National Treasures

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

We rode the subway to Omotesandō to visit the Nezu Museum. This ultra-modern building has a wonderful Japanese garden. Once again, we have encountered a large tract of wooded land hidden away in the heart of Tokyo. Amazing.

Nezu Museum has 7,400 works of Japanese and East Asian art, including calligraphy, sculpture, textiles, and ceramics. The Nezu’s collection includes seven National Treasures, 87 Important Cultural Properties and 94 Important Art Objects.

I would really like to do some research on the process of giving these designations to pieces of art. Who decides? What are the criteria? Is there ever any controversy over these decisions? What effect do the designations have on the public? Do people tend to skip over the non-designated items? Is that a good thing? 

I appreciate the help. I am not an art expert - not even close. I can’t possibly look at everything in a museum, or read the information about everything I look at. In a less structured way, I used guidebooks, rather than a government agency, to decide what to see in Italy. There’s just too much to digest. It is valuable to focus on what is considered important, but I would like to know more about why a particular piece of art is important. So, it seems like a good idea to create a hierarchy of art for the general public, but something about all the categories and levels of importance seems a little pretentious. Furthermore, if you have too many designations and categories, the importance of all of them gets watered down a bit.

I will admit that I LOVED the one National Treasure that was brought to my attention during this visit.

The first gallery we came to featured screens. We don’t use screens much today in the US. I’m not even sure they are used much today in Japan. But at one time they were everyday items.  Everyday items, I might add, that must have begged for an artist to come along and give them a little extra oomph.

Did I mention that we were not allowed to take photos inside the museum? So you are going to have to use your imagination, for the most part.

Now, among all these screens were two that I thought were spectacular. You can get a look at them at the website for the Nezu Museum. They appear in a group of scrolling pictures at the top of the home page. (For now. I expect that the museum will update its homepage at some point.)

The first screen I’d like you to notice is the one with the irises. This is actually a set of two six-panel screens, and these are a National Treasure of Japan. They were painted circa 1701-1705 by Ogata Kōrin. The artist painted on gold leaf, using only powdered azurite and malachite to make the blue and green pigments. I was surprised to see such a modern looking piece of art that dates from over 300 years ago. 

The second screen I would like to tell you about is the one on the Nezu’s homepage that looks like some quilts on a rack. It is actually kimonos on a rack, and it tells a story about a man, a courtesan, and a child. I think the title was something like “Whose Sleeves?”

We also saw some amazing bronze pieces, some as much as 3000 years old. Those are the things that really stood out, IMHO.

The garden of the Nezu was lovely.

We wandered around and came to a tea house where tea and sweets were being served. We decided to stop - we were hungry and ready to sit down. It was an interesting experience, but, once again, not what I was expecting. We had to sit on the front step and put our feet on a big rock in front of the entrance, and take our shoes off. Inside, people were kneeling on the floor. This was the Japanese style of kneeling, called seiza. (Click on the link to see what it looks like.) My knees were already swollen after all the walking and standing I had done, and it just wasn't going to happen for me. Fortunately, they did bring us chairs, but it was a little bit embarrassing to sit in chairs while most of the others were managing to kneel. 

We were not supposed to take pictures of other guests, so I blacked out their faces. You can see the back of a man in a black robe, kneeling and serving tea.

The people running the tea house seemed to be Buddhists. They performed some rituals while serving us matcha tea. We all got one “sweet,” called wagashi.

We took the train back and stopped at Don Quijote in Shinjuku to see if they had a certain item  wanted to buy. If you have never been to Don Quijote, this is what you need to know. It is a humongous, over-the-top store full of tacky souvenirs and cheap junk. An obnoxious theme song is constantly blaring and tourists are pushing and shoving to get in or out. 

The thing I wanted was a tanuki statue, and I would never go into Don Quijote unless I really wanted something and couldn’t find it anywhere else. We looked on all 5 floors and couldn’t find it. We couldn’t find anyone to ask. Finally I went to the check-out counter and asked a young lady. She didn’t know and asked someone else who said they didn’t have them but we should look in Asakusa. (To be continued)

We were glad to get back to the hotel.

Vibran azaleas in front of our hotel

 After a short rest we went out for dinner to Ippudo, a ramen place near the hotel that we have visited several times on previous trips. Quick, cheap, and delicious.

Today’s fabric is kimono fabric. This is a bundle of vintage silk crepe de chine kimono fabric scraps, sold on Etsy by CircaFabrics.

Loose Ends:

There was a question in the Comments yesterday about how we knew what to order from the machine at the noodle place. One of the people who worked there gave us a card with English  corresponding to the buttons on the machine. Somebody was available to help you, if you needed it. There really weren’t very many choices: small or large, extra meat or extra vegetables. then there were a number of toppings that were extra. You pressed the buttons for your order and a screen showed your total. You put cash or a credit card in to pay and that was it. The cooks got the orders on a tablet.