{"id":3153,"date":"2018-12-28T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T16:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2019-05-20T16:34:50","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T07:34:50","slug":"kyle-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/kyle-3\/","title":{"rendered":"\u6d6e\u4e16\u7d75\u3068\u82f1\u8a9e\u5b66\u7fd2\u306e\u5171\u901a\u70b9"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hi, it\u2019s Kyle! Today I’d like to talk about something I didn’t enjoy at first but eventually grew to love: Japanese Art<\/div>\n
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First Impressions<\/h1>\n
\u00a0Japanese art, especially ukiyo-e<\/span> woodblock paintings, is not something I enjoyed the first time I saw it.<\/div>\n
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Of course, I always connected the images to Japan and thereby liked them by default, but they certainly weren\u2019t something I would put on my list of the best parts about Japan and Japanese culture. \u201cWhere is the detail?\u201d, \u201cWhy do these faces look so unnatural?\u201d, \u201cThis is all too simple\u201d were some of the comments I used to make whenever I saw this type of art, especially in art exhibitions where I paid to enter with the expectation to be moved by elaborate and awe-inspiring works of art.<\/div>\n
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However, like most things concerning Japanese culture, the deeper I let it sink in and the more I reflected on it, the more the value and beauty of this style of art became apparent and became something that I learned to appreciate.<\/div>\n
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I want to start by defending my justifications as to why I didn\u2019t think much of Japanese art at first. Growing up in New York, I remember going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan and being absolutely blown away by not only the immense collection of art there, but also by the individual paintings themselves. The detail and life found in Italian, French and Spanish artwork was absolutely breathtaking and worthy of all praise that it receives. After spending what felt like an eternity admiring those European works of art, I wandered into the Japanese exhibit and felt immediately let down. The detail, vibrance, skill and beauty of the European selection I had seen minutes before was nowhere to be found in the Japanese art exhibits. Of course, the paintings had their own style which was easy to recognize, but I couldn\u2019t seem to find the same level of appreciation for them. \u201cWhat was the artist thinking?\u201d, I thought to myself as I looked at \u201cIrises at Yatsuhashi\u201d by Ogata Korin. Comparing that with French or Italian paintings of the same period, it was almost as if the Japanese artists weren\u2019t even trying. I left the museum with a newfound appreciation for European art, but a feeling of confusion and disappointment for Japanese art.<\/div>\n
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My Mind Starts to Change<\/h1>\n
That all began to change after moving to Japan and being thrown in the deep end of Japanese culture. Everything I had previously thought of what was worthy of admiration was beginning to change. Specifically, the appreciation of the simplicity found in things. In my experience, the simpler things were, the more beauty can be found within them. A seasonal washoku meal, a blooming cherry blossom tree, or a cup of tea are all examples of things that I began to recognize as beautiful especially because of their simplicity. Yes, there is a time and place for those things which are elaborate and detailed, but I was living in a world where those things were seen as novelty, not things which can be appreciated on a daily basis.<\/div>\n
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This idea made its way into my opinion of Japanese art. The depictions of life in the artwork that I once thought were unelaborate now had a new angle from which I began to appreciate them. While I still loved the European artwork that I naively compared Japanese artwork to, now I saw the beauty in the Japanese art I once shrugged off prematurely. Life is not always extraordinary and over-the-top like it is in European art. It is more often like it is the way its depicted in ukiyo-e<\/span>: unexaggerated and natural. Once I realized this, I felt a stronger connection to this style of artwork because I was more likely to see the scenes depicted in the artwork in my daily life in Japan, giving me an opportunity to appreciate them even more.<\/div>\n
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What Do English and Ukiyo-e Have In Common?<\/h1>\n
Many of my students have the same feelings when starting to learn English.<\/div>\n
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This is especially true in junior high schools, where they need to start taking English more seriously as opposed to just playing games and having fun in elementary school. Many students do not see the point at first, just like how I didn’t see the point in Japanese art. However, as they study more and time passes, they start to enjoy it because they can understand more. I think the key is making sense of something that’s right in front of you that you don’t understand. Just like I now see a reason to appreciate Japanese art, my students eventually come to love learning English after they have found practical uses for it.<\/div>\n
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What was it like for you when you started out learning English? Did you dislike it at first or did you enjoy it from the start? Have you ever changed your opinion on something you used to dislike as time passed?<\/div>\n
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Hi, it\u2019s Kyle! Today I’d like to talk about something I didn’t enjoy at first but eventually grew to love: Japanese Art First Impressions \u00a0Japanese art, especially ukiyo-e woodblock painti…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[276,5],"tags":[209,27,264,265],"class_list":{"0":"post-3153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-native","8":"category-learning","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-japan","11":"tag-japaneseart","12":"tag-ukiyo-e","13":"article cf"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3251,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fruitfulenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}