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(*)(Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture) (★)(´URUSHI´, Japanese lacquerware, is perhaps the oldest and most sublime of all the Japanese arts and crafts. Its history goes back more than 7,000 years, and it is still vibrantly alive today. It is practiced by craftsmen working in time-honored techniques and by modern artists forging the future. Valued for its utilitarian durability, urushi developed into an incomparable art, adorning a multitude of objects from luxurious palaces to lavish murals and exquisitely crafted fountain pens. The present book, written more than fifty years ago by the Living National Treasure Gonroku Matsuda, has long been must reading for collectors, researchers, and laypeople. It is the Bible of Urushi, covering every conceivable aspect of the subject. It includes some fifty full-color illustrations of masterpieces honored by history and masterworks by Matsuda himself. The present edition has been supervised by Kazumi Murose, a disciple of Matsuda´s and a Living National Treasure in his own right. His Foreword enables the reader to acquire a broader understanding of the contents of the book and to gain a deeper appreciation of its value and impact on the world of urushi. ◆Gonroku Matsuda was born in 1896 into a farming family in Kanazawa, Ishikawa prefecture, an area endowed with a rich tradition in arts and crafts from premodern times. At the age of seven, seemingly as a natural course of events, he began learning urushi craftsmanship from his older brother. In March 1914 he graduated from the Ishikawa Prefectural Technical School in urushi, and in the following month he left for Tokyo and entered the Tokyo Fine Arts School in the urushi department. Having been engaged in the practical aspects of urushi from a very young age, at the time he entered the university he was already technically capable of producing a graduation project. The university provided him with the opportunity not only to broaden his grasp of urushi technique but also to deepen his knowledge of Japanese and Western painting, design, sculpture, and appreciation of classical Japanese art from the foremost experts in their respective fields. After graduation at the age of twenty-five, in early April 1921 he began to take part in the repairing of artifacts excavated at the 2,000-year-old Lelang site in Korea and was immensely impressed by the high technical quality of Han-dynasty urushi and its durability. In 1931 at the age of thirty-five he oversaw the urushi decoration of the Gobinden [now Gokyuusho] in the Imperial Diet Building. In 1939 at the age of forty-three he culminated thirty years of research on historical bowls with the publication of ´Jidai-wan taikan [A Compendium of Historical Bowls]. In the same year he had the opportunity to study the Tamamushi Shrine in Hooryuuji and take detailed notes. In May 1943, at the age of forty-seven, he was appointed professor at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. In October he submitted his cabinet with Hoorai motif to the 6th Japan Arts Exhibition [Shinbunten]. In February 1955 at the age of fifty-nine he was designated a Living National Treasure by the japanese government. In September 1962 he took part in the repair of the National Treasure Chuusonji Konjikidoo [repair complete in 1967]. In April 1967, when he was seventy-one, the Ishikawa Prefectural Wajima Lacquer Technology Research and Training Institute opened, which he had so wholeheartedly supported, and he served as a lecturer. In November 1976, at the age of eighty, he was awarded the Order of Culture. In November 1979, when he was eighty-three, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, held an exhibition on modern Japanese urushi art, at which Matsuda´s cabinet with Hoorai motif was displayed, among other of his works. In January 1986, when he was ninety, he submitted his flat tea-caddy with ivy design to the 3rd Japan Traditional Japanese Lacquer Exhibition. On June 15 he passed away from heart failure.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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