Art Prints of Watanabe Sadao: Christianity through Japanese Folk Art: Exhibit and Events

Location:  Allen Library North Lobby/Balcony and East Asia Library (Gowen Hall 3rd Floor) 

An exhibit of the Biblical Mingei Prints of Japanese printmaker and artist Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996), famous for his biblical prints influenced by mingei undo, the Japanese folk art movement developed in the late 1920s and 1930s. This exhibit showcases Watanabe's stencil prints, original stencils, tools of the artist, as well as monographs from East Asia Library collection on mingei and mingei artists.

Questions? Contact Japanese Studies Librarian, Azusa Tanaka

“My teacher, Watanabe Sadao” by Anne H.H. Pyle

Location: Allen Auditorium

Time: 4:00-5:00PM

Anne Pyle will talk about her experience, the printing method and memories of her teacher, Watanabe Sadao.

Anne H.H. Pyle is a graduate of Skidmore College and has a master's degree in art education from Columbia University. She studied oil painting at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts and with Hobsen Pittman of the Philadelphia Academy. In Japan she studied printmaking with two of Japan's leading print artists, Yoshida Toshi and Watanabe Sadao.  She was Watanabe's only private student and presently owns one of the largest collections of his work.  She has written extensively and lectured to various church and university groups on his life and art.

"Christianity in Japan: Some Observations on Sadao Watanabe's Faith" by Fred G. Notehelfer

Location: Allen Auditorium

Time: 4:00-5:30 PM 

Dr. Notehelfer will trace the background of Christianity in Japan from its introduction to the present and make come observations of the challenges that Christians faced in Modern Japan, World War II, and the Postwar period. He will touch on Watanabe's links to the Mingei Movement and its efforts to counter the pressures of a modern, industrialized society.

Fred G. Notehelfer was born to German Missionary parents in Japan in 1939. He grew up in Tokyo, graduated from the American School in Japan, and received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1962. His Ph.D. was taken at Princeton University in 1968 in Japanese History. After teaching briefly at Princeton he joined the UCLA History Department in 1969. From 1975-1995 he served as the UCLA Director of the USC-UCLA Joint Center in East Asian Studies and since 1992 he has directed the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies. Notehelfer specializes in the late Tokugawa and Meiji periods. He is particularly interested in the social and intellectual history of Japan's transition from a "traditional" to a modern society. He is also interested in what Japanese have done with universal systems of thought imported into Japan from the West and Asia. His books include Kōtoku Shūsui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical (Cambridge, 1971); American Samurai: Captain L.L Janes and Japan (Princeton, 1985); and Japan Through American Eyes, the Journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859-1866 (Princeton, 1992). He has recently completed an abridged edition of the Francis Hall journal which has been published by Westview Press 2001.” (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/notehelfer/)