Ursula (FALL 2023): The new issue feature Takesada Matsutani, 86, who has lived and worked in Paris since the late 1960s, but he came of age as an artist in Osaka, Japan, as a member of the avant-garde Gutai movement. He has long worked in highly experimental ways with printmaking and artist’s books.
According to the records of the temple, the temple was opened in 1047 by Yoshiaki Shonin and enshrines the “Yakushinyourai,” the Buddha who can cure all illness. The name of the temple is said to come from “Joruri,” the realm where the Buddha lives.
The main hall of Joruri-ji is particularly long with nine Amida Buddhas enshrined inside. During the Heian period about 30 such nine-body Amida temples were built around Kyoto, but Joruri-ji is the only temple that still exists. Both the main hall and nine-body Amida Buddha are designated as national treasures.
*The Nine Amida Buddhas sitting statues are being repaired two at a time over a five-year period from July 2018.
HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 2023) – This issue features The murder John F. Kennedy 60 years on, the dirty secrets of medieval monks, what the Nazis learnt from the Beer Hall Putsch, Christianity’s bloody history in Japan, and deaf expression in Renaissance art.
Was it the mob? A coup? Cuban dissidents? War hawks? 60 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the theories are still debated. Do any of them hold up?
In the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler was in prison and the Nazi Party banned. But its failure taught him valuable lessons.
Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.
Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain by Jessica Cox looks at the engine of the Victorian population boom: motherhood.
The Globalist Podcast (October 11, 2023) – The latest from Israel and the implications for Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future as the conflict between Israel and Hamas enters its fifth day.
Plus: a leak in a Finnish gas pipeline is ‘not an accident’ and how businesses are changing Tokyo’s skyline.
The wastewater releas e from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is expected to have negligible effects on people and the ocean
In 2011, the east coast of Japan suffered an earthquake and tsunami that resulted in the meltdown of three of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This led to an uncontrolled release of large amounts of radioactive material to the surrounding land and to the Pacific Ocean.
A debate about the age of ancient footprints continues
Dating the oldest evidence for the presence of Homo sapiens in the Americas is a matter of ongoing debate. One view is that the earliest such evidence is from 16,000 to 14,000 years ago, after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), when people would have crossed the Beringian strait from Siberia over a dry land bridge.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (October 2, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the search for the antidote to ageing, why a bigger EU is a better EU (11:30), and Japan’s world-leading toilet culture (25:30).
July 1–September 10, 2023
Gstaad
Since 1977, Setsuko has resided in the Grand Chalet of Rossinière, close to Gstaad, making this an opportunity for her to exhibit within reach of her Swiss home. Into Nature furthers the bodies of work presented in Into the Trees, Setsuko’s debut exhibition at Gagosian Paris in 2019, and Into the Trees II, a solo presentation at Gagosian Rome in 2022.
On view in Gstaad are new ceramic sculptures, produced at Astier de Villatte’s Paris workshop and made of terra-cotta glazed in white enamel. Setsuko’s renderings of trees, with their delicately modeled representations of acorns, blooms, foliage, and fruit, emphasize the rooted solidity of their trunks to convey lasting strength and emergent growth. Reminiscent of Japanese ceramics dating back to the age of Jōmon earthenware (c. 10,500–300 BCE), these works also refer to the animistic Japanese religion Shintō, to which trees are of central symbolic importance.
Boomers Daily 