Mitsuko Tabe
Biography. Early Years. Mitsuko Tabe was born in Taitung in the Japan-occupied Taiwan in 1933. Her father, Kogoro Ishibashi, applied for a police officer position in Taiwan after the bankruptcy of the family’s sawmill, and subsequently moved the entire family there. Tabe lived in the countryside of Taiwan before the start of kindergarten and went to Taitung National School for elementary school. In her early years, the family traveled frequently between Taiwan and Japan, before settling back to Fukuoka after WWII in 1946. Tabe remembered staying for some time in Amagi, a smaller town near Fukuoka  during her early years, and spending a lot of time learning sewing and dressmaking from her mother Rie. In 1951, graduating from the Fukuoka Prefectural Ukiwa High School, Tabe began painting on her own. At around the same time she also started working in the sales section of a coal company in Fukuoka. After about two years, through her brother who was working in the personnel department of the famous Iwataya Department Store, Tabe was hired first as a temporary worker and soon was offered a full-time position as a sales clerk in 1953. In the same year when  she started working at Iwataya, Tabe joined the company’s French and painting circles, two of the company's hobby circles. These hobby circles, referred to as Saibi-kai, were established by the company for publicity purposes. Having eight or nine participants, the painting circle met a few times a week with a teacher and a nude model so that the circle members can practice drawing and painting regularly. Tabe drew the streets of downtown Fukuoka, where Iwataya was located, and worked on many paintings of landscape and daily objects. Tabe’s talent was soon recognized as her work was  selected for the 13th Fukuoka Prefectural Exhibition (Fukuoka "kenten") in 1953. While the painting circle was a great way to meet artistic companions, Tabe gradually distanced herself from Saibi-kai because she was dissatisfied with the instructor Aoki Hisashi, a Niki [Second Century] Society member, who would modify students’ paintings. During her time at Iwataya, Tabe saw art frequently as the department store regularly hosted art exhibitions: as she later recalls, they included "Western Female Artists Exhibition" (西部女性展) and "Art of Today's World Exhibition" (世界今日の美術展), both held in the 1950s. In the building of Iwataya, there was a small  gallery where Tabe first encountered futureKyūshū-ha members including Sakurai Takami, Ishibashi Yasuyuki, Ochi Osamu, and others. In 1957, there was a two-month-long strike organized by the employees against the Iwataya management. Although Tabe did not fully support the strikers, she herself did not go to the work. Tabe recalls that she wad dubious of the union and found little difference between the placards of the rightwing and those of the labor movement. During that period, Tabe often visited the studio of Terada Ken’ichirō, an artist then associated with the Nika (Second Section Society) and later joined Kyūshū -ha. In January 1958, Tabe officially left Iwataya and got married in March with Kenji Tabe. Works during Kyūshū-ha (1957-1968). In March 1957, Mitsuko Tabe joined the Kyūshū-ha soon after its founding and remained a core member through its dissolution in 1968. Tabe served as treasurer and participated in all of the Kyushu-ha exhibitions in Tokyo and Fukuoka. As one of the few female members, Tabe brought a feminist viewpoint to the group. Anger of Fishes ("Gyozoku no Ikari", 魚族の怒り) (1957). Beginning in 1957, Tabe created multiple marine-themed paintings, including Fish 1 & 2 ("Gyozoku" 1  & 2, 1957), Conversation by the Sea 1 & 2 ("Umi de no hanashi" 1 & 2, 1957), and the best known one, Anger of Fishes ("Gyozoku no Ikari", 1957). Detailing her interest in this subject matter, Tabe puts, “I’ve made fish a theme of mine. It’s something that started when I began to feel a fascination with a biology, an ecology, other than the human one. The forms of fish and shells, when you really concentrate on them, don’t make any single stable form. In their wet sliminess we can receive and feel them in any way we choose . They’re also full of irony and humor. My aim is to capture what is so hard to capture, swimming around freely.”In making these paintings, Tabe sought to explore the fecundity of nonhuman ecology and attempted to visualize the motion and even unpredictability of marine lives. Employing asphalt and oil paint to create thick texture — a signature style of Kyūshū-ha members’ work — Tabe staged an energized blast of abstracted shapes and colors to represent the presumed emotion of the fish. Clumps of hexagonal grid lines explode from the center resemble schools of angered, recalcitrant fish, seemingly crushed by  a great force from above. With the rusting red, the rough surface exhibit sandstone-like quality. Tabe also used cross-sections of a bamboo broom handle to make rings and stuck them to the canvas with tar. The use of both industrial and organic materials reflects Tabe's environmentalist concern, making the painting an early example of the artist’s social consciousness. Anger of Fishes won the Asahi Silver Prize at the 3rd Western Women's Art Exhibition (1959) and the Gold Prize at the 3rd Western Japan Western-style Painting Newcomer's Excellence Exhibition (1960), and was exhibited in  the 2nd Kyushu Independent Exhibition organized by the Nishinippon Shimbun. Propagating ("Hanshoku suru", 繁殖する, 1958/1988). The theme of procreation and swarm was carried over to the Propagating ("Hanshoku suru", 1958/1988), series that reportedly consists of four paintings, all created in 1958. The tar-coated bamboo rings have taken much stronger presence now as to form the central figures. The groupings of the rings characterize various formations of lives, human or nonhuman. Other artists in Kyūshū-ha, such as Taniguchi Toshio and Nakanishi Natsuyuki, also explored the subject of propagation. While having not been explicitly stated, the Propagating series can also  be read in the framework of the female, mirroring Tabe’s later investigation of women as child-bearers. In September 1961, two of Mitsuko Tabe’s works, the Placards (1961) and Artificial Placenta (1961), were exhibited at the 3rd Kyūshū-ha Exhibition at Ginza Gallery, Tokyo.== 1953 The 13th Prefectural Exhibition, Fukuoka 1960 Gold Award at the 3rd West Japan Western Painting Exhibition 1960-63 Yomiuri Independent Exhibition 1964 Solo exhibition, Tokyo 1971 The 5th Kyushu Contemporary Art Trend Exhibition, Fukuoka Prefectural Culture Hall 1972-73 "Will to Possibility", Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Yawata 1974 "Illusion and Emotion", Fukuoka  Prefectural Cultural Hall, Fukuoka 1974-84 Kyushu Women Painters Exhibition (organizer) 1976, 1978 Solo exhibition, Toa Gallery, Muraokaya & Fukuoka Prefectural Cultural Hall 1978 Amigo Exhibition — Toshiko Hirayama, Aiko Oguro, Mitsuko Tabe, Art Stage, Fukuoka 1978 10th Today’s Art Exhibition, Fukuoka Prefectural Cultural Hall 1981, 1983, 1990 Earth Art Post Office Exhibitions 1981, 1983 Solo exhibitions, Fukuoka 1982 "Kyushu Women Painters Special Exhibition", Fukuoka Prefectural Cultural Hall 1984 "Eight Women Artists Exhibition", Gallery DON, Fukuoka 1987 "'87 Kyushu Contemporary Art - Transformation of Creation", Fukuoka Prefectural Art Museum 1988 "Kyushu-ha Exhibition: Anti-Art Project", Fukuoka Art Museum 1988 Asia International  Art Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum 1988-90 Solo exhibitions 1990 World Mail · Art Exhibition, Gallery Gaya, Fukuoka 1992-93 Solo exhibition, Makigami Gallery, Tokyo 1993 Fukuoka Nichido Gallery, Tokyo 1993 Contemporary Art of Kyushu 93’: the Rebirth of Image Exhibition, Fukuoka 1994-95 Solo exhibition, Cast Iron Gallery, New York 1995 Contemporary Art Techniques / Collage Exhibition, Nerima Ward Museum of Art, Tokyo 1998 Exhibition, Gallery Okuda International, Washington, D.C. 1999 Exhibition, Adirondack Community College, New York 2000 Fukuoka City Culture Award; Solo Exhibition, Kurokawa INN Art Museum, Fukuoka; 7th Fukuoka City Art Federation Exhibition, Fukuoka City Art Museum 2002 "Mitsuko  Tabe: Recent Works", Gallery Toile, Fukuoka 2003 "Kyushu Power", Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto 2003-04 Solo exhibition, Gallery 58 2005 "Apple’s Secret", Hiroshima Museum of Art 2005 "Japanese Women Artists in Avant-Garde Movements, 1950-1975", Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art 2012 Mizoe Gallery, Fukuoka 2013 "Mitsuko Tabe: Life is Art", Fukuoka Art Museum 2013 "New Works by Mitsuko Tabe", Mizoe Art Gallery, Fukuoka 2015 "Exhibition of 100 Works by Mitsuko Tabe and the Best Artists of Kyushu", Y Art Gallery, Osaka 2015 Kyushu-ha Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum 2017 "Mitsuko Tabe: Evolution is Very Creative", Mizoe Art Gallery , Fukuoka (upcoming) 2022 Mitsuko Tabe Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum Books. "The Earth Post Office for Incoming Caller Payment", Ikka Shobo, 1984 "The Dream Eater: The World of Michiko Ishimure" (co-authored with Nobuko Kono), Fujiwara Shoten, 1992 "The Art of Conception", Hana Shoin, 1997 "The Apple of Two Thousand Years: My Theory of De-Art", Nishinippon Shimbun, 2001 Collections. Fukuoka Art Museum Mizoe Art Gallery Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto SUNY Adirondack