‘Tokyo: Art and Photography’ at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

29 July 2021 – 3 January 2022

Ahhh… Edo, Edo, Edo… …city of dreams, and occasional nightmares… …as Kumagai Jiro Naozane in the final part of the Kabuki play ‘Kumagai Jinya’ (Kumagai’s Battle Camp) says about the fragility of human existence “Juroku nen wa hito mukashi, aa, yume da yume da” (Sixteen years, like a day. Ahhh! It’s a dream, a dream). And if any phrase best represents both the negative and positive potentialities that have emerged from the natural and man-made adversities that have afflicted Tokyo and best reflect, at least in the mind of this reviewer, its impermanence, of almost continual destruction and re-construction since its inception as Edo, it is this one.

January 2020 Tea Event Minamoto Kitchoan London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 25th January 2020

Time: 14.00– 17.00 (Please just pop in anytime during the event hours)

Admission: FREE

October 2019 Tea Tasting Event

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 26th October 2019

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

Exhibition Review: ‘Sakubei Yamamoto and the Rich Seams of Japan’s Coal Mining History’

4^th Oct – 15^th November 2019 at the Japanese Embassy in London

It was Monday 30^th July 1973 when, just before 620 am, Colin Burton (a maternal uncle), who had moved from Bolsover Colliery to work at Markham Colliery at Stavely in Derbyshire, stepped off the pit cage having had to ascend back to the surface during the early part of the shift. As he moved away twenty-nine fellow coal miners boarded the double decker pit cage to begin the journey down the shaft to join their shift mates on

August 2019 Tea Tasting Event

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 31st August 2019

Time: 14.00– 17.00

Admission: FREE

Review: ‘Manga マンガ’at the British Museum 23 May – 26 August 2019

Dedicated to the victims of the Kyoto Animation fire in Uji City!

Belonging to Kōzan-ji temple in Kyōto the Japanese National Treasures the eight ‘Scrolls of Frolicking Animals’ and the ‘Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans’ called ‘Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga’ (animal-person caricatures) were painted between the 12^th and 13^th centuries by, it is thought, the artist-monk Toba Sōjō. They are credited by many as the earliest form of manga.

Fast forward nearly a thousand years and the Citi Exhibition ‘Manga マンガ’ at the British Museum (supported by CITI with logistics partner IAGCargo) is touted as the biggest

Review: Brave Blossoms – The History of Rugby in Japan

As with any activity in Japan once it gains the Imperial seal of approval, formally or implied, it goes from strength to strength!

Not having been a rugby fan and only really actively interested in the two larger tournaments, the Six Nations and the World Cup, and the more famous National sides from Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, it came as something of a pleasant shock whilst on a visit to Japan in September 2015 when, with very little warning, the news media in Japan was suddenly flooded with images of their National Rugby Team dealing out a shock 34-32 defeat to South Africa’s Springboks in Brighton at the 2015 Rugby World Cup which was

October 2018 Tea Tasting Event

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 27th October 2018

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

September 2018 Tea Tasting Event

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 22nd September 2018

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

March 2018 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 31st March 2018

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

January 2018 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 27th January 2018

Time: 14.00– 19.00

Admission: FREE

October 2017 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 28th October 2017

Time: 14.00– 19.00

Admission: FREE

Film Review: Mukoku

A departure from director Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s graphic, often ultra-violent style!

Kengo Yatabe (Gō Ayano) is a fifth dan Kendoka who used to be a Kendo instructor at the local high school. His father Shōzō (Kaoru Kabayashi), who he detests and loves in equal measure, was also his Kendo teacher and had a bad reputation for being a brutal practitioner of the technique associated with ‘satsujin ken’, a murderous sword, as opposed to ‘katsujin ken’, a life giving sword. His father is in hospital in a vegetative state after a dreadful incident involving both father and son and his mother has died, something he is struggling to come to terms with. He has given up his

September 2017 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 30th September 2017

Time: 14.00– 19.00

Admission: FREE

Film Review: Boys For Sale – Bai Bai Bōizu

Premiered in the UK as one of the official selection at the 25^th Anniversary of the Raindance Film Festival 2017.

What might at first seem like a potentially titillating documentary on male prostitution in the Shinjuku 2-chome area of Tōkyō, reportedly the largest urban gay area in Asia, becomes something fascinating and shocking in equal parts. One wonders as the documentary progresses at what point the historical Japanese openness and acceptance of male-male sex as a necessary part of human life became something to be frowned upon and kept hidden. Adrian ‘Uchujin’ Storey, who

August 2017 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 26th August 2017

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

July 2017 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 29th July 2017

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

June 2017 Tea Tasting Event At Minamoto London

Sample some of the best high quality Japanese teas available in the UK!

Venue: Minamoto Kitchoan 44 Piccadilly, London

Date: 24th June 2017

Time: 14.00– 18.30

Admission: FREE

Art Review: Hokusai: Beyond The Great Wave – An Exhibition At The British Museum

Exhibition dates: 25^th May – 13^th August 2017

http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/hokusai.aspx

 

Katsushika Hokusai was born Tokitarō in 1760 in Honjo Warigesui, the present-day Kamezawa area of Sumida City. He was adopted by Ise Nakajima, an artisan, who made and supplied metal mirrors to the Shōgun’s court and, according to “Katsushika Hokusai Den” (Biography of Katsushika Hokusai) by Kyoshin Iijima, a mother who was granddaughter to Kobayashi Heihachirō, an expert swordsman and high ranking retainer of