The Art of Kako Ogihara

Basically every time I meet a person in Japan I am asked what my job is. Then I tell them that I am a college student, which leads them to ask for my age. Everybody is blown away, of course, when they discover that I am not in my early or mid-30's but only 21 years old. After that ordeal passes, I tell them that I am an art major, which gets them really excited. It amazes me how reliably art excites the Japanese people.

Being Japanese, Ogihara-san got very excited once I told him about my art major. But he was excited for another reason as well- his great-grandfather, Kako Ogihara, was a traditional Japanese painter- art is in his blood. When he told me this, I became very excited as well. This all led to a lot of excitement. And so I asked him lots of questions about Kako, what sort of paintings he did etc.

Kako Ogihara

Ogihara-san showed me a bottle of wine made from his family's grapes. The label was a section of a painting done by Kako Ogihara about 100 years ago. Pretty cool! Ogihara then told me that at his mother's house they had loads of his work, in addition to a bunch of Kako's painting workbooks. The next day we stopped by the house to look at the paintings.

Being an art major, I was a bit distressed by the storage methods for the artwork- folded up in old boxes. The folding is what really got me. One of the books had been nipped by an apparently ravenous mouse.

A teaching workbook, from which Kako likely studied. Note the mouse bites and the stunning translucency of the paper

There were lots of workbooks, seven or eight, and lots of individual paintings and sketches. Leafing through them all was really interesting because you could see the images in the workborks mirrored in the sketches done by Kako. Some of the images in the workbooks were recreated entirely, large-scale. All were beautiful.

A mutual favorite of Ogihara-san and myself

Another mutual favorite, sadly folded up. Note the translucency of the paper

An image from one of Kako's workbooks

One of Kako's workbooks

This last workbook is very special. It was in excellent condition and had more images inside than all the other workbooks. All were in color. The binding was top notch, despite the book's age of around 120 years old. This workbook is very special because Ogihara-san gave it to me. When he gave it to me, with a huge and beaming smile, he told me that it probably had not been used for at least 70 or 80 years. This made me happiest of all- that he understood the book not as an artifact or fossil- a souvenier, essentially- but as something alive, something that should be used and perpetuated. I hope to do that!