The work of Touhaku Hasegawa

I went to the national museum Tokyo the other day. They exhibited work of Hasegawa Touhaku. He is a 15th century Japanese painter. Touhaku started as a religious painter at a local region, and he went up to the capital city Kyoto.

He had big rivals, Kanoh Eitoku and his group. Kanoh group already had powerful patrons, strong warrior or shogun, when Touhaku came out. They had built up a certain painting style and it had been very major. Touhaku learned Kanoh style and added his own style. Additionally, he challenged variety type of painting, so it made him a unique painter. Then, he finally got great success.

I’m interested in not only his paintings but also his strategies.

A seminar in English

I went to Tokyo last week. This trip's main purpose was to take part in the seminar by a computer software maker. They sometimes give seminars about their new products. The product which was discussed there was a kind of computer software development environment, and 500 people who use it or are interested in the market around it attended the seminar.

I excited variety of speakers. One of them was an engineer from their American head office, and the others were artists who used this software from Europe, and Japanese independent software creators. They informed a lot of things from new functions of the new one to their strategy on some markets and its expected effects with customer’s satisfaction. I could know not only its technical tips but also impress by their creative work. I was strongly stimulated by them.

I had one more impression. Foreign speakers made speech in English in the seminar. The seminar gave an interpreter receiver service, but some Japanese audience seemed to be able to hear without it and some of them asked questions in English to the speakers. I felt that our world is globalizing quickly and I should study English harder.

"Surrogate"

I watched the movie "Surrogate" the other day. This is a near future sci-fi story. In this story, everybody has his or her own robot and they make it be a surrogate to do all activities out of home. People wear goggles and sensors on the special chair at home, and then control their own robot remotely. They enjoy life as Surrogates, because not only it makes their life safer but also they looks younger, healthier or more beautiful as a robot than their real figure.

However, it makes them have had a lot of fear for their life. For example, after the hero lost his surrogate because of being destroyed by anti-surrogate people during chasing a criminal who run away to the anti-surrogate people’s domain, he had to go to his FBI office by himself as his real body. One of his colleague said that he should have another Surrogate as soon as possible, because it is very dangerous to be out of home by his real body. She seemed to want to say no surrogate was insane.
I think that this plot might allegorically mention an aspect of our modern life. Many people use the Internet, and we can do a lot of things at home through it, for example, shopping, learning, or meeting with other people. Some people have avatars as they say in the Internet, and even enjoy fashion and virtual activities there.

This movie might alert us that it is possible that these kinds of life make us increase fear or negative feeling for the real life. The more dreadful thing is that we get around to feel them general, and nobody finds them something strange if there are.