Latest news with #Matsuda
National Geographic
06-08-2025
- General
- National Geographic
Finding light in Hiroshima's legacy
The shadow of artist and photographer Will Matsuda's face can be seen on an image of gingko leaves from a tree that survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Matsuda's latest project was inspired by the "nuclear shadows" that the bomb etched into surfaces across the city. Photographs by Will Matsuda Three years ago, Oregon-based photographer Will Matsuda learned something that totally reframed his connection to the Japanese city where he had ancestral roots––Hiroshima. His family had received a translated koseki, an official register that records vital information about all Japanese households—marriages, births, and deaths. 'It listed a bunch of our relatives' dates of death on August 6, 1945, and a few days after that,' he says. That was the day the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, an act of destruction that razed much of the city, instantly killed tens of thousands of people, and sickened thousands more with radiation poisoning. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had been killed. (The elusive horror of Hiroshima.) Matsuda's relatives, including his great-great-grandmother Tama Miyahara, numbered among the dead. 'Had the bomb not happened, I would have family to see when I go there,' he says. Origami cranes, whose shadows are depicted here, are symbols of peace and hope in Hiroshima. As Matsuda reflected on how a violent turning point in human history was a personal tragedy for his family, one thing struck the 32-year-old photographer: how the bomb's intense heat and light etched shadows of people and objects who had been standing in its path on Hiroshima's buildings and streets. 'It turned the city into a negative,' he says. This inspired Matsuda's newest project: photographing objects in Hiroshima without a camera—instead using a similar process to that which created the nuclear shadows. Matsuda produced his cameraless photographs—like this image of the shadow of dried sardines—by placing light-sensitive paper behind the fish and exposing them to light. Matsuda captured objects that survived the atomic bomb in 1945, including a Japanese sago palm. The shadow here is of a palm fond from the tree. This character—which means 'offering'—appeared on a lantern at a shrine in Matoba-cho, the neighborhood where Matsuda's great-great-grandmother lived before the bombing. He captured the shadow of the character by holding photographic paper up to the lantern. Matsuda captured objects that had personal significance, including this shadow of a hydrangea from Hiroshima Castle, where his great-grandmother once worked. To make these images, Matsuda held pieces of photographic paper up to objects while quickly exposing them to a light source. The process imprints the shadow of an object on the paper—'in the same way that the violent process of the bomb did,' he says. And he had to do all this at night in order to limit the papers' exposure to light. Matsuda doesn't want his project to be defined by the nuclear shadows, however. He wanted to build off of them to create something new. To that end, he chose to feature objects that survived the 1945 bombing. A gingko tree, a partially melted teapot––they underline resilience in the face of destruction. When the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima, it destroyed and damaged countless objects, including this partially melted teapot. The image's red hues 'look shockingly like a sunset,' Matsuda says. Though partially melted from the bomb's effects, this glass bottle survived the bombing. The bomb produced a wave of intense heat which scorched and melted this roof tile. Matsuda also chose sites with personal significance, including a shrine in Matoba-cho, the neighborhood where his great-great-grandmother had lived at the time of the bombing. He says he felt a 'deep spiritual connection' to the shrine and created an image there as a way to honor her. By traveling to Hiroshima to capture these images, Matsuda says it was a personal journey as well as an artistic one. 'I'm trying to reestablish my own connections to the city because the familial ones have mostly been erased,' he says. 'I was raised fairly Buddhist, and there's this prayer and ritual connected with your ancestors. So it has been spiritually motivating for me to connect to them.' Though Matsuda took inspiration from the nuclear shadows that the bomb created, he says, 'I'm much more interested in showing life and vibrancy,' which he accomplished by featuring plant and animal life, like this shadow of a fish. The leaves and branch in this image belong to a willow tree that was only 370 meters away from the hypocenter, the area beneath where the bomb detonated over Hiroshima. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum houses artifacts that survived the bombing, including this teapot, partially melted roof tiles, and a glass bottle. While on assignment, Will Matsuda traveled to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which houses artifacts that survived the atomic bombing. He says: "I felt a reverence and an emotional connection to the nuclear-bombed artifacts I photographed at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I am looking for these through-lines, these living and nonliving things that existed before and after the bomb. I wanted to really sit with them, but that just wasn't possible in a photoshoot like this. I had to move quickly and carefully, in the dark, to make the images in this unusual way. With this process, it feels like there is part of these special objects imprinted onto the paper–their melted forms, their resilient beauty, and the evidence of what they endured."
Los Angeles Times
23-07-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Anaheim Union High School District Supt. Michael Matsuda announces retirement
With a final graduation season behind him, Michael Matsuda decided it time to turn the tassel on his own tenure as superintendent of the Anaheim Union High School District. Matsuda announced his retirement in a video message to the district, which serves roughly 26,000 students, 70% of whom are Latino, across campuses in Anaheim, Cypress, La Palma, Stanton and Buena Park. 'Like all the thousands of students who have graduated through their own capstones, their own reflections on life, I am ready to move on with the next stage of my journey,' he said in brief remarks. Matsuda's 11-year run as AUHSD superintendent will conclude at the end of the year. 'This is not the end,' he added. 'It is only the beginning.' Described as an 'unexpected' pick when first appointed superintendent in 2014, Matsuda touted 21 years of experience at AUHSD, mostly as a teacher at Orangeview Junior High School and the prestigious Oxford Academy before taking on an administrative role overseeing professional development. Some trustees at the time expressed reservations with Matsuda's lack of administrative experience before a 4-1 vote appointed him to lead the district. During his time as superintendent, Matsuda became synonymous with a number of branded educational efforts. AUHSD became the first California Democracy School District and secured $26 million for community schools. The 'Anaheim Pledge' program also provides free tuition for district graduates to attend Cypress and Fullerton College as freshmen with the intent to transfer to UC Irvine. In making students career ready, AUHSD partnered with Google in offering career certificates through several tech courses. The AUHSD issued a news release calling Matsuda's tenure 'a defining era of innovation, student empowerment and national recognition' for the district. 'Superintendent Matsuda's legacy is one of courage, vision and relentless dedication to equity, innovation and student voice,' said Brian O'Neal, president of the board of trustees. It was O'Neal who cast the sole vote against the superintendent's 2014 appointment, but he had long since retired his skepticism. 'His leadership has not only reshaped AUHSD but has served as a national model for the future of public education.' Trustee Annemarie Randle-Trejo added that Matsuda's 'impact will be felt for generations.' But toward the end of his tenure, AUHSD faced a serious challenge in the form of declining enrollment, an increasingly common post-pandemic conundrum for campuses statewide. The district has shed about 5,500 students in Matsuda's time as superintendent, a contraction that is expected to double by the 2028-29 school year. Citing sagging enrollment stats, trustees initially approved more than 100 teacher layoffs last year before protests prompted Matsuda and district officials to work with the teachers' union on a plan to save jobs through alternative budget cuts. Though teacher layoffs were averted, a budget presentation given during a June board meeting made clear that fiscal challenges still lie ahead. Projected budget deficits are expected to spike from a modest $300,000 this school year to $47 million by 2028-29. The Trump administration's push to withhold significant federal education grants has also thrown a wrench into budgeting, with the district considering only $15 million of $41 million in federal revenue to be 'certain.' How AUHSD grapples with staying solvent going forward is a pressing matter for Matsuda's successor. The trustees are conducting an internal search for Matsuda's replacement, a recruitment process with an application deadline set for this coming Monday, July 28. In soliciting input, trustees have invited community members to participate in a multilingual survey regarding the selection of a new superintendent, with their comments also due Monday. The tight turnaround, which comes while school is out for summer, has raised concerns for some in the community. 'There's no rush,' said Germaine Neumann-Chau, a former district parent and freelance journalist. 'Our school district is limiting our opportunity to attract the best candidates. Are we looking at what is best for the district or continuing a favored agenda?' Dulce Sotelo, a district parent, called the recruitment process 'rushed.' She learned of Matsuda's retirement through his video message and plans on filing out the survey soon but wants more transparency overall. 'Is our voice really going to be considered?' Sotelo asked. 'What if there's someone with incredible experience, who can understand our students and they can't apply because they're only doing it internally?'
Spectator
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Could Japan soon be governed by chatbots?
Tokyo Could Japan be the world's first -algocracy – government by algorithm? The concept has been flirted with elsewhere: in 2017 a chatbot called Alisa challenged Vladimir Putin for the Russian presidency. But there is reason to believe that if any major country is going to replace its politicians with AI, it will be Japan. The citizens of Yokosuka in Kanagawa have had a remarkably lifelike AI avatar of their mayor, Katsuaki Uechi, at their service for over a year now. It (he?) speaks perfect English with a slight Japanese accent, with Uechi's facial features manipulated to make it look as if he is pronouncing the words correctly. The avatar exists on the city's website and YouTube channel, standing at a podium, making speeches. The avatar's portfolio has expanded since it was launched and the phantom image will apparently be used during times of disaster to 'disseminate information' and spread a 'message of peace'. Meanwhile, the mayor of Sagamihara, Kentaro Motomura, has begun delivering responses to the city council based entirely on AI drafts. Politicians around the world have probably been doing this for a while in secret, but Motomura might be the first to boast about it. He claims that the software developed has been 'trained' with three years' worth of council responses and administrative terminology and can produce in seconds what salarymen used to toil late into the night for. However, these innovations seem minor compared with the ambitions of Michihito Matsuda, otherwise known as the 'AI mayor', who has stood for office several times, and promises to replace all politicians with AI. In Matsuda's hi-tech update of Athenian democracy, the people of Japan will register their views on all issues online. AI will then take over and formulate policy based on the resulting collective intelligence. The algorithms used will be available for all to scrutinise and revise should errors, biases or 'hallucinations' become apparent. The advantages of this, says Matsuda, are obvious. The whole political class can be removed at a stroke. Trust will be restored to democracy as people will be consulted on every issue and the process of how their views become policy will be transparent. Matsuda, who wears a mask in all his campaign videos, is formally running as a 'representative of AI' as the rules do not yet allow machines to stand for public office. This issue would be resolved in his AI dream world. What is remarkable about Matsuda, a somewhat controversial character with a colourful past (he is a former pro-wrestler), is how seriously he is taken. He has never come close to winning in his three mayoral and one gubernatorial contests, but he got 8 per cent in his first outing and nearly 3,000 votes when he ran for Tokyo governor, which is not bad in a contest with 56 candidates. He has also earned the endorsement of a major national party (Ishin – a sort of Japanese Reform). In interviews, Matsuda comes across as intelligent, amusing and entirely serious – a bit like a more upbeat and affable Dominic Cummings. It is not hard to understand why Japan is receptive to the idea of AI governance. In many ways, Japan already resembles an AI culture. Many aspects of everyday life and almost every professional (and even much personal) interaction are streamlined and formalised to eliminate all risk of spontaneity. This produces reliable but often robotic exchanges that do feel as if they have been crafted by an algorithm. Life can appear scripted (quick tip to visitors to Japan: do not engage shop staff in conversation; I tried this on my first week, asking a girl stacking shelves if she was having a busy day – she fled to the stockroom). Likewise, in politics, exchanges are often scripted to the word ahead of time. How much of what is left really needs a human? Matsuda did some research for one of his campaigns and concluded that 80 per cent of a mayor's duties could be completed by robots or eliminated entirely. The rest, the creative part, could be AI-generated. Even in the arts, the Japanese seem quite relaxed with the idea of AI taking over. When Rie Kudan won the prestigious Akutagawa prize for her novel Sympathy Tower Block and revealed part of it had been produced by ChatGPT, there was more criticism outside Japan than in. AI has been used to create the voiceovers in anime films and write some of the scripts. As for music, would anyone mind, or even notice, if the interchangeable manufactured J-pop girl bands were replaced by avatars? Matsuda looks for support from young voters. They have been excluded from Japan's so-called 'grey democracy', where everything is decided by and for the older generation, and are often resentful of it. Matsuda told a podcast interviewer that an algocracy was inevitable as soon as the over-seventies, who are heavily invested in the current system, die off. Politics seems not only irrelevant to the lives of young people but also unremittingly boring. This was brought home to me sharply when I was preparing to begin a university class and discovered that the former prime minister Shinzo Abe had just been assassinated. The news was greeted with a collective shrug; the students barely looked up from their phones. After all, with so many parts of young people's lives now governed by algorithms, why not politics? AI has worked its way into every aspect of life, even sex. Japan's dating drought, along with a near-obsession with anime, has caused a boom in virtual liaisons. More and more young men and women dream of saying 'I love you' to pixelated entities. A survey by the Japanese Association for Sex Education found that 15 per sent of young respondents were romantically attracted to anime and video game characters. If things get serious, there are even companies that issue marriage certificates for such unions. If you can fall in love with an avatar, you could surely vote for one.
Wall Street Journal
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Rimless Glasses Used to Give ‘Grandpa' Vibes. Are They Now Cool?
Josh Calihan, 37, wanted to give his face a break. The Chicago-based personal shopper owned plenty of chunky, heavy glasses but craved something lighter. Then, last fall, he spotted the newish M3104-B glasses by Tokyo brand Matsuda. The specs feature striking hexagonal lenses, brushed-gold titanium arms with delicate filigree—and no rims. In the past, rimless glasses 'kind of gave me 'grandpa,'' said Calihan. But Matsuda, he argued, has 'taken something that would normally be considered very conservative and put their touch on it. The little details make it special.' At once fresh and relatively classic—not to mention light—they have become his go-tos.
Yomiuri Shimbun
07-06-2025
- Business
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Heirs to Kyoto Talent: Metal Ornament Craftsmen Responsible for Cultural Properties Has Impressive Workmanship
The Yomiuri Shimbun Metal ornament craftsman Kosuke Matsuda smiles during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun at Kazariya Matsuda, his workshop in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, sur-rounded by a myriad of work tools. UJI, Kyoto — Metal ornament craftsman Kosuke Matsuda was using a hammer and chisel to engrave an arabesque pattern on the surface of a thin copper sheet. The 1.5-centimeter-wide, 26-centimeter-long sheet will adorn a folding screen. The sheet has to be exquisite but not too showy — the optimum balance to enhance the ap-pearance of the screen. Matsuda, 33, is very strict and meticulous about his handiwork. He switched to an-other chisel and, on a section with no design on it, neatly engraved a 'nanako' pattern, which involves small, dotted circles, each measuring 0.4 millimeters in diameter. Looking closely, you will notice that none of the tiny circles overlap and there is no extra space between them. The nanako motif highlights and adds depth to the delicate arabesque pattern. The Yomiuri Shimbun Matsuda engraves patterns by rhythmically hitting a chisel with a hammer. Kazariya Matsuda, his workshop, is in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture. It was founded in Kyoto more than 200 years ago. The workshop was mainly engaged in producing hikite pulling handles for fusuma sliding panels, as well as ornaments for frames used to mount paintings and calligraphy pieces in homes. During a housing construction boom in the 20th century, the work-shop was inundated by orders. However, as the lifestyles of people in Japan became more westernized, Japanese-style rooms started to disappear. Instead, the company started to receive many more orders related to cultural prop-erties, which they rarely received. Over the past 20 years, these orders have grown to comprise more than half of the total. Matsuda has restored pulling handles for fusuma sliding doors in Nijo Castle's Ninomaru Palace and Kiyomizu Temple's Jojuin subtemple. He has also repaired metal ornaments for floats in the Gion Festival and restored ritual instruments in the Seiden main hall of Shuri Castle in Okinawa Prefecture, among other renowned cul-tural properties. Choosing career path In the spring of 2015, after graduating from university, Matsuda started working at the workshop with the idea of potentially succeeding his father, Kiyoshi, 63, the eighth-generation operator of the business. After much consideration and inner con-flict, he ultimately made the decision to enter this world on his own. The Yomiuri Shimbun Various hikite pulling handles, including eye-catching ones with family crests and beautiful engravings Since he was a child, the workshop had been a playground for him. He closely watched his father and other craftspeople work and even helped them. However, his father never pressured him to follow in his footsteps, saying, 'You can choose your own career path and do whatever you want to do.' At university, Matsuda majored in social welfare, his field of interest. He also attended school to study bookkeeping and management and even received a job offer from a financial institution. However, he ultimately chose the family business, as he knew firsthand that its techniques were essential for repairing and restoring cultural prop-erties. Matsuda's father has been named by the central government as a holder of the se-lected conservation techniques for cultural properties in the field of metal ornament crafting. He also serves as a director of an industry organization. Matsuda's father has built credibility for himself in the industry and interacted with people at the fore-front of various fields. 'It's amazing that he has been able to do a job where mistakes are not tolerated for so many years,' Matsuda said. He was encouraged by his father's strong presence and meaningful work. Even making tools Metal ornament craftspeople create patterns and characters on metal sheets made from gold, silver, copper and brass by using chisels to perform engraving techniques. They sometimes do forging — striking metal with a hammer to give it a certain shape — and coloring. Coloring techniques include lacquering, smoking by burning cedar leaves and chemical coloring, in which metal ornaments are boiled in a mixture of chemicals to change their colors. For many years, these tasks were divided among fellow craftspeople, each with their own area of expertise. However, in recent years, the number of metal ornament craftspeople has been decreasing, and there are only a handful of such craftspeople across Japan. There are dozens of different types of chisels used in Matsuda's workshop but only one craftsman in Aichi Prefecture who can be trusted to produce the tools. The Yomiuri Shimbun Dozens of types of chisels are used according to the size of the pattern on the piece and the purpose. In Matsuda's workshop, the work is done by the father-son pair. Matsuda is trained by his father and also visits other craftspeople to learn the techniques of engraving and chisel making. He does this to broaden his field of expertise for the future, anticipating that the industry will drastically transform due to changes in the environment and a shortage of workers. He is also interested in the latest technologies and trends, including 3D printing. In many cases, cultural properties cannot be taken out of the places where they are kept, and craftspeople have difficulty in making prototypes without sufficient exami-nation. It was under these circumstances that Matsuda started using a 3D printer. The technology has helped him create elaborate prototypes much faster and made dis-cussions with his clients go much more smoothly. The Yomiuri Shimbun An elaborate pattern is engraved with a chisel. The company also started producing and selling copper coffee drippers, lanterns and other handicrafts for everyday use. The products are advertised on social media. The company intends to offer a wider variety of products at a broader range of prices in the future. 'As I work on national treasures and important cultural properties these days, the skill requirement has increased,' Matsuda said. 'I want to work hard to meet those re-quirements.' *** If you are interested in the original Japanese version of this story, click here.
