August 2021 Message from the Executive Director

As you receive this, Japan will be gradually returning from the obon お盆 holiday, the kanji characters burnt on the mountainsides around Kyoto smouldering after guiding the spirits of the deceased back to the other world, in the gozan no okuribi 五山送り or daimonji 大文字 festival. Conditions permitting, we are currently planning to resume our […]

An Interview with Leiko Ikemura

Leiko IkemuraBorn in Tsu Japan, Leiko Ikemura has lived in Europe for more than fifty years. After completing language studies at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Japan, she moved to Spain and completed her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Seville between 1973 and 1978. She then moved to Zürich and in […]

Framing Nature: New display at the Sainsbury Centre

Framing Nature, East End Gallery, Sainsbury Centre Free Admission18 June – 3 October 2021  In celebration of the Japan-UK Season of Culture Framing Nature highlights photographic work in the Sainsbury Centre collection by Nobuyoshi Araki (b.1940) and Hiroshi Sugimoto (b.1948). Obsessional in their exploration of life and death, Araki and Sugimoto share an abiding fascination […]

Report on the talk “Jōmon: Stone Circles and World Heritage”

Professor Simon Kaner began the lecture and was followed by a recorded interview by Mayor Hata and Otake Sachie (Obsidian Museum Curator) in Nagawa-machi Town. It concluded with talks by Heather Sebire (English Heritage) and David Dawson (Wiltshire Museum in Devizes).   It was ‘Jōmon July’, time to celebrate Japanese prehistory. The inscription of the […]