The term “onnanoko shashinka” loosely translates to “girlie photographers”. It is used to describe an immensely popular group of young Japanese female photographers whose work is largely characterized by simple subjects reflecting their everyday life captured with a point-and-shoot aesthetic. Mika Ninagawa has been described as second generation “onnanoko shashinka,” a very skillful [...]

A senior Canadian artist, Takao Tanabe (born in Prince Rupert, right here in British Columbia) has been making paintings for nearly 50 years. While he began his career as an abstract painter, he is primarily known as a landscape painter. Although his references to the land were not always conscious, Tanabe believes [...]

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (ca. 1797 - April 14, 1861) was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting and belonged to the Utagawa school. He was born in 1797, the son of a silk-dyer, originally named Yoshisaburō. He assisted his father’s business as a pattern designer, [...]

Venus is a chair by Tokujin Yoshioka that is literally grown into being. It “takes shape by making the tiny crystals frow in an aquarium, and makes its appearance over time as if the goddess herself gradually emerges from water. This crystal chair, which is formed using the laws of nature and embodies [...]

… President Truman warned that if Japan still refused to surrender unconditionally, as demanded by the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, the United States would attack additional targets with equally devastating results. Two days later, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and attacked Japanese forces in Manchuria, ending American hopes [...]

This series, titled “Picnic”, by Masato Seto, shows people in parks, sitting and lying on plastic sheets placed on grass. They look as if they were in their rooms without roofs and walls. Seto creates invisible rooms using a conceptual tool - plastic sheets - within a conceptual space: parks. It makes [...]

Asako Narahashi’s series half awake and half asleep in the water is a collection of C-Prints of various coastal sites in Japan. Since beginning the project in 2001, the artist has photographed over fifty locations with a Nikonos 35mm waterproof film camera. Narahashi floats chest deep in the ocean while facing back towards the shore, [...]

In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. The bomber’s primary target was the city of Hiroshima, located on the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. Hiroshima had a [...]

Originally part of Tennō-ji, the five-storied pagoda was built in 1644. It burned down in 1771 and was rebuilt 19 years later. This last version, built in 1791 in Japanese zelkova wood, was at almost 35 meters the tallest of its kind in the Kantō area. The five-storied pagoda had been donated in 1908 by [...]

Masks have always fascinated me. When you put on a mask, you are given the opportunity to step into the skin of someone other than yourself. You assume a different character, take on different mannerisms and see things in a different perspective. I have taken part in art installations where I was required to wear [...]