Last week we took a bicycle ride to the other side of our tiny city of Warabi to visit a small museum housed in a former residence. I wasn’t really paying attention earlier when Naoko explained the exhibit on view there, but as I began to walk around the first room after paying our 300 yen entry I was pleasantly surprised to find some exquisite ukiyo-e prints on the wall, in a distinctly different style from that of say Hiroshige or Utamaro. They were clearly of the 19th century, yet very fresh and alive. They reminded me a bit of Kuniyoshi or Hokusai’s manga.
When we were escorted to the makeshift cafe/bookstore after finishing looking at the exhibition, it all became clear, as there were various exhibition catalogues and books on the artist, who was none other than Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889). And as it turned out, the museum was the Kawanabe Kyosai Kinen Bijitsukan (Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum). How it ended up that our humble little city — better known to most Japanese as one of the most densely populated spots in all of Japan, or for its reputation as a haven for yakuza — became host to this wonderful little treasure I do not know (presumably Kawanabe’s descendents eventually settled here and at some point the house was turned into a museum), but it heartens me that there exists this cultural oasis a bicycle ride away. Kawanabe’s great-granddaughter Kusumi Kawanabe is the director of the museum.
The exhibition we saw there (on view until October 25th) is entitled Edo • Meiji tanoshimu shomin or “The amusements of the ordinary folk of Edo (Tokyo) during the Meiji era” (roughly), and uses Kyosai’s work to focus on how Edo residents amused themselves in the beginning years of the Meiji Restoration. Elephant rides, childrens’ sumo, string games, hunting for mushrooms — these and other pastimes are depicted wittily by Kyosai. You can get an idea of the exhibition by clicking on the links on this page from the museum’s website (though be forewarned, an idea is all you get as these images are rather poor representations).
Kyosai is an interesting character, in part because after studying with Kuniyoshi (he entered into his apprenticeship with Kuniyoshi when he was only 6 years old!) and then breaking out on his own, he enjoyed rather free contacts with Westerners living in Japan (who were more influenced by he than he was by them, it should be noted). The most important of these, British architect Josiah Conder, learned printmaking from Kyosai, and later wrote the first English-language appreciation of Kyosai (in 1911).
There is scant decent reproductions of Kyosai’s work available online. For starters, you can try:
Waseda’s Database (30 images)
The Art of the Print (7 images)
Castle Fine Arts (5 images)
Or you can seek out Timothy Clark’s OOP Demon of Painting: the art of Kawanabe Kyosai.
On the museum’s English site (excuse the sloppiness) you’ll find directions complete with pictures on how to get to the museum (it’s only a half-hour outside of Tokyo, in Saitama).