Japanese Culture Day opens in Havana

A Japanese Culture Day opened on Friday with a photographic exhibition by the Japan Camera Industry Institute at the Conde de Lombillo (Count of Lombillo) Palace in Old Havana.
 
 
The exhibition, active through October 20, includes pictures taken by photographer Miyauchi Kotaro of the 1896 Meiji Sanriku tsunami, 128 years ago. It was one of the most devastating events in Japan in terms of damage.

A photo album by Nakajima Matsuchi (1868-1912), documenting the disaster with snapshots of his student, was discovered in 2012.

Yano Hiroshi, director of the Japan Camera Museum, said its contents are probably the world’s first original photographic record of tsunami devastation.

Sponsored by the Japanese Embassy in Cuba and several Cuban institutions, the event, which runs through October 12, also includes the opening of an origami and shodo (calligraphy) workshop at the Casa de Mexico in Old Havana on Saturday.

Japanese films such as “Padre del Ferrocarril de la Via Lactea” (Father of the Milky Way Railroad, 2023), “Chica de Laca Tsugaru” (Tsugaru Lacquer Girl, 2023), and “Bajo el cielo abierto” (Under Open Sky, 2023) will be screened at 23 y 12 movie theater and the New Latin American Film Festival House from September 25 to 29.