Soseki's Light

Buddha of the Setting Sun (Amida)
Gregg Chadwick
40"x32" oil on linen 2010
Private Collection Marina del Rey

One in an ongoing series of artworks inspired by the life and poetry of
the Japanese Zen monk, poet, scholar and garden designer Muso Soseki. I am indebted to the American poet W.S. Merwin for his masterful versions from the Japanese translations and for his kind words of inspiration to me at the Hammer Museum.

Temple of Eternal Light
by Muso Soseki
(1275 - 1351)

English version by
W. S. Merwin
Original Language
Japanese

Buddhist : Zen / Chan
14th Century

The mountain range
the stones in the water
all are strange and rare
The beautiful landscape
as we know
belongs to those who are like it
The upper worlds
the lower worlds
originally are one thing
There is not a bit of dust
there is only this still and full
perfect enlightenment


Portrait of Zen priest, poet and garden designer Musō Soseki

Tokyo Lolita

Tokyo Lolita, originally uploaded by GreggChadwick.

Gregg Chadwick
24"x18" oil on linen 2010

Arrietty the Borrower: Next Studio Ghibli Project to be Released in Japan on July 17th 2010

Japanese film artist Hayao Miyazaki has announced that Studio Ghibli's next film, Arrietty the Borrower (Karigurashi no Arrietty ), will be released in Japan on July 17th 2010. The new film is inspired by Mary Norton's novel The Borrowers. Studio Ghibli's free adaptation of the book will be set in Japan in an anime version of the studio's home neighborhood Tokyo Koganei.

Miyazaki will be overseeing the film but Hiromasa Yonebayashi, at 36 years old, directs the feature.

On the occasion of Miyazaki's film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005 , AO Scott wrote that after viewing a Miyazaki's film "you may find your perception of your own world refreshed, as it might be by a similarly intensive immersion in the oeuvre of Ansel Adams, J. M. W. Turner or Monet. After a while, certain vistas - a rolling meadow dappled with flowers and shadowed by high cumulus clouds, a range of rocky foothills rising toward snow-capped peaks, the fading light at the edge of a forest - deserve to be called Miyazakian."


Hayao Miyazaki
Study for Princess Mononoke

AO Scott continues, "As a visual artist, Mr. Miyazaki is both an extravagant fantasist and an exacting naturalist; as a storyteller, he is an inventor of fables that seem at once utterly new and almost unspeakably ancient. Their strangeness comes equally from the freshness and novelty he brings to the crowded marketplace of juvenile fantasy and from an unnerving, uncanny sense of familiarity, as if he were resurrecting legends buried deep in the collective unconscious."


Arrietty the Borrower's theme song has been co-written by the French celtic harpist/singer Cécile Corbe




Japanese Website at:
Arrietty's Project
Studio Ghibli

More on Miyazaki at:
The Art of Miyazaki

Kyoto: March

Gregg Chadwick
Kyoto: March
(for Gary Snyder)
36"x48" oil on linen 2010

Kyoto: March

BY GARY SNYDER

A few light flakes of snow
Fall in the feeble sun;
Birds sing in the cold,
A warbler by the wall. The plum
Buds tight and chill soon bloom.
The moon begins first
Fourth, a faint slice west
At nightfall. Jupiter half-way
High at the end of night-
Meditation. The dove cry
Twangs like a bow.
At dawn Mt. Hiei dusted white
On top; in the clear air
Folds of all the gullied green
Hills around the town are sharp,
Breath stings. Beneath the roofs
Of frosty houses
Lovers part, from tangle warm
Of gentle bodies under quilt
And crack the icy water to the face
And wake and feed the children
And grandchildren that they love.

13 Geisha (13芸者)

Gregg Chadwick
Sea of Spring 春の海 (Haru no umi)
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

Japan has been a continual theme in my life and artwork. At age 10, I began my artistic dialogue with Japan before I even exited our arriving plane in Okinawa. On that journey I sketched the new world around me and have continued to do so over the years. My latest body of work was inspired by an artistic pilgrimage to Tokyo and Kyoto in March and April 2009. At that time, I was privileged to be in Kyoto at the height of the cherry blossom season.
Young geisha in training (maiko) and full geisha brought their own color and timeless beauty to the city.
The word geisha in Japanese means arts - person ( gei - sha). The flower and willow world of these caretakers of Japan's traditional arts seems to be as fragile and impermanent as the cherry blossoms that bloom so quickly then fall each year.


Gregg Chadwick
Gion Night
85"x37" oil on linen 2009


Gregg Chadwick
Karyūkai ( 花柳界)
85"x54" oil on linen 2009


Gregg Chadwick
Maiko's Night
36"x18" oil on linen 2009

Gregg Chadwick's Studio with Karyūkai ( Flower and Willow World ~ 花柳界)

The Mayor of Hiroshima Declares,"We have the power. We have the responsibility. And we are the Obamajority. Together, we can abolish nuclear weapons."

Paper lanterns are released each year on the Motoyasu River in Hiroshima in remembrance of the atomic bomb attack. This year's ceremony on August 6, 2009 marked the 64th anniversary of the 1945 event. President Obama said earlier this year in Prague that “…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” And “…take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” I agree with President Obama. I learned not long ago that one of my Japanese friend's father is a survivor of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. In Japanese these courageous people are called hibakusha. My friend and his wife will in the near future take us on a tour of the city of Hiroshima. Even though I have been to Hiroshima many times and I count the city as one of my favorite places in the world, I know that this tour given by the children of a hibakusha will change me in unforeseen ways.

The mayor of Hiroshima,Tadatoshi Akiba, is also courageous. Today in his speech marking the 64th anniversary of the events of August 6, 1945, Akiba called for a world free of nuclear weapons. Many would call him naive. Instead, I draw great faith in his hope for the future.

Tadatoshi Akiba's full speech is posted below:



The devastated Japanese city of Hiroshima months after the atomic bomb was dropped.
US Archives

PEACE DECLARATION

That weapon of human extinction, the atomic bomb, was dropped on the people of Hiroshima sixty-four years ago. Yet the hibakusha’s suffering, a hell no words can convey, continues. Radiation absorbed 64 years earlier continues to eat at their bodies, and memories of 64 years ago flash back as if they had happened yesterday.
　
Fortunately, the grave implications of the hibakusha experience are granted legal support. A good example of this support is the courageous court decision humbly accepting the fact that the effects of radiation on the human body have yet to be fully elucidated. The Japanese national government should make its assistance measures fully appropriate to the situations of the aging hibakusha, including those exposed in “black rain areas” and those living overseas. Then, tearing down the walls between its ministries and agencies, it should lead the world as standard-bearer for the movement to abolish nuclear weapons by 2020 to actualize the fervent desire of hibakusha that “No one else should ever suffer as we did.”
　
In April this year, US President Obama speaking in Prague said, “…as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” And “…take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.” Nuclear weapons abolition is the will not only of the hibakusha but also of the vast majority of people and nations on this planet. The fact that President Obama is listening to those voices has solidified our conviction that “the only role for nuclear weapons is to be abolished.”
　
In response, we support President Obama and have a moral responsibility to act to abolish nuclear weapons. To emphasize this point, we refer to ourselves, the great global majority, as the “Obamajority,” and we call on the rest of the world to join forces with us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. The essence of this idea is embodied in the Japanese Constitution, which is ever more highly esteemed around the world.
　
Now, with more than 3,000 member cities worldwide, Mayors for Peace has given concrete substance to our “2020 Vision” through the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, and we are doing everything in our power to promote its adoption at the NPT Review Conference next year. Once the Protocol is adopted, our scenario calls for an immediate halt to all efforts to acquire or deploy nuclear weapons by all countries, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which has so recently conducted defiant nuclear tests; visits by leaders of nuclear-weapon states and suspect states to the A-bombed cities; early convening of a UN Special Session devoted to Disarmament; an immediate start to negotiations with the goal of concluding a nuclear weapons convention by 2015; and finally, to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020. We will adopt a more detailed plan at the Mayors for Peace General Conference that begins tomorrow in Nagasaki.
　
The year 2020 is important because we wish to enter a world without nuclear weapons with as many hibakusha as possible. Furthermore, if our generation fails to eliminate nuclear weapons, we will have failed to fulfill our minimum responsibility to those that follow.
　
Global Zero, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament and others of influence throughout the world have initiated positive programs that seek the abolition of nuclear weapons. We sincerely hope that they will all join the circle of those pressing for 2020.
　
As seen in the anti-personnel landmine ban, liberation from poverty through the Grameen Bank, the prevention of global warming and other such movements, global democracy that respects the majority will of the world and solves problems through the power of the people has truly begun to grow. To nurture this growth and go on to solve other major problems, we must create a mechanism by which the voices of the people can be delivered directly into the UN. One idea would be to create a “Lower House” of the United Nations made up of 100 cities that have suffered major tragedies due to war and other disasters, plus another 100 cities with large populations, totaling 200 cities. The current UN General Assembly would then become the “Upper House.”
　
On the occasion of the Peace Memorial Ceremony commemorating the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing, we offer our solemn, heartfelt condolence to the souls of the A-bomb victims, and, together with the city of Nagasaki and the majority of Earth’s people and nations, we pledge to strive with all our strength for a world free from nuclear weapons.
　
We have the power. We have the responsibility. And we are the Obamajority. Together, we can abolish nuclear weapons. Yes, we can.

August 6, 2009

Tadatoshi Akiba
Mayor
The City of Hiroshima

The United States bomber Enola Gay which dropped the atomic weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. May we never forget. And may we abolish nuclear weapons in our lifetime.
photo by GreggChadwick


More at:
A Call for Peace from Hiroshima

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850 opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and runs through April 2008. The exhibition of Japanese paintings from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has traveled from Kobe, Japan to Nagoya to Tokyo to the Kimbell Museum then back to their usual home in Boston and on to Ontario and now San Francisco. The exhibition is stunning. Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodcuts may be quite familiar but the chance to see his paintings on silk was revelatory. Two paintings in particular stood out:

Hokusai's Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror (Kyômen bijin zu) is a work of extreme elegance and beauty. A woman stands before a mirror, a cherry seductively lolls in her mouth, and in her right hand she holds a letter. A poem inscribed on the scroll by the poet Shima Tokki reads:

Does that letter from
the man she waits for promise
a summer's night out?


Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese, 1760–1849
Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror
Kyômen bijin zu
鏡面美人図
91 1/8" x 31 9/16" (Image: 54 5/8" x 22 5/8") ink, color, gold, and mica on silk c.1805
detail - full image below



There is an immediacy and humor in Hokusai's work that seems to beckon us into his view of a vanished world.



Hokusai's festival banner, Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller (Shû Shôki zu nobori), was painted in liquid inks and possibly cinnabar which was thought to provide protection from disease. Zhong Kui's garments seem to rustle in winds brought forth by impending struggles. The Demon Queller is resolute, moving briskly forward, grasping his sword, ready to battle demons, disease or misfortunes that might spring forth on the road ahead.


Katsushika Hokusai 1760–1849
Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller
Shû Shôki zu nobori
朱鍾馗図幟
92 15/16" x 37" painted banner; color with ink on cotton c. 1805
Images of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller, were hung in Japan on Boy's Day held on May 5th. In China woodcuts of the Demon Queller were also hung on May 5th during the Dragon Boat Festival.



Another important aspect of the exhibition Drama and Desire is the inclusion of erotic paintings known as shunga which are rarely exhibited. Until recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston stored and catalogued these paintings away from the main collection. Eishi's handscroll contains twelve erotic scenes under the title - The Elephant's Leash. The title refers to a Buddhist sutra that describes how a woman's hair could capture even a wild elephant.
Eishi's vivid images imagine how this force could entwine an amorous couple.


Chôbunsai Eishi, 1756–1829
The Elephant’s Lure
13 3/8" x 222 15/16" handscroll: ink, color, gold, and mica on silk 1804–1818
detail