I love traveling by train. It may be because it’s a common mode of transportation in the country I come from, especially for young people, and because Italian landscapes are full of regional and seasonal surprises, a pleasure best savored sitting idly by the window of a train car. I still remember with awe a few of those surprises: a sudden field of sunflowers in the Emilia region, the thick fog that envelopes everything for miles along Pianura Padana, the mountains and streams crossed by the small blue train on its way to Switzerland, and my personal favorite, the vast expanse of the Ligurian Sea that appears as soon as you descend from the Appennino into the coast near Genova.
Considering my fascination with trains, and the world you see from them, I couldn’t miss the enchanting exhibition dedicated to Shikō Munakata at the Japan Society in New York. Shikō Munakata is a self-taught 20th-century Japanese artist who, in his lifetime, produced an impressive number of works thanks to his ability and remarkable speed. In 1963, Munakata traveled several times from Tokyo to Kyoto on the coastal road, Tōkaidō, just like the master of woodblock print Hiroshige had done a century earlier, and then to Osaka. He traveled by rail, after being commissioned by Suruga Bank to create a contemporary view of Tōkaidō on the occasion of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. At each station, he made sketches of the landscape and daily life he observed on thin rice paper, which he later pasted in reverse on a special wood. He then carved the wood with chisels, applied ink, and printed the images, producing the 61 woodblock prints displayed at the Japan Society.
At the exhibition, the artworks are cleverly arranged so as to create the shape of an actual train, with the brightly colored vertical ones on one side and the black-and-whites horizontal prints on the other, simulating windows and the views they reveal.
Munakata left a journal of his travels and work along Tōkaidō1. On January 18, 1964, he wrote about the following print: “I came across this landscape when I was walking on the road back. After I finished drawing, Chiyako asked what the place was called, and one of the children surrounding me answered “Kiretotsu.” I have no idea how to write it, but I gave phonetic equivalent letters, 裂 戸 (kireto). It was my ita-affection2 that caused me to arrange cattle egrets in a row on the trees in the middle.”
Here’s one of the colored prints, with the unmistakable Mt. Fuji in the background.
Walking between Munakata’s prints, in the mysterious atmosphere created by the gallery’s lighting, I felt transported to a faraway land and a distant time. In the background played a recording of Munakata’s voice enthralled by Beethoven’s Ode to Joy while he worked. Let’s listen to it and enjoy it as much as Munakata did until the very last days of his extraordinarily creative and productive life.
Shikō Munakata 12.10.21-03.20.22 A Way of Seeing, Japan Society, Exhibition Guide
A deep affection toward woodblocks.