Japanese Art

Reflections on Calligraphy in Japan: Part, Present & Future

Posted on by Alice

Out of all the forms of art to come from Japan one of the most influential – if not the most influential – has got to be calligraphy. First introduced to Japan during the 6th century calligraphy’s artistic significance has continually transformed throughout history. Today, in the 21st century, it is possible to look back at reflectively at the history of calligraphy in Japan to consider the way that its socio-political influence has changed, both within Japan and the wider world. This reflective consideration of calligraphy has been a focus of study this week, and as such this post will analyse two different academic discussions about calligraphy’s influence throughout history.

The first discussion comes in the form of an hour’s lecture produced by the Metropolitan Museum as part of their Sunday at the Met series. The lecture, consisting of talks by Tomoko Sakumura and John Carpenter and a brief calligraphy demonstration by Shodo Harada Roshii, was largely concerned with the role of calligraphy in pre-modern Japan.

Beginning with a discussion on waka – or ancient court poetry – before moving on to an examination of the presence of calligraphy within medieval artwork, the talks concluded by looking at the aesthetic dimensions of calligraphy as a form of writing. The topic of this talk was very much on calligraphy’s influence within Japan alone, examining the way this artform was expressed during a time period yet uninfluenced by the wider artistic world. However, the second academic discussion I have looked by contrast shifts its focus sharply towards calligraphy’s influence on the wider artistic world following the second world war.

The work of our very own Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer, the creator and course director of UEA’s MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies, Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde considers how post-war calligraphy bridged artistic interests between Japan and the East. ‘Bokujinkai’ refers to the 1950’s calligraphy research and exhibition collective who worked to advance avant-garde or ‘modern’ calligraphy. In her book, Professor Bogdanova-Kummer details how the abstract form of calligraphy was likened to American interpretive art. Inspired by this similarity, a blending of the two artforms was proposed as a way to unite the two previously warring nations through art. The efforts of the group, and the success of their monthly publication, Bokubi, would pave the way for calligraphy’s recognition within the western modern-art world, cementing a place for the art form not just within Japanese art, but also internationally.

Having moved from the use of calligraphy in pre-modern Japanese art to its post-war use as a means of improving east-west relations, it is curious to consider how the significance of calligraphy has changed within Japan over time.

And this has got me thinking; having gone through such a fundamental transformation over the past millennia, what is in store for the future of calligraphy? This is a question that it appears only time will answer.

Further reading

The Met (2013). Sunday at the Met: Brush Writing in the Arts of Japan. Accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AGgwUlaJc.

Bogdanova-Kummer, Eugenia (2020). Bokujinkai: Japanese Calligraphy and the Postwar Avant-Garde. Japanese Visual Culture, Vol 19. Brill. ISBN 9789004437067.

Third Thursday Lectures – Spontaneous and Playful: Kawanabe Kyōsai as a Performer

Posted on by Alice

On a sunny spring evening we congregated virtually for another Third Thursday Lecture, this month hosted by Professor Sadamura Koto. A fellow of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Professor Sadamura is currently curating the Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Exhibiting works from the eccentric 19th century artist, the exhibition is the result of Professor Sadamura’s years of research into Kawanabe Kyōsai and will be open from the 19th of March to the 22cnd of June 2022.

Kyōsai was certainly a fascinating figure in Japanese history, and Professor Sadamura’s lecture served to shed a little more light on to the life of the prolific artist. Born in 1831, Kyōsai began painting at the tender age of 7, completing his formal kano artist training by 19 years old. Originally trained in classical painting with a specialism in large compositions, during his 30s he would begin gravitating towards more satirical art. Images depicting animals engaged in human-like activities as well as absurd erotic art known as shunga have remained some of the most popular examples of his work. Unflattering allusions to governmental figures – typically in undignified or compromising situations – were another notorious aspect of Kyōsai’s art and would even lead to him being imprisoned in 1870.

Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831 – 1889), Courtesy of The Soame Jenyns Collection of Japanese and Chinese Art

Kyōsai’s life was a colourful one and as Professor Sadamura recalled his exploits it was hard not to be feel a degree of affection towards him. But for me personally, one of the most moving and interesting parts of this lecture was the recollection of his friendship with Josiah Conder, a 29-year-old British watercolourist who became his pupil in 1881. Having originally travelled to Japan for the 1881 Domestic Industrial Exhibition, the apparent shine that Kyōsai took to the younger artist is perhaps surprising considering the less-than-flattering way he had previously represented foreign powers in his art. However, it was a friendship that was clearly a deep one, with Condor remaining friends with Kyōsai right up until his death in 1889 and having reportedly held his hand as he died.

Following the artists death, it is his sekiga – or ‘spontaneous paintings’ – that have remained a fascinating aspect of his artistic legacy for modern art enthusiasts. Publicly drawn as a form of entertainment, these incredible paintings were created in a few short hours and remain some of the most impressive examples of his work.

And it is these sekiga that are at the heart of the Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection exhibition. By displaying examples of these works within small spaces, Professor Sadamura wishes to ‘create a space where visitors feel as if they are experiencing the lively presence of the artist’. Due to money and time limitations it remains to be seen if I will get to experience the lively presence of Kawanabe Kyōsei for myself, but this has certainly been a fascinating lecture into the colourful life of a highly influential artist.

Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection will be open for public viewing at London’s Royal Academy of Arts from the 19th of March to the 22cnd of June 2022. To find out more please visit their website.

‘From the Collection of a Private Man’ – A Look at the Work of Edmund de Waal

Posted on by Alice

The nature of collections is a very personal thing. What we choose to collect, how, and why can say a lot about us as individuals. And when we look at collections from a historic perspective they can offer tantalising clues about their previous owners, and even provide scholars with a breadcrumb trail to trace the linage and travels of a particular family.

This is the premise of Edmund de Waal’s bestselling non-fiction book The Hare With Amber Eyes, in which he used his family’s collection of 264 beautifully carved Japanese netsuke as a storytelling tool to document the history of his family. This week’s blog post, however, does not concern this specific collection of Japanese artefacts, but rather the influence of the theme of collections – and of Japan itself – on Waal’s own artwork.

Having trained in Japan as a potter, Waal is an accomplished artisan in his own right, and one of his pieces has recently found a home in the Sainsbury Centre’s collection here on UEA campus.

From the Collection of a Private Man by Edmund de Waal, as displayed at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, photo taken by myself

Entitled From the Collection of a Private Man, the art-piece is a collection of roughly 50 separate miniature ceramic pieces, arranged among 7 shelves behind a glass frame. A stark, clinical white in colour and with a repetitive uniformity of form and shape, I have to admit that at first glance I did not find this piece particularly enticing. Nor could I see any obvious trace of Japanese influences. The collected pieces in fact seemed – to me anyway – disappointingly minimalist, and modern, with seemingly nothing to discern them from the work of artists who had not honed their craft in Japan.

However, upon closer inspection – and the minute forms of these objects really urges the viewer to peer closer – I noticed something very interesting. On several of these pieces – such as the example below – you can see little lines and touches of gold, as if marking invisible cracks or chips in the works.

These lovely, subtle touches of gold are not simply stylistic embellishments but actually an example of a Japanese practice such as kinsugi. Rooted within the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, a philosophy encouraging the appreciation of the beauty in imperfection, kinsugi translates literally as ‘golden repair’. It is a technique of lovingly fixing broken ceramics in a manner that highlights – rather than conceals – the damage it has suffered, preserving it for posterity in the form of a beautiful, golden scar. This is the first time I have seen the influence of kinsugi reflected in the work of a European artist, and it is curious to see the presence of such a uniquely Japanese art within a distinctly contemporary and minimalist piece.

It is left up to the viewer’s assumption whether this is an example of genuine, necessitated repair, or a deliberate artistic allusion by Waal, intended to exemplify his Japanese influences. Either way, it is a truly a lovely touch, as well as a humbling reminder to myself not to judge a work by first appearances.

References

De Waal, Edmund (2010). The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. Penguin Random House. ISBN 978 0 099 53955 1.

Nomliving.com (2021). Kintsugi: A How to Guide. Accessed at: https://nomliving.com/blogs/thingswedo/kintsugi-a-how-to-guide.

Explorations of 3/11 Through Artwork: Yasusuke Ôta’s ‘Deserted Town’

Posted on by Alice

Natural disasters have been a recurring element of Japanese life for centuries. Located on a highly active tectonic zone, earthquakes and tsunamis pose a constant risk to the people of Japan and have repeatedly devasted towns and cities throughout its history. But as much as the threat of such disasters are well recognised in Japan, it does not make it any less devasting when they do occur.

At 2.46 PM on the 11th of March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Tohoku region of Japan, the strongest earthquake in recorded history. This earthquake was shortly followed by a devastating tsunami that struck the North-eastern coast of Japan, wiping out entire towns and killing more than 19,000 people. Adding yet further devastation, these dual disasters would then result in a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, displacing a further 150,000 people as the surrounding area was forcibly evacuated.

What was left behind in Fukushima however was unknown numbers of domestic pets and farm animals. And it is these animals that have become the subject of one post-3/11 Japanese photographer seeking to explore the aftermath of the disaster through his photography.

Ôta, Yasusuke. Deserted Town. 2011, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In the photo Deserted Town from Yasusuke Ôta’s collection The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima, we are met with the surreal image of an ostrich strolling through the deserted streets of a Fukushima shopping district. In any other context, such an image could be considered highly comical. And indeed, it could certainly be argued as a moment of levity in a photo collection largely comprising of disturbing images of dead animals.  

But as much as this kind of comical image may seem to diminish the seriousness of the situation, as a matter of fact the production of humorous and surprisingly light-hearted art pieces in response to natural disasters has always been commonplace in Japan. In her book Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923, Gennifer Weisenfeld discusses various examples of humorous artworks created in the wake of historic disasters in Japan. Much of these artworks depict comical causes of such disasters, such as the childish misbehaviour of gods, or the antics of a mythical, gigantic catfish that was historically blamed for the occurrence of earthquakes.

This light-hearted response to mass loss of life and physical destruction may seem strange, but ultimately, it says a lot about the nature of human beings. Humour has always existed as a coping mechanism for humanity in the face of traumatic events. And this trend can be seen as much in older artworks created in response to natural disasters in Japan as it can now. In situations of destruction on a scale beyond human comprehension, maybe the only way that we can truly process such events is through images that depict the surreal and absurd. Such as, perhaps, the image of an ostrich taking a stroll through inner-city Fukushima.

Further Reading

Huismarseille.nl (2022). Yasusuke Ôta’s collection The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima. Accessed at https://huismarseille.nl/en/exhibitions/yasusuke-ota/.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer (2012). Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923. University of California Press.

‘Making Japan’ & ‘The Japanese House’ – A Review of Virtual Exhibitions

Posted on by Alice

For this weeks assignment we were asked to visit and review an exhibition related to Japanese art or textiles. However, due to money and time limitations I was unfortunately unable to visit an exhibition in person this week. Instead, I have decided to bring you a mini review of two separate (free) Japan-related exhibitions available for online viewing, where I will share my thoughts along with links for any interested readers.

(Leeds Museums and Galleries) Making Japan: Art. Life. Culture.

This beautifully laid out virtual exhibition explores a collection of physical objects encompassing the breadth of Japanese history and culture. Very effectively in my opinion, Making Japan is broken into groups of objects related to specific aspects of Japanese culture and history; samurai, religion, celebrations, food, popular culture, and most pertinently for this assignment, crafts. This specific display emphasized the wealth of different influences that have shaped Japanese crafts over the centuries, such as zen Buddhism as well as Western influences during the Meiji (1868 – 1912) era.

An really interesting aspect of Making Japan for me was the link between the collection and the Gascoigne family, who were living in Japan between 1946 and 1951. While it was not clear how many of the objects included in the exhibition were once owned by the family, it does feature several photos taken during their time in Japan, along with some rather lovely, colorized camera footage. This little detail provided a personal touch which really made it stand out and was an added highlight in a very visually appealing exhibition.

(Barbican) Online Exhibition Tour: The Japanese House

This tour differed quite dramatically from Making Japan in that rather than providing a mixture of text and images, this exhibition takes the form of a google maps style walkthrough. The Japanese House is the UK’s first major exhibition to focus on post-war Japanese domestic architecture, taking visitors on a (virtual) walkthrough of Japanese homes over the last half a century.

While I do want to highly praise the curators of this exhibition for the obvious amount of careful planning that went into the design and content of this exhibition, I do have to be honest and say that this virtual tour was a very jarring experience. It was impossible to zoom in on a lot of the text and images featured in the displays, which was very disappointing. And certain parts of the exhibition, such as displays on the lower floors, were also impossible to (virtually) travel to as far as I could see.

This is not at all to suggest that The Japanese House is a poor exhibition; from what I was able to make out, quite the opposite is true. However, I do think the visual walkthrough format was the wrong choice for an exhibition for such small text and images, and a reconsideration of the choice of format may be in order.

Ainu Culture in Japanese Colonial Photography

Posted on by Alice

Colonialist photography has a complicated and chequered history in Japan. With the surface intention of demonstrating Japan’s anthropological prowess to the rest of the world, it also served the additional function of strategically dehumanizing the indigenous people who populated different parts of Asia. By reducing them in the public mind to uncivilised ‘savages’ in need of the paternalistic guidance of colonialist powers, nations could effectively dismiss lingering moral concerns about the subjugation of indigenous people.

In addition to their role in colonialist propaganda, photography featuring indigenous people also became a major source of curiosity for Japanese people during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Typically distributed in the form of single postcards or anthologies, images of different races and indigenous peoples became popular collector’s items. These images ranged from isolated profiles emphasizing the physical characteristics of different races to photographs purporting to capture the everyday activities of native people. These photos were typically highly staged, with careful planning put into composition, location and who and what was featured in an image. However, that is not to say that more organic images of the daily lives of indigenous people were also not captured during this time.

For today’s post I would like to look at one such example of seemingly un-staged colonialist photography. While I am unable to directly post this photograph to my blog due to copyright restrictions, it can be be viewed for free if you follow this link to the Layfayette online collection.

This photo depicts an Ainu community participating in an iomante or a ‘bear ceremony’. The Ainu are an indigenous group who, while today mostly isolated to Hokkaido, once occupied northern Honshu and the Sakhalin and Kuril islands. Centuries of oppression and subjugation under Japanese rule stripped the Ainu of their lands and rights. And as with so many other indigenous groups in Asia, they also became a much-studied subject within Japanese colonial anthropology.

Looking at this photo as it is displayed on the Lafayette website, there is actually little information about this image. We do not know the identity of its photographer, but we do know that it was taken in Hokkaido between 1933 and 1945. We can also infer that the scene it depicts is organic rather than orchestrated due to the context of the events that are taking place in it.

Iomante is a ceremony that involves the ritual killing of a young bear. The Ainu traditionally view bears as kamui or ‘gods’, and during the winter hunters will venture in to caves to seek a baby bear to bring back. Fed only the best food and raised lovingly by the local community for the duration of one to two years, it is believed that the sacrificed bear will then return to the land of the gods, grateful for the kindness they have been shown. This gratitude will then be repaid in kind through the spiritual protection of the bear deity. As such, this ceremony is not a regular occurrence, and it can be surmised that the events taking place in the photograph are genuine. The history of colonial photography is an ugly one, but images like this are certainly intriguing from a historical perspective.

Further Reading

BBC.com (2020). Japan’s forgotten indigenous people. Available at https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20200519-japans-forgotten-indigenous-people

Ka. F. Wong (2006). Entanglements of ethnographic images: Torii Ryūzō’s photographic record of Taiwan aborigines (1896–1900). Japanese Studies, Vol 24, no. 3, pp. 283-299. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371390412331331546

Third Thursday Lecture – When Sylvester Morse (1838 – 1925) Met Matsuki Bunkyo (1867 – 1940)

Posted on by Alice

This month for their Third Thursday Lecture series, the Sainsbury Institute for Japanese Arts and Culture (SISJAC) welcomed Professor Nicole Rousmaniere, SISJAC’s own founding director and current research director. Also serving as a curator for the British Museum, she was the lead curator for their 2019 Citi Manga Exhibition, and having had the opportunity to speak to her before as part of my MA she is a fascinating person who is always a joy to listen to.

The subject of this month’s lecture relates to Professor Rousmaniere’s current research in to two important figures in the history of Japanese-Western relations; American zoologist, archaeologist and orientalist Sylvester Morse, and Japanese entrepreneur Matsuki Bunkyo. These two men came to Professor Rousmaniere’s attention due to their relation to one of her specialist fields, that of Japanese ceramics.

After some introductory words by Professor Simon Kaner and Dr Ryoko Matsuba, Professor Rousmaniere began her lecture by introducing us to the background of these two men, and how they came to meet. Known as the ‘father of Japanese archeology’, Sylvester Morse would first come to Japan in 1877 to study molluscs. He met Matsuki Bunkyo while working as professor of zoology at the University of Tokyo in the late 1870s, and offered to sponsor him to attend Salem High School in return for his help building a collection of Japanese ceramics. Upon graduation, Bunkyo would go on to marry a local Salem woman and become a highly successful dealer in East Asian art and ceramics. Morse meanwhile would donate his expansive collection of Japanese ceramics to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where it today remains.

Portrait of Matsuki Bunkyo (Source: Philips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts)

This was a deeply engaging lecture that shed light on a very important story in the wider narrative of Meiji-era Japan-America relations. On a personal note, one of the things I really want to applaud Professor Rousmaniere for in this lecture is her decision to illuminate the life of Bunkyo’s wife Martha Bunkyo, a brilliant and ambitious woman in her own right. Having held ambitions to teach in Japan since childhood, Bunkyo and Martha’s troubled relationship would be dogged by allegations of domestic violence and Bunkyo’s numerous affairs, eventually culminating in her suicide.

It was a tragic end to the life of a woman who was pivotal in Bunkyo’s integration into Salem society, and a detail that so easily could have been reduced to a footnote in the dissolution of his career. The fact that the story of Martha’s short life was handled with such empathy and dignity is something I greatly appreciate and actually found very touching. The women who existed in the lives of famous, male figures have a frustrating tendency to be ignored in historical narratives, and so I was impressed by the care taken not to let this happen. Overall it was a wonderful lecture, and I look forward to hopefully hearing about more of Professor Rousmaniere’s research in the months to come.

Ogata Gekko’s Bijin Meisho Awase: Understanding Meiji Japan Through Art

Posted on by Alice

When we analyse art, understanding the historical context of a work may be just as important as analysing the scene it depicts or the techniques used to create it. Every piece of art is a product of the time-period in which it was created. As such, artwork often functions as a snapshot of a particular century in much the same way as a photograph, preserving the sensibilities, emotions, and motivations of artists during that time for posterity. It is here that art and history intersect as separate disciplines, and a mutual understanding of both becomes an important aspect of interdisciplinary cultural studies.

The Meiji era (1868 to 1912) was a pivotal moment for art in Japan. Following the opening of Japan to the West during the 1850s and 60s, art became an important tool in the efforts to demonstrate the cultural and industrial prowess of Japan to Europe and America. One such artwork produced during this time is Ogata Gekko’s Bijin Meisho Awase (Beauties at Famous Places), created in 1897. Made in the classic ukiyo-e woodblock print style, it is one of four of Ogata’s artworks to be kept at London’s Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum.

Ogata, Gekko. Bijin Meisho Awase. 1897, V&A, London.

On a surface level, this beautiful ink and paper artwork seems simple in its premise. Here, we see an woman and two young girls out on a walk, dressed in traditional kimono and strolling against a backdrop of colourful autumn flowers. But what is interesting about this image in an historical context is the fact that it is actually an aesthetic reworking of a very popular motif in pre-Meiji art.

Images of women with children were a popular artistic subject during the 1700s and early 1800s, but these kinds of images previously did not typically depict mothers and children. Instead, these were images of courtesans accompanied by their child attendants. However, at the time of the Meiji restoration such art was deemed too vulgar due to their allusions to sex work, and therefore unrepresentative of the kind of ‘fine art’ the Meiji government wished to bring to the attention of the western art world. As a result, this traditional motif was sanitised instead as maternal images of mothers and children, reworking the same basic composition within a different, more ‘honourable’ context.

What perhaps makes this change even more significant is the fact that the self-taught Ogata actually began his artistic career designing advertisements for brothels. When you take this fact in to account, you truly can appreciate the transformation that was taking place in Japan at the time, not just in the art world, but also societally. In this way, the field of art history is an invaluable tool for exploring particular periods of history, and one that can, quite literally, illustrate the complex socio-political climate of the time.

The V&A’s catalogue of artworks can be viewed for free through their website.

References

Yoshiaki, Shimizu (2001). Japan in American Museums: But Which Japan? The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 1. pp. 123 – 134. https://doi.org/3177193

Third Thursday Lectures – Hokusai’s Illustrations for The Great Picture Book of Everything

Posted on by Alice

For the Sainsbury Institute’s final Third Thursday Lecture of 2021 assorted students, academics and members of the public gathered online to listen to a talk by Dr Alfred Haft, curator of the new The Great Picture Book of Everything exhibition currently open at the British Museum. I detailed my own visit to the exhibition in a recent blog post, but this lecture proved a wonderful opportunity to take a deep dive in to the exhibition through the expert knowledge of its curator.

The work of celebrated ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849) the 103 separate artworks that comprise The Great Picture Book were purchased by the British Museum from a Paris auction in 2019. As explained by Dr Haft, the survival of these beautifully intricate drawings is owed to the fact that this work was ultimately never published, and as a result they were not destroyed as part of the woodblock making process which would have been used to reproduce them. And while the decision not to publish The Great Picture Book may have left its existence unknown for centuries, its unexpected emergence sheds tantalising light on to the later years of the intriguing and famously cantankerous artist.

Illustration made by Hokusai while working as an apprentice (Artwork by Katsushika Hokusai, photograph taken by myself at the British Museum).

Beginning by recounting Hokusai’s lifetime, Dr Haft touched upon not only the details of Hokusai’s various apprenticeships under established artists as a young man, but also the tragic loss of his youngest daughter and wife in his later life. This was a personal touch that was quite moving, enabling the audience to get a sense of Hokusai the man, not just the artist.

Dr Haft’s artistic analysis of selected pages of The Great Picture Book was also highly engaging. For those who have not yet had a chance to see them in person, it is important to emphasize how incredibly tiny these illustrations are. Barely the size of a postcard, the sheer level of detail that has been put into these sketches is simply astounding. In one especially charming example, a painstaking use of linework has been used to suggest differing textures of feathers in a sketch of a duck so small ‘it could rest comfortably in a soupspoon’.

Image of birds analysed in Dr Hafts lecture, the duck in question can be found in the bottom centre. (Artwork by Katsushika Hokusai, photo taken by myself at the British Museum)

The Great Picture Book of Everything is in essence a testament to the mastery of Katsushika Hokusai, and a collection of works that we are very lucky to still have intact. Dr Haft’s talk served as a fantastic introduction to the exhibition for those who have yet to visit, and for those of us who have a wonderful companion talk to explore the history of Hokusai just that little bit further.

To find out more and buy tickets to The Great Picture Book of Everything exhibition at the British Museum, please visit the exhibition’s webpage. And if you would like to read my own personal review of the exhibition, the relevant blog post can be found here.

For more information about the Sainsbury Institute and their Third Thursday Lecture series, please visit their website.

Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything – The Master Arrives at the British Museum

Posted on by Alice

This week I was lucky enough to start off on an exciting note with a guided tour of the British Museum’s new exhibition, Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything. Studying an MA in Interdisciplinary Japanese Studies with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures certainly has its perks, and this chance to view the exhibition for free and speak with the Exhibitions curator, Dr Alfred Haft, is an opportunity I have greatly appreciated.

One of the few remaining original prints of The Great Wave, Hokusai’s most famous work

Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist who lived between 1760 and 1849. A historically renowned master of ukiyo-e, a type of woodblock prints, his expansive catalogue of works remain one of the most culturally significant in the world of art. And this catalogue of works has expanded very recently, with the discovery of a collection of 103 separate drawings attributed to Hokusai coming to light in 2019. Belonging to an unpublished work titled ‘The Great Picture Book of Everything’, through the efforts of Dr Haft and the British Museum these images have now been catalogued online and also put out on public display.

The box which once housed the collected drawings of The Great Picture Book

Dr Haft and the other staff involved in creating this exhibition have been incredibly successful in structuring it in a way that really urges visitors to slow down and contemplate the art on show in a leisurely manner. The simple but eye catching colour scheme of sheer white and deep blue draws your eye to smaller displays of art implements and sketchbooks, while the walls of the exhibition space are lined with the tiny, individual pages of The Great Picture Book of Everything.

Page from an picture book attributed to one of Hokusai’s apprentices

I must say that I was truly blown away by the level of detail that could be seen in these tiny, fragile pages, smaller than even the average book-page today. Looking at the texture of the hair in one particular sketch I could almost feel its softness while gazing at the individual, delicate curls that had been painstakingly drawn by Hokusai, who, it is worth noting, would have been at least in his 60s at the time. There’s something incredibly intimate about seeing such a tiny drawing close up, and being inches away from something that so legendary an artist would have physically drawn himself.

The goddess Nüwa receives precious stones to repair the pillars that separate heaven and earth by Katsushika Hokusai

Because what makes this collection so remarkable is that most of the works that still exist today would not, physically, have been drawn or painted by Hokusai. Rather, they are printed iterations of works that Hokusai himself once sketched, with the originals destroyed as part of the woodblock printing process. As such, it is the fact that these pages were never published which has ultimately saved them. Why The Great Book of Everything was never published is a question we can only speculate, but it was a decision which has left behind a beautiful – and exceedingly precious – collection of images created by Hokusai’s own hand, to now be preserved in posterity for future generations.

To find out more and book tickets, please visit the British Museum website.

(All photographs featured were taken by myself.)