The Yamatane Museum of Art, Japan’s first museum to specialize in Nihonga, opened in July of 1966 in the Kabutocho neighborhood of Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Its core collection consists of a large group of paintings donated by the museum’s founder, Taneji Yamazaki (1893-1983). Its second director, Tomiji Yamazaki (1925- ), broadened and deepened the collection, acquiring works by Hayami Gyoshu and initiating programs such as the Yamatane Museum of Art Award.

On October 1, 2009, the museum moved to its new home in Hiroo, in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward. Here, acting on our founder’s principle of contributing through art to society and, above all, culture, the mission of the museum is collecting, presenting and interpreting Japanese art through exhibitions and research on modern and contemporary Nihonga. To present the works in our collection as effectively as possible, our new facility incorporates the latest advances in lighting, display cases, and other equipment. It is our hope that, through the museum experience, visitors will develop an intense appreciation of Nihonga’s characteristic sense of the seasons and of the distinctive materials such as mineral pigments, silk, and paper used to create these paintings.

Hiroo, a neighborhood that is remarkably verdant for its city center location, is home to many schools, embassies, and other international institutions. The museum emphasizes educational and outreach activities that are a good match for its setting, including lectures for children as well as adults and special viewings on days when the museum is closed. Our goal, as a vital center for communicating information about Japanese culture both within Japan and internationally, is to to contribute to the advancement of scholarship and to society through exhibitions backed by systematic and steady research. We hope that our visitors will appreciate and support these efforts.

Regarding art as a part of life, the museum also offers fine art gifts inspired by the exhibitions and the changing seasons in the museum shop, together with a menu of special Japanese confections (wagashi) in the café. We hope that visitors will feel at home in our museum, develop a strong connection to it, and come to visit it frequently. We will be most pleased if, through their encounters with Nihonga at this museum, visitors not only enjoy a richly rewarding experience but also rediscover Japanese culture.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Yamatane Museum of Art.

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Yamatane Museum of Art was founded in 1966 by Taneji Yamazaki who has donated his numerous collection of Japanese art.　The ex-chairman of the Yamatane Art Foundation, Tomiji Yamazaki collected 105 works of Hayami Gyoshu known as one of the most respected Japanese artists among scholars and collectors.

The Museum displays 6 to 7 exhibitions throughout the year by selecting paintings according to the respective topics. The collection mainly focuses on Kindai Nihonga (Modern Japanese paintings after Meiji era). The Museum also has collections of oil paintings, Ukiyoe, and Ancient Japanese Calligraphy. The wide variety and the level of the collection has a very high reputation among experts in Japan.

In 2007, as we faced the 40th anniversary, we staged the exhibition of “The Best Selection of Yamatane Museum of Art” from April 12 to July 16 （First Term Apr. 12-Jun.3, Second Term　Jun.6-Jul.16）. In this exhibition we displayed works of the Japanese-painting masters such as Yokoyama Taikan, Kobayashi Kokei, Hayami Gyoshu, Murakami Kagaku, Uemura Shōen, Okumura Togyu, Higashiyama Kaii, Kayama Matazo etc. The collection has many splendid paintings and a few of them has been designated as Important Cultural Properties which happens to be very rare for modern Japanese paintings.

The Museum does not exhibit the collection on permanent basis, due to the weak nature of Nihonga being easily affected by the environment. Paintings are replaced about 7-8 times a year based on respective topics to allow visitors to see as many collections as possible each year.

Please visit our museum and make your first step into the magnificent world of Nihonga.

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	3-12-36 Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0012, Tel: 03-5777-8600 (Hello Dial, English available)
	10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (Last Admission at 4:30 p.m.)
	Mondays (closed on the day after a national holiday), December 28 - January 4, and closed for exhibition installations. Call to confirm schedules.
	Regular Exhibitions: Adults: 1,000 [800] yen, University and high school students: 800 [700] yen *Special Exhibitions: addmission fees vary according to each exhibition. Middle school and younger children: free of charge *Figures in brackets are for groups of 20 or more. *Disability ID Holders and one person accompanying them are admitted free of charge.
	10-minute walk from the West Exit of JR Ebisu Station and from Exit 2 of Ebisu Station on the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line. ■ From Shibuya Station, East Exit: Take Toei Bus (Metropolitan Bus): “Gaku 03” service bound for Nisseki Medical Center (Japanese Red Cross Medical Center) and get off at “Higashi 4-chome”stop (2 minute walk from the bus stop). Bus stop ① is where you disembark, and ② is where you embark. ■ From Ebisu Station, West Exit: Take Toei Bus (Metropolitan Bus): “Gaku 06” service bound for Nisseki Medical Center (Japanese Red Cross Medical Center) and get off at “Hiroo Kōkō (Hiroo high school) Mae” stop. Bus stops ③ is where you disembark, and ④ is where you embark.

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The Museum has a collection of over 1800 works including four Important Cultural Properties which is very rare for modern Japanese paintings. They include Hayami Gyoshu’s "Dancing in the Flames", "Falling Camellias", Takeuchi Seiho’s "Tabby Cat" and Tsubaki Chinzan’s "View of Mt. Kuno", and 18 Important Art Objects such as Iwasa Matabei’s "Court Lady Enjoying Wayside Chrisanthemums" and Sakai Houitsu’s "Autumn Plants and Quails", which are special works of Edo Period and other masterpieces.

The museum's collection is also well known for the number of works by Okumura Togyu, such as "Maelsroms in Naruto" and "Cherry Blossoms at Daigoji Temple", Yokoyama Taikan’s "Sakuemon’s House", Kobayashi Kokei’s "Scenes from the Tale of Kiyohime", Uemura Shōen’s "Scene from a Noh Play Kinuta" and Murakami Kagaku’s "Woman in the Nude".

click thumbnail to enlarge

Iwasa Matabei
"Court Lady Enjoying Wayside Chrysanthemums"

Sakai Houitsu
"Autumn Plants and Quails"

Tsubaki Chinzan
"View of Mt. Kunozan"
(Important Cultural Property)

Takeuchi Seiho
"Tabby Cat"

Yokoyama Taikan
"Sakuemon’s House"

Uemura Shōen
"Scene from a Noh Play Kinuta"

Kobayashi Kokei
"Scenes from the Tale of Kiyohime"

Murakami Kagaku
"Woman in the Nude"

Okumura Togyu
"Naruto Maelstroms"

Okumura Togyu
"Cherry Blossoms at Daigo-ji Temple"

Hayami Gyoshu
"Dancing in the Flames"
(Important Cultural Property)

Hayami Gyoshu
"Camellia Petals Scattering"
(Important Cultural Property)

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Exhibition	Periods
In 2013
【Special Exhibition】 A Profusion of Flowers ― The Language of Flowers and the Encyclopedia of Flowers―	6 Apr 〜 2 Jun
【Special Exhibition】 A Special 140th Birthday Exhibtion Kawai Gyokudō ― Depiciting Japan, Heart and Hearth	8 Jun 〜 4 Aug
The Centennial of the Reorganized Japan Fine Arts Institute Exhibition Hayami Gyoshū and the Elite of the Japan Fine Arts Institute	10 Aug 〜 14 Oct

* The above schedule is subject to change. Please visit our web site
www.yamatane-museum.or.jp or call Hello Dial, the general museum information
number, 03-5777-8600, for up-to-date information before your visit.

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Spring - when birds sing and flowers bloom in glorious color - truly a time of delight for the five senses. This spring we fill the museum with flowers in the Special Exhibition A Profusion of Flowers ― The Language of Flowers and the Encyclopedia of Flowers.

The Japanese have long been interested in seasonal plants and flowers and have sought to recreate them in visual form. They have celebrated the beauty of flowers and at times enjoyed growing them, and over the centuries, countless depictions of flowers have been created.

Amidst the seasonal changes in the Japanese archipelago, flowers have come to be seen as important seasonal markers. Images of people enjoying the flowers of spring, summer, autumn and winter are featured in genre paintings and illustrated narratives. And an abundance of blossoms have been depicted in the scenes of everyday life in these works. There have also been countless paintings created in the bird-and-flower genre, and plants and grasses paintings, where flowers from different seasons are included in the same composition, or in complementary compositions. Paintings of birds and flowers of the four seasons, or flowers of the four seasons, weave together images of Japan's natural landscape with specific plants, with seasonal flowers and birds used to create a single scene.

The traditional depiction of these birds and flowers, and grasses and flowers genres was brought to Japan from China, and came to be painted by Japanese painters in various formats, from handscrolls to hanging scrolls, and large format folding screens. Edo Rimpa school painters presented various types of flowers and grasses in a natural scene across the folding screen format, as seen in Suzuki Kiitsu's Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons and Ikeda Koson's Flowers of the Four Seasons (Private Collection). Araki Jippo, who added a decorative quality to the bird and flower painting styles he learned from Chinese painting, created a set of four hanging scrolls on the Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons to form a utopian worldview. In the Meiji and later periods, painters sought a new form of flower expression. Hayami Gyoshū's Camellia Petals Scattering [Important Cultural Property] and Yamaguchi Hōshun's Sunny Moments in the Rainy Season show the artists' understanding of pre-modern bird and flower, and flowers and grasses painting aesthetics, all while adding a new composition or color palette to give the subject a modern feel.

This exhibition presents works depicting flowers in terms of three concepts -- people and flowers in narrative tales, birds and flowers as utopian visions, and flowers of the four seasons. These paintings are presented alongside waka poetry and quotations from the painters that reveal key flower terms, the characteristics of flowers, or poems on the subject of flowers. This exhibition with its presentation of paintings of flowers in full bloom will give visitors an opportunity to view and understand these art works in terms of art, literature and garden arts.

*Art works listed without collection identification are all in the Yamatane Museum of Art collection.

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The year 2013 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Kawai Gyokudō (1873 - 1957), a Nihonga artist whose lyrical expression of the nature and people of Japan is still loved by many today. Upon this occasion we are pleased to present a retrospective spanning Gyokudō's entire oeuvre, centering on the 71 Gyokudō works in the Yamatane collection and including major works borrowed from other collections.

Gyokudō was born in present-day Aichi prefecture and raised in the scenery-rich region of Gifu prefecture. At the age of 14 he began serious study of Nihonga painting methods with the Kyoto Maruyama-Shijō school painters Mochizuki Gyokusen and Kōno Bairei, and his talents quickly became apparent.

This exhibition presents works such as: his early masterpiece Cormorant Fishing (Yamatane Museum of Art); the Kanō school-influenced Hills and Streams in Autumn (Yamatane Museum of Art), created around the time he moved to Kyoto and studied with Hashimoto Gahō; a painting said to be from his transitional period, New Moon (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo); and, Red and White Plum Blossoms (Gyokudō Art Museum). These works and others in the exhibition reveal influence from the Rimpa and Nanga school styles and trace development of his new interpretations of these stylistic origins, all culminating in the richly evocative and lyrical works of his later years. The exhibition also features the special display of the newly rediscovered Korean Gentleman Chatting Under a Willow Tree, long absent from public view. Debut appearances include Gyokudō's Sketch Albums (Gyokudō Art Museum) and the privately produced magazine Kenyūkai zasshi (Gyokudō Art Museum) that the 18-year-old Gyokudō compiled with his friends.

Upon Gyokudō's death in 1957, the Nihonga painter Kaburaki Kiyokata commented, "With the death of the great Japanese landscape painter Gyokudō, I feel as if the rivers and mountains of Japan have disappeared." The landscapes painted by Gyokudō, a richly literate painter known to have composed his own haiku and waka poems, evoke a warm sense of nostalgia in present-day viewers.

Yamazaki Taneji, founder of the Yamatane Museum of Art, was in close contact with Gyokudō, often visiting him in his home in the Ōme district of western Tokyo. Thanks to that connection the Yamatane Museum of Art collection today includes many of Gyokudō's masterpieces. This exhibition will present the entire museum's holdings of his works, a first since the opening of the museum, including pieces that have been restored especially for this exhibition and are presented for the first time, plus other rarely seen items such as calligraphy and paintings on pottery. We hope that visitors to the exhibition will enjoy to their heart's content the fascination of Gyokudō, a painter who depicted the hometown feeling and heart of Japan throughout his life.

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