Cultural tours in Japan

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    [name] => Art in Japan
    [code] => 12934
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    [introduction] => Many of the finest collections of Japanese art in museums and in situ in temples and shrines.

World Heritage sites at Nikko, Kyoto, Nara and Horyu-ji, and the art island of Naoshima.

Outstanding museum buildings by Tadao Ando, I.M. Pei and other leading architects.

Other aspects of Japanese culture, past and present, including gastronomy and gardens.
    [description] => 
Japan has one of the richest and most continuously active art traditions in Asia, perhaps anywhere. Some of the earliest known ceramics are found here, as is the world’s oldest-standing wooden building. But Japanese contemporary art also ranks with the best in the world and is eagerly imitated and collected. 
Between those chronological poles can be found a wealth of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines from all periods, and some impressive military architecture. National, regional and private collections exist in profusion throughout the country; Japan has a long and impressive lineage of art-historical scholarship and connoisseurship. Add to this in recent times a network of conservation and restoration labs and the latest technology for archaeological investigation. In short, despite the large number of wars and natural disasters that have periodically overwhelmed the country, Japanese arts are to be enjoyed in extraordinary abundance. The great majority of important pieces remain in the country. 
Throughout history, Japan has tended to make a less emphatic division between art and craft than is the case in Western countries. Of equal rank alongside the ‘fine arts’ of painting and sculpture there are outstanding examples of ceramic, textile and metalwork, as well as uniquely beautiful gardens and a special aesthetic to food and eating.
As a deeply hierarchical society until modern times, there is ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art, from royal and shogunal works to that of the urban populace (the fabled ‘art of the floating world’). Modern Tokyo is part of the experience as well as the ancient capital of Kyoto, the yet more ancient city of Nara and the celebrated art colony of Naoshima in the Inland Sea. World Heritage sites figure on the tour, but we also visit less well known sites, such as ceramic studios and mausolea.
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    [name] => Japanese Gardens
    [code] => 15071
    [slug] => japanese-gardens
    [introduction] => A study of the evolution of Japanese gardens through the centuries. 

A chance to appreciate the relationship of gardens to the Japanese way of life.

From Kyoto’s wealth of exquisite temple gardens to Tokyo’s hill-and-pond gardens.

Time in each city to explore other aspects of Japanese culture. 

Fine examples of ‘borrowed scenery’ at Nara, with its Buddhist temples and deer park, and Hikone Castle on the shore of Lake Biwa.
    [description] => 
Japanese gardens possess an aura of timelessness, against which the cycle of the seasons unfolds its pageantry. Throughout the 1,600-year-old Japanese tradition of creating gardens, the chief consideration has consistently been the depiction of a landscape. This approach to design was firmly established with the earliest gardens during the fifth and sixth centuries under the expertise of architects and artisans from Korea and China, who introduced their scholarly taste for the elegant pond garden. From the continent, a variety of sacred landscapes deriving from Buddhist as well as Chinese religious cosmographies entered Japanese culture; Mt. Sumeru, the centre of the universe according to Buddhist legend, has frequently been represented through the centuries, as have been the Taoist Islands of the Blessed Immortals.
Above all, the Japanese took the Chinese tradition of landscape gardens and transformed it into an expression of their love for their own native natural landscapes. Verdant mountains sloping down to the sea; waterfalls and streamlets; rugged shores and shingle beaches; an ever-varying coastline of inlets, coves and jutting promontories – have provided a beloved subject matter. Trees and shrubs are carefully selected and arranged to create a seasonal palette, while ponds symbolise the sea, and the rocky outcrops set within them reflect the self-image of the Japanese as an island people.
The idea of landscape links together the two major types of Japanese garden: the pond garden, on the one hand; and the rock garden on the other, a style that emerged during the 15th century, in which serene and contemplative spaces are enhanced by the symbolic representation of water through the use of gravel. In the latter half of the following century, the great tea master Sen-no-Rikyu sought to reproduce the ambience of forest glades for his tea rooms. Lack of space has never been considered an inhibiting factor, and through the judicious choice and symbolic placing of stones and plants, beautiful panoramic vistas have been created in the tiniest of gardens.
This tour presents a variety of superb gardens from all periods of Japanese history, from the aristocratic ‘paradise’-style temple gardens and the enigmatic Zen Buddhist rock gardens of Kyoto, to the borrowed castle scenery at Hikone and the tea gardens of Kanazawa, to the amalgamation of these styles in the imposing gardens of the samurai elite in Tokyo.
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