James journeys through Japan's mountainous forests, marvels at its zen gardens and admires centuries-old bonsai, to explore the connections between Japanese culture and the natural environment. Travelling around Japan's stunning island geography, he examines how the country's two great religions, Shinto and Buddhism, helped shape a creative response to nature often very different to the West. But he also considers modern Japan's changing relationship to the natural world and travels to Naoshima Art Island to see how contemporary artists are finding new ways to engage with nature.
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James journeys through Japan's mountainous forests, marvels at its zen gardens and admires centuries-old bonsai, to explore the connections between Japanese culture and the natural environment. Travelling around Japan's stunning island geography, he examines how the country's two great religions, Shinto and Buddhism, helped shape a creative response to nature often very different to the West. But he also considers modern Japan's changing relationship to the natural world and travels to Naoshima Art Island to see how contemporary artists are finding new ways to engage with nature.
2017 • Travel
He explores how the artistic life of three Japanese cities shaped the country's attitudes to past and present, east and west, and helped forge the very idea of Japan itself. In Kyoto, James reveals how the flowering of classical culture produced many treasures of Japanese art, including The Tale of Genji, considered to be the first novel ever written. In Edo, where Tokyo now stands, a very different art form emerged, in the wood block prints of artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. James meets the artisans still creating these prints today, and discovers original works by a great master, Utamaro, who documented the so-called 'floating world'. In contemporary Tokyo, James discovers the darker side of Japan's urbanisation through the photographs of Daido Moriyama, and meets a founder of the Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata, whose film Grave of the Fireflies helped establish anime as a powerful and serious art form.
2017 • Travel
The clean minimalism of the Japanese home has been exported around the world, from modernist architecture to lifestyle stores like Muji. But the origins of this ubiquitous aesthetic evolved from a system of spiritual and philosophical values dating back centuries. James visits one of Japan's last surviving traditional wooden villages, and the 17th-century villa of Rinshunkaku, and reveals how the unique spirit of Japanese craftsmen turned joinery into an artform - creating houses without the need for nails, screws or glue. Exploring some of the traditional arts of the Japanese home, James also investigates attitudes to domestic culture in modern Japan, meeting photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki, chronicler of Japan's crowded cities and tiny apartments. Other highlights include a performance by calligrapher and artist Tomoko Kawao and a visit to the hometown of architect Terunobu Fujimori.
2017 • Travel
Experience Yosemite's incredible wonders with breathtaking cinematography, including such icons as the granite monoliths El Capitan and Half Dome, and the spectacular Bridal Veil and Yosemite Falls. Learn about Yosemite's fascinating history as the first land set aside for preservation that inspired John Muir and photographer Ansel Adams and discover why Yosemite is one of America's Crown Jewels.
2020 • Travel
Journey through Chile on a quest to find its elusive Pumas. On the way, discover the wondrous creatures that inhabit this beautiful country.
S1E1 • Wild Chile • 2018 • Travel
Levison Wood and guide Binod Pariyar face a 30-mile trek through the jungles of Eastern Nepal, with no roads and few people to tell them they are heading in the right direction. Their journey comes to an end in Bhutan, a country rarely visited by foreigners, where they visit a holy mountain, join the celebrations for the king's birthday, and listen to local children's tales of yeti.
S1E5 • Walking the Himalayas with Levison Wood • 2016 • Travel
David Thompson was a Briton who helped change the face of Canada. He mapped nearly four million square miles of North America. This would be an impressive feat today - in the 1800s it was, quite simply, staggering. Thompson effectively paved the way for trade from coast to coast in Canada, strengthening the status of the country and defining the borders that kept Canada independent from the US. Ray explores Thompson's footsteps across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. He draws on a new set of bushcraft skills and local knowledge, and explores the mapping techniques used by Thompson.
S1E5 • Ray Mears's Northern Wilderness • 2009 • Travel
The cherry blossoms are out, and James hits the streets of Tokyo with his new guide Yujiro. As James discovers, this unique city is home to some of Japan’s greatest eccentrics and ideas. From obsessive trainspotters, musicians and baffling hi-tech gadgetry to cat superfans, penis festivals and mind-blowing computerised art shows, James tries to understand what makes Japan tick.
S1E3 • James May: Our Man in Japan • 2019 • Travel
Levison Wood returns to the site of his car crash to resume the journey, and is reunited with the people who saved his life. He keeps a promise to Binod by accompanying him on a trek to his family home in Pokhara, before continuing their travels with members of the Gurung tribe, who risk their lives to collect honey from wild bees living on high cliffs. They visit the site of an earthquake in 2014 and visit Kathmandu, before crossing the border into Bhutan.