Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anne Nishimura Morse

The MFA's holdings of Japanese art make up the finest and most comprehensive collection outside of Japan. This stunning overview features many of the collection's best-known and most beloved works, including such rare paintings as the eighth-century Buddhist panel "Shaka, the Historical Buddha, Preaching on Vulture Peak" and the thirteenth-century narrative hand-scroll "Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace" (the most exciting section of the celebrated Heiji monogatari scrolls), along with fine examples from the Museum's unsurpassed grouping of woodblock prints, magnificent sculptures such as a gilt-wooden statue of the bodhisattva Miroku by the twelfth-century master Kaikei, plus a representative selection of postcards, textiles, ceramics, lacquer wares, sword-fittings and other decorative arts. In all, more than 160 highlights from the museum's staggering collection are illustrated and discussed, divided into four themes--Art of the Temple, The Town, The Ruling Classes and Japanese Art in the World. Ranging from the seventh century to the present day, this engaging volume introduces readers to the complex variety and renowned brilliance of Japanese arts.

Arts of Japan

Kendall H. Brown

J. Thomas Rimer

"Published in conjunction with the exhibition ... organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from March 10 to June 6, 2004"--T.p. verso.

The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Art of the Japanese Postcard

Timothy Clark

Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain)

Louise Erica Virgin

Early Ukiyo-e Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Dawn of the Floating World, 1650-1765

Anne E. Havinga

Published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, April 5 - July 12, 2015.

Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11

In the Wake

The lineage of the "superflat" Murakami's vision of the Japanese aesthetic Takashi Murakami's irreverent, pop culture-infused art has made him one of the most recognized Japanese artists today. His bright, contemporary boisterousness, however, belies his deep scholarship and engagement with traditional Japanese art. Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics presents key examples of Murakami's work alongside a rich selection of Japanese masterpieces spanning several centuries and arranged here according to concepts laid out by his mentor and foil, leading Japanese art historian Nobuo Tsuji. These include works by Kawanabe Kyosai, Soga Shohaku, Kano Eino, Ito Jakuchu and Hishikawa Moronobu. Beautifully illustrated with Tsuji's selections from the peerless Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as some of the artist's best-known works of painting and sculpture, the combination of old and new in this groundbreaking volume enriches our understanding of each, and ultimately shows us how contemporary art can be seen as part of a continuum or lineage. Takashi Murakami (born 1962) is an internationally acclaimed artist and the founder and president of Kaikai Kiki, an art production and management company based in Tokyo with a studio in New York City. He was the first person to earn a PhD in Nihonga--a form of Japanese paintings created using traditional materials and techniques--at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Over the last two decades, he has presented numerous exhibitions around the world, from Versailles to Qatar. His first major solo exhibition at a US museum was held in 2001 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, titled Takashi Murakami: Made in Japan. Murakami is well known for his corporate branding projects with Louis Vuitton, VANS, shu uemura, Issey Miyake, Lucien Pellat-Finet, Roppongi Hills and ComplexCon, as well as collaborations with musicians such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. In 2008, he was selected as one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People." More recently, he has been working on film and animation productions, releasing his first live-action film, Jellyfish Eyes, in 2013 and an animated television series, 6HP (Six Hearts Princess), in 2017.

Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics

John W. Dower

Jacqueline M. Atkins

Frederic Alan Sharf

Modernity took many forms in 1930s Japan, but in the tumultuous years before militarism pushed the country toward global aggression, it was most visibly associated with a glittering consumer culture. Inundated with western jazz-age trends and new technologies, Japan's big cities, especially Tokyo, offered the most enticing attractions to a newly liberated generation: bustling streets of department stores, cafés and teahouses, movie theaters and ballroom dance halls. Modern architecture, industrial design and fashion overshadowed traditional arts as Japan strove to take its place in a cosmopolitan world. The Brittle Years examines the different ways in which designers and artists visualized what it meant to be modern in Japan in the years leading up to World War II. Its 160 full-color illustrations of paintings, textiles and graphic arts are astonishing not only for their great visual impact but also for the insight they provide into a rapidly transforming nation. Among the more surprising images are kimonos bearing patterns of tanks or futuristic cityscapes, paintings of fashionable Japanese women with bobbed hair in western dress and handbills of factory and agricultural workers joined in solidarity. Essays by leading experts on Japanese art and history, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning author John W. Dower, elucidate the many tensions within Japanese society and show how and why such images of power, progress, and beauty helped the nation celebrate and divert modernity to new purposes during these brittle years.

Visualizing Japan in the 1930s

The Brittle Decade

Donald Keene

Frederic A. Sharf

Essays by Donald Keene, Anne Nishimura Morse, Frederic A. Sharf, Louise E. Virgin.

Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era, 1868-1912, Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age

Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690 - 1850 ; with Contributions by Asano Shūgō, Howard Hibbett, Kobayashi Tadashi, Naitō Masato, Tsuji Nobuo

Drama and Desire

Sebastian Dobson

A Much Recorded War examines the Russo-Japanese conflict from the viewpoint of its artistic legacy, exploring the ways in which it was represented, promoted, and mythologized. Presenting over eighty objects - from woodblock prints, lithographs, watercolors, and photographs to film, postcards, and even garments - the book discusses the origins and history of the war, the development of its imagery in Japanese art, and the ground-breaking role of photography and newsreels. Published to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Portsmouth Treaty, which ended the war, this is both a remarkable work of historical scholarship and a brilliant compendium of graphic art.

The Russo-Japanese War in History and Imagery

A Much Recorded War

The catastrophic events of March 11, 2011 the earthquake, tsunami, and ensuing nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant have been called the triple disaster in Japan. Among the first artists to respond to these experiences were photographers. Some, including those with personal ties to the affected Tohoku region, attempted to document the devastation, drawing on a long history of depicting natural disasters in Japanese art. As the immediate effects of the earthquake and tsunami gave way to the slowly unfolding nuclear disaster, artists began to respond to the challenges of depicting an invisible threat that calls up the collective memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting images assembled in this lavishly illustrated volume are by turns poignant, searing, disturbing and often strangely beautiful. With interpretive essays from leading American and Japanese scholars and statements from the artists themselves, this book presents the unfolding process of how photography can address destruction, social change, anxiety and memory, through images that express emotions beyond words.

Anne Nishimura Morse

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