Museums

The Himeji City Museum of Art is housed in an historic red-brick building on a site whose many beautiful features include an impressive view of Himeji Castle. The castle, designated a World Cultural Heritage and National Treasure, is often likened to a white heron because of its elegant lines. Opened in 1983, the museum promotes art and enhances local culture, by acquiring, exhibiting, and conducting research on a broad spectrum of art works. Exhibitions are held in three galleries: the Permanent Exhibition Gallery, the Special Exhibition Gallery, and the Collection Gallery. In addition to exhibitions, the museum hosts lectures, gallery talks, workshops and other events to promote public understanding of the arts. Our aim is to be a museum that is both popular and accessible.

The Himeji City Museum of Art has a collection of 13 Japanese swords belonging to the Sakai family, the lords of Himeji Castle, and holds a Japanese sword exhibition once a year.
The Japanese swords have from ancient times been admired not simply as a weapon, but as a prized treasure and an exquisite work of art. Perhaps most emblematic of the unique beauty of the Japanese sword is the hamon, the distinctive tempered patterning along the cutting edge of the sword's blade. The often organic and ethereal patterns of these hamon possess a diversity of form and a profoundness of depth that help set the Japanese sword apart from other forms of global swordcraft. Central to the sword's aesthetic beauty, over time a number of categories developed for classifying and describing the most common types of hamon. These include the straight suguha, the undulating wave-like notare, the irregular patterns of ko-midare, the zigzag "alternating eyes" gunome, clove-shaped chōji, the "surging waves" tōran pattern, and the amorphous hitatsura. However, no two hamon are alike – and it is perhaps here that the Japanese sword resonates with our own unique, internalized mindscapes, allowing us to perceive indefinable and irreproducible mental landscapes.
Through the steel tempered by countless master swordsmiths and the hamon patterns embedded in the forged surface, these swords evoke multifaceted scenescapes through their complex configuration of diverse elements, such as the serene horizon of a suguha hamon, the crashing wave forms of a tōran hamon, the powerful crystal forms of nie, or the misty forms of nioi. This infinite scenic variability transcends the descriptive capacities of language, echoing the experience of perceiving the crystalline surface of water, a violent sea in winter, a mountaintop rising from a sea of clouds, or a receding mountain engulfed in fog. These diverse kinds of glimmering landscapes embedded in the bare blade are brought forth through exposure to the light of the sun, the moon, or the artificial light of the gallery, generating for each individual viewer, for a brief moment, an ineffable and singular mindscape.

Main works

At le Petit-Gennevillieres, Sunset

From December 1871 to January 1878, Claude Monet based himself at Argenteuil, a town on the outskirts of Paris. Here, the painter enjoyed an extremely fruitful period, producing more than 170 works and engaging with a variety of themes as he developed his style.
A popular recreational area for residents of Paris, Le Petit-Gennevilliers, on the opposite shore of the Seine from Argenteuil, hosted yacht races every summer. There are several extant works by Monet dating from 1874 depicting the area from a number of perspectives. This painting is one of that group; in it Monet depicts the landscape at sunset, looking towards the lower reaches of the Seine. 1874 was also the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, at which Monet showed Impression, soleil levant the work that gave the Impressionists their name.
According to the auction catalogs, Eugène Murer acquired this work directly from Monet in 1877. A well-known collector of Impressionist works, Murer seems to have been a focus of attention in those days. An article carried in the Cris de Peuple newspaper dated October 21, 1887 lists the names of the artists in Murer's magnificent collection, including where and when they were born. One of the listed works, its title stated as Bateaux après l'orage, soleil couchant dramatique, marine (Boats after the storm, dramatic sunset, water), is thought to refer to the present work. Enchanted by the fleeting natural beauty, Monet has used bold, vigorous brushwork to paint the surface of the water and the evening sky after a thunderstorm. We can tell from the picture that he is trying to capture the moment when the sun sets. The work speaks eloquently to the birth of Monet as the master of Impressionism, at this time and in this place; the master who continued to express on his canvases how light and colors shift and change as the hours pass.

Takada Kenzo, blouse, skirt

Takada once commented that his florals, used abundantly every season, were different each time in shape and colorway, sometimes two-dimensional, sometimes wallpaper-like, veering from African-inspired to resembling traditional Japanese bed quilts to Kashmiri in mood. This work, created under one of the themes of the 1994 spring-summer "Gipsy" collection, is beautifully embroidered with floral motifs and was inspired by the traditional Manton de Manila Spanish flamenco shawl.