慶應義塾大学アート・センター　Keio University Art Center

This year, the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Activities related to the art archives were launched five years after KUAC’s inception and have since expanded and become a focal point of the center’s activities. As a part of this development, a total of twenty-five art archive exhibitions have been held since 2006.

The “Tanabe Collection” presented during this exhibition consists of items that were cataloged in the early days of KUAC’s art archives but have not been widely known until now. This exhibition returns to the roots of these archives by introducing the collection, which features materials connected with the kabuki magazine Yakusha.

The inaugural issue of Yakusha was published shortly after the Second World War in June 1947. This was a difficult time period with scarce supplies, and the magazine lasted two years before discontinuing publication in July 1949 with its 18th issue. In its “Inaugural Address,” the ambition and passion for kabuki leap off the pages as the magazine showed the true form of kabuki—a traditional art unique to Japan—and communicated its hope to create a new era of national kabuki. The materials that would become the Tanabe Collection were donated by the family of the late Yakusha founder Mitsuo Tanabe.

This exhibition will present stage photographs, sketches, and manuscripts, that were published in the magazine. This will be a rare opportunity to view invaluable items from that time period, which until now have been rarely seen. By viewing this collection, we hope that visitors will be able to feel the passion that was infused into kabuki during difficult times, as well as share the intense emotions that aficionados and researchers alike must have experienced from the pages of the magazine.

Translated with DeepL

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