At sixteen, Blaise departs Moscow with Jehanne, a Parisian sex worker, bound for the distant Far East. Thus begins Prose on the Trans-Siberian Railway and of Little Jehanne of France (1913), a “simultaneous book” combining free verse by the twenty-six-year-old Blaise Cendrars, blending personal experience and imagination, with bold, colorful imagery by Sonia Delaunay-Terk, who was born in what is now Ukraine. Amid the abstract forms, the only recognizable image is that of the Eiffel Tower, symbolizing Paris, the poet’s final destination.

Amid World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the social and cultural changes that followed, many artists drifted eastward or westward, in terms of both their subject matter or ideas and their literal geographic location.

Marc Chagall was born into a Jewish family in Vitebsk in the Russian Empire (now Vitsyebsk, Belarus). In 1911 he emigrated to Paris, where he absorbed the latest developments in modern art. In 1914, while he was back home for his wedding, war and then revolution broke out, making it impossible for him to leave the country. He was finally able to return to Paris in 1923. Flowers on the Roof was painted around the time he had established a life in Paris with his wife and child and gained the freedom to pursue his art independently.

Felice Rix (Ueno Lizzi) was born into a Jewish family of businesspeople in Vienna and worked as a designer for the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop). After marrying the architect Ueno Isaburo, she moved to Kyoto in 1926. She continued designing for the Wiener Werkstätte until 1930 and traveled between the two cities until 1937. In 1938, however, her homeland of Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, after which she devoted herself fully to her work in Japan.

Meanwhile, in the 1930s, avant-garde artists in Czechoslovakia debated a prospective alliance between Parisian Surrealism and Soviet Socialist Realism. In Prague, located between Paris and Moscow, the poet Vítězslav Nezval grappled with the tensions reflected in Gît-le-Cœur Street and Invisible Moscow, prose poems based respectively on his experiences in those two cities. Nezval subsequently came into conflict with his close friend Karel Teige for defending the Moscow Trials, in which so-called counterrevolutionaries were purged under Stalin’s dictatorship, and for supporting the Soviet shift toward state-mandated Socialist Realism. The two eventually severed ties.

We hope this section offers an opportunity to reflect on those who sought a place to belong while torn between East and West during the tumultuous first half of the 20th century.

During the Edo period (1603–1868), people in Kyoto and Osaka traveled on sanjukkokubune (cargo boats that could carry thirty koku, or roughly 5,000 liters, of rice) along the Yodo River that links the two cities, transporting goods, circulating culture and knowledge, and maintaining lively personal ties. In the Meiji era (1868–1912), a state-run railway between Kyoto and Osaka opened in 1877, and when combined with the Osaka–Kobe line that had begun service in 1874 as the first state-run railway in the Kansai region, the two routes made it possible to travel by rail from Kyoto to Kobe. Even so, fares were high, and in the early Meiji years many people continued to rely on riverboats, with steamships eventually operating alongside the traditional sanjukkokubune.

From the late 19th century onward, painters also traveled between Kyoto and Osaka by these means. Literati painters, known for their wide-ranging journeys and for ideals such as Tomioka Tessai’s motto “Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles,” often spent long periods on the road. One of these literati painters was Tanomura Chokunyu, who visited many regions and was active in both Kyoto and Osaka, leaving a significant legacy in both cities. In Osaka, he hosted the Seiwanchakai, a major sencha tea ceremony gathering held on the banks of the old Yodo River (now the Okawa River) and remembered in the history of Sencha, while in Kyoto he advocated for the founding of the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting and became its first head. In Osaka, the Naniwa School of Painting and the Osaka Art School were established, but both were private institutions and were short-lived. As a result, some painters from Osaka studied at the Kyoto City Technical School of Painting, a public institution that traced its origins to the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting. At the same time, Osaka was an industrial powerhouse known as the “Manchester of the East,” and in 1925 the city became Japan’s largest in terms of both population and area, ushering in the economic boom times of the “Greater Osaka” era. Under these circumstances, some painters moved from Kyoto to Osaka in search of work, others received commissions from Osaka’s business leaders, and others held exhibitions in both cities.

This section presents works by painters with connections to both Kyoto and Osaka, including Ikeda Yoson and Kotozuka Eiichi, who studied Western-style painting in Osaka before enrolling at the Kyoto City Technical School of Painting, as well as Shimomura Ryonosuke, who left Osaka to study in Kyoto and later exhibited in Osaka with the Pan-Real Art Association.

Where are you standing now?

In a past exhibition, Kawaguchi Tatsuo showed a map indicating the location of his work. In an era before GPS, it presented viewers with a vantage point as if looking down on their own position from above. Ida Shoichi incorporates footprints left on the floor into his imagery, treating them as “prints” and inviting the viewer to imagine where their owner might be heading. Distance from a work can also change how it appears. When viewed from afar, Yoshinaka Taizo’s Doorway registers as the shape of a door emerging in relief, but on closer examination the surface is filled with minute lettering, revealing it to be a collage of newspaper stock and real estate listings. The fine diagonal lines in Maekawa Tsuyoshi’s work are actually threads embroidered onto fabric. In Tsubaki Noboru’s painting, which conveys the tension between a small stone and the space around it, dynamically varied brushwork sets the entire surface in motion. In two paintings by Kashihara Etsutomu, a box-like form at the center appears three-dimensional through a perspectival illusion, and in fact the compositions contain a visual trick: one is flat, while the other is in relief. Sugiura Kunié and Imogen Cunningham employ close-up shots to reveal the vitality of flowers. How we see shifts according to our position, and viewing art can be understood as finding one’s own sense of distance and place to stand.

Where you stand when looking can also reflect your psychological distance from the subject. Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon take a critical view of the conventions that shape how we look at art. Morimura Yasumasa, while engaging with Van Gogh’s paintings, stepped right into the world they depict. So, where do you stand to see the world?

Crafts of the Meiji era (1868–1912) emerged as the collapse of the feudal domain system following the Meiji Restoration brought an end to the protection that artisans had long received from their domains. They now faced the challenge of adapting their skills to a new age. In other words, they shifted from producing objects for longtime patrons to responding to the demands of new users in a rapidly changing society. This led to the establishment of a distinctive style in Meiji crafts: the emphasis on technique itself as a defining visual element of the work.

In recent years, Meiji crafts have gained wide popularity, often encapsulated by the term chozetsu giko (transcendent technique). These works are indeed characterized by intricate decoration and remarkable realism, inspiring awe at the artisans’ sensitivity and technical mastery. However, the roots of their techniques lie in traditions of craftsmanship passed down from the premodern era. Building on this foundation, artisans ambitiously sought out new information from abroad, absorbed the latest technologies and styles, and refined them according to their own vision, producing the works today celebrated as examples of “transcendent technique.” For many years, however, Meiji crafts were a largely neglected field of art history. This was partly because many of the finest examples were goods for export and sold at world expositions or through art dealers, leaving few outstanding pieces in Japan. Having been made for overseas audiences, they were often criticized as overly decorative, excessively focused on technique, and lacking authentic Japanese aesthetics or character. However, as modern art-historical research has progressed, more works have been repurchased from overseas, providing increased access to superlative objects. At the same time, the reappraisal of Meiji crafts remaining in Japan has also advanced, and as a result, we have a clearer picture of how artisans in the new era produced objects that reflected Japan’s identity as a modern nation. Today, Meiji crafts are recognized as a crucial link between the premodern and modern periods of art history.

The Kawakatsu Collection, a centerpiece of the museum’s holdings, is a major collection of works by Kawai Kanjiro, one of Japan’s leading ceramic artists. The Kawakatsu Collection was donated to the museum in 1968. A total of 425 works were selected from a vast array of pieces filling an entire room, following Kawakatsu’s generous instruction to "choose as many as you wish."

The Kawakatsu Collection encompasses many of Kawai’s most important ceramics, ranging from his earliest period, when he modeled his work on Chinese prototypes, to his final years after joining the Mingei (Folk Art) movement. It is analogous to a “chronological dictionary of works” that traces the full scope of his career. The late Kawakatsu Kenichi, who assembled the collection, served as advertising director of the Takashimaya Department Store’s Tokyo branch, general manager of Takashimaya, and managing director of Yokohama Takashimaya. He also served as a judge of crafts for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and made major contributions to the advancement of craft design. The long friendship between Kawai and Kawakatsu began when Kawakatsu went to meet Kawai at the station as he arrived in Tokyo for discussions in preparation for the 1st Creative Ceramics Exhibition held at Takashimaya in 1921. The two immediately developed a strong rapport, and Kawakatsu began acquiring Kawai’s ceramics. Reflecting on the collection, Kawakatsu wrote, “This is not solely the result of my personal taste. At times, Kawai himself made works for the collection, and he selected many of them himself.” Kawakatsu also described the collection as “a testament to the friendship we shared.”

Kawai is known as one of the founders of the Mingei movement. However, his work extended beyond the folk craft framework. He conducted continuous experiments with vessel forms, glazes, and techniques, always underpinned by his extraordinary technical skill, and in his later years his ceramics became ever more visibly infused with the joy of creation. This exhibition offers a glimpse into the aesthetic world Kawai pursued through his post-World War II works.

In the previous collection exhibition, we focused on recently acquired works, including those of Matsumoto Shunsuke, AI-MITSU, and Aso Saburo. This time, we present Ayako Playing Cat’s Cradle, a celebrated painting by Yamaguchi Kaoru, which is also among the museum’s recent acquisitions.

Yamaguchi Kaoru, a painter from Gunma, has a special connection to the museum. In 1969, as the first anniversary of his death approached, the museum held a major retrospective that brought together many of his best-known works and offered a comprehensive view of his artistic development. The museum already owned three of his paintings, and Ayako Playing Cat’s Cradle, which was shown in that retrospective, has now been newly added to the collection. This exhibition includes four paintings by Yamaguchi from the museum’s collection, together with one on loan from a private collector. Alongside Yamaguchi’s works, it also features those of artists who were close associates.

Yamaguchi began painting as a child, studying under numerous teachers and refining his technique as he interacted with many other painters. Later in life, when asked to name his favorite artist, he reportedly cited Sakamoto Hanjiro, a prominent figure active since the Meiji era (1868–1912). The two shared a similar approach, producing paintings rooted in realism yet characterized by a strong sense of abstraction. Yamaguchi formally studied under Wada Eisaku, a professor at Tokyo Fine Arts School, but even before that he attended Kawabata Gagakko (Kawabata School of Painting), where he met Murai Masanari, who would become his lifelong friend. During his studies in France after graduating from art school, he maintained close ties with Murai, Yabashi Rokuro, Hasegawa Saburo, and Mori Yoshio, and after returning to Japan, he participated with these artists in groups such as the Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai (Free Artists Association).

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, which opened in 1963, has presented textile-based works since its early years. The museum’s continued focus on this medium is aimed at reexamining, in light of today’s circumstances, the artistic potential and critical perspectives of the works it has shown thus far.

Thirty years have passed since the museum featured the work of Leonne Hendriksen in Beyond Textiles: Four Dutch Contemporary Artists (1996). The recent work by Hendriksen featured here explores the solidarity we need amid the current climate of instability, which became impossible to ignore during the COVID-19 pandemic. The translucent, sack-like modules arranged in a circle represent a community of human bodies held together by mutual support.

With the physicality foregrounded in Hendriksen’s work as a key concept, this exhibition examines approaches to textiles in which materials, structures, and the acts of weaving and sewing themselves acquire symbolic meaning, without relying on figurative forms or motifs.

Two aspects of physicality can be seen in fabric: evocation of the wearer’s body, reflecting fabric’s use in clothing, and evocation of the maker’s body. While kimono are generally appreciated for their patterns, Murayama Yoriko’s work foregrounds their wearable forms, evoking the image of fur draped over the body. Works by Mae Engelgeer, made from hemp cloth that once served as kimono fabric, and Tanaka Chiyoko’s Kesa series both employ a process of cutting and reconfiguring fabric to create new meanings. Hiroi Nobuko exposes thread knots that are usually hidden in the course of weaving, and as traces of cutting and tying actions, they symbolize the value of time and labor as well as the act of reconnection. Extending these ideas to the sphere of the collective, Ari Bayuaji examines the reconstruction of community through the processes of respinning, redyeing, and reweaving.

What we see in these works may ostensibly be nothing more than knots, seams, and layers of fabric. However, these familiar, everyday sights conceal actions that open our imaginations to the society that surrounds us.