{"id":1805,"date":"2013-05-25T18:57:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T23:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=1805"},"modified":"2013-05-27T10:26:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T15:26:19","slug":"natsume-soseki-and-the-visual-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bourdaghs.com\/blog\/?p=1805","title":{"rendered":"Natsume Soseki and the Visual Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week in Tokyo I visited the ongoing “Natsume Soseki and the World of Art” (??????????????? exhibit at the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku Bijutsukan, near Ueno Park. The show continues through July 7 and is well worth your while. The exhibition website (Japanese language only) is here<\/a> and includes many images from the show.<\/p>\n

It’s a big exhibit–over 200 pieces arranged across eight different rooms. The first room, “Preface,” centers on Hashiguchi Goyo’s striking Art Nouveau style illustrations and cover designs for the first edition of I Am A Cat<\/em> (Wagahai wa neko de aru, 1905-6). I’ve seen most of them before, but having them displayed together alongside early sketches really brings out their wonderful strangeness.
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“Chapter One” focuses on mostly European-style painting, including a number of works discussed in Soseki’s early fiction. “Chapter Two” turns its gaze on East Asian pieces, including some mentioned in various novels and stories. “Chapter Three” includes 42 works connected to the novels Kusamakura<\/em> (1906), Sanshiro <\/em>(1908), And Then<\/em> (Sore kara, 1909) and The Gate<\/em> (Mon, 1910). It includes, for example, John William Waterhouse’s 1901 oil painting “The Mermaid,”<\/a> which Sanshiro and Minako encounter and discuss in Sanshiro<\/em>. This room includes one painting especially created for the exhibit: Sato Eisuke’s reconstruction of “Mori no onna,” the portrait of Minako that Sanshiro gazes at in the closing pages of the novel. The style of Sato’s rendering matches my mental image of the painting described in the novel, but it seemed much too small: reading Soseki’s description of the work, I imagine an enormous panel-sized painting, but Sato’s version is less than one meter tall, I think. Here’s a video snippet:<\/p>\n