The Itabashi Art Museum in Tokyo is highlighting art villages created in central Tokyo before World War II, and after the war in modern-day Naha by Okinawans who used to work in Tokyo, illustrating the history of these villages and cultural interactions between Tokyo and Okinawa.
Featuring approximately 90 works of art, "Tokyo/Okinawa: Ikebukuro-Montparnasse and Nishimui Art Village" is an important show particularly because it brings together a number of paintings by artists from the Okinawan community.
Starting in the 1910s, Tokyo's Ochiai district -- which is close to Ikebukuro -- became home to painters such as Tsune Nakamura, Yuzo Saeki and Shunsuke Matsumoto. In the 1930s, more and more up-and-coming artists lived in rented houses with ateliers in Ikebukuro, forming a community that was later called "Ikebukuro-Montparnasse" after the famous artistic hub in Paris.
The first half of the exhibition is dedicated to artists in Ochiai and Ikebukuro. The display includes a painting by Saeki that depicts a pastoral scene in Ochiai and surrealist works by Ai-Mitsu and Saburo Aso.
Many artists from Okinawa also lived in Ochiai and Ikebukuro, such as Choko Haebaru, Aijun Nadoyama and Keiichi Yamamoto, who developed artistic skills in the communities while at the same time promoting their home culture.
Tsuguharu Foujita traveled to Okinawa Island in 1938 with Haebaru as a guide. Foujita's "Grandchildren" shows an aged woman dressed in kimono dyed with the bingata local traditional technique. She is shown sitting with her grandchildren before tortoiseshell-shaped graves, also particular to Okinawan culture. This painting indicates how artists from mainland Japan were interested in the culture and customs of this area.
In 1948, Okinawan artists who used to live in Tokyo built the Nishimui Art Village in Shuri -- now part of Naha -- which was the capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. On display in the final exhibition room are paintings by these Okinawan artists, which feature various shades of white, in contrast to the works shown in the previous rooms, which mostly use heavy, cold colors.
For Masayoshi Adaniya, who was drafted into military service during the war, U.S. bases in his homeland worked as his main artistic theme (Okinawa was still under U.S. occupation at that time), as shown in his "Nostalgia," a drawing of an American soldier on sentry duty. The work's white scenery looks like a heat haze, drawn with both sharp and blurred lines, which seem to indicate the complicated and lamentable situations Okinawa has been facing.
Nadoyama was interested in drawing local women and traditional dancing, as shown in "Okinawan Woman." Yamamoto's "When I Love You and Hate You" shows his approach of seeking his own designs in surrealism.
"Tokyo/Okinawa: Ikebukuro-Montparnasse and Nishimui Art Village" runs until April 15. The Itabashi Art Museum in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, is closed on Mondays.
Visit www.itabashiartmuseum.jp/ for details.
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