Volume 04, Number 24

Diversions
By Owen Schaefer

Drumming Up Some New Year Cheer

With the warning sound of hyoshigi blocks clacking in neighborhood streets and the ringing of temple bells after midnight, the Japanese New Year is a time of traditional sounds (usually accompanied by a generous dose of enka). While the playing of the taiko drum is not a particularly orthodox New Year tradition, the Kodo drummers of Sado Island have made a tradition of taking their rumbling sounds on a celebratory year-end tour each December.

Kodo has been touring Japan and the world for more than 20 years, and spends as much as eight months on the road. They are well-known at home and practically venerated abroad: foreign reviews gush over the power of their performances, and audience applause competes with the drums for volume. But the group works hard and is more than worthy of its praise. New apprentices live and work together for years before they are even allowed to perform in public, and the troupe practices with a nearreligious dedication. To call Kodo's performances powerful is something approaching understatement.

Determined to both preserve the practice of taiko drumming and also see it grow, the troupe incorporates a tasteful modicum of international rhythms into their performances, and features both new and old works each time they set out in December. This year's tour, entitled Trans-border, will have highlights from the year's many performances along with two debut works: one, a new dance arrangement; the other a drumming piece based on “ondeko,” or “demon-drumming,” a tradition native to the group's Sado Island home.

The 20 drummers will arrive in Tokyo's Bunkyo Civic Hall, performing between Dec. 21 and 24. If you're looking for an earth-shaking way to see out the old year before ringing in the new, this is it. Kodo—“Trans-border” (Dec. 21–Dec. 24) Bunkyo Civic Hall. Suidobashi JR Station. ¥4,500–¥6,000. Various times. Tel. 025-986-3630. http://kodo.or.jp

Watch this space

It seems Tokyo, these days, is rife with multidisciplinary, crossover, cross-pollinating and sometimes cross-purposed exhibitions seeking to lay bare the future of art. While contemporary art remains stubbornly mired in the present, there's no denying that some curators have a better sense of how to present current trends than others.

Take the Museum of Contemporary Art's forwardleaning New Year exhibition, Space for Your Future. The show's theme of “space” includes the physical, personal and metaphorical, and exhibits the new work of Japanese and international artists, architects and designers while also opening new vistas on established pieces. The result is a fl uid connection between disciplines and genres—architecture and design works resonate naturally with video and installations, and the lines between the two creative worlds frequently, and successfully, blur.

Central to this mixing of ideas and disciplines is Junya Ishigami's Balloon—a gleaming house-sized box which fl oats in mid-air in the large central room of the museum, neither rising nor falling. Ishigami is an architect who frequently forays into furniture and installation art. His weightless, three-story creation presides over much of the show. At once building and object, solid and space, it serves as a perfect centerpiece.

Kiichiro Adachi's dance-club-in-a-phone-booth provides participants with headphones, a disco ball, and one-way mirrors. You can step inside the box and groove along with your refl ection, while spectators watch from the outside—raising some interesting questions about personal space and the public gaze.

Elisabetta Di Maggio's paper cut-outs play with space and absence while turning maps into patterns. In an adjoining room, Taiwanese artist Michael Lin makes a surprising departure from his usual, overwhelmingly colorful works by hanging a canvas of his signature fl oral designs at one end of the room and continuing to extend the work onto the walls in pencil. The effect is a feeling of suspension and imbalance as the infl uence of the colored canvas radiates out, exaggerating the room's emptiness.

Other stand-outs include Dutch design group Demakersvan's Lace Fence, Carsten Nicolai's moody installation fade and Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's short film Emerald, a haunting meditation on what fills forgotten living spaces.

It is certainly debatable whether or not Space for Your Future will be as prophetic in scope as it would have you believe. But if this first exhibition of the New Year is a sign of things to come, it should be a very good year indeed. Space For Your Future (to Jan. 20) Museum of Contemporary Art. Kiba Metro Station. ¥1,300. 10am–6pm Closed Mon. Tel. 03-5245-4111.
www.mot-art-museum.jp

Listings:

edison Osorio Zapata Solo Exhibition (to Dec. 22) Solo show with installations in glass by South American-born artist. Galerie Tokyo Humanité. Kyobashi Metro Station. Free. 10:30am– 6:30pm. Tel. 03-3562-1305. www.kgs-tokyo.jp/humanite.html
Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art (to Jan. 14) Guest curators and 36 contemporary Japanese artists explore a broad canvas of genres and disciplines. Mori Art Museum. Roppongi Metro Station. ¥1,500. 10am–10pm. (Tue. until 5pm). Tel. 03-6406-6100. www.mori.art.museum
Nordic Modernism: Design & Crafts (to Jan. 14) Examples of master designers from the part of the world that brought you Ikea. Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. Hatsudai Station (Keio Line). ¥1,000. 11am–7pm. (to 8pm Fri. and Sat.) Closed Mon. Tel. 03-5353-0756. www.operacity.jp
Albert Anker—Healing Paintings from Switzerland (to Jan. 20) First retrospective of the warm and fuzzy paintings of Swiss-born Albert Anker. Bunkamura Museum. Shibuya Station (Metro, JR). ¥1,300. Tel. 03-3477-9111. www.bunkamura.co.jp
Two Lives in Palau (to Jan. 27) Works from literary author Atsushi Nakajima, and the artist known as “Japan's Gauguin,” Hisakatsu Hijikata. Setagaya Art Museum. Yoga Station (Tokyu Denentoshi Line). ¥800. 10am–6pm. Closed Mon. Tel. 03-3415-6011. www.setagayaartmuseum.or.jp
Flower Robotics (to Jan. 27) Tatsuya Matsui's sometimes unsettling, sometimes beautiful robots-as-art. Art Tower Mito. JR Mito Station. ¥800. 9:30am–6pm. (Closed Mon.) Tel. 029- 227-8111. www.arttowermito.or.jp
La Boheme (Jan. 20–Jan. 26) Puccini's Christmas opera, sung in Italian with Japanese supertitles. New National Theatre. Hatsudai Station (Keio Line). ¥1,500–¥21,000. Various times. Tel. 03-5351-3011. www.nntt.jac.go.jp
From the Permanent Collection (to Jan. 27) Almost 200 paintings and sculptures from the museum's collection focusing on modern Western art and Japanese painters in the Western style. Bridgestone Museum of Art. Tokyo Station (JR, Metro). ¥800. 10am–8pm. (Sun. to 6pm). Tel. 03-3563-0241. www.bridgestone-museum.gr.jp
Underground (to Jan. 28) Exhibition of underground engineering. See what's under your feet. Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation). Tokyo-Teleport JR Station. ¥900. 10am–5pm. (Closed Tue.) Tel. 03-3570-9151. www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/j/sp/underground