Hiratsuka sees Japan as a land of contrasts. On the surface it looks rather westernized with McDonald and Coca Cola. But underneath the facade traditional Japanese culture and values remained unchanged. The artist mentions two examples:
"For example, Japanese gardens are cultivated high atop thirty story Western skyscrapers, or people dine on McDonald’s hamburgers while watching Sumo wrestling. In my work I explore this chaotic coexistence.
Like with the railroad, innovations in years are going to be #built out
--07.23.2013--The dilemma here is palpable, be this and you can meliorate inhumane #happiness
--04.26.2013--How many companies actually work about the #product
--04.26.2013--A car that would not require the monthly pushing of a barn #mileage
--09.12.2012--Birds, insects and well being #earthed
--07.08.2012--And yet it no longer matters as much. #meditation
--06.22.2012--Reading material, this is for you #weekender
--06.22.2012--From home to work and back each day #work
--06.16.2012--The undertaking can be paralyzing #climbing
--06.16.2012--Remember the good old days of running #barefoot
--06.14.2012--Bright and beautiful in some places. In other places, it will be cloudy and raining. #there
--06.14.2012--This speaks of the tangible concerns of particular human beings #incompleteness?
--06.14.2012--The latest is, if nothing else, a monument to the fact that #art is
--06.14.2012--What am I to do with feelings like these? Useless feelings in a world in which everything must be made useful. #a step
--06.10.2012--Toast to warm weather with this cool and fruity beverage featuring a potent strawberry syrup mixed into water or club soda. #strawberry cup
--06.10.2012--And on the finish, a slightest bitterness that reminds you of juniper berries. It's a flavor you sit with after each bite, and there are about five of them with each fruit. #apricot
--06.10.2012--He insisted that he was only creating "well-drawn clean humor." But something else was surfacing in his work. #little nemo
--06.10.2012--Kids today spend all their time in front of glowing screens anyway. #how many teachers does it take
--06.10.2012--Businesspeople with good hearts looking to make a difference usually start with three questions: "How can I give back?" "How do I pick a good cause?" and "What skills should I contribute?" But the businesspeople I've met who have made the biggest contribution usually started with a different question: "What can I get?" As a result, they engage more deeply, contribute more of their skills, and do so for longer duration. #cause
--06.10.2012--It is thus flawed, a weightless, overly romantic attempt at economic analysis, special only in that it is not an entirely boring read. #weightless
--06.10.2012--Are nature and spirituality compatible, are they aloof colleagues, indifferent and incurious about what the other is saying? #physics
--06.10.2012--I'm not entirely sure what literary fiction is "supposed" to be...but it is something that we can recognize when we read it, and in terms of speculative stories, it's a suggestion of internal struggle. #weird
--06.10.2012--A beginner's guide to #crowdfunding
--06.10.2012--What to do about health? #soy
--06.10.2012--Gasping for breath because of pollution. #asthma
--06.10.2012--A blogger, twitter, and a million dollar suit. #defamation?
--06.10.2012--As 2012 begins, what will the year bring about? #leap year
--04.23.2012--Scientists published their work in journals that only scientists read, classicists in volumes that only classicists read, and engineers in blue books that no one read. So the reference book was born---the compendium of facts, the chrestomathy of passages, and the anthology of extracts---by which the rest of us could learn and use the information that print technology was producing, filling bookshelves that could be measured by the mile. #wikipedia
--04.23.2012--
