Friday, Nov. 2: Talk and Slide Presentation by Jeff Kucharski from 6:30pm – 8:30pm

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Images from along the Kiso-kaido Road
A jaunt through the history of a road that built a nation


Complementing <Travel Road of Kiso: Photographs by Jeff Kucharski> Exhibition
November 1 ~ December 12, 2012 at The Japan Foundation, Toronto

Friday, November 2, 2012, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
The Japan Foundation, Toronto, 131 Bloor Street West, Suite 213
Admission Free
Reservation Required: www.jftor.org/whaton/rsvp.php 416.966.1600 x102

Jeff Kucharski is from Edmonton, Alberta but lived and worked in Japan off and on for a total of 12 years over the course of a career in government. He first went in 1982 and taught English, studied Japanese and got a black belt in a martial art called Shorinji Kempo. In 1985 he married his wife Hideko whom he met in Hamamatsu City and they moved to Tokyo where he worked for a large Japanese company. In his government career, Jeff was able to return to Japan several times to live there, and took the opportunity to amass a large portfolio of images of Japan.

Jeff is primarily a landscape photographer. He considers Japan to be by far one of the best locations for landscape photography in the world, and particularly in the Fall season due to the striking color of the leaves, and the abundance of beautiful natural settings. In 2004, he took a photograph of Japanese radishes drying in the sun and submitted it to a national competition in Japan and was awarded the Grand Prize by Princess Takamado and former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. His photograph appeared in a gallery exhibition in several cities in Japan and articles in magazine publications. Since then, he has appeared in gallery exhibitions in Edmonton in addition to the current one in Toronto.

In addition to photography, Jeff is interested in Japanese history and he collects 19th century books about Japan. His specialty is books written in English by the first foreigners who visited, lived and worked in Japan in the late Edo and early Meiji periods. He owns a number of very rare books in his collection.

His lecture today is entitled “Images from Along the Kiso-Kaido Road- A Jaunt through the history of a road that built a nation”.