As many of you know, last year I had the extraordinary opportunity to spend six months in Japan as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and as Visiting Scholar at Tokyo University of Agriculture. During my time at the University, I often ate lunch in the commons with some of the students so I could practice my Japanese language skills and learn firsthand about the Japanese people and their culture today. One day, when I was talking about how much I love our Japanese cultural events such as O-Bon and Moonviewing at the Garden in Portland, two of the young Japanese students looked intrigued. They said they had never experienced either festival and joked that perhaps I knew more about Japanese culture than they did.
That conversation provided me with important insights and strengthened my commitment to advance our amazing Garden in order to help promote and preserve the culture of Japan. While most people associate the preservation of culture with museums and their exhibitions of artifacts and art work, here at the Garden we have the unique opportunity to offer dissemination of both contemporary and traditional culture through activity as well as exhibition by using the Garden as a venue to provide significant cultural and aesthetic context. The Garden has long hosted tea ceremonies and ikebana demonstrations, added cultural festivals such as Kiku Matsuri, Children’s Day, and Hina Matsuri, and has expanded offerings to include a variety of hands-on workshops in traditional Japanese garden techniques and practices. All of these programs directly act to preserve traditional Japanese culture.
Equally important, under the extraordinary curatorial leadership of Diane Durston, last year’s exhibition on the arts of Northwest Native Americans and the indigenous Ainu people of Japan made striking and innovative cultural comparisons. The impressive Garden installation of Glass Art by Jun Kaneko in 2008 attracted an entirely new audience to the Garden, providing us all with an exciting and important convergence of contemporary Japanese artistic expression in a traditional setting. This year, we’re featuring both contemporary Japanese art in the work of indigo textile artist Shihoko Fukumoto in November as well as traditional art with the Hidden Art of Netsuke Carving exhibition in June. Such varied programs offer an important perspective on Japanese culture with the Garden as backdrop. These exhibitions and activities introduce customs and traditions of the past as well as innovative ideas of the present to audiences of today in creative and unique ways which speak, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly, to many.
The Portland Japanese Garden is proud to play a role in helping familiarize the local community and visitors from around the nation and the world (including perhaps some friends from Japan), with the beauty of Japanese culture, old and new, right here in our amazing Garden.
— Steve Bloom
