of situation.
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For the past 60 years Japanese book publisher Sanseido has maintained one of the country’s most-popular dictionaries. Every several years the dictionary undergoes a revision where new words are added and old ones removed. The latest such revision–the first in 8 years–was recently announced with 3500 new words added and 1,100 words removed. The removed are always interesting and generate somewhat of a buzz because they tell the story of forgotten times. Of course words aren’t simply removed because they’re “old” so to speak. So let’s take a walk down memory lane and remember some of the deleted words and why they were removed.
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all photos by Masanori Kaneshita
Vase is a small boutique–a select shop, as they say in Japan–located along an equally tiny side street next to the Meguro River. The shop has been in business for 15 years but last year they decided to expand. But they didn’t have to move far. A 70-year old vacant wooden house right next door turned out to be the perfect new home.
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Earlier this year we reported that Japan’s largest manufacturer of matchboxes, Nittosha, announced that they’re shutting down their business line. Gone is the tradition of walking out of a kissaten with a box of matches as a souvenir. Fearing that beloved matchboxes would be extinguished from our lives entirely, a Hokkaido-based confectioner took matters into their own hands and created edible matchstick cookies.
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all photos courtesy Asako Kitamura
Giant floats paraded down the streets of Aomori last week for the Nebuta Matsuri, one of Japan’s most-iconic and heavily attended summer festivals. It was held for the first time in three years after a long covid-induced hiatus. A total of 18 floats featuring scenes from scroll paintings depicting warriors and mythology lit up the heart of the city. Pictured above is a float created by Asako Kitamura, Japan’s only female Nebuta float artisan.
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Rooted in Buddhism, incense are an essential component of Japanese funerals, as well as home altars where we reflect on and remember our loved ones. Thought to purify the space and create a tranquil mood, it’s a tradition that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. And neither has the shape of incense. So when Japan’s oldest incense-maker asked how they can innovate on something so unchanged, the answer was to redesign them as a celebration of individual life.
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all photos by Koji Fujii courtesy Toru Shimokawa Architects
Invented in the town of Dazaifu and dating back hundreds of years, umegae mochi is a type of rice cake filled with sweet red bean paste and imprinted with the petals of a plum blossom. The sweets are practically synonymous with Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, and have been a popular souvenir for as long as many can remember. Umegae mochi can be found in many shops in Fukuoka, and even at the train station, but one shop in particular stands out: the Yasutake mochi shop.
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Every three years, Naoshima, Teshima and ten other islands including Megijima, Ogijima and Shodoshima play host to a collection of installations and artists for the Setouchi International Art Triennale. 2022 marks the 12th anniversary of the art festival and the summer season just kicked off today, August 5th. While many of the permanent installations remain up (but not all of them), the islands continue to add new site-specific artworks and one of those is a collaboration between Brazilian-Japanese artist Oscar Oiwa and architect Shigeru Ban.
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“Akishiki” (2020) by Riusuke Fukahori | all images courtesy the artist
Artist Riusuke Fukahori has devoted his career to painting goldfish. His “2.5D paintings,” as they’re called, come to life through a meticulous and repetitive process of applying layers and layers of paint, each sandwiched between thin layers of resin, until the lifelike goldfish are complete and appear to rise up from whatever canvas he has chosen. A new exhibition in Tokyo reflects on the artist’s body of work and the deeper meaning behind the goldfish.
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