Mt. Fuji, Shinoda Toko, and Ink Painting: The Source of Her Art
Information
- Number of items exhibited
- 31
- Period
- Apr 4 (Fri.)–Jun 21 (Sat.), 2025
- Closed
- 2nd and 4th Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays
- Admission
- ¥500, children through high school age free of charge.
- Event
- Concert: Alexander Benkei Kato-Willis in Piano Improvisation Concert
We are pleased to hold a concert, welcoming composer and improvisation pianist Alexander Benkei Kato-Willis.
Venue: Taichi Hall, Gifu Collection of Modern Arts
Date: Apr 19 (Sat.)
Time: 5:00 p.m. (doors open, 4:30 p.m.)
Capacity: 100 people
Fee: ¥1,000 (including entrance to the Toko Gallery)
Reservations: by Apr 9 (Wed.)
Gallery Talk by Museum Curator
(a curator will show participants around the exhibition, explaining the works on display)
Dates: Apr 19 (Sat.) and May 31 (Sat.)
Time: 2:00 p.m. (about one hour)
Fee: Free of charge (a ticket to the Gallery is required)
Advance reservations unnecessary; meet at the Toko Gallery reception desk.
About the Exhibition
Shinoda Toko owned an old minka rebuilt as a mountain retreat at Lake Yamanaka, Yamanashi prefecture, northeast of Mt. Fuji. She spent many days there seated in a chair observing the constantly changing landscape of the great peak.
Shinoda expressed her thoughts about Mt. Fuji in essays and interviews, observing how “it is a presence that transcends all other things” and “it is so suitable that the name is often written ‘fu ji,’ in characters that mean ‘like no other.’” And she loved the lone peak, so distant from any other mountains, as similar to the solitary way she saw herself in life.
The time Shinoda spent at her cottage amid the profound quiet and shifting seasons was for her an irreplaceable source of creativity. While she was well aware of the impossibility of capturing the beauty of the mountain’s ridgelines, the colors that glow from its slopes, or the qualities of its light and shadow, still the “red Fuji” tinted by the morning sun evoked red, the sparkling winter white of the snow-capped mountain evoked ink painting, and the stirrings in her heart and mind arising from the shape of the mountain before her became the source of her abstract lines and shapes.
Referring to Shinoda’ essays expressing her attraction to Mt. Fuji, this exhibition offers a re-reading of what her ink paintings and other works are about and the sources of her creativity.