At the time of the cherry blossoms in Yuyuantan, the 2022 China-Japan Cultural and Art Exchange Season kicked off on March 26 at the China Millennium Monument in Beijing. As the key activities of this exchange season, the "Edo Ki-oe Song - Ukiyo-e Exhibition" and the "Edo Monogatari - Japanese Creative Market" provide a good place for Beijing citizens to enjoy cherry blossoms, watch the exhibition and visit the market, and also bring a feast of culture and art to the audience.
The "Edo Kei Song - Ukiyo-e Exhibition" presents the works of different periods in the history of ukiyo-e from the early days to the decline of the 300 years, and the exhibition presents the unique view of nature of the Japanese nation and the scenes of civic life, entertainment and aesthetic fashion of the Edo period in four chapters: "Flowers Not Sleeping", "Ejo", "Baimeitu", and "The Realm of Peace", of which the two most famous series of ukiyo-e landscape paintings, "Thirty-six Views of Fugaku" and "Fifty-three Times of Tokaido", are exhibited in its entirety. It provides Chinese audiences with a rare opportunity to perceive Edo culture through a zero-distance system.
The exhibition features 140 groups of ukiyo-e classics and is displayed in an immersive space of 1,500 square meters, offering a panoramic view of the ukiyo-e landscape. March coincides with cherry blossom viewing season, and the 1878 work Ueno Yuen Cherry Blossoms Ishito depicts this theme, and Ueno Park is still a cherry blossom viewing spot in Tokyo. From this picture, the viewer can see the most typical feature of Meiji-era ukiyo-e, in which an imported red chemical dye used, bright and not easy to fade, is called "Meiji red".
The Utagawa school was the largest genre that swept through the Edo ukiyo-e world at the end of the 19th century, with more than 150 direct painters, covering almost all the subjects of ukiyo-e. As a representative of the Utagawa school, Hiroshige Utagawa has a calm personality and delicate painting style, and is good at rendering ordinary life with poetic moods, evoking people's strong nostalgia and nostalgia for tradition, which is also known as "nostalgia Hiroshige". The exhibition's "Kabara Night Snow" is the most splendid of all of Utagawa's snow scenes, depicting the night of a snowy village, with three silent pedestrians, surrounded by silence, and it seems that only the footsteps of stepping on the snow rustle in the ears. Although Kabara could not see such heavy snow in reality, Utagawa Hiroshi painted his own mental landscape, and the quiet night scene under the rain and snow moonlight was his best play. The masterpiece "Shono White Rain", which is equally famous with "Puyuan", is also exhibited, and the passers-by in the rain are walking low and hurrying, although there is no specific portrayal of the character image, but the layers of bamboo forest on the background are transformed into gray shadows, revealing a faint sentimental feeling.
Katsushika Hokusai's world-famous "Surfing in Kanagawa" is a must-see work in this exhibition. The sea is turbulent, and the boatmen cling to the hull of the ship and follow the waves. The rolling waves guide the viewer's attention, making Mt. Fuji at the bottom of the picture undiminished. This classic is a masterpiece of traditional art and Western techniques, and it is also a classic work representing Japanese art.
While watching the exhibition, the nearly 2,000-square-meter "Edo Story - Japanese Creative Market" restored the life of Japanese society for the audience, vividly showing the social landscape of the Edo period. Nearly 100 merchants such as Japanese stationery fashion play, Cosplay Japanese kimono, Japanese snacks, sake tasting, and handicraft workshops gather here, so that the audience can experience the perfect combination of Japanese handmade spirit and life aesthetics in Beijing.