Picturing Japan Up Close and Personal

One of the most important features of Japanese culture lies in its overall "right brained"orientation. Japan always appears to present itself to the world visually, emotionally and as a synthesis of the whole.

This makes the country a photographer's dream -- if approached, not as macrocosm, but as microcosm.

THE TODAIJI IN NARA AS SEEN BY THE TYPICAL TOURIST CAMERA

That is, one might well take picture postcard perfect views of exquisite examples of traditional Japanese architecture but accomplish little beyond recording an image similar, if not identical, to ones found in millions of other photo albums compiled by other international visitors to "the exotic East". (Lee once attended a presentation focused on photographs taken by Frank Lloyd Wright while in Japan in the early twentieth century, for example, which graphically illustrated just this point -- Wright's view of Japan as represented in these pictures replicated that of almost every other traveler coming to Japan, both before and after him!)

The key here is to take a closer look, avoiding the grand vista in favor of the unique snippet of reality capturing your eye, your heart and your imagination, recognizing as well that in the detail lies the whole, the entire entity, of which it is a part.

The attention paid visual presentation and precise detail is so central to the Japanese cultural experience, in fact, that these seminal characteristics have led many scholars to regard all Japanese art as essentially "decorative" and little else!


Lee would beg to differ, of course, but urges you, nonetheless, to pay attention to "the little things in life" encountered while examining Japan and Japanese culture. Stand back too far, and the result might well be a jumble of disparate and contrasting impressions, traditional and modern, in good taste and bad, both sublime and exasperatingly disquieting.

Instead focus your camera lens on "the little", the world in microcosm, and you might well come away with some unforgettable, very emotionally satisfying -- and unique -- pictorial memories.