Toshio Yamanouchi's job took him to India in 1951 -- but it wasn't simply work that kept him there for the next 25 years. What kept him based in New Delhi and took him traveling all across the subcontinent and Southeast Asia was a single-minded search: for the artistic trail blazed by religion on the move.
Yamanouchi started out in India as general manager for iron importer Kishimoto Co. Ltd. -- but he ended up finding, collecting and preserving the religious and folk art that charts Hinduism's and Buddhism's 1,400-year-old connection with Japan.
The result was a collection of 350 statues, sculptures, reliefs and paintings from the second century to the early 20th. Seventy of these are now showing at the Okura Shukokan Museum of Fine Arts through May 26, alongside the museum's standing collection. The exhibition, "Gods Derived From India to Japan," commemorates 50 years of official Indo-Japan ties.