Kashima Arts specializes in authentic museum quality Japanese arts spanning from ancient to contemporary pieces. Our works include pieces such as “Bokuseki” (a Japanese term for “ink trace” style calligraphy developed by Zen Monks), “Byobu” (decorative jointed Japanese folding screens), “Shikishi” (square card board with a gold trim edge used for drawings, poetry, and autographs), “Tanzaku” (long and narrow cardboard used for poetry writing), “Komonjo” (ancient documents, modern Japanese paintings, and antiques).
Our clientele includes museums, art galleries, major department store special exhibitions, and individual collectors. Our mission at Kashima is to discover and enrich people around the world about our rich Japanese and cultural art traditions.

Please note that our office will be closed following days;

August 8th to 15th, 2010

November 10, 2009

Creator : Morita Tsunetomo
Title of the painting : "Children in Autumn Field" - Hanging scroll

　 This painting has the feeling of nostalgia.
In this painting, there is a boy who is trying to drop chestnuts from a tree. And the behind the boy there is another boy who is watching how it goes. Then the third one concentrates at gathering the chestnuts that dropped from the tree to the ground. Do they bring those chestnuts home, and show them off to their mothers? Or do they carry the prickle cases home together with laughing at pain of the pricks? The circumstance calmly surrounds them. We might be able to feel gentle scent of soil, slight changing colors of trees, and sigh of the autumn wind by just watching this painting.

July 01, 2009

Creator : Kusunoki Keishu
Title of the painting : "The Falls" - Hanging scroll

　 Few people know about, the Nanka style painter, Kusunoki Keishu who purely loved painting just solitarily and never wanted fame and wealth in his whole life. The one who devoted himself to Tomioka Tessai and Uragami Gyokudo left tans of Sansui paintings. Most of his art works were painted with luxuriant foliage, craggy mountains, and streams in between them. The lines he drew over and over make a unique distortion that represents his originality. Although, this falls painting is very crisp and graceful. It is rare work that comes to the fore of his pureness, clearness, and powerfulness. The mighty straight lines without any perplexity brace us up. This scroll would be cool you down a shimmering hot summer day by the water sound of the basin of a waterfall, and also you may feel the fresh splash from there.

May 13, 2009

Creator : Mori Sosen
Title of the painting : "Monkey" - Hanging scroll

　 This work, which was painted by Mor Sosen the painter in the Edo period is well expressed monkeys’ fur as if we can feel the touch of the fur. He changed his penname as狙仙 around his age of sixties, therefore he painted these monkeys before sixties. Sosen left many paintings of deer, tigers, and cats. Above all, his monkey was the most famous subject known for “Sosen’s monkey”. There is an anecdote; when a monkey saw Sosen’s monkey at Ema-do in Itukushima, the monkey jumped on the Sosen’s monkey. Ito Jakuchu was famous for fowls, and he left many fowls in his yard for the observation of his paintings. Also Sosen was handed down that he left monkeys and wild boars in his yard as same as Jakuchu did and he went to mountains to sketch out wild animals. In a book called “Towazukatari” published in 1917, describes about Sosen that he looked like a monkey when he watched his monkeys in his yard with kneeling down on a stool. When we think of the painter, who went after monkeys painted monkeys and also was influenced by monkeys, this work would have the feeling as his portrait.

• Japanese
• English