Tweet29-01-2012 om 21:52 by Sueli Brodin

There were many reasons I was eager to see the new exhibition at Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht entitled “The Beauty of Silence – Japanese Nō and Nature Prints by Tsukioka Kōgyo.”

First of all, my interest is always raised when I come across anything related to Japan.

Secondly, the name of the exhibition, which had immediately reminded me of Yasunari Kawabata’s novel “Sadness and Beauty”, held the promise of a rare glimpse into a fascinating aspect of Japanese culture.

My knowledge of Japanese print artists being generally limited to Hokusai and Hiroshige, I was also keen to discover the work of Tsukioka Kōgyo, whom I had never heard of. The prospect of learning something about Nō theatre was also appealing, since it is a part of Japanese culture I am not familiar with. My mother says that we went to a Nō play once when we lived in Japan, but I can’t remember it.

Moreover, I have been very fond of Japanese prints ever since my French grandmother gave me one as a special birthday present when I turned 18.

She told me that she had bought it in the early 1950s in Tokyo, during her one-year stay in Japan with my stepgrandfather. She didn’t know at the time that one day she would have a half-Japanese granddaughter to give it to. “Who would have thought that your father would later marry a Brazilian woman of Japanese origins? The fact that you are half-Japanese by blood and have lived in Japan as a child makes me even happier to offer you this present, because I know how meaningful it will be to you,” she told me that day.

My grandmother’s Japanese print hangs in my bedroom and I enjoy looking at it every day. It is a colourful image depicting a humorous scene of a group of women dressed in kimono, chuckling at one of them who has just fallen over backwards while trying to dig up a turnip. I don’t know who is the artist who drew it and I don’t know if it’s a famous print but it is very precious and valuable to me.



The Bonnefanten Museum invited the Japanese print collector and author of the exhibition catalogue Robert Schaap to lead the Museum’s tour guides and representatives of the press through the selection of 50 woodblock prints by Tsukioka Kōgyo.



Schaap outlined the historical context in which Kōgyo became acquainted with what was to become the main subject of his work as a print artist, the Japanese Nō theatre.



Kōgyo was born in 1869, one year after Emperor Meiji's accession to the throne. It was a time of profound political and economic change in Japan, when the rule of the shoguns was replaced by that of the emperor and the seat of power moved from Kyoto to Tokyo.

The classical Nō theatre, which until then had been reserved to the nobility who also supported it financially, became accessible to the ordinary public and Schaap explained the circumstances in which Kōgyo was given his first opportunity to attend a Nō performance: "The Russian Tsarevich, who was on an official visit to Japan and had planned to attend a Nō performance, fell  victim to an assassination attempt on his way to the theatre. As a result, he changed his plans and Kōgyo was able to get hold of one of the tickets that had suddenly become available."



Kōgyo learned the art of woodblock printing from his master and stepfather Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and dedicated much of his life work to the depiction of the Nō theatre form.



Kōgyo's Nō prints are dramatic and colourful and yet subdued in their noble refinement. Just like the Nō scenes they depict, they ask to be admired in silence.



Some of Kōgyo's prints represent Kyogen plays, which are short and humorous acts usually performed between two Nō performances.

Schaap told us the story of a famous Kyogen play entitled Suehirogari, or An Umbrella instead of a Fan: "A man once gave a big sum of money to his servant and asked him to buy him a "suehirogari" at the market. The servant wasn't familiar with the word "suehirogari" and didn’t know that it meant a fan. He arrived at the market and was fooled by a mischievous merchant into buying an old umbrella instead. When his master saw his servant coming back with an umbrella, he became upset and started scolding him for being such a fool. But the servant started singing and dancing to get himself out of trouble and the master ended up forgiving him and happily singing and dancing with him.”



Apart from Nō prints, the exhibition also presents a beautiful selection of landscape and animal prints, as well as six impressive roll paintings on paper and silk. They all combine the same mixture of vivid details and sober refinement. Many of the prints are so perfectly made that it is hard to believe that they are not paintings.





Kōgyo’s view of Mount Fuji brought me back dear childhood memories of our weekends in Gotemba at the foot of the majestic volcano and made me feel secretly grateful to the curator who selected it for the exhibition.



I left the museum in a serene and meditative mood, filled with a quiet yet deep happiness at all the beauty that had travelled through time and space to reach me here in Maastricht.





The exhibition “The Beauty of Silence – Japanese Nō and Nature Prints by Tsukioka Kōgyo” was made in collaboration with the Japan Museum SieboldHuis in Leiden and will run until 8 April 2012.

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