“puzzle” by rinpa eshidan.
no wonder i couldn’t find anything about rinpa eshidan. their name “rinpa” uses the kanji “輪派” in japanese, not “琳派”. both combinations of kanji sound the same, “rinpa”. it’s a common problem in japanese that it’s hard to know which kanji are used to write someone’s name, since there are usually several possibilities. most japanese names are chosen as sounds first (in kana, the japanese syllables) — then you find kanji to make up those sounds.
i figured rinpa eshidan’s name would be written with the same kanji as the historical art style called rinpa (琳派). especially because “eshi” is the old-fashioned japanese word for a (traditional) painter. but instead, they chose the kanji “輪派” to spell “rinpa”. i guess they did it on purpose, to show a connection to japanese art tradition and to show their own philosophy at the same time. “輪” means circle in japanese. according to their blog,
rinpa is “circle” style. it’s a group that values the connections between people. the members are big fans of hip-hop and art. they get together once every two months to perform at clubs.
how did i find out about them? through the magical mystery of the internet. the director of the rinpa eshidan videos, daisuke yamamoto, contacted me through MIXI, the biggest japanese social network site (5,700.000 members).
i joined MIXI a few weeks ago after being invited by a japanese girl who used to live in saskatoon (i found her blog online, but she moved away just before i got here). MIXI is sort of like MySpace in japanese, but the pages are not so ugly. all MIXI members have to be invited by another member. anyway, i’d been wanting to find out about rinpa eshidan, so i wrote about them on my MIXI page.
a couple days ago, i posted their video, “1 week of art works” on my blog. just the next day, that video got promoted to the front page of YOUTUBE. the video now has almost 600,000 views and people really like it. since there isn’t any information about “rinpa eshidan” in english online, my blog post shows up when people search for them. but unfortunately i didn’t have any information about them either…
…until now. after he contacted me, i visited daisuke’s MIXI page and read a little bit about him. he’s a grad student at a fine arts university in tokyo. the video, “1 week of art works” was done for his graduation project (i’m sure he did very well!). he’s obviously very talented. at the same time he sounds like a very humble person as an artist, which i like.
he said that he’s working on setting up a new website and is also working on another new video! he’ll let me know about them when they are finished. so i’ll post about them then. also, it sounds like ABC will be showing a rinpa eshidan video on TV soon (or maybe it’s already aired. i don’t know. i don’t watch ABC).
Go rinpa eshidan, go!
