By IPS Correspondents
TORONTO, Oct 10 1995 (IPS)

Toronto’s artistic centre Harbour front is presently hosting a large festival featuring the work of more than 200 Japanese artists.

Covering the whole range from theatre and film via literature to paintings and photography, the festival appropriately titled ‘Today’s Japan’, focuses on contemporary art.

“I had heard from many people in the creative community that they were very interested in contemporary Japanese art,” says Bill Boyle, the initiator of the event. “I figured that the idea of a contemporary Japanese arts fair had many things going for it.”

Most cultural festivals dealing with Japan, he says, concentrate on traditional arts – reinforcing the stereotypes of Japan as a country swamped in technology but culturally chained to the past. Boyle, who has worked on getting the festival off the ground for four years, wanted to show western audiences that there is a Japanese reality between those two extremes.

Also, he says, “it could plant the seeds of collaboration between Canadese and Japanese artists”.

But apart from ideology, there was a more mundane reason for the decision to concentrate on contemporary arts: “it wouldn’t be nearly as expensive as a festival built around traditional arts”. Though this festival is by no means small, it is much more modest than for example was the huge Japanese fair organised in Britain five years ago, which was largely devoted to traditional arts like Kabuki theatre.

The budget-restrictions, Boyle says, required a new approach, and thereby led to a presentation of Japanese arts from a completely fresh perspective.

Mariko Oka-Fukuroi helped organise the festival from Japan and notes that it is precisely the clear concept and the relatively modest set-up which make ‘Today’s Japan’ strong.

The festival, which will last for several months, includes the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto – a photographer whose pictures combine both fact and fantasy to simmering effect – and will see the Suzuki Company of Togo stage ‘Dionysus’.

Also included is a retrospective of recent Japanse films, titled ‘Japanese Cinema of the Nineties’.

Several young film makers, virtually unknown outside Asia, will be represented here. They include Shinya Tsukamoto, Kenchi Iwamoto and the cult hero Beat Takeshi. Their films, nihilistic and hauntingly beautiful, often reflect a developing culture which is heavily influenced by the popular culture of the west. (MORE)

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