On April 29, the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum held what it calls an “art talk” event to examine the broad appeal of Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89) to this day. Among those speaking at the special event was Kyosai’s great granddaughter Kusumi Kawanabe, who chairs the Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum Board of Trustees and serves as its director; TripAdvisor country manager Tomoe Makino; Yasunori Tamaki, an executive producer at Kadokawa Corporation; and Time Out Tokyo president Hiroyuki Fushitani.
In the first half of the event, the three guests introduced their favorite Kyosai artworks and shared their views on the artist’s creations. In the second half, Director Kawanabe fielded questions and shared personal anecdotes of the challenges she had to overcome in establishing the museum as well as her feelings for Kyosai’s daughter and fellow artist Kyosui, who is the director’s grandmother, among others.
