Welcome back, Yokohama

Overview

The Yokohama Museum of Art partially reopened on Friday, November 1. On Saturday, February 8, 2025, we will at last welcome its full reopening. To commemorate that longed-for event, we are holding the "Welcome Back, Yokohama" exhibition, hoping that including “Yokohama” as a key word in the title will attract a wide variety of visitors. This exhibition is also the first planned by Kuraya Mika since she became the Yokohama Museum of Art’s director.


Highlights of the Exhibition

1. New perspectives on the history of Yokohama



“Yokohama” is our core concept, “diversity” our guiding perspective. Through paintings, photographs, crafts, videos, and other works and reference materials, we dig deeply into the history of Yokohama from new perspectives, producing surprising insights.





2. Together for the first time after our long closure for renovations, masterpieces from our collection



Cézanne, Picasso, Magritte, Nara Yoshitomo—enjoy superb examples of modern and contemporary art.





3. Enjoy with your children



Our “Art as kids see it” corner combines works and easy-to-understand display techniques that both kids and their parents will enjoy. It is a great opportunity for parents and children to appreciate and discuss art.

List of Works



René MAGRITTE, "The Museum of the King," 1966
oil on canvas, 130.0 x 89.0 cm
Collection of Yokohama Museum of Art



Peter Bernhard Wilhelm HEINE (attribute to)
"Commodore Perry Coming Ashore at Yokohama," after 1854
oil on canvas, 53.3 x 80.5 cm
Collection of Yokohama Museum of Art
(Donated by Mr. HARA Noriyuki and Mrs. HARA Etsuko)



Paul CÉZANNE, "Mrs. Cézanne in Striped Dress," 1883-85
oil on canvas, 56.8 x 47.0 cm
Collection of Yokohama Museum of Art

Director’s Message

At this new launch of the museum, the "Welcome Back, Yokohama" exhibition is an opportunity to introduce the many masterpieces in our collection from new perspectives. We will also display works and reference materials from other institutions in Yokohama, including the Yokohama History Museum, the Yokohama Archives of History, the Museum of Yokohama Urban History, and the Yokohama Civic Art Gallery. Moreover, a new work specially commissioned for this exhibition will be displayed in our Grand Gallery.

“Yokohama” is the key to interpreting the works and “diversity” the pillar of the concepts guiding our museum’s activities, post renewal. “Diversity” as our viewpoint sheds new light on the presence of subjects in Yokohama-related works that have been scarcely noticed until now—the people who lived in what is now Yokohama before the opening of the port, women, children, residents with various roots. This approach brings about many new discoveries in familiar works and Yokohama history. Moreover, probing deeply into local history will also bring us different views of world history.

To enhance the enjoyment of visitors with children, we are creating the “Art as kids see it” corner within an exhibition room. We are also strengthening the educational and outreach programs that are another pillar of our activities.

"Welcome Back," our exhibition title, embodies two meanings: “The Yokohama Museum of Art is back after three years” and “Extending a welcome to all of those of diverse backgrounds who have lived or now live in Yokohama.”

Kuraya Mika
Director, Yokohama Museum of Art

Chapters of the Exhibition

Chapter 1. Before the Port
Everyone knows the cliché: “Yokohama’s history begins with the opening of the port. Before then, it was no more than a small fishing village.” With the cooperation of the Yokohama History Museum, here we display artifacts that people who lived in, broadly speaking, what is now the city of Yokohama used in their daily lives, legacies from the Jōmon period (14000 to approximately 400 B.C.) on. These items are introduced in terms of sub-themes, including “women” and “children,” for example.


Chapter 2. Opening the Port
The port of Yokohama was opened in 1859 in response to demands from the United States and European nations. "Nishiki-e" (polychrome woodblock prints) depicting Western-style streets, foreigners, railroads, and other sights satisfied the curiosity of people living outside the city about these new phenomena.
With the opening of the port, Yokohama developed as a city both to see and be seen, both from abroad and from other parts of Japan. Its residents were conscious of how others perceived them.
Here we also trace the history of Yokohama’s red-light districts, which began just after the port was opened.
To cater to the foreigners flocking to the city, licensed quarters with clusters of brothels and red-light districts (delineated by red lines on police maps) were created. This concept reappeared periodically throughout Yokohama’s history.


Chapter 3. The Opened Port
In Yokohama, a great number of paintings and craft objects were produced as souvenirs to be sold to foreigner visitors or for export. Here we introduce the works created in that cultural “contact zone.”
The Western-style painter Goseda Yoshimatsu learned to paint from his father Goseda Horyu, who produced paintings to be sold as souvenirs.
Japan’s educational system greatly restricted, for many years, opportunities for women to study art. Yoshimatsu’s younger sister, Watanabe Yuko, learned to paint, not at school but instead by participating in the family business, and also achieved great success.


Chapter 4. The Port Destroyed
The "Nihonga" (modern Japanese-style painting) artist Imamura Shiko was born into a family whose business was making paper lanterns for export. Ushida Keison, another "Nihonga" painter, was born into a family whose business was packaging export ceramics.
The rapid growth in Yokohama’s population was largely due to people like those artists’ families who flocked to Yokohama from all over Japan seeking employment in export- or import-related businesses.
This chapter includes works by these two artists, both the children of parents who moved to Yokohama. Hara Sankei, an enormously wealthy collector who made his fortune in the silk trade, was their patron.
Yokohama had been developing smoothly until 1923, when it was struck by the Great Kanto Earthquake. What did artists in Yokohama at the time witness, and how did they depict these scenes for future viewers?


Chapter 5. The Port Destroyed Again
Yokohama recovered from the global depression and gradually rebuilt after each disaster. Yamashita Park, built on the buried debris from the Great Kanto Earthquake, was completed in 1930. Many bridges that collapsed during the fires that followed the earthquake were rebuilt.
Here we look at cityscapes of Yokohama through works depicting rivers and bridges, where people enjoyed the prosperity of post-disaster reconstruction and were gradually caught up in the tide of the times by the approach of war.
Here we introduce the "Yokohama Bridges" series by the Western-style painter Matsumoto Shunsuke. The series, which depicts Tsukimi Bridge near Yokohama Station, is being shown as a group in Yokohama for the first time.

　
Chapter 6. The Port in Peril
In May 1945, Yokohama was the target of a massive aerial bombing campaign. Then postwar rebuilding was long delayed by the Allied Occupation’s requisitioning the city center. Here we introduce Yokohama from the years under the Occupation to the period of rapid economic growth.
Yokohama, in which the Miyozaki licensed quarter was established shortly after the port was opened in 1859, responded to Japan’s defeat in World War II by promptly preparing “comfort facilities” for the American soldiers occupying Japan. That role was inherited by the Magane-cho (Eishin) red-light district, the Honmoku brothel area, and streetwalker prostitutes and continued until the full implementation of the Anti-Prostitution Act in 1958.
Yokohama, having suffered prolonged postwar chaos, became the setting for many Japanese films in the postwar period. Recurring tropes in both novels and movies included the harbor, foreign crime syndicates, and the drug trade.


Chapter 7. The Museum Opens
Development of the Minato Mirai 21 district began in 1983. The opening there of the Yokohama Museum of Art, designed by Tange Kenzo, was timed to coincide with the 1989 Yokohama Expo (YES ‘89). Here we introduce the process by which this museum was founded.
At the same time, we rethink from new perspectives the famous works that for more than thirty years have been “citizens of Yokohama,” familiar parts of our collection. We lend a thoughtful ear to what the models in these paintings had to say about them, including Hortense Fiquet Cézanne, the model for Paul Cézanne’s "Portrait of Madame Cézanne in a Striped Dress" (1883-85) and Marie-Thérèse Walter, in Pablo Picasso’s "Woman Sleeping in an Arm Chair" (1927).


Chapter 8. Reopening at the Port
The final chapter celebrates the relaunch of the museum, focusing on contemporary art works created after 2010s by the various artists, including Hiwa Kazuhiko, from whom we commissioned a new work art for this exhibition. We have also created a special corner, “Art as kids see it,” where we display works chosen especially to appeal to children.
“Diversity” is our starting point as we celebrate the variety of life and lives in Yokohama and give our children hope for the future.

[Chapter 1]
"Jar with Human Face Ornament"
From Kamidai Site, Tsurumi Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa
Late Yayoi period
Yokohama History Museum
[Kanagawa Prefecture-designated important cultural property]

[Chapter 5]
KATAOKA Tamako, "In the Shade of a Tree"
1939, Color on paper
Yokohama Museum of Art, Donated by Ms. Kataoka Tamako

[Chapter 8]
HIWA Kazuhiko
"walkingpractice feat.HIWADROME"
2023, Dimension variable
Wheelchair, curved mirror, LED illumination, projector, LCD, media player, 3D printer, mannequin, insulock
Place of presentation: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (reference photo)