Book Review: ‘Honoured and Dishonoured Guests: Westerners in Wartime Japan’

For a subject that seems rarely to have been written about this is a welcome publication highlighting (and that is the operative term being used in this review) the experience of foreigners in Japan during WWII albeit in this review with reservations about some of the assertions it makes.

A Kabuki Oshiguma (Face Pressing): A Relic From The Past

Three celebrated Kabuki actors imortalised on a silk artefact!

Kabuki (classical all-male dance-drama) enthusiast and collector Trevor Skingle shares his discovery and the facinating history of a Japanese scroll he bought from an art dealer in the Netherlands that survived the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. His research has enabled him to identify the three Kabuki actors from the 1920’s who’s faces are imprinted onto the silk cloth and the artist who crafted a simple but elegant scroll

Literature And Disaster In Japan: Reflections From History And The Present Day

A Japan Foundation free event – 13^th March 2012 from 6:30 pm

Commemorating one year since the Great East Japan Earthquake, The Japan Foundation presents an evening looking at the relationship between literature and disaster in Japanese history. Writers have often been called upon to try to help society come to terms with the challenges of tragic events in Japan’s past. Correspondingly, such events have periodically led to