How will the experience of the recent natural disasters impact on the work of Japan's artists? It's a question that is playing on the minds of many observers of the art world here these days, and it's a question that is somewhat answered — at least by way of historical parallel — in a show currently under way at the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku.
A little over a 150 years ago, at about 10 p.m. on the night of Nov. 11, 1855, the million-plus inhabitants of Edo (present-day Tokyo) were shaken from their sleep by an earthquake now thought to have been magnitude 6.9. With an epicenter directly below the city — a chilling reminder that there is historical precedent for the most feared quake scenario today — it unleashed massive destruction. More than 4,300 lost their lives and more than 10,000 saw their houses collapse or burn in the fires that followed the jolt. One of the latter was an artist named Kano Kazunobu, who was then in his 39th year.
Kazunobu wasn't particularly famous at the time. There is even reason to doubt the legitimacy of his claim to the famous "Kano" name, which indicates his membership of the nation's most esteemed school of painters (he doesn't seem to have gone through the usual apprentice system). But at the time of the quake, this antique dealer's son from Honjo Hayashimachi in Edo (present-day Sumida Ward) had secured what would have been a dream job for any artist: a massive, 100-painting commission that is estimated to have been worth ¥100 million at today's values.