Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Drawn by images of Japan centred on ideas of craftsmanship and spirituality, disseminated from the mid-nineteenth century, artists and intellectuals in the West have often searched East for something beyond the normative patterns of their societies. This paper looks at the case of Westerners who have crossed national borders to practice ceramics in Japan between the 1960s and the 2010s. Based on interviews with forty participants in Japan, I investigate their attraction to and entanglement with the ethos of Japanese pottery through an analysis of their narrative accounts. After tracing the contested relationships between Japanese ceramics and the country’s spiritual and philosophical traditions, I explore the practitioners’ accounts of their engagement with Japan-fostered ceramic making values and processes, particular in their bodily, material, and sensorial dimensions. Drawing on recent theories of making that incorporate Eastern philosophical frameworks and a view of aesthetics that goes beyond modern Western conventional understandings of art and beauty, I argue that Japan-nurtured ceramic making processes and spiritual philosophies function as a way for practitioners to articulate and explore multifaceted social connections with materials, objects, histories, people, communities, and environments, thus showing the many layers of relational engagement encapsulated in the experience of making. Finally, I claim that the makers’ attraction to the ethos of Japanese ceramics is rooted in cosmopolitan orientations, ecological aspirations, and the search for a good life. By giving Japan-fostered material cultural practices new meanings, Western practitioners' entanglements with Japanese ceramics illustrate the floating character of objects and their power in shaping identities beyond artificially defined borders, thus subverting Orientalist and cultural nationalist discourses.

DOI： 10.11576/ao-5807

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Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Wiley  

The Kouraku Kiln, a 150-year-old Japanese porcelain factory in the traditional rural pottery town of Arita, has been struggling with the economic decline brought by the burst of the bubble in the mid-1990s, rural migration and changes in lifestyle and tastes. Using ethnographic fieldwork, I look at the independent innovative activities that the Kouraku Kiln factory has put into place to overcome such problems: an artist-in-residence program and a treasure hunt, both coordinated by Brazilian ceramic artist and cultural agitator Sebastião Pimenta. By making use of the local history, identity, and infrastructure to attract visitors from all over the world to the production site, Kouraku Kiln has changed its focus from its products by selling knowledge and experiences. Besides contributing to the revitalization of the local economy, the constant presence of Pimenta and other international artists at the factory has added to the creation of multicultural exchanges in the local community, raising issues about social integration and local citizenship. With this case study, I aim to add to discussions about the revitalization of rural places and the regeneration of Japanese traditional crafts through the acknowledgment of globalization and mobility. By addressing issues related to the impact of transnational flows in rural communities, this article argues for the contributions of migrants in their communities of destination and examines the transforming relationships between art, society, and local development.

DOI： 10.1111/ijjs.12101

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Other Link： https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/ijjs.12101

Language：Portuguese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)   Publisher：Universidade de Sao Paulo, Agencia USP de Gestao da Informacao Academica (AGUIA)  

Departing from a genealogy of Western knowledge about Japan from the modern period to the present day, this article focuses on the analysis of the so-called “discourse of Japanese uniqueness” (Nihonjinron), emphasizing its role in the construction of images of Japan in the West and its impact in Japanese society, based on a bibliographic review centered on the area of Japanese Studies and the Social Sciences. In this process, we will trace the development of Nihonjinron from European Orientalism, rooted in the process of colonization and imperialism, to the Japanese cultural nationalism of the postwar period, and its criticism in the context of the development of post-colonial studies from the mid-1980s. Finally, we will point to new directions that focus on a multicultural and cosmopolitan approach in the study of Japan.

DOI： 10.11606/issn.2447-7125.v0i42p93-111

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What do we talk about when we talk about traditional Japanese arts and crafts? What types of objects are included in this category and what cultural social and ideological meanings do they entail? And finally how have traditional Japanese arts been invented and reinvented throughout the history of modern Japan in order to shape a unified and monolithic image of Japanese culture in a period of national identity making? In the popular imagination the expression "traditional Japanese arts and crafts" often entails cultural expressions connected with the past and that convey specific ideas of "Japaneseness" such as the tea ceremony flower arrangement martial arts woodblock prints and ceramics amongst others. In this article we will not to discuss the origin and features of these arts but will instead examine them in the context of an institutionalized national discourse that reflects historical political and social processes involved in the making of images of Japan. The goal is to discuss the definition of traditional Japanese crafts and show how their identity is intertwined with political ideologies historical constructions and cultural representations. Starting from the first participations of Japan in the International Exhibitions of late nineteenth century the rediscovery of old pottery kilns and the revival of tea ceremony amongst the urban elite in the 1920s the folk crafts movement of the prewar and postwar years the creation of the title of Living National Treasure in the 1950s and the more recent “Cool Japan” nation branding this article will illustrate the main historical moments that have contributed to the definition reinvention and revitalization of certain traditional Japanese arts in the last one hundred and fifty years drawing on authors from the field Japanese studies social sciences philosophy and art history from a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective.

DOI： 10.15068/00154867

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By presenting the life-story account of two Japanese women ceramists Shoko Suzuki and Mieko Ukeseki inserting it in its historical and sociocultural context this work aims to present the historical constructions cultural representations personal experiences and subjectivities involved in the construction of their identity. From their discourse and practice analysis collected from the precepts defined by Daniel Bertaux (1997) as recits de vie ("life story accounts") we intend to understand the personal processes involved in the construction of their cultural identity marked by the transcultural experience due to the immigration to Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s respectively. The history of Japanese ceramics takes here an important part for the construction of images of "Japaneseness" which are translated in the discourse and practice of these potters. However it is in the appropriation and reinterpretation of these representations in dialogue with their personal experiences and subjectivities that cultural identity is created. By shedding light on the personal account of the life stories of two Japanese women potters in Brazil this research also aims to contribute to illuminate various aspects of history society and culture of Japan and Brazil in the last century in particular the processes involved in the construction of Japanese cultural identity through craft and pottery the situation of women in Japanese ceramics the immigration of Japanese artists and craftsmen to Brazil and the creation of a Japanese-Brazilian identity.

DOI： 10.15068/00124638

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Language：Portuguese   Publishing type：Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (trade magazine, newspaper, online media)  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (trade magazine, newspaper, online media)  

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Publisher：Oxford University Press (OUP)  

DOI： 10.1093/ssjj/jyae014

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Language：English   Publishing type：Book review, literature introduction, etc.  

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Language：English   Publishing type：Article, review, commentary, editorial, etc. (trade magazine, newspaper, online media)  

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Total pages：159   Language：Portuguese

In the fall of 1975, a group of seven young artists (three Brazilians, two Portuguese, and two Japanese) arrived in the small town of Cunha, in the Paraíba Valley (São Paulo state, Brazil), with a common dream: to create a collective pottery studio with a wood-firing kiln in the middle of nature. In December 1975, the group opened the town's first traditional Japanese wood-fired kiln, a noborigama. Forty years later and after the dissolution of the original group, there are now seven noborigama kilns and around twenty ceramics workshops in operation in the city, making Cunha the largest noborigama center in South America. In recent years, Cunha has established itself as a gathering place for artists and potters of various origins, attracting professionals and interested parties from all over the country and beyond. In addition to the introduction of kiln opening and the establishment of new workshops, the creation of the Cunha Ceramics Cultural Institute has given young people in the city access to ceramics education. This book tells the story of the 40 years of high-temperature ceramics in Cunha and well its contemporary developments. It also presents the work of the ceramists working in the city today, covering the technical and artistic aspects involved in the ceramics production processes in the region.

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

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Language：English   Presentation type：Other  

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