Art Japan

I read with amusement Judith Herman's explanation of Japanese shabu-shabu ["Soaking Up Art in Japan," July 20] as Mongolian hot pot. It is like explaining German kraut using Italian sausage as an example. Technically they are similar, but culturally (and their taste) they are a world apart. Ken Lin Pasadena

Japan's most popular practitioner of the 700-year-old craft of woodblock printing sweeps the wide sleeves of his kimono to one side and gently pushes the blade of a curved chisel into a slab of linden. With the tool, which he made by hand, the artist slowly begins carving the mirror image of an old gate in Kyoto, Japan's former capital. A 25-year resident of the ancient city, he is renowned for his defense of Japanese traditions.

A collection of rare books illustrated by Japanese artists during the Edo Period will be on exhibit this month at the Cal State Northridge library. The collection, assembled by anthropologist and CSUN professor emeritus Robert Ravicz over a 25-year period, was recently acquired by the Chiba City Museum of Art in Japan.

In a welcome follow-up to "Requiem for the Sun, " Blum & Poe's superb survey earlier this year of the art of Japan's Mono-ha movement, the gallery has assembled another, similarly museum-grade survey exploring the work of one of its leading figures, Kishio Suga. With 86 works spanning more than 40 years, it is a substantial undertaking - Suga's first solo exhibition in North America, and the first single-artist show to occupy both floors of the gallery's prodigious space. It feels light and fresh, almost spontaneously generative.

MOVIES Killer Klowns From Outer Space Attend a screening of the camp classic featuring creepy clown puppets by the Chiodo Brothers, who are masters of special-effects puppetry. Their handiwork has spanned decades, from the toothy fur balls in the "Critters" franchise to the gun-toting, epically vomiting marionettes in "Team America: World Police. " The Chiodos will host a Q&A after the film. Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.. 11:50 p.m. $10. (323)

Shan Ichiyanachi dips a chopstick into his portable stove and comes up with a blob of molten blue corn syrup. Pulling, stretching and snipping with scissors, he adds red, green and yellow corn syrup, fashioning a sea horse with a fringed mane. The candy man has come to town. Ichiyanachi, 43, is one of two practitioners in the United States of amezaiku ("sweet candy craft"), a 1,000 year-old Asian folk art.

Companies thinking about entering the Japanese market should think of the process as a never-ending courtship, according to two Orange County executives whose companies entered the Japanese market in recent years. "No matter how well I felt I knew the market, there were a lot of surprises in their business practices that delayed our business plans," said Steven M. Kishi, a vice president for international operations at Anaheim-based Carl Karcher Enterprises Inc., owner of the Carl's Jr.

From perhaps the world's smallest kite to acrobatics by Tokyo firefighters, a once-in-a-lifetime view of Japan goes on display Sunday, back to the age before Americans opened the country to the outside world nearly 150 years ago. It is an exhibit called "Edo--Art in Japan 1615-1868." Tokyo was known as Edo in the 17th century, when it had a million inhabitants and was the world's largest city, said Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art.