Книги о восточном искусстве

In celebration of one of Kusama’s most iconic infinity rooms

A tribute to Yayoi Kusama, the world’s most popular artist, according to The Art Newspaper and The Guardian.

Yayoi Kusama is one of Japan’s most important and famous artists, beloved across multiple generations and different audiences, capable of wonder and amazement. Infinito presente is a tribute to her original and unique art, focusing on Fireflies on the Water one of her most iconic Infinity Mirror Rooms from the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Fireflies on the Water is a room-sized installation where, as the title suggests, the lights seem almost natural, like fireflies on a quiet summer’s night. The pool of water creates an incredible sense of stillness and the mirrors reflect never-ending images of themselves, creating a sidereal ambience. Space appears infinite, without top or bottom, beginning or end. As in Yayoi Kusama’s early installations, including her Infinity Mirror Room (1965), Fireflies on the Water embodies an almost hallucinatory approach to reality. Although linked to the artist’s personal mythology and the process of therapeutic work, this work also references sources as diverse as the myth of Narcissus and Kusama’s native Japanese landscape.

About the Author:

Stefano Raimondi, contemporary art curator, is director of network The Blank Contemporary Art, Italy’s leading network dedicated to the promotion and enhancement of contemporary art and the territory in which it is embedded.

Learn how to draw a bestiary of supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore, and discover their origins as you go.

Yokai is a Japanese term for mystical beings that encompasses a range of supernatural phenomena, including demons, monsters, ghosts, and shapeshifters. Sometimes cute, sometimes frightening, but always enchanting, the creatures are often at the center of popular anime and manga stories. In Yokai Bestiary, learn how to draw 35 types of yokai while learning the folklore behind them.

Created for artists of all skill levels, this step-by-step drawing book shows you how to block in major shapes, provide proper shading to give dimension and depth to your drawings, and draw small but culturally significant details. Among the yokai types, you’ll learn to draw:

- Kitsune, fox demons with multiple tails
- Kappa, reptile-like spirits with a turtle's shell on their backs
- Tengu, monsters with bird-like characteristics
- Kodama, tree spirits 
- Nekomata, cats with two tails 
- And many more! 

With both drawing instruction and Japanese mythology to engage your mind, Yokai Bestiary will transport you to a fantastical land of beasts and spirits.

About the Author:

Lance Red is a fantasy illustrator and character designer living in Michigan. He provides detail-rich illustration assets for the game and book-publishing industries as well as private commissions. He has also recently started sharing more of his process with an education focus on his Patreon, which includes creating artwork for tabletop games, adventure books, conventions, and more as well as teaching budding artists through online library programs.

Yokai are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. In the Edo period (1603-1868), many artists, such as Hokusai Katsushika or Kuniyoshi Utagawa, created their works of featuring Yokai inspired by folklore or their own ideas. Yokai have attracted the artists and have been a common theme in art works until these days because of their unique forms and their mysterious behaviors.

This book is a visual collection of art works of Yokai in Japan since the Edo period. The works are not only paintings but also wood block prints, scrolls, ceramics, kimonos, children’s playthings such as board games, and more. This would be an attractive book for Yokai beginners/maniacs, and would be also a valuable source for designers and illustrators.

About the collection: Most of the items that will be featured in the book come from personal collections by Koichi Yumoto, who has the largest Yokai collection in Japan. He comments on the history of Yokai and explains about the items in the book.

About the Yumoto Koichi Collection:

This is the largest personal collection of Yokai art in Japan. Around 4,000 works which range from the Edo period to the present day. These include painting, woodbock prints, scrolls, ceramics, kimonos, wooden sculptures, magazines, children’s toys, board games, and more. In April 2019, the collection was housed in the new Yokai Museum called Miyoshi Mononoke Museum located in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.　

Rising star Charles Fréger brings his inimitable eye to unfamiliar Japanese folk rituals

In rural Japan the passage of the year is marked by festivals and rituals that have changed little for centuries. Elaborate outfits, crafted from textiles as well as branches, straw and elements sourced from the natural environment, are donned in agricultural and fishing communities throughout Japan to celebrate seasonal rites of fertility and abundance.

Yokainoshima (literally ‘island of monsters’) explores the extraordinary range of masks, costumes and characters that reappear with each returning season. Charles Fréger’s photographs combine acute documentary attentiveness with individual portraiture in an entirely fresh and distinctive style.

Toshiharu Ito and Akihiro Hatanaka, both specialists in Japanese folk culture and anthropology, analyse Fréger’s photographs, setting the huge variety of eclectic clothing in ethnographic context and describing the local festivals, dances and rituals. A final illustrated reference section describes individual costumes and masks.

About the Author:

Charles Fréger is a photographer based in Rouen, France. Internationally acclaimed for his subtle and poetic portraiture, he has devoted himself to the representation of social groups. Previous books include Wilder Mann and Portraits in Lace.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) was the last great woodblock print master of the Ukiyo-e tradition. With his distinctive style of dramatic lines and use of gorgeous colours, Yoshitoshi was soon recognised by his contemporaries as the most outstanding woodblock artist of his time. One Hundred Aspects of the Moon is regarded as his greatest achievement. The series brings to life the history and mythology of ancient Japan. In all 100 prints the moon figures prominently, either clearly visible in the design itself, or else referred to in the beautiful poem in the text cartouche. The subjects of the prints range from historical figures such as the novelist and court lady Murasaki Shikibu from the Heian period (794-1185) and samurai warlords like Takeda Shingen (1521-1573) to mythological creatures and scenes related to the Japanese theatre forms kabuki, no and kyogen. The series not only strongly refers to Japanese literature and culture, it also includes many references to the literary traditions of China, which were of major influence on the cultural developments of classical Japan.

About the Editor:

Bas Verberk, a Japan curator of the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne, offers clear descriptions with new insights and knowledge about this popular series, now first presented in a non-Japanese publication.

This art book showcases depictions of hell in Japanese art from the 12th century to the 19th century.

It features a large collection of masterpieces presented with details and enlargements from the works. These images are of aesthetic, thought-provoking, frightening and wickedly funny.

The single-volume collection focuses primarily on works designated as Japanese National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties and features the various depictions of hell by prominent artists such as Kazunobu Kano, Nichosai, Yoshitoshi Tsukioka and Kyosai Kawanabe. It is a must-see for artists, illustrators and anyone interested in representations of hell. This volume also features the 19th-century woodblock-printed edition of Ojoyoshu (The Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land) written by the medieval Buddhist monk Genshin (942 - 1017) and is accompanied by modern bilingual text.

Written in 985, this influential Buddhist text is often compared with Dante's La Divina Commedia (La Divine Comedie/The Divine Comedy). Its brutal scenes of underworld realms display the suffering and cruelty one might endure as a consequence of harmful acts committed in life or the judgement by the Ten Kings of Hell. These ideas of hell in Ojoyoshu have played an enduring role in inspiring Japanese Buddhist paintings and other subsequent texts, particularly from the medieval period onward, and are vividly portrayed in the painting featured in this volume.

Essays from historians of both Japanese art and Buddhism are also included in bilingual text.

The authoritative and wide-ranging visual essay on the aesthetics of Japan, a classic volume now back in print with a stunning new cover design

‘Japan style’ is an aesthetic recognizable to everyone: a beautifully displayed flower, an elegant piece of calligraphy, or a simple rock garden, yet it is also difficult to define.

Written by one of the world’s most respected scholars of Japanese art and culture, this book does just that. Illustrated with over 150 stunning images that unlock the essence of Japanese art and culture, alongside Gian Carlo Calza’s groundbreaking and insightful text, Japan Style explores specific achievements in Japanese art and architecture and offers an in-depth analysis of the whole of Japanese culture, its vision of the world and of humankind.

About the Author:

Gian Carlo Calza is an academic researching on Asian cultures and arts and their interplay with the West. He is a leading authority in Japanese art and aesthetics, author of many books, and curator of many exhibitions in the field.

He was a professor of Asian Art History at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and director of the International Hokusai Research Centre in Milan. Among the most important of his books are: Tanaka Ikko, Hokusai, Ukiyo-e, and Poem of the Pillow and Other Stories, all of which were published in English by Phaidon.

Contents and sections:
Irregular Beauty
 - Japan Style
 - Tea and the Aesthetics of the Undefined
 - Images of Emptiness
 - The Seductiveness of Impermanence
 - Eccentric? No, Extraordinary
 - The Secret Message of No
 - Tears of the Mask
 - The Colours of Darkness
 - interlude: Small but Great
The Feeling of Nature
 - The Harmony of Things
 - An Intimate Perception of Reality
 - The Dragon in Tranquillity
 - Nature's Magnificence
 - Nature and Beauty in the Floating World
 - Interlude: Eating with the Eyes
Masters of Art
 - Zeami: The Flower in the Demon
 - Hokusai: The Old Man Mad about Painting
 - Kawabata: The Power of the Ethereal
 - Mishima: When Will You Kill Yourself, Master?
 - Ikko: A Flash of Light
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index

Japanese swords, particularly those wielded by famous samurai warriors, hold a continuing fascination for collectors of fine arts and historical military weapons. This book is designed to enhance one's appreciation for the wide variety of Japanese swords (as well as their related polearms), their manufacture and their preservation.

A fascinating opening chapter explains how the elite Samurai class dominated Japan for more than a thousand years, how technological and ideological advances overtook the Samurai in the 1860s, heralding a more up-to-date political and military system of governance, and how such changes affected Samurai sword design and manufacture.

Subsequent chapters present topics of greatest relevance to today's sword collector: namely, the modern Japanese sword; different types of swords and their construction and testing; collecting and studying Japanese swords (and the tremendously important etiquette involved); and techniques of preserving and polishing swords.

This book is beautifully illustrated with paintings, photographs, drawings, and maps. In addition, there is an in-depth glossary and useful tables explaining Japanese calligraphic symbols relating to swords, both of great value to the collector.

About the Author:

Clive Sinclaire is an instructor in the kendo form of martial arts and has been collecting Japanese swords for more than forty years. He is Chairman of the To-ken Society of Great Britain and frequently writes articles on Japanese sword culture and collecting that are featured on the society's website (www.To-ken.com) as well as in magazines. He has become a frequent visitor to Japan in the course of his research and studies, and in particular to the NBTHK (Nihon Bijitsu To-ken Hozon Kyodai) sword shows.

In The Art of the Japanese Sword, master swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshihara offers a comprehensive view on the making, finishing and appreciation of Japanese blades.

The Japanese sword, a unique work of art in steel, can be appreciated from a number of viewpoints. Its functionality as a weapon, the sophisticated metallurgy and scientific thinking utilized by the swordsmith, the shape of the blade itself, and the different crystalline forms in the steel all contribute to the beauty of these remarkable weapons. The Art of the Japanese Sword conveys to the reader a basic background regarding the Japanese sword, as well as an explanation of how to view and appreciate a blade. It also illustrates the details of how a sword is made and finished today.

Modern craftsmen use completely traditional methods from the past to prepare their steel, forge the sword and create the unique hardened edge. By gaining a good understanding of how a sword is actually made, the reader will be able to appreciate the Japanese sword more fully.

Japanese sword art stands out in many ways: functionality as a weapon, sophisticated metallurgy and metalsmithing, the shape of the blade itself--all contribute to the beauty of these remarkable weapons. The Art of the Japanese Sword conveys to the reader Japanese samurai sword history and Japanese sword care, as well as explaining how to view and appreciate a blade.

With 256 full-color pages, this sword book illustrates in meticulous detail how modern craftsmen use traditional methods to prepare their steel, forge the sword and create the unique hardened edge. By gaining a good understanding of how a sword is made, the reader will be able to appreciate the samurai sword more fully. Topics include:

- Appreciating the Japanese sword
- History of the Japanese sword
- Traditional Japanese steelmaking
- Making the sword
- Finishing the sword

About the Authors:

Yoshindo Yoshihara is a third-generation swordsmith. His grandfather Kuniie began making swords in 1933 in Tokyo and was ranked among the top swordsmiths in Japan during his career. Yoshindo lives and works in Tokyo with his son, who represents the fourth generation of swordsmiths in the family. Yoshindo, who is always training young swordsmiths and currently has five apprentices working with him, has been named an Important Cultural Property of the city and prefecture of Tokyo and is a mukansa (top-ranked swordsmith) in Japan.

Leon Kapp, a molecular biologist, lives with his wife Hiroko in San Rafael, California. He has been seriously interested in Japanese swords for over twenty-five years and has spent a great deal of time learning about them from Yoshindo.

Hiroko Kapp is a writer for Senken Shimbun News of Tokyo and writes about fashion and the fashion industry in the US. She graduated from Musashi-no Art University in Tokyo. For twenty-five years, she was active in the apparel business and designed scarves for her own line in the US.

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Пролистать книгу The Art of the Japanese Sword: The Craft of Swordmaking and its Appreciation на Google Books.

The samurai sword: a symbol of the spirit of old Japan, it embodies the samurai's steel discipline, unswerving devotion and peerless skill. With its creation, a feat of craftsmanship passed down by generations of artisans, the samurai sword is generally considered to be superior even to the famed blades of Western Damascus and Toledo. "The Samurai Sword Handbook" is a precise exploration of the samurai sword designed for sword collectors as well as anyone intrigued by these ancient blades. Detailing the origins and development of the samurai sword, its historical background, styles, famous schools and differences in construction, this revised edition of the classic reference outlines methods of identifying and researching the sword, as well as caring for it properly. This must-have for sword lovers is sure to be a bestseller.

About the Author:

John M. Yumoto was the foremost authority on the samurai sword outside of Japan. A native of California, he spent time in Japan studying under a number of masters from different schools and learned the art of sword polishing and of identification and evaluation.

Paying tribute to a century of one of the world’s most popular and enduring genres, 100 Years of Anime follows the beloved medium from its earliest beginnings to its current blockbuster success. Learn all about the technological inventions and artistic genius that shaped the genre in this authoritative account of anime, illustrated with stunning full-color stills. Revisit much-loved series, including Dragon Ball, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Pokémon, and Studio Ghibli films — and discover new favorites — in this complete guide!

_Pore over full-color stills that showcase how changing technology, culture, and artistic innovation have influenced and enhanced the narrative themes and aesthetics of the genre.
_This book features popular anime titles including Dragon Ball, Akira, Pokémon, Cowboy Bebop, and Studio Ghibli films, as well as more niche works that helped define the genre.
_Celebrating a century of success, this title covers the earliest days of the genre to contemporary examples and explores all the evolutionary steps in between.

About the Authors:

Matthieu Pinon is a former maths and physics teacher who has been writing about Japanese pop culture in magazines since 1998. He is the co-author of A History of Modern Manga, published by Insight in 2023. He enjoys presenting facets of Japanese life to the wider world to help others understand the customs of a country they may be unfamiliar with.

Philippe Bunel is credited as a contributor to a book about the Studio Ghibli founder, Hayao Miyazaki, Shades of a Work.

A History of the Samurai tells the complete story of Japan's legendary warrior class from beginning to end — an epic tale of intrigue, bloodshed and bravery that is central to an understanding of the Japanese character and of Japanese history. It describes in detail the core Samurai philosophy of Bushido —"the way of the warrior"— a complex code of conduct embracing ideals of honor and loyalty that continues to govern the Japanese way of life today.

Historian Jonathan Lopez-Vera offers a compelling look at these enigmatic warriors including:

- The lives of famous Samurai—Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's greatest swordsman; Tomoe Gozen, the woman who became a Samurai; Tokugawa Ieyasu, the last Shogun; and many more
- The tragic tale of the 47 Ronin who chose honor over their own lives and were forced to commit ritual suicide after avenging their fallen master
- The philosophy of Bushido, "the Way of the Warrior," the code of conduct that embraced the ideals of honor and loyalty and governed the Samurai way of living
- The decline of the Samurai and their transformation from rough, battle-hardened warriors to highly educated philosopher-poets

Illustrated with 125 archival prints and photos, the nobility and grandeur of the Samurai is brilliantly showcased in this book. Readers will enjoy immersing themselves in the Samurai's world, as historian Jonathan Lopez-Vera traces the fascinating story of the rise and fall of these enigmatic warriors throughout Japanese history.

About the Author:

Jonathan Lopez-Vera has a PhD in Japanese History and an MA in World History from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain). He is a member of the Ethnographies, Cultural Encounters and Religious Missions (ECERM) research group and Research Group on Empires, Metropolis and Extra-European Societies (GRIMSE). He also runs the HistoriaJaponesa.com website and is co-editor of the journal Asiademica.

Russell Calvert has a masters degree in translation studies from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona). He has 25 years TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) experience, including posts at ESADE Business School (Barcelona) and Salalah College of Applied Sciences (Oman). He was the subtitler, translator and interpreter for the 2012 Mecal International Short Film Festival of Barcelona.

The definitive catalogue of an unparalleled collection of Indian jewelry and luxury objects made at the height of the Mughal empire and the Deccan sultanates.

This is the definitive catalogue of an unparalleled collection of Indian jewelry and jewelled luxury objects made at the height of the Mughal empire and Deccan sultanates in the 16th and 17th centuries. The collection, widely regarded as one of the finest in the world, was assembled by Sheikh Nasser and Sheikha Hussa al-Sabah for The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, and reveals the beauty, sophistication and diversity of Indian jewelled arts.

The Indian subcontinent is naturally rich in gems. From ancient times master jewellers developed a wide array of unique techniques and made it home to the most sophisticated jewels on earth. Exotic birds and animals, flowers, trees and mythological scenes rendered in precious gemstones, gold and enamel demonstrate these artists’ prodigious imagination and skill. They produced not only an unmatched range of jewelry to adorn the body but also ritual and household items of astonishing refinement and luxury, as well as extravagantly large engraved gemstones to serve as symbols of their princely patrons’ royal power – including a spinel of nearly 250 carats believed to be the legendary Timur Ruby.

This volume includes not only the finest and most valuable pieces in the collection – some familiar to connoisseurs, others published here for the first time – but also many previously unknown types that extend our understanding of artistic output in the region. With specially commissioned photography giving unprecedented new views of more than 300 jewelled objects, this is a publication of historic importance and beauty, for all lovers of jewelry, the arts of India and of the Islamic world.

About the Author:

Salam Kaoukji is curator and collection manager of The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, and an editor of Thames & Hudson’s long-running and acclaimed series of catalogues. Her previous books include Precious Indian Weapons and other Princely Accoutrements (2017) and Treasury of the World: Jewelled Arts of India in the Age of the Mughals (with Manuel Keene, 2001).

This collection of projects by the "father of modern origami" contains detailed instructions for 60 of the master's original works.

Master origami artist Akira Yoshizawa was a true innovator who played a seminal role in the rebirth of origami in the modern world. He served as a bridge between past and present -- between the ancient traditional craft and the development of origami as a contemporary practice -- inventing new techniques and in preserving the traditional Japanese forms. In fact, the notational system of diagrams widely used today to indicate how models are folded was developed mainly by him. Above all, Yoshizawa was responsible for elevating origami to the status of an art form.

This beautiful origami book is the first comprehensive survey of the extraordinary work of Akira Yoshizawa. In addition to 60 models from his private collection, it features over 1,000 original drawings by the artist, and English translations of his writings in Japanese on origami, all of which are published here for the very first time.

Origami projects include:

- The Koinobori and the Helmet
- Butterflies of Every Kind
- Fairy Tale Crowns and Caps
- The Lion Mask
- The Tengu Masks

and much more!

Akira Yoshizawa also contains an explanation of the Master's personal philosophy of origami by Yoshizawa's widow, Kiyo Yoshizawa and an insightful introduction from Robert Lang, a leading artist and exponent of origami art in the West.

About the Author:

Born in 1911, Akira Yoshizawa is the father of modern origami. The publication of his first collection of models in the early 1950s caused a major sensation. In 1954, he founded the International Origami Centre in Tokyo. In 1955, his original works were exhibited for the first time at a show in Amsterdam, an enormously successful event that introduced him to the West. It was during these years that he came up with a system of notation based on a series of symbols and graphic signs indicating various types of folds and thus created a method that was later adopted by many origami artists and is still in use today. In subsequent decades Yoshizawa folded and taught origami, published books on the art, and participated in innumerable events on an international scale. As his fame spread throughout the world, he came to be seen as the most distinguished representative of the art, a pioneer of many techniques used in modern origami. Yoshizawa died in 2005, on the day of his 94th birthday.
 

A vibrant record of the Asian theatre puppets in the Lin Liu-Hsin Puppet Theatre Museum in Taipei

Asian puppet theatre is a treasure house of Asian grassroots religion, culture, history, ethics and entertainment. But with the rise of mass entertainment, puppet theatre has been banished to the fringes and performances of this sublime art form are becoming rare.

Theatre performances may have dwindled but the impact of these beautiful puppets has not. Their charm and exquisite craftsmanship leaps out from the pages of this book, which introduces for the first time the beauty of theatre puppets from all major Asian traditions, captured in over 300 colour illustrations.

Taking the reader on an inspiring journey through hundreds of years of creativity, this beautiful book will not only appeal to people with an interest in Asian arts, but will also open up to the general reader a whole new realm of art.

Contents List:

Introduction and essay • Glove • String • Rod • Shadow • Descriptions

About the Authors:

Robin Ruizendaal has been researching puppet theatre throughout Asia for over twenty years. He is director of the Lin Liu-Hsin Puppet Theatre Museum in Taipei and creative director of the Taiynana Puppet Theatre Company.
Wang Hanshun is a photographer, who has been working with the Puppet Theatre Museum in Taipei for over ten years.