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Japan Style
Striking photographs and brief essays attempt to define the style of Japan in terms of elegance, simplicity, compactness, vitality, and other qualities
148 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 7, 2011
Excellent photo book on Japanese style in art and design. How traditional Japanese art and craft has affected Japanese style and design. Fantastic book.
May 7, 2012
In 1980, the Victoria and Albert Museum devoted a major exhibition to modern Japanese craft and design seeking to display modern Japanese artefacts as beautiful objects in their own right as well as trying to convey something sense of their visual context in which they were made and used.
This is a photographic record of the exhibition, together with some interesting, but very brief essays from a time when Europe and the US were rediscovering the vitality of japanese craft aesthetics.
The subject of the photographs include an extraordinary range of traditional and contemporary objects such as straw temple shimenawa, festivals, dolls, pots, rain capes, inkstone boxes, bamboo fencing, paper-cord decorations, candy, straw wrappings for eggs, combs as well as, by now, more familiar objects such as prints, paper lamps, fans, lacquerware, masks, netsuko, the exquisitely designed butterfly stool by Sori Yanagi, plastic figures of television cartoon figures, pachinko parlors, tatami mats and japanese cameras and secateurs.
The photographs are all extremely well composed and lit; perhaps only a solitary seascape and the odd fashion photograph have lost their freshness. Many of their objects have, of course lost their 1980 extraordinary sense of otherness to the Western eye, as the objects themselves have imbricated themselves into contemporary culture.
This is a photographic record of the exhibition, together with some interesting, but very brief essays from a time when Europe and the US were rediscovering the vitality of japanese craft aesthetics.
The subject of the photographs include an extraordinary range of traditional and contemporary objects such as straw temple shimenawa, festivals, dolls, pots, rain capes, inkstone boxes, bamboo fencing, paper-cord decorations, candy, straw wrappings for eggs, combs as well as, by now, more familiar objects such as prints, paper lamps, fans, lacquerware, masks, netsuko, the exquisitely designed butterfly stool by Sori Yanagi, plastic figures of television cartoon figures, pachinko parlors, tatami mats and japanese cameras and secateurs.
The photographs are all extremely well composed and lit; perhaps only a solitary seascape and the odd fashion photograph have lost their freshness. Many of their objects have, of course lost their 1980 extraordinary sense of otherness to the Western eye, as the objects themselves have imbricated themselves into contemporary culture.
January 1, 2024
This a book of pictures under the rough heading "Japan Style", and the first thing that the first essay says is just how rough this is. It sounds like this book was originally written to go along with a museum exhibition meant to explore the meaning of that title.
The first part, the essays, were interesting. Some fun facts, and some very high-level stuff about Japanese material culture.
The second part, the many sections of pictures, was fun to browse through. The pictures aren't labelled on their own page. You'd have to look at the back of the book to reference them.
If you are looking for something in-depth, then you won't find that here. But for more general info and some beautiful pictures, it's a useful reference.
The first part, the essays, were interesting. Some fun facts, and some very high-level stuff about Japanese material culture.
The second part, the many sections of pictures, was fun to browse through. The pictures aren't labelled on their own page. You'd have to look at the back of the book to reference them.
If you are looking for something in-depth, then you won't find that here. But for more general info and some beautiful pictures, it's a useful reference.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews