A Floating World

I am an MA graduate in Art History of East Asia and have a huge passion for all things Japanese!  Art/ Book Reviews/ Movie Reviews

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Record of a night too brief by Hiromi Kawakami

I have been a huge fan of Hiromi Kawakami’s work ever since I read her melancholic and sweetly simplistic novel ‘Strange Weather in Tokyo,’  and  also enjoyed her other books which run in a similar vein of realistic slice of life dramas, with multi-layered eccentric characters and beautifully elegant prose. This recent release was the first book Kawakami wrote and consists of three short stories which all possess overlapping themes and a distinctive style.

I must admit I was surprised by the surreal plot having read Kawakami’s more grounded novels. The stories are very confusing and I feel it take a few reads to understand the symbolism! There is a strong motif of anthropomorphic humans, as consistently the protagonist of the first story transforms into a rampaging horse and a even a fish. It also works in reverse, as the central moment in the final story revolves around a woman stepping on a snake which then turns into a woman, who proceeds to take up residence in her home as a maternal figure.

Despite the dreamlike structure of these stories and the often puzzling moments which fall very firmly into the ‘Magic Realism’ genre, it is still a compelling and quick read. I devoured this book in a few sittings and found myself carried away by the lyrical prose, like reading poetry, my mind dissected each sentence absorbing and interpreting as I tried to decipher the symbolic meaning beneath all the strangeness, often relating it to themes of identity, love and family.

If you are a fan of Kawakami I thoroughly recommend this book, if only to see how she has transformed as a writer over the years, and how multi-faceted  her style is as a writer. I also think you can make many parallels between ‘ Record of a Night too Brief’ and the surreal writing of Haruki Murakami. If you love fantastically dark unrestrained stories then this is certainly the book for you!

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Netsuke, Blind men climbing over an elephant, ivory, 19th century.

Netsuke were commonly carved from ivory but could also be made from wood or bamboo. They served a practical function and were used as a stopper to secure money pouches and bags around the top of a Kimono’ s obi. However as apparent from this intricately carved example, the craftsmen who made these were highly skilled and there were evident social and aesthetic benefits to possessing such objects.

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Noh Masks, Pitt Rivers Museum

The Pitt River’s Museum is a treasure trove of objects from all over the world frozen in a fascinating Victorian time warp. From the original collection the museum acquired 54 Noh masks, ranging from the 17th century to the 19th century, barely changing in terms of style and craftsmanship. The majority of them were also probably crafted by Buddhist monks who would have made these masks in their spare time.

Noh is a theatrical art form which involves acting melodramas or farces through mime and dance. It originated from the 13th Century and was originally seen as being entrenched in religion, over the centuries however it changed into a lengthily performance which were extremely codified and marked by their elaborate costume, use of slow expressive movements, and of course the highly stylised masks which added character to actors particular if they were playing demons. In general masks were required to have neutral expressions and it was up to the actor to add personality to their character through their emotive performances. Like with other styles of theatre in Edo Japan, Noh actors found celebrity amongst the growing middle classes, many admires would even give them gifts, such as expensive costumes, to convey their admiration.

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Kuroda Seiki, Lake Shore, oil on canvas, 1897.

A beautifully serene example of a Yōga style painting, a phrase coined in the Meiji Era, to describe a work which is strongly influenced by artistic techniques associated with European art.

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Brangwyn and Urushibara

I have always been fascinated by the artistic exchange which flows between Japan and Europe. We see the Dutch influence exhibited in later Japanese woodblock prints in the use of perspective and chiaroscuro techniques. And of course Japanese artists’ use of composition, colour and technique during the industrial boom of the Edo period can be felt in the work of the Impressionists, as well as Vincent Van Gogh and later in Art Nouveau design. I am endlessly intrigued by this rapid cultural exchange and the idea of an isolated country suddenly exploding in popularity and becoming an every day features in our visual landscape.

I recently discovered Yoshijiro Urushibara (1888-1953) and Frank Brangwyn (1867-1959) who were two phenomenally gifted artists who together embarked on many collaborations, which fused European and Japanese artistic styles and methods.

When I stumbled upon their work I was struck by how illustrative it seemed, with bold graphic lines and a tremendous sense of drama and realism, truly capturing the character of an individual or the chaotic drama of an event, in a manner which is narrative and sincere as opposed to glorifying, such as Urushibara’s wonderful Devil’s Bridge, St Gothard’s pass, which also merges a silhouetted schematic Japanese composition with a Western subject.

Another example of this bold quality is Brangwyn’s portrait of Yamanaka which is unique in its arrangement displaying a wreath of fading flowers curving into an emotive and almost grotesque masks. Yamanaka himself is quiet and lost in his own thoughts but is beautifully rendered in a moment of peace frozen in time.

Brangwyn was trained by the ‘Arts and Crafts’ artist and designer William Morris and shares his admiration for the natural world as evident in his painting Swans 1921. In this painting we can also see there is a distinct separation of colour which reflects the solidity and definition of a Japanese woodblock print.

Urushibara at 19 travelled to London from Tokyo to take part in a Japanese woodblock print exhibition. He exhibited such talent that he was swiftly hired by the British Museum as a restorer of Chinese Scrolls such as the ancient and culturally significant “Admonition Scrolls.” During this time in Europe and as a result of his collaboration with Brangwyn, his use of colour became more muted and increasingly Western in subject and composition. The most ambitious example of this change is in their Bruges Series where we can see a distinct fusion of two cultural styles, for example Urushibara’s Le Quai Vert, Bruges, which echo’s Dutch landscape traditions.

If you would like to learn more about these wonderful artists there is an exhibition currently showing at the William Morris Gallery until 14th May 2017 called ‘Sheer Pleasure: Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan.’