By Will Lerner, Communications Manager for Portland Japanese Garden & Japan Institute
On January 18, Living Traditions returned to Portland. A series of conversations and talks that explore the most iconic facets of Japanese culture and traditions, Living Traditions launched in 2020 as a joint project of Japan Institute of Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Society, supported by the Prime Minister’s Office of Japan. Initially restricted to digital spaces in light of the global COVID pandemic, 2024 saw its first in-person experience at the offices of iconic Portland advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy. 2025 marked the second year of a Portland-based, in-person gathering, this time in the cozy wood paneled Cheatham Hall at the World Forestry Center in Washington Park.
Aki Nakanishi, Director of Japan Institute as well as the Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education for Portland Japanese Garden, helped launch Living Traditions alongside Koichiro Matsumoto, Managing Director, Research and Programs of the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA). Prior to his employment at JIIA, Matsumoto had served more than 25 years in public service, including time as Global Issues Director for Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office under three different prime ministers. “People in Japan and the United States were tilting inward during the pandemic and developed a strong craving for culture,” Matsumoto shared during a 2023 visit to the Garden. “That sentiment gave birth to Living Traditions.”
2025’s installment, titled “The Future of Social Resiliency and Natural Environment,” explored new frontiers in the cultural fusion of American ingenuity, technology, and craftsmanship with Japanese aesthetics. It was an especially timely conversation amidst the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County. Featured among the guests was keynote speaker and Los Angeles resident Hitoshi Abe, a professor and former Chair in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA and the Director of the UCLA Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. He was joined by fellow speaker and panelist Sadafumi Uchiyama, Curator Emeritus of the Garden. Frank Feltens, Curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., rounded out the group with brief remarks and by serving as moderator of a panel discussion that followed Abe and Uchiyama’s presentations.
Making Ourselves More Resilient
The afternoon kicked off by a welcome from Lisa Christy, Executive Director of Portland Japanese Garden. “I love this series because it looks at modern topics and trends, but it traces their roots back to ancient Japanese traditions that date back centuries and even millennia,” shared Christy. “Living here in the U.S., where we’re a relatively young country in the world, we sometimes get a bit dismissive of the past. It is humbling and illuminating, I think, to explore the wisdoms that come from historical journeys of some of the most iconic facets of Japanese culture and doing that through these conversations between experts and cultural stewards such as our speakers here today.”
Following Christy was Nakanishi, who served as emcee for the event. “We are here to learn and to ask ourselves, ‘How do we also make ourselves more resilient against natural disasters, which do not recognize any international borders?’” Nakanishi noted. “It’s poignant that this awareness of disaster preparedness is even more important than ever because of what our friends and family in Los Angeles are going through right now. And I’m sure I’m speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister’s office, all the colleagues there as well as friends at Japan Society in New York when we say we share the deepest sympathies with those people who are being affected by the ravaging fires.”
Creating Communities That Can Withstand Disaster
Hitoshi Abe led off the presentations as the keynote speaker for the afternoon’s event. In addition to his work as an educator and academic at UCLA, Abe is the founder of the international design practice Atelier Hitoshi Abe. The organization’s works are dotted throughout the world including Japan, the U.S., and Austria. Abe, known for demonstrating that architecture can play a leading role in societal innovation, focused on the idea of “regenerative urbanism,” which he described as “a design strategy of creating disaster resilient urban environments through harmony with nature.”
Abe, born in Miyagi Prefecture, pointed to his native nation of Japan as a place that has had to manage a volatile natural environment. He noted that during the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) the nation saw nearly 50 significant fires in Edo (today known as Tokyo). “Every five years most of Edo would burn down and then rebuild again,” he noted. “The city repeated a cycle of destruction and rebirth. The people’s daily lives and economic activity was shaped by the assumption that the city would burn every five years.”
While the infernos of the Edo period have subsided, especially with the introduction of fire-resistant Western technology, Japan is still subject to an unrelenting landscape. “The people of Japan, a country blessed with abundant natural resources, have lived side by side with the dangers of disaster,” Abe shared. “For example, of the more 1,000 earthquakes with a magnitude of six or more from 1994 to 2003, about 23 percent occurred in Japan.”
All of this is to say that it makes sense to look to Japan for guidance on how to maintain and foster society as the climate crisis increasingly threatens global stability. To help illustrate this, Abe pointed to how communities in Shizuoka Prefecture have handled flooding from the Ōi River, including homes being designed on plots of land shaped like boats to reduce the force of water, thus preventing houses being swept away. This notion of finding balance in nature rather than seeking dominion over it is crucial. “Human beings form and operate within their own closed systems,” Abe said. “The balance can be maintained if the scale remains at a particular scale, but when settlements expand to a global scale, the collision between the larger circular current of nature and humans begins to occur. Regenerative urbanism attempts to resolve this friction by weaving various human activities as a series of small systems within a larger cycle. It does not reject nature or disasters, but asks how can we softly accept and let them go past?”
Abe wrapped up his remarks by touching upon an international collaborative project, the “ArcDR3 Initiative.” Led by UCLA and Tohoku University, in partnership with the Association of the Pacific Rim Universities, ArcDR3 involved 11 schools proposing urban designs that would address local environmental concerns. Eventually, the ideas were categorized and organized into seven different types of city concepts that, depending on the local needs, would reflect the principles of regenerative urbanism. One all-too-timely example of this was the “Pyroactive City,” in which it was proposed to create buffer zones between urban boundaries and nearby wild environments in areas that have “ignitable” ecosystems. Here, residents would regularly make sure that undergrowth and dead shrubbery were cleared in the buffer zone to reduce the amount of fuel available to fire.
Mending Broken Hearts Through Gardens
Complementing Abe’s remarks were those from Sadafumi Uchiyama. No stranger to the audience, Uchiyama previously spent 15 years under the employ of Portland Japanese Garden in the roles of Garden Curator, Chief Curator, and Director of the International Japanese Garden Training Center until his retirement at the end of 2023. Now Curator Emeritus, Uchiyama devoted his time to considering how gardens can lead to a more emotional regeneration in the face of disaster or upheaval.
“Since ancient times, gardens have been largely created in the image of heaven or paradise,” Uchiyama shared. “In many respects, gardens were necessary places for spiritual refuge that served people across the spectrum. In other words, gardens are universal patterns of cultural significance and meaning. The garden is a reference point to remind us of our true self—who we are and where we belong.”
Uchiyama then touched upon two different examples of gardens providing refuge to those of Japanese ancestry. The first was from Japan’s Muromachi period (1336-1573) during the decline of the Ashikaga shogunate’s power as the Onin War saw Japan devastated by bloody conflict. “The city of Kyoto was literally burned down to ashes in just ten years,” Uchiyama noted. He pointed to the then-shogun, Yoshimasa Ashikaga (1436-1490). Noting that while Yoshimasa was considered a “weak and broken leader,” the shogun was also largely responsible for shepherding a cultural renaissance that included garden building. A chief example of this was the landscape of the famed Silver Pavilion, where Yoshimasa sought safe haven as turmoil unleashed itself around him.
Jetting ahead nearly a half-millennium later, Uchiyama then turned to the experience of the Japanese and Japanese Americans who forced into concentration camps during World War II. “Gardens of peace were built at [Manzanar War Relocation Center] by incarcerated Japanese Americans in the face of racism and wartime hysteria,” Uchiyama said. “In my mind, these gardens are the ultimate symbols of hope and resilience. …These gardens were built in a very short period of time between 1942 and 1944, just about two years. This means that the incarcerated people started building gardens only three months after having moved there.”
“The garden is a remarkably elastic and generous creation that has the capacity to both generate and absorb our feelings in times of joy and more in tremendous sorrow,” Uchiyama concluded. “The garden makes an otherwise hostile environment more human and hospitable. I believe gardens are foundational to regenerative cities. It will serve us well to center around the garden and green spaces and thoughtfully weave them into the urban fabric to mend our broken hearts and weary souls. This commitment will make us stronger, wise, and more in touch with what sustains our lives.”
Transforming Breakage into Something New and Appealing
Frank Feltens would be the final speaker of the afternoon, speaking briefly before a panel discussion. Feltens, who previously guest curated the Garen’s 2022 exhibition, Garden of Resonance: The Art of Jun Kaneko, further explored how Japan has evolved through a series of catastrophes in its history. “Japanese culture has experienced a range of natural and manmade disasters, partially prompted by the country’s geographical location along four tectonic plates and partially also through mainly domestic struggles for power that also often lay the country in ruins,” Feltens began. “In the wake of such looming dangers, Japanese culture has embraced cataclysms as not only negative, but as generative forces for cultural advancement. The inevitability of periodic catastrophe has spawned an attitude that I think can be described as both accepting and defiant at the same time. Catastrophes, fissures, and such were viewed as a fact of existence and as an opportunity for actively enacting personal societal and cultural evolution.”
To illustrate this further, Feltens pointed to a passage from one of Japan’s most revered texts, Hojoki, a 13th century work by author, poet, and essayist Kamo no Chōmei (1153?-1216):
“The flowing river never stops
and yet the water never stays the same.
Foam floats upon the pools,
scattering, re-forming, never lingering long.
So it is with people and all their dwelling places
here on earth.”
“These words are kind of a classical, a synopsis of an attitude that I think pervades Japanese culture throughout centuries and still is very much in existence today,” Feltens offered. “One of preparedness both mental and physical resilience and strength. One that understands and accepts the reality of disasters without capitulating to them but instead understanding them as inevitable and as opportunities for cultural and personal advancement.”
Feltens wrapped up his turn at the mic by pointing to the Japanese art form of kintsugi, the same art form masterfully rendered by Portland Japanese Garden exhibiting artist Naoko Fukumaru in her exhibition, open through March 16, 2025.
“The technique called kintsugi developed in Japan around the 15th century and allegedly gained prominence after damaged, highly valuable Chinese tea bowls were sent back to China for repairs,” Feltens shared. “They returned with metal staples which horrified the Japanese owners. …This experience prompted a search for a different method. Japanese craftsmen began developing a new method of repair that would not only transform breakage but effectively alter and often enhance the aesthetic of the broken object. …The final result emphasizes rather than disguises the history of breakage, creating shimmering veins of precious metal that traces the object’s wounds, its history becomes really imprinted onto the object forever. In other words, fissures and breakages are not ignored or concealed. They are celebrated retraced and reformulated into something fresh, new and appealing.”
Exploring the Joy and Wonder of Japanese Gardens Through Dialogue
As Japan Institute continues to explore how it can further expand its dynamic programming in its home city of Portland, the organization is already looking ahead to next year upon learning that the Prime Minister’s Office of Japan was pleased with the 2025 Portland-based installment. “We have been offered full curatorial freedom to select topics of Japan Institute and Portland Japanese Garden’s choosing, which is an incredible show of confidence in our ability to create impactful and globally relevant programs,” Nakanishi notes.
In the meantime, Nakanishi is very pleased with this latest iteration. “With a sellout crowd eager to learn from Japan’s ancient wisdoms and their relevance to today’s societal challenges, the event truly exceeded expectations,” Nakanishi shares. “The afternoon epitomized our commitment to sharing the joy and wonder of Japanese gardens through dialogue grounded in our ideals of living in harmony with nature and culture. It also highlighted Portland Japanese Garden and Japan Institute’s steadfast commitment to local partnerships, including the special one we have with our fellow Washington Park resident, the World Forestry Center.”