The painters in your collection are commonly described simply as "Individualist." Can you elaborate on what is meant by that?

The Japanese do not know where to put these artists, and the Japanese like to have a cubbyhole for every single thing: "You're from the Maruyama-Shijo school [which promoted the importance of firsthand observation], or you're a Rimpa [natural style on gold background] painter." Somebody like Jakuchu comes along, and he doesn't fit any mold. They don't know where to put him. Then you have a man like Nagasawa Rosetsu, who is like Maruyama Oukyo [founder of the Maruyama-Shijo school], but is so good that he overtakes him. And they throw him out, or he quits, or he was murdered -- you don't know really what's true. They just cannot categorize him, and the Maruyama-Shijo school won't take him. They have the 10 greatest painters or students and they don't include him -- one of the greatest of all artists. They should put him there, but he doesn't fit . . . so what do they do with him? They put him in with Jakuchu. And then there is Soga Shohaku, who really was an individual, so they also stick him in there. And they just think up a name, "Individualist."

How could they gain a reputation without being a part of a school?

I wonder why? [laughs] Jakuchu said it very well: "Many painters paint with great skill, but they cannot go beyond skill, that's what makes me different from others."

It is his passion?

You can't believe that this is a painting. It's just too good. He gives life to these animals. You can see the weight to them. You look at that mosaic screen and you'll see animals painted out of squares, and squares within squares, and yet they all stand on their legs, or are there actually flying; they're alive. There's some sleeping right next to one that's alert; all out of squares, and he can imbue them all with this feeling. With the most mundane way of painting, he can do anything.

You say the collection is free of religious overtones and other stylistic guidelines.

Some will have it, but I am not buying an artwork because "Oh, I found me a Catholic painting." No, I buy the beauty of the painting.

So the one constant in the collection is you. How did you form your aesthetic? How did you train your eye?

I worked with Frank Lloyd Wright -- I was an engineer, I had no art training -- and he taught me about nature; how to mutilate a hillside, take a bulldozer and cut into it and then bring in brick and stone and wood and build something that makes that hill look more beautiful. He never taught me art, or Japanese art -- but he taught me the love of nature. And the thing that I always remind people about: He said to me and many others, "You spell God with a capital G. Well I spell nature with a capital N." And that's the main thing that I see in these paintings; it is consistent in everything I have ever bought.

Have you ever watched a person make a flower arrangement? They cut off the limbs, and they rip off the leaves and they bend that thing; they stick it in a vase, and you think "How did they ever find such a beautiful flower?" This is what an artist does when he leaves out everything that isn't necessary. "How did he ever find such a beautiful camel, or a landscape or a building?" Whatever it is, it is the pure essence of nature.

At what point did you realize you were a collector?

Recently! It wasn't until recently. Since nobody liked it, I never thought of it as a collection. I guess probably in '71 with the Jakuchu show, and '73 with the Rimpa show, when I loaned works to the Tokyo National Museum. That was when I probably started to think that there was value in the collection, other than just something I liked.

What did your family and friends think when you started collecting?

Nobody noticed. Friends and family ignored it. My intermediate family stood behind me. But my parents and my brother -- we were a very close family -- but they never came over to look at it. Never cared.

Why were these works undervalued when you bought them?

No one liked them. They didn't even known the names of these artists in Japan.

Did these artists ever enjoy popularity in Japan?

I am sure when the artists were living, they were respected or they couldn't have painted so much. But the Japanese seemed to have just lost all connection with taste after World War II, when everybody wanted everything Western.

For all kinds of art?

I think so.

But these were the artists you liked . . .

They were all Edo. They were from 200 years ago. Whether they were liked at that time, I don't know. I know some were, or we wouldn't know about them.

What was the influence of the rising merchant class during the Edo Period?

You have a reversal there, the class ranking was: samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants. In the old days, it would have been an insult for an artist to put his name on a samurai's painting. So many of the great early paintings were never signed. But when the artist was painting for the merchant class, the merchant class wanted to have a high-class name, so they would put names on fullsize, just as big as they could get them. So in that sense it was reversal -- the artist wasn't known in the early period, except when they were samurai.

Is there any Japanese art now that you think is still undervalued?

I don't know what you mean by undervalued. If you mean compared to [Vincent] Van Gogh or [Gustav] Klimt, they are way undervalued! Klimt just sold at $135 million, so Jakuchu is way undervalued if you look at the quality of the painting.

Do you think Japanese art will start to gain the kind of acceptance these Western artists enjoy?

I think they are gaining acceptance in Japan, and that is the first step. After this tour of Japan, the show is going back to the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. They are taking a big risk here by putting the art out without glass, with changing light on it, something nobody has ever seen in Japan. And if it works, and gets the publicity that these artists should get, hopefully we'll see success back in the States. Probably almost nobody in Japan has seen the art in the way the artist thought it would be seen. Behind glass with an unchanging spotlight, it is seen the only way that the artist never saw it. He actually painted the painting to change in different light. I learned this by watching the sun move behind clouds while watching the paintings, and it was breathtaking, and nobody has ever seen it. The artist painted in the sunshine, he painted in the shadows, he painted in the moonlight. He knows these different lights. And when he wants to paint a moonlight painting, whether he paints it under moonlight, or whether he knows how to paint it looking like moonlight, I don't know. But you hang that painting on a moonlit night, and it is so gorgeous compared to in the daylight.

My whole life has been spent trying to show people the beauty of Japanese art. I started a foundation in 1983 whose sole purpose is to promote Edo Period art.

I assume the value of these works has increased, tremendously. Where I could [once] buy hundreds every year, I can buy one or two now.

What changed that?

They started showing them in museums. When I was buying, they didn't show Edo art in the museums at all. We had the first Jakuchu show in the national museum in 1971 and that was the first time he had been shown.

What was the response like?

Huge compared to other artists of the Edo Period. But if they had put on a Buddhist show or a Kamakura show, it would [have] been bigger. But I think, at that time, they were saying that there were 800 people a day, and that was the biggest thing they had seen in a long time.

Did they know Jakuchu?

They were coming in cold, but the big exhibition was when Jakuchu was put on at the Kyoto National Museum about five years ago. Rather than sell it to the old museum patrons, they pushed it to young people, and it was mobbed. It was the biggest show ever held there. They sold 45,000 catalogs during the show, and they have made several printings after.

Are you expecting a similar response this time?

From the youth, yes. That is what we are hoping for. My daughter even got some of the images put on skateboards. It's a way of getting to more of a younger generation without overwhelming them from a scholarly perspective. You know kids aren't really interested in reading textbooks about it, so we're hoping that through the boards, they'll go on the Web site of the company that is making them and put tags on them describing the artist.

Do you pay any attention to contemporary Japanese art?

No. They have Westernized Rimpa painting, and it doesn't work. There is one painting in this show by Suzuki Kiitsu, one of the greatest painters, but he has tried to round the faces, he has tried to make a river flow around a hill. Whereas Rimpa is flat -- look at those gold and blue screens, screens with fans, that river is a curtain, it's straight up and down.

A lot of Japanese art has left the country since the Meiji Era. When you bring your works here, do you ever get the sense people would like to see them stay?

If I didn't have them, they wouldn't see them. They wouldn't have been shown, they would be in a private home, put away, and I've always brought them back anytime someone wanted them for a show.

I wouldn't mind it if they really wanted them back, I could make an arrangement. But the Japanese seem to be happy to have their art shown overseas. There's never been any movement to return them that I know of. But a lot of people wanted to put this show on. That was wonderful, I just planned to bring it over to the one museum, and before I knew it they had four signed up -- the others being Kyoto, Kyushu and Aichi.

For other related stories, please click the following links:
'Individualist' achievements
A stroll among the masterpieces