This is How to Japanese, a monthly newsletter with something about Japan/Japanese and a dash of いろいろ.
日本・日本語: 美術館
In April 2007, I drove from Fukushima to Aomori during spring break. I hadn’t done much planning, so other than eat an amazing ホタテ丼 (hotate-don, scallop bowl) on the main drag, I went to see a temple and then ended up at the Sannai-Maruyama special historical site. It’s a large park area with an excavation of a Jomon Period settlement and recreations of buildings. The Jomon Jiyukan museum greets visitors at the end of a circular drive.
The Aomori Museum of Art is only 600m away, but I unfortunately mistimed the visit, so I was only able to see Nara Yoshitomo’s Aomori-ken statue outside the museum. The massive dog sculpture in the freezing cold hinted at greatness within the museum, but it was out of reach. Alas.
As luck would have it, I ended up on a there-and-back bus trip to Nebuta Matsuri, Aomori’s most famous parade festival, that summer. Before the parade, we had a few hours to kill, so they drove us to Jomon Jiyukan. I’d already been but knew art was just beyond the hill, so I scuttled over and was treated to Chagall’s backdrops for the ballet Aleko, one of the most striking displays of art I’ve ever seen. The backgrounds are 9 meters by 15 meters and require a room even larger to be displayed. The museum has three of the four in existence. They are tremendous, in every sense of the word.
I think about this museum often, and I thought about it again recently after a visit to the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, over the New Year’s holiday to see the exhibit ニッポンの油絵 近現代美術をかたち作ったもの (Japanese Oil Paintings - The Artists who Shaped Modern/Contemporary Art).
It was a great exhibit, and I learned a lot about Japanese artists I wasn’t familiar with. The building itself is a striking modern building but seems to be aging and is currently undergoing some renovations, so there was scaffolding on the front. The walls of the museum were all slightly off white, and there were markings from where works had previously hung.
But for 520 yen, I was able to see a comprehensive exhibit of oil painting in Japan from the opening of the country in the late 1800s to the present day. For another 350 yen, I saw an impressive display of Mithila paintings on loan from a Niigata museum. And for another 350 yen, I went through the permanent collection, which included Murakami, Rothko, and Van Gogh in addition to many modern Japanese greats like Saeki Yuzo. It was a bit surreal. There was hardly anyone else in the museum, and only one couple in the cafe when I paused to have a cup of tea.
Japan’s prefectural art museums are one of the country’s most underrated assets. I think there will always be arguments over how municipal funds get spent, especially on what kind of art gets purchased. (See, for example, the conversation about Tottori’s Warhol acquisition.) But I think it’s amazing that people across the country, from Kochi to Sapporo, have access. Whether or not they are being used to their fullest extent as education and cultural material, I can’t say, but they’re out there. You don’t have to go far to see impactful works, curators (hopefully) trying to be part of the conversation and (hopefully) including Japanese artists in that conversation, and beautiful, haunting spaces where people can sit and have a coffee.
Just a short newsletter this month. I have a few things simmering and need to shift some of my time around. When I was in the museum I snapped a photo of the museum director’s introduction to the exhibit.
The style struck me as a nice compromise between the 書き言葉 I wrote about in December and a more spoken です・ます style. There are raw verb stems used as transitions between clauses but sentence endings with a warm, spoken tone. Another tool to keep in your quiver, if you ever need it. Give it a read if you’d like!
いろいろ
SWET has a tribute to former Japan Times columnist Angela Jeffs. I didn’t know her, but in reading the tribute I discovered her remarkable account of moving to Japan, which is part memoir and part tribute to the Japan Times. Recommended reading. While you’re at it, you might as well read Mark Schreiber’s account. I hope our generation leaves messages like these for the next. Occasionally it’s nice to imagine having arrived in Japan a decade or two earlier than I initially did, but I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything.
MURAKAMI HAS A NEW NOVEL OUT IN APRIL! AHHH! As usual, the title hasn’t been released yet, but it will be 1,200 manuscript pages. By my calculations, that means around 600 pages? In other words, mercifully short for Murakami. It’s the first of his novels to be sold directly as an ebook, although I imagine that won’t stop the midnight release parties. Watch this space for more Murakami madness.
We’ll see if I can keep this going the whole year, but here’s the start of a thread. I added スシロー and 神宮外苑 in a second tweet. Did I miss anything?
I love buying books on Mercari. They almost almost always get delivered more quickly than used books from Amazon Japan, and sometime you get a bonus message.
I think this hot take holds up. Inspired by Fire Emblem Engage.
Brush-up Life is my favorite J Drama so far this season.
I second this recommendation. I was a little wary of how the second episode started, but they got through the re-do of childhood more quickly than I expected. A lesser show would have gotten stuck in a really annoying doldrums.banger drama alert, first episode was a delight https://t.co/piNnQg6RRpPatrick St. Michel @mbmelodies