The Japan Society Review 105
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 105 Volume 19 Number 2 (June 2024)

The second quarter of 2024 has continued to enrich the
UK’s cultural landscape with an impressive variety of books,
exhibitions, and events that delve into different facetsof Japan. The latest issue of The Japan Society Review
presents five reviews, each crafted by our dedicatedvolunteer reviewers, providing insightful reflections onthese engaging works.
We begin with Christopher Harding’s The Light ofAsia, a profound exploration of the cultural and intellectual
exchanges between Japan and the broader Asian context.
Harding’s work illuminates the historical and spiritualconnections that have shaped modern Japan.
Next, Catherine Butler’s British Children’s Literature
in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses
offers a fascinating examination of how British children’s
literature has influenced and been reinterpreted within
Japanese culture. Butler’s scholarly approach provides
a unique perspective on the cross-cultural dialogue
between the two literary traditions.

In Mongrel, debut novelist Hanako Footman presents
a powerful narrative that confronts issues of identity,belonging, and cultural hybridity. Footman’s evocative
storytelling captures the complexities of living between
worlds and the search for self amidst cultural intersections.
The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Yamada Futarotransports readers to the dark and gripping world of Meijiera Japan. This historical detective novel intricately weaves
mystery and history, shedding light on the sociopoliticalturbulence of the time through the lens of a chillingmurder investigation.
Lastly, we explore the visual arts with the exhibition
Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking.
This exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery showcases
the remarkable artistic legacy of the Yoshida family,
highlighting their contributions to the evolution ofJapanese printmaking across three generations.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

The Light of Asia by Christopher Harding

2)

British Children’s Literature in Japanese Culture:
Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses by Catherine Butler

3)

Mongrel by Hanako Footman

4)

The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Yamada Futaro

5)

Exhibition - Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese
Printmaking

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Reviewers
Chris Corker, Laurence Green, Kimberley Reynolds, David Tonge
and Shehrazade Zafar-Arif.
Image from the exhibition Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese
Printmaking

The Light of Asia
by Christopher Harding
Allen Lane (2024)
ISBN-13: 978-0241434444
Review by Laurence Green‘What is real? Who says? How should we live?’ - These are
the three questions that lie at the core of Christopher
Harding’s eminently readable effort on Asia, expandingon the Japan-centric scope of his previous two books
to now encompass the continent as a whole. Wrapped
up in these three questions is an attempt to tease out abroader, all-encompassing narrative that pulls on both
history and philosophy as approaches to tell a story
fundamental to humanity’s existence: what is it aboutother nations, so far removed from us both spatiallyand spiritually, that continues to enthral and fascinate
us? Harding seeks to paint this as an enduring pattern,
across a vast span of years that takes us from ancient
times to the present day, a constant, endless searchingfor a potential greater truth to the world.
Told over three core parts, the opening
movements of The Light of Asia - charting antiquity
to roughly 1600 - fall very much within the grandhistorical scope of a type one can imagine from a Peter
Frankopan or Simon Schama tome. From the familiar- Marco Polo in China - to the less so - tales of ‘PresterJohn’, a mediaeval Christian King believed to residesomewhere in India, the early pages of Harding’s
narrative dazzle with a wealth of riches; the world map
veritably unfurling in real time, as new horizons are
unveiled, and new realms (and religions) are revealed
to those first Western travellers to the East. The
wonder in these early chapters - whether recounting
the familiar or unfamiliar - is palpable.
As we move forward in time - the second part ofthe book taking in the years 1600 to the early 1900s the fraught history of colonialism and the need for thematerial riches of Asia rears its head. But more than this,as one chapter puts it, is the ‘search for souls’ - and it isin this central aspect, the tussling of religiosity and theprospect of converting those in the East to Christianity(but also the concurrent flow back to the West of
Eastern thought and early translations of Easternreligious texts), that the book takes up what proves tobe its core mantle: spirituality and philosophy. What did
the East offer by way of its religions that the West did
not? Early comparisons in the vein of we-do-this, theydo-that give way in the Enlightenment, via figures like
Immanuel Kant, to a more considered thoughtspace2

by which to consider what the likes of Buddhism and
Hinduism might offer. To return to Harding’s core setof questions: ‘What is real? Who says? How should welive?’
The final chapter of the book’s second part draws
us into the world of famed mystic Madamme Blavatsky,
the Russian-American who through her writings andfounding of The Theosophical Society in 1875 caught
something of a vogue for Eastern ‘inspired’ spirituality,
spurred on by trips to India and Tibet. Following in thisvein, the book then doubles down on this interwoven
trend for guru-like figures bringing the East to theWest; with a number of chapters dominated by anaccount of Alan Watts - the man who perhaps morethan any other, helped to popularise the imageof Buddhism in the West. As philosophy meets
psychedelics in the heady counterculture of the 1960s,
the cultural exchanges spurred on by this Eastern
fascination find new and intriguing outlets; chief
among the examples cited here being sitar-featuring
Beatles tracks like Norwegian Wood. These popcultural ‘moments’ serve well to punctuate the more‘thinky’ philosophical thread of the book’s final third,
and if anything emphasise just how much the broader
sense of what we now see as commonplace and partof the fabric of Western culture - mindfulness being
one of the particularly astute examples presented here
- are now subverted and wholly absorbed from their
original Eastern point of origin.
Impressively ambitious in its mission, The Light ofAsia both stands and falls by its variety - the cornucopialike approach offering up fascinating tit-bits ofmemorably witty narrative, but always in an attempt
to map one to another, to thread the needle throughthem all toward a possible end goal. Fans of Harding’s
previous books may find their mileage varies here:
does the material on Germany’s ‘oriental renaissance’,or trippy 60s beat philosophy, hold as much of a pull as
the analysis of the Portuguese Jesuit’s earliest efforts inbringing Christianity to Japan, for example? Imagined
as a three-part documentary series, perhaps, it’s easy to
see the volume’s punchy narrative hitting home, andthe storytelling is never anything less than crisp andlucid - but there is a lot going on here, and the deeper
the book gets into the inner philosophical workingsof its comparative subject matter - moving from theexterior to the interior, in other words - the more onus
it puts on the reader to believe in and keep pace with
the importance of these connecting links.
Fascination abounds here though - and one
imagines that prompted by one of the many pieces
Issue 105 Volume 19 Number 2 (June 2024)

singled out for analysis here, whether it be Victorianpoet and journalist Edwin Arnold’s titular The Light ofAsia - from which Harding’s book gets its name - orthe Hindu Bhagavad Gita itself, like so many who havecome before, the sparks of a deeper exploration will bekindled here.§

British Children’s Literature
in Japanese Culture:
Wonderlands and LookingGlasses

in not always flattering ways. I was particularly
struck by nineteenth-century accounts of Japan asa ‘Paradise’ for children and babies. The approach toraising children was so different from that in middleclass British homes that several commentators write
about it with a kind of awed surprise. One example
is the writer Mary Crawford Fraser, whose husband
was an attaché there in the 1890s. In A Diplomatist’s
Wife in Japan: Letters from Home to Home (1898) she
observes, ‘It is, to me, most comforting to see that allthat is desirable in the little people’s deportment canbe obtained without snubbings or punishments or
weary scoldings. The Love showered upon children
simply wraps them in warmth and peace, and seems toencourage every sweet good trait of character without
ever fostering a bad one’ (p. 25).
That discussion of childhood forms part of the firstchapter, where Butler illustrates the emergence of therelationship between Japan and Britian through thelens of children’s books. This is followed by a chapterthat looks in more detail at the way a British presence
in Japan – not least in the form of missionaries – helped
bring about a body of writing for children of the kindthat had evolved in the West. In other words, it resulted
in the creation works by individual authors specificallyfor children’s edification and entertainment as opposedto traditional tales for a general audience includingchildren. Butler discusses these books as part of thedrive to modernise Japan. Many of the first children’sbooks were translations of Western classics including
The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe and Don
Quixote. Delightfully, the Japanese love of Beatrix Potter,I learned, came from the publication of Peter Rabbit inan agricultural journal! I was very pleased to see that
unlike so many scholars, Butler pays fulsome tribute to
the translators who underpinned – as they still do – theprocess of introducing books from other countries.
Chapter Three takes us to the spine that supports
the literary relationship between Britain and Japan byexamining the creation of what Butler identifies as aJapanese canon of British children’s literature – a canonthat diverges significantly from the one that prevails in
the UK. Japan, in fact, has preserved many texts that are
now completely forgotten in their country of origin.
This point is well exemplified by the case of Ouida’s
A Dog of Flanders (1872). As well as looking at well-by Catherine Butler
Bloomsbury Academic (2023)
ISBN-13: 978-1350195479
Review by Kimberley Reynolds
It has been a very long time since I admired and enjoyedan academic publication as much as I did Catherine
Butler’s study of the long relationship between British
children’s books and Japanese culture. The book is
meticulously researched and draws on a wide range ofacademic disciplines, but it is so engagingly written that
it will be as accessible to lay audiences as to specialists
in the field. I have been fortunate in having worked
with several Japanese scholars and students over theyears and in visiting Japan several times, but I learned
more from this book than I have done even from theserich experiences. Butler draws on literary, scientific,
biographical, autobiographical, historical, political andmany other sources to construct a framework throughwhich we can understand the appeal of British writing
for children to people in Japan.
Each of the five chapters introduces a new
body of work and way of understanding the impact
and reception of British children’s books in Japan.
The Introduction is titled, ‘Writing from the outsidein’, which I think captures the essence of this book:
Catherine Butler may have begun her research as
an interested outsider, but through close study ofJapanese culture and language she has found aposition at the intersection between British children’sbooks and Japan. While alert to what she can neverfully know or fully understand and the way her thinking
is inevitably shaped by earlier Western analyses ofJapanese culture, she is nonetheless illuminating
about the texts, institutions, films and places she
discusses. The book is principally concerned withJapanese responses to British children’s books, butfrom her position between the two cultures, Butler
frequently provides what she describes as a ‘lookingglass’ in which British readers will find attitudes to andassumptions about children and their books reflected
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3

loved British texts such as Tom’s Midnight Garden, The
Children of Green Knowe and Charlotte Sometimes,
this chapter introduces Japanese books that were
inspired by such classics as Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.
At this point Butler moves beyond traditional printed
texts to discuss adaptations and repurposings of British
works in the form of anime, manga, TV, music andadvertising. Logically, then, Chapter Four is a detailed
case study of Miyazaki Hayao and British children’s
literature, culminating in extended readings of someof Studio Ghibli’s brilliant animated adaptations ofBritish children’s books.
Chapters Four and Five, which covers children’s
literature tourism in Britain and as the inspiration for
popular children’s book-based theme parks acrossJapan, are probably the two that will be of mostinterest to general readers. Not all the theme parks are
exclusively dedicated to British landscapes or books,
but Butler’s careful discussions of these elements once
again make us reflect on the respect and emotion

garnered by these works abroad. (Children’s books, I
believe, are a too little recognised form of soft power.)
Butler’s photographs of these locations illustrate
the chapter. She has also provided images for otherchapters and the book is quite generously illustrated
throughout. The quality of the reproductions is my
only serious criticism of this fine volume, whichconcludes with a brief but thoughtful reflection onwhat the use of British children’s books in Japan mightsignify. In their Japanese contexts, the reworkings ofBritish books are affectionate, knowledgeable anddeeply respectful, and yet they change the books for
those British who encounter them. Similarly, Japanese
tourism in Britain has changed the places they visit,
as sites ‘cater to Japanese fantasies of Britain...shaped
in no small part by children’s literature’ (p. 180). This
relationship is long, enduring, valuable and fascinating,as British Children’s Literature in Japanese Culture
makes beautifully clear.§Mongrelfeels unique, despite many of the similar themes
explored by their perspectives around sex, sexual
violence, racial identity, and a longing for one’s
homeland. Their different backgrounds and lived
experiences allow them to shed light on these issues
from varying angles: Mei as a biracial woman raisedin predominantly white Surrey, Yuki as a Japaneseimmigrant in London, and Haruka as a Japanese
woman in Tokyo. I enjoyed reading all their pointsof view, and was never disappointed when one
character’s chapter appeared over another’s, but I’ll
confess I found Haruka the most interesting. This waspartly because her setting was the most fascinating,from the lush descriptions of her grandparents’ farmto the metropolitan frenzy of Tokyo, but also because
she, compared to Mei and Yuki, seemed to have themost agency in her story. She is loud, unapologetic,
and delightfully hedonistic, with a caustic charm thatmade her chapters fresh and entertaining, even when
they were exploring dark themes.
What also made the merging storylines so
enjoyable was the opportunity to see the protagonists
from each other’s perspectives. When Haruka and Mei
meet, we see their thoughts overlapping simultaneouslywith each other’s, each woman marvelling at how theother is prettier than her, finding beauty in each other’s
insecurities. After being embedded in each character’sinternal landscapes for so long, it was refreshing to seethem in a new light. In contrast, however, the minor

by Hanako Footman
Footnote Press (2024)
ISBN-13: 978-1804440438
Review by Shehrazade Zafar-Arif
Hanako Footman’s debut novel, Mongrel, follows
parallel stories of three Japanese women: Mei,biracial and living in Surrey with her white father andstepmother, grieving her Japanese mother as she
navigates her identity and sexuality. Yuki, who leaves
the Japanese countryside to pursue a musical career in
London, where she becomes romantically entangledwith her older teacher. Haruka, who runs away fromher grandparents’ home to become a hostess in aseedy Tokyo club after her mother’s mysterious death.
The book starts out slow and a little meandering, andI found my attention wandering, until the three storylines
start to merge and you realise how the characters areconnected. This happens subtly, with vague hints andthrowaway comments, which makes the twist feel earned
rather than melodramatic. This revelation immediately
quickens the pace of the book, paving the way for newquestions and mysteries, and made me far more invested
in the story and the characters.
That’s not to say that the characters aren’t
compelling on their own, even when we’re justreceiving snapshots of their lives. Each woman’s voice
4

Issue 105 Volume 19 Number 2 (June 2024)

characters often felt flat and were largely unlikeable,
except for Haruka’s grandparents, who made up someof the most emotional and endearing moments of thenovel.
Footman’s writing is lush and lyrical, withdescriptions soaked in specificity and detail, particularly
when portraying the Japanese countryside or describing
Japanese food. These details make the world of the novel
immersive to readers who aren’t familiar with Japan anddeeply evocative to those who are. In contrast to thewistful beauty of these depictions, Footman does nothold back when it comes to the ugliness in the novel,with descriptions of sex and the body that are jarringand visceral, and which make the scenes of sexualassault all the more harrowing. While uncomfortable toread, they serve as an unflinching examination of thethree women’s complex relationships with sex, with
their bodies, and with womanhood.
One noteworthy technical feature is the lackof dialogue tags - instead, dialogue is represented
through italics, in an almost poem-like fashion. Initially,
this took me out of the story somewhat, and madereading the dialogue a bit jarring to follow. However,it feels appropriate in a novel with vastly less dialogue,
where the majority of the story is internal, and we
spend more time in the characters’ thoughts andfeelings than in the external world. As such, there isa strong sense of feeling throughout the story - when
the characters feel something, they feel it a thousand
times over, feel it in their body, and this feeling spills
over into the language. This raw, dense writing fits wellwith the novel’s intensity of topics and themes, but
it sometimes tips into overly sentimental prose andrambling internal monologues that tend to arrest the
progression of the plot.
Another clever device used by Footman, to
integrate Japanese folklore into the novel, is theimbedding of three Japanese folktales into the story,
with each one having clear allegorical parallels to thethree women’s lives. They’re woven seamlessly into

the story, an allusion to the book of Japanese fairy
tales Mei owns but cannot read, as if we the readers
are witnessing her own interpretation of them.
At its heart, the story is a compelling explorationof Japanese identity both within Japan and outside it,
and more broadly of the immigrant experience. Mei’s
struggles with her identity as a hafu, half white and half
Japanese, and her regrets about how much she has
tried to assimilate into English culture, symbolised byher infatuation with her white best friend Fran, would
resonate with many biracial or second generation
immigrant readers. All three women face the intense
scrutiny of the male gaze, particularly the exoticizationand fetishization of Japanese women as objects ofdesire. In contrast but also in parallel, we see a great
deal of internalised racism and self-hatred throughreferences to women trying to stretch their eyes or
envying Mei’s paler hair and Westernised features.
If I had to pick one word to describe the tone of thenovel, it would be longing. Throughout there is a great,
painful sense of longing: for home, whether it’s Mei’srose-tinted memories of the Japan of her childhood
or Yuki’s fear of forgetting her homeland, so much sothat she doesn’t want to eat the food her mother has
packed for her because it’s her last link to Japan. This
longing is represented, in large part, by a longing for
one’s mother, which is a sentiment that drives both
Haruka and Mei in their choices and the way they view
their lives. The figure of the mother is one that haunts
the novel even when she’s not on the page.
It’s because of this preoccupation with grief andlonging that I could forgive the book’s occasional
meandering and oversentimentality. Both were
symptomatic of its complex, raw subject matterand the struggling psyches of its characters, as was
the beautifully layered, nested structure of plot andperspectives, stories within stories, interwoven toreveal the unexpected but delightful connections
between characters that culminated in a startlingly
hopeful message in an otherwise bleak story.§

The Meiji Guillotine Murders

famous and prolific writer of detective fiction; Yamada,
however, went on to produce an impressive bodyof work and became a renowned writer in his own
right. A large number of his stories concern the (often
sneaky) exploits of ninjas. Indeed, if he is known today
to English-speaking audiences it is likely by thosefamiliar with the adaptations of his Kouga Ninja epic,
including Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls in its 2003
manga and 2005 anime forms, as well as the 2005

by Yamada Futaro
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk
Pushkin Vertigo (2023)
ISBN-13: 978-1782278887
Review by Chris Corker
Yamada Futaro (the pen name of Yamada Seiya) was
discovered by Edogawa Ranpo, arguably Japan’s mostLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

5live-action Shinobu: Heart Under Blade adapted fromthe same material. Cinephiles (and incognito-windowbrowsers) may also indirectly know his 1962 novel
Hitsugi no Naka no Etsuraku by its transformation into
Oshima Nagisa’s sexually-explicit 1965 film Pleasuresof the Flesh.
Published through Pushkin Press’ Vertigo label,
which in recent years has delivered translations of anumber of Japanese detective stories, this first English
translation of 1979’s The Meiji Guillotine Murders gives
readers a chance to experience Yamada’s work directly.
Set in 1869, two decades after the Black Ships forcibly
lifted Japan’s policy of isolationism and Westernideas began to flow into the country, the story takes
place in a fraught but fascinating time of clashinginstitutions and ideologies. Amongst this culture ofdisarray, detectives Kazuki and Kawaji, part of a newlyformed police force that aims to tackle governmental
corruption, are assigned to investigate a number of
strange murders that seem to have no connection
to one another. Fighting duplicitous officials andmediating civil unrest, the pair also struggle with theirown conflicting opinions on the direction this new
Japan must take.
While Pushkin recommends Yamada’s novel
to fans of other Japanese mystery writers such as
Yokomizo Seishi, The Meiji Guillotine Murders is not yourtypically breathless thriller. On the contrary, the pacecan sometimes feel leisurely, with the wider historical
picture and its implications referenced throughout inauthorial asides. Perhaps this is an acknowledgementof the sheer amount of instrumental changes occurring
during the early-Meiji period, in which Japan, but also
the very notion of what it meant to be Japanese, wasevolving. While much of this was in response to aforeign threat, the country was also still reeling froma bloody civil war that re-instated the emperor as thecentre of the nation after two and a half centuries
of Tokugawa rule. If this snapshot of history seems alittle overwhelming, then strap yourself in, because
Yamada’s novel delves even deeper, offering up a listof names, places and government bodies that could
leave readers unfamiliar with Japan’s Meiji history alittle nonplussed. In fact, reading The Meiji Guillotine
Murders it’s hard to shake the feeling that the work
is only really one part detective story and two parts
historical fiction.
While the short introduction by Bryan Karetnyk,
whose translation is accessible and reads well, does
help to foreground some of the key issues of the time,
this is perhaps a novel that would have benefited from
more thorough notations, particularly with reference6

to certain names that leave characters in the novelin awe (such as, for example, Fukuzawa Yukichi) but
would likely underwhelm a reader not fully-versed inJapanese early-modern history. Elsewhere, uncommon
government titles and items of clothing are left in theoriginal Japanese but seem little more than exotic
dressings. Perhaps for a story that bills itself as a pacey
whodunit it might have been better to offer English
alternatives to facilitate such a flow.
“There came a noise that defies description: the hissof iron, and then a cry that mixed with wonder andhorror.”

Where the novel excels is in its central motif ofthe guillotine. An import from France where it wasused to instigate a revolution, here it is brought in by
the Japanese authorities to administer state justice(though who and what are really running the stateis still somewhat vague). The guillotine is lauded byits proponents as a more humane alternative to thesword, the most common method of execution until
the point—but the dispassionate manner in which its
dispatches criminals lends it an air of sterile cruelty. A“grim spectre” that leaves criminals and prosecutors
alike frozen to the spot, what the guillotine embodies isthe fear of those who believed an adoption of modern
western techniques was simply an unnecessary
switch of processes that did nothing but dilute thecultural character of the Japanese. While the sword
was considered to be a vital part of the one whowielded it (however romantically-skewed that notionmay), the guillotine is a machine that seems to takethe human out of the equation altogether. This senseof modernity eliminating the communal human is
one that endures in Japanese cultural criticism today,
finding hearty echoes all over the world. Just as theguillotine separates head from body, so a rampant
pursuit of modernity can be seen as a mechanism thatsevers the human subject from its culture.
Sometimes in The Meiji Guillotine Murders
there are scenes in which characters act or speak in
a way as to make their personalities and foibles quite
clear, only for the author to describe these traits
unequivocally in the next paragraph. Exposition likethis is quite common in the novel and indicative of thesort of work that readers should expect going in. Whilesome of the characters and situations are intriguing,
the prominence of the bigger picture, enduringly
referenced, relegates these events, and characters
especially, to the paraphernalia of a nation-defining
epoch. This is a novel for those who like their history at
the front and centre of their historical fiction. Similarly,
Issue 105 Volume 19 Number 2 (June 2024)those fans of detective fiction prepared to sit patiently
through historical detail to reach a conclusion that may
resonate more for their efforts will also be content. The
Meiji Guillotine Murders is undoubtedly a historicalnovel, but detailing as it does a period of near-uniquerapid modernisation and cultural transformation, it is ahistorical novel on one of the most interesting periodsof not only Japanese but world history.§

Exhibition - Yoshida: Three Generations ofJapanese Printmaking
at Dulwich Picture Gallery(19 June - 3 November 2024)
Review by David Tonge
Many of us will be familiar with the printmaking of
Hokusai, Utamaro and Hiroshige. But few will have had
the opportunity to explore the work of the Yoshidadynasty of artists, so I will get right to the point bysaying this exhibition was not what I expected, is anabsolute treat and one you shouldn’t miss.
If you don’t know the Dulwich Picture Gallery, it’s
10 mins or so by train from central London and then ashort walk via Dulwich village. I am particularly fond of
it because I live close by and with its leafy streets, cafesand village atmosphere you would never know you
are in London. It’s somewhat of a hidden gem.
But more importantly, founded in 1811 it is
the world’s first purpose built public art gallery. The
patron’s goal being to exhibit the old masters ‘for theinspection of the public’.
So, it’s no surprise Yoshida Hiroshi, a man witha desire to learn and be influenced by the West, hadread about and visited the Dulwich Picture Gallery in
1900. It’s at this point that the story begins with hissignature in the preserved visitor’s book of the day. The
simply laid out exhibit consists of a collection of rooms
each of which, aided by simple (noren-like) hanging
graphic panels, maps the eclectic creative directions
the Yoshida family pursued while maintaining thefamily print making business.
The star of this show is the artwork much of which
is on loan from the Fukuoka Art Museum. In viewing
this work, we can immediately understand the uniquepersonality of successive generations of the family andhow they might compare to their contemporaries. If
you expect a 36 views of Mount Fuji kind of exhibit, you
might be disappointed (although there is a 10 views ofMount Fuji) but if you are interested in how Japanese
artworks can be simultaneously Japanese and Westernthen you will be excited by this collection.
Yoshida Hiroshi developed a complex method ofcreating prints, by using many more layers of colour thanthose before him had attempted. He wanted, according
to printers who worked with him, to express emotions
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

and natural elements such as the air and humidity. To
achieve this effect, the layering of one colour on top of
the other again and again was employed.
This means that if we look at, for example, thenight scene of ‘Kagurazaka Dori’ from his Twelve scenes
from Tokyo series, we can see the shimmering lights inthe wet road as clearly as one might in a photograph.
Compared, for example, to Hokusai’s ukiyo-e styleprints, which are beautiful as an ethnographyof Japanese life, Yoshida’s work has a depth andcomplexity that promotes a deeper engagement withthe viewer. Or is this just a Westerner’s response?
Hiroshi and his wife Fujio travelled extensively
in the US, Europe and Africa. Hiroshi painted somestunning images of El Capitan in California, Athens atnight and the Matterhorn. All of which are curiously
and delightfully both Japanese and Western in style.
Fujio was a force of nature. She was one of the firstJapanese women to study Western art styles and oneof the first Japanese women to become internationallyrenowned. Quite a thing in male dominated Japan– even today. Her prints from the 1950’s, featuring
vivid and tightly cropped views of flowers such as
Gladiolus or Nasturtium, do not feel Japanese at all.
They are bold in composition and colour and feel bothlike ad agency spreads and Georgia O Keefe’s rather
sexualised interpretations of the same subject matter.
In rooms two and three of the exhibit weencounter the work of Yoshida Toshi & Hodaka thetwo sons of Hiroshi & Fujio and then Chizuko, Hodaka’s
wife. In very simplistic terms the further you moveaway from Hiroshi the more influenced by Western art
movements such as Abstract, Modernism and Pop thework becomes, but perhaps for market necessity theseare peppered with returns to classic Japanese subject
matter and styles.
7

Toshi’s abstract pieces such as Bruges and Misty
Dance sit happily alongside the more traditional Stone
Garden or his overseas studies such as San Francisco
and the stunning Camouflage where grass turns intoa dynamic foreground pattern from which two tigers
wait on their pray. I can’t help but think his moving fromone style to another positively influenced, improved
and advanced the other.
Hodaka, the younger son and seemingly the rebel,
was a pioneer of Japanese modernism. His work wasconspicuously not Japanese in flavour, breaking bothfrom the mainstream and with the family printmaking
tradition. His 1950’s work such as Woods and Kite
are more about self-expression than documentation,
whereas his work in the 1960’s was heavily influenced
by the Pop Art of Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns andWarhol. In the 1970’s he went on to create prints basedon photography yet returning to a connection with theukiyo-e tradition in his use of black outlines on people
and buildings and in the bokashi gradients in the blue
skies of his Mythology of the Outskirts of Town series.
Here Hodaka creates a bridge to both his brother andfather’s work.
Chizuko was one of the most innovative
Japanese printmakers of the second half of the 20th

century. She was constantly shifting stylistic direction,unhindered by finding and maintaining a marketablestyle. Her early prints are quite delicate compared to
Hodaka’s work and have an illustrative rather thanpainterly flavour. But for me the stand outs are her later
work such as Cool Breeze and A View at the Western
Suburb of the Metropolis. Both of which are hazy blue
abstracted landscapes and somehow again connect
beautifully with Hiroshi’s work and the tradition ofJapanese printmaking.
The final room is a large-scale installation by
Yoshida Ayomi, Hiroshi’s granddaughter whose work is
another departure from her parents and grandparents
yet is an evolution of the family print making legacy,
aesthetic and processes. Her work has a different
emotional impact on the viewer, you are inside it, notviewing it and in this exhibit neatly brings the dynasty’s
connection to Western art and the Dulwich Picture
Gallery full circle.
The Yoshida family were and are groundbreaking
in the context of Japanese printmaking and art moregenerally. Please go and see it, enjoy the lovely
atmosphere and brilliant curation of the Dulwich
Picture Gallery where art is ‘for the inspection of the
public’.§