Introduction

Our Spring 2010 catalogue of Japanese art wanders along personal paths through the 20th century. It shares our passion for Japan’s embrace of modernity. Though much hardship and trouble filled the period, the arts breathed with a feeling for life’s beauties and possibilities.

We include a number of Nihonga paintings from the first decades of the century, as well as two from the last. Enamels, lacquers and metalwork reflect the finest taste and workmanship of the late Meiji and Taishō eras. A group of studio basketry textures the collection before we glance at some of the high points of modernism from the 1930s through the 1970s.

All of the work reflects a feeling for the natural world. This we believe to be one of the essential elements of Japanese aesthetics, in all periods and mediums. A sense of the mutability of things, the transience of life and its beauty shadows and deepens many of these pieces. Even the most abstract or stylized of these works respects the rhythms and physical perfection of the natural world. The more closely one looks at the components of life, the more exact and balanced do they seem. Most Japanese know this innately and the knowledge informs the society’s respect for flawless craftsmanship. While this quality may seem obvious in the work of naturalist painters, we believe it informs the best modernism as well. It echoes in the work of the studio bamboo artists, in the elegant geometries of metalworkers such as Takahashi Kaishū, the rigorous bronzes of Sasaki Shōdō and Takamura Toyachika, or the commitment to skilled potting and firing by abstract ceramic artists such as Suzuki Osamu. None of these artworks exist in the airless world of humanity alone. They connect us with the broader universe and make us feel its brilliance.