Japan

Activity: In the following activity, you will make your own orihon to use as a journal. What stories might you record in it?

Asian Art Museum storyteller, Liz Nichols, tells a Japanese story about a boy who was only one inch tall.

The “Paintings by Masami Teraoka” exhibition was on view at the Asian Art Museum from October 22, 1997 to January 25, 1998. This exhibition featured thirty-three current paintings and four prints by Masami Teraoka (b. 1936), a Japanese-born painter of contemporary American pop art. The Asian Art Museum was pleased to present Paintings by Masami Teraoka as a partial response to the frequently asked question, “What happened in Japanese art after the middle of the nineteenth century?”

Learn about the Japanese supernatural creature Amabie and create an amulet with her image.

Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Jeff Byers, tells a story about a monk and a samurai in the Asian Art Museum’s Japan galleries.

Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Leta Bushyhead, tells a new year story about Jizo, a deity whose statues are a common sight throughout Japan, especially by roadsides. Traditionally, he is seen as the guardian of children.

An introduction to Shinto, one of Japan’s earliest belief systems.

Learn more about the famous samurai story, the “Tale of the Heike” and hear Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Leta Bushyhead, tell an excerpt from the tale. This video include artworks from the Asian Art Museum’s collection.

Ogawa Machiko’s artistic connection to raw natural beauty is linked to her time living abroad with her anthropologist husband as well as to the seaside landscape of her hometown of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido. “It is my passion for the earth that drives my continual search for the essential in art. The vessel form, with both interior and exterior space, enables me to best pursue this quest — it is not about making vases. Rather, I am inspired by the concept of emptiness within the whole.”
* Ogawa studied ceramics with three Living National Treasures in Tokyo and at the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Paris, then continued her studies in Burkina Faso in West Africa and in South America