Book launchTuesday 7 November 2006
6:00pm – 8:00pm
A Japanese Menagerie: animal pictures by Kawanabe Kyōsai
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
By Rosina Buckland, Timothy Clark and Shigeru Oikawa
Published by British Museum Press
Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–89) was a highly individualistic painter of the late Edo and early Meiji eras in Japan, his career spanning from the end of the feudal system to the beginnings of rapid modernisation. His first name meant ‘crazy studio’ and in the 1860s he developed a new genre of ‘crazy pictures’ (kyōga). Kyōsai’s works range from painstakingly detailed painted pieces to spontaneous and inspired sketches dashed off while drinking prodigious amounts of sake during ‘calligraphy and painting parties’ (shogakai). Though he first trained in the academic Kano style, many of his designs were made into colour prints and illustrated books for the public in the popular ukiyo-e tradition. Kyōsai’s animals, from cats to mice and frogs to elephants, were often the agents for his light-hearted commentary on the new Meiji Japan. To modern audiences they remain striking and delightful studies of the natural world.
Rosina Buckland is a PhD candidate at New York University where she specializes in Japanese painting of the Meiji era and Shigeru Oikawa has written extensively on Kyōsai and curated the exhibition Comic Genius: Kawanabe Kyōsai.
About the contributors
Timothy Clark
Timothy Clark is Head of the Japanese Section in the Department of Asia at the British Museum. His publications include Demon of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kyōsai (1993) and The Dawn of the Floating World: Early Ukiyo-e Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1650–1765 (with Louise E Virgin, Anne Nishimura Morse and Allen Hockley, 2001). His current interests are the Maruyama-Shijo school, and the development of the art market and exhibitions in pre-modern Kyoto.
Israel Goldman
Israel Goldman (chair) is an international dealer in Japanese art, specialising in prints and illustrated books. He received his BA in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1981. He is co-author of Hiroshige: Birds and Flowers (1988) and was a major lender to the British Museum exhibition, Demon of Painting: The Art of Kawanabe Kyōsai (1993). He was also guest curator of Comic Genius: Kawanabe Kyōsai at the Odakyu Museum, Tokyo (1996). In 2002, an exhibition was held at the Ota Memorial Museum in Tokyo, titled, Kawanabe Kyōsai: First Showing of the Israel Goldman Collection.