JAPANESE BA MBOO AND THE WORLD EXPO: A CENTURY OF DISCOVERY
KAJIWARA KOHO
2
Shadow, 2013, 17.5 × 12 × 9.25 inches
JAPANESE BA MBOO AND THE WORLD EXPO At the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris, the Western world saw Japanese bamboo art for the first time. The Tokugawa Shogunate participated in the Exposition along with two feudal lords from the island of Kyushu. Various regional specialties were displayed, including hand-crafted bamboo baskets. A year later, the Meiji government was formed, and Japan embarked on a program of active modernization and participation in world affairs. The newly-formed government felt a strong obligation to display a new Japan to the world and aggressively promoted the country’s unique products.They created lavish national pavilions to promote the culture and arts of Japan at most of the major world’s fairs over the next 40 years, including the World Exposition of 1873 in Vienna and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The strategy worked and an enormous mania for all things Japanese was created in Europe and the United States. To supply this newly-created export market, a number of workshops with anywhere from a few dozen to over 200 artisans were set up in and around the Arima hot springs region, one of the historic centers for high-quality bamboo crafts during the Edo period (1615 –1868). Since the “Arima basket” had become a well-known brand name, products made in surrounding areas were also classified as “Arima baskets.” Recognizing Arima’s success, other regions in Japan soon followed suit in setting up production of bamboo flower baskets, serving trays, and stationary boxes. During the heyday of the world’s fairs and Japonisme, several major early bamboo basket collections in the West were formed, such as the Hans Spörry bamboo collection, assembled from 1890 to 1896; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe bamboo basket collection, approximately 170 baskets, including 60 rare examples of Hayakawa Shokosai I; the Arima basket collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Edward C. Moore Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This special exhibition, Japanese Bamboo and the World Expo: A Century of Discovery, honors the fairs’ roles as critical moments of international exposure that inspired the first generation of modern bamboo masters and their followers to further develop the art form. With pieces spanning from the Boat Shaped Flower Fruit Basket (1887) by Hayakawa Shokosai I to Prism: Square (2015) by Nakatomi Hajime, the exhibition provides an introduction to the diverse developments bamboo arts have undergone throughout the last century by focusing upon three primary regions of bamboo art: Kansai, the historic cities of Kyoto and Osaka and the surrounding area; Kanto, which covers the greater Tokyo metropolis; and Kyushu, which is the southern island of Japan.
K ANSAI
HAYAKAWA SHOKOSAI I (1815 –1897 ) Boat Shaped Fruit Basket, 1887, 12 × 11.5 × 6 inches 4
One day in the mid 19th century, a bamboo craftsman in Osaka named Hayakawa Shokosai carved his name into a small piece of bamboo which he then inserted into the bottom of a freshly finished basket. As far as he knew, he was the first person to sign a basket in Japan. Hayakawa Shokosai I has long been credited in Japan as the first bamboo craftsman to sign his work, but recent research shows that two other basket makers in the Kansai area began signing their works at roughly the same time. What was in the air? For many years, flower baskets from China were deemed more desirable than Japanese- made versions. The sencha tea ceremony was introduced from China, and Chinese tea accessories were the esteemed (and unsigned) originals. Restricted trade encouraged Japanese craftsmen to become excellent imitators of Chinese baskets. However, Hayakawa was creating new forms that were personal in style and conveyed a distinctly Japanese aesthetic. The first signed baskets coincided with Japan’s resumption of international trade, and in the face of these broader opportunities, signing a basket was both a public challenge and crucial self- advertisement. By the 1880s, Hayakawa Shokosai I was known in Europe and America to be Japan’s foremost bamboo artist. His international exposure came by way of the world’s fairs of the late 19th century. It is fitting that a superb example of Hayakawa’s work,Boat Shaped Fruit Basket, is included in this exhibition on the centennial of San Diego’s own world’s fair, the Panama-California Exposition of 1915. The Kansai region is considered the cradle of Japan’s great artistic traditions.The nobility, priesthood, and scholars were brought together in the imperial capitals of Nara and Kyoto, and a flowering of culture resulted.The port city of Osaka became the economic capital of Japan, and merchants joined the nobility as important patrons of the arts. The Kansai bamboo art aesthetic reflects this sophisticated patronage. Hayakawa, Tanabe, Maeda, Yamamoto, and Wada are the names that dominated bamboo art in Japan from the late 1800s into the 1920s. These artists excelled at the most refined, formal baskets but also developed an aesthetic that reflected an engagement with nature and enjoyment of rustic forms. Deceptively simple, this manner of working became a litmus test among artists to rank each other’s artistic refinement. Tanabe Chikuunsai I‘s flower basket Zazen is a typical example. Constructed on a loose framework of hexagonal plaiting, irregularly plaited bamboo strips freely intertwine throughout the form. Tanabe Mitsuko, Chikuunsai I’s granddaughter - in - law, provides a wonderful contemporary example in Sunlight Streaming Through the Leaves of Trees. Kansai artists born in the early 20th century, like Tanabe Chikuunsai II, Higashi Takesonosai, and Maeda Chikubosai II, responded to Modernism with a flowering of creativity. Sophisticated proportions and shapes, exquisite rattan wraps, beautifully finished surfaces, and warm, subtle colors are typical of the works made in Kansai since the 1940s. Kansai’s aesthetic tradition is now being carried forward by Fukunishi Ryosei, husband and wife Tanioka Shigeo and Aiko, and by the great-grandson of Chikuunsai I, Shochiku, soon to be Tanabe Chikuunsai IV. ■
Steve Halvorsen, TAI Modern
HAYAKAWA SHOKOSAI IV (1902 –1975 ) Kofukuji Peony Basket, after 1945, 17 × 12 × 12 inches
HAYAKAWA SHOKOSAI V (1932 – 2011) Untitled Flower Basket, late 1960s to early 1970s, 19.5 × 9 × 9 inches
TANABE CHIKUUNSAI I (1877–1937 ) Zazen, 1910s to 1920s, 18.25 × 10.25 × 10.25 inches
TANABE CHIKUUNSAI II (1910 – 2000 ) Lily Shaped Flower Basket, after 1945, 17.5 × 7.5 × 7.5 inches
TANABE CHIKUUNSAI III (1940 – 2013) A Breeze from Long Ago, 2012, 8.5 × 16 × 5.5 inches >
< TANABE MITSUKO Sunlight Streaming Through the Leaves of Trees, 2000, 10.25 × 10 × 10 inches
TANABE SHOCHIKU III Infinity, 2014, 34.25 × 15 × 15 inches
HIGASHI TAKESONOSAI (1915 – 2003) Akebono, after 1945, 12.5 × 8.25 × 8.25 inches
MAEDA CHIKUBOSAI I (1872 –1950 ) Boat Shaped Flower Basket, 1926, 10 × 20 × 10.5 inches
MAEDA CHIKUBOSAI I I (1917– 2003) Sunlight, 1960s to 1970s, 10 × 6.5 × 6.5 inches
FUKUNISHI RYOSEI Evening Glow, 2010, 13.25 × 9.25 × 8 inches
K AN TO
18 (1890 –1958) IIZUKA ROKANSAI
Long Live His Majesty the Emperor, 1950s, 20.5 × 9 × 9 inches
The artists of Eastern Japan are mainly based in Tokyo, Tochigi, and Niigata prefectures. The Kanto region became a home to artists known for their innovation and break with tradition. From a broad range of colors and types of bamboo, to inventive, asymmetrical shapes, these artists share an impulse for experimentation.This new way of thinking made the Kanto region the center of bamboo arts in the late Taisho (1912 –1926 ) and early Showa (1926 –1989) Periods. Iizuka Rokansai (1890 –1958), the sixth son of Iizuka Hosai I, led the radical modernization of bamboo basketry as a creative art form. Rokansai exhibited both nationally and internationally. His innovations inspired other bamboo artists in the region and beyond. Rokansai’s siblings — including Iizuka Hosai II (1872 –1934) — and many of his talented students were very active throughout the twentieth century. Rokansai advanced the aesthetic experimentation that Osaka- based Hayakawa Shokosai III (1864 –1922) explored a few decades earlier by trying to establish bamboo craft art as a true Japanese fine art. Although his forms, composition, and expressions were radically new, he used motifs from the Tenpyo Period (the late seventh to mid- eighth centuries), and introduced the Japanese traditional concepts of Shin- Gyo- So — three levels of formality in Japanese design — into his works. He claimed that there were three basic modes: Shin defined the most formal, elaborate and symmetrical basket; Gyo defined the less formal baskets in which the artist’s creative ideas mixed with traditional forms; and So basketry was characterized by innovative composition and forms that looked more like sculptures than baskets. Two current Living National Treasures of Japan — Katsushiro Soho, who once learned from Saito Bunseki, and Fujinuma Noboru, whose artistic philosophy is greatly influenced by Rokansai’s son, Iizuka Shokansai— reside in Tochigi.These contemporary artists are philosophical heirs of Iizuka Rokansai and are still advancing the idea of bamboo basketry as a creative art form. In response to innovative styles and sculptural forms, the Nitten exhibitions of the Japan Art Academy evaluate bamboo works as fine art. Unlike the Dento Kogei exhibitions, which evaluate based on traditional forms and strict technical criteria, the Nitten welcome a variety of shapes and techniques.The highest ranking Nitten artist is Honma Kazuaki, whose use of shakotandake — a unique type of speckled bamboo grass — in Origin III exemplifies the Kanto region’s exploration of new materials and textures. His adopted son, Honma Hideaki, represents a further break with tradition in the abstracted and sculptural Double Current. The last student of Iizuka Shokansai, Oki Toshie’s geometric Spring Breeze reflects the region’s sleek and modern aesthetic, which is also seen in the cherry-red dyes of Isohi Setsuko’s Kouka, and Nakamura Tomonori’s modular Balsam Flower. ■
Koichiro Okada, TAI Modern
KATSUSHIRO SOHO Among the Reeds, 2004, 13.5 × 17 × 8.5 inches
FUJITSUKA SHOSEI Rose, 2013, 11 × 13 × 14 inches >
< FUJINUM A NOBORU Spring Light, 2010, 10.75 × 12.5 × 13 inches
HONMA KAZUAKI Origin III, 1996, 23.5 × 18 × 6 inches
HONMA HIDEAKI Double Current, 2013, 19.5 × 43.75 × 10.5 inches
OKI TOSHIE Spring Breeze, 2013, 7.5 × 11.5 × 11.5 inches
NAGAKURA KENICHI Arc, 2014, 15.25 × 27.25 × 7.25 inches
IIZUKA HOSAI I I (1872 –1934) Natural Color Flower Basket with Handle, late1920s to early 1930s, 11 × 8 × 8 inches < KOSUGE KOGETSU Double Walled Flower Basket with Handles, 1950s to 1960s,14.25 × 6.75 × 4.75 inches
ISOHI SETSUKO Kouka, 2013, 8.5 × 20.5 × 9.5 inches
NAKAMURA TOMONORI Balsam Flower, 2015, 15.5 × 19 × 16 inches
K Y USHU
SHONO SHOUNSAI (1904 –1974 ) Sozen Flower Basket, 1955 to 1965, 10.5 × 10.5 × 7.5 inches
Bamboo craft has a long history in Japan. Dating back to the Jomon period (10,000 – 300 BCE ), many daily-use items were made with bamboo because of its strong yet lightweight qualities. Oita Prefecture is home to nearly 40% of Japan’s bamboo forests and one of the most significant regions in the development of the bamboo arts. According to an old story, a salt merchant traveling through the region in the 14th century complained that the containers he used to transport his salt were too heavy. When a local craftsman heard this, he created the first bamboo zaru (“basket”) for salt.These baskets became popular and were soon requested by salt makers from nearby towns. This is considered the beginning of the bamboo basketry trade in Oita. Oita is located on the island of Kyushu in the southern part of Japan, and its geography makes it home to hot springs and mineral water. Many farmers came to the town of Beppu to relax at the hot springs after harvest. Functional bamboo baskets became a popular souvenir as more and more visitors made Beppu their vacation destination. As demand increased, vocational schools of bamboo crafts were established to train craftsmen in the making of the traditional Beppu basket. When the popularity of tea ceremony and ikebana led tastes to favor elaborate, Chinese- style baskets, artisans from Arima, an area nearer to the cultural epicenter of Kyoto, were invited to Beppu to teach local artists more sophisticated, non- utilitarian styles of craftsmanship. In 1902, the Meiji government established a municipal training school in Beppu and a curriculum in bamboo art was included. The school is now the Oita Prefectural Bamboo Craft and Training Support Center. Unlike other regions, which have relied more on a more traditional apprenticeship system, the success of Beppu’s bamboo training has depended on educating future craftsmen in a school setting.Talented artists from around the country came to teach and learn in Beppu. Influenced by the techniques and styles from a variety of regions, Kyushu’s bamboo artists developed a unique style of powerful constructions and robust, jar- shaped baskets. As markets opened up, some craftsmen started specializing in baskets intended more for display than daily use. The majority of pre-war artisans were farmers making baskets for themselves or their neighbors, whereas modern bamboo artists began spending months making a single piece to submit to official exhibitions. This shift is reflected in the change of terminology from kagoshi (“basket maker”) to takekogeishi (“bamboo crafts artist”). Shono Shounsai (1904 –1974), the first bamboo artist to be named a Living National Treasure, revolutionized the art form, creating works that ranged from exquisite traditional vessels to abstract, expressionist sculpture. He also made his mark as a teacher; many of his former students, such as Tanabe Kochikusai, Shono Tokuzo, Abe Motoshi, and Yamaguchi Ryuun, are now mature artists who have taken on the task of educating and inspiring the next generation. The other seminal figure in the Kyushu bamboo tradition is Iwao Kounsai (1901–1992), an important leader and advocate for Oita’s bamboo craft industry. Significant artists, including Kadota Niko, Iwao Honan, Kajiwara Koho, Monden Kogyoku, Kajiwara Aya, Honda Syoryu, Kibe Seiho, and Nakatomi Hajime are part of the Iwao artistic lineage. ■
Dr. Hiroko Johnson, San Diego State University
MONDEN KOGYOKU Flower of Wave, 2007, 12.5 × 13 × 17 inches >
< KADOTA NIKO (1908 –1994 ) Untitled, 1980s, 13.25 × 15.5 × 14.5 inches
HONDA SYORYU Sound of Waves, early 1980s, 9.75 × 14 × 14 inches
KA JIWARA AYA Guiding Waves, 2010, 11.5 × 12 × 12 inches
YUFU SHOHAKU Sacred Mountain, 2015, 28.5 × 21 × 20 inches
TANABE KOCHIKUSAI Ascension, 2014, 19.75 × 14.5 × 14.5 inches
YA M A GUCHI RYUUN Breeze Among Bamboo Leaves, 2012, 11 × 22.5 × 18 inches IWAO HONAN I (1925 – 2002 ) Blue Ocean Plaited Flower Basket, 1980s to 1990s, 7.5 × 13 × 13 inches
SUGIURA NORIYOSHI Whirl Wind, 2010, 22 × 12 × 12 inches
KAWANO SHOKO Fusion, 2015, 7.5 × 15 × 15 inches ABE MOTOSHI Diamond-Shaped Windows, 2005, 14.25 × 10 × 10 inches >
SHONO TOKUZO Otori, 2014, 6 × 57 × 17 inches
KIBE SEIHO Sea of Clouds, 2014, 9 × 13 × 12.5 inches
Back Cover: MORIGA MI JIN Warm Current, 2015, 13.75 × 13.5 × 6 inches
NAKATOMI HA JIME Prism: Triangle, 2015, 21.25 × 20.5 × 14.5 inches
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