Japan

In 2018, Amrit published ‘Children of Change’, a memoir recounting his early life and the difficult years in Auroville when he and others chose not to take sides in the bitter conflict between the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) and the then-dominant Auroville collective.

Jyoti Naoki Eri was born in Kyoto, Japan, to accomplished artist parents. He trained as a sculptor in Japan through a traditional apprenticeship process.

A few weeks ago a new biography of The Mother was published. The Mother: A Life of Sri Aurobindo’s Spiritual Collaborator is written by Peter Heehs, a reputed historian who has been a researcher in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives for over 50 years, writing biographies of Sri Aurobindo and publishing papers on related topics.

Donald “Don” Kelman (91) passed away on 30 January 2025 at his home in the Prarthana Community in Auroville. He had valiantly fought dementia for several years with the support of his loved ones and a community of dear friends.

The first thing that strikes you about any exhibition of Priya Sundaravalli’s is the sheer fecundity and variety of her work which makes it impossible to classify her.

Valeria has been teaching ikebana, the traditional Japanese Art of Flower Arrangement, in Auroville for over twenty years. Why did she, an Italian, study it for many years in Japan and then decide to teach it here?

On August 26th, Ananda (Jean-François R.L. Bertaux) left his body at Marika House at the age of 68, after coping with Parkinson’s disease for many years.

The Mother’s stay in Japan between 1916–1920 was not only of profound importance for her spiritual explorations, but might also have had a big influence upon the development of Auroville.

Amrit joined Auroville in 1969. Recently he wrote about his life and spiritual development before and during his residence in Auroville. As a member of the so-called ‘Neutral’ group, his account offers a very different perspective upon Auroville’s troubled history in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Flashback to 30 years ago: A 10 year old Auroville child comes across a haiku in a book of poems that describes the moss temple of Japan. It sounds so beautiful and the little girl imagines that this must be a place in a fairytale where everything is possible …

A few weeks before her 100th birthday, Luise Hansen left her body on April 21st in Kobe, Japan. Luise, originally from Linz, Austria, had come to Pondicherry in the late sixties and had some personal darshans with The Mother.

The undisputed master of Auroville woodworking is Japanese Aurovilian Kenji Matsumoto. But it was by chance, he says, that woodworking became his profession.

In 2010, the first ‘ONE ASIA’ event was held in Auroville. It brought together artists and tea masters from various Asian countries to explore and strengthen unity between their cultures, as well as introducing the richness of Asian cultures to Auroville.

The name of Dominique Darr is indissolubly connected to the early days of Auroville. Who in Auroville doesn’t know her photo of a lone granite stone with the letters AV painted on it, marking Auroville land?

George Katsutoshi Nakashima (May 24, 1905 – June 15, 1990) was a Japanese-American woodworker, architect, and furniture-maker, one of the leading innovators of 20th century furniture design and a father of the American Craft Movement.