"'Japan is the Key…': Collecting Prints and Ivories, 1900–1920", March 30 to July 21.

The Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland (map) will run the exhibit "'Japan is the Key…': Collecting Prints and Ivories, 1900–1920" from March 30 through July 21 in Gallery One. The exhibition, to borrow heavily from the CMoA website,

presents highlights from Carnegie Museum of Art’s significant collection of iconic Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) in an entirely new way, uniting them with Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s holdings of exquisite Japanese carved ivories (okimono). These collections were formed in the early years of the 20th century, motivated by European and North American acceptance of Japan as an emerging modern power, and the aesthetic appeal of Japanese art to artists and collectors. Japan is the Key… tells the story of two very different men who promoted Carnegie Institute’s early interest in Japanese art: poet and critic Sadakichi Hartmann, who masterminded the Department of Fine Arts’ controversial exhibitions of Japanese prints in the first decade of the 20th century; and ketchup magnate H. J. Heinz, who acquired ivories on his world-wide travels on behalf of local industry and religious organizations. This exhibition offers a rare view of this period of cultural interchange through the lens of the personalities that shaped it.

Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia, April 1 - 26.

The Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia will take place this year from April 1st through 26th. There is a massive amount of events planned around the festival, so browse the website and consider making the drive (or the Megabus) for the weekend. Consider visiting, too, Shufuso, a Japanese garden in Fairmont Park, a short distance from where many of the cherry blossoms are located.

Crocodile in the Yangtze and Sushi: The Global Catch at CMU this week.

Carnegie Mellon University International Film Festival: Faces of Media runs from March 21 through April 13, and relevant to this site are the two Asian-themed films this weekCrocodile on the Yangtze and Sushi: A Global Catch.

Crocodile on the Yangtze is scheduled for March 22, 7:00 pm, at the McConomy Auditorium, CMU University Center (campus map). The director will attend, says the website. The movie's official website says:

Crocodile in the Yangtze follows China’s first Internet entrepreneur and former English teacher, Jack Ma, as he battles US giant eBay on the way to building China's first global Internet company, Alibaba Group. An independent memoir written, directed and produced by an American who worked in Ma’s comany for eight years, Crocodile in the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs of life in a Chinese Internet startup at a time when the Internet brought China face-to-face with the West.

Sushi: The Global Catch is scheduled for March 24, 5:30 pm, at the same place. After the movie is a reception with a presentation by a sushi chef. An NPR review says of the film:

Outlining the process that brings tuna from the boat to the plate is just one of the building blocks of the film's larger argument about the economic and environmental impact of the sushi industry. Although The Global Catch initially considers sushi broadly, it takes the food's ubiquity for granted, merely glancing at its role in the culture and its global culinary influence as it speeds toward its essential focus: conservation.

Tickets for each of these are $8 for regular admission or $5 for seniors and students.

Zenkaikon anime convention in Lancaster, March 22 - 24.

Lancaster will host its annual Zenkaikon anime convention this weekend, March 22 - 24 at the Lancaster County Convention Center (map). "Zenkaikon was created in 2006", says the website,

through the merging of two Philadelphia-area events -- Kosaikon, an anime convention held at Villanova University, and Zentrancon, an anime and science fiction convention held on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

There is a long list of events and guests that looks appealing to all levels of fan and Japanese-cultural enthusiast: rock group The Slants, kimono consultant Kuniko Kanawa, anthropologist Charles Dunbar, Cosplay Burlesque, video game tournaments, karaoke, and live-action role plays, among others. The panels include topics like "A Complete History of Manga", "Beyond Bleeps and Bloops: An Introduction to Video Game Music", and "The Aging Otaku: Fandom and Getting Older", among more specialized ones.

Lancaster is a fine town, and is actually a city of 59,000, and not just a few roads in Amish country. Both it and the surrounding county are worth a visit, and not just in late-March. It's about four hours from Pittsburgh, though is a relatively easy drive from Hershey, Harrisburg, and other points east.

"Malaysian Tea House" at Pitt, March 22.

The Malaysian Cultural Camaraderie (MalaCCa) and Pitt Global Ties are putting on a "Malaysian Tea House" at William Pitt Union on Friday, March 22, from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. From their Facebook Event page:

Come and explore THE BEST STREET FOOD from Malaysia!

Oh, did we tell you they are free? YES, all these food are FREE by Pitt Global Ties and Malacca!

Ice Kacang
Douhua
Kaya Toast
Mochi
Tepung Pelita
Indian candies
Teh tarik

1985 anime The Dagger of Kamui (カムイの剣) at Hollywood Theater, March 24.

The Hollywood Theater in Dormont (map) will show the Japanese anime film The Dagger of Kamui (カムイの剣) on March 24, the latest in their semi-regular Anime Series. The plot summary, from Anime News Network, of the 1985 movie adapted from the novel series:

A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro - along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam - travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.

It starts at 2 pm and tickets are $7 for adults.

Pittsburgh Sakura Project 2013 Spring Planting Festival, April 6.

The Pittsburgh Sakura Project will hold its annual Spring Planting Festival in North Park on April 6 from 1:00 to 3:00. Since 2009 the Pittsburgh Sakura Project has been planting cherry blossoms and other flowering trees near the Boat House in North Park. About this year's festival the website says:

This year’s event will include hanami (flower viewing, weather permitting) and learning about the trees, planting of approximately 7 trees, tea ceremony, music, and more.

There is another planting day each fall, during which they plant a good many more trees. The website has photos from years past and also the flyer reposted above. For a little more background about the group, we again defer to the website:

We plan to plant 250 ornamental cherry trees around the greater Pittsburgh region over a 10-year period, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Pittsburgh in 1758. Our aim is for lovers of cherry blossoms to enjoy beautiful, mature cherry trees in the Pittsburgh region. The PSP will enable visitors to Allegheny County parks to enjoy the unique scenery of Sakura and strengthen bonds within the local Japanese community by creating a focal point for cultural and personal exchange. By adding the new element of Sakura to existing park scenery, we create a new aesthetic while preserving the woodland scenery, an example of cultural harmony and environmental sustainability for future generations.

Taken on a rainy day in late March, 2012.

Allegheny County gave permission to the Pittsburgh Sakura Project to plant there in 2008, and while North Park certainly is scenic it would be especially striking to have sakura in a more urban setting, like Schenley Park.


Scouting locations a little while ago.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry at Mercyhurst University, March 22.

The documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry will run on March 22 as part of Mercyhurst University's Maria J. Langer Film Series. The documentary's official website describes the film and subject:

Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.

It's been in Pittsburgh a few times, and the City Paper wrote of it last year:

Weiwei enjoys fawning attention in the West, particularly for his pointed critiques of his homeland's government, while in Beijing, his celebrity and influence is constantly checked by the authorities.

Mercyhurst is in Erie, and the film will run at the Taylor Little Theater on the northern edge of campus on East 38th Street (map). There are two showtimes, 2:15 and 7:15, and this and the other films in the series are free and open to the public.

Korean films The Thieves (도둑들) and Architecture 101 (건축학개론) at Pitt this month.

The movies The Thieves (도둑들) and Architecture 101 (건축학개론) will comprise this spring's Korean Film Festival at the University of Pittsburgh, now in its 10th year. Both films are new, were successful in Korea, and have found international exposure through large film festivals in London and New York, respectively.

The Thieves is a 2012 comedic action movie---or a "sprawling, relentlessly entertaining thriller", according to the New York Times--- with an ensemble cast featuring several of Korea's top stars. The Korean Film Database summarizes:

In order to let things cool down from their latest heist, Popeye and his group of thieves go to Macao on a job. But the mastermind behind this job is none other than Popeye’s old partner Macao Park, who escaped with 68kg of gold several years ago on their last job together. Macao Park brought Chinese thieves as well but little did they know what Macao Park planned for each one of them. But his plan takes an unexpected turn when Popeye brings Pepsi, an old flame of Macao Park, to settle the old score.

Architecture 101 is a romance that plays with a retro setting, as Wikipedia tells us:

The film reignited 1990s throwback fever among Koreans and made the fashion, music and celebrities of the period cool once again. Songs from the '90s, including duo Exhibition’s "Etude of Memory" were included on the score. Characters also use pagers, hair mousse, and portable CD players. The protagonist is even obsessed with GEUSS T-shirts - counterfeits that were popular among Koreans in the 1990s. Nostalgia-inducing scenes that feature characters expressing awe at a one gigabyte hard drive computer or communicating with each other via landline telephones also brought the audience back in time.

The Korean Film Database again provides a summary:

In his college days, aspiring architect Seung-min (UHM) fell deeply in love with classmate Seo-yeon (HAN). However, fate denied them the opportunity to stay together forever. Now a successful architect, Seung-min has not spoken to Seo-yeon since that time. However, one day she suddenly reappears in his life, asking him to design a replica of her childhood home. Moving back and forth from past to present, the affections and heartaches between Seung-min and Seo-yeon slowly unfold, and it appears that fate may give their love a second chance.

The Thieves plays on March 19, and Architecture 101 on March 26. Both are held in room 4130 Posvar Hall on the Pitt campus (map) at 5:00 pm, and both are free and open to the public. The campus is accessible by any city bus that goes to Oakland, and parking is available at, among other places, meters around Schenley Plaza and the Carnegie Library across the street or in the Meyran Ave. garage two blocks away.

名所フィラデルフィア百景: 100 Famous Views of Philadelphia.

Artist Matthew Meyer is now selling prints from his Japan-inspired "100 Famous Views of Philadelphia". They're amazing, they're in time for Philadelphia's sakura festival next month, and they're for sale on his Etsy page.

The series draws its name from "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo", a famous series of prints from the 19th century that is both vintage postcards and art.

"Teruko Shiono is a one-woman Japanese-American amity committee in the Pittsburgh area".

We recently learned of the passing of Ms. Teruko Shiono, whose obituary was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette yesterday. She helped found the Japan Association of Greater Pittsburgh, was active in the Pittsburgh Council for International Visitors (now Global Pittsburgh), and with her husband was "instrumental in the creation of the Japanese Nationality Room at the University of Pittsburgh". She was also, according to a 1988 Newsweek profile, "a one-woman Japanese-American amity committee in the Pittsburgh area".

Shortly after she arrived in this country, Teruko Shiono was given a baby shower by her new friends in Pittsburgh. She has never forgotten that unexpected kindness and has spent the better part of 30 years trying to repay it.

Mrs. Shiono is a one-woman Japanese-American amity committee. When a Japanese woman went into labor at Pittsburgh's Presbyterian-University Hospital, and it developed that the mother-to-be and the doctors couldn't speak to each other, Mrs. Shiono hurried from her Highland Park home to bridge the gap. When Japanese athletes come to town, Mrs. Shiono is always available to whip up some home cooking -- rice, sushi, yakitori. The recorded Japanese voice that describes sights on local tour buses is hers. When the Pittsburgh Opera Theater wanted to stage "Madame Butterfly" it was Mrs. Shiono they turned to, and the costumes were found. And when a Japanese student is homesick in Pittsburgh, the school is likely to give him Mrs. Shiono's number. "They want to talk," she says, "so I listen. It's a Japanese custom -- the older helps the younger. You do what you can. That's the American way too, yes?"

She also found time to teach Mr. Rogers and friends how to do origami.

Japanese-American detainees to "feel the warm friendliness of the people of Pittsburgh"; papers tell story of wartime Japanese-American relocation to Pittsburgh.

The archives of local newspapers trace the brief history of Pittsburgh's involvement in the imprisonment and forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. These articles show that an old orphanage on Perrysville Avenue in Perry North doubled as a temporary home for Japanese-Americans forced out of their homes elsewhere. It was a source of some controversy, mostly because neighbors were afraid Japanese-American laborers would damage property values, though the program of incarceration and forced relocation ended before Pittsburgh could fulfill its potential as a home for 100 to 200 families.

Hina Matsuri Doll Exhibit at Maridon Museum, through May 3.

"Hinamatsuri in Hiketa", by mars2015.

Butler's Maridon Museum has a Hina Matsuri Doll Exhibit now through May 3rd, in addition to its regular exhibitions of Asian art. March 3rd is Hinamatsuri (雛祭り) in Japan, Girls' Day, and is commemorated by a series of dolls, says Wikipedia:

Platforms covered with a red carpet are used to display a set of ornamental dolls (雛人形 hina-ningyō) representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.

And the museum writes:

When a little girl is born in Japan they usually are gifted a set of Hina Matsuri dolls. These dolls are to be put up and taken down on March 3rd. If the dolls are not taken down at the end of the evening it could me bad luck for the little girls future.

This Festival is also called "Momo no sekku (Peach Festival)" because of the peach blossom season on the old lunar calendar.

The museum is located at 322 North McKean St in downtown Butler (map), and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Foreign students protest working conditions at PA McDonald's.

Via the Wall Street Journal and others comes news of foreign student workers protesting conditions at the Harrisburg McDonald's at which they were placed through agencies under the auspices of the Exchange Visitor Program:

This week, [Argentine college student Jorge] and 14 other foreign students demonstrated outside a McDonald's after filing complaints with the State Department and Labor Department saying they were exploited at fast-food outlets in the Harrisburg, Penn., area and housed in substandard conditions. The students were on a three-month J-1 visa for work and travel.

. . .

The students in Harrisburg, including those from Malaysia, China, Peru and Chile, said they were attracted by ads on their university bulletin boards and websites, such as one by a company called Out of the Box Personal Development in Kuala Lumpur, touting "a unique opportunity to live life in the USA—up close and personal!"

Lee Siew Yeen, a director for Out of the Box, said she was surprised by the complaints and would reach out to the students. "There was a housing issue. Other than that they weren't going through anything that was different from other students," she said. "They were pretty happy."

On arrival, the university students were assigned to one of three McDonald's in the Harrisburg area. Some said they were given so few hours that they hardly earned any money after their boss and landlord deducted rent from their paychecks. Others said they were forced to work shifts as long as 25 hours straight without being paid for overtime.

"Since I got to the States, I have been working just to pay to live in a basement," says Mr. Rios, who arrived in mid-December and shares the one-room space with five other foreigners who work at the same outlet. He said he worked about 25 hours a week earning $7.25 an hour and Mr. Cheung, his boss, deducted weekly rent of $75 from his pay.

Let the Bullets Fly (让子弹飞) at IUP, March 13.

The second installment of Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Asian Studies Club Film Festival is the Chinese movie Let the Bullets Fly (让子弹飞, Ràng Zǐ Dàn Fēi) on March 13. The Harris Theater summarized, when it was in Pittsburgh last summer:

Since its release this action-comedy-thriller has been lauded for its stunning mix of dark humor and eye-popping violence. Starring Chow Yun-Fat, it's become the highest-grossing film of all time in China. Set in 1920s Sichuan, it tells the tale of the bandit "Pocky" Zhang Mazi, who poses as a local governor in a dusty town, but finds himself at odds with the local mobster, who is not eager to share his turf with another drifter. A complex and deadly series of mind-games ensues between the two crooks, which are as violent as they are hilarious.

It will be shown in room 233 Keith Hall (campus map) at 7:00 pm, and is free and open to the public.

Chatham College students posing in Japanese costumes, 1923, for a May Day performance. From the Chatham University Archives Image Collection:

The Japanese dance group poses in their costumes and their performance hair and make-up. The 1923 May Day pageant featured a number of episodes from varying cultures and historical traditions. Part I, titled the "Birth of May Day" included dances by the allegorical figures of Night, Dawn, the Sun, and Spring among others. Part II centered on the "Coronation of the May Queen," senior Marion Jobson, and Part III, titled "Entertainment of the Queen," featured a wizard, a Roman Spring procession, an Egyptian episode, a Grecian episode, a Normandy folk dance, an English folk dance, a Japanese episode, “poses from old prints,” and a cherry blossom dance.

Emperor opens March 8 at Squirrel Hill's Manor Theater.

The movie Emperor, starring Tommy Lee Jones as Douglas MacArthur and dealing with the question of trying Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal following World War II, opens nationwide tomorrow and will be in Pittsburgh at Squirrel Hill's Manor Theater.

As General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) suddenly finds himself the de facto ruler of a foreign nation, he assigns an expert in Japanese culture - General Bonner Fellers (Fox), to covertly investigate the looming question hanging over the country: should the Japanese Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved?

The City Paper didn't really care for it--[it] "might have been informative and even provocative, but winds up being a lackluster, unsatisfying affair."---and it's doubtful 100 minutes of pop history will do justice to a question with lingering implications today.

The Manor Theater's page has showtimes for Friday and the weekend.

City Paper on Pittsburghers teaching English in Korea.

This week's Pittsburgh City Paper looks at locals who have gone overseas to teach English as a Foreign Language in South Korea.

Applicants do not have to have any teaching experience, but they must have earned a bachelor's degree in some field from an accredited university.

Monthly salaries vary by Korean province and the metropolitan area teachers are placed in. [English Program in Korea]'s site shows the minimum salary is about $1,700 per month. Salaries rise for applicants with teaching experience and for those with advanced degrees.

"The benefits of coming here are great. You make a good salary and have good vacation time. EPIK also pays for your plane ticket, gives you starting money and a furnished apartment that is rent-free," [Megan] Rees [of McKees Rocks] wrote in an email interview. "Americans living in Korea pay no taxes for two years and get the pension deductions from their paycheck back when they leave Korea."

. . .

EPIK teachers sign a one-year contract and have the option to renew. Giegel [of Observatory Hill] is considering signing on for another year. After two years in South Korea, Rees says she has decided to take a job to teach English in Japan beginning in May.

"My dream in life is to travel the world and experience living in different cultures," says Rees. "It gives you the [confidence to start] a new life from scratch, and it teaches you the world is bigger than what you have known growing up."

Even before the "Great Recession", teaching English in Asia has been an attractive option for recent college graduates. There are local chapters of the Japan Exchange and Teaching [JET] Programme, and there are numerous blogs by Pittsburghers in South Korea, including Brian in Jeollanam-do (teacher-turned-columnist) and Good for Man's Health (teacher-turned-bar-owner).

Teaching overseas is a viable short-term option, but in recent years the market has soured for older, experienced teachers who price themselves out of jobs because schools only want to pay young, cheap ones. Conveniently enough, the Korea Herald today has part one of a two-part series on the phasing-out of native-speaker English teachers in South Korea, cuts and shifting priorities that started several years ago.

[Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education] and [Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education] emphasized that their programs, both started in 2005, were never meant to last.

The English Program in Korea ― similar to the programs run by Seoul and Gyeonggi and South Jeolla provinces, but run in the rest of Korea ― was started in 1995 to enhance English education, and promote cultural understanding. The NETs would work alongside and train English-proficient Korean teachers, who would eventually replace them.

Seoul said the phaseout was ahead of schedule. It placed NETs in all public schools by 2010, two years earlier than planned, and says its Korean staff’s skills have improved dramatically.

SMOE claimed that 95.6 percent of Korean English teachers had “teaching English in English capacity” by the end of 2011, and began to phase out NETs last year.

GEPIK officials said that while the reductions were planned out, the timing was not. However, they said it was entering the next phase ― handing the classes over to English-proficient Korean teachers.

Taiwanese film Three Times (最好的時光) at Maridon Museum, March 25.

Butler's Maridon Museum will show the 2005 Taiwanese film Three Times (最好的時光) on March 25 as part of this year's Spring Film Series. Wikipedia says:

[Three Times] features three chronologically separate stories of love between May and Chen, set in 1911, 1966 and 2005, using the same lead actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen.

The Maridon is an Asian art museum at 322 N. McKean St. in downtown Butler (map) that presents Asian films from particular countries as part of its spring and fall series. Last year it was China and Vietnam. The show starts at 6:30 and is presented by Dr. William Covey of Slippery Rock University.

Multicultural Night at O'Hara Elementary School, March 14.

If there are children in your family they might enjoy visiting O'Hara Elementary School (map) in the Fox Chapel Area School District for its Multicultural Night on March 14. There will 20 culture booths including Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and China; a bunch of local performers; and vendors with Turkish, Korean, and Argentinian food. It will run from 5:30 to 8:00 pm at the School Commons Area.

IUP Asian Studies Club Film Festival starts March 6.

On March 3rd the Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Asian Studies Program announced its spring film festival, which will have five movies from March 6 through May 1. The first is Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し), a 2001 Japanese animated film playing tomorrow, March 6. Wikipedia sums up its reception:

When released, Spirited Away became the most successful film in Japanese history, grossing over $274 million worldwide. The film overtook Titanic (at the time the top grossing film worldwide) in the Japanese box office to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a $229,607,878 total. Acclaimed by international critics, the film is often considered one of the greatest animated films of all-time [and it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (tied with Bloody Sunday) and is among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Other films include the Chinese action comedy film set in the 20s Let the Bullets Fly (让子弹飞) and the Korean historical drama Hwang Jin Yi (황진이). The movies will be shown in room 233 Keith Hall (campus map) at 7:00 pm, and all are free and open to the public.

As I wrote three weeks ago about the Foreign Film and Music Festival running now, IUP puts on good foreign film series. The best I've seen in western PA was a Korean film festival nearly a decade ago.