THE FINE ART SOCIETY

the
fine art
society
asian
art in
London
2013

Four
Living
National
Treasures
of Japan

Jun Isezaki
Kunihiko
Moriguchi
Kazumi Murose
Noboru
Fujinuma



asian art in london 2013

THE FINE ART SOCIETY

Dealers since 1876
in association with

Mariko Whiteway

31 October to 21 November 2013
148 New Bond Street · London W1S 2JT
+44 (0)20 7629 5116 · [email protected]
www.faslondon.com

Asian Art in London Asian Art in London
31 October - 9 November 2013

Asian Art in London Asian ArtOinfLfoincdioanlly suppo20r13ted
+44 (0)20 7499 2215 by The Embassy
[email protected] of Japan
www.asianartinlondon.com
2013 Asian Art in London
31 October - 9 November 2013

Asian Art in London
+44 (0)20 7499 2215
[email protected]
www.asianartinlondon.com



Four Living
National Treasures
of Japan

Jun Isezaki
Kunihiko
Moriguchi
Kazumi Murose
Noboru
Fujinuma

The Fine Art Society

in association with

Mariko Whiteway

Jun Isezaki · vase

Bizen ceramic · 38.5 x 33 x 33 cm
illustrated opposite title page

Noboru Fujinuma · open-work flower basket

Bamboo · 22 x 43 x 43 cm
illustrated below

Dimensions are height x width x depth

The Fine Art Society is proud to present the
latest in a series of homages to the arts of Japan: a
series stretching back to the 1880s, as you will read
in Rupert Faulkner’s fascinating and informative
introduction. The most recent in this series was in
1992 with Opening the Window: British Artists in Meiji
Japan, with an introduction by the former British
Ambassador to Japan and Chairman of the Japan
Society, Sir Hugh Cortazzi. This is also the latest
exhibition in partnership with Michael, and now
Mariko, Whiteway; a series of co-operative ventures
that commenced in 1972 with the appropriately titled
The Aesthetic Movement and the Cult of Japan – an
exhibition that charted the influence of Japan on
British arts and architecture in the 1860s and 1870s.

We are also delighted to have the support of the
Embassy of Japan with this venture, and it is our first
exhibition under the excellent umbrella of Asian Art
in London. And it is a remarkable coincidence that
2013 happens to be the 400th anniversary of the first
official contact between our two nations; as the British
Association for Japanese Studies so ably recounts:
in September 1613, King James I gave the Shogun a
precious goblet. He gave his father, the all-powerful
former Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, a telescope – the
first ever known outside Europe. The items, with
letters of friendship, were conveyed by the newly
formed East India Company. The Japanese responded
with two suits of armour, ten sumptuous paintings
and permission for the British to reside and trade in
Japan for ever.

It could be said that we are the beneficiaries of this
friendship; but without all her infectious enthusiasm,
and the hard work of Mariko Whiteway, this exhibi-
tion might have been still-born. So we are delighted
that these four wonderful artists, great men in their
own land, are allowing us to exhibit their work nearly
6000 miles from home. And I know that Marcus
Huish, my predecessor, would have been very proud
of a wonderful, continuing tradition.

Patrick Bourne
Managing Director, The Fine Art Society



Introduction

This exhibition of the work of four of Japan’s
Living National Treasures is one of the most ambitious
of its kind to have been held in Britain for many years.
We know about the achievements of these and other
distinguished makers through exhibitions such as
Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan (British Museum,
2007) and Japanese Studio Crafts: Tradition and the
Avant-Garde (V&A, 1995). Never, though – and this
is not to disparage the representation of high-end
Japanese crafts at events such as the Craft Council’s
annual COLLECT – has there been an occasion when
so many works by four such eminent makers have
been available to London’s collecting public. At the
same time as being in keeping with the scrupulous
standards for which The Fine Art Society has long
been respected, there is a particular appropriateness in
the FAS’s holding of this exhibition, for Marcus Huish,
the founding Managing Director of The Society,
was an ardent Japanophile who between 1880 and
1909 organised an important series of exhibitions on
different aspects of Japanese art. He was, furthermore,
an extensive contributor to the activities of the Japan
Society and in 1888 published a wide-ranging volume
entitled Japan and its Art.

Living National Treasure, for which the equivalent
in this country would be Grade 1 Listed Person, is
the popular term for Important Intangible Cultural
Property, an individual designated by the Japanese
government for his or her contribution to the trans-
mission of craft (and also theatrical and musical)
practices inherited from the past. The system was
established in the course of the early 1950s when, in
the aftermath of the Second World War, there were
pressing concerns about the erosion of traditional
Japanese culture. Following the initial identification

of traditions that were felt to be worthy of preser-
vation and in danger of being lost, the net was cast
wider to include practices that were not necessarily in
danger of extinction but were regarded as important
for historical or artistic reasons. The appointment of
individuals as living manifestations of these tradi-
tions took place in 1955. Designations continue to
be made to this day, with one of the key events for
the showing of works by Living National Treasures
and makers working in comparable modes being the
annual Japanese Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition.
Tradition in the context of this system is, most
importantly, understood as an active process of conti-
nuity and change. The goal is not imitation of histor-
ical precursors but the exploration of inherited styles
and methods of production through the making of
objects that belong unequivocally to the present and
are imbued with a strong sense of artistic creativity.

The categorisation used for the appointment of
Living National Treasures is reflected in the structure
of the Japanese Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition,
which is divided into seven sections: ceramics,
textiles, lacquer, metal, wood and bamboo, dolls,
and a catch-all section for other disciplines such as
cloisonné, glass and inkstone carving. In the current
exhibition we have exemplars of ceramics, textiles,
lacquer and bamboo. Isezaki Jun is a master of the
distinctive clay from the Bizen area and the firing
techniques used to conjure up the rich colours
and textures for which Bizen ceramics have been
admired since Japan’s medieval period. Some of his
pieces are in classical vessel forms while others are
in powerfully sculpted shapes reminiscent of cast
engine blocks and similarly monolithic products of
modern industry. Moriguchi Kunihiko is also firmly

rooted in the present. He uses the techniques of yūzen
dyeing, which were originally pioneered in Kyoto in
the seventeenth century, in the realisation of abstract
designs derived through various types of mathemat-
ical transformation. While this is not immediately
apparent from static displays of his kimono, he is not
only interested in the two-dimensional aspect of his
designs but also in how, when his kimono are worn,
their patterns shift and change as they move through
space. The meticulousness of Moriguchi’s dyeing skills
is echoed in the maki-e (‘sprinkled picture’) lacquer-
work of Murose Kazumi. His designs range widely
from the classicising through the stylised representa-
tion of nature to the purely abstract. Every piece is the
product of months of labour carried out with a degree
of precision that disallows even the slightest of tech-
nical errors. In contrast to Moriguchi’s yūzen dyeing
and Murose’s maki-e lacquerwork, Fujinuma Noboru’s
bamboo creations have a visceral quality more akin to
Isezaki’s ceramics. If the weaving varies from formal
through semi-formal to informal, thereby reflecting
the concepts of shin-gyō-sō that underlie many
traditional Japanese cultural forms and practices, the
innate materiality of the bamboo is always allowed to
express itself with unfettered immediacy.

RUPERT FAULKNER
Senior Curator, Asian Department
The Victoria & Albert Museum, London



Jun Isezaki

Jun Isezaki – born in 1936 – was designated as a
living national treasure for work with Bizen pottery
in 2004, only the fifth in this category. Although
his craft is traditional he works in a very modern
idiom. He has brought back the traditional design
of kiln used in the middle ages – a kiln that is
dug into a hillside like a tunnel. In contrast to the
more common ‘climbing kiln,’ built on the top of
the slope, this makes it possible to produce a large
amount of pottery with a consistent quality.

Jun Isezaki · tall rectangular vase

Bizen ceramic · 56.5 x 30.4 x 21.2 cm

Jun Isezaki · tall rectangular vase

Bizen ceramic · 58.5 x 31 x 19 cm

Jun Isezaki · broad rectangular vase

Bizen ceramic · 47.2 x 45.7 x 23.7 cm

Jun Isezaki · large sculpted dish

Bizen ceramic · 12.5 x 44 x 43.3 cm

Jun Isezaki · clay bird I

Bizen ceramic · 17.5 x 14 x 10 cm

Jun Isezaki · clay bird II

Bizen ceramic · 19.7 x 13.9 x 10.2 cm

Jun Isezaki · tall footed vase I

Bizen ceramic · 53.6 x 26.1 x 18.6 cm

Jun Isezaki · tall footed vase II

Bizen ceramic · 51 x 18.2 x 21.2 cm

Jun Isezaki · large multi-faced vase

Bizen ceramic · 38.6 x 23 x 18 cm

Jun Isezaki · bird on gourd

Bizen ceramic · 33.3 x 19.5 x 14.8 cm



Kunihiko Moriguchi

Kunihiko Moriguchi – born in 1941 – was
designated a living national treasure in 2007.
Moriguchi is a Yuzen textile artist. Yuzen is a fabric
dyeing technique dating back to the 17th century.
Kunihiko Moriguchi is preserving a skill handed
down to him by his late father, Kako Moriguchi,
a celebrated kimono painter and living national
treasure before him. Moriguchi spent three years at
Paris’s École des Arts Décoratifs in the 1980s. and
has shown his kimonos at the annual Exhibition of
Japanese Traditional Art Crafts since 1976, and
in Paris since 1986.

Kunihiko Moriguchi · kimono: ‘beyond’

Yuzen dyed silk · 180 x 140 cm



Kunihiko Moriguchi

the big bang I

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

the big bang II

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

Kunihiko Moriguchi

the big bang III

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

the big bang IV

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

Kunihiko Moriguchi

the big bang V

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

the big bang VI

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

Kunihiko Moriguchi

the big bang VII

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm

the big bang VIII

Yuzen dyed silk · 33 x 33 cm



Kazumi Murose

Kazumi Murose – born in 1950 – was nominated
a Living National Treasure in 2008. Murose
graduated from the Graduate School of Fine Arts
and Music at Tokyo University of the Arts.
A Makie Urushi lacquer artist, Murose has exhibited
in numerous exhibitions in Japan and abroad,
including at the British Museum in 2002
in an exhibition titled The Culture of Lacquer:
Japanese Beauty Inherited.

Kazumi Murose · box and cover

Makie Urushi lacquer · 9 x 24 x 24 cm

Kazumi Murose · chessboard

Makie Urushi lacquer · 6 x 44.8 x 44.8 cm

Kazumi Murose · wine cooler

Makie Urushi lacquer · 21.5 x 14.5 x 14.5 cm

Kazumi Murose · three-tier box

Makie Urushi lacquer · 21.5 x 21.5 x 21.5 cm

Kazumi Murose · small box and cover

Makie Urushi lacquer · 2.2 x 7.4 x 7.4 cm

Kazumi Murose · box and cover

Makie Urushi lacquer · 17.2 x 44 x 28.1 cm

Kazumi Murose · SMALL box

Makie Urushi lacquer · 11.2 x 13 x 13 cm

Kazumi Murose · incense container

Makie Urushi lacquer · 14 x 11.3 x 11.3 cm



Noboru Fujinuma

Noboru Fujinuma – born in 1945 – was designated
a living national treasure in 2012. Fujinuma is
a bamboo artist, a chance trip to Paris, in 1972
changed his life. He returned home anxious to study
and revive traditional Japanese craft, choosing the
art of bamboo. After serving an apprenticeship with
Yagisawa Keizo, Fujinuma started to innovate. In
1992, at the 39th Traditional Craft Arts Exhibition,
his work received the winning Tokyo Governor’s
Prize and was purchased by the National Museum
of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Noboru Fujinuma · ikebana basket I

Bamboo · 54 x 19 x 19 cm

Noboru Fujinuma · ikebana basket I

Bamboo · 44 x 17 x 17 cm

Noboru Fujinuma · cylindrical vase I

Bamboo · 54 x 9 x 9 cm

Noboru Fujinuma · cylindrical vase II

Bamboo · 49 x 9 x 9 cm

Noboru Fujinuma · flower basket I

Bamboo · 27 x 22 x 22 cm

Noboru Fujinuma · flower basket II

Bamboo · 23 x 34 x 36 cm

Noboru Fujinuma

large basket

Bamboo · 28 x 50 x 50 cm

plaited basket

Bamboo · 22.5 x 37 x 34 cm
illustrated on back cover