Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – The Last Two Weeks

The last two weeks of my recent trip to Japan were spent mostly on Ōshima, in Ehime Prefecture, with family, but they also included side trips to the nearby island of Ōmishima and to Matsuyama, Kure and  Tomonoura, the latter two both near Hiroshima on Japan's main Island of Honshu, and again to Kurashiki, also on Honshu. 

The island of Ōshima is at the center of the Inland Sea area controlled during Japan's Sengoku Period by the Murakami Suigun (traders, guides, and occasional pirates) and at the north end of the island is the Murakami Suigun Museum, which focuses on the maritime history of the Murakami Suigun.

There is a great deal to see at the museum, but it's not well labeled in English – although well enough for a non-Japanese speaker to get some idea of the activities of the group and what areas were under its control. The tidal currents in the Inland Sea are notoriously dangerous, and even today the shipping lanes through Japan's Inland Sea are among the most tightly controlled in the world. The Murakami Suigun primarily acted as traders and guides helping ships navigate safely through the boiling whirlpools created by the shifting tides between the islands. In return for their services as guides, they took a percentage of the goods passing through. 

My perspective may be unusual, but, to me, most exciting object in the museum is a red, cochineal-dyed coat. "Cochineal" refers to the red dye (also known as "carmine") and to the insect from which cochineal is derived  (Dactylopius coccus), a scale insect native to tropical and subtropical South America and into Mexico and the Southwest US. It parasitizes cacti in the genus Opuntia (the prickly pears), sucking moisture and nutrients from the host plant. Cochineal insects on the pads of the cacti are brushed off the plants and dried. Carminic acid can be extracted from the dried insects and their eggs, which is then combined with aluminium or calcium salts to make cochineal, the dye. 

Today, cochineal is mostly used as a food additive (as a natural colorant), but it was once in high demand for textile production. It was highly prized because carmine, or cochineal, is bright red and, importantly, it is colorfast. Most other natural red dyes are fugitive. The Murakami Suigun Museum's red coat (still brilliantly red after almost two hundred years) and faded red flags (dyed not with cochineal but with safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), known in Japanese as benibana) illustrate the difference. As cochineal insects live only on cacti native to the new world, far from Europe and Asia, the dye was rare and expensive before the development of synthetic dyes. It is quite remarkable that cochineal was being used in Japan in this period. The bright red coat in the Museum's collection strikes me as an extraordinary artifact.  

Kure, is today best known for its naval base. You might say Kure is to the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force what Mare Island once was to the US Navy. Kure continues to be one of only two submarine bases in Japan and all of Japan's submariners are trained there. Kure is also remembered for the most famous of the many ships built in its shipyards, which have been in continues operation since the Meiji Period – the battleship Yamato, the largest battle ship ever constructed (she displaced 71,000 long tons when fully loaded and carried nine 18-inch guns, the largest guns ever mounted on a warship of any kind). 

Despite her size and big guns, she was sunk in April of 1945 by US carrier planes; by the end of WWII, battleships, vulnerable to air attack, were essentially obsolete. In addition to the still-operational shipyards and the Maritime Self Defense Force base, Kure has a museum that focuses on minesweeping and submarine technology, featuring a full-sized submarine, which incudes interactive exhibits. The second floor focuses on  minesweeping, with exhibits showing the many different types of mines and illustrating minesweeping techniques. 

The history of minesweeping after WWII presented there is rather interesting. I had not been aware of the extent to which the US mined Japanese waters during WWII. Mines were still being removed from Japan's waterways well into the early 1950s and beyond. Typically for Japan, which in official contexts likes to focus solely on how Japan suffered during WWII, there is little mention of the war itself or of the activities of Japanese submarines during the war. The museum – as it is housed in an actual decommissioned submarine that sits in a giant cradle in the middle of a street – is a somewhat startling sight.

After visiting Kure, we went to Tomonoura, near Fukuyama. The town is known for its harbor (which has been active for centuries) and historical buildings surrounding the harbor area. These are in a similar style to the well-preserved buildings in Kurashiki, but almost none in Tomonoura have been restored, so, compared with Kurashiki, it looks rather dilapidated. As we visited in the rain, we didn't stay long. 

One highlight of the last two weeks was an excellent dinner at Fenua on Oshima, a restaurant that focuses on traditional French cuisine, heavily influenced by locally available ingredients, run by the owner/chef (all by himself), who studied for years in France and ran a successful French restaurant in Tokyo for many years before retiring to the countryside on the island. In the evening, only one couple is seated. It can be hard, therefore, to get reservations but worth the effort. The wine selection is very good. Not cheap, but cheap in dollar terms compared with what the same number of dollars will buy you in the US (about $90 per person for the set course not including wine). Fenua is an unexpected oasis of European culture in rural Japan. The beautiful building, with views over the ocean was designed and built by Kengo Kuma and Associates.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Little cars

Not too long ago, Mr. Trump, in one of his rants, brought up the issue of the car market in Japan. He complained, as past presidents have done, that Japanese consumers don't buy US-made cars. The reason is simple. American cars, generally speaking, are too big for Japanese roads. 

US automakers make no attempt to design cars that will sell in Japan. Japanese consumers mostly want small, relatively inexpensive, right-hand drive cars. Kei cars (typically under 11 feet in length and 4 feet in width, engine displacement 660cc or less, power output capped at 63 horsepower) account for around 40% of new cars sold in Japan. In rural areas, the percentage is surely higher. I'd say easily 60%–70% of the cars on the road in the rural areas I visited in April and May (in Shikoku and Kyushu) were kei cars. 

Until US automakers are willing to address the needs of local consumers, they will never sell cars in Japan in appreciable numbers. Here are a few photos of small, right-hand drive cars seen in Japan. Notice that they have yellow and black license plates, indicating  the vehicle is a kei car. I could have taken hundreds more photos like these. Tiny cars are everywhere in Japan – which is appropriate given the narrow roads.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 302 (Santa Rosa)

Here's a collage from last summer. This is Untitled Collage No. 302 (Santa Rosa). Completed August 14, 2024. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, bark cloth fragment, collage. Image size: 32.2cm x 16.8cm (12.7 x 6.6 inches). Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website.

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay or by appointment.

Books I'm Reading: Airplane Literature

I recently traveled to Japan and back. I distracted myself from the inconveniences of flying economy class (almost eleven hours there and just over nine hours back) with some reading, as people do, but I'm a moderately nervous flyer, so I find it impossible to read while flying unless the book is either a collection of shortish essays that allow me to read in bursts or it's light, very brisk reading. I took Frank Abagnale's Catch Me if You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake with me (Broadway Books, 2000; I picked up a used copy in a thrift store a few years ago thinking it might be interesting to see how the movie version departs from reality) and, ahead of my flight home, I picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's The Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession (Penguin Books, 2022) at a bookstore in Haneda Airport. I read the entirety of Catch Me if You Can on the way to Tokyo and most of The Bomber Mafia in the air on the way home. They were both good, fast-paced choices, Catch Me if You Can in particular because, if you've seen the movie, most of the story is already familiar.

Some incidents in the movie Catch Me if You Can have always seemed implausible to me. It turns out that, although clearly details have been altered and certain incidents added or exaggerated (or underplayed; the book suggests the real Abagnale spent a lot more of his time pursuing women than the character in the film does), most of it is true in a broad sense. I noted two major differences, though. I have always thought Abagnale's apprehension in the film especially problematic. It makes no sense. It's hard to believe anyone could have established or acquired and operated a large-scale printing shop in the middle of a tiny town in France without anyone noticing as the DiCaprio character appears to do in the film. In reality, the nearly perfect, essentially real (although forged) checks Abagnale was using at the end of his career as a bad check passer were innocently made by the gullible father of an Abagnale girlfriend who, very conveniently, owned a printing company (he was told they were being made as samples).  

The other main difference – and it is a striking difference  – between reality and the movie is in the punishment the real Abagnale received at the hands of the French government after his arrest. He endured shockingly cruel treatment in prison (barely fed, in solitary confinement without light, sleeping in his own excrement for months on end) and the book devotes a great deal more time to describing his stint in prison and how he was eventually released than the film version does. Worth a read.

The Bomber Mafia was the name given to a group of US military men who before and into WWII (comparatively early in the history of aviation), believed, before any proof was available, that precision bombing alone would someday be the way wars were won and, by avoiding high casualties both among soldiers fighting on the ground and among civilians, won more quickly and more ethically. Led by Major General Haywood S. Hansell, they put their faith in the Norden bombsight, which, in theory (in perfect conditions – conditions that almost never prevailed), allowed dropping a bomb in a precise location from tens of thousands of feet in the air. The bombsight, despite its promise and the resources that went into its production and protection (its development was top secret and units in use were to be destroyed to prevent capture), had a very bad record in actual use. Eventually, the opposing view, championed by Curtis Le May – that indiscriminate "area bombing" (and eventually indiscriminate firebombing using napalm canisters) was more effective – prevailed, ultimately resulting in the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo (and then cities all over Japan), which in the space of a few hours killed more people than either of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan later in the same year (comparing the immediate deaths anyway; the lingering effects of the atomic detonations eventually killed more people).

The details are mostly recorded history. What makes this book of interest is its focus on the way members of the Bomber Mafia, who, despite huge losses suffered by bomber crews using the bombsight and repeated failures to hit targets with enough bombs to make the sacrifices worthwhile, refused to accept failure and repeatedly doubled down on the idea of precision bombing, placing blame for unacceptable results elsewhere. The book is more an examination of social psychology than a war tale and its look at how people get attached to questionable ideas and stubbornly defend them despite contrary evidence seems particularly relevant at the moment. The irony is that toward the end of the war, precision bombing became increasingly possible and, today, with drones and computer-guided munitions, it really is possible to "drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 30,000 feet" as those championing the Norden bombsight claimed. Whether precision bombing, in practice, was truly more ethical than carpet bombing continues to be debated. Le May argued that anything that shortened the war ultimately meant fewer deaths than would have occurred if carpet bombing with incendiary bombs (and atomic bombs in Japan) hadn't been used. Hansell and the Bomber Mafia were appalled by indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. This book asks you to decide whose side you would have been on. Another book worth reading. 

Plants I'm Growing: Pawpaws

Two days before leaving for an extended stay overseas (at the end of April), two pawpaw plants arrived in the mail – trees I had ordered almost three months earlier (the nursery shipped the trees when they were considered ready to plant rather than when they were purchased). I would like to have been at home to watch over them as they settled in, but I had to leave. In the first couple of months after planting, a new tree is always vulnerable, so I was worried about them, but I'm happy to say that with the help of friends and neighbors who agreed to keep an eye on the garden during my absence, they have both successfully leafed out and seem to be doing well. It will be a couple of years before they start producing fruit, but so far so good.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Birds

Back home after five weeks in Japan, it's taking some time to adjust. On my mind in particular is editing photos from the last two weeks of my trip, which were spent mainly on the small island of Iyo-Oshima, where my wife grew up. One easy bit of organization was finishing a list of the birds I saw on my trip. I ended up with  44 species observed, of which 14 were what we birders refer to as "life birds" – a species observed for the first time in a lifetime. In the list below, those marked with an asterisk were life birds for me. I regret not having been able to get a good shot of the beautiful Narcissus Flycatcher – maybe next time....

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

Oriental Turtle Dove

*White-cheeked Starling

*Azure-winged Magpie

Brown-cheeked Bulbul

Carrion Crow

Large-billed Crow

Meadow Bunting

Coal Tit

*Willow Tit

Long-tailed Tit

*Grey Wagtail

Winter Wren

Eastern Spot-billed Duck

Mallard

Rock Dove

Grey Heron

*Japanese Green Pheasant

White Wagtail

Oriental Greenfinch

*Japanese Wagtail

Varied Tit

Pale Thrush

* Dusky Thrush

Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker

Great Coromorant

* Brown Dipper

Eurasian Teal

Black-eared Kite

Grey Heron

Great White Egret

* Little Grebe

* Japanese Grosbeak

* Ryukyu Minivet

* Japanese Bush Warbler

Blue Rock Thrush

• Masked Bunting

Eurasian Coot

Comon Moorhen

Common Pochard

Tufted Duck

Osprey

* Narcissus Flycatcher

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 301 (Santa Rosa)

Here's a collage from last year. This is Untitled Collage No. 301 (Santa Rosa). August 5, 2024. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, found paper (letter fragment), collage. Image size: 26.4cm x 14.7cm (10.4 x 5.8 inches). Matted to 20 x 16 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse. 

This one is a bit unusual for me as it uses a piece of found paper. Most often my work is made entirely from monotypes I've made myself. In this case, however, the colors of the pair of stamps perfectly complemented the colors in the monotypes. Postage stamps are perhaps the quintessential cliché in collage, but I think it works in this case. 

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website.

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay or by appointment.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Kurashiki

A short trip to Kurashiki. Kurashiki is a modern Japanese city. In many parts of it, you'd see few signs of its history as an important hub of commerce, but step into its well-preserved old town and it's like you're in another time. 

The area now the old part of the city was once a shallow inland sea. It was drained in the 17th century and became a center of salt production and then a center of cotton production, in part because cotton is unusually tolerant of salty soil. Production of cotton led to cotton spinning and Kurashiki became famed for its denim (Kurashiki is the still the home of Kurabo Industries, originally Kurashiki Boseki [Kurashiki Spinning], a major producer of textiles and other products; its first factory complex, built in the 1880s, has been converted into a hotel and retail shops). 

Many of the city's cotton and textile warehouses, retail stores, and residences dating from as far back as the late 1600s have been preserved or restored. There is an entire district of white stucco and tile architecture, buildings that today house shops and restaurants but also businesses, some of which have been in continuous operation for 100 years or more. 

The town has dozens of museums, the most famous of which is the Ohara Museum of Art. In addition to the Ohara Museum, there is a toy museum, there are other art museums, a history museum, a museum of natural history, a museum of folk arts, and others. 

I mainly wanted to see the Ohara Museum on this visit – another place I last saw more than four decades ago. Opened in 1930, it was the first permanent collection of Western art in Japan. It originally showed mostly French paintings and sculpture of the 19th and 20th centuries but later expanded to include paintings from other European countries and other periods. Today the collection also includes work by some well-known 20th century American artists.

The collection was originally established through the patronage of Ōhara Magosaburō, whose wealth stemmed from the Kurashiki textile industry and on the advice of the  painter Kojima Torajirō (1881–1929). In 1961 a wing was added for Japanese paintings of the early 20th century (including work by Fujishima Takeji, Aoki Shigeru, Kishida Ryūsei, Koide Tarushige and others) and a wing was added for ceramic work by Kawai Kanjirō, Bernard Leach, Hamada Shōji, Tomimoto Kenkichi and others in the same year. A wing was later added to show woodcuts by Munakata Shikō and dyed textiles by Serisawa Keisuke. These last two sections are now together known as the Crafts Wing (Kōgei-kan). A memorial hall dedicated to the work of painter Kojima Torajirō is nearby. 

While the Ohara collection has a few gems (an excellent Gauguin, an oil sketch by Cezanne, and several excellent pieces by Japanese artists), on the whole I think the ceramics in the Crafts Wing are of a higher caliber. The work of Hamada Shōji is consistently of the highest quality but I was also impressed by the work of Kawai Kenjiro, a potter I had not previously been aware of. 

There is an El Greco Annunciation in the collection that gets a lot of attention, but I've never been able to stomach El Greco. I think he's the man who invented painting on velvet. So, if you visit the museum, don't miss the Crafts Wing. Unfortunately, photography is banned throughout the museum (except in a small section of antiquities), so I can't show you any highlights. 

Kurashiki is in Okayama Prefecture, once known as Bizen, and the famous Bizen Ware pottery is very much in evidence with many specialty stores selling handmade Bizen pots. With all the museums and the dozens of shops and boutiques, you could easily spend a couple of days wandering through the old town. The old town manages to remain an historical district while at the same time carrying on as a vibrant modern shopping and business area. Well worth a visit.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Japanese Bush Warbler

Finally. The Japanese Bush Warbler, known locally as the Uguisu, is a secretive skulker, frequently heard and rarely seen. I have lived in Japan for a total of nearly 20 years and never seen this ubiquitous songster. Like the Bewick's Wrens common in Northern California, the Japanese Bush Warbler has an oversized voice. It's hard to believe such a small bird can make so much noise. Everywhere in rural Japan you hear the Uguisu's distinctive song. It's a drab little bird, but its song is hauntingly beautiful. I had never seen one until yesterday. Because they tend to stay hidden deep in foliage and they move quickly, I was lucky to get this shot of one in full song. Not a great photo. I wish it were sharper, but it will do. Finally. 

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Mt. Aso

Our tour of Kyushu ended with a visit to Mt. Aso after a stop at Takachiho Shrine. We went to see the shrine but also to complete a mission. We were asked by the proprieties of the inn we had stayed in the night before to deliver a package – some of her home-baked bread. On hearing that we were heading for the shrine, she asked us to take the bread to the Guji there (the head priest at the shrine), a friend of hers. Mission accomplished. The area around the shrine is said to be the location of several key events in the creation myths recorded in Japan's earliest written documents, but, as a guide I overheard said, no place names are mentioned, so other places have made the same claims. Regardless, the area is pretty. It’s known for its serried cedar forests (logging operations were evident everywhere – old stands of trees alongside clear-cut areas and areas newly replanted), for  its terraced rice fields, and for its volcanic rock formations. 

On my trip to Kyushu 48 years ago, we made a stop at Mt. Aso, but it was completely shrouded in dense fog. There was simply nothing to see. This time, the weather was more favorable. Aso is one of Japan's most active volcanos. In the main crater there is at present a blue-green lake of sulfuric acid that has been relatively stable, but occasionally there are small eruptions and even in a stable state the crater constantly spews steam. The area around the crater is strewn with rocks expelled in previous eruptions, mostly pumice and scoria. It all looks peaceful, but a row of colored warning lights at the entrance to the main crater area that reflect the level of sulfur dioxide in the air and concrete shelters that look like they belong on the WWII Normandy Coast are proof that anything could happen at any time. Most visitors appeared unconcerned.

Along the way, we stumbled upon the Sakamoto Zenzo Museum, a small museum dedicated to the work of – you guessed it – Sakamoto Zenzo, an abstract artist that was active mostly in the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s. The work was housed in an attractive building that looked fairly Western from the outside, but was very traditional inside. The place claims to be Japan’s only art museum with floors entirely of tatami mats.

One inn we stayed at, the Luna Observatory Auberge Mori No Atelier, has the second-largest privately owned telescope in Japan (82cm, or 32.3 inches – second-largest by one centimeter), a planetarium, and it offers stargazing sessions in the fields behind the inn. Telescopes of this size are generally owned by governments or institutes of education. 

The view through the telescope, to be honest, was a bit disappointing as the weather was not very good, but the instrument itself was impressive. It dwarfs a figure standing beside it. At the touch of a button, it will find any celestial object in its database. The man who demonstrated the telescope works in the restaurant as a waiter. The man who did the planetarium demonstration also works as a waiter. It was amusing to watch them change hats. As waiters they were awkward. When talking about the stars, they were in their element.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Takachiho Gorge

After seeing the Buddhist statues at Usuki, we visited Takachiho Gorge, which is a popular tourist stop. You can rent a row boat to see the gorge from water level. I've photographed it artfully, making the place look quite deserted, but, in reality, it's full of unpracticed boaters bumping into the walls of the gorge and into each other. 

I found it difficult to row with my back to the direction of travel (which is the correct way to propel a rowboat) and ended up doing it backwards, which worked but probably looked strange. 

The gorge is pretty even though only a small portion is accessible. Worth a visit, but make a reservation online ahead of time – the wait for a boat otherwise can be as long as five hours.

One highlight was seeing a small dark bird zoom past, flying just over the surface of the water and straight down the gorge – behavior that immediately identified the bird as a Dipper of some sort. I later looked it up and found that the Brown Dipper (Cinclus pallasii) is the local Dipper – a new life bird for me.

Places I'm Visiting: Japan 2025 – Usuki

In the past few days, I've been traveling through Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands. Kind of a whirlwind tour. We crossed over from Shikoku by car ferry landing very near  Usuki, which is famous for an area with buddhist statues carved into rock faces of tuff, a soft rock of welded volcanic ash. The carvings date from the late Heian to early Kamakura period, which puts them early in the 12th century. 

I was last in Usuki 48 years ago. I first visited Japan in 1977 as a high school exchange student. One of my host families owned a tile factory of renown that made the roof tiles for several famous buildings including Matsuyama Castle and the Glover House in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving Western-style wooden house in Japan. I went along on a trip to inspect the Glover House tiles. 

Memory is unreliable. At Usui I remember seeing mostly a single large carved stone head. I have no recollection of the many  standing and seated figures carved into the rock there. 

In any case, the place looks very different today, nearly half a century later. The head I remembered has been restored to the body it came from, a parking area has been added, pathways have been created and structures have been built over the statues to protect them from the weather. In addition, they've been designated as National Treasures (in 1995) since I last saw them. The place was familiar and strange at the same time. 

It was interesting to see Royal Ferns here (and many more at other locations in Kyushu). These are one of the Osmunda ferns that are unusual in that their spores are borne on entirely separate structures from the fronds (most ferns bear spores on fertile fronds that otherwise resemble the non-fertile fronds). I've tried to grow Royal Fern in the past, but never had much success. It was a pleasure to see them happy in their natural habitat.