Today is the Runeberg Day that pays tribute to Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804 – 1877), Finland’s national poet. Runeberg was an epic poet who also wrote the lyrics to Finland’s National Anthem.  

On this day the Finns traditionally eat Runeberg torte, a sweet pastry said to be created by Runeberg’s wife Fredrika Runeberg (1807 – 1879). She in turn was a journalist, an author and a spokesperson for women´s rights. 

Poems, 1830 

Elk Hunters, 1832 

Second note, 1833 

Hanna, 1836 

Christmas night, 1841 

Third note, 1843 

King Fjalar, 1844 

The Tales of Ensign Stål part 1, 1848 

The Tales of Ensign Stål part 2, 1860 

Kings of Salam, 1863 

Ingredients

125 g of unsalted butter

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 dl wheat flour

50 g of almond crumb

1.5 dl breadcrumbs

1.5 dl gingerbread crumbs

a teaspoon of ground cardamom

1 egg,

1 dl sugar

1 dl of cream

bitter almond oil

raspberry jam

punch or almond liqueur

1 dl icing sugar

1 teaspoon water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 125°F. Soften the butter without melting it. Combine baking powder, flour, crushed almonds, bread crumbs, crushed gingerbread and cardamom. Beat the beaten eggs and sugar together and mix with the cream, melted butter and flour. Finally, add two drops of bitter almond oil.  

Place the resulting batter in a silicone or paper container and fill the center with raspberry jam. Add the dough to the top of the jam, a little more than halfway up the container.  

Place in the oven and bake at 125 degrees for the first few minutes, then increase the temperature to 200 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the tart is a beautiful brown color.  

When the baked tart is cool, remove it from the container (you can leave the paper container in place). Add punch or almond liqueur to the tart to moisten it. (For families with small children, substitute sugar water.) Make the icing by adding a drop of water to the icing sugar and top the tart with a circle. Fill the inside of the rings with raspberry jam.  

Serve with coffee or punch. 

Enjoy!

Photo: Jenna Tavasti

The Foundation of the Finnish Institute in Japan has chosen MA Jenna Tavasti as the new project manager of the Finnish Institute in Japan for the next three-year term starting from 1.1.2024. The project manager is responsible for planning and coordinating the implementation of the institute’s activities related to science and culture. The institute is based in Tokyo.

Tavasti has previously been employed by the Finnish Institute in Japan as the research assistant, and thus she has extensive experience in the planning and practical implementation of events related to the institute’s science and culture program.

The Finnish Institute in Japan is a scientific and cultural institute operating from Tokyo. Its purpose is to promote the knowledge of the Finnish culture, science, higher education, technology and economy and the collaboration in these fields between Finland and Japan. The Institute identifies and anticipates the development and cooperation needs between both countries in science, culture and education and helps potential partners to find each other.

Finland has a total of 16 cultural and scientific institutes in different parts of the world. The Finnish Japan Institute is the only one based in East Asia.

For more information contact the director of the Finnish Institute in Japan, PhD Anna-Maria Wiljanen, (anna-maria.wiljanen@finstitute.jp), phone +81 80 4069 7846.

The exhibition Intimate Entanglements: Contemporary Finnish Fashion situates at the intersection of novel politicization and digital disruption of fashion. Through the works of Finnish fashion designers and brands, the exhibition explores the intimate relationship between the body and the clothes, and how digitalization impacts it. The exhibition shows how designers challenge body norms as well as the how of digitalization on fashion changes the relationship.

Intimate Entanglements: Contemporary Finnish Fashion is an edited version of the exhibition Intimacy displayed at the Design Museum in Helsinki, Finland in 2021–2022. The exhibition is based on extensive research on the work of the most prominent Finnish fashion designers of the 2020s and beyond. It is accompanied by the book Intimacy. Embodied knowledge, creative work and digitalization in contemporary Finnish fashion.

The exhibition is curated by Professor Annamari Vänskä and Post-Doctoral Researcher Natalia Särmäkari from Aalto University. Intimate Entanglements is part of the research consortium Intimacy in Data-driven Culture (IDA), funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Research Council of Finland.

Intimate Entanglements: Contemporary Finnish Fashion
29.11.–3.12.2023
Opening hours tbc
Meguro Museum of Art, Citizens Gallery
2 Chome-4-36 Meguro, Meguro City, Tokyo 153-0063
Free entry, welcome!

Information about the auxiliary programme coming soon!

Knitted outfit (2020) by designer Leevi Ikäheimo. Photo: Mika Kailes. Model: Paavo Kärki.

Harri Kalha, Ph.D., (b. 1962) is a visual artist as well as a scholar and a non-fiction writer. In the late 1980s Kalha frequented the “drawing school” of the University of Helsinki and participated in various art courses. A year spent at Académie Roederer in Paris secured his artistic conviction. His central concern became the line and linearity, the exploration of which has since migrated from the pencil to scissors. In 1997, Kalha earned his doctorate in art history and moved on to pursue a prolific career in art scholarship and writing. The recipient of several book awards, Kalha was even nominated twice for the prestigious Finlandia award in non-fiction literature. He continued to make pictures, however, especially between book projects, and egged on by personal losses. Recently, the pressure for visual creation has become too overwhelming to be tackled “on the side”. Today Kalha, who likes to think of himself as a University educated folk artist, devotes 100 percent of his time to his chosen medium, collage.

Exhibition Collage: The Eloquence of Paper
7.–12.11.2023
ars gallery (5-13-1 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0001)
11–18 (last day 11–15)
Free entry, welcome!

Harri Kalha: Cho Cho Chan, 2023

Ruminations on Collage

Collage is an art of recycling and re-contextualization: giving old images and papers new meanings. While collage artworks often flirt with surprise and absurdity, there are also subtler levels of meaning that arise from aesthetic elements (such as the textures and hues of aged paper), as well as from various cutting techniques.

All art, beyond technical explorations, entails self-expression: opening up, bit by bit, to others and to oneself. Like all tedious handwork, cutting and pasting can have a grounding or soothing effect. Yet in order to elevate “therapy” into something worthy of artistic presentation, the work must be driven by an underlying idea, be it aesthetic or conceptual.

The practice of collage is largely about decision making: killing your darlings. I personally prefer those fatal decisions to be conceptually informed, but while the concept may be more or less “literal”, the mood of a work remains subjectively expressive. My personality tends to melancholia, and my humor has a sardonic edge to it.

Technical gimmicks, visual puns and unexpected juxtapositions are part and parcel of this wondrous medium, but lighthearted surprise shouldn’t overpower the more tenderly personal levels of expression.

Harri Kalha, Ph.D., collage maker

Harri Kalha: Shibari, 2023

Banner photo: Harri Kalha: Scenario, 2023

The annual Finnish-Swedish week Hallå Tokyo! is here! This year the theme is Communicating culture and traditions. Come and join us and celebrate the Finnish-Swedish culture! 

Hallå Tokyo! 31.10.–3.11.2023

Kindly see the attached programme.

Registration for all events at:
https://finstitutejapan.peatix.com

Photos: Pexels, Lee Esselström, FIJ, Jonne Räsänen / Otava, Nina-Maria Oförsagd