Let's Enjoy Amazing Traditional Japanese Craftworks And Share The Photos!

While traveling Japan, one of the disappointing things might be most museums are prohibiting taking photos of their exhibits. 

So I'd like to introduce an interesting special exhibition of traditional Japanese craft-works. "Amazing Japanese Traditional Art During Meiji Period" is being held at the Art Museum of Tokyo University Of Art. Taking photos of the exhibits is allowed in this exhibition although there are few exceptions. The museum is even encouraging people to share the photos through social networking systems.

This exhibition shows various traditional Japanese crafts during Meiji period (1868-1912). Meiji period is considered as the earliest modern times of Japan. It started right after Tokugawa shogunate government collapsed and Samurai time ended. In the exhibition, We can see many kinds of unique and original craft-works in those days.

One of the interesting crafts are "Jizai-okimono" which means "decorative objects with freely movable joints". I'm showing an example of it on the middle row in the photos above. The snake was made of metal but many of small metal rings like shard are assembled to make the shape, then the snake can wriggle as if it is a real snake. Craftsmen of this art pursued realism and they made various animal objects such as crows, eagles, dragons, and even shrimps with movable joints just like real creatures.

There is a Youtube movie introducing how smooth it can move (It is a frame by frame recording movie).


Actually there is a reason why this kind of art were made a lot at that time. The skill were originally for making Samurai armor. During Samurai era, the skill to make metal joint that can move smoothly like a living creature was very important to make good armor. After Shogunate government was ended and Japan got the first modern government, metal craftsmen still had kept the great skill, then they started to create these objects as decorations. Nowadays I'm not sure if there is any craftsmen who are still making this craft.

You can see more different types of crafts in the exhibition as shown in the photos on the bottom row. It seems like these craftsmen were trying to see how much their work can be elaborate. Each pieces were made by amazing skills. It would be worth to see and very interesting. 

The exhibition continues until October 31st. The museum is located in right outside of Ueno Park, Tokyo.