ACF 434: Serizawa textiles on exhibit at Japan Society through January 17, 2010

Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design
Japan Society Gallery
Through January 17, 2010

Obi (Sash) Length, Scenes in Okinawa, stencil-dyed crepe silk

Last Friday my wife Francesca, who weaves and knits, and I, who do neither, took in this exhibit at Japan Society. Both of us marveled at the creations of Serizawa Keisuke (1895-1984). They made it readily apparent why he was deemed a "Living National Treasure" during his lifetime.

Noren (Entrance Curtain), Knots in the form of
the Chinese character Kotobuki (long life), stencil-dyed cotton

Serizawa was a master of stencil-dying. His works of art, based on craft techniques, covered a broad range of media, such as screens, kimonos, book covers, magazine designs, and entrance curtains. He also utilized a wide variety of materials: cotton, silk, hemp, and other fibers, all decorated with beautiful natural dyes.

Chinese character hana (flower), stencil-dyed tsumugi-weave silk

The above images are from scans I made of the three postcards that are on sale. A fully illustrated catalog can be ordered online or purchased at Japan Society.

But Serizawa's creations deserve to be seen and appreciated in person, if at all possible.

For further information and gallery hours, click here.

ACF 433: Two episodes of Korean Ghost Stories to screen at The Korea Society

The Korea Society
950 Third Avenue @ 57th Street, 8th Floor
(Building entrance on SW corner of 3rd Ave. and 57th St.)

The second installment of The Korea Society's Korean Ghost Stories mini-series features two spine-tingling episodes. Haunted House and The Reincarnated Princess will be shown this Thursday, December 17, 2009, starting at 6:30 PM. Both were originally shown on the KBS television series Korean Ghost Stories, which was also known as Hometown of Legend. They will be presented in Korean with English subtitles.

This is the second of the two-part mini-series. The first, on November 19th, featured a fascinating and informative introduction by Heinz Insu Fenki, both an author and the director of Interstitial Studies Institute at Suny New Paltz. This was followed by a screening of Nine-Tailed Fox, a marvelous tale of a clan that uses the harshest means imaginable to hide a dark secret about some of its women.

Haunted House

In Haunted House (starring Lee Duck-hwa, Lee Min-woo, and Yoo Hye-jung), the ghost of a young woman haunts the family members who sold her into a life of corruption.

The Reincarnated Princess

Two sisters return from the grave to seduce and punish the men who killed them in The Reincarnated Princess (starring Lee Jin, Kang Sung-min, and Lee Ji-hyun).

For further information, click here.

Korean Ghost Stories is a presentation of The Korea Society with support from

ACF 432: 20th Century Boys 1 DVD due out this Tuesday, December 15th from VIZ

20th Century Boys 1
© 1999, 2006 Naoki Urasawa, Studio Nuts / Shogakukan
© 2008 “20th Century Boys” Film Partners

20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End
Directed by Yukihiko Tsutsumi
Japan, 2008, 142 min.

20th Century Boys 1: Beginning of the End, the first film in a trilogy based on Naoki Urasawa's hugely popular manga, is due out on DVD this Tuesday, December 15th from VIZ Pictures, the live-action division of VIZ Media. Both this film and its immediate sequel 20th Century Boys 2: The Last Hope had their New York premieres at this past summer's New York Asian Film Festival. I was unable to go to a screening of either of them, so I was glad to get an advance screener of this upcoming release.

The film begins in 2015 in the Disciplinary Cells of Umihotaru Prison, a clearly high-security lock-up on a barge located in a bay, presumably Tokyo's. Two prisoners who can't see one another are talking, one of them recounting the story of a hero to the other, a hapless manga artist.

That story, and the bulk of the film, is set in the late 1990s. It concerns several individuals, roughly in their late twenties, who were close friends in their youth. Kenji Endo (Toshiaki Karasawa) was the leader of the group in 1969. He later went on to play guitar in a rock band, but now (late '90s) manages a convenience store and takes care of his young niece, whose mother, Kenji's sister, disappeared sometime ago. Among his friends are long-haired Otcho (Etsuishi Toyokawa) and Yukiki Setoguchi (Takako Tokiwa), a lovely female police officer.

The group comes together again as a mysterious cult led by a man who wears a mask and is known only as "Friend" has emerged. Numerous individuals have disappeared, just like Kenji's sister, and one of their friends has met an untimely and bizarre death. At the same time, catastrophic events have begun occurring around the world, events that seem to be replicating fantasies in Kenji's "The Book of Prophecy" which he wrote years earlier to entertain his young friends. As the new millennium approached, is the world heading towards the apocalypse he predicted? And who is this "Friend" and what role, if any does he have in these strange occurrences?

Intercut within the general "flashback" to the late 1990s are further flashbacks to 1969, when Kenji and his friends hung out in a "clubhouse" fashioned from tall grass and when he wrote "The Book of Prophecy." One of the very nice touches here is the expert casting of the younger counterparts of the various characters. Each really bears a strong resemblance to their grown-up personage, which aids in reinforcing their individual characteristics.

20th Century Boys 1 is blessed with an intriguing story line, solid directing, and fine acting. My only regret was that I didn't have the next two volumes available to pop into my DVD. I can't wait to see the two remaining films and find out what happens.

ACF rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars (very good, highly recommended).

The 20th Century Boys 1 DVD will have an M.S.R.P. of $24.92 US and $35.99 CAN. Sorry, but I don't have any info at this time about special features on the DVD.

But I have been informed that 20th Century Boys 2: The Last Hope is scheduled to be released in February, 2010, also by VIZ Pictures. No word yet on when 20th Century Boys 3: Redemption, which premiered in Japan in August, 2009, will be out, but I expect it to be sometime later next year.

ACF 431: Samurai Vendetta lobby cards

In anticipation of tonight's screening of Samurai Vendetta at 7:30 at Japan Society, here are some screen captures of lobby cards that were on my screener DVD.

ACF 430: Oishinbo a la Carte - The Joy of Rice

OISHINBO A LA CARTE © Tetsu KARIYA, Akira HANASAKI/Shogakukan Inc.

The latest installment in the Oishinbo a la Carte manga series recently became available from VIZ Media. This one is all about that quintessential Japanese food, rice. It covers such topics as the optimum moisture content of rice grains before cooking, when organic brown rice can be very unhealthy, foods that actually taste better with rice than by themselves, and dishes in which other items are either cooked separately or together with the rice.

All this is remarkably entertaining as well as informative.

Rice of course has been of major importance to the Japanese for millennia. So much so that it was used as a unit of monetary exchange, the koku (approximately 330 lbs of rice), and of a daimyo's (feudal Japanese lord's) wealth. Estates were appraised by how many koku of rice they could produce.

By coincidence, shortly after reading this volume, I happened to watch Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill again. In it, Jo Shishido's character has a thing for smelling fresh cooked rice. In an interview on the Criterion DVD, Suzuki explains that since the character was an assassin, he did not think the character would crave the smell of cooked meat. So instead, Suzuki says, he decided to use rice, the most Japanese of all foods.

Oishinbo ("The Gourmet") has sold over 100 million copies since it began publication in 1983. The VIZ a la carte editions compile selected highlights by topic. Consequently, the narrative is sometimes non-chronological. That is, developments in the story line that occur in one edition may not have yet occurred at points in a subsequent edition. Fortunately, there's a concise, easy to use appendix of notes at the end of each volume. Here such "temporal dislocations" are explained, and additional terms are described.

The Joy of Rice is another fine volume in this terrific manga series, which is definitely one of my favorites. The only downside about it that occurs to me is that, like every other volume, it made me hungry and wishing that I was wealthy enough to fly to Japan and eat and drink nothing but the best of the national cuisine!

Finally, for your info, the next and I believe final a la carte edition will explore the world of izakaya - Japanese bars and drinking establishments. It's due to be available in January 2010.