When we think of contemporary Japan, some of the first things that comes to mind is the Japanese comic book industry, called manga, video games, anime animation, and tokusatsu, live action dramas. Currently, the Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei is featuring an exhibition focusing on the development of Kaiyodo and Otaku culture in Japan. Kaiyodo is the name of the manufacturer who developed along with the Otaku culture. Kaiyodo was originally a specialty store that sold models, but over the years, evolved into a center for pop culture and design. Kaiyodo is responsible for the shokugan industry of packaging toys in children's foods and for the development of individual assembly kits called, "Garage Kits." Otaku is the name given to the associated activities and artforms that developed in an area of Tokyo called, Akihabara. The Otaku culture is comprised of both the larger industries, but also includes the manufacture of many small figures, known as doujinshi, or self-published works. You can read more about the
museum at http://www.es199.com/eventsparties1.php?nid-1185
This fascinating exhibition is brought alive with interesting videos of the artists who created the work, plus clear historical information about how it all got started, how the products are made, and of course, the amazingly intricate figures themselves. I have visited the exhibition twice and each time have become a fan of some new set of characters. The halls are lined with small miniature figures that represent the characters we know from movies and storybooks. The characters are sculpted by a series of artists from different types of clay. Typically, the finished characters are then cut with a very fine blade into pieces from which individual molds are cast. Each cast piece is then reassembled and painted in hundreds of steps. All of the manufacturing is done in China where factory workers labor over the figures. Some of the paint jobs are so intricate that some 45 or more individual steps are made from start to finish. Japanese artists have final say on how accurate the casts and paintings are to the original. The artist and factory communicate, overnighting materials back and forth. There are many categories of figures. Some are transformers, some are female. There are military, robots, fantasy characters, dinosaurs, animals, monsters and even some larger figures made specifically for the museum. In particular, I was amazed at the series of Japanese warlords and the animals. The details and tiniest nuance were all perfectly executed.
One artist, Bome, who specializes in the bishoujo, female characterizations, has developed a larger line of characters that were so racy that they were placed in a separate room requiring an ID pass to enter! These figures were definitely suggestive! My favorite however, were the Japanese Shokugan characters created by the artist Shinobu
Matsumura. He worked for the company Furuta when they began placing animaltale figures into their chocolate products. Now that culture, of putting toys into food products, is everywhere. Two days ago, when I purchased a container of milk..a little figurine of a bear was contained in a small box attached to the milk carton. You can see him on the left.
My daughter, Rachael and son-in-law, Anthony Snead, are here for a visit. It is great to have them to explore Taiwan with. Their company is just wonderful! My next blog will feature our travels to Toroko, but here is a picture of Anthony putting together a garage kit! And another picture is of Rachael and Anthony on a mysterious hiking trail
we discovered behind the famous Grand Hotel in Taipei.
he image on the right, once again people are lining up to enter the subway train. Notice the white lines on the ground. Throughout every subway station white lines are painted in double rows indicating where to que up. The lines are painted to the left of the where each train door will open, keeping theose waiting in line out of the way. This allows people to exit the cars first, then the people waiting in line can enter. Check out the picture to the right, showing the gates that first display a blinking red light to let you know that the train is coming and open once the tr
ain has stopped. The picture on the left shows the fabulous display that gives you an estimated time for the next train's arrival, plus visuals that are stimulating!
Although the shopping was fun, the food strange, but good, once I got myself to try it, my favorite part of the trip was the tea house where we spent the afternoon. The girls found a beautiful spot high upon the hill with picture windows facing out to the mountains and ocean below. We arrived in the rain and the view was bleak and foggy. But as the afternoon slipped away, the clouds lifted and the view became quite clear and magical. We opened the windows and felt such a fresh sweep of ocean air, that it seemed as if the last vestiges of my jet lag evaporated into the air.
We enjoyed a traditional tea ceremony which included the steeping of tea leaves and flowers and the pouring of the first pot of tea over the cups. This first pouring is discarded, more water is added to the leaves and the tiny cups are filled. The drinking of the tea began in earnest and continued for four refills before the ceremony was repeated. Interspersed with our tea activities, we ate wonderful dried fruit, played a variety of card games, I learned my requisite ten new Mandarin vocabulary words per day and we simply sat and visited. It grew dark and we became hungry and ordered a wonderful meal. Eventually, we trekked back up the hill, up the three thousand steps and found our way to our richly appointed beds. I was thrilled to find a TV with English speaking movies! So here I was in Jiufen, perched high atop a mountain, hanging out over the ocean, snuggled down in my quilted and buffeted down feathers, watching "Finding Dr. Nimo." 
