Unlocking a trove of talent
YOU would think, if you ran a museum stuffed with more than one million exhibits, that picking out a few things to lend Hong Kong wouldn't really be much of a problem. At which Nishioka Yasuhiro laughs.
'It's been a big headache!' he says. 'Which pieces to bring? What kind? We have everything from the Neolithic period onwards!' In the end, the deputy director of the Tokyo National Museum made the only decision possible - and delegated to his heads of department. They each had to pick one item, their best from a museum that houses the largest collection in the country.
'That was the only way we could choose the highlight of what the museum has,' he says. 'They had a lot of trouble.' Much agonising later, 100 exhibits are on display at Hong Kong's Museum of Art in the first major show of Japanese art China has ever hosted. 'It sounds slightly impolite but there never seems to have been the slightest interest in Japanese art by the Chinese people before, no curiosity or demand,' says Yasuhiro.
Then last year Hong Kong lent treasures for an exhibition, Pearls Of The Orient, to the Tokyo National Museum, prompting Yasuhiro to suggest this exchange, though he says with admirable implacability that he first approached the Government with the idea in 1994.
Interestingly, with so much Japanese art potentially on offer, the SAR Government asked the Tokyo Museum to narrow its choices and only lend 19th-century Japanese pieces that illustrate a time of great transition in its art world.
'It was just felt that people here might find it more accessible, that it would be more suitable to show a period that had been so influenced by the colonials and Europeans,' says Yasuhiro.
The result, even as a blinkered look at Japanese art, is a mix of works including painting, calligraphy, ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork, sword fittings and textiles, representing various schools and styles flourishing in Japan at the time.
Paintings are by some of the country's most famous artists: Takeuchi Seiho, Yokoyama Taikan, Katsushika Hokusai, Seiki Kuroda.
There are also examples of an era of sophisticated craftsmanship: writing boxes, furniture, game sets, bronze mirrors, folding screens, costumes. A number of the more fragile pieces will be changed at the beginning of August, in order to protect them.
The exhibits reflect aesthetic tastes of Japanese living in the Edo (1603-1867) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods, really the first time the country's art became known to the West, a time of frequent cultural contact that paved the way for a new look in modern Japanese art. Until then Japan had been heavily influenced mainly by Chinese and Korean culture and had not developed its own distinctive art forms and styles.
'We had no Industrial Revolution, nothing like that,' says Yasuhiro.
'There was an exposition in Vienna to which Japanese art was taken in 1872, and it was the big eye opener for the Japanese people.
'They suddenly started to be more aggressive in learning about European art. They'd never seen oil paintings before, for instance.' Changes came initially through Nagasaki, the only 'window' to the outside world. Everyone was suddenly studying new techniques. 'Until that time, Japanese art had been virtually locked away,' says Yasuhiro.
But the culture of the nation is closely linked to its political system, the exhibition's catalogue points out, and Japan's Modern period, starting with the Meiji era, began when the emperor regained power and a new government was formed. As usual, changing culture would reflect changing politics.
The exhibition explores the progress of several Japanese arts. Lacquerwork reflects the large-scale production and state-of-the-art technology of the time, works sumptuously decorated in gold and silver, like the surface of a writing box so densely covered with gold it looks more like flakes than powder. Plaques like the one with a view on Enoshima are typical of the new style that emerged because of international exchanges.
Bunmei Kaika (civilisation and enlightenment) describes the movement of Westernisation in society at the time, although it wasn't long before Japanese traditions made a comeback to show Japan as a modern nation, a 'return to the traditions', something explored in many of the paintings, which cover a period of about the 100 years. There was a move, for instance, from the 'picturisation of conceptual world' to 'painting visible things as one sees them', like Oki Ichiga's Edo Garden Of The Feudal Lord Of Inshu Province.
Meiji period ceramics also show the social changes. Ceramics were a possible export item from a country where industries were just developing. Expositions began to show the nation's potters moving away from the traditional values of Chinese ceramics and revealing their view of a new world.
The loss of patrons with the gradual democratisation of society was a blow to craftsmen like the revered metalworkers, and the government waded in not just to save that industry, but to provide a stable environment for the arts. Metalwork became smaller, deeply engraved; castings became internationally recognised, the industry adapted - but the time of the country's famed swordmakers was over. Metalwork on the scale it had existed was one of several arts gradually fading out with rapid modernisation and industrialisation.
Japanese Art Of The Nineteenth Century. Special Exhibition Gallery, 2/F HK Museum of Art, TST. 10am-6pm Mon-Wed and Fri-Sat (closed Thur); 1pm-6pm Sun and public holidays. $10 ($5) - Wed free. Tel: 2721 0116. Until Aug 27
