Waterlife: Exquisite Illustrations of Marine Creatures Based on Indian Folk Art

brain pickings
http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/04/06/waterlife-tara-books/

Waterlife: Exquisite Illustrations of Marine Creatures Based on Indian Folk Art

by Maria Popova

From walls to paper, or what the eye of the octopus has to do with swans and women’s role in the arts.

I’ve been a longtime fan of independent Indian publisher Tara Books, who for the past 16 years has been giving voice to marginalized art and literature through a commune of artists, writers, and designers collaborating on remarkable handmade books, including I Like Cats, Do!, and Tara’s crown jewel, The Night Life of Trees. But now comes what’s positively the most exquisite book I’ve ever held in my hands: Waterlife by artist Rambharos Jha, who explores the marine wonderland through vibrant Mithila art, a form of folk painting from Bihar in eastern India.

'The Lobster's Secret'

'Crocodile Smile'

'Snake Festival'

Jha writes:

I was born in the culture-rich district of Darbanga, in the Mithila region. But my father moved along with all of us to Madhubani, where he started work in a government-supported art and cultural project. This project sought to breathe new life into local art traditions and also to help artists earn a living. Since women had traditionally decorated walls and courtyards, they participated in this project in large numbers…

Living as we did in Madhubani, I had a chance to look at what they were painting. I would spend hours watching them work. I had not known of this art earlier and wondered why I was drawn to it, and what purpose there could be in my being attracted to these lines and shapes? Mixing colours and ideas, the women drew pictures that took hold of my mind.

Jha eventually learned to draw himself, initially drawing on stories from Hindu mythology and eventually moving on to more secular subjects, pursuing his own creative impulse but remaining deeply inspired by tradition.

Mithila art was originally painted on the walls of houses during festival season, but in the late 1970s, it migrated from walls to paper.

The book comes in a limited edition of 3,000 hand-numbered copies and, like all handmade Tara gems, is screen-printed by local artisans in Chennai using traditional Indian dyes, whose earthy scent you can smell as you leaf through the thick, textured pages.

Waterlife was among 10 books I curated for the TED 2012 Bookstore and is, without a shadow of exaggeration, the most beautiful book I’ve ever laid eyes on. The screen does it no justice whatsoever.

The Little Book of Hindu Deities: Pixar Animator Rethinks Mythology

brain pickings
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/10/27/the-little-book-of-hindu-deities-sanjay-patel/

The Little Book of Hindu Deities: Pixar Animator Rethinks Mythology

by Maria Popova

What the goth Goddess of Time has to do with elephant head transplants and Pixar’s pastimes.

What if you could cross The Night Life of Trees, the magical artwork based on Indian mythology, with The Ancient Book of Myth and War, that delightful side project by a team of Pixar animators? You’d get The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow — an impossibly charming illustrated almanac of gods and goddesses by Pixar animator Sanjay Patel. These beautiful stories from Indian mythology span the entire spectrum of human experience — petty quarrels and epic battles, love and betrayal, happiness and loss — with equal parts humor and respect, pairing each full-color illustration with a lively profile of that deity.

In the book’s introduction, Patel notes his fascination with Japanese animation, which influenced his style in depicting the Hindu deities — a curious case of creative cross-pollination across cultures. For an added smile, Patel originally self-published the book before Plume picked it up.

A playful morphology of a mythological pantheon, The Little Book of Hindu Deities is as captivating and entertaining as it is informative without being encyclopedic — a light and joyful journey into Hinduism by way of the contemporary pop culture aesthetic.

Patel’s follow-up, The Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities, featuring 12 stunning removable prints, is also very much worth a look.

HT @ShamilaJiwa; images courtesy of Sanjay Patel

guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/17/hiroo-onoda-japanese-soldier-dies?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Japanese soldier who took three decades to surrender, dies

Hiroo Onoda, a second world war intelligence officer, stayed holed up in Philippine jungle until he was coaxed out in 1974

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• Justin McCurry in Tokyo
• theguardian.com, Friday 17 January 2014 11.43 GMT

Hiroo Onoda walks out of the Philippine jungle to surrender in 1974. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The last Japanese soldier to come out of hiding and surrender, almost 30 years after the end of the second world war, has died.

Hiroo Onoda, an army intelligence officer, caused a sensation when he was persuaded to come out of hiding in the Philippine jungle in 1974.

The native of Wakayama prefecture in western Japan died of heart failure at a hospital in Tokyo on Thursday, his family said. He was 91.

Onoda’s three decades spent in the jungle – initially with three comrades and finally alone – came to be seen as an example of the extraordinary lengths to which some Japanese soldiers would go to demonstrate their loyalty to the then emperor, in whose name they fought.

Refusing to believe that the war had ended with Japan’s defeat in August 1945, Onoda drew on his training in guerilla warfare to kill as many as 30 people whom he mistakenly believed to be enemy soldiers.

The world had known of his existence since 1950 when one of his fellow stragglers emerged and returned to Japan. A second member of the group reportedly died in 1950.

Onoda, whose sole remaining companion was killed in a shootout with Philippine troops in 1972, held firm until two years later.

He was only persuaded to surrender when his former commanding officer travelled to his hideout on the island of Lubang in the north-western Philippines and convinced him that the war had ended.

Until then, Onoda would later explain, he believed attempts to persuade him to leave were a plot concocted by the pro-US government in Tokyo. By the time he surrendered he had been on the island since 1944, two years after he was drafted into the Japanese imperial army.

Onoda wept uncontrollably as he agreed to lay down his perfectly serviceable rifle.

He was later pardoned for the killings by the then Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos. In his formal surrender to Marcos, Onoda wore his 30-year-old imperial army uniform, cap and sword, all of which were in good condition.

He returned to Japan in March the same year, but after struggling to adapt to life in his homeland, he emigrated to Brazil in 1975 to become a farmer. He returned to Japan in 1984 and opened nature camps for children across Japan.

Japan’s top government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, praised Onoda’s strong will to live, telling reporters on Friday: "I vividly remember that I was reassured of the end of the war when Mr Onoda returned to Japan."

Onoda was one of several Japanese soldiers who remained holed up in their former battlegrounds long after the war ended.

Onoda, like Shoichi Yokoi, a soldier who was found on the island of Guam in 1972, dismissed reports declaring the war’s end as Allied propaganda. On his return to a hero’s welcome in Japan, Yokoi famously
said: “It is with much embarrassment, but I have returned.”

In 2005 there were unsubstantiated claims that two former Japanese soldiers in their 80s were still in hiding in the mountains on the Philippine island of Mindanao. The men were reportedly afraid that they would be court-martialled for desertion if they gave themselves up.

KATACHI = formas

Katachi by Shugo Tokumaru

"Katachi" means "shape". The song tells us to start noticing the shapes and sounds around us before they disappear!

http://youtu.be/Q-WM-x__BOk