Tracing the Shadow of an Artist

A trip to Japan was not on my agenda until one of my students asked me about Yasuo Kuniyoshi, an artist born in Japan in 1889.

The student, a doctoral candidate, had come from Japan to take a graduate course I teach, “Art in New York, 1900-1940,” at the City University of New York. She was curious about Kuniyoshi, who was a prominent figure then. I knew about him as a friend of Edward Hopper, whose biography I wrote.

Both men were among the leading artists shown in “Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans,” a 1929 exhibition at the newly founded Museum of Modern Art in New York. Critics at the time questioned whether a foreign-born artist like Kuniyoshi qualified as an exemplar of American art. To the art world, there was no question about it: He was as American as anyone making art in New York in the Jazz Age, then during the Depression and, yes, during World War II, for which he contributed anti-Japanese war propaganda. Yet his birth in Japan barred him from U.S. citizenship until 1952; he died in 1953 before completing the process.

I was familiar with Kuniyoshi’s work. His paintings, drawings, prints and photographs are in 50 museum collections in the U.S. (including the Getty in Los Angeles and the Norton Simon in Pasadena). His art is strikingly original. The emotionally expressive compositions suggest that he intended to convey a complexity of meanings, from dreams and fantasies to anxiety and pain. Partly because of acquisitions by collectors in Japan, he’s better known in his homeland than in his adopted home.

Kuniyoshi, the only son of a rickshaw driver, immigrated to America in 1906. A public high school teacher in Los Angeles encouraged the newly arrived 17-year-old to take art lessons. “I had always liked pictures, and so I thought it was a good idea,” he wrote in a magazine article in 1940. He moved to New York in 1910 and became swept up in the creation of modernism in American art.

My student’s quest piqued my interest: What kind of environment had Kuniyoshi left behind?

I decided I had to visit his birthplace in Okayama and the museum there that is dedicated to his work. Okayama is on the central Japanese island of Honshu, roughly halfway between Osaka and Hiroshima. It’s popular with Japanese tourists as a jumping-off point for touring the folk art capital of the country, Kurashiki (pronounced cure-AHSH-key), a 15-minute local train ride away. Okayama is easy to reach from Tokyo or Kyoto because it’s on the Shinkansen, or bullet train, line; the trip takes 90 minutes from Kyoto, four hours from Tokyo.

The city, which has a population of 500,000, is a political and economic center, modern and not especially distinguished looking. It’s known for its mild climate-a good thing because my trip, with my husband, John Van Sickle, was in January.

Kurashiki is also known for Korakuen, a classic 17th century “stroll garden” considered one of the three finest public formal gardens in Japan. Its 28 acres, on an island in the Asahi River, contain rice paddies, tea bush arbors, ponds, streams and maple, cherry and apricot trees. January was not the best month for visiting Korakuen, but its design elements, if not its flora, were in enjoyable form.

Okayama castle, or U-jo (‘Crow Castle”), looms over Korakuen. The original was built in 1597 and largely destroyed in World War II; its 1966 reconstruction houses relics of local history.

After a stroll through the garden, John and I crossed Tsurumi-bashi, a bridge into the old part of the city. It was a short walk to Kuniyoshi’s birthplace at 9-14 Izushi-chi. (After crossing the bridge, turn down the first tiny street on the right; his is the fourth house on the left.) A sculptural monument to the artist stands next to the modest dwelling, still a private residence. The monument features a cow, referring both to Kuniyoshi’s birth in the year of the cow on the lunar calendar and to his iconic depictions of cows. They were prominent in his first one-man show, in 1922. Later he recalled: “I wasn’t trying to be funny, but everyone thought I was. I was painting cows and cows at the time because somehow I felt very near to the cow. ... I thought it decorative as well as ugly, and so I painted cows constantly until I was exhausted. Following that I turned to babies.”

From there we continued to the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art. This impressive contemporary building, designed by Shinichi Okada, houses local archeological finds along with swords by craftsmen and work by artists from Okayama Prefecture. The art ranges from traditional scroll paintings by the master Sesshu (1420-1506) to Kuniyoshi canvases painted in America.

One of the most remarkable of his works is the 1947 “Festivities Ended,” which alludes to World War II. A figure of a horse removed from a carousel is upended, looming over two small reclining figures in the littered landscape below, symbolizing the complex history of U.S.-Japanese relations, a theme that recurs in his art and career. “Fish Kite” (1950) depicts a carp pennant (these are displayed all over Japan each May 5 for Boys’ Festival); in the upper right corner is a calendar page dated July 4.

Kuniyoshi’s art was always representational, but his style, palette and subject matter shifted often, from self-consciously primitive figures, landscapes and still lifes to sophisticated renditions of nudes and circus performers.

The best introduction to his work is the Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum, which occupies the second floor of the headquarters of Benesse Corp., an Okayama educational publishing company that includes Berlitz International. The founder of the company, Tetsuhiko Fukutake, bought his first Kuniyoshi painting in 1971 and became fascinated with the artist. His son, Soichiro Fukutake, Benesse’s current president, founded the museum in 1990 to honor his father’s passion. The museum is outstanding, with a changing show of its extensive collection of paintings, drawings and lithographs along with displays of furnishings from Kuniyoshi’s studio. There are personal effects of note, such as props used in his still lifes, and his easel, brushes and other working materials.

Visitors to the museum are welcome in the Benesse company cafeteria, a convenience we appreciated. There’s also a delightful atrium with a coffee bar beneath a three-dimensional work by American artist Frank Stella, and music from a playerless grand piano, which we found amusing.

In warm weather you can sit outside and eat on the garden terrace, which offers a waterfall and a colorful sculptural fountain by Jean Tinguely and Nikki de St. Phalle, who also created the fountain next to the Centre Georges Pompidou (Beaubourg) in Paris.

Kuniyoshi recalled seeing only one Western painting as a child, a battle scene, which made a lasting impression because, he wrote, it was “more than decorative and dignified.” But he retained an interest in Japanese folk art, which today is celebrated in Kurashiki, about 10 miles from Okayama.

Kurashiki means “warehouse village,” a reference to the town’s commercial history as a shipping center for the region’s produce. In the center is a canal lined with restored buildings, including rice granaries, with their distinctive black stone tiles and wood-beamed interiors, and a 19th century weaving mill, a reminder of the town’s prominence as a producer of cotton textiles. The mill has been transformed into a complex called Ivy Square and contains a charming hotel (where we stayed), restaurants, boutiques and several small museums.

Kurashiki’s attractions are geared to the Japanese tourist trade. Yet their setting along the canal, which is punctuated by arched bridges and lined with willow trees, is so picturesque and evocative of old Japan that I did not mind the ubiquitous souvenir shops. A stroll down Homachi Street in the old residential quarter of Kurashiki added to my feeling that I was seeing an authentic Japan. Mixed in with small Buddhist shrines and the occasional antique shop were businesses where we were thrilled to witness traditional Japanese crafts being produced: a tatami mat maker, a paper lantern maker and a studio of weavers.

Kurashiki is aimed at tourists but, as we learned, not foreigners. At dinnertime we asked the hotel concierge to direct us to a restaurant that sounded interesting in our guidebook. (In small cities, I found, these seldom list street addresses.) We wound up in a pleasant-looking place called Shinsui, which had beautiful porcelain serving dishes on display as if in a museum.

It was Monday, a slow night, and we were the only customers. Unlike our experience in larger cities, we found no plastic food models to point to, no English menu, no one among the friendly staff speaking tourist English. I pulled out my handy phrase book and pointed to the words for “fish,” ’seafood” and “vegetables” and then asked in Japanese, “What do you recommend?” What followed was a multi-course dinner-eggplant, sashimi, small broiled fish, a tofu dish and a soup-delivered on elegant dishes with plenty of smiles and consumed with great pleasure. Including sake, dinner for two came to only $40.

Our hotel, the Ivy Square, offered Western as well as Japanese-style rooms. We went for the standard comforts of home, including a private bath. (The adventurous who book a Japanese room-one sleeps on a futon on the tatami-mat-covered floor-should be aware that it will require bathing in the hotel’s communal bath, which may not be open when you need it.)

Kurashiki is also the home of the first museum of Western art in Japan, the Ohara, founded in 1930 by Magosaburo Ohara, a local textile magnate who built his collection by sending artist Torajiro Kojima abroad to purchase art. Kojima’s own accomplished body of Postimpres-sionist-style paintings merits its own branch of the Ohara. It’s behind Ivy Square, close to Kojima’s collections of fine folk crafts and Chinese art.

Along the canal, the Japan Rural Toy Museum caught my eye. I’d admired the still life “Toy Tiger and Objects” (1932) in the Kuniyoshi Museum and wondered whether I would be able to find a papier-mache toy tiger like the one the artist purchased on his only visit to Japan (to see his dying father in 1931-32). I need not have fretted. In the toy museum’s gift shop, which is nearly half the size of the museum itself, there was an entire shelf of toy tigers, complete with bobbing heads and detachable tails.

The many masks that I saw in souvenir and craft shops in Kurashiki recalled the white papier-mache mask that lies on Kuniyoshi’s drafting table in Okayama. Masks recur in several of his late paintings, including “Upside Down Table and Mask” (1940) and the brilliantly colored “Mr. Ace” (1952), two other canvases in the Kuniyoshi Museum’s collection. After hearing that a red, long-nosed papier-mache mask represented “a good devil whose purpose was to protect the family,” I purchased it for $5 and carefully hand-carried it home.

Guidebook: Around Okayama

* Getting there: From LAX, connecting service (one plane change) to Okayama is available on China Eastern and Korean airlines. Or you can fly nonstop from LAX to Tokyo’s Narita airport on Japan Air Lines (JAL), Korean or Varig. All Nippon Airways (ANA) flies to Okayama from Tokyo’s Haneda airport. Round-trip fares start at $875 (Korean), $1,061 (China Eastern), $1,037 (JAL). The Shinkansen, or bullet train, from Tokyo to Okayama is about $270 round trip. A Japan Rail Pass is recommended and is available for seven, 14, or 21 days ($481 for the 21-day pass). To obtain a rail pass, purchase an exchange order (available from JAL-PAK, 700 S. Flower St., Suite 1000, Los Angeles, CA 90017, telephone [(800] ) 652-5725, and from other authorized travel agencies). The exchange order is turned in for a ticket at a railway office in Japan. For more information, see the Web site https://www.jreast.co.jp/jrp/).

* Where to stay: In Okayama, Hotel Granvia Okayama, 1-5 Ekimae-Cho, next to the train station; tel. 011-81-86-234-7000, fax 011-81-86-234-7099; about $207 double. In Kurashiki, two hotels in the historic canal quarter: Kurashiki Ivy Square Hotel, in Ivy Square, tel. 011-81-86-422-0011, fax 011-81-86-424-0515; Western-style rooms run about, $130; some Japanese-style rooms, $212 to $293. Kurashiki Kokusai Hotel, behind the Ohara Museum, has doubles for $140; tel. 011-81-86-422-5141, fax 011-81-86-422-5192.

* What to see: Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, 8-48 , Tenjin-cho; tel. 011-81-86-225-4800; open 9 a.m.-5 p.m., closed Mondays. Admission $2.50. Yasuo Kuniyoshi Museum, Benesse Corp., 3-7-17 Minamigata, Okayama; tel. 011-81-86-225-1100; open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays only. Free admission. Ohara Art Museum, 1-1-15 Chuo, Kurashiki; tel. 011-81-86-422-0005, fax 011-81-86-427-3677, https://https://iwe.kusa.ac.jp/OHARA /om_op.html. Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m., closed Mondays and public holidays. Admission $9.

Among Kurashiki’s half-dozen other museums are Torajiro Kojima Memorial Museum, behind Ivy Square, and Japan Rural Toy Museum on the canal. Both are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Mondays) and charge $2.50 admission.

* Where to eat: In Okayama, Mura Ichiban Robataki, one block south and east of the western (railway station) end of Momotaro-dori, the main east-west trolley line. It has an illustrated menu; open until 9 p.m. One block east of that is Zen, a microbrewery with a pub menu in English; open 6 p.m.-3 a.m. In these and other cases of exploratory dining, you’ll have to ask your hotel desk to draw directions on a city map. In Kurashiki, Kiyutei An, across from entrance to Ohara Museum. Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m., closed Mondays. Specializes in grilled meat. Dinner, $20 per person.

* For more information: Japan National Tourist Organization, 515 S. Figueroa St., Suite 1470, Los Angeles, CA 90071; tel. (213) 623-1952, fax (213) 623-6301, https://www.jnto.go.jp. English-speaking visitors may obtain information while in Japan by calling JNTO toll-free numbers: from Tokyo, 3201-3331; from Kyoto, 371-5649; elsewhere in the country, 0088-22-4800.