In the two years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, many of Japan's visual artists and curators have cobbled together art-related events and projects with the aim of lending support to the people in the affected areas. Almost as many have struggled trying to put art to some practical use — group "performances" for clearing debris, for example, or "workshops" for entertaining those at evacuation centers.
Now, a new approach is being tried — and its unabashed simplicity appears likely to ensure its success. "Jakuchu's Here!" is a no-holds-barred blockbuster exhibition bringing together more than 100 quality artworks from the mid- to late-Edo Period — especially those by the popular Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800). The key to the show's genius is there in its title: "here!" Where? Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, that's where — not the profitable population centers of Tokyo and Kyoto, to which such big-time shows usually stick like magnets, but the three prefectures hit hardest by the quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis.
"Jakuchu's Here!" thus represents a gift from Japan’s art establishment to an audience that it has neglected for decades. It includes loans from not only each of Japan's six national museums but even the Imperial Household Agency, too, and yet, surprisingly, it was the brainchild of a man unaffiliated with any of those venerated institutions; he doesn't even live in Japan. Meet Joe Price, an 83-year-old Oklahoman with a disarmingly down-to-earth demeanor and a fondness for telling stories.