Mark Does Japan: Day 27

13 November 2025 Filed in: Photography | Travel

Wednesday, 12 November 2025

After yesterday I wasn’t really wanting to do much so I took it easy in the morning and took a random walk in the afternoon which took me to the National Crafts Museum. Apparently national museums used to all be in Tokyo but they decentralised some of them and this was one of the first, 5 years ago. You would think nice Japanese crafts, like I did, but no they were having a special exhibition of the work of Lucie Rie, a British ceramic artist.

Bernard Leach

I liked this set

small gallery

2 items

a bowl

3 in a row

These looked to be the same design but with different colour inside. I tried an overhead shot to see how that worked and I needed to clip the top to avoid shadows and range finding flashes.

being tricky

another vase, note the wire supports

I am assuming the vases get tied down with the fine wire to support them in case of earthquake. The photographs behind are of Lucie Rie.

the museum

The building housing the museum (on the left) used to be the old 9th Division Command Headquarters and was originally in the grounds of Kanazawa Castle. After WW2 it was used as an administrative building by the University. In 1968 it was moved and both wings removed, and then in 2020 it was moved to its current site and the wings restored and it was repainted to its original state.

The history museum was less interesting, although the buildings, originally military armouries, were nicely restored and the glassed in lounge was a relaxing place to hide while eating a snack.

history museum

what?

A bit cryptic as they allowed you to photograph.

experience modern life

Experience living in post war Japan.

Russian officer’s dinner

The various wars were very lightly covered. This was a replica dinner for a Russian officer during the Russo-Japanese War.

The Kaga-Honda Museum was more interesting except you could only photograph one small area and that was introduced with this sign.

photography OK

I’m not sure about the responsible bit. Sounds like one of my law school lecturers on exercising caution on the accuracy of what he said. There were a lot of statements starting with “it was said that …”.