Opening Dialogues Kamata Yusuke: A Vision for the Two Landscapes
Yokohama Museum of Art
Until Jun 28
SHARE
Artists
Yusuke Kamata
Kamata Yusuke has investigated Japanese houses both in Japan and overseas, including in South Korea, Taiwan, the United States, and Brazil, and has presented architectural installations that foreground the complexities of society and culture. Born and raised in Yokohama, Kamata traces the origin of these activities to his teenage fascination with a group of traditional Japanese structures at Sankeien Garden in Honmoku Sannotani, Yokohama.
In recent years, Kamata has returned to these formative interests through research on the garden’s founder, the business leader Hara Tomitaro (known as Sankei, 1868–1939), who was also a supporter of Nihonga (modern Japanese-style painting) painters. After moving to Tokyo from Gifu Prefecture, Sankei met Yasu, the granddaughter of the industrialist Hara Zensaburo, while teaching at Atomi Girls’ School (now Atomi Gakuen), and married into the Hara family. He expanded the family’s silk business into one of Japan’s most successful enterprises. As both his grandfather and his uncle were Nanga (a style of Japanese landscape painting established in the mid-18th century and influenced by literati paintings from China’s Jiangnan region) painters, he grew up well versed in calligraphy, painting, and Chinese poetry, and at first aspired to become a painter or a scholar. After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, he devoted himself to the reconstruction of Yokohama and cut back his activities as an art patron, while actively pursuing his own art. The Hara general partnership company Hara Gomei Kaisha included a real estate division that carried out residential development in Honmoku, Yokohama, as well as agriculture, forestry, and housing development projects in Seoul, Korea, a place Sankei himself never visited. Kamata came to consider whether a shared imaginative faculty linked Sankei’s highly developed sense of space as a calligrapher, painter, and supporter of the arts with the spatial perspective evident in his approach to urban development.
For the Yokohama Museum of Art, Sankei is a figure of great importance, with connections to Okakura Tenshin (1863–1913, a leading figure in the modernization of Japanese art), and his legacy is one area of focus of the museum’s collecting policy. In 2019, the museum presented “The Eye of a Connoisseur: The Legendary Hara Sankei Collection” to mark the museum’s 30th anniversary. In the context of the present program, Kamata will take this research further by drawing on the Yokohama Museum of Art’s scholarly resources and its collection. He will present installation works, shown in a solo exhibition format, that bring into view the multiple facets of Sankei’s imagination, shaped by a life situated between Japanese tradition and global modernity.
This exhibition will be held concurrently with “Imamura Shiko: A Revolutionary Innovator of Nihonga,” which surveys the career of Imamura Shiko, among the artists supported by Sankei. Linked with a concurrent exhibition of works from the permanent collection, it will be held in one room of the collection exhibition (Gallery 4).
In recent years, Kamata has returned to these formative interests through research on the garden’s founder, the business leader Hara Tomitaro (known as Sankei, 1868–1939), who was also a supporter of Nihonga (modern Japanese-style painting) painters. After moving to Tokyo from Gifu Prefecture, Sankei met Yasu, the granddaughter of the industrialist Hara Zensaburo, while teaching at Atomi Girls’ School (now Atomi Gakuen), and married into the Hara family. He expanded the family’s silk business into one of Japan’s most successful enterprises. As both his grandfather and his uncle were Nanga (a style of Japanese landscape painting established in the mid-18th century and influenced by literati paintings from China’s Jiangnan region) painters, he grew up well versed in calligraphy, painting, and Chinese poetry, and at first aspired to become a painter or a scholar. After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, he devoted himself to the reconstruction of Yokohama and cut back his activities as an art patron, while actively pursuing his own art. The Hara general partnership company Hara Gomei Kaisha included a real estate division that carried out residential development in Honmoku, Yokohama, as well as agriculture, forestry, and housing development projects in Seoul, Korea, a place Sankei himself never visited. Kamata came to consider whether a shared imaginative faculty linked Sankei’s highly developed sense of space as a calligrapher, painter, and supporter of the arts with the spatial perspective evident in his approach to urban development.
For the Yokohama Museum of Art, Sankei is a figure of great importance, with connections to Okakura Tenshin (1863–1913, a leading figure in the modernization of Japanese art), and his legacy is one area of focus of the museum’s collecting policy. In 2019, the museum presented “The Eye of a Connoisseur: The Legendary Hara Sankei Collection” to mark the museum’s 30th anniversary. In the context of the present program, Kamata will take this research further by drawing on the Yokohama Museum of Art’s scholarly resources and its collection. He will present installation works, shown in a solo exhibition format, that bring into view the multiple facets of Sankei’s imagination, shaped by a life situated between Japanese tradition and global modernity.
This exhibition will be held concurrently with “Imamura Shiko: A Revolutionary Innovator of Nihonga,” which surveys the career of Imamura Shiko, among the artists supported by Sankei. Linked with a concurrent exhibition of works from the permanent collection, it will be held in one room of the collection exhibition (Gallery 4).
Schedule Now in session | Apr 25 (Sat) 2026-Jun 28 (Sun) 2026 63 days left Opening Hours Information
| ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee | Adults ¥500, University Students ¥300, High School and Junior High School Students ¥100, Elementary School Students and Under free. | ||||
| Website | https://yokohama.art.museum/eng/exhibition/202604_openingdialogues/ | ||||
| Venue | Yokohama Museum of Art https://yokohama.art.museum/eng/ | ||||
| Location | 3-4-1, Minatomirai, Nishi-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 220-0012 | ||||
| Access | 3 minute walk from exit 3 at Minatomirai Station on the Minatomirai line, 10 minute walk from Sakuragicho Station on the JR Negishi or Blue line. | ||||
| Phone | 045-221-0300 | ||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
Back to Articles
SHARE
No comments yet