My husband and I visited Japan for twelve days; Tokyo, Kamakura, and Kyoto. Each day was packed with new experiences, largely planned on the fly. In retrospect, my favorite activities were watching a sumo wrestling practice session in Tokyo and visiting the Samurai Ninja Museum in Kyoto, which was basically an hour-long history lecture while getting to hold swords.
I purposely did not make our vacation a textile tour, but you know how that goes–every trip is a textile tour. And all roads lead to Norwegian weaving. In Kyoto we went to a jazz club, Zac Baran. It was a monthly Django Reinhardt night. It was clear that both the violinist and the accordion player were exceptional. Six musicians outnumbered the four members of the audience in the tiny bar. At a break, Mike said something to the red-haired guitar player, who said he was just playing in, that he was from Norway, and is attending an international relations semester in Kyoto. I began speaking Norwegian, and quickly learned that his grandmother went to weaving school in Valdres, as I did, although it would have been ten years before me.
Two nights later at another jazz club, Birdland, we saw our new friend Arve again!. This time we had a long chat over bourbon, listening to a piano player. I got his opinion on Norwegian things. On the current Crown Princess Mette Marit/Epstein scandal: perhaps Norway no longer needs a monarchy. Knausgaard: hasn’t read him, no time during University. The new Harry Hole series on Netflix: really great, high production value. And he thinks Norwegian women are the best.
The bartender owned the bar, and was celebrating its 50th anniversary that night. He seemed very pleased that his son is going to take over.
One morning in Kyoto we visited Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion. Afterwards, walking toward the Ryoanji Temple Rock Garden, we passed the Kyoto Prefectural Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine Arts, our most fortuitous unplanned museum stop. Check out the exterior! Nearly the entire museum was devoted to a display of the work of the painter Koichi Takeuchi, “The Wind that Greets.” Mike even bought the catalog of his beautiful ethereal work.
I’m always on the lookout for tapestries. There was one tapestry at the Insho-Domoto Museum, woven from a painting by the artist Insho Domoto, for whom the museum is named.
We visited a great flea market. The best stall featured old kimonos, some with boro, Japanese patchwork, with layers of patches used for repair and layering for warmth. When the patches were sewn, it was for reasons of poverty and thrift. Now they cost hundreds of dollars.
While in that booth, a man plucked a kimono I had not seen from the rack and slipped it on in front of the mirror. It wasn’t blue, but in gold colors, with a beautiful ink-brush rabbit on the shoulder blade area. It was gorgeous and unusual. “Take it off. Take. it. off,” I said to myself. But of course he admired himself, and bought it. I saved money, no doubt, and didn’t even get a photo.
But I did get a weaving treasure, a loom reed made of–you know–reed. It’s a lovely object. When I was paying for it, I noticed that the dealer used another one as an unsual tray for a line of sake bowls.
We visited the Museum of Modern Art-Kyoto, MOMAK, where I was drawn to an exhibit called Cloth and Clay. It featured the high-tech fabric production and construction of IM Men, the Issey Miyake menswear line. The designers used the ceramics of the famous Japanese potter Kamoda Shoji as inspiration for their clothing. Mike drank espresso in the coffee shop as I studied the whole exhibit closely. It was fascinating to read how the surface texture of a piece of pottery determined how a designer used five different threads for the base layer of jacquard-woven fabric and different threads for the overshot pattern areas, or how the shape of a pot affected the piecing of the arm of a jacket.
I barely dipped into the huge Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art across the street, and paid extra to see the exhibit NIHONGA AVANT-GARDE: KYOTO 1948-1970. It was so interesting that these radical post-WWII Japanese artists followed trends that were quite international. Hello, Robert Rauschenberg. Hello, Lucio Fontana or Anselm Keifer. My favorite pieces had a Japanese sensibility (not to mention a textile connection, too). Below, left, is the work that was the poster piece, Scarlet No 24 by Hidetaka Ono, 1964. I was drawn to the intense color and the worn attached canvas that looks like a folded kimono. Below, right, is Work-139 by Shigeyoshi Iwata, 1963. I love the element that looks like an obi and the wood pieces above it that look like Japanese architectural elements.
This tiny bit of a travelogue doesn’t even mention all of the great food we ate, the fun of wandering the streets, the pottery gallery we visited, and the feeling of Tokyo train station mastery. To end, here are photos from the sumo practice, a train station shot, and a super cool sculpture by Kenji Yanobe, Ship’s Cat, at the WeBase Kamakura hotel. We especially recommend that hotel.
