In Japan, we have cherished seasonal occasions since antiquity. Shitsurai, the ceremonial process of furnishing and preparing rooms for various seasons, dates all the way back to the Heian period. At the time, the architectural style of shinden-zukuri was open and bare with only pillars in the rooms. Structures such as byōbu (folding screens), misu (matchstick blinds), kichō (portable silk partitions), as well as ōshoji (sliding screens) and toriishoji (sliding doors with overhead torii -shaped pillars), were used as partitions, furnishing rooms for daily or ceremonial use with decor and furniture.

Eventually into the Muromachi period an architectural style called shoin-zukuri materialized, and an archetype of the Japanese-style room with a tokonoma (alcove) was born. The tokonoma has been considered sacred since it is said to have originated from raised floors where high-ranking noblemen and lords would sit. Meanwhile, it was also a place where a nobleman would think of various ways to entertain his guests in accordance with the changing seasons based on the Twenty-four Solar Terms.

As it is clear from the origin of kagura as a form of divine play associated with spiritual invocation and requiem, Japanese people have long regarded the act of “play” as a contact zone between deities and humankind since the Age of the Gods. In light of this, it is not unusual to consider shitsurai as a form of curatorial practice based upon “homo ludens (the playing human)*1”.

With the advent of technology from the West that triggered the Meiji Restoration and accelerated the country’s rapid modernization, traditional forms of Japanese painting such as yamato-e was redefined as modern nihonga. The unparalleled disaster that was the Second World War brought about a drastic shift in values, stimulating the birth of avant-garde calligraphy represented in the Bojinkai collective, or revealing the “age of Hot Abstraction” that led to the kiln-fired objet (obuje-yaki) by the Sōdeisha movement.

The traditional techniques of kogei and bijutsu, including their linguistic origins, are changing and it is worth paying attention to the technological concepts and expressions that are currently redefining these fields. Masayasu Mitsuke, a Kutani ware akae saibyo (red enamel glaze) artist, presents a contemporary version of an Imperial Easter Egg, forgoing the craft’s main motif of the land of immortals, and instead utilizing the secondary patterns of yorakumon (motif in aristocratic jewelry) and asanoha (hemp leaf). Niisato Akio’s luminous vessel from the openwork technique of hotarude is reminiscent of a modern-day UFO, identical to the image of the utsuro-bune as described in ‘Hirokata Zuihitsu’ (Hirokata’s essays from the late Edo period). Then there is Ayako Someya’s calligraphy, where universally recognized chemical symbols appear visually ambiguous, their drippings harkening to the characteristic mottled pigmentation of the Rinpa school. Among these artists, from East Asia, the exhibition introduces Mao Guanshuai, whose sculptural touch is modeled after the rare literary connoisseur Kawabata Yasunari’s beloved relic of Rodin’s A Woman’s Hand, as well as  Chihhung Liu whose twenty-first-century Basho painting seems to capture the dazzling sunlight and moist humidity of Taiwan.

The resonance of their work with modern nihonga, avant-garde calligraphy, and kiln-fired objet is an eloquent testament to the fact that shitsurai is not only a playground but also a kind of time machine that transcends time and space.

*1: Human beings are “homo ludens=the playing human”. It would not be an exaggeration to say that all cultures that cultivated humankind were born out of and presupposed by “play”.

Source: Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, trans. by Hideo Takahashi. Chuokoron-Shinsha, 1973.