So Yesterday I Visited a Museum...

So basically I visited a museum.  It was an art museum, with exhibits mainly from the mid 1850's onwards, depicting Japan and Japanese life through the eyes of a number of different people.  It was a general museum, but the exhibitions seemed to have a pre-occupation with foreign influences upon Japanese art, and the work of foreign artists interpreting Japan itself.  All in all I found it quite interesting, and I found the Japanese public reaction to the western influence extremely interesting.

Some of them thought the paintings drawn by Japanese in a western style, oil paintings from the turn of the century for example, were quite vulgar and un-Japanese.  I thought they were pretty decent, some of them had taken the crazy pills before painting, but they weren't as dysfunctional as Picasso.  The kind of painting you have to stand well back from in order to appreciate that it is actually a horse, and not a colour blind attempt at a cloud.  That kind of thing.

Some of my fellow museum goers thought the Japanese artists lacked something their western counterparts did.  At least I think this is what happened.  One of the couples kept looking between two of the pictures noting differences, and they seemed to me (with my handicapped  understanding of Japanese) to be looking upon the Japanese effort unfavourably.

So we have a situation where the Japanese don't like Western Style paintings, and don't like Japanese who have been trained in such techniques.  What did these peoople like?  Who knows, but I don't think they would have found it in that museum.  The exhibits went from the port opening in Yokohama, and the various interpretations of the opening, (western drawings, paintings, eastern paintings, calligraphy, etc.) all the way to the crazy modern pictures that are nothing more than splodges of paint randomly 'painted' onto a canvas to look like... love.  Or hate, or apathy; who knows.

Generally speaking I found a lot of the paintings, regardless of artist, to be quite skilfully drawn/painted, but I found few that I really liked.  I think the obsession with yokohama having its' 150th 'opening its' borders' celebration is what drove this particular collection, but I was kind of underwhelmed.  A lot of the Japanese style trinkets on display seemed quite generic, and even the ceremonial Kimono display, that pretty much symbolises Japan, was rather disappointing.

Its' bacon was saved however, by the photography section of the museum.  The photographs they had on display were absolutely fantastic, showing life from back when people still lived in wooden huts, up to the ubiquitous rocker phase that happened, by the looks of things, everywhere in the world at the same time.  (And is still going on in Ueno park!)

To me this little slice of life was the most interesting part of the museum, and I think the art was somewhat underwhelming.  I can say the photography section saved the experience though, and I must admit to being inspired by the photographs on display!

At this point I would like to say I'm livid beyond imagining.  I have spent an hour and a half writing a massively detailed report on what happened, and why it happened; but the website has had a hysterical spastic fit and deleted it all.  Good job blogspot.  Good job.


So I guess I'll just write it all up for another couple of hours again, I've got nothing else to do at the moment anyway.

Of course being a museum I wasn't able to take any photographs, which is a shame because I'd like to show you how awful some of the pictures were, and how good one or two really were.  On the way back from the museum, while looking for something to eat we heard some music.  So we went to investigate.  We happened upon a street performer the likes of which I've never seen before.  If I had to describe his and his performance, then I would say I couldn't.  You have to see it to believe it.  And so I will now present to you, with a newfangled piece of technoqiwizadry I've found, his performance in a number of acts.



So this guy had a sign up saying, roughly translated, 'the performance begins in 10 minutes.'  Seeing this I was fully aware that this was a part of the act as it were.  He was sitting down clothed at you see him here (with only two legs at this point) and some music started playing.  My companion, and presumably most of the Japanese audience were confused as to what exactly was happening.  This kind of audience manipulation worked extremely well with the Japanese audience, as it took everyone a minute to adjust to the fact the sign wasn't true!  He uses this  again in a later video.

I feel I must mention the sound designer, as the music was absolutely fantastic, and fitted the performance perfectly.  It really was something quite brilliant.  If anyone knows what the first song is please tell me!



This is as direct a continuation as I could ma
nage with my camera.  It only takes video for three minutes, and then spends a sizeable amount of time processing and saving that information.  Unfortunately you miss a bizarre sitting thing he does, where he crosses his legs and whatnot, but of course there are four so it looks strange - strange to say the least!  (I'm running out of words along the lines of weird, strange, bizarre etc...)



So at this stage we see his other 'study' into Japanese psychology.  Whether planned or not, I found this particular part really interesting.  He holds cards up giving different instructions throughout his performance.  This particular instruction is for the right hand side of the audience to move to a more central location.  This particular instruction made sense to the people on the right, because they were actually standing on a path and generally obstructing the public, whereas we were sitting on a group of raised steps in an amphitheatre kind of design.  So once these people moved, (he doesn't speak for this part) he took the same piece of paper over to the other side and, in a comedy manner (as you can see in the video) flips it over and asks everyone to move more centrally.  At this point no one moves, and he does the theatrical bit you see on the video.

Now by the stage of him begging I'm laughing because the Japanese people there didn't even acknowledge that they were being asked to move.  They didn't look him in the eye!  Their reluctance to move was quite astounding.

So I was the only one in the audience laughing...Awkward.

But it turns out he was anticipating this reaction.  Although I don't have it on camera he holds up another card that read something along the lines of, 'Ok, stay where you are.'  Roughly translated.

The audience laughed at this...



So at this point we return to more traditional street performance fare.  He manages to keep things feeling original however, by combining a number of disciplines.  The 'robot dance' + mime + his amazing music creates a performance that my camera doesn't do justice.

This section of the performance went on for a long time, but it was varied enough to keep it more than interesting!

So he eventually moves onto the next video, which requires a little explanation.

After his techno mime he pulls a glove out of his box of tricks, and it takes on a mind of its own and attacks the audience; eventually becoming stuck to his face.  At which point he asks a member of the audience to hit him on the back of the head with a mallet.  We pick it up after he's been hit...



So I stopped filming after this point, but he carried on for a good while.  I wish I'd been able to stay to see the performance that was after it; if it was half as good as this guy, it'd be amazing.

I couldn't take picture in the library, so these are mainly of the street performer, with a couple of random pictures thrown in for some reason.

So this is a view of the seating area.

The arrangement worked out really well, whoever designs these places in Tokyo is really clever, or really lucky.  Either way he earns his pay.

Ok so he does this little 'warmup' skit after the four legged animal, and he uses the legs from the previous bit, putting them over his head and doing stupid stuff like that.

Stupid stuff like this!

It's all done very well.

This is the volunteer from the video.  He was used in a number of different skits as well.

This looks like a small, little brother version of tower bridge.

I don't really understand what it's doing here, or why they put it there.

This is the tallest building in Japan apparently.  I spent a while lining this picture up, and I think it came out quite well.

I also like the lights and whatnot, pretty!

Ignore the finger, look at the curved escalator!  I've always wondered whether it was possible to have one, and now it's been proved possible!  Simple things...















Ok so after two writings it's up and running now.

Be sure to check out the post below here:

Naree's Videos!