This category showcases the many ways in which the festival’s main theme of “Humanity and Nature in Japan” can be enjoyed in a variety of scenes and emotions captured in films and animations, with screenings and exhibitions across the country. It also presents experience-style media artworks as well as large-scale installations that use digital technology to reflect our present and evoke the future.
It also presents programs to dramatize urban space to evoke the experience of humanity’s symbiotic relationship with nature through collaborations between Japan’s traditional performing arts and contemporary art and technological art.
Public festivals, rituals and related customs that are part of everyday life are an expression of the traditional spirit of reverence for nature and gratitude for its bounty. Tea ceremony, flower arranging, calligraphy, and other cultural and literary practices of everyday life related to dress, food, and dwelling are part of what we now call “lifestyle culture.” Traditional Japanese music (hogaku) as well as contemporary music are also integral parts of lifestyle culture.
The festival showcases the wonders of all these diverse activities. It also presents performing arts productions and exhibitions featuring waka and haiku poetry that address the theme of nature in Japan, with explanations and experience-style programs available to all, including visitors from abroad.
A wide variety of regional cuisine is appreciated by locals and passed down as part of daily life, including ingredients that grow and thrive in each distinctive natural environment of the Japanese archipelago. Japan’s food culture showcases the beauty of nature and the changing aromas and flavors of the four seasons, and is sustained by the close connection between food and annual celebrations and other events in every part of the country. Programs include exhibitions that present food culture as it is nurtured in the local ethos of different regions and opportunities for special food-related experiences.
High-resolution videos and photos will showcase the changing panoramas of Japan’s four seasons, as well as cultural, artistic and scientific assessments.