JAPAN - CROATIA,
JEWELS
Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb, 2005
If we measure the quality (and popularity) of haiku poetry by a number of international prizes, then Croatia can be ranked very high: immediately after Japan and the USA (1993, 1995). This is due to continuous efforts and enthusiasm of Vladimir Devidé, a well known Croatian mathematician and japanologist. He obtained a prestigeous Japanese "Order of Sacred Treasure'' - Konsanto Zuihosho.
Here is his haiku related to the aggression on Croatia written in 1991:
A small pool of blood -
Chilled in air raid:
little girl and her huge doll
In the burned-out village
a wounded stray dog
sniffing charred bones
The first competition in Croatia in haiku poetry among primary school children was organized in 1986, on the occasion of the grand exhibition Kyoto - svijet kulture (Kyoto - World of Culture) in Zagreb. About 500 children throughout Croatia participated. Kyoto and Zagreb are sister cities since 1972.
It seems that a well known tune "U boj, u boj" from the opera Nikola Subic Zrinski by Ivan Zajc is taught in Japanese schools. Information by Mr. Nenad Bach, New York. Professor Vladimir Devidé, japanologist from Zagreb, considers this very probable: he remembered a very young boy walking on a Tokyo street Komaba, wearing a huge rucksack filled with books, and whistling the familiar melody - "U boj, u boj"! (personal information, 2004).
The web page "U boj, u boj" has been prepared for Japanese readers, with historical account, where you can listen to the tune performed by Japanese choire singing in Croatian! (Provided by Kwansei Gakuin Glee Club).
Listen to U BOJ, U BOJ (6MB), sung by Japanese choir in Croatian
Lovro von Matacic, one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century (1899-1985), started his career in 1919 as conductor of orchestras in Osijek, Novi Sad, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Riga, and in Zagreb in 1932. From 1942-1945 he was conductor of the Vienna Opera.
After 1945 he was imprisoned by the Yugoslav communist regime, and together with Croatian poet Tin Ujevic and painter Kristian Krekovic sentenced to confiscation of all movable and immovable property.
In 1950's he became organizer of Festivals in Dubrovnik and Split. In 1956 Matacic moved to Germany to conduct East Berlin Opera and the famous Dresden Staatskapelle, then conducted at Bayreuth in 1959, and from 1961 to 1966 was Gereralmuikdirektor in Frakfurt. He was also guest conductor in Vienna Opera, Milan Scala, in Chicago, Naples, Palermo, Rome, London, Cleveland, Tokyo, Prague, etc., and was elected the honorary director of the Japanese Orchestra in Tokyo.
From 1970 to 1980 he was conductor and artistic director of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, and almost simultanesously from 1973 to 1979 had the same role in the Monte Carlo Orchestra.
Miroslav Miletic, viola player, founded the Pro Arte string quartet in Zagreb, which in 1970's was among 10 best string quartets in the world. Among his numerous students was Hiroshi Hirano, violist from Japan (Tokyo). As a composer he promoted Croatian folklore and church music (in particular from the island of Hvar). He considers the Croatian folklore music the most beautiful and the richest in the world. In 1975, accompanied by the Leningrad philharmony, he played his Viola concert. Maestro Miletic collaborated also with K. Stockhausen on electronic music. He has his works published at Schott, Berben, Meckverlag, Pizzicatto etc, and an LP issued in the USA.
Croatian violoncellist Monika Leskovar (1981) is winner of the prestigeous Tchaikovsky competition in Japan for 1995 (a student of maestro Valter Despalj), the third prize at the 1997 Rostropovic competition in Paris, the second prize at the 1998 Eurovision contest for young instrumentalists, winner of the 1999 Roberto Caruana competition in Milano, Italy, the second prize at the famous ARD competition in 2001.
Nenad Bach's work and his life story have been featured on all the major US TV networks (CBS, ABC, NBC), on CNN, on Sky Channel, and on TV channels in Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Japan, and many other countries.
It is interesting and little known that in Japan there exist two recordings of Vlaho Paljetak's well known song Marijana - in the Japanese language! I had opportunity to listen them on two records issued in Japan, when I visited Mr. Mario Kinel in his appartment in Zagreb (Mr. Kinel was a well known pop-music composer and translator; he even translated Vu plavem trnaci into Italian and German). Of course, out of Japanese verses I understood only - Marijana. Marijana is also very popular in Czechia. It was included in both Croatian original and Czech translation into the book "Svetove Evergreeny" (World's Evergreens), published in Prague in 2000 (Petr Jansky - MUSIC CHEB).
IT WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO LISTEN TO "MARIJANA" IN JAPANESE ON THE WEB...
Among Croatian Latinists and writers in Croatian a central place is occupied by Marko Marulic, who is the "father of Croatian literature" (born in Split, 1450-1524). He was the most famous spiritual writer of his time in Europe, and also the first who defined and used the notion of `psychology', which is today in current use.
His book De institutione bene vivendi (six volumes, 64 chapters), published in Venice in 1506, had fifteen editions until 1686 and was translated from Latin into
- Italian,
- German (five editions between 1583 and 1614, all in Köln, in parts already in 1568),
- French (7 editions, the first in 1585),
- Japanese (in Nagasaki, in parts, 1585) ,
- Portuguese and Czech,
altogether 40 editions.
It is well known that St. Francis Xaver had taken only two books on his long pilgrimage to the East (India, Japan and China): the Bible and De institutione. Furthermore, in his testament St. Francis Xaver asked that Marulic's book be burried with him. Therefore we may conclude that Marulic was a spiritual father of St. Francis Xaver.
St. Francis Xaver's personal sample of Marulic's book was kept in Madrid in a collection of valuables until 1937, when it had dissapeared. St. Ignazio Loyola included De Insitutione into the list of basic references for the formation of Jesuits.
Marulic left us many beautiful verses and the epic poem Judita written in the Croatian language, for which he sais expressly to be written in the Croatian verses (versi harvatski). Some of his original verses are held in Glasgow (GB). His Judith was translated into English, Hungarian, French, Italian, and some parts into Spanish. Marulic translated from Latin into Croatian the famous "De imitatione Christi" by Thoma de Kempis.
The original Marulic's manuscript of "De institutione bene vivendi" has been stolen from the Croatian National Library in Zagreb around 1980. Any information about this would be appreciated.
According to investigations of a French specialist Charles Béné, Marulic's texts have been used extensively by Thomas More and Henry VIII. It is known that Marulic's "Evangelistarium" that was read by Henry VIII bears many comments by the King. It is considered that two of the king's three literary works were written under the influence of Marko Marulic. Marulic's poem "Carmen de Doctrina Domini Nostri Jesu Christi pendentis in cruce" was translated into English as "A Dialogue betwext a Christian and Christ hanging on the Crosse" by Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel (1557-1595).
According to C. Verdiani, Marulic is also the author of the Florence Codex, which contains a biography of St Jerome written in the Croatian language. There he wrote St Jerome is our Dalmatian, a glory, honour and fame, and brilliant crown of the Croatian language. In Croatian: Jerolim je nass Dalmatin, on je dika, posstenje i slava i svitla kruna hrvatskoga jezika. It is worth mentioning that preserved manuscripts of Marko Marulic show that he also used the cursive glagolitic script. Marko Marulic sent a dramatic letter to the Pope Hadrian VI, describing an extremely tragic position of the Croats threatened by the onslaughts of the Ottoman Empire and asking for help. His books were known not only in the whole of Europe, but also in Japan (in the 16th century) and South America. For example, parts of De institutione bene vivendi were translated into Japanese already in 1585, published in parts in Nagasaki under the title Sanctos no gosayuno, see Franolic (he mentions 1595 instead of 1585).
When St. Francis Xaver arrived to Kogoshima in Japan in 1549, he also brought Marulic's "De insitutione bene vivendi". According to bishop Hamao from Yokohama, president of Japanese Bishop's Conference and of Asian Caritas, the formation of earliest Japanese Christians had been very probably based on the spirituality of Marulic. See here (in Croatian).
It is interesting that in Berlin a monument of Marko Marulic was set up in 2000. In the Library of Congress, Washington, a symposium was held devoted to his work.
IT WOULD BE OF GREAT INTEREST TO HAVE A PHOTO OF THE FRONT PAGE OF MARULIC'S BOOK PUBLISHED IN JAPAN IN 1585.
Anthony Maglica, holder of hundreds
of patents and trademarks, founded Mag Instrument, Inc, in Los Angeles
in 1955,
and designed Mag-Lite flashlight, which is now an American product icon,
among 100 top products that "America makes best". The Maglite products
have been honoured by the Japan Institute of Design and
the Museum for Applied Art in Germany. Mag
Instrument donated thousands of flashlights to aid in the rescue efforts
at the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. Born in New York, and
as a child raised
in Croatia, Tony Maglica has plenty of other interests which include
also Zlarin, Croatia, where he grew up.
The SUVAG center for voice transmission for reeducation of speach disorders and deafness has been founded in Zagreb in 1961 by Academician Petar Guberina (1913-2005). The name of SUVAG is coined from Systeme Universel Verbotonal d'Audition Guberina.
His books were translated into many languages, including Arabic and Japanese. In France, he was awarded the Legion of Honour: Knighthood in 1968, the Officer’s Cross in 1989, which he was awarded in main quadrangle of the Sorbonne in Paris.
Danilo Blanusa (1903-1987), Croatian mathematician, professor at the University of Zagreb, was born in Osijek. He discovered a mistake in relations for absolute heat Q and temperature T in relativistic phenomenological thermodynamics, published by Max Planck in Annalen der Physik in 1908. This result that he published in Glasnik mat.-fiz i astr., 2/1947 in his article "Sur les paradoxes de la notion d'énergie", was rediscovered 13 years later by Heinrich Ott, and published in "Zeitschrift für Physik" in 1963. It is already time to correct wrong attribution of this discovery to Heinrich Ott in the scientific literature, since Blanusa's priority is indisputable.
Blanusa's most important work is related to isometric immersions of two-dimensional Lobacevski plane into six-dimensional Euclidean space and generalizations. This result is included in authoritative Japanese mathematical encyclopedia Sugaku jiten published by Iwanami shoten, Tokyo, 1962, p. 612. His work about imbeddings of hyperbolic spaces into Euclidean spaces has been cited in 1956 by John Nash (well known mathematician, Nobel prize for economy; Blanusa is cited in his paper "The imbedding problem for Riemannian manifolds", Annals of Mathematics, Vol 63, No. 1, 1956, pp. 20-63).
The Baroque art in the Croatian north is described by a famous Japanese photographer Keiichi Tahara:
Quand un ami française m'a conseillé d'aller voir les églises baroques en Croatie...je n'ai pratiquement rien trouvé sur ce sujet. Cela m'a paru étrange, et j'ai cédé a la tentation...
Keiichi Tahara: Les Anges de Croatie, éd. Assouline, Paris, 1995 (Baroque art of the Croatian north), translated into Croatian under the title Pamcenje andjela, Nakladni zavod Globus, Zagreb, 1996,
Ivan Rabuzin (1919) - designed a curtain decorating the stage of one of the best Kyoto theaters (Japan), as well as the Takarazuka theatre in Tokyo (10.5 x 24 m, 1980), and several other museums in Japan: Sategaya Art Museum in Tokyo, Saitama Museum of Modern Art in Urawa, Isetan. He also had exhibitions at Daimaru and Shinsabashi in Osaka.
Since 1976 his designs are used by "Rosenthal", renowned producer of procelain ware. He is also a member of the Croatian Parliament (Sabor). It is interesting that Rabuzin's father was a miner, while his mother was blind. His art was exhibited throughout the world: Zagreb, Paris, Antibes, Zurich, Milano, USA (Louisiana, Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Insitute Museum of Art, Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Milwaukee Museum Art Center, Chicago Public Library, C.W. Post Art Galery/Long Island University, Pittsburgh), Oslo, Munich, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, Verona, Brescia, Florence, Tokyo, Osaka, Geneva, Cologne, London, etc.
Several films have been made about Rabuzin's work, including one in Japan (Moritani Shiro, Kyoto). Amonog numerous monographs devoted to his work we mention only the following one: Masayoshi Honme, Ivan Rabuzin / Taiji Harada, 1990, published by Kodanasha, Japan.
PHOTOS OF RABUZIN'S DESIGNS OF JAPANESE THEATRES ARE MISSING HERE
The unique beauty of Croatian landscape is offerend by the magnificant mountain of Velebit, and the famous Primosten vineyards, where folk builders used drystone walls to protect every handful of soil from being washed away from the arid rocky terrain. Thus an amazing rocky lace of Primosten has been obtain over the centuries, whose large sized photo can be seen inside the building of United Nations in New York. It is not surprising that Velebit's Endemic Garden and Vineyard from Primosten have won the gold medal at Japan Flora 2000 international exhibition of garden arrangmenents. The exhibition in 2000 was held on Awaji islands near Kyoto, with participation of 60 countries.
PHOTO OF THE CROATIAN GARDEN OF JAPAN FLORA 2000 IS REQUESTED
Charles Billich is outstanding Croatian painter born in 1934
in the town of Lovran
in Istria, and since 1956 working in Australia. He has permanent exhibition
of his works at Hakane Museum in Tokyo since 1997, and was designated
the official
artist of the Australian Olypic team for Olympic Games in Sydney in
2000. I like his Canberra cantata. In 1998 Charles Billich completed
his series
of Bleiburg
paintings. He was elected the official painter of Australian and the
USA national teams at Olympic Games in Greece, 2004. In 2004 he was
elected the Official Artiest
of the 2008 Bejing Olympiad. Laurate of the Milan & Spoleto Award,
Italy, in 1989.
His most famous galeries are Billich Gallery in Sydney (100 George Street), Australia, and Fortezza Gallery in the lovely town of Lovran, Croatia. In 2004 he had the exhibition of some of important Croatian contributions to science, held in the building of United Nations in New York (portraits of Faust Vrancic, David Schwartz, Lupis Vukic, Slavoljub Penkala, Josip Vucetic, Nikola Tesla, Marin Getaldic, Rudjer Boskovic, Marco Polo, Andrija Mohorovicic, Spiridion Brusina, Lavoslav Ruzicka, also Croatian cravate, and an oil representing one of truly painful Croatian themes from the period 1945-1948 immediately after the WW2: Bleiburg). He was commisioned to paint East Timor's official independence painting. He presented a pinting to pope John Paul II.
Charles Billich Collections (incomplete):
- The Vatican Collection
- The Parliament of Japan
- The Royal Collection of Thailand
- The City of Rijeka,
- Croatia The Town of Lovran,
- Croatia The City of Orebic (Franciscan Monastery: The Way of the Cross), Croatia
- Embassy of Croatia, Canberra,
- Australia City of Düsseldorf
- The City of Osaka, Japan
- The City of Sydney, Australia
- State Theater, Sydney, Australia
- The City of Melbourne, Australia
- United States Sports Academy
- New York State Govt. Port
- Authority Hall of Congress, Washington D.C., USA
- Internatinal Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland
- QinShiHuang BingMa Yong Museum, X'ian, China ...
The name of Croatian sportsman Mirko Filipovic Crocop is well known in Japan.
Drago Stambuk, Croatian ambassador: Squaring the circle and rounding the square, "...I spent one weekend last winter [2005/06] at the snow festival in Tokamachi. ... The first prize in the kimono competition at the festival went to a checkered red-and-white kimono called Croatia..."
Croatia - Japan cultural and economic society
Croatia - its History, Culture and Science