Japan

Before the holidays I was in Japan for 3 weeks with San Jose Taiko.  I'm still thinking about everything I saw there - it's been 12 years since I was there last.

Lately I've been thinking about how my artistic sensibilities are influenced by Japanese aesthetics, and exactly what that means.  I think part of it can be described by this passage that I scribbled in a notebook some years ago from a book on Japanese art and craft (unfortunately I didn't write down the name of the book):

Japanese forms are gentle and susceptible to change, and have a fragility that evaporates into the atmosphere.  This holds true for all materials, not only paper, fiber, wood, or earth, which are frail in appearance.  Materials such as stone and metal, perceived to be permanent are also soft; they change, disintegrate and disappear with the passage of time.


[Japanese forms are] a true balance between function, the potentials of materials, the context within which an object is used, and beauty.