The Japan Foundation Los Angeles provides an introduction level Japanese language course “Summer Day Camp for Teens: Discover Little Tokyo” from July 22 – 26 at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. The class will be held from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. The program is suitable for 14 -18 years old with no prior experience in learning Japanese. Class size is 12 people. 5 days tuition is $180 including class materials. Campers will learn: + Phrases through games + Japanese greetings and expressions + Japanese pronunciation and Katakana (Japanese phonetic alphabet) + Numbers in Japanese...
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The Japanese Language Scholarship Foundation will present the 10th annual all-USA high school Japanese speech contest on Saturday, May 25, from 12:30  - 6:00 pm at Humanities Instructional Building at the campus of University of California, Irvine.  The venue can be found at http://www.classrooms.uci.edu/gac/HIB100.html This speech contest will be hold with help of Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles and the American Association of Teachers of Japanese. All participating contestants are top three winners of a sub-national / regional / state / multi-school Japanese language speech contests held in the U.S. between April 1, 2012 and April 15,...
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From Cara Kallen, Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California We have several events coming up and I want to be sure you are all aware of them.  We’ve had three successful workshops leading up to Matsuri on June1st and there are three more to go – four if you count the workshop with Riley Lee on June 2nd.  Here’s a rundown of all the events: Saturday, May 25 is a busy day for all of us – in the morning from 10 am to 12 noon there is a choice of workshops:  Taiko Drumming with Arnold Shimizu at Sonoma County...
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A Japanese American women group will honor veteran Japanese classical dance master Hanayagi Rokumine of Los Angeles. A program “An Afternoon with Hanayagi Rokumine” presented by the Nikkei Women Legacy Association will be held on Sunday, June 9, in the new Senator Daniel K. Inouye Center for Democracy, Tateuchi Forum Theater in Little Tokyo from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm, followed by an informal dessert reception from 2:30 to 4:00 pm. Senator Daniel K. Inouye Center for Democracy is at the Japanese American National Museum, 100 North Central Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012.  Tickets for the program with limited...
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  Crowd-pleasing taiko songs and Arabic-Japanese musical fusion will be featured in TAIKOPROJECT’s all-new Rhythmic Relations 2013, to be held Saturday, June 29, at 8 pm at the famed Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood. Joining in the first half of the concert are drumming groups Bombu Taiko, Kitsune Taiko, Loma Pacific Taiko, and Tanuki Taiko, in an exuberant program that features more than sixty taiko drummers. In the second half of the concert, guest artist Middle Eastern master drummer Amir Sofi joins TAIKOPROJECT for new collaborative works blending taiko with the Arabic tabla and tambourine.  Since its founding in 2000, TAIKOPROJECT has...
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The following classes are cancelled as of May 15, 2013. Acclaimed textile artist Setsuko Hayashi is back by popular demand at Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena in June. Over three consecutive Sundays, students will create projects using three distinctive dyeing techniques: Japanese shibori, Indonesian batik and stenciling. Classes will be held on Sundays, 3 pm to 5:30 pm: June 9, 16 and 23. Taught in Japanese and English. Each class is $35 for members, $45 for non-members, or sign up for all three for $90 for members, $120 non-members. Fee includes all materials. Students under 15 must be accompanied...
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  Japanese Prints: Hokusai at LACMA   April 13, 2013–July 28, 2013 Pavilion for Japanese Art Los Angeles County Museum of Art   The museum’s collection includes excellent prints by the renowned Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). Among the museum’s holdings are two of this artist’s most iconic works, popularly known as Red Fuji and The Great Wave. A recent gift from Max Palevsky added to the museum’s collection a complete set of the eight prints from Hokusai’s A Tour of Waterfalls in the Provinces. In addition to these color woodblock prints, the current exhibition also features pages from...
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  The Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford opens its new exhibition, Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints from May 5 through July 27, 2013. The opening lecture will be given by Dr. Andreas Marks, curator of the Clark Center, on Sunday, May 5 at 2:00 pm. Seats are limited. For reservation, call the Clark Center at (559) 582-4915. Dr. Marks is also the editor of the accompanied book of the exhibition. In the late 1820s, the writer Ryutei Tanehiko (1783 – 1842), the print designer and book illustrator Utagawa Kunisada (1786 – 1865) and the...
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    Los Angeles County Museum of Art Installation: Maruyama Ōkyo | Birds and Flowers On View: January 19 — July 2013 Location: Pavilion for Japanese Art, East Wing   This installation of paintings from LACMA’s permanent collection focuses on the artist Maruyama Ōkyo and his followers. Ōkyo (1733-1795) changed the course of Japanese art by introducing a new mode of expression. Rather than adhering to Japanese painters’ traditional use of existing pictorial works and sketches, Ōkyo relied on first-hand observation to capture his animal subjects. By observing birds and animals in their natural habitats, and as they interacted...
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Takashi Tomo-oka, “Lotus 3″ 2011, Digital photograph printed on washi and mounted on scroll, Courtesy of Ippodo Gallery. © Takashi Tomo-oka     Pacific Asia Museum, 46 North Los Robles Ave, Pasadena, CA 91101 www.pacificasiamuseum.org Takashi Tomo-Oka April 19 through July 28, 2013 Focus Gallery Takashi Tomo-oka features six scroll-mounted photographic works that combine the classical and contemporary. As a young artist, Tomo-oka became interested in nihonga (neo-traditional Japanese painting) but was drawn to photography, adopting the digital camera as his medium rather than a brush. Tomo-oka eliminates all extraneous visual information other than the subject itself—vegetal forms such...
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  Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena presents the new exhibition Focus on the Subject: The Art of the Harari Collection from April 5, 2013 to March 30, 2014 in the Frank and Toshie Mosher Gallery of Japanese Art. The exhibition includes a full object rotation in October 2013 to accommodate a greater number of objects and protect them from extended exposure to light. The renowned Harai Collection of Japanese Edo (1603-1868)  and Meiji (1868-1912) era paintings and drawings is one of the most significant group of works on paper at Pacific Asia Museum. Amassed in London during the 1950s...
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The Taishō era (1912–1926) was a brief but dynamic period in Japan’s history that ushered in a modern state with increased industrialization, shifting political parties, radical fashions, and liberal thinking in many areas. However, this era of heightened experimentation ended with the arrival of an international depression, the promotion of ultranationalism, and the country’s entry into what would become the Greater East Asia War. Reflecting both sides of this dramatic transition, two disparate representations of modern Japan will be displayed together in Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto, on view March 26–August 25, 2013,...
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