Rebecca Salter is a London-based artist who studied in Japan at Kyoto City University for the Arts and has continued her involvement with the country and the culture since returning to the UK.

While conducting research for her two books on Japanese woodblock, Japanese Woodblock Printing and Japanese Popular Prints, Rebecca Salter became aware that many of the craftsmen she was visiting were retiring and not being replaced by a trained apprentice. She decided to try and film interviews with as many as possible to preserve their stories and provide a record of their skills for the future. Rebecca Salter commented: “Because so many of the craftsmen were elderly, it was important that the project got under way very quickly and the generous grant from GBSF made that possible.”

The filmed interviews (a total of nearly 40 hours) will be lodged with a museum as a free resource for future generations. There is also a possibility (if further funding becomes available) that it will be put online.

Matsui Shigeo - Kyoto karuta maker		Matsuzaki Keizaburo - Tokyo printer

 

Shimizu Hamono - carving tool maker All photos by Rebecca Salter

The Wales Millennium Centre has strong links with Japan and, with funding from the Foundation, commissioned a series of sumi-e art works by Japanese artist Takumasa Ono for permanent display in its new Japan Room. The aim was to introduce this art form and to make it more accessible to the Welsh public. The Centre also organised a number of outreach events hosting a series of sumi-e workshops for adults and children and presenting a series of live performances linked to Japanese culture.

Early sketches of sumi-e produced by Takumasa Ono for the Japan Room.		One of the final sumi-e art works.

The McLean Museum and Art Gallery in Greenock, Scotland, mounted an exhibition in which arms, armour and other historical pieces were displayed alongside modern items such as clothing and film posters. Local people were able to enjoy various activities that involved aspects of Japanese life, including ikebana, bonsai, and calligraphy workshops, talks on kendo, demonstrations of taiko drumming and the tea ceremony. Primary schoolchildren learned origami and a series of Japanese films was also shown. The Japanese season attracted just under 5,000 visitors. This was a fine example of modest grant support of £800 going a long way into bringing a taste of Japanese culture to this part of the UK.

Workshop by the Scottish Bonsai Association at McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council.

Japan is a leader in the world of fashion. A small grant helped fund a sell-out London Fashion show organised by the Ueda College of Fashion in Osaka and University College of Creative Arts in Rochester. The show helped to promote more links and exchanges between the younger generation in both countries and also did much to raise awareness of and funds for the World Food Programme.

A model prepares for the show. Photo: Alistair Guy

It Came From Japan is a UK-based collective dedicated to making the UK more accessible to Japanese musicians. Our grant helped it to organise two showcase UK tours for Japanese bands at which new contacts were made for future tours and exchanges in popular music performance and culture.

Japanese band, Bespa Kumamero, performing in England. Photo: Roxanne Royer

Support was given to London’s Barbican Centre towards the UK’s first film retrospective of the work of manga artist, animator and producer, Osamu Tezuka. TV programmes and documentaries about Tezuka, were also shown along with a special exhibition of his drawings, animation cells and artefacts. The season was enhanced by a programme of education workshops exploring the art of creating manga and anime, and talks by the season’s curator and anime expert, Helen McCarthy.

Osamu Tezuka’s most recognised and beloved character Astroboy. Picture reproduced courtesy of Tezuka Productions © Tezuka Productions.		Reading manga. Photo; Lighthouse Trust.

Our Tokyo office awarded a grant to a unique Anglo-Japanese initiative – the Stepping Stone Project –which enabled two UK theatre directors to visit Japan to run workshops with Japanese actors and with people with disabilities. The workshops led to a full stage production and the were vital first steps towards the introduction in Japan of new approaches to theatrical performances by people with disabilities.

The workshop in progress.

To coincide with the British Museum’s major exhibition, Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan, the Foundation gave grant support to its International Symposium: CRAFT HERITAGE IN MODERN JAPAN - Perspectives on the ‘Living National Treasures’. Speakers included practising craft artists, scholars and historians. The symposium addressed topics such as the concept and meaning of ‘craft’, what craft heritage can give to present day artists and possible future directions for the craft.

Doll, ‘naming a Child’ (Meimei), 1980. Akiyama Nobuko, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.		Large bowl with celadon glaze and incised design, 2005. Nakashima Hiroshi, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

The depth and variety of Japanese contemporary drama remains virtually unknown in the UK. A grant was given to the all-Japanese Ichiza Theatre Company for readings and performances of Hisashi Inoue’s The Face of Jizo and to enable the Company to stage further productions of Japanese theatre in English across the UK. Ichiza is the first UK- resident Japanese company for many decades to perform Japanese theatre in English.

The Face of Jizo. Photo by Alessandro Evangelista. Copyright © 2007 Evangelista Photography

The Foundation was delighted to make an award to ‘Stretch’, an arts charity that encourages lifelong learning and participation in the arts among socially excluded groups.  In order to facilitate access by prisoners and mental health patients, unable to visit museums and galleries, it developed with the Victoria and Albert Museum and with the Royal Armoury a series of materials, CD roms and virtual tours of their Japanese collections.

Film and Video Umbrella commissions, curates and produces film, video and other moving-image works by artists which are presented in collaboration with galleries and other cultural partners across the UK. Following our initial grant to enable it to send UK artist/writer/cook Jake Tilson to work in Japan with the renowned Japanese photographer/cultural commentator, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, we were pleased to award a second grant to help it mount a unique exhibition by the two artists resulting directly from their collaboration. Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella in association with the Wapping Project, the exhibition presented a series of light-hearted and engaging encounters with the diverse histories and cultural associations of the eel in Japan and the UK - an artistic exploration of the complex cultural and culinary significance of this extraordinary creature. The project combined Tsuzuki’s anthropological observations with Tilson’s highly personal and eclectic approach to his subject. The exhibition was a great success with wide press and media coverage and there are plans now to take the exhibition to Japan.

© Jake Tilson with Kyoichi Tsuzuki

Playbox Theatre received two grants to enable them to stage a performance of the noh play Haito the Tree Wizard in local schools in Warwickshire and later to take younger members of Playbox to Tokyo to perform children’s drama in schools in Japan.

Warwick’s Playbox Theatre Company performing a new Noh play ‘Haito the Tree Wizard’ for local schools. Photo: Andy Brining of Brining Photography.

Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth welcomed animator/filmmaker Takashi Ishida as artist in residence in Autumn 2008. He spent his residency period producing a 'live drawing' in the gallery watched by the public and a stop motion film, 'Reflection'. Mr. Ishida participated in workshops with university students and in the Portsmouth Film Festival. He also led 'The Big Draw' where children as young as two created an installation within the education room. When the residency was completed the gallery held a month-long exhibition of the finished film, 'Reflection'.

The Foundation’s support for publications is an important element in achieving its aim of spreading wider mutual knowledge of Japanese and British cultures. We give financial support to UK publishers wishing to publish a work on or about Japan or towards the author’s research costs in Japan.  Books published over recent years with assistance from The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation have included:

• A manga version of the life and works of Lafcadio Hearn published by Boychild Productions
  
• Doing Business with the Japanese by Geoffrey Bownas, David Powers, Christopher Hood and individual contributors, published by Direct Image
• Japan through Writers’ Eyes by Elizabeth Ingrams, published by Eland Publishing Ltd
  
• Reciprocal Frame Architecture by Olga Popovic Larsen published by Architectural Press (An imprint of Elsevier)
  
• The Business, Life and Letters of Frederick Cornes – Aspects of the Evolution of Commerce in Modern Japan, 1861-1910 by Peter N Davies, published by Global Oriental Ltd
  
• Land of the Samurai – Aberdeen’s Japanese Treasures, published by Aberdeen City Council
  
• The Japanese Sword – The Soul of the Samurai by Gregory Irvine, published by V & A Publications
  
• Traditional Folk Music in Modern Japan by Dr David Hughes, published by Global Oriental
  
• The Japanese Consumer: An Alternative Economic History of Modern Japan by Dr Penelope Francks, published by Cambridge University Press
  
• Publication of Biographical Portraits Volume Six by the Japan Society, published by Global Oriental Ltd
  
• Tokyo, Love, Hello by Chris Steele Perkins, published by Editions Intervalles/Magnum Photos
   
  The Foundation also gives an annual award (the Sasakawa Prize) through the Society of Authors to an interpreter of Japan to the English-speaking world. The author is chosen by a special panel of judges from the Society of Authors.

  Recent awards have been
  

• Chris Bradbury for a children’s book Young Samurai- The Way of the Warrior’, published by Puffin Books and to Helen McCarthy for a new work on manga artist, animator and producer, Osamu Tezuka.