This is on a Target First Free Sunday, so admission to Lords of the Samurai is only $5. Admission is granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Due to capacity restrictions, admission is not guaranteed. We'll be arriving when the museum opens for the day to assure entry and have time to see everything.

Option 1: Come to the museum at 11 AM to view the exhibit first, then we'll have lunch at the Cafe Asia at 12:30 PM and view the Kanji demo and/or movie.

Option 2: Come to the museum at 12:30 PM for lunch at the Cafe Asia then view the exhibit after.

Please comment in your RSVP if you will come for option 1 or 2.

$2.00 fee payable to me via PayPal or check to reserve your spot in the meetup and help pay for meetup web site fee. Your Yes RSVP is not complete until the $2 is paid. You do not need to have a PayPal account. Click here to pay through PayPal and enter [masked]. If you would like to pay by check, e-mail me for my address.

See exhibit description below as well as special events happening that day.

Description of exhibit:
The samurai culture and code of conduct, bushido, have long captivated the imaginations and aspirations of young and old in the Western world. More than just professional warriors, Japanese samurai of the highest rank were also visionaries who strove to master artistic, cultural, and spiritual pursuits.

Lords of the Samurai takes an intimate look at the daimyo, or provincial lords of the warrior class in feudal Japan. The Hosokawa clan, powerful military nobles with a 600-year-old lineage, embodied this duality of fierce warrior and refined gentleman.

The exhibition features more than 160 works from the Hosokawa family collection housed in the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo, and from Kumamoto Castle and the Kumamoto Municipal Museum in Kyushu. Objects on view include suits of armor, armaments (including swords and guns), formal attire, calligraphy, paintings, tea wares, lacquerware, masks, and musical instruments.

The Asian Art Museum is the only U.S. venue for this exhibition.

Crazy for Kanji
10:00 am–1:00 pm
Education Studios, (Space is limited, and on a first-come, first-served basis)

Author Eve Kushner serves up a palatable plate of kanji from her new book, Crazy for Kanji. Using games, puzzles, cultural clues and fun facts, Crazy for Kanji delivers Japanese written characters with a side of fun. Join Eve at this engaging program for kids and families—learn the stroke order of characters related to samurai, train your brain with verbal logic quizzes, and play a game of sudoku, kanji style. Books are available for purchase in the Museum Store. Eve Kushner, a Berkeley based writer and student of Japanese, is an incurable kanji-holic.

Sixties Swordplay Classics
The political and cultural tumult of the early 1960s shook Japan as it did the rest of the world. Japanese filmmakers responded to the changing times by disguising themes of dissent in the traditional form of the swordplay film, or chanbara. Previously populated by heroic samurai, self-sacrificing masterless samurai (ronin), and historical figures who exemplified noble Japanese virtues, the genre began embracing a new kind of hero, or antihero: the lone outcast, distrustful of authority but maintaining a personal code of honor. Samurai Spy and Kill! films from two masters of Japanese cinema, redefine for a modern generation the meaning of loyalty and honor, as embodied by the iconic figure of the samurai.

11:00 am
Samurai Spy (Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke)
Masahiro Shinoda
Japan, 1965, 100 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.

2:00 pm
Kill! (Kiru)
Kihachi Okamoto
Japan, 1968, 114 minutes, Black and White, DVD, not rated
Japanese with English subtitles

In this pitch-black action comedy by Kihachi Okamoto, a pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, Kill! playfully tweaks samurai film convention, borrowing elements from established chanbara classics and seasoning them with a little Italian western.

Web site about exhibit: http://www.asianart.o...

Directions: http://www.asianart.o...