Schlagwort: Japan

back from the UK

I finished my censorship paper. I’m thinking about uploading it, hence there’s quite few information on this particular topic. Highly recommendable nevertheless is an exhibition catalogue on Ukiyo-e and censorship by Sarah E. Thompson and H. D. Harootunian, „Undercurrents in the floating world“ (1991).

I spent three weeks in the UK, mainly to drink tea and play with the dog of my parent’s friends living there. My last days were in London, where I literally lived at the V&A/ National Art Library. It’s great and if you have the chance going to London, don’t miss the V&A. Notes for the next visit:
*For observing objects closely, you can actually preorder several objects from the British Museum. (at least one month in advance)
*DO NOT fly Ryanair.

This semester, I’ll spent some time with African Art. I’ll have to prepare papers and PPP for
*Ife Art and
*a selection of works by Willie Bester.

Still pending:
*Last makeup on Shino and Raku
*wait for reply on kambodian buddha

—

UPDATE 14.09.2010

I signed on Scripd and uploaded my paper. You can find it here:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/37425115/Zensurstempel-auf-yakusha-e-von-den-Kansei-Reformen-bis-zur-Meiji-Zeit-1791-1868

UPDATE 17.04.2012

I quit my Scripd Account but uploaded it on my blog here:  2010: Zensurstempel auf yakusha-e von den Kansei-Reformen bis zur Meiji-Zeit (1791-1868) (.pdf)

some notes

gaijin in kimono. a difficult topic.
women sewing all night and day to compress their bodies in selfmade victorian corsets. same thing.

i believe you can take a thing and develop it into something new.
my new obsession is kanzashi (hair ornaments), especially the type びらびら簪 bira bira kanzashi (dangling ones).
i would love to get the chance possessing one. same thing with victorian garment, i love the looks, i would also love to touch and feel it… but going out wearing that? no way.
authenticity is not my main focus. i don’t like making fun out of people playing with authenticity because i see no point in that, people always took traditions and developed them into something new, until those eventually became tradtional looks, and so forth… as we live, we’re already part of history.

still, seeing pictures of those women gives me similar shivers as when i’m at the museum.
i am very thankful i was born in the 21st century, and even if there was some time machine, i would not even dare going 30 years back in time.

fashion of every couleur is pleasurable to look at for me,
the items i like to wear are usually of one kind: plain and simple. when i was younger, i broke that unwritten rule sometimes; but for now, i like a non-distracting, reduced style on myself best.

https://www.kanzashigarden.com/briefintro.html
https://www.kanzashigarden.com/basic.html

making tsumami kanzashi
https://kurokami-kanzashi.deviantart.com/art/Kanzashi-Tutorial-Part-I-43067797
https://www.vivcore.com/kanzashi_core.html
https://www.kanzashigarden.com/howtofold.html

a very lovely piece
https://myloko.deviantart.com/art/The-Visitor-From-Kyoto-53509122

Tea labelling III

I’ll meet Seongiu on Dec 9th. She’s very lovely indeed and agreed to help me out a little. I’m pretty glad. The general outline of my paper will be as follows…

1.Grunddaten bekanntgeben:
–1a. Aussehen beschreiben,
–1b. Geschichtlicher Hintergrund in Korea,
–1c. Verwendung solcher Schalen in Korea (zB trinken von makari? dieser Cidre-Art, Nationalgetränk… essen von Reis, Gerichten, usw. ganz Alltägliches)
2. Koreanische Sicht– Bewertung der Schale aus koreanischer Sicht (Einordnen: deombeong?, eingetauchte Glasur, usw…)
3. Japanische Wertschätzung der Schale (kurz fassen)
–3a. Vergleich zu Ido – Kizaemon – eine koreanische Schale ist Nationalschatz in Japan
4. Persönliche Ästhetik, Berwertung der Schale

question of heritage
Es muss generell differenziert werden zwischen:
I. In Korea hergestellter Ware
II. In Japan von Koreanern hergestellter Ware und
III. Von Japanern nach Korea in Auftrag gegebene Ware

question of use in a japanese context
Teeschalen der japanischen Teezeremonie lassen sich prinzipiell nach drei Fragestellungen betrachten:
i. Ist die Schale für koicha (dicken) oder usucha (dünnen Tee)?
ii. Ist es ein Typ der karamono (China), kōraimono (Korea), wamono (Japan) oder nambam (Barbarisch)?
iii. Wenn vorhanden, von welchem Ofen bzw. Künstler stammt das Stück?


questions i still cannot answer
– on the japanese side: what’s the primary source? where are all those fuzzy termini written down, and in which context? who made them up, and when?
– on the korean side: how mcuh were they aware that the japanese claim certain cultural values as their own and how was this being discussed by korean literati?
– on my side: what exactly is the crux of this piece,… where lies the beauty? why is it unique? and what of all that jazz is worth being written down? -_o

—

My „Korean Book of Tea“ has arrived. I am not as glad as I’m supposed to be. I’ll write a more detailled review later. Actually, the coffee table book alert is ON. Lots of white space in the pages, which I personally do not prefer to pages stuffed up with ink up to the dog’s ear.

again late for chinese class

oh, dear. i hate getting up at 6am… so i got up at 7am, decided to skip again and work at home. -.-
anyways. i wanted to post here since i held my presentation. my professor wasn’t so satisfied i think. she yelled, „japanese labelling of korea tea bowls has to stop!“ and then she said very quickly some korean words for labelling bowls that i could not quite made out. i will go to her today to ask again.
also, i think my main failure was that i was researching for „茶碗“ (japanese) instead of „bowls“ (korean word).
i read already that the bowls were peasant, common bowls (which isn’t an insult or something romantic… just the fact, used for tea, rice, soup, cidre…) and that the japanese used them ONLY for tea.

so, my second failure based on this wrong research was to present no buncheong wares, but wares from japanese museums only. of course, i could not find any „teabowls“ in the korean museums. i should have searched for „bowl“+“16c“+“korea“+ maybe buncheong, but im not sure if it is buncheong (but, then, what could it be else? it has some semi-seladonish glaze, but it’s definately not seladon…)

aya… i feel like a freshmen again…

babbling further on…

So, I found some really interesting pieces in the Freer&Sackler… Like this one…

I am still not satisfied with my yondering and pondering about the plain copying of Japanese made up „identities“ for pots… (As in Cort 1992, Chanoyu 71)
What made so many people drive to consider these labels as superior?

Why do we have a huge interest in Japan and Japaneseness but not in other asian countries? Is there some „Koreanxiety“? Why is access to specified literature so limited here?
I saw a really good bibliography of the University of Hawai’i (by Kenneth Robinson), but most of the mentioned are not to be read in Germany. A shame…

I look forward to my pilgrimage in February… as Marichi called it…

Chemistry Corner
General Overview
Useful Database
John Baymore’s Thoughts

Tea labelling

I want to start with a rather specific question. I saw there are different terms taken from Japanese for labelling. Please excuse my bad translations to English.

I. CLASSIFICATION OF TEA WARE
ie. Raku, Hagi, Karatsu and so forth;

II. DESCRIBING OUTER APPEARANCE OF TEA WARE
ie. 茶だまり cha damari (tea lake), 口造り kuchi tsukuri (mouth of cup), 目跡 moku ato (marks of stacking) and so forth;

III. DESCRIBING PHENOMENA
ie. 雨漏 amamori („rain-through“ or tea stains caused by semipermeablility), 緋色 hi-iro (fire stains), 巣穴 suana (pin holes in shino ware), ??? kin-zukumoi (gold repair) and so forth.

Well, this is how I would differenciate between types of labelling. I am open for other suggestions, but this might be a whole different discussion 😉
This is leading to my question. I am very disconcert by those terms in a whole. For group number one, „classification of tea ware“, one can easily fight for hours what Raku exactly is, and what can or cannot be called Raku.
For group number two, For me, this is the least troubling group, since archaeology did a good job on this and most of it is purely translation work IMHO. One has only to be careful not to mix these terms with group number three (like, is moku ato a general term that appears or can it be considered as a phemomena?)
Coming to the group causing me sleepless nights bathing in sweat: Number three.
*Where exactly are these terms coming from?
*Who labelled these?
*How open or differenciated is the label?
I read them every so often in catalogues, sometimes with, sometimes without Kanji, but I cannot stop wondering what they exactly describe. For example, what is the difference between 巣穴 suana and ゆず肌 yuzuhada (citron skin) exactly? What makes a tiny hole a 巣穴 suana? Shall or shant it be of black-ish colour? Can it only be applied to Shino ceramics or can it also be used describing other ceramics with those phenomenon? What about 雨漏 amamori? What’s the dfference between this and 茶渋 cha shibu, tea stains?

Lots of question marks above my head.