toranosukev

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Claiming the Space You Deserve

I came across this Substack post by Loleen Berdahl, “How to take up more space in academia,” and some of what she said just really spoke to me. I am currently in an administrative position which, now that I’ve settled into it and gotten a clearer sense of the patterns of the workflow and of what exactly is and is not my job, and so forth, is actually a lot less stressful, and a lot more free and…

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Visiting Imperial Tombs pt 3

I would like to start this third post in the series by jumping back in time to the 13th century, and Emperor Go-Uda (#91, r. 1274-1281), whose mausoleum was easily one of my top favorite visits. I woke up on Feb 24 this year (fortunately, a National Holiday, and a day off from work) to find a fair amount of snow in my little private rock garden, and I don’t think I could have known that it would…

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Visiting Imperial Tombs pt 2

As it happens, I visited the tomb of Emperor Jimmu, the legendary first emperor of Japan, since writing the last post, so I guess we’ll start there. Here it is. One thing I guess I was surprised by is that from what I can tell, the area identified as Unebi goryô, that is, the mausoleum site, is not the entirety of Mt. Unebi, nor the center of the mountain, but just off to one side. Many of the…

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Visiting Imperial Tombs

The tomb, in Fushimi (southern Kyoto) of Emperor Kammu 桓武天皇 (r. 781-806), first emperor to make Heian (Kyoto) his capital. The mausoleum of the Meiji Emperor 明治天皇 (r. 1867-1912), the last emperor to rule from Kyoto, is located nearby. Incidentally, quite possibly the first imperial tomb I ever visited, back in 2010. Since moving to Kyoto two years ago, I almost couldn’t help it but to come…

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Ryukyu Royal Treasures at the 1926 First Japanese Treasures Exhibition

Reading about the Ryukyuan royal treasures that went missing in 1945 – most of them presumed stolen, rather than destroyed; and a few of them recently rediscovered and returned – I happened for the first time upon *images* of them displayed in a pre-war, 1926, exhibition at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum (東京府美術館, today the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum 東京都美術館): the 第一回日本名宝展覧会, which I’m…

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Murakami Takashi: Mononoke Kyoto

Finally went and saw the Murakami Mononoke Kyoto show that’s been up for half a year or so. I generally tend to think of Murakami as over-hyped, if that’s the right word – not that his work isn’t fun, creative, interesting, smart, but just that surely there are so many other artists out there who a museum could be highlighting. Much like Murakami Haruki over in literature – in the past X years, I…

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Taketomi & Tourism

Gradually moving through my old drafts. This one is from just about a year ago, August 2023. Getting off the ferry at Taketomi. Arriving on Taketomi Island and seeing how many people were also getting on or off boats, and how much infrastructure was there guiding people to resorts, buses, tours, … I just immediately got this feeling of sadness, and of guilt.  Because, of course, I am a visitor…

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A Who's Who of Prewar Okinawan Cultural Figures

Yamazato in a 1958 issue of Okinawa Graph magazine. Reading an autobiographical piece by Okinawan artist / playwright / novelist / cultural writer / cultural official Yamazato Eikichi, and it’s kind of amazing how many big name, famous, notable, figures keep coming into the story. Seems like he knew everyone who was anyone in Okinawan culture at the time – or, they knew one another. It’s got me…

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ANU Museum of the Jewish People (Part 2)

An installation meant to represent the development of Jewish wisdom across the ages, from the Tanach, Talmud, and Mishnah, to a wealth of other writings. (Continuing on from my previous post about this museum at the University of Tel Aviv) Following the section on famous individuals throughout Jewish history, where I left off in the last post, the museum then takes us through the histories of…

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Gaza Photo exhibit at Ritsumeikan Peace Museum

The Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University, recently hosted an exhibition on Gaza. Sadly, ironically for a Peace Museum, I think the exhibit did little to counteract the antisemitic narratives that inform and underly the conflict, and that have fueled so much division, harassment, and violence around the world since Oct 7, and also did little to highlight or encourage possibilities…

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Shinto ceremonies at Sui gusuku?

I was shocked when I saw this image on the official Shurijo Castle Park Instagram account this past May 25-26. Shinto priests performing a fully Japanese – not Okinawan, or Luchuan (Ryukyuan) – Shinto ceremony at the construction site where the Main Hall of Sui gusuku, the former royal palace of the Lūchū (J: Ryūkyū) Kingdom, known as Shurijō in Japanese, is currently being rebuilt following a…

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ANU Museum of the Jewish People

I don’t even know how to talk about this post-Oct 7. But, this has been sitting in my notes, in my drafts, since June 2023, well before Oct 7, with the intention of just writing about my impressions of the museum at that time. So I guess we’ll see what I end up writing. ANU (Hebrew for “we” or “us”) is the largest Jewish museum in the world. It opened in its current form, on the grounds of Tel…

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Teruya Yuken: Heavy Pop

My latest trip to Okinawa happened, by chance, to align with the exhibition “Heavy Pop” at the Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum – the first large-scale solo show of Teruya Yuken’s work to be held in Okinawa. I have been fortunate to see Teruya’s work a number of times now, in smaller galleries in Okinawa, at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and elsewhere; seeing so many works all…

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Confederate Flag over Shuri

I don’t remember when or how exactly I first learned that when US military forces took control of Shuri castle (Sui gusuku) – the former royal palace of the Ryukyu Kingdom – on May 29, 1945, marking a significant stage towards total victory in the Battle of Okinawa, the first flag American servicemembers raised over the former palace was not that of the United States, the Stars and Stripes, but…

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Netanyahu and Hamas

I realize this has inadvertently become a rather Israel-heavy blog in the past year or so, only because I visited Israel this past summer, and have been just super behind on posting about anything else. But, in the aftermath of October 7, what many are now calling Black Shabbat, or the Simchat Torah War, here we are. A flood of things to talk about, think about, respond to. Overwhelming grief…

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Judicial Reform Passes in the Knesset

I’ve fallen far behind in the blog posts I’ve been meaning to write about my Israel trip earlier in the summer – specifically on the second of two of the fantastic museums we visited. I drafted much of this post weeks ago, and am not updating it based on what has happened since. I want to just take the draft, and put it out – my thoughts from that time, that I should have published at that…

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The Yitzhak Rabin Center

Yitzhak Rabin (b. 1922) was Prime Minister of Israel from 1974 to 1977, and again from 1992 until his assassination in 1995 at the hands of a Jewish Israeli right-wing extremist who opposed the Oslo Accords. Right: A bloodstained paper found in Rabin’s shirt pocket after his assassination, with the text of a song or poem called Shir Hashalom (A Song of Peace). I was old enough at that time to…