Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>The Sound of Water

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

The Sound of Water

by John McGee

Togyu Okumura, Naruto Maelstroms, 1959, 128.5x160.5cm
(Images courtesy Yamatane Museum of Art)

After six weeks of rain, an exhibition glorifying the sound of water might seem an unlikely attraction. But hey, go with the flow. Besides, rain falls in only a few of the ink paintings, nihonga and woodblock prints in this jumbled show drawn from the Yamatane Museum of Art's permanent collection. 

Most of the 34 works give us an escape into steep valleys streaming with waterfalls or take us to watch waves crashing against empty coastlines. Water is portrayed in a range of styles and is by turns scenic, romantic, threatening and peaceful. 

The newest piece in the show, The Falls (1995) by Hiroshi Senju, has a bit of all of these. The very large (194x324cm) monochrome pour painting uses a mixture of crushed oyster shells and pigments to depict white water glowing on midnight blue washi. Placed waist-deep in the pool at the bottom of the crashing falls, viewers can sense its visceral, if silent, force. 

Many waterfalls tinkle or gush down the museum's walls. A pair of washed-out blue-gray falls splash over rocky gray cliff faces like delicate strands of yarn in Takeshi Ushio's Sound of Dawn-Cascading of Milky Way and Shooting Stars (1991). In Tomoto Kobori's ink-and-color hanging scroll The Falls of Ryumon in Ise (Taisho-Showa Era), water drops like a blank screen in front of admiring spectators.

Matazo Kayama, Waves, 1979, 
85.5x129.7cm 

But the raw power of Senju's fictional Falls is matched only by the Naruto Maelstroms, great swirling whirlpools in the sea between Shikoku and Awaji Island. One of Hiroshige Utagawa's Edo-Period woodblock prints (the earliest pieces in the show) is a three-sheet-wide bird's-eye view of Naruto (1857). In the cartoonish overlook, the sea spirals betweens small islands in the foreground while boats and a mountainous landscape float behind. In 1959, Togyu Okumura zoomed in closer to the surge, imbuing his stormy, watery green washes with psychological turbulence: A frothy white whirlpool circles viciously, sucking us into its Poe-like depths. Takeshi Ishida's 1992 blue-and-white version is a nearly identical composition. But it is a wider and more detailed view of the dangerous sea blender. 

The scariest part of the show, however, is not the power of nature but the specter of the palette knife. Masterful works like the 14m-long Chu Province Scroll (1910) by Taikan Yokoyama and Cormorant Fishing (1895) by Gyokudo Kawai share the space with muddy, awkward Bob Ross experiments from the 1960s and '70s. The most baroque and compelling of these is Sumio Goto's 1969 Waterfall. Craggy gold Max Ernst mountains at the top provide a backdrop for trees of pointy, interlaced Julio Gonzalez black iron twigs. The silvery-white protagonist slides down the middle, over angular rocks like the naturalistic but utterly false concrete forms the Japanese construction ministry installs in the countryside. 

Still, these combinations of good and not-so-good highlight the importance of style in nihonga. They also record how styles, if not subject matter, have evolved over the last 170 years or so. 

And sound? Two speakers play gratingly soothing tracks of chirping birds and a gently flowing stream. Like Goto's landscape, this odd addition was probably meant to mesh with the show but only heightens its cabinet-of-curiosities feel.

This exhibition was held July-Aug 2003 at the Yamatane Museum of Art in Sanbancho (Hanzomon), Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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