Build your own Japanese temple

Tucked away on the Internet Archive is a rather pretty little pdf that seems to give guidelines on how to build a Japanese temple. (It says it's from the year 1200, but I don't know if they had bound books in those days. Wouldn't it have been a scroll?) It mostly seems to concern itself with ratios and measurements. I’m sure it would be more instructive if I could actually read the cursive script next to the illustrations.

But I was especially impressed by the illustration of the torii gate, which shows which angles should be used on the ends of the top cross-beam (or kasagi, according to Wikipedia) and how to make sure they’re correct. Now that I know this, whenever I see one in a photo or film, I find myself checking to see if they’ve got the angles right.

Currently watching: Gallery Maggot’s photostream

A couple of weeks ago I found the sketchbook I used to keep a diary when I went to Japan. I read it, and was reminded about the art gallery in Osaka I’d been to where I’d seen an excellent photography exhibition.

I did a little searching and found the site of the gallery itself, and also their photstream on flickr. Here you can find a lot of evocative and interesting photos of urban Japan (Osaka, I presume). Now I check it every few days, for the latest views of Japanese cityscapes which are quite different from the clean shiny version I see in Jdramas. Fascinating, often quite beautiful, and always worth watching.

Netherlands versus Japan: Miki Yuuseki

Okay, so I'm getting these out of order, but this is a nice short one.

Miki Yuuseki (御木　幽石) is an illustrator and I picked up some of her work when I was in Japan. It's cute, with some very nice brushwork and I keep meaning to get some more stuff from YesAsia. For those clever enough to order things direct from Japan or just fancy a bit of window shopping to see more of her stuff can go here.

Art

That's what this blog needs: a bit of art.

Got hopelessly lost in Osaka today trying to find Den Den Town (described in the travel guide as a seedy, retro entertainment spot) and while heading along a main road I saw a sign advertising an art gallery down a side street. It was called "gallery maggot" which didn't inspire confidence, but I thought I had nothing to lose by just popping in.

The gallery was just a single room on the seventh floor (the lift only went up to six, and I wondered if the advert wasn't some situationist prank to get people to come in and then get lost or confused when there was never a gallery at all) and it was full of large black and white prints of Japanese city life from the past thirty years. It was a bit of a lucky find, as they were in turns beautiful and funny and poignant. I bought the book (which I don't have with me just now so I can't actually tell you the photgrapher's name!) and a couple of postcards.

As an idea, I also took a couple of snaps of pictures from the book, so you can see what I'm talking about.