The Public Entry Exhibitions of the Artist Associations
Various · Annual, mostly autumn and spring
On many days the busiest parts of the building are not the loan shows but the galleries where Japan's artist associations hold their annual exhibitions. Walk into one and you will see hundreds of large canvases hung edge to edge, rooms of ink calligraphy, ceramics on plinths and elderly artists in their best clothes greeting friends beside their work. These are the kobo-ten, public entry exhibitions, where members and newcomers submit work to a jury and the accepted pieces go on show. Groups such as Nitten, Nika, Inten and the calligraphy federations have held their shows here for generations.
The system grew from the government salons of the early twentieth century, and the museum was built in 1926 largely to house them. It gives the building a rhythm all its own: exhibitions last one or two weeks, the walls are stripped and rehung overnight, and the same galleries can go from oil painting to bonsai to photography within a month. These shows have also been the launch pad for the avant-garde: Sekine Nobuo's Phase of Nothingness, Water, one of the founding works of Mono-ha, was first installed in the Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan held in the old building in 1969, and Gutai artists and many postwar painters first reached a Tokyo public here.
For a visitor the public entry shows are cheap or free, uncrowded on weekdays and unlike anything in a Western museum. Do not expect masterpieces on every wall; expect instead a living picture of what tens of thousands of people across Japan are painting, carving and writing right now, and a glimpse of the craft standards and traditions they measure themselves against.
Did You Know? In the autumn season the museum can change over an entire suite of galleries between two associations' exhibitions in a single night.
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