Upcoming Exhibitions

• Hokusai from the British Museum
  ―together with masterpieces of painting from collections in Japan

  April 16 to June 12, 2022

  Katsushika Hokusai, the archetypical late-Edo master of ukiyo-e, is one of Japan’s most famous artists. He is immensely popular both in and outside of Japan, and the large number of his outstanding works, assembled by numerous collectors, now in the collection of the British Museum is especially noteworthy.
  This exhibition includes primarily works from the British Museum collection, to which we have added brush-drawn paintings from collections in Japan with the aim of illustrating changes over time in Hokusai’s work. It also focuses on the collectors who assembled the works in the British Museum Collection, to highlight aspects of their love of Japanese art.

  

  Ducks in flowing water, Katsushika Hokusai, Hanging scroll, 1847
  1913,0501,0.320 © The Trustees of the British Museum

• Landscapes of the Heart―Utamakura (TBD)

  June 29 to August 28, 2022

  From ancient times, Japanese have inscribed their feelings in beautiful landscapes expressed in waka poems. By linking emotions to specific places,
  it was possible to share the feelings in waka with others with no knowledge of the actual landscapes. That rhetorical form became known as utamakura, “poetry pillow words”. These “lyrical pillows” added depth to paintings and crafts. Today, however, those waka are no longer common knowledge, making it difficult to share the feelings conveyed by the utamakura. This exhibition is an experiment in attempting to reawaken and share these feelings through a diverse group of works of art.

  

  Writing Box with Scenery of Mt. Ogura in Maki-e (Important Cultural Property), Muromachi period, 15th century, Suntory Museum of Art

• Masterpieces from the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts (TBD)

  September 14 to November 13, 2022

  The Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts was opened in May 1936 to offer opportunities to Osaka citizens to experience its outstanding artistic culture, to enrich everyday life, to support artists’ activities, and, more broadly speaking, to provide resources for the vitalization of culture in Osaka. The collection it has assembled the decades since its founding includes nearly 8,500 examples of Japanese and Chinese paintings and calligraphy, sculptures and crafts. Our museum has taken the opportunity presented by the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts’ closing for major renovations in the fall of 2022 to hold, in Tokyo, an exhibition of works that embody the finest essence of the East Asian art for which that museum is famous.

  

  Late Autumn, Uemura Shoen, Showa era dated 1943, Sumitomo Collection, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts

• Treasures from the Chishakuin

  November 30, 2022 to January 22, 2023

  Cherry blossoms in the spring, maple leaves and autumn grasses in the fall: the rivalry between the beauty of the four seasons is an eternal theme in Japanese art. Chishakuin Temple, the headquarters of the Chisan School of the Shingon Sect of Buddhism, in Higashiyama, Kyoto, is graciously lending an assemblage of magnificent works for this exhibition. The temple has meticulously preserved a group of partition and wall paintings in rich colors on gold grounds that Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539-1610), who ranks with Kanō Eitoku as a Momoyama-period genius, and his disciples painted for Shōunji, the mortuary temple for Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s son Tsurumatsu. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to present those Chishakuin treasures in one setting. Moreover, its utterly famous Cherry Blossoms, Maple Tree, and Pine Tree with Autumn Plants will be shown together outside the temple for the first time.

  

  Maple Tree (National Treasure), Hasegawa Tōhaku, Momoyama period, 16th Century, Chishakuin Temple