April 17, 2005

• PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ME OUT

  Shoen Uemura

  Once upon a time in faraway Kyoto in the spring of 1875, a little girl was born who would one day be given Japan’s highest award for cultural achievement. Her father having died soon after her birth, she grew up with her mother and aunts in a famous little tea-shop where the patrons came to learn the refined art of Japanese tea. Her earliest drawings were so astonishing she was considered a child prodigy and encouraged by her mother she won a painting competition that enabled her to become the first female to enter the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School at age 12. In those times, Japanese women were not expected to be anything but wives and mother or servers of men’s wishes. She had a strong interest in “Bijinga” drawings (images portraying the beauty of women) over her lifetime and developed them into works of art rather than sketches. At age 15 she made a dazzling entrance into the art world by winning a first prize at the Third National Exposition for the Promotion of Industry and her painting was bought by a British Duke. She went on to study with various painting masters and in 1903 when she was 28 she began to work as an independent artist. Besides breaking ground as a woman in the Japanese art world of her time, she also was accused of having an affair with one of her teachers, who was probably the father of her son, though she never revealed his name. In spite of breaking one of Japan’s most stringent taboos – bearing a child out of wedlock – her art was too great to be denied by the scandal. She became the first woman member of the Japan Imperial Fine Arts Academy in 1941 at the age of 66 and in 1948 was the first woman to receive the Order of Cultural Merit at age 73. Within a year she died in her cottage in the mountains with her brush in her hand, leaving behind a son Shoko and grandson Atsushi, who also became artists, and a great legacy of painting. It is said because of the war years approaching she did not have the international career she might have had. Without access to the large North American market, no Japanese artist can make an international career even to this day. But in her own country she is famous and beloved for fighting for the rights of women and for her achievements as a great artist. Her name is Shoen Uemura. (See more of her beautiful work here.)
  

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  Deep Thought: “If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror, because I bet that’s what really throws you into a panic.”
  Today I am grateful for: Ideas
  Guess the Movie: “The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.” Answer: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, 1999. Winner: Eliminate_the_Impossible.
  Sweet Victory: Maryland Stands Up To Wal-Mart
  by Katrina vanden Heuvel
  With the federal government content to let Wal-Mart run amok, it has been left up to the states to protect workers from the retail behemoth’s excesses. This past Saturday, April 9, Maryland showed America’s largest corporation who’s boss.
  Maryland’s House of Delegates voted 82 to 48 to approve a bill that would require all businesses in the state with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits for workers (or, alternatively, donate the funds to the state’s Medicaid program). Wal-Mart, with its 15,000 employees, is the only such company that does not already spend 8 percent on health care for employees–and thus, the direct target of the bill. Spearheaded by Maryland for Health Care, the legislation was supported by a coalition of over 1,000 organizations representing Maryland’s health, business, and community interests. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 9:36 pm
  + = Love my Netflix.
  - = Last Life in the Universe pissed me off.

  • 4:29 pm
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