The graphic art of Yumeji

Yumeji Takehisa personifies the Taisho romantic style--a cultural phenomenon and its products, which conveyed life in the Taisho era (1912-1926). His bijin-ga--paintings of women, sometimes elegant, sometimes melancholic--have found a new following, as has the artist himself. An ongoing exhibition at a Tokyo museum, however, focuses on another side of the artist: his successful career as an art director.

"Yumeji is generally known for his depictions of languid beautiful women, but he also was a graphic artist and proved himself in a variety of fields," said Keiko Ishikawa, a curator at Takehisa Yumeji Museum, where 420 of the artist's works are being shown under the title Takehisa Yumeji: Zuan to Soshoku-ten.

"In addition to his fragile, feminine bijin-ga paintings, he was active in commercial publishing and marketing, cleverly employing the fashion and atmosphere of the times. He added to his Japanese-influenced style elements from art nouveau and art deco, which attracted women looking for something new."

The exhibition is divided into five sections. The first provides an overview of the designs and patterns Yumeji used. The remaining sections delve into far more detail.
The 420 items, chosen from among the 3,300 works in the collection at the 20-year-old museum, are all related to printed matter, including magazines, books and posters. Visitors can find Yumeji's chiyogami-patterned washi paper, magazine covers featuring a woman he drew in the Taisho romantic fashion and department store advertisements with Yumeji's interpretation of geometrical patterns.

In a 1931 Mitsukoshi department store poster, for example, Yumeji employs more geometrical, simplified lines to portray a woman, a radical change to his more orthodox bijin-ga.
A number of magazines aimed at female readers of the time--publishers had just begun targeting education and entertainment publications at girls and women--show that Yumeji did not only create cover images, but also a number of interior editorial illustrations. He was even responsible for the overall art direction of the publications.

Ishikawa includes in the exhibit a number of Yumeji's ebuto--designed envelopes--illustrating the trend among women of the time to exchange letters. The ebuto were among the original items Yumeji sold at his own store, Minatoya Ezoshiten, which he opened in 1914 in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. (The store was shut down two years later due in part to his personal problems with women).

"Yumeji's wide range of works tells us he was more than the laid-back, romantic artist who was busy painting and loving women," Ishikawa said. "He also was what we would now refer to as an art director." Yumeji also is known for his tumultuous relationship with his wife, Tamaki, and mistresses.
"The products also show that Yumeji was a man of ideas. In one women's magazine, for example, Yumeji introduced yukata designs and used as models an actress and a woman from a well-off family. He then sold the yukata fabric as merchandise," she said. His sophisticated commercial artistry can be found in a number of paintings that he made for the covers of a series of musical scores published by Senoo Gakufu. Between 1916 and 1929, Yumeji's paintings were featured on about 270 books of musical scores.

According to Ishikawa, there were few people at the time who were able to read or play to the score. "But people bought scores just for their covers, and those by Yumeji were the most popular."
It was around 1925 when radio started becoming popular in Japan. It's easy to imagine how difficult it must have been for Yumeji to express the charm of opera and Western music on these covers with so little access to information. Still, his illustrations for Peer Gynt or Nina, for example, show his excellent artistic skills.
Yumeji fell ill and died in 1934 at the age of 49.

"Shojo-ga [illustrations of girls] artists such as Junichi Nakahara [1913-1983] and illustrator Ado Mizumori are among artists who say they were influenced by Yumeji. Mangaka Moyoko Anno also evaluates him highly," Ishikawa said. "I'm sure his influence would only have been greater had he not died so young."
"Takehisa Yumeji: Zuan to Soshoku-ten" until March 27, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at Takehisa Yumeji Museum in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo. Closed March 22 and Mondays, except March 21. Admission is 900 yen for adults, 800 yen for college and high school students and 400 yen for middle and primary school students. The price of admission also includes entrance at the neighboring Yayoi Museum.


For more information, visit the official Web site at www.yayoi-yumeji-museum.jp.