Studio: international art (87.1924)

TOKYO

PART OF " LIFE EVANESCENT "
BY YOKOYAMA - TAIKWAN

TOKYO.—That eventful day—Septem-
ber i st, 1923—was the private view
day of the tenth annual exhibition of the
Nihon Bijutsu-in, which has come to
assume a great importance in every art
season in Tokyo. Hundreds of guests
gathered at the Takenodai exhibition
building in Uyeno Park, and before hardly
any of them had gone through one half of
its numerous exhibit rooms the great
earthquake came, which shook the building
from its foundation. The paintings on the
walls rattled violently and some of the
sculpture fell to the floor. The shock was
followed by others, and they caused
thousands of houses to collapse and started
fire at seventy-six different places through-
out the city almost simultaneously, terrific
wind playing havoc with each, razing more
than four hundred thousand houses, killing
no less than one hundred thousand persons,
rendering homeless more than one-and-a-
half millions of people. 000
Thus the tenth annual exhibition of
the Nihon Bijutsu-in in Tokyo, before it
was open to the general public, had to be
closed down in the midst of the private
view day. However, the paintings were
subsequently taken to the west and shown
in Osaka and Kyoto, and finally they were
brought back to Tokyo and shown to-
gether with sculpture in a school. 0
My first impression of the exhibition
was a strange consciousness of a foreboding
gloom, suggestive of such a disaster as we
have just gone through. To my regret,
I was unable to see the exhibition before
the catastrophe. Had I seen it, it would
have enabled me to ascertain how much
of this first impression was due to the
recent experience on my part. There
was a feeling of tragedy of fire in the
work of Kondo-Koichiro which filled the

second room. It was entitled Fishing
by Cormorants, and consisted of six
long panels, a black and white drawing,
mainly in washes, on an absorbent paper.
There was a terrific power in the torment-
ing tongues of flame in Fudeya-Tokwan’s
pair of two-panelled gold screens depicting
Amanda, a cousin and disciple of Buddha,
surrounded on all sides by the flame. The
fourth room was superb : the big room
was filled with the work of Yokoyama-
Taikwan. The work was consummate,
assuredly one of the greatest ever produced
by Taikwan. It was a panoramic view of
natural phenomena with enough of man’s
life woven in not to cause any disharmony
with nature. Itwas entitled Life Evanescent,
consisting of twelve long panels of silk in
black monochrome, extending some one
hundred and thirty-five feet in length with
slightly less than two feet in width. It
is intended to be mounted into one long
scroll. It started with a peaceful autumnal
scene with a group of deer among pines
and maples, the gradation of colour

wonderfully well suggested in black. In
the painting, romantic undulating hills

merged into dramatic rugged cliffs, below
which a torrent gushed on to join a river
that poured into the peaceful ocean.

Nature was portrayed in four seasons
blending into one another, in mists, rain
and other natural phenomena, ending

finally in a cloud-burst and whirlwind in
which an infuriated dragon in action was
discernible on a close examination. 0
Otherwise, Taikwan’s long panels repre-
sented tranquil beauty in nature and in
man’s life. And, to be sure, the exhibit
contained many works expressive of calm
serenity of life as may be seen in the
examples of sculpture here represented. 0

JlRO H ARAD A.

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