Land of Chrysanthemums

October and November are the months for chrysanthemums(kiku in Japanese) in Japan. Colorful mums are flowering here and there in my neighborhood. At this time of the year, lots of chrysanthemum festivals and exhibitions are being held around the country.

I dropped in at one of the exhibitions on my way home from the office. On entering the site of Yushima Tenjin (Yushima Tenmangu Shrine) which is located in the midst of Tokyo, I smelled the refreshing scent of chrysanthemums in the air. It was not as sweet as lilies, roses, or Winter Daphnes but was beautifully fragrant.

About two thousand chrysanthemums in a variety of types and colors were in full bloom. They had been cultivated with attentive care by chrysanthemum lovers, including elementary and junior high pupils. The flowers were proudly on display. Let me introduce some of them.

There are about 350 types of wild chrysanthemums in Japan.  The cultivar was introduced into Japan in ancient times, probably in the 8th century, from China where chrysanthemums were first cultivated as a herb about 3500 years ago. In China, the cultivars were cultivated due to improvements in cross-pollination about 1500 years ago.

In the Heian period(794~1185/1192 AD) in Japan, chrysanthemums became very popular among the royal and noble classes. Ever since then, Japanese people have drawn them in paintings and have written lots of poems about their beauty and elegance.

by Ogata Korin (1658~1716) ↑　↓

In the Edo period(1603~1868), with the wide spread of chrysanthemum cultivation among common people, many improvements were made to the flowers and more gorgeous types were born.

by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Edo period

In the paintings and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo period, these splendid improved flowers after the improvement were frequently depicted.

Tomoe Nishiki

Hokusai painted Tomoe Nishiki.

The chrysanthemum crest has been the emblem of the imperial household since the Go-toba Emperor adopted the flower as his official seal. The imperial crest has a chrysanthemum flower with sixteen petals.

The Imperial Crest

There are more than 150 other different patterns of chrysanthemum flower design. You can see them here.

These are chrysanthemum dolls or mannequins who are clothed in chrysanthemum flowers. Chrysanthemum doll shows usually deal with historical events.

Whenever I see chrysanthemum flowers, they awaken a memory of my departed father who loved the flowers and often took me and my sister to chrysanthemum festivals when we were children. He also liked to see chrysanthemum doll shows in the festivals. So many years have passed since then .. I still miss him very much.

Bonsai chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemum Garden

These rice ears were dedicated to the Yushima Tanmangu Shrine to celebrate and give thanks for the autumn harvest.

Where Budding Artists Hatch - Tokyo Design Festa

The Tokyo Design Festa, a freestyle International Art Event open to all artists, was like a giant incubator where more than 8500 embryonic artists gathered together with their own original artworks. It was held from October 24th to 25th at the Tokyo Big Sight, the largest event hall in Japan.

Tokyo Big Sight

Of the artists who participated in it, I guess some will certainly hatch into birds, rise high up into the sky, and become shining stars in the future. Both professional and non-professional artists from all over the world exhibited proudly their creative talent at the Festa, the biggest and most exciting art event in Asia.

produced by Kamaty Moon

Last Saturday I went to see it for the first time at the Big Sight which I had occasionally visited to see other exhibitions. This time, the hand-made picture books created by Monica, a good friend of mine, were on display. She is a promising artist who won a prize recently.

This is one of the hand-made mini picture books by Monica. ↑　Its title is "The Lion Picture Book". Doesn't this sleeping lion ↓ look sweet?

© Monica I., 2009

permissions for reproduction given by Monica, Thank you.

On entering the Big Sight, I was welcomed by some thrilling rock music performed by college students. Walking into the site, I found it really spectacular to see that both of the expansive East and West galleries were forested with 5200 booths.

 Can you believe the rental fee for a booth was only 525 yen (about 6$) per day? The Festa must be an ideal stage for artists in-making who are looking for an opportunity to show and sell their artworks to a very large audience from all over the world.

created by tam tam clay

created by Hanaoka Saori

Along with these display booths, you can enjoy not only seeing lots of live music performances as well as plays in a variety of genres, experimental animated films and movies screened in mini-theaters, but you can also eat many different country's cuisines! I ate Mexican food. It was quite delicious!

It was pleasurable to see many young participants who were dressed in interesting colorful costumes. They were willing to be my photographic subjects probably because they wanted to show off their fascinating disguises. They looked very lively and passionate.

Since I have been very busy lately, I had at first planned to hang out at the site for only three hours, however, I eventually stayed there for more than five hours looking around various booths and buying little fancy goods for souvenirs. Even so, I could not have a look-around the entire gallery.

These square cake-like art objects are decorations for walls. You can use them as tiles to cover walls too. The girl who had made them said she loved to eat cakes which inspired her to make them. 

created by Uri.

These chic pieces of ceramic ware were made by a young potter.
created by 勝村顕飛

In the midst of the chaotic zing, I surely felt the great passion for art welling up, budding creativity looking eagerly for new directions, and big waves of swirling dynamism made by future artists!

* permissions for photographing  the art pieces in this page given by their creators. Thank you.

Treasures of the Imperial Collections

Majestic tigers roam in the woods, peacocks in old pine trees look down upon you, mythical phoenixes spread their shining wings, marine creatures rejoice in the sea, and a riotous profusion of seasonal flowers smile at you.......

Chinese Lions (detail) by Kano Eitoku & Kano Tsunenobu,
(Right)Azuchi-Momoyama period, 16th century 
(Left) Edo period, 17th century
Sannomaru Shozokan

(The Museum of the Imperial Collections)

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Emperor's enthronement, the special exhibition, "Treasures of the Imperial Collections” is now being held at the Tokyo National Museum.

The imperial collections are the best collections of Japanese art and craft-works in our country. The exhibition consists of two parts: I went to see the first part which started on October 6th. The second part will start on November 12th. Let me introduce some of the exhibit currently on view.

Phoenixes and the Rising Sun (detail) by Ito Jakuchu

Edo period, 1755 , Sannomaru Shozokan

The first part of the exhibition focuses on masterworks by painters from pre-modern to modern times. One of the highlights is Ito Jakuchu. Jakuchu was born in Kyoto in 1716 and created his own style of painting which was a fusion of realism and imagination.

from The Colorful Realm of Living Beings  

by Ito Jakuchu  Edo period, 1757-66 

Sannomaru Shozokan  

His best known artwork, “The Colorful Realm of Living Beings”  was on display in a spacious room. This grand-scale work is comprised of 30 individual hanging scrolls which were originally produced as Buddhist paintings to be hung behind a Shaka (Sakyamuni) triad. Each scroll was quite large and I was lost for words because of its splendor. Most people would probably never get to chance to see the complete collection of 30 scrolls.

...........................................................................

Snow, Moon and Flowers by Uemura Shoen

1937  Sannomaru Shozokan

(The Museum of the Imperial Collections)

.................................................................................

Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months

by Sakai Hoitsu, Edo period, 1823

........................................................................

After the Rain by Kawai Gyokudo, 1924

When I went outside the gallery, I realized the air was redolent with the sweet scent of fragrant olives which were in full bloom in the museum site.

Walking through the extensive Ueno Park, I found ripe purple beauty berries,

and on my way home by the river, pampas grass swaying in the wind. What a crisp autumn day!

Muse Synchronicity - Winds of Change Shake Japan

Muse is a very popular British band and their latest album, “The Resistance” was released on September 16th in Japan. I've heard it was released two days earlier in Europe on September 14th. Soon after its release, I bought the album. I was impressed by the operatic dynamics and I listened with a thrilled fascination.

When I listened to the lyrics of the first track,"Uprising”,  I was really amazed at how their content had a marked similarity to what has  occurred lately in our country and I even wondered whether they were singing about Japan.  I know very well that the song is based on the UK, though.

An "Uprising” however DID occur in Japan recently just as MUSE sings in the first track. What a coincidence !

On September 16th, the same date as the release of Muse's new album, the new Hatoyama government was born and has begun to steer Japan in a new direction that will probably cause drastic or rather revolutionary changes in our society. The lyrics to the song are as follows (abbreviated) :

And (they) hope that we will never see the truth around

(So come on)........

Another packaged lie to keep up trapped in greed

And endless red tape to keep the truth confined.  

So come on

They will not force us, They will stop degrading us,

They will not control us　

We will be victorious.......

You know that their time's coming to an end.......　

Come let the revolution take it's toll........

Japanese voters’ pent-up anger against the old guard, the Liberal Democratic Party(LDP), finally exploded in the Lower House election on August 30 and crushed the LDP which had run the country for more than 50 years of the postwar era. Hatoyama and his party, the Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ) won the election in a landslide.

Just as Hatoyama and the mass media both said, it was a revolution.

We are now looking to the new government to try and deal with various difficult challenges. We look to them with high expectations and some anxiety because their policies and political style are quite different from the former administration's.

How drastic?

The government plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. This is an international pledge declared by the Prime Minister, Hatoyama at the United Nations. 25%?  What a high goal! Everybody gasped at the figure!

All the public works projects will be reviewed and the most expensive dam construction project has already been canceled by the new government. Etc. etc. etc…

Hatoyama’s “Hato” means a pigeon. Can the pigeon soar high up in the sky and lead us to the new future? We truly hope so!

 René Magritte

Muse "Uprising"  from the album "The Resistance" 

Resistance  　←　This is very nice too!!

The Moon Viewing Festival and Moons in Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints

The mid-autumn full moon, which is also known as the harvest moon, came on the 3rd this month. I saw the beautiful full moon last Saturday night. Clouds sometimes came and went hiding the moon as if they were "giving us a chance to rest from looking at the moon” as Basho wrote in one of his haiku.

The autumn air was clear and I enjoyed being bathed in the moonlight. Although, since I have been pretty busy recently, it is probably too late to post about this theme.

 

Japanese people have held the mid-autumn moon festival usually in October since ancient days. We call it “(O)tsukimi”, which means moon viewing. This year my family ate Moon Rabbit mochi (rabbit-shaped mochi) to celebrate the harvest moon.

In Japanese legends, the Moon Rabbit lives on the moon and makes mochi.  A brief outline of the legend goes like this:

Once upon a time, a monkey, a rabbit, and a fox lived together in a forest. One day the Lord of Heaven appeared disguised as an old dirty begging priest and said “As I've traveled long distances, I'm now very tired and hungry. Could you give me something to eat?”

The monkey went off at once to gather nuts and gave them to him and the fox brought back fish from the river. The little rabbit ran to the fields to look for food but came back with nothing. Being very sad, the little rabbit said to the old man, “Eat me, please." and then threw himself into the flames to be roasted

The Lord of Heaven was very impressed with the rabbit's sacrifice. Weeping, he said, "Thank you everyone for your great kindness. I appreciate you all. But what the little rabbit has done is exceptionally sublime. It is  proof of true love."  Then he immortalized the rabbit and let him ascend to the lunar palace on the moon. Ever since then, the rabbit has been making mochi on the moon.

From Wikipedia ↓

When you see markings on the full moon, you may be able to identify the Moon Rabbit pounding mochi in a mortar. The story has its roots in India and there are other versions of the Moon Rabbit legend in China and Korea.

Japanese woodblock Ukiyo-e artists have depicted the moon in lots of different ways. Here are some of them. Which one do you like best?

One Hundred Aspects of the Moon
by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839~1892)  ( ①～④）

①

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839~1892)　↑↓

②

③

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839~1892) 　↑　↓

④

⑤

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797~1858),  Seba  「木曽海道六拾九次之内 洗馬」, Edo period

⑥

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797~1858), Saruwaka-cho

⑦

Ohara Koson (古邨: 1877～1945) Herons. Meiji priod 

⑧

Gakutei Harunobu, Edo period, 「天保山末廣橋月夜の図」

⑨

Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870~1949) Shinagawa-oki　↑

Kawase Hasui (1883 – 1957) ↓　→　⑩　

⑪

Dragon Rider －An Impossible Dream? What's the Origin of Dragons 2

Do you know that there have been many modern-day sightings of creatures that look like pterosaurs?

Pterosaurs or winged reptiles that existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period (220 to 65.5 million years ago) once ruled the Jurassic and Cretaceous skies. They are considered to have become extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs but were a species closely-related to them.

Many accounts of encounters with flying pterosaur-like creatures have been reported from around the world so far, the youtube video below is one of these accounts.

Of the reports, some must have been misidentifications of real living animals such as mega bats or large birds, and some may have been total hoaxes or wishful interpretations because none of the modern-day pterosaurs were captured nor their dead bodies found.

"Pterosaurs" sound like huge flying creatures, however, their size ranges from as small as a sparrow to as large as a small airplane. One of the largest types, Quetzalcoatlus, was named after the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl. The fossil remains suggest that they had a wingspan of 12 meters (40 feet). As for famous Pteranodons, they had an 8~9-meter (about 25 feet) wingspan.　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Quetzalcoatl　↑

Well, there is a great question here. Did all the pterosaurs really die out about 65 million years ago once and for all? Wasn't there any chance for some of them to survive after the Great Cretaceous Extinction and　to live until fairly recently, until the days we call “the Neolithic Age (beginning about 9500 BC) "? Or do they still live today just like the ones in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" ?

Interestingly, many legends and myths of various cultures around the world have stories of flying reptile-like creatures called dragons or lóng(竜/龍）in China.

the Neolithic Age （Hongshan culture BC4000～BC3000）  jade

And some think these huge mythical flying creatures mirror the ancients' sightings and reports of surviving pterosaurs . There is a variety of views about how dragons originated and this is one of them. If some of the survivors fortunately had lived until 10000～4000 years ago, they might have become the origin of dragons.

Dragon design 元 玉鏤彫龍穿花佩 jade (Yuan Dynasty　1271～1368）    
National Palace Museum, Taipei

Ever since I read this tentative theory mentioned above and the article in the Chinese history book written by Sima Qian(司馬 遷 BC145～?) which tells of ancient dragon masters/keepers about 4000 years ago in the legendary kingdom, Xia ( 夏― its archaeological remains have not been yet found, though ), I came to believe that pterosaurs were one of the origins of dragons.

According to the Chinese book, they could FLY and served as vehicles for the Xia emperors ! How fascinating! Therefore I thought that some of huge pterosaurs had lived in ancient China and had been called dragons or lóng(竜/龍）. 

Furthermore, since about 4000 years ago, other Chinese records, including inscriptions on bones and tortoise carapaces, have had lots of detailed and vivid descriptions of sightings of lóng.

↑ tortoise carapace

“What fun it would be to be a dragon rider like a Xia emperor !” I would often think of such bizarre fluff.

However, one day in early summer, 2008, my dream dragon suddenly crashed in the Miraikan Museum in Tokyo, where we went to see the exhibition, "Pterosaurs; Rulers of the Skies in the Age of Dinosaurs".

the poster of the exhibition

At the exhibition, I found that pterosaur bones were hollow and air filled, like the bones of birds. The fossil remains suggest that giant pterosaurs could just simply soar over the Earth and glide short distances. They had membrane type wings similar to bats.  Bat membranes ?! Oh No!  Pterosaur-wings are considered to have been as thin as a credit card!! Oh No!

How can we ride such fragile creatures?! I had long thought that they had been magnificent creatures with stout wings of hard thick flesh.

from the Neverending Story(movie)       Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke

Disappointed at the truth the fossils tell, I bitterly looked up at the full-scale mock-up of colossal Quetzalcoatlu.

Avril Lavigne's Keep Holding On  is nice!!
from "Eragon"   Baby dragon, Saphira, is very cute!



The Dragon in the Lake   What's the Origin of Dragons 1

Cosmos Butterflies

The universe is full of magical things and the latest Hubble image of NGC 6302 (Butterfly Nebula, Bug Nebula) is a fascinating poem the universe has woven.

NGC 6302,  planetary nebula in Scorpius
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business and snapped this stunning shot. On September 9, 2009, the news section of the NASA website described this beautiful nebula as follows:

"What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour—fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes!


A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planet when viewed through a small telescope.


NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri."

Another beautiful butterfly nebula, M2-9, was discovered in 1947. It is located about 2,100 light-years away from the Earth. Doesn't it look like a piece of jewelry created by the art nouveau artist, René Lalique?

M2-9: Wings of a Butterfly Nebula

I wonder how long these butterfly nebulae will remain so radiantly beautiful. Since we can see only their light emitted a long time ago, there is no telling what has happened to them in the faraway space where they were. Possibly baby stars were born and have begun sparkling by this time.

All things are in flux, and so are the nebulae, and so are we. The splendid formations of butterflies remind me of some of Tagore's verses: 

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough

Let your life
lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf

Strike in chords from your harp
fitful momentary rhythms.

by Rabindranath Tagore(1861 - 1941)

Oh How lovely it would be if we could live not in fleeting time, but in the ever expanding present moment, "eternal now"!!

Tour of our galaxy's visible nebulae  ←So fantastic!

Thank you, Nagisa-san for inspiring me!