Azuma Kabuki Musicians Nagauta Music 1954 (with liner notes)

Kabuki (歌舞伎) is a classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-upworn by some of its performers.

The individual kanji, from left to right, mean sing (歌), dance (舞), andskill (伎). Kabuki is therefore sometimes translated as "the art of singing and dancing". These are, however, ateji characters which do not reflect actual etymology. The kanji of 'skill' generally refers to a performer in kabuki theatre. Since the word kabuki is believed to derive from the verb kabuku, meaning "to lean" or "to be out of the ordinary", kabukican be interpreted as "avant-garde" or "bizarre" theatre.^[1] The expression kabukimono (歌舞伎者) referred originally to those who were bizarrely dressed and swaggered on a street.

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Tetsuya Nomura vs Yoshitaka Amano.

Tetsuya Nomura (野村 哲也 Nomura Tetsuya, born October 8, 1970) is a Japanese video game artist, designer and director working for Square Enix (formerly Square). He designed characters for the Final Fantasy series, debuting with Final Fantasy V and continuing with various later installments. Additionally, Nomura helmed the development of the Kingdom Hearts series starting in 2002 and was also the director for the CGI film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. He received the "Excellence in Visual Arts" award by the International Game Developers Association for his work on the first Kingdom Hearts game, alongside Shinji Hashimoto. In IGN's "The Top 100 Video Game Creators of all Time" Nomura was listed at number 84.

Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝 (formerly 天野 嘉孝) Amano Yoshitaka, born March 26, 1952) is a Japanese artist, character designer, illustrator and a theatre and film scenic designer and costume designer. He first came into prominence in the late 1960s working on the anime adaptation of Speed Racer. Amano later became the creator of iconic and influential characters such as Gatchaman, Tekkaman: The Space Knight, Hutch the Honeybee and Casshan. In 1982 he went independent and became a freelance artist, finding success as an illustrator for numerous authors, and worked on many best selling novels such as The Guin Saga and Vampire Hunter D. He is also known for his commissioned illustrations for the popular video-game franchise Final Fantasy.

Since the 1990s Amano has been creating and exhibiting paintings featuring his iconic retro pop icons in galleries around the world, primarily painting on aluminium box panels with acrylic and automotive paint. He is a 5 time winner of the Seiun Award, and also won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters.

Amano's influences include early Western comic books, art nouveau, and Japanese woodblock prints. In early 2010, he established Studio Devaloka, a film production company.

Yoshitaka Amano -

Yoshitaka Amano (born July 28, 1952) is a Japanese artist known for his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and for his character designs, image illustrations and title logo designs for the Final Fantasy video game series developed by Square Enix (formerly Square).
Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan; as a young adolescent, he was fascinated with drawing. In 1967, he began working for Tatsunoko Productions in the animation department, where he was introduced to the early Japanese anime movement. His first paid project was for the Speed Racer anime franchise (also known as Mach GoGoGo). He worked in character design for anime shows such as the Time Bokan series, the Gatchaman series, Tekkaman and the Honey Bee.

In the 1960s, Amano was exposed to Western art styles through comic books and their Japanese Western-influenced counter parts, and believes Western comics to be his artistic roots. He has cited Neal Adams as his favorite comic book artist, noting that he would often purchase used comics based on his cover artwork, only to be disappointed that the interior artist was different. Amano was also fascinated by the art styles of psychedelic art and pop art of the West, particularly the work of American Pop artist Peter Max.In the 1970s, Amano's intrigue led him to the study of the artworks of the late 19th century and early 20th century European movement of Art Nouveau, as well as the ancient Japanese hand woodblock printing work of Ukiyo-e. While concentrating on illustration, he was still at Tatsunoko Productions until he left in 1982.
In the early 1980s, he concentrated on illustrations for Science Fiction and Fantasy, while still keeping the influence of his animation and other illustration works from the 1960s and 1970s.[4] This in turn created a unique personal style, which was influenced by both modern surrealism as well as realism fluent in many classic and modern techniques.

In 1983, he was behind the illustrations for the novel Demon City Shinjuku and the first of Hideyuki Kikuchi's novel series Vampire Hunter D.This was adapted to a movie in 1985 for which Amano worked as character designer. The film was one of the first anime movies to be released outside of Japan. In interviews, however, Amano has stated that he was not pleased with the final product of the movie. More involvement in illustration had led to the creation of collections of his artwork being published, such as "Maten" in 1984.
n 1989, he had his first exhibition called "Hiten" at Yurakucho Mullion in Tokyo, Japan.He continued to work with Square and their Final Fantasy series, and in 1990 he started to work as an artist for stage theater. His first work for theater was Tamasaburo Bando's Nayotake, which was in the same year.During this time while working as illustrator, character designer and set designer, he had exhibitions of his becoming well-known for his printing works.
In 1994, after Final Fantasy VI, he was no longer the main character, image and graphic designer of the series (he started to provide promotional and character artwork for the next games, as well as working on the title logo designs for most of the games), but in 1995 he started to become better known world wide with his work at the Biennale d'Orléans in France, and then in his newly established workshop and exhibition "Think Like Amano" in New York in 1997, which followed another exhibition in New York at the Angel Orensanz Foundation entitled "Hero". Amano also appeared in the 1998 movie New Rose Hotel which is loosely based on the William Gibson short story with the same name, in which he played the character Hiroshi.

Music by:Steve Roach
www.steveroach.com

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji - Hokusai (1831-33)

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) is an ukiyo-e series of large, color woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). The series depicts Mount Fuji in differing seasons and weather conditions from a variety of different places and distances. It actually consists of 46 prints created between 1826 and 1833. The first 36 were included in the original publication and, due to their popularity, ten more were added after the original publication.^[1]

While Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is the most famous ukiyo-e series to focus on Mount Fuji, there are several other series with the same subject, includingHiroshige's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Hokusai's own later series One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is a popular subject for Japanese art due to its cultural and religious significance. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As Henry Smith explains, "Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain."^[2]

The most famous single image from the series is widely known in English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa-oki nami-ura^?), although a more literal translation might be, "Off Kanagawa, the back (or underside) of a wave." It depicts three boats being threatened by a large wave while Mount Fuji rises in the background. While generally assumed to be a tsunami, the wave was probably intended to simply be a large ocean wave.

Each of the images was made through a process whereby an image drawn on paper was used to guide the cutting of a wood block. This block was then covered with ink and applied to paper to create the image (see Woodblock printing in Japan for further details). The complexity of Hokusai's images includes the wide range of colors he used, which required the use of a series of blocks for each of the colors used in the images.

A collection of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji prints contained in the wellness spa of the Costa Concordia was lost during the collision of the ship on January 13, 2012.^[3]

All forty-six prints (the original thirty-six plus the ten additions) were featured in the exhibition "Hokusai: 36 Views of Mount Fuji" at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, in the spring of 2012.

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Queste suggestive stampe comprendono in realtà 46 vedute del Monte Fuji da diverse prospettive e stagioni (10 sono state aggiunte successivamente la pubblicazione) prodotte dal grande artista Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Sono immagini molto armoniose e solenni, che mettono in primo piano il rapporto uomo-natura, il tutto incorniciato da un sapiente uso del blu di Prussia che contribuisce a dare alle xilografie un tono etereo e raffinato.

Musica: McCoy Tyner (1938), "Valley of Life", dall'album "Sahara" (1972).

Utagawa Hiroshige [1797-1858] - The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō

Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese: 歌川 広重), also Andō Hiroshige (Japanese:安藤 広重; 1797 – 12 October 1858) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition.

Hiroshige is best known for his landscapes, such as the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō; and for his depictions of birds and flowers. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868). The popular Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series by Hokusai was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject, though Hiroshige's approach was more poetic and ambient than Hokusai's bolder, more formal prints.

For scholars and collectors, Hiroshige's death marked the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Hiroshige's work came to have a marked influence on Western painting towards the close of the 19th century as a part of the trend in Japonism. Western artists closely studied Hiroshige's compositions, and some, such as van Gogh, painted copies of Hiroshige's prints.

Shakuhachi Instrumental by 清虎(Kiyotora B Sekikawa) 
Arrangement by Dan Sekikawa and Macintosh.

Utagawa Hiroshige the "Nature's Master"

Woodblock prints by Kawase Hasui [ 川瀬 巴水, 1883-1957 ]

Kawase Hasui (川瀬 巴水, 1883 -- 1957) was a prominent Japanese painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and one of the chief printmakers in the shin hanga ("new prints") movement.

For more information please visit the given link,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawase_H...

Woodblock prints by Hiroshi Yoshida [1876-1950]

Hiroshi Yoshida (吉田 博 Yoshida Hiroshi?) (1876-1950) was a 20th century Japanese painter and woodblock print maker. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the shin hanga style, and is known especially for his excellent landscape prints. Yoshida travelled widely, and was particularly known for his images of non-Japanese subjects done in traditional Japanese woodblock style, including the Taj Mahal, the Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon, and other National Parks in the USA.

For more information visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_...

Japanese Woodblock Printmaking [with Keizaburo Matsuzaki-san]

㋭Woodblock printing in Japan (Japanese: 木版画, moku hanga) is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type, but was only widely adopted in Japan surprisingly late, during the Edo period (1603-1867). Although similar to woodcut in western printmaking in some regards, the moku hanga technique differs in that it uses water-based inks—as opposed to western woodcut, which often uses oil-based inks. The Japanese water-based inks provide a wide range of vivid colors, glazes, and transparency.

㋭Wiki Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodbloc...

㋭Keizaburo Matsuzaki-san, the printer's Official Website:

http://woodblock.com/encyclopedia/ent...

Superflat First Love - by Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton

Full short film celebrating six years of collaboration between Murakami and Vuitton.

Takashi Murakami on Jellyfish Eyes, Nuclear Monsters, and Artistic Influences

Takashi Murakami's first live-action feature film, Jellyfish Eyes, has been ten years in the making. The Creators Project sits down with the legendary Japanese artist to discuss the filmmaking process, advances in CGI, and his overall artistic influences at his recent exhibition Arhat at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles. 

Read More: 

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/bl...

http://www.takashimurakami.com/

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Louis Vuitton Superflat Monogram - Takashi Murakami

This is the commercial for the Louis Vuitton flat monogram series. It's by the same guy who made the Kanye West Artwork on his album "Graduation".

Superflat Monogram - For Louis Vuitton from Chris Coleman on Vimeo.

Superflat World - Takashi Murakami

Project "Artist Impression" 2013 of Saxion University
made by Yarikata Studios

BIOGRAPHY OF HOKUSAI - [BBC documentary]

BBC - biography of Hokusai (documentary).

Tony White ~ "Hokusai - An Animated Sketchbook"

(Note: Fans of this film might like to know about my current personal project, currently in development and seeking funding...http://www.spiritofthegamemovie.com.)

Re 'HOKUSAI': This was my first ever... and still my favorite... short animated film! I created it in my spare time while I was still a director/animator at the Richard Williams Studio in London during the late 1970's. I actually started the film after we had completed 'A Christmas Carol', when I was Richard Williams' own personal assistant at the time. 'Carol' went on to win the first of Dick's three Oscars. When my own 'Hokusai' film won a British Academy Award I moved on to set-up the 'Animus Productions' animation studio... a creative entity I led for a further 20 award-winning years. The film itself was inspired by the wonderful sketchbooks of Hokusai. When I saw them I realized that this artist was indeed a true animator at heart... he just didn't have the knowledge or the technology to be one in his lifetime. I therefore sought to bring his drawings to life for him, as homage to his genius.