YOSHIMASA and the Silver Pavilion. The Creation of the Soul of Japan. Donald Keene.

A friend's return to Japan through Donald Keene's Contemporary Lit anthologies, prompted me to read Donald Keene's illuminating appraisal of  Yoshimasa and The Silver Pavilion.  I visited the Silver Pavilion in Kyoto, though it is not Silver, nor was it ever silver, but wood, as this was not the Golden Age of the Golden Pavilion. 

Yoshimasa and The Silver Pavilion. Ginkaku-ji  The Creation of the Soul of Japan. Donald Keene.   

 The imperial line from which Yoshimasa  descends includes the emperor of the Gold Pavilion Kinkaku-ji.  Yoshimitsui.  about which Mishima writes, and about which Philip Glass wrote the score to the film.  These are performed beautifully on piano by the Japanese pianist, Maki Namekawa. 

Yoshimasa was considered a failure as a 15th c. shogun emperor, because he was inept in war strategy and battles. He retires to zen monastery.   He accomplishes being a patron of those most advanced in the arts: gardens, tea ceremony,  Zeami and noh theater, painting (Sesshu)  and architecture as well as poetry (he wrote waka). .He is responsible for the mountain retreat Higashiyama.   Even perfume blending: kodo.  His encouragement of the arts and his patronage deserves a special place in Japan’s cultural history.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Giacometti, Yanaihara Isaku.

Image
Yanaihara Isaku was 38 years old at the beginning of his stay in Paris. A recommendation of Jean Wahl had allowed him to get a scholarship from CNRS. In his homeland, he taught philosophy at the University of Osaka; he wrote and meditated about Rouault, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus which he translated  The Myth of Sisyphus  . After the parenthesis of a trip to Greece and Italy, he had agreed to pose for the artist he met at an exhibition for autumn 1955. This decision  transformed his life. Immediate consequence, she brought him to extend his stay in France: Alberto had always need new work days to specify what the disconcerted and frightened from his friend's face.  "Your face ... I see everything tiny and terribly huge ... I must paint the two together. "  Yanaihara had planned to leave for a trip to Egypt before joining Japan. His departure was constantly postponed: Giacometti desperate to complete the portraits he had...
Read more

Markus Schinwald at Wattis Institute exhibition, co curated by SFMOMA as an off site project

Image
Exhibit of images altered to represent "interior psychic adjustment" with external clues   Captivating Duncan pfyfe chair legs climb gold post Neil Benezra, Director of SFMOMA, SF   Anthony Huberman, Dir CCA Wattis Institute Stephen Beal, President  CCA at Wattis Institute               The Viennese Artist, Markus Schinwald, and his life partner, Ginger Dellenbaugh  
Read more

Pauline Kael house with Jess Collins murals, Berkeley

Image
my favorite mural Very exciting!  This house may become a poetry center, like the wonderful house, UPENN has, for its poetry readings.  But right now, it is still in a process of negotiation, as Sotheby's realtor, creatively organizes a committee to "save the house" and murals.  Christopher Wagstaff, author of a recent exhibition catalogue, the exhibition which is touring and currently in Pasadena, having been at the Grey Art Gallery in NYC, and at the Crocker in summer 2013) - unfortunately I was in China.  The exhibition centers on the relationship and work of Robert Duncan, Poet, whose work I greatly admire(and did as a UW student) and in NYC where I heard him read once before his death.  Pauline Kael is a legend and of course, I read her theater reviews, and heard her speak at the Y92 in NYC, in the 70s.  I never knew she started for a decade in Berkeley writing her reviews.  Her correspondence with poet Robert Duncan (1940-1946) has...
Read more