Another World: Sagawa Art Museum
Approaching the Sagawa Art Museum is like approaching a mirage. At first, there is no building, only rippling water shifting under the sunlight, little silver waves marching in rhythm. From this reflective pond rises a procession of columns guiding the eye upwards, towards sweeping slanted roofs that resemble the sails of a ship, or temple eaves. The museum emerges like an ancient shrine reimagined in modern form – sleek, contemporary lines engulfed by water and light. Monumental and weightless.
It is a different world.
A hushed, sacred atmosphere lingers everywhere, the subtle lighting quietly illuminates lowered ceilings, the empty hallways are occasionally greeted by one or two wandering figures. It is the kind of space that holds a certain weight of mystery, waiting to be explored in pure silence.
Opened in 1998, the Sagawa Art Museum embraces the sparkling gems of Japanese art – the painter Ikuo Hirayama, the sculptor Churyo Sato, and the ceramic artist Raku Kichizaemon XV - Jikinyū – housing and displaying their works next to Lake Biwa in the ancient district of Omi, Shiga Prefecture. A reflection of its lush surroundings, the museum embodies the Japanese reverence for nature — the meditative act of observing water, light, and shadow, and finding in them a form of timeless beauty. Such thoughts permeate each room and exhibition, a few of them explored here.
Ikuo Hirayama: Prayer for Peace
The current exhibition at the Sawaga Art Museum selects 50 works from its collection of more than 300 paintings by the artist Hirayama Ikuo, tracing his legendary journeys across Asia that led to the production of his ‘Silk Road’ series. Like the mystical museum setting, Hirayama’s story is one of spirituality, hope, and passion.
A survivor of the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Hirayama suffered from the long-term effects of radiation sickness. Despite being affected by several cancers, the artist, an ardent pacifist, embarked on multiple quests around Asia since the 1960s. Following the ancient Silk Road linking Turkey and China, Hirayama discovered and recorded heritage sites and architectures that were being threatened by wars and looting.
The artist worked at a fervent pace. During his initial visit to Xinjiang, China, in 1986, the artist completed 8 sketches of Loulan’s old city ruins within 49 minutes amidst storm warnings. His second visit in 1989 resulted in over 60 additional sketches within 3 days. These formed the core exhibition series for the Sagawa Art Museum. Gently placed in rooms and hallways painted in neutral, sandy colours, these sketches of city walls underneath a brilliant blue night sky seem to shine on their own, a glimpse into thousands of years of history still standing amid yellow hills and heavy winds. Using a range of mineral pigments, metallic dusts and gum, Hirayama’s illustrations on paper have a relief effect that becomes ever more visible underneath the gentle lights, exposing a divine quality echoing the artist’s own resilient life story.
Throughout the exhibition space, archways and rooms designed with symmetry continuously prolong this sense of sanctity – not necessarily in the religious sense, but a feeling of peace and protection. At the end of a corridor, a small room shows two paintings of Khmer Buddha statues from Angkor Wat. In 1993, at the invitation of His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Hirayama, by then appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the Registration and Preservation of World Heritage Sites under the Guinness World Records, participated in the conservation and restoration of this Hindu-Buddhist temple complex. His drawings documented these mystical sites for global exhibition and dissemination. Today, they reside in the museum, dark grey washes and glistening edges still telling the tales behind intricate carvings and sculptures.
Chashitsu (Tea Room)
Inside the water garden surrounding the museum, one might notice a separate architecture barely reaching the surface, its four sides hidden behind tall reeds. This is the Chashitsu, or the Tea Room, designed by Raku Kichizaemon XV - Jikinyū.
The traditional Japanese tea ceremony, or chanoyu (’the way of tea’), was first created by Sen no Rikyū in the 16th century. Rikyū was particularly influential to later practitioners of chanoyu via his conceptualisation of wabi-cha, which emphasises rustic simplicity and direct honesty. Situated within the pond at Sagawa Art Museum, Jikinyū’s tea room pays homage to these principles, offering only few visitors immediate access to this transcendental endeavour.
Traditional chashitsu is always designed with the intention to guide visitors into a calm mindset before the appreciation of tea. At the museum, the chashitsu is built almost entirely below water level, and can only be entered through a darkened underground passage. The road (ro) is constructed out of wooden railway planks from Australia, making each step to feel like embarking on a voyage into the unknown. With clever use of light and perspective, where one side of the wall is slightly slanted, the road appears to be longer. Passing through this illusionistic threshold, one takes a seat at the yoritsuki, a space where visitors begin to cleanse their minds, to leave behind worldly concerns and distracting voices. The long table made out of hardwood is amplified by the faint yellow glow of light at foot level, casting a majestic shadow across the narrow room.
Then, carefully walking between irregular stone slabs amid a little stream, the mizuroji gives a refreshing moment of contact with the outside nature. Sitting on a bench, the viewer’s sightline is restricted to a circular wall from which water gently falls. Similar to a tsuboniwa, a small, enclosed courtyard in traditional Japanese houses, this area exhibits a restrained simplicity that guides one to concentrate on what is visible – water, rocks, a glimpse of blue sky above – and listen as heartbeats calm down.
The ritualistic procession continues through the tiny nakakuguri that forces everyone to bend down, the umetsukubai, where traditionally guests would wash their hands, and the Koma Bandaan, a small tea room approximately the size of 4 to 5 tatamis decorated with a single scroll and sometimes a flower. Between each structure, an exquisite play of materials, light and shadow unfolds. Black wooden streaks side-by-side to translucent washi paper screens; dense bamboo sticks form a barrier to the exterior, allowing only fractured sunlight to stream through the shadowy interior. The faint green colour of the reeds outside gradually climbs onto the coarse paper screens, a little reminder that the guests are stepping up into a world of light.
And finally, one reaches the final room, the Hiroma Fugyouken.
Natural light floods the space. Swaying reeds and subtle ripples paint a long panoramic scroll – like a Japanese version of Monet’s waterlilies. This is a liminal space, one that is neither above the water nor below it, but precisely in between. On a sunny day, the waves’ reflections are cast overhead onto the rustic roofs creating an underwater effect, yet sitting down, one is on equal level with the exterior natural scenery.
Time seems to vanish. A journey from dark to light, completed. Now all that is left is the unpretentious pleasure of feeling aligned with nature, bare skin touching the smooth weaves across the tatami, water stretching endlessly towards the pale blue sky.
Raku Jikinyū Exhibition: Respecting and Challenging Tradition
Taking a turn next to the tea room entrance leads one into another realm of mystery and hidden allure. With a series of underwater halls and exhibition rooms, the museum’s display of Raku Jikinyū’s wide range of ceramic artworks embodies yūgen, an important concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics that explores the partially perceived, elusive beauty in shadows.
Darkness envelops everything upon entering. Not blackness, but a deep, heavy, solemn yet simultaneously peaceful grey that drifts across like veiling mists. The slight crack of wood and a slim silver glimmer offer the minimum direction. Here, the usual viewer-object relationship in museums is reconfigured. One is completely submerged in the dark, disintegrated into pure nothingness. Suddenly, Jikinyū’s raku tea bowls appear gracefully behind a single row of illuminated glass panels, like divine spirits dancing in another world – they take over the stage, becoming alive.
As one approaches, the dim lights cast wavering shadows of figures over the tea bowls, each with a hidden elevated foot so that they seem to float in the air. The closer one gets, the more visible the reflections become, almost as if one is actually holding up the tea bowl in a ceremony, joining the nameless people who have touched, used, and seen the bowl since its creation.
These yakinuki black raku tea bowls, black raku tea bowls, yakinuki tea caddies, and yakinuki water jars each bear unique marks of time and family legacy. Raku wares were first made during the Momoyama period (1573-1615) by Chōjirō, and the family lineage continues. Now retired from the Raku family headship, the fifteenth-generation Kichizaemon, Jikinyū, continues to explore the making and aesthetics of tea bowls. His works exhibit an ever-shifting sense of creativity, experimenting with different methods and glazes. Sometimes a splash of gold erupts against uneven black surfaces, sometimes colourful blotches paint the clay a vibrant seasonal scene. He emphasises the sculptural qualities of the bowls with bold trimmings, breathing an avant-garde spirit into the centuries-long tradition.
Walking up the stairs and finally back on ground level, one craves a long moment to re-gather thoughts and comprehend the profound, spiritual experiences of the different worlds offered by the museum.
Around a corner, floor-to-ceiling windows capture a view of Churyo Sato’s bronze statue of a woman standing still. A pool of crystal clear water embraces her, echoing her form and the corridors’ walls, trees beyond the museum’s boundary creating blobs of green across the flowing surface.
Here, people slow down, contemplate, dance between reality and fables, light and dark. The Sagawa Art Museum is a realm that cannot be precisely described in words or labelled. It is neither earth nor heaven, worldly or otherworldly. It is a place that can only be entered at the right time and in the right location, by those with a heart of reverence and curiosity.
