Day 85 - Advertising Council of Japan
The advertising council of Japan began their annual ad campaign on Japanese television, radio and newspapers and it was a great honour to be featured this year with two other foreign practitioners of Japanese arts.
The full commercial can be seen here:
From the AC Japan site:
"AC Japan (Advertising Council Japan) was born as Kansai Advertising Council (AC) in Osaka back in 1971, the year following Expo ‘70 in the same city, when Japan was experiencing its economic boom. The exponent was Keizo Saji, the president of Suntory at that time.
Mr. Saji, the first Chairman of the Board of Directors, studied the U.S. Advertising Council and thought of establishing the same system in Japan. He was deeply concerned about the problems that started to arise in the wake of the unprecedented economic growth such as environmental pollution, the deterioration of public manners and the weakening of human relationships, and attempted to raise public awareness of such social distortion. The activities of the present day AC Japan originated there."
https://www.ad-c.or.jp/about_ac/english/about_ac.html
The next artist featured is Suzanne Ross of the UK who practices Japanese Wajima Nuri, a type of Japanese lacquerware from Wajima, Ishikawa. The main distinguishing feature of Wajima-nuri is the durable undercoating achieved by the applying multiple layers of urushi mixed with powdered diatomaceous earth (ji-no-ko) onto delicate zelkova wooden substrates. (Sorry that explanation was from Wikipedia - I couldn't have explained it better myself.
Here is Suzanne's page:
http://www.ross-studios.net/faq.htm
And finally featured is Art Lee of the US who performs Wadaiko or Japanese traditional drumming.
http://www.tokara.net/ArtLee/index.html
These two are both seriously passionate about their art forms and Japan itself - what an honour to be featured together!