Category Archives: culture

Fun Link Friday: Osaka Castle 3D Light Show

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Paula

Over the past month or so Osaka Castle has participated in the Art Festival of Light by putting on an enormous light show projected onto Osaka Castle, complete with fire, tigers, and fireworks. My love of castles aside, it’s totally … Continue reading →

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Book Announcement: Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints

Posted on February 2, 2014 by LM

Via University of Washington Press. Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese Prints CAROLYN M. PUTNEY, KENDALL BROWN, KOYAMA SHUKO, PAUL BINNIE paperback not available $49.95 HARDCOVER (9780935172515) PUBLISHED: January 2014 SUBJECT LISTING: Asian Art BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION: 352 pp., 343 color illus., … Continue reading →

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Fun Link Friday: Gokaku Iyokan

Posted on January 31, 2014 by LM

Farmers in Yawatahama-shi (八幡浜市), Ehime prefecture, spent 5 years developing these pentagonal iyokan, a (delicious) type of citrus fruit native to Yamaguchi prefecture. The name “gokaku iyokan” is a pun on the word for pentagram (gokaku, 五角) and “passing” an exam (gôkaku, … Continue reading →

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Book Announcement: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism

Posted on January 26, 2014 by LM

Read about the writing of this book on The University of Michigan Record! Via Princeton University Press. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism Robert E. Buswell Jr. & Donald S. Lopez Jr. Cloth ISBN: 9780691157863 2013 | $65.00 / £44.95 eBook … Continue reading →

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Fun Link Friday: Biei’s Blue Pond

Posted on January 24, 2014 by LM

This wintry scene is brought to you by Spoon & Tamago, who featured some of Kent Shiraishi’s photos of the blue pond in Biei (美瑛), Hokkaido. The water contains a high degree of aluminum hydroxide, which is why it appears … Continue reading →

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Book Announcement: Zen Anarchism: The Egalitarian Dharma of Uchiyama Gudō

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Paula

  The Institute of Buddhist Studies is pleased to announce a new work in its Contemporary Issues in Buddhist Studies series, produced jointly with BDK America, and marketed and distributed by the University of Hawai’i Press. Fabio Rambelli, Zen Anarchism: … Continue reading →

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Fun Link(s) Friday: Ozu and Tokyo Story

Posted on January 17, 2014 by LM

BBC Radio’s Night Waves aired a show on Ozu’s Tokyo Story (東京物語), which was voted #1 (the best film of all time) in the British Film Institute’s 2012 Sight & Sound Directors Top Ten, beating out Citizen Kane.* On the 60th anniversary of the … Continue reading →

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Book Announcement: Kinsella, Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Paula

Japanese society in the 1990s and 2000s produced a range of complicated material about sexualized schoolgirls, and few topics have caught the imagination of western observers so powerfully. While young Japanese girls had previously been portrayed as demure and obedient, … Continue reading →

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Book Announcement: Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan

Posted on January 5, 2014 by Paula

Experimental Buddhism: Innovation and Activism in Contemporary Japan from the University of Hawaii Press. http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-9072-9780824838980.aspx (320 pages, 11 illustrations, $32.00 paper, $60.00 hardcopy) Experimental Buddhism highlights the complex and often wrenching interactions between long-established religious traditions and rapid social, cultural, and … Continue reading →

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Fun Link Friday: The Stray Cats of Kyoto

Posted on January 3, 2014 by LM

I’m rolling my eyes a bit at the title of this piece, but the photos are a great new lens through which to explore Kyoto. Katayama has taken thousands of pictures of the legendary ancient city that once was the … Continue reading →

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