Japan

Artist Hiroshi Sugimoto recently expanded his work to include traditional Japanese performing arts such as bunraku, or puppet theater, through film. Most recently, Sugimoto lent his vision to the arrangement, direction, and stage design of an adaptation of famed bunraku play The Love Suicide at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinju), a 1703 work by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The program begins with a screening of this monumental project, followed by a conversation between the artist and Phantoms of Asia (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18–September 2, 2012) guest curator Mami Kataoka.

Preparators at the Asian Art Museum install a 2100-pound bronze bell for the Bell Ringing Ceremony on December 31. In this annual tradition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, visitors, led by a Buddhist priest, mark New Year by ringing a 2100-lb., sixteenth-century Japanese bronze bell originally from a temple in Tajima Province in Japan. Now part of the museum’s collection, the bell will be struck 108 times with a large custom-hewn log. According to custom in several Buddhist cultures, this symbolically welcomes the New Year and curbs the 108 mortal desires (bonno) which, according to Buddhist belief, torment humankind.

Watch the installation of two monumental Japanese bronze lion sculptures on granite plinths outside the museum’s front entrance on Larkin Street.

Dr. Andrea Horbinski of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, discusses Japan and an interconnected world at the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute, held at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Dr. Andrea Horbinski, of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, discusses Japan and its geography at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as part of the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute.

Lewis Lancaster of UC Berkeley gives an overview of Japanese Buddhism.

The interdisciplinary performance features artists Tatsu Aoki, Kioko Aoki, Francis Wong, Megan Lee, Wesley Hitomo Yee and Melody Takata, as well as master artists Chizuru Kineya and Michikaoru Hanayagi.

Asian Art Museum Docent, Peter Sinton, gives a talk on his collection of Japanese gift covers. This talk was in conjunction with In the Moment: Japanese Art from the Larry Ellison Collection, wherein speakers explored their passion behind collecting. This talk was part of a Thursday Night event.

The annual Bell-Ringing Ceremony follows the Japanese custom in which the end-of-the-year bell (joya no kane) is struck 108 times before midnight on New Year’s Eve, symbolically welcoming the New Year and curbing the 108 mortal desires (bonno), which according to Buddhist belief torment humankind.

Lesson plan on the monetary and cultural value of Japanese swords and the role they played in Japanese trade.