JAPAN FOUNDATION WORLDWIDE

We hold events to introduce Japan and those for the purpose of international exchange at multipurpose auditorium at the Japan Foundation, Beijing. We’ve just held one of those events with a theme of Japanese New Year on January 12, 2008.It seemed that Chinese people’s interest in Japanese culture related to New Year is high and many people, much more than we had expected, participated the event.

Panels to introduce New Year in Japan were posted at the hallway to the auditorium.Visitors gazed with absorbing interest at those panels with photos and explanations on "new year’s visit to a shrine,""New Year dishes,""New Year’s monetary gift,""New Year’s card" and so forth.

The event started with "Kagamibiraki," in which sake barrel is broken with a wooden hammer. This is indispensable for a ceremony.Then our special guests from Tianjin, neighboring city of Beijing, graduate students studying Japanese language at Tianjin Foreign Studies University performed a Kyogen play. Audience let out an exclamation of admiration for their excellent performance because Kyogen lines are very difficult even for the Japanese.Next, we enjoyed mochi pounding, a great success of the event last year. The event warmed up when a few participants had a good luck to pound with a pestle by themselves. Our staff put sweet bean paste and toasted soybean flour to mochi and participants ate them saying "yummy!" Afterwards, they spent their time according to individual fancy at corners where they can experience games such as karuta, art of folding paper and Japanese chess.In each corner, a Japanese virtuoso living in Beijing provided an explanation, which was also welcomed.

The event often leads many of the participants into becoming a member of our library which mainly has books and stock shots related to Japan, and the library had many visitors during the event.

We would like to keep introducing various Japanese cultures to the Chinese people as many as possible through such event.

Photograph: Courtesy of Japanese Consulate in Seattle

The Japan Foundation New York office, in collaboration with the Japanese Literature Publishing and Promotion Center, invited Ms. Mitsuyo Kakuta, celebrated female Japanese novelist, to New York and Seattle for a week in February.

During her short stay, she met with almost 300 readers at six book events, including at Columbia University’s Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture, the University of Washington and the Japanese Consulate General’s official residence in Seattle.

"Women on the Other Shore" portrays two very different women at the age of 35, one a stay-at-home mom and the other a single independent woman who started her own business. The story begins with their first encounter and touches on issues concerning contemporary Japanese women as well as student bullying in Japan.

Ms. Kakuta herself seemed a little nervous about how her work would be perceived by a US audience. Once the events began, we witnessed very lively discussion between the author and the readers, with topics including Ms. Kakuta’s motivation to write the book, translation issues, and the differences and similarities in the publishing world and society in general between the US and Japan.

Though the setting of the book is very Japanese, some readers mentioned that there was a universal theme underpinning it, namely people’s desire to connect with other people and the society. Many readers were so enchanted by the observant, charming comments of the author that they stayed even after the event, wishing to have a small, informal discussion with her.

Japanese contemporary novels are rarely introduced in English. We are hoping that through these encounters, more and more people will be interested in Japanese contemporary literature and beyond.

 

Although Hungary is not close to Japan geographically and historically, so many Hungarian people are keen on getting knowledge about Japan. From January to February, in the period when cultural activities are not so active, the Budapest office has been introducing Japan through the regular activities as follows.

"Jápan Filmklub [Japan Film Club]" shows Japanese films twice a month all through the year at the Örökmozgó Filmmuzeum, one of the most popular cinemas in Budapest, showing films with good qualities but rarely shown in Hungary.In February, "Swing Girls" and "Water Boys" by director Shinobu Yaguchi were put on the screen and they attracted much attention especially of young generation.

Our office has a library and it can be used as a multi-purpose space.Using this space we organise a lecture every month. The lecture of Februrary was about Ainu culture. The lecturerer introduced a book "Chitose no Uepekere" by a writer Osami Gizo, who was born in Hokkaido and wrote this tale based on Ainu folklore. Despite that the lecture was held on Friday night, the number of audience was nealy 100 and some of them even had to stand. It proved Hungarian people’s deep intellectual curiosity and a great deal of interests to Japanese culture.

Finally, in the middle of February the second semester of the Japanese language course has started. The course is one of the pillars of our activities and about 100 Japanese learners have enrolled to the classes from beginner to intermediate level.In 2006 our office moved to a commercial centre with good access to transportation, and since then the number of students who drop out of the course has dramatically decreased. Majority of our students are young generation and every evening our office gets animated with liveliness of those students.

With spring coming soon we will further intensify our activity. Our office continues to work to provide more opportunities for Hungarian people to get acquainted with Japanese culture.

 

The Japan Foundation Cairo Office organized kite-flying event at the Giza’s Pyramids on February 8^th. Since it was the first time for the Agency of Archeology of Egypt, who had kindly permitted us specially to use the premises, to hear about such a unique idea, it could be said that we flew Japanese kites for the first time after the Pyramids were constructed there.

On this occasion, we invited kite specialists, Mr. and Mrs. Ohashi and organized kite-making workshops for children in Cairo. The children obviously enjoyed more with the kites of their own making, rather than those given by others.

Among the hundreds of threads the participants were handling, ‘Arch-kites’ of the Mr. Ohashi’s invention have jumped one after another from tiny boxes from two distant spots, intended to hang arch over the three big Pyramids. Unfortunately, since the wind was blowing from undesirable direction, the arch was heading for the Cairo city rather than the Pyramids. However, high and widely spread beautiful kites in row attracted not only the participants but also many tourists of various nationalities.

The staff members of the Japan Foundation, who participated in the workshops and learned how to make kites, have already started organizing workshops on their own to spread Japanese kites all over the country, but on a little different condition.

How different? We substitute ‘Kebab sticks’ for ‘takehigo’ (thin bamboo sticks).