It’s good to be king. Especially when you’re collecting Japanese art.

Given the intensity of our cultural sightseeing across the three weeks we spent in Japan in 2019, I didn’t rush to get to The Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace for Japan: Courts and Culture. That was a mistake. I imagined the royal family’s stuff couldn’t be that different than what’s on display at top Japanese museums. I was wrong.

It’s not the kinds of objects that differ, but their quality. All the things you’d expect to see in any Japanese exhibition are here: Samurai arms and armour, lacquer boxes and furniture, delicate porcelains, beautiful screens, exquisite prints. Everything was either acquired by a royal for his or her personal collection, or received as a gift from either the government or … more often … the imperial family. In the period between the commercial opening of Japan in 1853 and the beginning of WWII, both countries were empires with an exalted opinion of themselves and each fancied the other their match on the other side of the world. The gift giving was prodigious.

Of course, as any fan of Japanese culture knows, it’s more about elegance and craftsmanship than bling. So what you get here in four tasteful galleries is a subset of art and craft that exemplifies tasteful perfection. It’s all breathtakingly beautiful, one of a kind and manages to pull off that Japanese trick of being both simple and complex.

Britain’s fascination with Japan is an old one. The most striking piece in the first gallery is a set of armour sent as a diplomatic gift by the newly-established Tokugawa shogunate to King James I and VI. It’s hard, in our diverse and variety laden world, to imagine just how alien that beautiful but menacing costume must have been in Renaissance England. Given the age’s love of the exotic, and James’ love of both showing off and of beautiful things, I suspect he adored it. More intriguing, if you can tear your brain away from the sinuously writhing dragons, the spectacular flared helmet and the silk needlework that makes the arm covers look a bit like feathered wings, is the contemplation of what this could have meant. It invited trade. Had the country not changed its mind 20 years later, how might British trade and expansion have changed?

The Tokugawa armour was a false start in international relations, however, and from the 1630s to 1868 the British royals were just like everyone else. They had to buy from Dutch traders, the only Europeans the Japanese let in during their time of isolation. (The Dutch, thought the Japanese, so obviously put money above religion or making social judgments that they didn’t bring the risk of cultural contamination other Europeans threatened.) Seeing the spectacular pieces of porcelain Queen Mary I brought into the collection, you have to wonder if the fact she was Queen of the Netherlands before taking the British throne put her at the head of the shopping queue. 

The most profligate collector, however, is the same spendthrift who usually takes that title in these galleries: good old George IV. Unfortunately, George was splashing the cash when Europeans just couldn’t stop themselves from blinging their oriental collectibles up with French ormolu mounts. They were thought to make the items even more precious. While it’s interesting to see how European craftsmen played off the Japanese foundations, and what they created was masterful, they almost always take away from the allure of the original. 

While purchased collections brought in some wonders, it’s the re-opening of Japan … and the Imperial gift giving that goes with it … that move to jaw dropping territory. 

There’s more armour here, three sets each wonderfully different from the other in their intricate decorative schemes. A set of spears is black lacquer inlaid with chips of mother of pearl; the effect in a procession on a sunny day must have been incredible. Lacquer display cabinets are mind-boggling in the complexity of their creation, but pale to insignificance before a glass bowl created using a cloisonné technique to separate the powdered glass into panels, but then using chemicals to dissolve the wires so you’re left with a translucent, patterned object that seems impossible in its creation. 

There are ceremonial swords aplenty, as beautiful for the patterns and fire in their steel blades as for the ornate hilts, scabbards and presentation boxes. Throughout these objects, however, what is ornate is also generally small and subtle. I regretted deeply not having reading glasses to help me study the fine points. 

Like all the best gifts, many things here combined utility with an outrageous luxury you’d probably not lavish on yourself. The delicate mother of pearl, bamboo and gold fans. The subtly-patterned writing set and lap desk with a variety of bits and pieces that entice you to take up Japanese calligraphy just to learn how to use them. Most intriguing, an “incense game”, packaged in yet another purpose-built lacquer box with customised trays and compartments to hold all the kit. A master of ceremonies lit different bits of incense and challenged players to identify the smell, much as you can do today with sets that help to identify different essences in wine. A variety of small implements for preparing the incense made it clear some expertise was needed to run the game. I was a bit sad to see that the set appears never to have been used, all of the blocks of incense still carefully wrapped in their tidy packaging. 

The curators save the best for last. Just before the exit you’re confronted with two extraordinary screens. Choosing between them, should someone offer you one, would be painful as both are beguilingly beautiful … but in completely different ways. 

The first, a gift for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, is an almost monochrome study in browns.  It’s a scene of mountains, rocks and water, both wild and soothing. There are hints of brownish green in the mountains, and brownish red in the autumnal trees, but the whole scene manages to stay within one colour palette yet be completely realistic. From a distance it’s an almost impressionistic landscape. Up close, you realise tiny houses, crags and trees are all worked in such detail that a few square inches could be cut out and displayed as a precious miniature. It’s so real you feel yourself falling into the landscape, like the children in The Dawn Treader heading back to Narnia through the painting in the guest room. 

The other screen, a coronation gift to Edward VII, uses all the colour not deployed in the mountain scene. Here are birds, trees and flowers in riotous profusion, with one screen for each of the four seasons. Peacocks preen, cranes strut, exotic ducks and pheasants show off plumage unknown in the West, surrounded by billows of peonies, cherry blossom, quince and more. It’s as if the residents of Birdland were let loose at the Chelsea Flower Show. 

Both screens are masterworks of embroidery, so detailed that at a distance you think they’re painted. Up close, you can admire how the use of different threads, materials and techniques creates different visual effects. Usually, by the time you get to the end of an exhibition you’re a bit jaded by the wonders and might walk quickly past the last items. Here, they are worth the price of admission for the whole show.

One of the beauties of The Queen’s Gallery is that you can get your admission ticket validated for use for return visits for the next year, which means you can usually take in two exhibitions on one ticket, with all the return visits you wish. I’m already wondering if I might be able to get back before the show closes. I don’t usually invest in exhibition catalogues but couldn’t resist this one. (It was on sale!) Browsing through reveals a good many items that didn’t even register in my brain, so overwhelmed was I by all the beauty.  

If you want to drink in these wonders of Japan, make it quick, the show closes on 26 February, after which the items will return to their usual places throughout the Royal palaces. 

For more stories on Japan, please see the index “The Joys of Japan” in the right column of this blog. It lists all of my coverage from our trip in 2019, with links. Note the 3-column layout doesn’t come up if you’re viewing on a mobile device.

Exquisite Hokusai show redeems the horror of British Museum's American Pop Art

About half way through the American Pop art exhibit at the British Museum, with angst and disgust rising in equal levels, I was seriously considering cutting off our museum membership.

The show had started promisingly, with disturbing but relevant links to current events. "Repetition adds up to reputation" read the Warhol quote beneath his Marilyn Monroe silk screens. Prescient insight into much that is wrong with our present world. The art movement explored here, bridging the 1950s to the present day, reflects pop culture and consumerism back to us as a dark warning about our world. There are a few things here that are both meaningful and beautiful to look at: Ruscha's petrol station, Oldenburg's oddly compelling giant electrical plug, Haring's AIDS awareness cartoons. But most of the rest is menacing, angry, and .. in its lack of obvious artistic skills  ... begs the question: How is this art? And, more important to me as a British Museum member: Why is this here?

Hosted south of the river in Tate Modern, and positioned as a show about modern art as political protest, it might have worked better. But in this sacred ark of world culture, running under the title of American Dream: Pop to the Present, it was a dark embarrassment to both the British Museum and the United States. No wonder, when we moved on to American politics at dinner with friends later that night, I unexpectedly broke into gasping sobs. This stuff casts a long shadow of gloom and dread. If the point of art is to provoke emotion, then I suppose it's successful in its way.

My eyes, however, would like to find some beauty in art.

Thank heavens for Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave in the smaller exhibit space upstairs. This show
is as lustrous and life-affirming as Pop Art was grim and soul-sucking. And it's not just pretty. In Hokusai's long life (1760-1849) he introduced many modern innovations to Japanese art, while his influence flowed westward to be seen in everything from Beardsley prints to post-war decorative fabrics. He even predicted the musician Prince's "symbol as name" phase, changing his name ... and thus the cartouche with which he signed his work ... multiple times throughout his career to encapsulate what he was trying to accomplish in each phase of his life.

Hokusai was a Japanese painter and print maker, most famous for his Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji. We all know The Wave. (Officially, The great wave off Kanagawa.) Few realise there are 35 more scenes, rich with variety. There are landscapes from every angle, some with the mountain dominant and others where you really have to search for it. In some scenes, people go about their everyday lives so accustomed to the beauty they hardly notice. In others, they're on the mountain itself, climbing to find spiritual enlightenment. Hokusai uses simple, elegant lines and wry observation to bring people into glorious life. Flora and fauna are acutely observed. Colours are exquisite. In the example above, check out the fishermen fighting the sea in the blue twilight, with Fuji looming in the distance. If all this show did was to broaden our awareness of The Wave into its larger series, it would be a wild success.

But there's so much more.

From his earliest days, we see exquisitely beautiful and highly traditional images of deities, dragons and legends. Even here he's breaking away from the pack: a series on the adventures of the warrior hero Tametomo is filled with humour and has a clarity of line so modern it seems to be laying the foundations for manga. Another series of genre scenes originally commissioned by the Dutch East India Company shows him learning from European styles, playing with perspective and introducing the new colour of Prussian Blue into Japan (a shade that would transform his work). These also show his amazing ability to capture slices of real life. In one scene, a samurai stops to advise a boy and his father getting ready to fly their kite. In the foreground, two dogs are sniffing each other's butts. That sweet, achingly real touch of reality makes it feel like you could step through the frame and join the scene.

This is, indeed, a show worth having reading glasses to view. You will want to linger over prints to see what his tiny people and animals are doing. The drama and humour captured in deft brushstrokes is extraordinary.

Later, we come to a series of flower and bird prints suffused with a sense of profound peace. I could happily hang Weeping cherry and bullfinch above my bed and contemplate it nightly. Just when you think Hokusai may be getting staid in this category of stately flowers and perching birds, he surprises you with Carp in waterfall, a scene of remarkable action as the fish bob and weave through the pounding torrent. There are ghost stories and illustrated poems, portraits and temple decorations. Hokusai's gentle humour keeps rearing its head throughout.

We also get to see Hokusai the commercial designer, a reminder that he was extremely famous in his own time. There are designs for exquisite hair combs, fans and netsuke, some with the finished products beside them. It's no surprise that the Hokusai-inspired jewellery in the gift shop is some of the most beautiful I can remember associated with any British Museum show. Rather than splurging on that, however, I bought the show catalogue so I could pour over all the detail I'd missed.

Which leads me to the only drawback of this show: its thick crowds. You will spend far more time queuing to pay close attention to these modestly-sized masterpieces than you will actually get in their contemplation. Downstairs, my footsteps echoed through cavernous, mostly empty display spaces for the Pop Art show. I wonder if the visitor numbers are making management regret their decisions? Upstairs, you're packed body-to-body trying to take in hundreds of detail-rich objects in a small space.

Even without the crowds, there'd probably be too much here to digest in a single viewing. So yes, I will be keeping my British Museum membership. Because shows like Hokusai are more typical of the Museum's track record than the American angst. And because membership means I'm going to be able to pop in several more times before Hokusai closes 13 August. Like that other Japanese favourite, sushi, this art deserves to be savoured in many small bites.