Locomotoring

Ōta Memorial Museum of Art at Harajuku shows exhibitions of ukiyo-e wood-block prints. It is one of the few museums to continuously exhibit ukiyo-e. The main part of the collection consists of about 12,000 pieces collected by one individual, Seizō Ota Ⅴ, former president of Tōhō Insurance Company. His extensive collection was made available to public by his family after he passed away in 1977. During our visit, the exhibition showed “Specters” by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

My prior experience with wood-block prints had been at the SF de Young museum, so this was a treat. Yoshitoshi’s art is very detailed. Some of his specters reminded me of animated creations by Hayao Miyazaki, especially from the movie, Spirited Away.

The museum store had some delightful chusen tenugui (a piece of dyed cotton cloth) prints. The chusen technique is from the Meiji era (1868-1912) and is illustrated in this helpful figure accompanying our purchase of two delightful pieces, one showing an autumn scene and another, spring.