All posts tagged Japanese culture

Japan: Myths to Manga @ Young V&A

Young V&A

Older readers may remember the Museum of Childhood sited near Bethnal Green tube station out in East London. This has always been part of the Victoria and Albert Museum but in the early 2020s was rebranded ‘the Young V&A’. They’ve cleared the central space with just a café at the far end, and moved all the exhibits onto galleries overlooking it.

The very open, uncluttered ground floor of Young V&A, just a cafe at the far end (photo by the author)

I remember going to the Childhood Museum decades ago and being disappointed at the array of old dolls in fusty wooded display cases. Nowadays they’ve made a big effort to make as many exhibits as possible interactive, with a build-your-own meccano ball rollerball thing, machines to make patterns in sand and more basic things like tables with pens and paper and stencils (I used one of the stencils to trace a guitar and then draw a silly face on it).

But I’d come to see the ‘Myths to Manga’ exhibition which has been running for almost a year and I’ve kept putting off. For some reason I’d got hung up on the word ‘manga’ and thought it was another manga exhibition which, after the good one at Japan House and the massive one at the British Museum, I was in no special rush to see.

Myths to Manga

But I was wrong. Manga takes up a small, almost imperceptible part of this exhibition. It is more like a review of Japanese myths, legends, folk tales and religion, told through a great miscellany of objects. And, given its location in a children’s museum, I think we can safely assume say that a lot of these objects were not chosen in order to give a dry scholarly overview of the subject, but because they’re FUN!

So, at the interactive end of the show, echoing the emphasis on interactivity in the rest of the museum, there’s a little ‘forest’ area with fake trees and beanbags to lie on and listen to a Japanese folk stories on headphones; there’s an origami table with books on how to do origami and lots and lots of squares of origami paper, and a separate table with paper and pencils and books on how to draw manga characters. And maybe most fun, certainly noisiest, there’s a trio of traditional Taiko drums for small kids to bang the life out of.

Installation view of ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A. Note the drums on white stands in the foreground, and in centre frame, bean bags around a table covered in paper to do manga (photo by the author)

In display cases there are lots of toys, including Pokemon, Doreamon, Sylvanians, Hello Kitty, maneki-neku, all manner of dolls. There’s a stand of small Transformer toys from the 1980s (‘These are no ordinary toy cars!’) next to a more traditional V&A set of life-sized mannekins modelling the designs of Coco Pink Princess.

Installation view of ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A showing street fashion designs by Coco Pink Princess (Photo by the author)

There are games and models based on a number of traditional Japanese characters or types of spirit or demons, such as this one about the Yōkai, shapeshifting supernatural beings that include spirits, creatures and demons.

Yokusai display case in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A (Photo by the author)

At the big end of the spectrum there are painted screens and decorated kimonos. At the tiny end of the spectrum there are a number of absolutely exquisite netsuke. There are decorated vases, plates and styled shoes. There’s dolls house furniture from the last century next to the model for a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Studio Ghibli films. And talking of films, there are half a dozen monitors showing clips from recent animé movies.

Themes

How is all this arranged and organised? I’m glad you asked. The curators have taken primal aspects of Japanese (and probably any ancient mythology) and arranged all the exhibits under these great big headings. They are:

Sky (flying gods, demons and heroes)
Sun (the country’s name in Japanese, Nihon, means origin of the sun’, so some flags; in the Shinto religion the most important god is Amaterasu no Okami, goddess of the sun)
Stars (in East Asia the stars Vega and Altair are unlucky lovers, the Cowherd and the Weaver Princess who only meet up once a year when their stars align, an event celebrated in the Tanabata festival)

The Seventh Month from the series the Five Festivals, woodblock print, by Utagawa Kunisada (1830s) in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A © Victoria and Albert Museum

Moon (moon-viewing festivals called otsukimi; in East Asian mythology the moon is home to a white rabbit who makes mochi cakes for everyone)
Sea Below (mermaids and the amabie, the whiskered catfish namazu)
Sea Above (14,000 islands, waves, beaches, fishermen)
Forest (ancient forests full of legendary creatures like the tanuki raccoon dogs and kitsune foxes and heroes with superhuman powers like Momotarō and Princess Kaguya)
City (400 years ago Tokyo was a small fishing village, now it has a population of 14 million)
Streets (skyscrapers soaring above Shinto shrines, with old folk stories about the demons which come out at night)
Home (a place to display a small number of beautifully designed artefacts)

Each theme is explored through half a dozen or so objects of – as I’ve indicated – very varied size, shape and medium.

Part of the ‘Home’ theme, in installation showing examples of manga, anime, videogames, Pokemon, Gameboys and so on, in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A (photo by the author)

To take an example utterly at random, the ‘Streets’ section includes a poster using traditional woodprint style to depict a woman so absorbed in her smartphone that she’s about to stumble off the platform at a train station. It’s a 2017 warning poster from the Tokyo subway, ‘Please do not use smartphones while walking’. Puts Transport for London’s poster to shame for style.

‘Please do not use smartphones while walking’, 2017 poster in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A © Victoria and Albert Museum

Under each theme there are summaries of traditional Japanese folk stories related to them. These include:

I liked the print of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, six ugly men and a fair maiden, known for sailing round in a boat. I liked the idea that you should sleep with a picture of the seven gods under your pillow on New Year’s Eve in order to have a lucky year.

I was also very taken with the witch’s shoes. In Shinto, some animals are thought to be messengers of the gods, in particular cockerels and crows. These bird-witched shoes were designed by Masaya Kushino in 2014 using crocodile leather and cockerel feathers.

Bird-witched shoes by Masaya Kushino (2014) in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A (photo by the author)

Modern art

In among the toys and models, plates and kimonos, shoes and dresses, there are a number of contemporary works of art which could have dropped here from a completely different, entirely adult exhibition. These included:

a large black and white photo of magical lights in the forest, Hakkoda #2 by Tokihiro Sato
a large digital ‘painting’, Tokyo Dizzily Land by Shigetoshi Furutani
a large sculpture made from car parts, Double Spiral by Keita Miyazaki

Installation view of the Street section of ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A’, showing (left to right) the smartphone poster, ‘Tokyo Dizzily Land’ by Shigetoshi Furutani and ‘Double Spiral’ by Keita Miyazaki (photo by the author)

Woodblock prints

Lastly, it took a while for me to realise that, in a way, the backbone of the show is provided by a series of beautiful woodblock prints, ranging in date from the 1770s to 1900, but with most of them coming from the 1830s, ’40s and ’50s. These also feel like they come from a different exhibition, a different world, one with far more artistic depth and resonance than the Transformers and Sylvanians. I counted 15 of them, by the following artists:

Utagawa Hiroshige (7)
Utagawa Hiroshige II (1)
Utagawa Kurisada (2)
Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1)
Totoya Hokkei (1)
Ishikawa Toyomasa (1)
Katsushika Hokusai (1)
Utagawa Sadahide (1)

Yes, this would be the same Katsushika Hokusai who did the famous Wave and it’s here, Under the Wave off Kanagawa from the series ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’.

But although all of them were interesting and half of them were really good, my favourites were both by Utagawa Hiroshige – Star Festival at Yanagishima (1856) and Moonlight at Ryogoku (1856).

Moonlight at Ryogoku by Utagawa Hiroshige in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A © Victoria and Albert Museum

Summary

If you’ve got small children they might like the interactive stuff, for a bit. If you’re interested to find out a bit about Japanese culture, their beliefs about the sun, moon, sea and so on, and to learn about some traditional folk stories accompanied by related prints and illustrations, games and toys, then it’s interesting enough. But if you’re an art lover then I think you’d go to see the prints, some of which are really beautiful – and also the half dozen or so miraculously small and intricate netsuke. In the example below, each ‘clam’ is the size of a fingernail. Even with my glasses on I couldn’t see the full details of each carving, it’s a miracle an artist ever carved them, so small, so precise and so beautiful.

Netsuke of clam shells with the eight famous views of Omi by Nagamitsu (1800 to 1850) in ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A © Victoria and Albert Museum (photo by the author)

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Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan @ Japan House

For decades Japan has been well known for its stylish modern design, across all kinds of products, machines and devices, but surprisingly it has no national design museum. In recent years curators and leading designers have embarked on a project to select and research products and objects which reflect the best of Japanese design, a kind of design museum of the imagination. So far some 19 leading designers have taken part, each selecting items which demonstrate their design tastes and ideals.

This lovely FREE exhibition at Japan House in Kensington is a selection of seven of these designers, from filmmakers to architects. Each has been allotted a stand or area displaying items they would put into a permanent collection of design treasures, ranging from 5,000-year-old Jōmon pottery to bang up-to-date sportswear, from electronic musical instruments to cartoon festival figures.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House © Japan House (photo by Jérémie Souteyrat)

The seven displays are each accompanied by a video documenting each creator’s research process – where they went, what they saw, and explaining the design principles behind the objects they chose – produced by NHK, Japan’s equivalent of the BBC.

In the process the exhibition raises broader questions about the nature and purpose of ‘design’: What is design? What is it for? Why do we need it? How do we know when design is good or bad?

The exhibition features an entire wall where visitors can answer the question ‘What does design mean to you?’ on (stylishly designed) sheets of paper, with the pencils provided, and then stick them onto the wall. The wall was already covered with hundreds of visitor ideas and comments by the time I arrived (you can see glimpses of it in section 5 below).

Seven Japanese designers

1. Tagawa Kinya

Tagawa Kinya is a design engineer and co-founder of international design agency Takram. For his project he explored the design process of a master of Japanese product design, Yanagi Sori (1915 to 2011). Sori had a long, wide ranging and distinguished career; Tagawa chose to explore Yanagi’s design principles by examining the numerous designs he developed for his cutlery collections.

Installation view of Yanagi spoons at ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ showing designer spoons at Japan House (photo by the author)

I enjoyed reading Yanagi’s thoughts about ideal cutlery. According to him any imperfection in cutlery affects the palate i.e. our perception of what we’re eating. As touch is the most sensitive of the five senses it follows that cutlery we put in our mouths not have even the slightest blemish or imperfection. Which explains why his cutlery, especially the spoons on display here, are all made from single strips of metal or wood.

2. Tsujikawa Kōichirō

Tsujikawa Kōichirō is a film-maker. He chose and researched the design of wooden spinning tops from Hyōgo because ‘a toy is the first designed object a human comes into contact with’. He explored tops in the collection of the Japan Toy Museum in Himeji, Hyogo Province.

Installation view of spinning tops at ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House (photo by the author)

Toys nurture a child’s five sense and the primal desires to touch, see and hear. As such, they embody design in its most basic form. Spinning tops are one of the earliest and simplest types of toy with examples being found in 6th century sites in Japan. Possibly they originated as artifacts in religious ceremonies and might have been types of talisman. Obviously now, as documented at the Japan Toy Museum, although bounded by the original circular design and spinning functionality, they come in a world of designs and patterns.

It was a shame, I thought, that we couldn’t play with them, that there was no-one demonstrating how to spin them for the entertainment of the numerous kids and toddlers who were visiting. And for big kids like me.

3. Morinaga Kunihiko

Morinaga Kunihiko is a Fashion designer who works for the ANREALAGE brand. He chose to research the tradition of haburagin clothes. These are talismanic patchwork garments which were worn over 500 years ago by the noro village priestesses from the island of Amami Oshima in Kagoshima Province. The garments are thought to have been worn by 12 and 13 year old trainees. Since both good and bad spirits were present at these rituals the patchwork composition of the haburagin clothes was meant to ward off evil spirits and protect the girls.

Installation view of a haburagin jacket and explanatory video at ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House (photo by the author)

Haburagin were made from cuttings from the kimonos of many people. Habura is the local word for butterfly or moth and referred here to floating spirits of the dead. The garment was a patchwork of triangles, each representing a butterfly or moth, and hence a coat that called on the combined powers of the spirit world to protect its wearer.

Decorative futameotoshi stitching was often used for the Haburagin. The alternation between long and short stitches was thought to exorcize evil spirits. It was particularly applied to openings such as the collar and sleeves where spirits were more likely to gain entrance. As Morinaga points out, ‘The detail is small but held enormous power and significance.’

4. Sudō Reiko

Sudō Reiko is one of Japan’s most influential textile designers, now president of textile design firm Nuno Co. She chose the shirts created by the Goldwin company for the Japanese rugby team for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. These used cutting edge 3D moulding techniques in which the fabric is created three dimensionally and shaped to the players’ bodies using heat. The result is that the shirts fit the body exactly, following the contours of the body and fitting like a membrane. They are tear-resistant, dry quickly and are extremely light. Believe it or not the shirts’ designer was inspired to develop the technique from a lifelong interest in the 3D lanterns which feature in the annual Tsuwaya Yokata Andon festival in Oyabe City.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing the 2019 Rugby World Cup shirts (photo by the author)

5. Hirokawa Tamae

Hirokawa Tamae is a fashion designer. Her Skin Series used the technology of no-sew knits to produce the experience of putting on a second skin. Work from the series attracted global attention after being worn by Lady Gaga and became part of the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in 2017. In 2021, she collaborated with ASICS to produce the podium jackets for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She chose the 700-year-old Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival in Fukuoka.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing yamakasa decorations (photo by the author)

The Hakala Gion Yamakasa Festival has been in existence for 700 years. Hakala Gion Yamakasa is a rite centred on the Hakala district’s tutelary Kushida Shrine. It has been suggested that in a time of pestilence, the townspeople are carried the priest Shoichi Kokushi, founder of the Jotenji temple, on a dais to calm the hungry spirits by sprinkling holy water through the streets.

From this derives the word Yamakasa which describes the portable shrines carried through the streets during the festival. Some used to be as much as 16 meters tall, but the installation of overhead wiring made that impractical in the modern era and the old Yamakasa have been replaced by the enormous but stationary Kazari Yamakasa and smaller Kaki Yamakasa floats, which are still paraded through town.

The Kaki Yamakasa portable floats can still weigh as much as 1 ton and be carried by more than twenty people. The base structures are held together by joinery and hemp ropes. The decorative themes cover a broad range from traditional symbols to contemporary cartoon characters which are all carefully crafted by local doll with a new batch created each year. It’s examples of these figures and figurines which are features in the display. The wall labels explain how design, shape, subject and colouring all bear symbolic meanings.

Installation view ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing yamakasa decorations (note the wall covered in comments left by visitors, as described above) (photo by the author)

6. Mizuguchi Tetsuya

Mizuguchi Tetsuya is an architect and ex-Sega videogame designer. He chose the ‘transacoustic piano’ designed by Shizuoka, in which an embedded speaker creates a sonic experience that can be felt through the entire body.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing the TransAcoustic Piano: note the two electronic transducers outlined in blue (photo by Jérémie Souteyrat)

In an acoustic piano, sound is normally produced by striking the strings with the hammers extending from the keys. The resulting vibrations are amplified by the soundboard. The instrument has about 230 strings and a cast-iron frame which in turn are connected to a wooden soundboard.

By contrast, the TransAcoustic Piano resonates sound with the aid of transducers, devices fitted to the soundboard to convert the audio signals into vibrations. This construction makes the whole piano resonate, creating the sensation of being enveloped by sound. It is an unique design enabling the listener to experience sound through the whole body.

7. Tane Tsuyoshi

Architect Tane Tsuyoshi chose earthenware from the Jōmon Period which sheds light on people’s daily living situations in Iwate over 10,000 years ago and how this still impacts design today.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing 5,000-year-old artifacts from Jamon Village © Japan House (photo by Jérémie Souteyrat)

The Goshono Jamon Museum is part of the Goshono archaeological site, in the city of lchinohe, Iwate prefecture. Excavations there commenced in 1989 and revealed the first-known Jamon Period mud-roofed pit-houses in Japan. The remains of more than 800 pit-houses have been found so far.

At the museum they’ve reconstructed a dozen or so mud-roofed pit-houses as scholars think they would have looked. As people made the shift from the nomadic lifestyle to fixed settlements they developed designs that gave concrete shape to the soil, fire and other vital resources. The Jamon people designed based on a ring system. The structure of village society was a ring and for over 800 years other huts were added to the central ring.

The display includes anthropomorphic clay figurines (dogū) and earthenware vessels from 5,000 years ago, roughly contemporary with Stonehenge. Fascinating.

Summary

From state of the art musical instruments and cutting edge sports kit through to ancient villages and religious figurines, the exhibition is light and airy but has tremendous range. Above all, like the brilliant Ainu people exhibition which preceded it, this exhibition gives you a real sense of the astonishing diversity of peoples and traditions who inhabit the place most of us in the West thing of us as simply ‘Japan’. They reveal that ‘Japan’ is a whole cultural world of its own.

Map

Map of Japan showing locations of the seven designers’ chosen objects.

Map of Japan showing the locations of the seven design projects featured at ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House © Japan House (photo by Jérémie Souteyrat)

Last call

It’s FREE. It’s beautiful, elegant and fascinating. Take the Tube to High Street Kensington, turn right and it’s less than a hundred yards away. Simple as spinning a top.

Installation view of ‘Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan’ at Japan House showing colourfully-designed whipping tops © Japan House (photo by Jérémie Souteyrat)

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Japan: Myths to Manga @ Young V&A

Young V&A

Myths to Manga

Themes

Modern art

Woodblock prints

Summary

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Design Discoveries: Towards a Design Museum Japan @ Japan House