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There are many literary towns in Japan suitable for street sweeping, where there are no large-scale complex shopping districts or first-line international brands, but only some self-owned stores opened by young artisans. The beauty of artifacts pursued by the Japanese is often hidden in these stores, which are simple in style and full of strong personal symbols. Today, we will start a journey from Kyoto to search for artifacts, visit those treasured folk art towns, and look for everyday artifacts that match your attitude towards life.
🤗 Kanazawa, the former Million Ishiban of Hokuriku
#Gold Leaf Craftsmanship #Higashi Chayamachi #Nishi Chayamachi #Edo Style #Japanese Lifestyle Aesthetics
If you are looking for a place where you can experience the ultimate elegance of Kyoto while avoiding the crowds, you have to look no further than Kanazawa, known as “Little Kyoto”. Kanazawa is located in Ishikawa Prefecture in Hokuriku, Japan, and was once the fiefdom of Toshiie Maeda, the famous Kaga Million Stone Lord, and is now an internationally recognized tourist destination. Kanazawa Station is a two-hour ride from Kyoto Station on the Kansai-to-Hokuriku “Thunderbird” Limited Express. It is worth noting that the architecture of Kanazawa Station is magnificent, combining modern, simple lines and traditional torii shapes to showcase the futuristic nature of the city.
Because of the dynastic elegance inherited from the Heian period, Kyoto is a little more subtle in its presentation to the visitor, who needs to delve deeper in order to realize its subtleties. Kanazawa's appeal is more straightforward, with more traditional culture, such as Kanrokuen Garden, one of Japan's three great gardens, the magnificent Kanazawa Castle, and the townhouses of the Edo period, as well as a number of futuristic post-modern buildings such as Kanazawa Station and the 21st Century Museum of Art, which was founded in 2004 at the very center of the city by architects. The 21st Century Museum of Art was established in 2004 in the center of Kanazawa, with the architect's conception of an “open park-like art museum for the entire city,” and is open to the public free of charge, with the exception of the popular installation “Transparent Swimming Pool” and regular special exhibitions, which require reservations on the museum's website. All installations are free and open to the public.
Kanazawa is internationally recognized as a “City of Handicrafts” and is rich in folk arts and crafts. Today, Kanazawa's Higashi-Chaya-cho and Nishi-Chaya-cho are home to many craft workshops and general stores where not only international tourists, but also locals often shop for their daily necessities. Tea culture is also very popular in this city. Unlike Kyoto's distinctive dynastic culture, the city is characterized by the splendor of the “million stone Kagabans,” which were once a part of the city's history. The most famous of these is the local gold leaf craftsmanship. Today, more than 90% of the gold leaf in Japan comes from Kanazawa, and you can buy ice cream and various sweets with gold leaf on the streets of Kanazawa.
Today's gold foils are divided into the four-hundred-year-old “Kobayashi gold foil” process and the modern “cut gold foil” process. In “Kashofu gold foil”, gold sheets are sandwiched between layers of washi paper (also known as kokeshi paper), which is infused with special liquids such as egg and ash juice, and then pounded by hand, utilizing the malleability of gold to form a foil thinner than a cicada's wing (about 2 thousandths of a millimeter). In contrast, the foil of “Kirikiri gold foil” is made by using a special carbon paper to hold the gold sheet, which is pounded by a machine, and then cut to the appropriate size with the paper. In Chaya-cho, there are a number of long-established gold leaf workshops where you can participate in gold leaf making.
Kanazawa is a small town, and there are buses running from Kanazawa Station that take about 5-8 minutes to each attraction, or about 1.5 kilometers on foot. Tucked away in a small area are various grocery stores selling food, cloth, and accessories, as well as art workshops that became popular during the Folk Art Movement. If you are interested in antique art, Kanazawa also has a number of stores that collect artifacts from Europe, Africa, and other Asian countries that were popular in the last century, and there are many antique items that are over 100 years old. If you are tired of shopping, you can order a bowl of seasonal “seafood don” at one of the large rows of stalls in the seafood market in Omi-machi, or a bowl of “gold leaf throat blackfish” rice bowl, which is a specialty of Kanazawa.
🤗 Kurashiki, a Folk Art Town in Okayama Prefecture
#Cowboy elements #Cultural town #Folk art sports center #Simple design
Okayama Prefecture, located in the Chugoku region in the western part of Honshu Island, is the birthplace of “Momotaro's Creation,” and is also known as “Haru-no-kuni,” due to the fact that it is situated on the leeward slopes of the northwestern coast of the mainland and receives very little rainfall, and is also known as “Haru-no-kuni. “In addition to the famous fortress of the Warring States period, Okayama Castle, there is also Korakuen Garden, one of the three largest gardens in Japan. Of course, Okayama is just a stopover for this trip. From Kyoto Station, you can take the Shinkansen (bullet train) for an hour to Okayama and then transfer to the JR Sanyo Line for a 25-minute ride to Kurashiki, the destination of this trip. If you're partial to the MUJI style, then this town tucked away by the Seto Inland Sea is a destination just for you.
Since the area was bordered by the Seto Inland Sea, it was an essential place for ships from Osaka to the Korean Peninsula, and it has had a strong commercial atmosphere since the Edo period, and after the Meiji Restoration, it became an important textile center due to the year-round cultivation of cotton in the area, and it is also the largest jeans production base in modern Japan. In the 21st century, the textile industry is no longer the dominant industry in the area, although the industrial structure has changed, but the element of “denim” seems to have become an important symbol of Kurashiki, Kurashiki also has a special “denim” as the theme of the town, from food and drink to cultural and creative items, from the denim museum to the denim museum. Kurashiki has a town dedicated to the theme of “denim,” which is filled with the standard dark blue color of denim, from food and drink to cultural and creative items, and from a denim museum to a variety of grocery stores.
A 500-meter walk from Kurashiki Station leads to a protected area of historic streets where the Ohara Museum of Art and the Kurashiki Folk Art Museum are located. The Ohara Museum of Art has a large collection of works by the Impressionists Paul Gauguin, Renoir and Claude Monet, as well as the Fauvist Matisse. Most of Monet's Water Lilies series are in Japan, and some are collected here. As the center of the Folk Art Movement, the Kurashiki Folk Art Museum displays a large number of artifacts that fuse art with life, fully reflecting the idea of the Folk Art Movement's advocate, Ryu Soetsu, that folk art must be born of and serve people's daily lives.
Kurashiki is not a big place, but it is a place where lovers of literature and light art can “sink”. Everywhere you look, you will find miscellaneous stores filled with glassware and ceramics, as well as lacquerware and hand-woven fabrics that are essential for daily life. This is a typical example of successful industrial transformation, where the influx of artists has revitalized the textile and creative industries that were once in the doldrums during the bubble era. While being practical, the products are given more of the artists' personal style and creative concepts, transforming them from uniform industrialization to highly distinctive diversification. Kurashiki's nighttime bustle is characterized by a perfect combination of traditional and Western cultures, with “Showa-style” bars and restaurants and traditional Japanese-style izakaya with warm curtains hanging in the streets.
🤗 Takamatsu, Artistic Faith Based on the Mountains and the Sea
#Seto Inland Sea Art Festival #Yayoi Kusama #Pop Art #Island Culture
The Seto Inland Sea, meaning narrow strait in Japanese, is located between Honshu and Shikoku in Japan. Shikoku is the smallest of the four islands of mainland Japan, comprising the prefectures of Kagawa, Tokushima, Kochi and Ehime. It has been an important transportation route since ancient times. Ships have traveled between the islands for supplies, bringing new cultures and ways of life to the islands. They blended with the inherent culture of each island to form unique traditions and customs that have survived along with the beautiful scenery. The Setouchi International Arts Festival is held every three years under the theme of “Sea Revitalization,” with the aim of revitalizing the Setouchi islands to the point where nature and mankind once blended together, and making the Setouchi Sea a “Sea of Hope” for all regions of the world. The festival is held every three years, and during the festival there are many modern artworks based on the beliefs of the mountains and the sea, in addition to the island's permanent exhibits.
The destination of this trip is Takamatsu in Shikoku, which is also the main venue for the Seto Inland Sea Art Festival. From Okayama, you can take the JR express line to Takamatsu City in Kagawa Prefecture in about an hour. The main part of Takamatsu is located on Shikoku Island, and the venues where the festival is held are on small islands that rise up from the Seto Inland Sea. Naoshima Island is an important venue for the Seto Inland Sea Arts Festival, and it has been selected by the British travel magazine Traveler as one of the world's seven best cultural attractions to visit. The island, with a population of less than 4,000, can be described as a large-scale art museum, and from the moment you set foot on the land, every blade of grass, tree, and brick around you maps the shadows of the masters of art. Of course, you can find many folk crafts and daily utensils as you stroll through the town.
At Miyaura Port on Naoshima Island, there is a red giant pumpkin installation by renowned Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama, while another yellow giant pumpkin is in the back garden of the Benesse House, which can be accessed by a shuttle bus from Miyaura Port. Continuing along the tour route are the Lee U Hwan Museum of Art and the Jichu Museum of Art, both designed by renowned Japanese architect Tadao Ando. When the poet of Shimizu clay was flying over these devastated islands, he wanted to fill up these pits, which symbolized the bursting of the bubble economy, through the art of architecture, and thus a great building, the Jichu Art Museum, was born. As the name suggests, the entire museum is built underground, and as you can see from the aerial photo, there are several geometrically-patterned light ports at the top of the museum, through which the sunlight passes at different angles throughout the day, creating different visual effects.
In addition to Naoshima, the neighboring island of Kodo is perfect for wandering around, with many treasure stores scattered around, fulfilling the desire for a “paradise”. It was the setting for Hayao Miyazaki's animation “The Little Witch in the House,” and is famous for its olive trees and Mediterranean climate. On Kodo Island, there is a famous “Angel's Path” tidal landscape. When the tide goes out, the path leading to the island in the sea will appear, and by stepping on the Angel's Path, you can walk to the island that is originally in the center of the sea. It is worth noting that the Angel's Path appears only twice a day, from 5:00 a.m. to about 8:00 a.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to about 7:00 p.m. There are many soy sauce breweries on the island, and if you are brave enough to try the island's unique “soy sauce ice cream,” you will surely unlock a whole new taste experience.
Although Toshima does not have as many works of art as Naoshima, it is an island where art and nature are in perfect harmony. The Toshima Museum of Art was created by Japanese architect Rikui Nishizawa and art master Riichi Naito. The entire venue is themed on water, and there are no exhibits in the museum, as it is an artistic whole in itself. The art museum looks like a drop of water on a hillside from a distance, and there are many drops of water on the floor inside the building, giving it a crystal clear viewing experience. There is a seaside cottage near the harbor in Toshima where French artist Christian Boltanski has opened a heartbeat sound archive. He plays the sounds of heartbeats collected from all over the world here at random.
🤗 Tottori and Matsue, Pottery Towns under the Folk Art Movement
#Folk Art #Yumachi Kiln Ceramics #Dune Coast #Izumo-yaki
Tottori Prefecture in northwestern Honshu, Japan, is a two-hour drive northeast by JR from Okayama Station. Located in the northwestern part of Honshu Island, it is hot and dry in the summer because the winds are blocked by the mountains and there is little rain (creating the largest coastal dune landscape in Japan), and in the winter, the winds come from the continent directly across the Sea of Japan, often bringing blizzards, which makes this prefecture the least populated prefecture in Japan. The origin of the word “Tottori” is recorded in the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters), which states that the area was named “Tottori” because it was thought to be a place where the imperial family would catch birds to pay tribute to the emperor. Like Kurashiki, Tottori was at the center of the Japanese folk art movement in the last century.
From Tottori Station, walk north to the Tottori Folk Art Museum. The founder of this art museum was local folk art activist Yoshida Joya, who was also a writer of the “Birch School,” one of the major genres of modern Japanese literature. He advocated the active use of collected works of art in everyday life, and at the time of the Folk Art Movement, he personally designed a series of furniture, lamps, and everyday objects and invited professional craftsmen to polish and mold them, combining the concept of “beauty through use” advocated by Ryu Sogetsu with “functional beauty” that emphasizes functionality. The concept of “beauty through use” advocated by Ryu Souetsu is combined with “functional beauty” that emphasizes functionality. Since Tottori's mountainous terrain was not conducive to the development of agriculture and industry, it was only possible to develop handicrafts, and many potters gradually emerged and became a famous ceramics producer. Tottori's local pottery, with its simple shapes and ancient glazes, fully demonstrates the aesthetic of simplicity advocated in the Folk Art Movement.
Leaving Tottori, you go further west to the next door Shimane Prefecture, also in the northwestern part of the island of Honshu, which also hides a small town, Matsue, where pottery is the main industry. Matsue is a city of water, connected to two large lakes, Lake Shinji and Nakai, in Tottori and Shimane Prefectures. The area was called “Izumo country” in ancient times, and the famous Yumachi kiln and Izumo-yaki pottery came from Shimane Prefecture. Therefore, in Matsue, there are a lot of local specialty stores where you can find good quality pottery items, mostly from local folk pottery kilns.
Matsue, like Tottori, has almost no pedestrians during the daytime, so how can such a sparsely populated town, which is not known as a travel mecca, support so many ware stores? There are artists who make wares, professional buyers who travel to and from the kilns, and most of all a large group of people who buy these wares and use them in their daily lives, and as long as this system remains in place, towns like this will continue to write their history. While the large urban complexes are certainly complete, the small and varied stores scattered throughout the city can also show the world their unique tastes and aesthetics of life and aesthetics of life.
🤗 Otaru, White Romance by the Canal
#blown glass #music box #pottery #art exhibition
After the late fall in November, Hokkaido will receive its first snowfall. Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan, the northernmost administrative region of Japan has a long history that has given rise to a culture distinct from that of the Japanese mainland. Especially after the Meiji Restoration, with the rise of modern industries, Hokkaido's unique geography has become the base of Japan's agricultural and livestock industry. Otaru, as the outer harbor of Sapporo, attracted a large number of foreign investors and became the “Wall Street of Northern Japan”. As the bubble faded and the industry shifted, Otaru's former glory is no more, but with the movie “Love Letter,” it became a popular tourist destination.
Probably the earliest we heard about the town of Otaru was in the movie “Love Letter” by Shunji Iwai, which featured scenes of snowy skies that made off-screen viewers incredibly eager. In the center of Otaru is a man-made canal lined with what were once cargo warehouses that are now art workshops and stores, making this the hottest pedestrian area. Otaru's most famous craft is hand-fired glass, which is called “nitsuko” here. The general merchandise stores along the street are filled with local glassware, from common household utensils to pure glass crafts, and visitors can choose from a wide range of items. Otaru also has a music box museum with thousands of music box products. There are thousands of music boxes, ranging from simple ones costing 1,000 yen to exquisite lacquerware and ceramic ones costing hundreds of thousands of yen, and visitors will buy one or two of these as a souvenir.
Since Hokkaido is a long way from Kyoto, it is common to travel to Osaka first and then take a flight to Sapporo's New Chitose Airport, and there are many direct domestic flights to Sapporo. After arriving at Sapporo Station, it takes only 30 minutes by JR to reach Otaru and experience the charm of this canal town. Otaru is not that big, and the core area can be explored in half a day. If you still have energy left, you can go to Tengu Mountain at the back of Otaru Station and wait for the sunset at the top of the mountain to have a glimpse of the bustling night view of the town, which also brings back the night of the “Wall Street of the North” in the west coast of Hokkaido.
- Author:japan guides
- URL:https://japan-guides.com/article/culture-72
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