Sadao Watanabe - Christ Enters Jerusalem

John 12: 12–15

In this print, most of the important elements of the Biblical tradition are present, although the onlookers are phlegmatic rather than enthusiastic.   Jesus, largely in green, is at the centre riding the donkey over ground covered with palm branches, discarded robes and flower heads.  Up in a spindly tree, is a figure who may be Zacchaeus, who climbed a tree to see Jesus. Luke records this at Jericho, but it is often included in the Entry into Jerusalem.

Watanabe’s work is executed in a traditional Japanese medium, and his Biblical themes are depicted in a Japanese setting. He liked his prints to hang in ordinary places where people gather, “because it was to them that Jesus brought the gospel”. This is a characteristic of mingei: art for the people and by the people.

Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.

Born: Tokyo, Japan, 1913

Died:  Tokyo, Japan, 1996

Early life

Orphaned at ten years old, Sadao Watanabe was invited to church by a neighbour, an event which changed his life. He was baptised at the age of 17. He began work in fabric dyers’ shops, sketching patterns and dyeing clothes.

Education

Watanabe encountered the renowned textile artist Keisuke Serizawa and learnt from him the ancient Okinawan technique of stencil-dying using handmade paper and natural pigments. In 1943, Watanabe married Harue Yoshimizu, who came from a papermaking family. She played a key part in his art, mixing the soybean milk that is essential as a binder.

Life and career

Watanabe’s family home in Tokyo was destroyed in a bombing raid in World War II and they fled the city. These were distressing years and he was in poor health, making a living designing for a futon factory.

Watanabe’s prints meld biblical imagery with the traditional Japanese folk art known as mingei. His print Ruth won the first Japan Folk Art Museum Award in 1947.  Gradually he was recognised internationally, and The Bronze Serpent won the first prize at the Modern Japanese Print Exhibition in New York City in 1958. His piece Kiku (Listening) (1960) was featured in the novelist James Mitchener’s book The Modern Japanese Print (1962).

Despite his growing international reputation, Watanabe lived modestly and in relative obscurity in Tokyo. His main aim was to reach his fellow countrymen with the Christian message in a way that was free from colonial influence and from the culture of the West. Not only is his work executed in a traditional Japanese medium, but his biblical themes are depicted in a Japanese setting. He wanted to see his works “hanging where people ordinarily gather … Because Jesus brought the gospel for the people.” This, together with the use of natural materials, is characteristic of mingei: art for the people and by the people. The two works in the Methodist Modern Art Collection were created twenty years apart and both acquired in 2010.

Watanabe’s exhibitions include the Modern Japanese Print Exhibition in New York (1958). Works were acquired by the National Museum of Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Vatican Museum. During President Lyndon Johnson’s administration (1963-69), Watanabe’s prints were hung in the White House.

Artnet website: www.artnet.com/artists/sadao-watanabe/ (viewed 18 September 2024)

Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford, Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 106-108

Wikipedia, ‘Sadao Watanabe’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadao_Watanabe_%28artist%29 (viewed 18 September 2024)