"Pour répondre à l'intérêt croissant des lecteurs francophones à l'égard du Japon, l'équipe du
journal OVNI s'est mobilisée et a décidé de créer un nouveau mensuel gratuit : ZOOM Japon.
Vingt pages réalisées avec le même esprit qui anime depuis 30 ans la rédaction d'OVNI, c'est-à-dire
offrir l'essentiel de l'actualité japonaise au Japon et en France avec un souci de clarté et le
désir de montrer ce qu'est le Japon du moment."
"One Piece Exhibition: Original Art × Movies × Experience One
Piece"
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the popular
"Weekly Shonen Jump" manga "One Piece", the Mori Art Center
Gallery is collaborating with its illustrator and writer Eiichiro Oda for a
special exhibition that is sure to please fans.
The manga follows the adventures of a teenage boy,
Monkey D. Luffy, and his crew, the Straw Hat Pirates, as he searches for the
"One Piece," a special treasure that will allow him to inherit the
status of King of the Pirates.
This exhibition showcases an eclectic collection of
original art, large character models and interactive attractions, and includes
brand-new never-before-seen artwork from Oda; till June 17.
Info:
Mori Arts Center Gallery; (03) 5777-8600; 52F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower,
6-10-1 Roppongi, Tokyo; 4-min. walk from Exit 3 of Roppongi Station, Toei Oedo
Line, 8-min. walk from Exit 4 of Azabu Juban Station, Tokyo Metro Nanboku Line.
10 a.m.- 8 p.m., Wed.-Mon. (Tue. till 5 p.m.). ¥1,800. Closed Wed
Yoji Yamada's ''Where Spring Comes Late'' is an epic about one
man's family's journey to discover the new Japan. They are Seiichi
Kazami, a young, out-of-work coal miner; Tamiko, his wife; their two
small children, and Genzo, Seiichi's old father.
Yoji Yamada's ''Where Spring Comes Late'' is an epic about one man's
family's journey to discover the new Japan. They are Seiichi Kazami, a
young, out-of-work coal miner; Tamiko, his wife; their two small
children, and Genzo, Seiichi's old father.
With high hopes and borrowed funds, the Kazamis set out from their
village in southern Japan to become dairy-farming pioneers on the
northern island of Hokkaido. In 1970, when the film was made, Hokkaido,
to most Japanese, was still a chilly, unknown land, an underpopulated
frontier territory.
''Where Spring Comes Late'' opens today at the Public Theater as part of
the current retrospective devoted to the films of Shochiku Studios.
At first, everything is splendidly new and promising to the Kazamis.
They pass through bustling Nagasaki, the largest city any of them have
ever seen, and move on to Fukuyama, on the Inland Sea, where they expect
to leave old Genzo with Seiichi's brother. In the course of one edgy
night with the brother's family, during which everyone is crowded into a
tiny house filled with tense adults and noisy children, Seiichi and
Tamiko realize that they'll have to take Grandpa with them.
They continue, changing trains at Osaka where they spend a few
marvelous, exhausting hours at Osaka's Expo 70, before proceeding to
Tokyo. It is there that events turn grim and the scheme of the movie
begins to show. In a movie of this sort, one death is acceptable and two
suggest a plague.
In its first half, ''Where Spring Comes Late'' has a lot of the grit,
pathos and humor of an Italian neo-realist comedy of the late 1950's.
Even the ample soundtrack music sounds Italian, though with a Japanese
intonation. After Tokyo, as the Kazamis journey farther and farther
north, the movie seems to melt into upbeat sentimentality.
Mr. Yamada, who wrote and directed ''Where Spring Comes Late,'' was
considered one of Japan's most promising new directors in the late
1960's, but then became sidetracked, to his own immense financial gain,
by the hugely popular series of ''Tora-san'' comedies.
His talent is certainly evident in ''Where Spring Comes Late.'' The film
is handsomely shot in Cinemascope (called ''Shochiku Grandscope'' in my
credits), which Japanese film makers used with a poetic authority not
matched by directors anywhere else in the world. The large cast,
including Chishu Ryu as Genzo, performs with reticent skill.
As long as it is attending to the commonplace details of family life,
''Where Spring Comes Late'' has real power. As soon as it begins to
attend to its epic concerns, the film itself becomes commonplace.
Itō Chūta (伊東忠太) (1867–1954) was a Japanese architect, architectural
historian, and critic. He is recognized as the leading architect and
architectural theorist of early twentieth-century Imperial Japan.
Second son of a doctor in Yonezawa,
present-day Yamagata Prefecture, Itō was educated in Tokyo. From 1889 to 1892
he studied under Tatsuno Kingo in the Department of Architecture at the Imperial
University. Josiah Conder was still teaching in the department, while Ernest
Fenollosa and Okakura Kakuzō were also influential in the formation of Itō's
ideas. For graduation he designed a Gothic cathedral and wrote a
dissertation on architectural theory. His doctoral thesis was on the
architecture of Hōryū-ji. He was professor of architecture at the Imperial
University from 1905, then of Waseda University from 1928.
Itō travelled widely, to the Forbidden City
with photographer Ogawa Kazumasa in 1901 and subsequently, after fourteen
months in China, to Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Europe and the United
States. Later he was involved in the planning of Chōsen Jingū in Seoul and a
survey of the monuments of Jehol in Manchukuo. He incorporated elements of the diverse
architectural styles he encountered in his many writings and approximately one
hundred design projects.
Itō helped formulate the Ancient Temples and
Shrines Preservation Law of 1897, an early measure to protect the Cultural
Properties of Japan. He is also credited with coining the Japanese term for
architecture, namely kenchiku (建築) (lit. 'erection of buildings') in place of
the former zōkagaku (造家学) (lit. 'study of making houses'). A member of The
Japan Academy, in 1943 he was awarded the Order of Culture. Itō has more
recently been criticised, with specific reference to his writings on Ise Grand
Shrine, for having 'blurred a religio-political discourse with an architectural
discourse'.
