Small is beautiful: sword mountings at the Kosetsu Museum

"It's very cool" – yes, it certainly was!

Of the multitude of art museums in Japan, many of the best are based on the collections of industrial magnates who made their fortunes during Japan’s period of modernization in the second half of the 19th century. These include the Mitsui Museum (Tokyo), Sen Oku Haku Kokan (Kyoto and Tokyo), Nomura Museum (Kyoto), Foujita Museum (Osaka) and Kosetsu Museum (Osaka and Kobe) to name but a few. They tend to have some very high quality pieces in their collections, bespeaking deep pockets and an educated eye - indeed, many of their founders were not only patrons of the arts, but active practitioners of disciplines such as sado (the tea ceremony).

One such founder was the newspaper magnate Murayama Ryohei, whose collection forms the basis of the Kosetsu Museum. The flagship museum was opened a few years ago in central Osaka, while the original, much smaller museum on the grounds of Maruyama’s old residence, requires a trip to the outskirts of Kobe.

Maruyama founded what became the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which remains one of the four big papers in Japan, later going on to a career in politics and build a substantial art collection. He was a tea enthusiast and, as befits his samurai heritage and early interest in kenjutsu, also collected swords and sword mountings. 

Recently, the Nakanoshima Kosetsu Museum in Osaka had an exhibition of some of his sword mountings, so I went along expectantly to have a look.

The museum entrance

The Nakanoshima Kosetsu Museum is an impressive museum, and I would recommend a visit if there is an exhibition that takes your fancy. A word of warning, however: they don’t accept credit cards or electronic payments, so make sure you take cash. It will come as no surprise that much of the signage is in Japanese, but there was enough in English that this shouldn’t present any problems - each section had an introduction in English, as well as which, the basic details of each piece were clearly labeled in Japanese and English.

The exhibition principally featured sword mountings, and some beautiful ones at that, but also included a few swords as well. It was not a large exhibition, but given the small size of most of the pieces on display, if it had been any larger, it would have been difficult to give all the exhibits the attention they deserved. As it was, at times, their small size made it difficult to fully appreciate their beauty.

 

I should also have added humour as one of their qualities -
here a Buddhist deity chases an oni that has stolen a holy relic.

 

 A large part of the display was made up of work by artisans of the important Goto family. Maruyama, perhaps because he came from a samurai family himself, was interested in items that were made to be used, so they were comparatively restrained. Restrained in this context means using a largely two-tone palette – the dark patina of the metal, often black or a dark bronze colour, contrasted with minimal gold details – rather than a lack of finesse or detail. There is a certain mood to the pieces as well – they are beautiful but not ostentatious.

Sword mountings are typically small in scale, but in spite of their size they contain a wealth of detail that requires careful inspection to really appreciate. While it was a test of eyesight, the exquisite craftsmanship, the makers’ eye for detail and balance of composition, as well as the charm of conception and execution, made the effort more than worthwhile.

 

This piece was only about 2cm in length

 

The pieces included a range of subjects, such as plants, animals, and objects from everyday life, as well as designs based on stories and legends from Japanese and Chinese history, some of which may be familiar to those with a knowledge of noh, kabuki, or ukiyo-e. Recognizing the story makes it more fun, naturally, but I suspect that much of this is no longer general knowledge for many Japanese museum goers, let alone non-Japanese.

Here is an example which movie fans may know from the early Kurosawa film, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail, (filmed in 1945 but not released till 1952 - you can see it here: https://archive.org/details/the-men-who-tread-on-tigers-tails), which is based on the kabuki play Kanjinchō, itself based on the earlier noh play Ataka. As with many of these, there is usually one element of the design which is recognisable, and then the rest falls into place. Here, it is the figure of Benkei with the blank scroll he ‘reads’ from.

The same scene from Kurosawa's film

The final room had a nice display of swords - the most recent was from the 16th century, while others were from the Namboku and Heian periods. Despite the differences in age, they seem to have been chosen for with an eye to their outward similarity. Their graceful curve (sori) was quite deep, and it was interesting to see this design continued through swords of different periods. Very high quality, of course. With swords, though, there is little to hold your attention unless you are already interested in them – one arc of glinting steel can look very like another, particularly when the labels give little detail (and there was not much more in Japanese), but sword appreciation is a severe discipline. I think they got the balance right – the relatively small number of blades was a good complement to the decorative mountings in the previous section, and gave some context – it was the sword, after all, that  was central to the decorative arts on display, setting the tone with its combination of craftsmanship, beauty and utility.