A Wealth of Free Documentaries on All Things Japanese: From Bento Boxes to Tea Gardens, Ramen & Bullet Trains

in Television, Travel | September 11th, 2015

“I used to be OBSESSED with Japan­ese cul­ture,” wrote an uncom­mon­ly thought­ful Youtube com­menter. “I miss that part of me. Try­ing to search for it again. That’s when I was the hap­pi­est.” Many of us west­ern­ers — or real­ly, many of us non-Japan­ese — go through sim­i­lar peri­ods of affin­i­ty and avid­i­ty for all things Japan­ese. Some of us put it away with our child­ish things; some of us make Japan­ese cul­ture a life­long inter­est, or even the stuff of our pro­fes­sions. I myself got into Japan ear­ly, at some point found myself put off by the just slight­ly too obses­sive Japan­ese pop-cul­ture fan com­mu­ni­ty in the West (though I admit­ted­ly read that com­ment below a music video with four mil­lion views), and lat­er returned with a much more seri­ous intent to under­stand.

But to under­stand what? The Japan­ese lan­guage, cer­tain­ly, and Japan­ese film, Japan­ese cities, Japan­ese aes­thet­ics, Japan­ese tech­nol­o­gy — all the fruits of the cul­ture that stoke in the rest of the world both deep envy and, some­times, faint sus­pi­cion. Why do they per­sist in using writ­ing sys­tems that, despite their con­sid­er­able beau­ty, come with such aggra­vat­ing dif­fi­cul­ty? The com­pre­hen­sive sub­way net­works in metrop­o­lis­es like Tokyo and Osa­ka func­tion day in and day out with aston­ish­ing reach and reli­a­bil­i­ty, but why do their rid­ers tol­er­ate crowd­ed­ness even to the point of get­ting uncom­plain­ing­ly crammed inside the cars by white-gloved atten­dants? And why, despite the Japan­ese love for ele­gant design and advanced con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy, do their web sites look so jum­bled and con­fus­ing?

NHK World can put you on the road to under­stand­ing these and oth­er ques­tions with Japanol­o­gy, their series of Eng­lish-lan­guage doc­u­men­taries explor­ing the things large and small, all sur­pris­ing to the for­eign­er, that make up the fab­ric of Japan­ese life. BEGIN Japanol­o­gy, their series for the Japan-intrigued but not nec­es­sar­i­ly Japan-expe­ri­enced, has come to six sea­sons so far.

At the top of the post, you can see its episode on ben­to, those painstak­ing­ly pre­pared lunch box­es, sim­pli­fied ver­sions of which even those who know noth­ing of Japan have seen at gro­cery stores the world over. To learn more about ben­to’s place in Japan­ese cul­ture, pro­ceed on to the rel­e­vant episode of Japanol­o­gy Plus, NHK’s series for the even more insa­tiably curi­ous Japanophile. And cou­ple with an episode on Ramen above.

Japanol­o­gy Plus also ded­i­cates one of its half-hour pro­grams to the Shinkansen, com­mon­ly known as the “bul­let train,” that quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese mode of trans­porta­tion that, with its impec­ca­ble half-cen­tu­ry record of speed, safe­ty, and punc­tu­al­i­ty, has become the pride of the land. (I, for one, hold out hope that Oba­ma will make The Onion’s “Ambi­tious Plan to Fly Amer­i­cans to Japan to Use Their Trains” a real­i­ty.) But if you don’t feel quite ready yet to board a Shinkansen, much less learn about its inner work­ings, try the Begin Japanol­o­gy Spe­cial Mini series, which offers five-minute dis­tilled doc­u­men­taries on such icons of Japan as tea gar­dens, hot springs, and Mount Fuji. Watch­ing all these, I feel glad indeed that I’ve already got the tick­ets booked for my next flight over there. Do you have yours?

You can find Japanol­o­gy added to our list of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

Let’s Learn Japan­ese: Two Clas­sic Video Series to Get You Start­ed in the Lan­guage

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Vintage 1930s Japanese Posters Artistically Market the Wonders of Travel

in Art, Travel | July 13th, 2015

Vintage-Japanese-Tourism-Posters

Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured vin­tage Japan­ese print adver­tise­ments from the gold­en age of Art Deco and for such prod­ucts as beer, sake, and cig­a­rettes. If you like that sort of thing, you might con­sid­er pay­ing atten­tion to the recent­ly launched Brand­ing in Asia, a site detect­ed to cov­er­ing “the art of brand­ing” as expressed in “the excit­ing new ideas and con­cepts explod­ing from the mind of Asia” — or the excit­ing old ideas and con­cepts which, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, remain pret­ty explo­sive still.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel13

Take, for instance, their col­lec­tion of clas­sic Japan­ese steamship ads. “In the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry,” writes Steph Aromdee, “Japan’s increas­ing­ly pros­per­ous mid­dle class was tak­ing to the high seas for trav­el. One com­pa­ny, the Japan Mail Steamship, adver­tised heav­i­ly, hop­ing to attract would-be tourists to their lux­u­ry ships. What were like­ly at the time regard­ed as sim­ple adver­tise­ments and brochures that sim­ply showed depar­tures and des­ti­na­tions, have today become viewed as stun­ning works of art.”

Vintage-Japanese-Travel4

Here we’ve excerpt­ed a few such adver­tise­ments from their impres­sive selec­tion which, as you can see, ranges artis­ti­cal­ly from the styl­ized to the real­is­tic, and con­cep­tu­al­ly from the prac­ti­cal to the pure­ly evoca­tive. They might entice read­ers onto a steamship voy­age with an Art Deco bathing beau­ty, a con­trast of human trav­el­er against moun­tain’s majesty, a detailed map enu­mer­at­ing a vari­ety of pos­si­ble des­ti­na­tions, or, as in the case of deer-filled Nara, a scat­ter­ing of local icons.

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The age of the steamship has, of course, long since dis­solved into the roman­tic past, even in Japan. Or per­haps I should say espe­cial­ly in Japan, whose shinkansen bul­let train not only put every oth­er mode of trans­port straight into obso­les­cence, but — at least to my mind — also boasts a cut­ting-edge romance of its own.

Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters7

And so these adver­tise­ments, more than 70 years after their print­ings, still get me plan­ning my next trip to Japan, a coun­try that knows a thing or two about desire and place. “Even in Kyoto,” wrote 17th-cen­tu­ry poet Mat­suo Bashō, “I long for Kyoto.”
Vintage-Japanese-Travel-posters12

via Brand­ing in Asia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Glo­ri­ous Ear­ly 20th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Pico Iyer on “the Art of Stillness”: How to Enrich Your Busy, Distracted Life by Unplugging and Staying Put

in Life, TED Talks, Travel | July 8th, 2015

Hav­ing known Pico Iyer for quite some time, on paper and in per­son, as a per­pet­u­al exam­ple and occa­sion­al men­tor in the writ­ing of place, it delights me to watch him attract more lis­ten­ers than ever with the talks he’s giv­en in recent years, the most pop­u­lar of which advo­cate some­thing called “still­ness.” But at first I won­dered: did this shift in sub­ject mean that Iyer—a Cal­i­for­nia-grown Brit from an Indi­an fam­i­ly who most­ly lives in Japan (“a glob­al vil­lage on two legs,” as he once called him­self), known for books like Video Night in Kath­man­du, Falling off the Map, and The Glob­al Soul—had put his sig­na­ture hard-trav­el­ing ways behind him?

Hard­ly. But he did start telling the world more about his long-stand­ing habit of rou­tine­ly seek­ing out the most qui­et, least “con­nect­ed” places he can—the sea­side no-speech-allowed Catholic her­mitage, the rur­al vil­lage out­side Kyoto—in order to reflect upon the time he has spent cir­cling the globe, trans­pos­ing him­self from cul­ture to alien cul­ture. “24 years ago, I took the most mind-bend­ing trip across North Korea,” he tells us, “but the trip last­ed a few days. What I’ve done with it sit­ting still—going back to it in my head, try­ing to under­stand it, find­ing a place for it in my thinking—that’s last­ed 24 years already, and will prob­a­bly last a life­time.”

If we want to fol­low Pico’s exam­ple, we must strike a bal­ance: we must process the time we spend doing some­thing intensely—traveling, writ­ing, pro­gram­ming, lift­ing weights, what have you—with time spent not doing that some­thing, a pur­suit in its own way as intense. He con­nects all this with the 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy cul­ture in which we find our­selves, cit­ing the exam­ple of folks like Wired co-founder Kevin Kel­ly and even cer­tain enlight­en­ment-mind­ed Googlers who reg­u­lar­ly and rig­or­ous­ly detach them­selves from cer­tain kinds of mod­ern devices, going “com­plete­ly offline in order to gath­er the sense of direc­tion and pro­por­tion they’ll need when they go online again.”

Achiev­ing such a prop­er intel­lec­tu­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal, social, and tech­no­log­i­cal com­part­men­tal­iza­tion in life may seem like a rare trick to pull off. But if you ever doubt its pos­si­bil­i­ty, just revis­it the last talk from Pico we fea­tured, in which he describes his encounter with Leonard Cohen, the only man alive who has suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined the lifestyles of rock star and Zen monk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Best Writ­ing Advice Pico Iyer Ever Received

Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

How Leonard Cohen’s Stint As a Bud­dhist Monk Can Help You Live an Enlight­ened Life

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Climb Virtually Up “El Capitan,” Yosemite’s Iconic Rock Wall, With Google Street View

in Google, Travel | June 25th, 2015

Google has used its Street View tech­nol­o­gy to let you take vir­tu­al tours of some far-flung places — places like Shackleton’s Antarc­tic, Mt. Ever­est and oth­er high moun­tain peaks, The Ama­zon Riv­er, and The Grand Canyon. Now you can add to the list, El Cap­i­tan, the icon­ic rock wall in the mid­dle of Yosemite Nation­al Park.

Yes­ter­day, Google’s offi­cial blog declared, “Today we’re launch­ing our first-ever ver­ti­cal Street View col­lec­tion, giv­ing you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb 3,000 feet up the world’s most famous rock wall: Yosemite’s El Cap­i­tan. To bring you this new imagery, we part­nered with leg­endary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Hon­nold and Tom­my Cald­well.” Above, you can see this trio in action, talk­ing about what makes El Cap a mec­ca for rock climbers every­where.

To cre­ate this Street View of El Cap­i­tan, Hill, Hon­nold and Cald­well worked with Google engi­neers to fig­ure out how to haul a cam­era up this sheer rock face. And what you ulti­mate­ly get are some amaz­ing 360-degree panoram­ic images. Accord­ing to Cald­well, these “are the clos­est thing I’ve ever wit­nessed to actu­al­ly being thou­sands of feet up a ver­ti­cal rock face—better than any video or pho­to.” Which, hat­ing heights, is good enough for me.

via Google Blog

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Take a Visual Walking Tour of Franz Kafka’s Prague with Will Self (Then Read His Digital Essay, “Kafka’s Wound”)

in Literature, Travel | June 24th, 2015

“There is noth­ing intrin­si­cal­ly imag­i­na­tive about the idea of ‘gold,’ nor the idea of ‘moun­tain,’” writes Will Self, cit­ing an idea of the philoso­pher David Hume, “but join them togeth­er and you have a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly gleam­ing ‘gold moun­tain.’ And might not that gold moun­tain be the Lau­ren­z­iberg in Prague? After all, it looms over con­tem­po­rary Prague just as it loomed in the con­scious­ness of Franz Kaf­ka, whose ear­li­est sur­viv­ing nar­ra­tive frag­ment, ‘Descrip­tion of a Strug­gle,’ is in part an account of a phan­tas­magor­i­cal ascent of its slopes.”

This asso­ci­a­tion comes from “Kafka’s Wound,” Will Self­’s new essay in the Lon­don Review of Books — or rather, a new “dig­i­tal essay” from the LRB on the BBC and Arts Coun­cil Eng­land’s new site The Space, one which takes full advan­tage of the mul­ti­me­dia future, much enthused over back in the 1990s, in which we now find our­selves. For some read­ers, myself includ­ed, the asso­ci­a­tion of the author of The Meta­mor­pho­sis and The Tri­al with Hume, the author of so many vol­umes fic­tion­al, non­fic­tion­al, and psy­cho­geo­graph­i­cal (find some in our col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks), con­sti­tutes rea­son enough to min­i­mize all oth­er win­dows and get read­ing.

But Self has tak­en on an even more ambi­tious project than that: the mind-map­pish inter­face of “Kafka’s Wound” offers a wealth of audio, video, and oth­er tex­tu­al mate­r­i­al to sup­ple­ment the expe­ri­ence of the main text, all of which con­nects in some way to the essay’s sub­ject: Will Self­’s “per­son­al rela­tion­ship to Kafka’s work through the lens of the short sto­ry ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor’ (1919), and in par­tic­u­lar through the aper­ture of the wound described in that sto­ry.” Self­’s own site describes the essay as “ ‘through com­posed’ with Will’s own thoughts, as he works, being respond­ed to by dig­i­tal-con­tent providers,” with more of that con­tent to come through July.

The envi­ron­ment inter­net, which facil­i­tates our nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to drift from sub­ject to at least semi-relat­ed sub­ject with an addic­tive vengeance, encour­ages asso­ci­a­tion­al think­ing. But so do cities, as a psy­cho­geo­g­ra­ph­er like Will Self knows full well. And so part of this rich lit­er­ary inves­ti­ga­tion takes the form of an hour­long doc­u­men­tary (click here or the image above to view), in which Self takes a walk­ing tour of Kafka’s Prague, seek­ing out the writer’s “genius loci,” the sites that gave set­tings to the mile­stones of his life and shape to his artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al sen­si­bil­i­ties. He also takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do a Kaf­ka read­ing right there in Kafka’s home­town. It’s one thing to read Kaf­ka with the Lau­ren­z­iberg in mind, but still quite anoth­er to do it with the Lau­ren­z­iberg in sight.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Edi­to­r­i­al Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novel­la The Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Free: Read 9 Travel Books Online by Monty Python’s Michael Palin

in Television, Travel | June 18th, 2015


Image cour­tesy of Chipps
Most of us come to Michael Palin through his work as a com­ic actor (in the role of dead par­rot sales­man or oth­er­wise), but at this point almost as many know him sec­ond as a found­ing mem­ber of Mon­ty Python, and first as an affa­ble glo­be­trot­ter. That part of his career began in 1988, when he host­ed the Earth-cir­cum­nav­i­gat­ing BBC trav­el series Around the World in 80 Days. (See an episode here.) Its suc­cess has led him, over the sub­se­quent 27 years, onto fur­ther (and far­ther-flung) tele­vised jour­neys: from the North Pole to the South, around the Pacif­ic Rim, in the adven­tur­ous foot­steps of Ernest Hem­ing­way, across the Sahara, up the Himalayas, across the “new” cen­tral and east­ern Europe, around the world again, and most recent­ly through Brazil.

Not con­tent to set a high water­mark for trav­el tele­vi­sion, Palin has also writ­ten a com­pan­ion book for each series, lav­ish­ly col­lect­ing maps, pic­tures, and his own trav­el diaries. Those last reveal a more nuanced side of “the nicest chap in Britain,” whose famous­ly easy­go­ing, def­er­en­tial, and unsur­pris­ing­ly good-humored per­sona place him so well to deal with the world’s stag­ger­ing vari­ety of peo­ple, places, and incon­ve­niences. “I can sum­mon up noth­ing but res­ig­na­tion at the thought of cook­ing with the locals all morn­ing, then hav­ing to lis­ten to music and songs I don’t under­stand for the rest of the after­noon,” he writes after wak­ing up on yet anoth­er island, in an entry excerpt­ed in last year’s Trav­el­ling to Work, the lat­est pub­lished vol­ume of his life’s diaries. “And, worst of all, hav­ing to look as if I’m enjoy­ing it.”

But these books also reveal that most of the time, Palin real­ly is enjoy­ing it. His insa­tiable curios­i­ty (not to men­tion his inex­orable pro­duc­tion sched­ule) dri­ves him con­tin­u­ous­ly ahead, a curios­i­ty in which you, too can share now that he’s made all these books free to read online at palinstravels.co.uk. Click on the links/titles below, and then look for the prompts that say “Dis­cov­er the Series Here” and, below that, “Start Read­ing the Book.”

And if you make a free account at the site, it will even allow you to you keep vir­tu­al “book­marks” in as many of the books as you like, guar­an­tee­ing that you won’t get lost amidst this wealth of trav­el con­tent. But if you choose to fol­low Pal­in’s exam­ple and actu­al­ly get out there into every cor­ner of the world, well, no such anti-lost­ness guar­an­tees exist — but as every fan of Pal­in’s Trav­els knows, those very com­pli­ca­tions make it worth­while. As least you won’t have a five-man crew trail­ing behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Mon­ty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Rail­way Jour­neys

Michael Palin’s Tour of the Best Loved Mon­ty Python Sketch Loca­tions

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Discover Japan’s Earthquake Proof Underground Bike Storage System: The Future is Now

in Design, Sports, Technology, Travel | May 25th, 2015

Behold, the inge­nious under­ground bicy­cle stor­age of Japan! What a vision of futur­ist effi­cien­cy — the only thing miss­ing is Ray­mond Scott’s Pow­er­house (aka Bugs Bun­ny fac­to­ry music).

Japan­ese cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor Dan­ny Choo strapped a cam­era to his seat to cap­ture a bike’s eye view of the robot­ic Eco Cycle Anti-Seis­mic Under­ground Bicy­cle Park. It takes an aver­age of 8 sec­onds for two-wheel­ers to make the jour­ney — human involve­ment stops at the street lev­el card read­er.

(One inter­net com­menter won­dered what hap­pens if the sys­tem malfunctions…and all I can say is I once spent what felt like an eter­ni­ty, trapped in Disney’s Haunt­ed Man­sion.)

Giken-Eco-Cycle-Underground-Bike-Park-1-537x424

As futur­is­tic visions go, it’s a finite one. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly design allows for fair­ly easy de-instal­la­tion, should pub­lic demand for safe, sub­ter­ranean bike park­ing wane.

It’s also earth­quake-proof, a fea­ture which gives rise to all sorts of dystopi­an Plan­et of the Apes-style fan­tasies (replace Apes with Bikes).

Cities from Lon­don and Paris to New York and Hangzhou have embraced bike­shar­ing schemes, but the Japan­ese mod­el allows cyclists to keep their own rides. Signs post­ed at street lev­el remind rid­ers to remove per­son­al effects like pets (!) before using the sys­tem.) Unlim­it­ed park­ing and retrieval comes in at under 20 bucks a month.

It’s an idea whose time has come. As of this writ­ing, the cycle-friend­ly Nether­lands is plot­ting the world’s largest bike park — under­der­ground — to be launched in 2018.

Hat tip to Dan­ny Choo.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Turn Your Bike into an Elec­tric Hybrid with MIT’s “Copen­hagen Wheel”

The Physics of the Bike

How Leo Tol­stoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Oth­er Tales of Life­long Learn­ing

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The Art of Collotype: See a Near Extinct Printing Technique, as Lovingly Practiced by a Japanese Master Craftsman

in Art, History, Technology, Travel | May 22nd, 2015

When I was a kid,  I spent a lot of time at the Indi­anapo­lis Star, where my moth­er worked in what was then referred to as the “women’s pages.” She kept me busy return­ing the pho­tos that accom­pa­nied mar­riage and engage­ment announce­ments, using the SASEs the young brides had sup­plied. After that, I’d hit the print­ing floor, where vet­er­an work­ers sport­ed square caps fold­ed from the pre­vi­ous day’s edi­tion, as that day’s issue clacked on tracks over­head. If I was lucky, some­one would make me a gift of my name, set in hot type.

The Star still pub­lish­es — I shud­der to report that its web­site seems to have renamed it IndyS­tar… — but cul­tur­al and dig­i­tal advances have rel­e­gat­ed all of the par­tic­u­lars men­tioned above to the scrap pile.

They came rush­ing back with wild, Prous­t­ian urgency when Osamu Yamamo­to, a mas­ter print­er at Ben­ri­do Col­lo­type Ate­lier in Kyoto, men­tions the smell of the ink, in the short doc­u­men­tary above, how over the years, it has seeped into his skin, and become a part of his being.

Col­lo­type, defined by the Get­ty Con­ser­va­tion Insti­tute as “a screen­less pho­to­me­chan­i­cal process that allows high-qual­i­ty prints from con­tin­u­ous-tone pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives,” has been on the way out since the 70s. As mas­ter print­er Yamamo­to notes, it’s a low-effi­cien­cy, small batch oper­a­tion, involv­ing messy matrix­es, hand-oper­at­ed press­es, and heavy iron machines that give off a sort of ani­mal warmth when work­ing.

Rather than pressmen’s caps, Ben­ri­do’s shirt­less print­ers wear hachi­ma­ki, rub­ber aprons, and pur­ple dis­pos­able gloves.

Film­mak­er Fritz Schu­mann (whose film on the old­est hotel in Japan we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured before) evokes the work­place — one of two remain­ing col­lo­type com­pa­nies in the world — through small details like the plas­tic-wrapped dig­i­tal Ham­taro clock and also by draw­ing view­ers’ atten­tion to the num­ber of years logged by each employ­ee. The art of col­lo­type takes a long time to mas­ter and novices appear to be in short sup­ply.

Should we con­ceive of this oper­a­tion as a quaint rel­ic, creep­ing along thanks to the whim­sy of a few nos­tal­gia buffs?

Sur­pris­ing­ly, no. The labo­ri­ous col­lo­type process remains the best way to dupli­cate pre­cious art­works and his­toric doc­u­ments. The way the ink inter­acts with retic­u­la­tions in the gelatin sur­face atop results in sub­tleties that pixel­lat­ed dig­i­tal images can­not hope to achieve.

Vis­i­tors to the stu­dio may sup­port the enter­prise by pick­ing up a hand­ful of col­lo­type-print­ed post­cards in the gift shop, but the office of the Japan­ese Emper­or is the one who’s real­ly keep­ing them in busi­ness, with orders to copy hun­dreds of del­i­cate, cen­turies old scrolls, paint­ings and let­ters.

Like a cir­cle in a circle…cultural preser­va­tion via cul­tur­al preser­va­tion! Per­haps the smell of the ink will pre­vail.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hōshi: A Short Film on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

 

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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