I recently had the opportunity to go to Maui and hang out in Lahaina to check out all the historical points of interests.  The one I want to share today is the Lahaina Jodo Mission.  While again, this is not exactly an antique,  it does have historical meaning.

The main attraction has got to be the large Amida Buddha statue which was cast in Kyoto during 1967-68.  The statue is made of copper and bronze and weighs around 3 1/2 tons.  It was brought to Hawai’i to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to the island.  The statue was once purportedly the largest cast Buddha outside of Japan.

The grounds also house a three tiered pagoda, a traditionally built temple with beautiful paintings by Hajin Iwasaki, and the largest ceremonial bell in Hawai’i.  Unfortunately my photographs of the temple and bell structures didn’t turn out, but I do have a nice one of the pagoda.  If you’re ever in Lahaina, I highly recommend giving the Mission a visit, and remember to recite the Nembutsu, “Namu Amida Butsu”, if you ever expect to enter the Pure Land.

Ok, this might not be Japanese, but this is the kind of stuff I like collecting and it has dual meaning to me. First off I inherited it from my Grandfather who was an avid collector of absolutely anything (might be where I got my antiques virus from) and it also shows how Eastern crazed the West was at the turn of the Twentieth century.

I can’t find any information for this item anywhere, but I can at least tell you what it states on the canister. The Samurai Perfume Co. was based in Newburgh, New York, which during the late 1800′s was quite an industrial hub (so much so that it is actually the first American city to be electrified and had the first electric street lights). This product was first registered under the Food and Drug Act on June 30, 1906. Reg. No. 10,168. This tin can be dated to 1914 due to the two IRS tax stamps affixed to the label, one for 3/8ths of a cent and the other for 1/4 of a cent. There is some Kanji on the label but my reading is rusty and can’t make out more than a few characters. Also, there are a lot of Japanese style imagery that may or may not be actual historical motifs and I haven’t had the time to try and decipher them. In any case, I don’t care, I just love the thing. If anyone out there knows about this stuff please let me know.

Here are a few close ups so you can check out the coolness for yourself.

You’ve all seen the Geisha running around in the movies with all sorts of ornaments in their hair, well one type are called kanzashi. I’m not an authority, but I might be able to extract some information out of the dark recesses of my grey matter to share with you.

At left we have a Bira bira style Kanzashi made out of tortoise shell. Bira bira means fluttering, which describes the dangling parts of the hair pin, and this type of kanzashi was traditionally worn by a Maiko (apprentice geisha). Kanzashi styles and the placement thereof were indicative of the status of the geisha, so a learned patron could always tell what level of geisha he was being entertained by. At around 42 minutes into the movie, Memoirs of a Geisha, you can see the character, Pumpkin, wearing two kanzashi, which shows that she is a junior Maiko. Also the material of the kanzashi could indicate what time of year it was seasonally. A tortoise shell kanzashi, like this one, was worn in the winter months.

Next up we have a kushi (comb) style kanzashi also made out of tortoise shell. This style is meant to stick in a hair bun and was made wide so that the artist had a lot of room to decorate them. This one is basically a carved relief which allows the natural translucency of the material to show, truth in natural materials being an always desired element in Japanese design. Other types of kushi kanzashi could be made out of other types of shell, or maybe wood, which was laquered and decorated with inlays, or maybe just simply gilded.

As with most of the pictures I post, you can click on them and see the original listing and find more photographs, as well as more information. Enjoy.

So the New Year has begun and mine hasn’t exactly been smooth so far. After a nice family vacation in Key West (where, surprise, I didn’t see one Japanese Antique) I returned home to find that I had been let go from my job for no apparent reason and my computer’s power cable was fried. But no need to worry, found a new job immediately, and Apple gladly replaced my power cord for free. Now I am up and running and hope to get some new posts up in the next few days. So if you didn’t forget about this blog, thank you for your patience, and hopefully your New Year has started much less eventful than mine.

Sorry for the goofy pic, I couldn’t help myself when I found it. Talk to you soon.

I’ve easily watched over 200 Japanese movies, old and new, and I’ve gotten into the habit of not only listening to the dialogue for language nuances, but also watching for cultural, architectural, and furnishing concepts. Last night I was watching Fight, Zatoichi, Fight and I saw an Inro in use for I think the first time (I might have just never noticed it before). What does that mean? A new post of course, and I think I found a very nice example to write about.

First I must say I dont know a whole lot about these objects, but they are probably the most well know type of sagemono (hanging objects) that were suspended from the obi. Kimono do not have pockets, so the only way people had to carry things around was by hanging them from their sash. The literal meaning of inro is seal container and the original design was basically a small box that held the Hanko (personal seal) and some type of inkpad. Later additional layers of boxes were added to hold anything else wanted to be carried. The boxes were strung together with silkin cord that ran through a Himotoshi (channel or aperture), tightened up with an Ojime (moveable bead) and hung from the obi with a Netsuke (sculptural object or toggle) to secure it.

This piece is a fine example of taka-maki-e (raised maki-e), where the design is built up of layers of lacquer mixed with metallic powders, in this case, cranes flying amidst the clouds. The inner sleeve area has nashiji-nuri (peach skin lacquer) where a base layer of lacquer is sprinkled with nashiji-ko (metallic flakes) and then coated again with lacquer. After that, it is polished to expose the flakes which give it that sparkly appearance. The ojime is a human skull made out of what looks like ivory, which is highly possible because this is from the late 1700′s, and the netsuke is made out of Edo glass.

This piece seems to have some provenance. Signed by the artist Kajikawa, purportedly used by a chief retainer of a Hirosaki daimyo, and due to the fact that you rarely find all three of the parts remaining together, it’s no doubt a museum quality piece and can command its high price tag of $10,000. Im starting to think I need to open my own museum so I could buy this kind of stuff; benefactors needed!