Exhibitions

Mako Idemitsu (b.1940) is a pioneering video artist, one of the most outstanding in this field in Japan today.

The cries of battle, the neighing horses on the battlefield, and the clanging of swords striking against each other have long faded away. But the sword is one of the three most sacred symbols of the Shinto belief, which is why it holds a special place in Japanese culture.

In ancient Japan, artists, poets and monks were accustomed to travelling about the countryside and recording their experiences in paintings and poems.

Pictures of birds and flowers - in Japanese kacho-e or kacho-ga - were particular favourites of the traditional Japanese artists. Kacho-e is one of the three pictorial motifs deriving from the Chinese classification system.

n 1603, after a long period of bloody civil wars, the Tokugawa dynasty came to power - the military regime of the shoguns - and ruled for more than 250 years.

This exhibition is the second of its kind since the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art reopened its doors to the public in 1995.

Hokusai (1760-1849) is recognized as one of the greatest artists in the world. Throughout his long life he created more than 35,000 illustrations and sketches for some 500 books.