Welcome to NOTEBOOK, a cultural guide to art, design and architecture along with a resource of local news and information in English giving a realistic view of Tokyo and further afield.
Revisiting November
11/02
XR or Cross Reality, a digital tool combining elements of virtual and actual reality, was been unveiled by the Odakyu Corporation in Shinjuku to showcase the redevelopment of the area and the old Odakyu department store on the west side of Shinjuku Station. Elsewhere, the 35th Tokyo International Film Festival drew to a close. Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye Dragon Inn, showing as part of the World Focus section, reflected the state of contemporary cinema as well as the present day, while other films such as World War III (2020) by the Iranian director Houman Seyedi and Eli, Eli, Lema Sabachthani? (2006) directed by Shinji Aoyama held a strange mirror to the world.
11/04
Yet more rockets were fired from North Korea as Tokyo sought to make itself a unique cultural center that stands apart from major city. The inaugural Art Week Tokyo involved 51 galleries, museums, and experimental art spaces opening their doors to visitors over 4 days. One venue was MOMAT, the National Museum of Modern Art in Takeshiba, which also celebrated its 50th anniversary while hosting the retrospective of Japanese artist Shinro Ohtake.
11/07
Two pet African ball pythons made their escape after being abandoned by their owner and released into fields north of Tokyo in Tochigi prefecture. In Tokyo, “Documentary Dream Show” (Yamagata in Tokyo 2022) at K’s Cinema in Shinjuku featured 45 films from the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival that had previously held online. Yamagata is further north of Tochigi and home to Asia’s first international documentary film festival, the first of which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Yamagata city in 1989. Since then, the festival has been held every other year during each October.
11/09
Japan aimed to have inbound tourism recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2025, bolstered by upcoming events such as the Expo 2025 in Osaka and the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo that same year. The weak yen also helped, while the US midterm elections pointed at how Japan's currency would fare over the coming months as investors buying the dollar were also frantically buying back the yen. And with a rare lunar eclipse seen the day before, the winter dish of crab was back on the menu. Fishing bans were lifted near Ishikawa and Fukui prefecture and the Snow Crab returned to tables nationwide as the winter drew in.
11/11
Sakumaseika, the 114 year-old confectioner known for its sweets in the Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies, announced it would close its doors in January 2023. Meanwhile, two exhibitions — “Voix” by Gozo Yoshimasu at Take Ninagawa and “Copper Age 1978-2022” by Shinro Ohtake at Ginza Atrium, GinzaSIX — both explored forms of primitive drawing.
11/14
The former village Kanbara in Gunma prefecture, originally buried by the volcanic eruption of Mount Asama in 1783, was reopened. The Tenmei Eruption not only devastated the village but also remodeling the local landscape known as the Pompeii of Japan. Meanwhile the Japanese Emperor and Empress on tour in Hyogo prefecture visited one of the world's fastest supercomputers, Fugaku, currently being used to predict future weather patterns and embrace the future of quantum computing.
11/16
Underwater drones are being developed by the Japanese government to patrol the waters around the Senkaku Islands near Okinawa and the renowned film director Kazuki Omori passed away after a period of illness. Known for writing and directing Godzilla vs. Biollante, 1989, and Godzilla vs. King Ghidrah, 1991, Omori began by adapting books by Haruki Murakami as well as writing his first film reflecting on his experiences studying at medical school.
11/18
Exactly 100 years after Albert Einstein came ashore in Japan for the very first time, the Japanese government announced that it would readmit foreign cruise liners following a 2-year ban during the pandemic. Cultural news turned Kyoto and upcoming editions of Art Collaboration Kyoto, Artist Running Festival as well as "50 Seconds" at Soda channeling innovation and invention that would reach an wider global audience.
11/21
Both Japan and the United States signed an agreement to send a Japanese astronaut to Gateway, a lunar-orbiting space station to be built by NASA. Meanwhile, Japanese documentary filmmaker Toru Kubota returned home after being released from a Myanmar prison the previous day. Screenplays written by Akira Kurosawa went on display at the National Film Archive of Japan in Kyobashi with a display of artefact and historical records, scripts written for other directors and unscreened screenplays that all revealed the secrets of Akira Kurosawa, the screenwriter.
11/23
A Japanese government panel of experts called for further tax hikes urging the general public to shoulder a heavier burden as the country sought to build up its national defenses. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, said it had given up on landing the country's ultra-small probe on the Moon after communication with the lander failed following its launch the week before. Back on Earth, Velvet Overhigh’m d.m.x, a bar in Shinjuku’s ni-chome, and Super Dommune, a live streaming studio and online channel across town in Shibuya’s Parco department store, aimed to fill the communal void of space (or Social Distance) with something more intimate and purposeful.
11/25
With Christmas fast approaching, an aquarium in Gifu is powered Christmas lights with an electric eel, while the oldest fossilized dinosaur eggshell in Japan was also found nearby. The art space Goya Curtain hosted painter Patrick Lundberg while the painter Shinro Ohtake and musician Yamataka EYƎ released their first album in 26 years as Puzzle Punks.
11/28
All eyes were trained on the middle east. The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar finally got underway alongside the 100th anniversary of the British archaeologist Howard Carter breaking open the tomb of King Tutankhamen near the Egyptian city of Luxor. A Japanese research team concluded an iron dagger found in the tomb earlier in the year had, in fact, been forged from a meteorite. West of Luxor and east of Qatar, the largest and only permanent artwork was being designed for the Abu Dhabi desert: The Mastaba, a project conceived in 1977 by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artist duo known for environmental installations. Their final project went on display at 21_21 DESIGN SITE at Tokyo Midtown.
11/30
Following Japan’s 1-nil loss to Costa Rica at the World Cup, other news suggested World Cup frenzy had put a strain on Qatar's camel industry. A day of film screenings by the Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas took place at the University of Tokyo as the late Japanese film director Yoichi Sai was also remembered. Sai is best known for his depiction of Koreans living in Japan with his debut “Mosquito on the 10th Floor” (1983) a film whose central character attempts to uphold the law while being consumed by vice and the changing face of contemporary Japan. For both Sai and Mekas, exploring social outcasts in infinitely different ways, produced experiences that are now thankfully being revisited.
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