Tokyo offered its Imperial Family a rare gift this week: the chance to see centuries-old Japanese masterpieces in their homeland for the first time, after generations on display in London. Emperor Naruhito, Empress Masako, and Princess Aiko accepted the invitation on October 6, touring the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s exhibition of Edo-period paintings from the British Museum.
The exhibition, titled “Hyakka Ryouran: Edo Paintings That Crossed the Sea,” takes its name from a Japanese phrase meaning flowers blooming in profusion. It is an apt description for the art of the Edo period, which spanned the 17th through the 19th centuries and produced some of the most accomplished painting Japan has ever known. The works on view belong to the British Museum, whose Japanese art collection ranks among the finest anywhere outside Japan.
A photograph from the visit captures the moment: the Emperor, the Empress, and Princess Aiko standing before a set of gold-ground screens, absorbed in a curator’s explanation. The screens gleam in the museum light, their mineral pigments and gold leaf as vivid as the day they left a painter’s studio hundreds of years ago.
A collection that made the round trip
Every painting in the exhibition has made a remarkable round trip. Created in Japan during the Edo period, these works eventually traveled across the sea to London, where the British Museum has preserved and shown them to millions of visitors over the course of two centuries. Now, at least for the run of this show, they are home again – and the first members of the public to welcome them back included the Imperial Family itself.
That the British Museum built such a collection at all is a story in itself. Over two hundred years, its curators assembled one of the great treasuries of Japanese art, introducing British and international audiences to schools of painting they might never otherwise have encountered. Lending the works back to Tokyo is a generous gesture, and a reminder that great collections are held in trust for the whole world.
Culture in the Imperial Family’s public life
The October 6 visit fits a pattern the Japanese public knows well. The Emperor and Empress have long been visible supporters of the arts and sciences, and Princess Aiko has in recent years taken her place beside them at cultural events, giving audiences a glimpse of the Imperial Family’s next generation. Their appearance at the museum carries the weight of that tradition: a statement that the country’s artistic heritage deserves the highest attention.
Imperial visits of this kind also carry a soft diplomatic resonance. No treaties are signed in a gallery, but when the Imperial Family spends an afternoon before paintings lent by Britain’s national museum, the message about the warmth of the Anglo-Japanese relationship needs no translation.
The glow of gold leaf
The screens that dominate the photograph are among the exhibition’s stars. Painted with scenes of birds, flowers, and landscapes in brilliant mineral pigments laid over gold leaf, they were luxury pieces in their own time, commissioned for castles, palaces, and great temples. Under gallery lights, the gold throws a warm glow across the room, and the brushwork rewards close looking in a way reproductions never can.
These objects were made to impress, and they still do. The Imperial Family stood exactly where Edo-period patrons would have stood, taking in works that were painted to delight a discerning eye. Four centuries collapse in a single glance.
Two island nations, one love of beauty
There is something fitting about Japan and Britain sharing these paintings. Both are island nations with long, proud artistic traditions and a national habit of looking outward across the water. The exhibition’s title – “Edo Paintings That Crossed the Sea” – could describe the cultural exchange between the two countries as a whole, a traffic in ideas and beauty that continues to this day.
For visitors who follow the Imperial Family’s example and make the trip to the museum, the reward is a homecoming made visible: Edo’s painted flowers, blooming once more on Japanese soil, under the gaze of the Emperor.
Photo: @kunaicho_jp
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