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Published: June 12th 2023
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There were a couple of things I definitely wanted to see in Osaka – one was the oval Ferris wheel by the Dotonburi River, and the other was the ukiyoe(pronounced you-kee-oh-way) museum.
You have undoubtedly seen ukiyo-e (literally “the floating world”) prints. Perhaps one of the more famous is “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” from the series “36 Views of Mt Fuji” by the artist Hokusai. These woodblock prints are a style of print and painting from the Edo period depicting famous theater actors, beautiful courtesans, city life, travel in romantic landscapes, and erotic scenes. Think of think of them as the 17
th century equivalent of movie magazines, postcards, men’s’ magazines, and advertising posters. Since these were woodblock prints, a lot of them could be made quickly and fairly inexpensively.
The Kamigata Ukiyoe is a small private museum, just a block south of the Dotonburi River. They specialize in kamigata prints, kamigata being the name of a region of Japan known for its theaters and well-known actors during the 17th and 18
th centuries when these prints were made. Since it is a small museum, they do not have a lot of art on the walls,
but their exhibits change every three months, and they have a nice, but small, gift shop.
There is another ukiyoe museum in Osaka that I came across purely by accident. Shinsaibashi is a covered walking street with stores and restaurants, that runs for eight block north from the Dotonburi River. My hotel was about a block and a half from Shinsaibashi, so it was convenient to walk there when the weather was bad. And who knows, a store just might catch my eye.
So. On a rainy morning I was walking up Shinsaibashi and I noticed a banner hanging off the upper story of Desigual – a clothing store. I moved closer to look at it in more detail and saw that it was a banner for a ukiyeo exhibit at the Osaka Ukiyoe Museum. I had visited a ukiyeo museum down by the Doronmburi River on my previous trip to Osaka, and wondered if the museum had moved.
I walked up the three flights of winding stairs to the museum, where I found that it was not the little museum I expected, but a clean, well-lit museum. The exhibit on offer while I was there were
prints of famous places and the experience of travel. The museum staff would even bring you a magnifying glass so that you could see the fine detail that had been carved into the woodblock from which the print was made.
The museum had a fairly extensive gift shop, offering the typical museum-y things: postcards, t-shirts, books, but they also sold original prints. Keep in mind that woodblock prints are by their very nature not one of a kind, but these had been pulled from the original woodblock and were of museum quality (with a price to match.)
If you go: • The Kamigata Museum is about a block south of the Dotonburi River, very near to the Hozenji Temple, which is very small but very pretty.
• Hours are 11am to 6pm, closed on Mondays, admission is JPY500
• The Osaka Ukiyeo Museum is on Shinsaibashi Shopping Street, above the Desigual shop
• The closest metro stop is Shinsaibashi station, which can be accessed in the Daimaru Department store.
• Hours are 10 am to 5 pm, closed on Mondays, admission is JPY1000
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Sharon
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Wow!
I would love to go to those museums. You find the coolest stuff !