Latest news with #TheGreatWave
7NEWS
3 days ago
- Automotive
- 7NEWS
Best-selling LEGO Japanese framed wall art to build and hang in your home
If long, dark evenings is inspiring you to find a new hobby, why not try a LEGO framed wall art, a fun arts and crafts activity for the whole family. Great for winding down from a long day at the office (or class) the Hokusai, The Great Wave kit has 1,810 LEGO pieces for creating a 3D artwork of the famous painting, and can be hung up on the wall once complete. A fan-favourite for hundreds of shoppers, those who have got their hands on the kit have described it as 'excellent,' and 'looks great on a wall.' Making the ideal gift for a birthday or special occasion, it's perfect for adults (18+) and art lovers, plus there's even a QR code to scan to access a specially curated soundtrack. Now 32 per cent off in a limited-time deal, you can pick up the LEGO Art Hokusai Wall Art for just $115.58 (down from $169.99). Shop more LEGO at Amazon Australia: LEGO Star Wars Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser, was $999.99 now $729.24 LEGO Star Wars Jabba's Sail Barge UCS Building Set, was $799.99 now $602.91 LEGO Technic Porsche 911 RSR Sports Car Set, was $299.99 now $222.83
The Mainichi
4 days ago
- General
- The Mainichi
Edging Toward Japan: The Japanese discovery of the colour blue
I seem to recall some years ago reading a short story by Haruki Murakami calling "Losing Blue" ("Ao ga Kieru"). If memory serves, this describes a man waking up one morning to discover, to his sadness, that the colour blue has completely vanished from the world, though nobody else apart from him appears to have noticed. The story seemed to me like quite a clever allegory for so many things that slip away from us in the modern world without anyone apparently realising. However, it's not so much losing the colour blue, but discovering it in the first place that has been on my mind recently. In July last year I was at an exhibition at the auction house Sotheby's in London and got to admire up close some original prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige. We are so used to images of Hokusai's famous depiction of "The Great Wave" or his blue-infused vision of Mount Fuji that we tend to think of the "blueyness" of this art as quintessentially Japanese. Yet a particular set of historical circumstances, and international influences, helped to produce this iconic art. A clampdown by the Japanese government on the depictions of the lusty pleasure quarters so beloved by ukiyo-e artists of the 18th century like Harunobu and Utamaro forced 19th century artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige to devote their attention to landscape portraiture instead. And crucially, they were suddenly given access to a vibrantly new colour pigment, Prussian Blue, produced in the factories of Northern Europe -- a world until then entirely closed to them. The combination of Japanese artists having their eyes turned towards previously ignored subjects and having a newly imported colour in which to paint them helped produce such iconic, visually arresting artworks. But then, the story of Japan's interaction with the colour blue has always been a rather peculiar one. One of the first things any student of elementary Japanese learns is that the word for "blue" in Japanese is "ao," but that this word actually means "blue or green." I must confess that, for long decades, I did not understand this. How could a word mean both blue and green? This seemed to me equivalent to having a word that meant "square or circular" i.e. very confusing about the meaning it is trying to convey. What makes this even more baffling is that the Japanese language also has a perfectly clear and common word for "green" ("midori"). So why on Earth would you not just have a word for "blue" ("ao") without bringing in the possibility that what you are talking about is not blue at all, but green? In terms of everyday usage, "ao" does indeed mean for most of the time "blue," but just when you think you can ignore the confusing "...or green" part of its meaning, it turns out that "green" things, which could be called "midori," are also called "ao." The most common example of this is the green of a traffic light, which is "ao," not "midori." As if all this isn't confusing enough, the expression for "deep green," the type of green you see when walking through summer woods for example, is "ao ao shita midori," which literally means "blue blue green." Why can't Japan keep "blue" and "green" apart? To answer that question, you have to think about the way we conceptualize colour in the world. We tend to think it natural to clearly differentiate the colours in a light spectrum as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet etc. But there is no particular reason why a specific band of the light spectrum is intrinsically obvious to us a definitive colour. Both wider and narrower bands of colour on the light spectrum might appear to us as recognizable colours depending on our associations with them. Most colours are obvious to us by connection with objects in the real world: blood is red; the sun is yellow. Indeed, many colours in Japanese are denoted by connection to real world objects. Grey is "rat-coloured" (nezumi-iro) or "ash-coloured" (hai-iro), while brown is "tea-coloured" (cha-iro). The problem with blue is that there are not many solid objects in the world that we can actually associate with blue. The two things people immediately think when you mention "blue" are the sky and the sea, but both of these are things you cannot grasp and whose colour are often a will-o-the-wisp of illusion. Pour some of that "blue" sea into a glass and it suddenly turns out to be colourless. The sky meanwhile is just empty air. With no solid object of fixed colour against which to correlate, "blue" has historically had the capacity to range loosely over the colour spectrum. In the case of Japan, "ao" denoted a range of blue and green, and retained that meaning even after the introduction of the word "midori" for green in the Heian Period. Japan is by no means unique in its often confusing approach to the colour "blue." In his book, "The World According to Colour", the art historian James Fox remarks how when European nations came into first contact with many ancient cultures -- from Pacific Islanders to the bushmen of southern Africa -- during the 19th century, they were baffled by the fact that so many of them seemed to have difficulty discerning exactly what "blue" was. Theories even abounded that they might even be colour blind to "blue." It's now more generally accepted that the decisive factor is linguistic and nearly all civilizations define "blue" at a later stage than other colours such as red, white and green. As the Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone observed, Homer frequently refers to the "wine-dark sea" and yet never once calls either the sea or the sky "blue." Is this because Homer was -- as tradition has it -- blind or is it because there was simply no precise concept of "blue" amongst the Greeks of his time? We live in a world in which we often pessimistically contemplate, like Haruki Murakami's protagonist, how dangerously close we are to losing precious things from the world. But we sometimes forget just how recently even something as blindingly obvious as the colour blue fully entered our field of vision. When you look again at those intensely redolent blues of Hokusai's and Hiroshige's prints -- of Great Waves of Blue surging over you or a Mount Fuji of Blue soaring in your imagination -- you gain some sense of what it must have felt like to have the scales taken from your eyes and a primary colour to be transmitted to your senses in overwhelming Technicolor magnificence for the first time. There is seeing and then there is seeing. And there is always the potential of waking up one morning and perceiving the hues and texture of the world in a thrilling new way. @DamianFlanagan (This is Part 60 of a series) In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain. Profile: Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).
Daily Mail
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Shocked art fans are all saying the same thing after seeing the original 'Great Wave' painting
Art lovers have been left baffled after discovering the real size of a hugely popular creative piece of artwork. After visiting the Montreal art museum currently housing The Great Wave Off Kanagawa - a woodblock print by Japanese artist Hokusai - X user Callan shared the image online. The post quickly caused a stir, with fans from around the world shocked after realising the true size of the original 1830s piece. One of 36 in a series of woodblocks titled Thirty-Six Views Of Mount Fuji, the panel is much smaller than many members of the public had come to believe. 'Am I silly or did anyone else think this piece was much larger?' asked Callan. Found as a card in plenty of gift shops, a poster in countless rooms and even spanning duvet covers and luxury throws, the print is familiar to both art lovers and those uninterested in artwork. But like many popular art pieces such as Van Gogh's Wheatfield With Crows or the Mona Lisa, seeing the real thing can sometimes be underwhelming. And it's not because the artwork isn't magnificent, but because it's so different in scale than it typically appears in replicas and reprints. 'Very cool to see these details up close, either way!' Callan continued. With 14,000 likes and hundreds of comments, many who viewed the post were similarly taken aback. One person wrote: 'I definitely assumed it was bigger!' Another echoed the sentiment, saying: 'I've seen this in person too, but at the time I didn't think about it. 'We have seen it projected or printed on big walls and I guess that's why we tend to imagine the original is bigger?' One person argued that the precise nature of the details lend the piece to being enlarged. 'There's so many big reproductions of it,' wrote Michael Frank. 'It's a testament to how clean and elegant the work is.' Many commenters who had also seen the original print shared their similar experiences And another chimed in: 'I too was shocked when I saw it in person. I guess we're used to seeing poster-sized versions.' However, those familiar with wooden prints pointed out that the scale is not unusual for the medium and genre. In fact, the piece - emblematic of the ukiyo-e style - might actually be on the larger end for its kind. One of the most well-known pieces of Japanese art in history, its dimensions are 24.6cm x 36.5cm - or 9.7in x 14.4in. The timeless image has before been described as 'possibly the most reproduced image in the history of all art', which explains why viewers might have preconceptions about its appearance. In the context of wooden prints, 'oban' refers to pieces roughly 10in by 15in. One commenter pointed out bluntly: 'This is the standard size for ukiyo-e prints, so yes, you are being silly.' Others in the comments shared their experiences of seeing their favourite artworks in person - only to realise they were much larger or smaller than expected. And portraits such as Van Gogh's (pictured) and the Mona Lisa - so often replicated - are not as large as art fans may suspect 'Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's self portrait are also super small,' wrote one. 'It's funny how such small paintings have massive impacts.' Other paintings which are deceptively small upon first viewing are The Creation Of Man by Michelangelo and The Persistence Of Memory by Salvador Dali.
AU Financial Review
30-04-2025
- General
- AU Financial Review
Why ignoring your inner caveman will make you a better investor
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (known as 'The Great Wave') is Japan's most iconic artwork. Hokusai's woodblock print balances the yin of a raging, chaotic sea with the yang of the calmly enduring Mt Fuji. It is a portrait of resilience in the face of chaos. The wave's power reflects nature's dominance and the importance of adapting to forces beyond your control. The fishermen on the boats aren't panicking; they are calmly working together with determination to ensure their long-term survival.
Japan Times
28-04-2025
- Japan Times
Man rescued from Mount Fuji twice in one week, local media reports
A man in his 20s was airlifted from Mount Fuji, then rescued again from its steep slopes just days later after he returned to find his phone, according to media reports. Police said the Chinese university student, who lives in Japan, was found Saturday by another off-season hiker on a trail more than 3,000 meters above sea level. "He was suspected of having altitude sickness and was taken to the hospital," a police spokesperson in Shizuoka Prefecture said on Monday. Later, officers discovered the man was the same one who had been rescued on Mount Fuji four days previously, broadcaster TBS and other media outlets reported. Police could not immediately confirm the reports, which said the man — having been rescued by helicopter on Tuesday — returned on Friday to retrieve his mobile phone, which he forgot to bring with him during the first rescue. It was not known whether he was able to find his phone in the end, said the reports, citing unnamed sources. Mount Fuji, an active volcano and Japan's highest peak, is covered in snow for most of the year. Its hiking trails are open from early July to early September, a period when crowds trudge up the steep, rocky slopes through the night to see the sunrise. People are dissuaded from hiking outside of the summer season because conditions can be treacherous. The symmetrical 3,776-meter mountain has been immortalized in countless artworks, including Hokusai's "The Great Wave." It last erupted around 300 years ago. In a bid to prevent overcrowding on Mount Fuji, authorities last year brought in an entry fee and cap on numbers for the most popular Yoshida Trail. Starting this summer, hikers on any of Mount Fuji's four main trails will be charged an entry fee of ¥4,000 ($27).
