Nakagawa Wadō (b. 1880)
Views of Osaka
Japan, dated 1937
Handscroll; ink and gold on paper
Purchase, Richard Lane Collection, 2003 (2007.245)
Conserved in 2009 with a generous grant from Robert F. Lange Foundation
This rare handscroll depicts the city of Osaka as it appeared in 1937, in the decade immediately prior to World War II. Because the city was heavily bombed during the war, little survives today from the pre-war period. Unlike most of the other artists in this exhibition, who responded to the modernization of urban Japan with a nostalgia for rural scenes of traditional life, Wadō contrasts areas of traditional architecture (temples, shrines, and residential structures) with modern steel bridges, Art Deco buildings, streetcars, and airplanes of the 20th century city. The composition culminates with a dramatic storm, in which gold lightning streaks across the sky.