Gotoh Museum

Gotoh Museum
	Gotoh Museum from the garden side
	Location within Japan
Established	1960
Location	3-9-25 Kaminoge Setagaya Tokyo 158-8510 Japan
Coordinates	35°36′44″N139°38′07″E / 35.612195°N 139.635294°E
Type	Art museum
Public transit access	Kami-noge Station
Website	www.gotoh-museum.or.jp

Last updated April 04, 2019

The Gotoh Museum(五島美術館,Gotō Bijutsukan) is a private museum in the Kaminoge district of Setagaya on the southwest periphery of Tokyo. It was opened in 1960, displaying the private collection of Keita Gotō, chairman of the Tokyu Group. Today's collection is centered on the original selection of classical Japanese and Chinese art such as paintings, writings, crafts and archaeological objects completed by a small selection of Korean arts.^[1] It features several objects designated as National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties. The exhibition changes several times per year with special openings in spring and fall. A garden with a tea house, ponds and small Buddhist statues is attached to the museum.

Tokyo, officially Tokyo Metropolis, one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, has served as the Japanese capital since 1869. As of 2018, the Greater Tokyo Area ranked as the most populous metropolitan area in the world. The urban area houses the seat of the Emperor of Japan, of the Japanese government and of the National Diet. Tokyo forms part of the Kantō region on the southeastern side of Japan's main island, Honshu, and includes the Izu Islands and Ogasawara Islands. Tokyo was formerly named Edo when Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu made the city his headquarters in 1603. It became the capital after Emperor Meiji moved his seat to the city from Kyoto in 1868; at that time Edo was renamed Tokyo. Tokyo Metropolis formed in 1943 from the merger of the former Tokyo Prefecture and the city of Tokyo. Tokyo is often referred to as a city but is officially known and governed as a "metropolitan prefecture", which differs from and combines elements of a city and a prefecture, a characteristic unique to Tokyo.

Keita Gotō was a Japanese businessman who built the Tokyu Group into one of the leading corporate groups in Japan.

The Tokyu Group of companies centers on the Tokyu Corporation railway company, which links Tokyo and its suburbs. Many companies in the group are designed to enhance the value of the Tokyu rail network. In addition to the railroad system, the group includes other companies in transportation, real-estate, retail, leisure, and cultural endeavors. Here is a partial list of companies in the Tokyu Group.

Highlights of the Collection

Genji Monogatari Emaki

One of the most important items housed in the museum are sections of the oldest extant illustrated handscroll of The Tale of Genji dating to the 12th century. This Genji Monogatari Emaki used to be the property of the Hachisuka family. The fragments cover chapters 38 (The Bell Cricket(鈴虫,suzumushi)), 39 (Evening Mist(夕霧,yūgiri)) and 40 (Rites(御法,minori)) of the novel.

<i>The Tale of Genji</i> classic work of Japanese literature

The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu in the early years of the 11th century. The original manuscript no longer exists. It was made in "concertina" or "orihon" style: several sheets of paper pasted together and folded alternately in one direction then the other, around the peak of the Heian period. The work is a unique depiction of the lifestyles of high courtiers during the Heian period, written in archaic language and a poetic and confusing style that make it unreadable to the average Japanese without dedicated study. It was not until the early 20th century that Genji was translated into modern Japanese, by the poet Akiko Yosano. The first English translation was attempted in 1882, but was of poor quality and incomplete.

The Genji Monogatari Emaki (源氏物語絵巻), also called The Tale of Genji Scroll, is a famous illustrated hand scroll of the Japanese literature classic The Tale of Genji is from the 12th century, perhaps c. 1120–1140. The surviving sections, now broken up and mounted for conservation reasons, represent only a small proportion of the original work and are now divided between two museums in Japan, Tokugawa Art Museum and the Gotoh Museum, where they are only briefly exhibited, again for conservation reasons. Both groups are National Treasures of Japan. It is the earliest text of the work and the earliest surviving work in the Yamato-e tradition of narrative illustrated scrolls, which has continued to impact Japanese art, arguably up to the present day. The painted images in the scroll show a tradition and distinctive conventions that are already well developed, and may well have been several centuries in the making.

The Bell Cricket 1: one illustration (third princess with maid and hem of Genji's robe), two pages of text
The Bell Cricket 2: one illustration (conversation between Reizei and Genji at an informal concert), two pages of text
Evening Mist: one illustration (jealous Kumoi no kari is trying to snatch away a letter from her husband Yūgiri who is Genji's son), two pages of text
Rites: one illustration (exchange of poems between Genji, the dying Murasaki and Empress Akashi, her adapted daughter), three pages of text

The fragments are very fragile and are listed as National Treasure. They are displayed in the Gotoh Museum every year for about a week in April/May around the Golden Week holidays. More scrolls are housed in the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya.

Golden Week is a week from the 29th of April to early May containing a number of Japanese holidays.

Tokugawa Art Museum Art museum in Nagoya City, Japan

The Tokugawa Art Museum is a private art museum, located on the former Ōzone Shimoyashiki compound in Nagoya, central Japan. Its collection contains more than 12,000 items, including swords, armor, Noh costumes and masks, lacquer furniture, Chinese and Japanese ceramics, calligraphy, and paintings from the Chinese Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368).

Nagoya (名古屋) is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is Japan's fourth-largest incorporated city and the third-most-populous urban area. It is located on the Pacific coast on central Honshu. It is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Kitakyushu. It is also the center of Japan's third-largest metropolitan region, known as the Chūkyō metropolitan area. As of 2015, 2.28 million people lived in the city, part of Chūkyō Metropolitan Area's 10.11 million people. It is also one of the 50 largest urban areas in the world.

Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki

Another important item and National Treasure of the museum collection are 13th century fragments of a handscroll of the Murasaki Shikibu Diary with illustrations. Three illustrations and three pages of text are housed in the museum. The items are displayed in the Gotoh Museum every year for about a week in autumn. More fragments are housed in the Fujita Art Museum in Osaka.

The Murasaki Shikibu Diary Emaki is a mid-13th century emaki, a Japanese picture scroll, inspired by the private diary (nikki) of Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting at the 10th/11th centuries Heian court and author of The Tale of Genji. This emaki belongs to the classical style of Japanese painting known as yamato-e and revives the iconography of the Heian period.

The Fujita Art Museum is one of the largest private collections in the Kansai region. The collection was assembled by Fujita Denzaburō and his descendants. It was installed in a storehouse on the family property in Osaka.

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Japan. It is the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Japan and among the largest in the world with over 19 million inhabitants. Osaka will host Expo 2025. The current mayor of Osaka is Hirofumi Yoshimura.

Related Research Articles

The Diary of Lady Murasaki is the title given to a collection of diary fragments written by the 11th-century Japanese Heian era lady-in-waiting and writer Murasaki Shikibu. It is written in kana, then a newly developed writing system for vernacular Japanese, more common among women, who were generally unschooled in Chinese. Unlike modern diaries or journals, 10th-century Heian diaries tend to emphasize important events more than ordinary day-to-day life and do not follow a strict chronological order. The work includes vignettes, waka poems, and an epistolary section written in the form of a long letter.

Yamato-e (大和絵) is a style of Japanese painting inspired by Tang dynasty paintings and fully developed by the late Heian period. It is considered the classical Japanese style. From the Muromachi period, the term Yamato-e has been used to distinguish work from contemporary Chinese-style paintings, which were inspired by Chinese Song and Yuan-era ink wash paintings.

The Kyoto National Museum is one of the major art museums in Japan. Located in Kyoto's Higashiyama ward, the museum focuses on pre-modern Japanese and Asian art.

The National Museum of Korea is the flagship museum of Korean history and art in South Korea and is the cultural organization that represents Korea. Since its establishment in 1945, the museum has been committed to various studies and research activities in the fields of archaeology, history, and art, continuously developing a variety of exhibitions and education programs.

Emakimono, often simply called emaki (絵巻), is a horizontal, illustrated narrative form created during the 11th to 16th centuries in Japan. Emakimono combines both text and pictures, and is drawn, painted, or stamped on a handscroll. They depict battles, romance, religion, folk tales, and stories of the supernatural world.

Ishiyama-dera Buddhist temple in Shiga Prefecture, Japan

Ishiyama-dera is a Shingon temple in Ōtsu in Japan's Shiga Prefecture. This temple is the thirteenth of the Kansai Kannon Pilgrimage.

The banknotes of the Japanese yen are part of the physical form of Japan's currency. The issuance of the yen banknotes began in 1872, two years after the currency was introduced. Throughout its history, the denominations have ranged from 0.05 yen to 10,000 yen.

The Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art is a private museum established in October 1964 in Tokyo, Japan.

The Maeda Ikutokukai (前田育徳会) foundation is a public interest corporation (公益法人) established on February 26, 1926 for the management and preservation of the cultural heritage of the Maeda clan, rulers of the Kaga Domain. It is located in Komaba, Meguro, Tokyo. The collection is centered on written materials including ancient documents or Japanese and Chinese books but also contains crafts items such as swords, armour or household items. The writings held by the foundation are known as Sonkeikaku library which is also used as an alias for Maeda Ikutokukai. This collection of old books, ancient records and documents is open to researchers on request only. The library's name is derived from the personal book collection of the 5th daimyō of Kanazawa Domain, Maeda Tsunanori, known as Sonkeikaku zōsho(尊経閣蔵書), which is distinct from the ancestral collection.

Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (偐紫田舎源氏), translated variously as The Rustic Genji, False Murasaki and a Country Genji, or A Fraudulent Murasaki's Bumpkin Genji, is a late-Edo period Japanese literary parody of the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. The work, by Ryūtei Tanehiko (柳亭種彦) (1783–1842) with illustrations by Utagawa Kunisada, was published in a woodblock edition between 1829 and 1842 by Senkakudō.

The Sumiyoshi Monogatari Emaki (住吉物語絵巻) is an emakimono from the Kamakura period of Japanese history (1185–1333). It illustrates the Sumiyoshi Monogatari, a 10th century novel that narrates the misadventures of a young girl mistreated by her stepmother and her romance with a high-ranking soldier. The work is classified as Important Cultural Property and is preserved at the Tokyo National Museum, but four fragments became detached during the 19th century.

References

↑ The Gotoh Museum Guide(leaflet)|format= requires |url= (help) (in Japanese and English). The Gotoh Museum. May 2007.

"The Gotoh Museum" (homepage) (in Japanese). Retrieved 2009-04-30.
Mary Neighbour Parent (2001). "JAANUS - Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System". Japanese Architectural and Art Historical Terminology (online ed.). Retrieved 2009-04-20.

External links

Media related to Gotoh Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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[1] The Gotoh Museum Guide(leaflet)|format= requires |url= (help) (in Japanese and English). The Gotoh Museum. May 2007.