Are you ready for another month chocked-full of Japanese inspired events? Well good, because April is looking like a pretty strong month.
The beauty of living in London is the ease with which you can expand your mind and indulge your interests, often completely for free. And, perhaps more importantly, you’re also never too far from one of YouMeSushi’s sushi delivery restaurants, so there’s always plenty of brain food within easy reach!
Here are some of the cultural events you can get your head around this April…
Book Launch – The East Asian War, 1592-1598: International relations, violence and memory, 31 March, Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Northeast Asia enjoyed five centuries of international peace from 1400 to 1894, only broken by the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s, which devastated Korea and highlighted the fragile strategic balance in the area.
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the war and deepens our understanding of East Asian international relations and strategic concerns.
Inori/Spiritual Journey – Sengu, 5 March – 16 April, Daiwa Foundation Japan House
“The art of sculpture photography is to let the sculpture speak”. Yukhito Masuura first became enchanted by photography at the age of 12. At the age of 18, he moved to France and soon became the assistant to Guy Bourdin at Vogue, Paris. In his quest for spiritual and creative enlightenment, Masuura was drawn to the work of western artists like Michelangelo Buonarroti, Auguste Rodin and Antione Bourdelle.
This exhibition takes a look at Masuura’s eight-year quest to capture the masterpieces of these great artists, including Michelangelo’s sculptural oeuvre and the bronze works of Rodin and Bourdelle.
Sketches from the Poem Road (after Matsuo Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North), 2 March – 25 April, Poetry Society Café, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden
This collaborative exhibition groups together the drawings and poems of Isao Miura (a Japanese painter and sculpture) and Chris Beckett (a widely published poet who has lived in Japan) to explore the legacy of Matsuo Basho’s masterpiece, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The exhibition examines the piece as an enduring model of travel-writing and looks at the influence of haiku and haibun on British poetry today.
Talk about Music in Japanese, 1 April – 9 April, Bloomsbury International, 8 Southampton Place, Holborn
Love music and Japanese culture? Now you can combine your two passions with this two-day Japanese course, which teaches intermediate and advanced Japanese speakers the vocabulary and expressions they’ll need to chat confidently about music in Japanese. At the end of the course you will put theory into practice by interacting with Japanese online communities.
Choose from a Wednesday course on the 1st and 8th April, or the Thursday course on 2nd and 9th April. The course is designed for non-native Japanese speakers and costs just £10.
And, if you need a little more food for thought, why not order some sushi takeaway to complete the perfect Japanese themed evening?
