The former villa of the silent actor Denjirō Ōkōchi (大河内 傳次郎 — 1896-1962)–most famous for starring in Akira Kurosawa`s Sanshiro Sugata, among many others and at his peak, was one of the top jidaigeki stars–lies lost in the back of Arashiyama’s bamboo groves. Called Ōkōchi Sansō (meaning Ōkōchi mountain villa) the estate of one of [...]
In the western part of Kyoto along the Katsura river lies a heavily templed area known as Arashiyama. Most famous of all the beautiful century old wooden structures is the Tenryu-ji Temple complex. Tenryu-ji Temple (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), head temple of the Tenryu-ji Rinzai Zen sect, was built in 1339 by Takauji Ashikaga [...]
The microscopic particles were developed by myriads of voices. They make you feel the vitality as if lives are flowing over, and after a while, you will realize you are being covered by them, as if sinking into the deep psyche. Then, as if they correlate with the millions of flowing lives and nature in [...]
America on the rocks – the updated national symbol of the United States: the dumpster diving Bald Eagle. How many can you count?
Manny Santiago explores the Foodie paradise of the Dong Hua Men Night & Sihuan Markets in Beijing as he travels overland from Kyoto to California
I first met Michael Nguyen on a beautiful spring day in Tokyo, the flowers in bloom. We were in a Shibuya park on Meiji Dori, where an anti-nuke rally climaxed in a costumed hippie drum offensive, bursting in the dappled light. If I remember correctly, Mike had a can of beer and a cigarette (he [...]
4 Japanese radicalism and the absurd was certainly not only the preserve of the Left. Yukio Mishima was the most famous living Japanese writer in the Fifties and Sixties, even better known than the older Yasunari Kawabata, who ultimately nipped him to the coveted Nobel Prize. But Mishima wore many masks. He was a novelist, [...]
1 Since the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11th, 2011 and the resulting Fukushima maelstrom, the western media has frequently reported a spectacle that appears to surprise them: Japanese people, the “quiet people”, are taking part in demos. Seemingly for the first time, petitions are being signed online and off, angry protests are being [...]
Presumably, any moderately blog-centric “critic” end of the year best-of listing is the easiest part of the job–compiling a blurb heavy inventory of all of the films reviewed over the year. That is if said reviewer actually has access to the myriad documentaries produced and shown around the multifarious festival circuit, the breadth of which [...]
There are several things I love about music in 2012. Forced to listen to it for hours at a time, House has finally begun to make some kind of sense to me, though it alternatively plops its repetitive self into the absurd column just as easily. Which parallels my feelings about Jack White’s Blunderbuss. Maybe [...]
The Maya, Hindu, Hopi, Summarians and the ancient Greeks all have similar beliefs–that there are 4 or 5 stages of the world and that we are either in the 4th or the 5th. The Sikhs think that we will go from the 4th to the 5th world on (or around) December 21st, 2012–though some place [...]
The word in the Amsterdam underground is that Valhalla (December 22nd) is an more than just an indoor winter festival with a multi-colored display of musical styles. It’s an exploration through the nooks and crannies of a convention center turned dance hall. A stimulating setting, that challenges and surprises, and is all about the experience [...]
November 11th, 2012 was the 37th anniversary of Angola gaining independence from Portugal. But independence sparked off a long and bloody civil war between the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) against the the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), [...]
Though we at Heso Magazine are practicing secular-agnostics, we are inclined to believe that Hurricane Sandy making landfall on the U.S. on the eve of the election is hardly coincidence. Not that this tempest is an Act of God, mind you, but a manifestation of a furious Gaia, the Earth goddess howling brimstone at a [...]
