THE MIHO MUSEUM'S PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING

Little did Mihoko Koyama (nor her daughter Hiroko) realize when the mother contemplated her first tea ceremony "collectable" purchase just what the future might hold in store. 

Yet today in rural Shiga Prefecture near Kyoto an architectural triumph, the Miho Museum, attests to both the family's instinctual willingness to share the beauty of ancient objects with a grateful public and the influence of cultural traditions on the contemporary Japanese built environment.

In 1989 Hiroko Koyama approached the world-famous architect I.M.Pei to ask him to design a museum worthy of displaying the Shumei family collection of ancient art, some 1000 exquisite objects that had grown from her mother's initial interest in tea ceremony artifacts.

The chosen site, however, presented unique challenges because it was almost entirely within the boundaries of a heavily-regulated national nature preserve.  Responding to the opportunity, the architect proposed an inspired solution based on an ancient Chinese tale well known in Japan as well.

In Peach Blossom Spring a fisherman, initially attracted by the beauty of flowering peach trees, is drawn into a hidden cave from which he emerges into a newfound paradise of pleasurable repose.
 

I.M.Pei suggested that his plans for the new museum incorporate a tunnel through which visitors would walk before encountering a suspension bridge leading across a valley to the museum entrance.  Not only would this approach recall the Chinese story but it would leave the natural surroundings largely untouched.  Building on this inspiration (and adhering to imposed governmental regulations), his submitted plans also called for 95% of the museum structures to be placed underground.

Open since 1997, the results are truly breathtaking.  The experience of a visit to the Miho Museum integrates the setting with the structure and the art to inspire the soul.  A triumph of modern engineering and inspiration, the museum nonetheless honors past cultural traditions in the midst of its contemporary innovations.

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RYUICHI SAKAMOTO'S RAW LIFE OSAKA

To celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Asahi newspaper and the 40th anniversary of TV-Asahi this year, the Asahi publishing company commissioned Ryuichi Sakamoto to write an opera.  Sakamoto, a respected and popular composer, actor and musician, responded with a work entitled LIFE which has subsequently been recorded at least three times, twice live ("raw") and once in a studio setting.

The opera reflects Sakamoto's postmodernist predilections.  It draws inspiration from bits and pieces of earlier materials and juxtaposes them in such a way as to force the listener to derive his or her own "meanings" from the resulting experience.  Moreover each performance is seen as unique -- hence the multiple recordings of the same work in performance to drive the point home.

Moreover the opera defies conventional assumptions in that it "stars", not individual singers, but recorded archival materials and specially-written musings by individuals central to the history of the twentieth century.  "Arias" include Winston Churchill's "these are the times that try men's souls" speech from World War II and Robert J. Oppenheimer's reflections on the Bhagavagita at the dawn of the Atomic Age.  In one especially moving sequence a French translation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech is read accompanied by a choral version sung in English.  There is so much going on here, so many layers, so many expectations being challenged, that the results demand multiple hearings.

Here again traditional literary assumptions are being honored in that such allusions to past literary works are always integral to the expected impact of any Japanese poetry or other work of artistic expression.  To listen to how these assumptions can still inspire contemporary innovation is heartening.

OCTOBER 31. 1999