In and From Japan:

A  Historical  Overview  of

African Art in Japan

Yukiya Kawaguchi

Africa and Japan: A Thin Thread of Interchange

Japan is so far away from Africa. The two of them could not necessarily have had a close relation with each other, not only geographically but historically. This situation, unfortunately, is not so much improved even today, though some hopeful changes have been observed under the recent remarkable progress of transportation and information technology.  However, looking carefully back on the history, we can find some traces of a thin but steady interchange of people from both sides which constructed a bridge over the sea between Africa and Japan.

                One of the oldest documents tells us that the first African came to Japan in 16^th century! In those days Japan kept trade relations with such foreign countries as China, Portugal and Spain under the open door policy. The first African to Japan is said to have been in one of the trading ships from Portugal. He is now supposed to have been from around the present Mozambique. The document continues that he might have had the honor to meet personally Nobunaga Oda, the supreme power of the Samurai government of then Japan and was treated by Nobunaga very courteously as an important guest from afar.       

Later, from the 17^th century to the mid 19^th century, in the period called Edo under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan closed her doors firmly to the outside but for China and The Netherlands. But some of the historical documents show us that there were some Africans accidentally found in Dutch ships, or Black people in American ships or British ships, drifted ashore in some cases, and wrecked in others, in the near seas of Japan. In this period, there was already a Japanese word (Kuronbou) for the American word, Negro, but all the people with relatively darker skin such as Indians, Indonesians, and Africans were covered by this word.  Some point out that the Japanese then did not have any racial, discriminative feeling towards African people, but sometimes kept some feeling of disgust to their poorer social position imposed by Europeans.2

                In 1868, Japan had Meiji Restoration to open again her doors widely to the outside. Since then, Japan, striving so hard to be a modern nation-state by officially importing Western civilisation in the fields of political, economic, social systems, among others, came under the great influence of modern Europe. For example, Japan had a representative philosopher of Enlightenment Yukichi Fukuzawa, who played a tremendously great role in the modernisation of Japan by introducing the various social institutions and values of the West to Japan. He writes in his Handbook of World Nations, published in 1869 just after the Restoration, that the black race is physically strong, but even though they should be able to accomplish things actively, they are lazy by nature and are not familiar with enlightenment. He also writes in another book, All About World Nations, published in the same year, that Africa is the most primitive and savage area in the context of the general introduction of world geography.  Of course, Fukuzawa had no experience of Sub-Saharan Africa. Which means that all of his description of Africa came from books published in Europe.  Here we can see very easily the strong reflection of the worldview formed by Social Darwinism accepted widely in then Europe.  But at the same time, here, I have to be careful not to totally misconstrue the historically important role of Fukuzawa. Indeed, in contemporary experience. He may be blamed for some points like the descriptions of the people and culture of Africa, but he made a great positive contribution to the modern Japan.  Without him, Japan could not have realised her modernisation.  

                Even in the 20^th century, what dominated Japanese view towards Africa was mainly the images imported from Europe and America. For example, one of them is a famous Hollywood film Tarzan made from Edgar R. Burroughs’ original.  Jungle, savage beasts, and naked men and women hereafter became an indispensable 3-piece-set to represent Africa, and were to spread out widely through the various media.  This kind of trick is still used repeatedly today in many media from films and novels for adults up to animations for children.

The Period of  Direct Contact: Africa and Japan after the World War. II

                After the World War II, the direct contact between Africa and Japan began in the field of culture, too.  But it was still a narrow stream and was not so free from misunderstandings and prejudices. For instance, we had an exhibition entitled “ The Curious Dolls from Asia and Africa” in Tokyo from May to June of 1955. 3  Probably it was planned and organised to commemorate the Asia and Africa Conference held in Bandon, Indonesia, in April of that year.  The title of this exhibition, “the curious dolls,” expresses so frankly the impression of the Japanese in those days towards the traditional wooden sculptures of Asia and Africa. I can point out the hesitation of the organiser in calling them sculpture.  And at the same time, an intention of the organiser trying to amplify the exoticism of Asian and African culture could be observed.  Anyway, for most Japanese, works from Africa were just something curious and never sculptures nor artworks.

                In 1960, an exhibition entitled “ Today’s Eye: From Primitive Arts” was held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.4   This exhibition was a general introduction of so-called primitive arts, widely covering masks and wooden sculptures from Africa and Oceania.  We should pay much attention to the fact that this museum was a Japanese National institution devoted to Modern Art. This means that masks and wooden figures from Africa were for the first time in Japan accepted and treated as art. The impact this exhibition gave to Japan then was probably very great.  However, the context in which these African and Oceanic masks and wooden figures were represented was nothing but that of Europe. In Japan since that time, this type of African Art exhibitions has been organised occasionally, but they were in many cases held at small show spaces, including department stores.

                On the other hand, during this period, some collections of masks and wooden figures were formed in Japan.  There were broadly 3 kinds of collecting channels. One was the ethnographical channel which was done systematically.  Another was the collection made by art dealers with some expertise and sold to private collectors. The third one was the collection made as souvenirs by diplomats or businessmen who had been in or to Africa. Of these three, the ethnographic collection, which is the biggest one, was formed by the government from 1968 to 1969 in the process of preparing the Universal Exposition in Osaka to be held in 1970.   In that systematic collection from all over the world, some 200 pieces from Burkinafaso, Niger, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Chad were included.5 Secondly as a private collector, Keisuke Serizawa was the most famous, who was also a world renowned dyeing artist. A part of his collection is now in his memorial museum in Shizuoka, Japan, and the other part is in Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai. For the third part, that is, souvenirs of Japanese diplomats and businessmen, a great number of works must have been brought to Japan. Once I have seen many pieces of wooden figures and Oshogbo art at the home of a ex-diplomat who had been in Nigeria.  But unfortunately or fortunately for Nigerian people all of the wooden figures were just well-made fakes.

                In 1977, the first ethnological museum in Japan, the National Museum of Ethnology, appeared at the site of the Universal Exposition in Osaka. In in the ethnological context, it was the first permanent exhibition of African art of an epochal nature at a museum in Japan, in that we could get the opportunity to see African art at a museum. 6 Later in 1990 at this museum, the exhibition “Masks from Equatorial Africa” 7 was held. Then the exhibition “ Images of Other Cultures” was to be held in 1997, in which I collaborated as one of curators.

In the meantime, the doors of Japanese art museums began to be opened towards the traditional art of Africa.   One of the examples was the exhibition of the Monzino collection which was famous as a fine African art collection in Italy, touring several art museums in Japan in 1993.8  And in 1991, a Senegalese contemporary sculptor Ousmane Sow’s one man exhibition was held in Tokyo. But the site for this small exhibition was just a corner of a department store’s floor in Tokyo. This very site assigned for Ousmane Sow showed us so clearly how the contemporary art of Africa was accepted in Japan in those days.9

                On the other hand, in the field of music, the various types of music from all over Africa were introduced in Japan: from the traditional one like percussion or Kora, which is the traditional strings from West Africa, to the contemporary ones, getting a lot of attention particularly of younger Japanese.  I can list here the names of some musicians then coming to Japan: King Sunny Ade from Nigeria, Fuquet Zafose from Tanzania, a Kogiri player Kakraba Lobi from Ghana, a percussion orchestra Doudou Njaye Rose from Senegal, again a percussion group Les Tambours du Burundi, young Senegalese superstar Yussou N’Dour, and a Zairian exponent of Lingara pops Papa Wenba. All of them were accepted enthusiastically by the Japanese audience. What was in the background of a general increase of the interest in African culture from 80’s to 90’s in Japan was a broad increase in the interest in the Third World cultures, which was called “Ethnic Boom” in Japan. The magazines for young people rushed to feature the hot information on the Asian or African fashion and restaurants, and the restaurants of African cuisine or Thai cuisine in urban area were full of younger people. The Ethnic Boom was an attitude trying to consume fragments of the third world cultures rather than understand, appreciate and respect them. At the basis of this phenomenon, was an ethnocentric eye in Japan, which enjoyed the fruits of an economic success after the WW II.     

                As for me, as a curator with much interest in contemporary African art, I could not help getting irritated to see such a boom, in which I myself was involved.  For, be it music concerts or exhibitions, despite that each program was very interesting, it was quite difficult for us to see where each piece of music, painting, or sculpture should be correctly positioned in a total framework of African culture. In Japan, it is also quite difficult to get information on a general idea of African culture. As a result, one can often see such a situation as the following.

In 1985, the works by Antonio Mupata, one of the TingaTinga painters from Tanzania, were exhibited in Tokyo with an ambiguous sub-title of “Urban Primitive”.  Those Japanese who saw this exhibition by accident at a corner of a department store in central Tokyo might take it a typical and representative African contemporary art. Maybe it would not take so much time for the visitors to have the conviction that all the African people produced such kind of paintings, playing with lions or elephants in the jungle.  For us who have a slightest idea of contemporary African culture, this kind of story is only a joke, but then in Japan, you could often see such attitudes.

                Just one exception was there in those days. There was an exhibition of African contemporary art which was very conspicuous. It was the exhibition of the contemporary Senegalese art, touring 2 museums in Japan from 1982 to 1983. As you know well, it was an international touring exhibition backed up by Leopold Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, starting from the Grand Palais in Paris in 1974. This exhibition introduced a group of young artists called L’Ecole de Dakar, appearing widely in Dakar from 60’s to 70’s. The exhibition should be kept in mind forever as a record of an active representation of African culture by African people.10

“Primitivism in 20^th Century art” and “ Les Magiciens de la Terre”

     About that time, the exhibition “Primitivism in 20^th century art” organized by MoMA, New York in 1984 created great repercussions, and another controversial exhibition “ Les Magiciens de la Terre” started at the Pompidou Center in Paris in response to the New York exhibition. Again in New York in 1991, the exhibition “Africa Explores” followed those two forerunners, focusing on the contemporary art of Africa. A grand aftermath of the discussion over the style of cultural representation formed by these exhibitions calmly but steadily began to reach the shores of Japan. 

An Inside Story: African Art of Our Time

                 In 1990, I had the kind offer by the Japanese Government to make a study tour around the equatorial Africa from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Zaire (the present Congo), Kenya, to Tanzania to investigate the art and artistic activities of that region. The main purpose of the tour was to get a general idea of African art as widely as possible. Of course, I knew I should not expect to see all of Africa and its art. I left Japan in November, 1990 for the 4-month journey around equatorial Africa. In Nigeria only, I travelled alone from Lagos, Oshogbo, Ife, Enugu, Nsukka, to Benin to see as many artists and as many art works as the time permitted.

                The study tour made me feel so strong that the representation of African art in Europe, America, and maybe in Japan was much biased and very arbitrary. At the same time, as I tried to appreciate the total context of the present Africa, I became keenly aware of the impossibility rather than the possibility of presenting or representing so-called African culture by framing up only the phenomenon of art.

                I like to take up the example of Ghanaian Coffin makers  or Nigerian grave statue makers to make my points clearer.   First of all, I should point out the danger of causing misunderstanding in representing some parts of African culture and art by coffins or grave statues.  Would it be too provocative for me to see behind such a tendency a malicious intent of Europe trying to limit items of African art into the zone called primitive?  And to praise these coffins and grave statues as new African art of our time by exhibiting them in the context of art museum or exhibition, what meaning on earth can it make?  This question at once leads us to another, more radical question: Can art  be a universal value or not?11

                Based on the reflection of these questions, I paid attention to the following two points in conceiving my exhibition on African art.  One is to present a general idea, not of traditional masks and wooden figures, but of visual phenomenon of 20^th century African culture as totally as possible.  I did not forget that there was need to trace its historical development. The other, or the second, is to neglect the framework of art to set a more broad frame to take up as wider visual phenomena as possible from signboards on the street, souvenirs, fashion, displays in the market, to scenes of people’s everyday life.  

                Of course, it goes without saying that this exhibition has to be held not at department stores but at public museums. Though this may sound a little bit contradictory to my policies as discussed above, if taking into account a clear difference of the social evaluation between public museums and department stores as far as the cultural project is concerned, and also a deep-rooted prejudice towards African art in Japan, the selection of the site was very important in representing African culture. Fortunately, several public art museums in Japan responded to my enthusiasm of introducing the contemporary African culture and accepted to collaborate in the project as co-organisers. The exhibition entitled “An Inside Story: African Art of Our Time” started from the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo in September 1995 and traveled through the other five public art museums in Japan for more than a year.12

The exhibition consists of the following four parts.

1. Prologue (1920’s ---)

2. The Age of Free School (1940’s ---1960’s)

3. Tradition and Modernism ( 1960’s―70’s)

4. Beyond Art  (1980’s)

Part 1 shows the age of discovering such primitive painters as Lubaki or Ntendu by white amateurs of art in Belgian Congo in early 20^th century, particularly in 1920’s. Part 2 focuses on the activities of free schools led also by white amateurs of art, which was actively developed in several places in the African continent. For example, the Potopoto school of in Brazzaville, Congo, that of Lubumbashi in Lubumbashi, Congo, and from Nigeria, the Oshogbo school were introduced in this part.13 In  part 3, I paid attention to some art movements struggling between the African tradition and Western modernism under a hot enthusiasm prevailing in African countries just after their independence. L’Ecole de Dakar in Dakar, and the Vohouvohou group in Abidjan were included here. Part 4 tries to gather as many kinds of pieces of our time as possible if they have only body and color, or something visual, from art works by professionally trained artists, art populaire of Kinshasa, glass paintings in Senegal, signboards on the street, dolls and puppets, toys, anything abandoned on the street, up to the display of street vendors at the market. I was ready for any criticism in this part, but I wanted to question radically the framework of art itself. Rethinking the history of African art of our time, I, as a curator, paid a special attention to the history of how what we call African art had been formed by the eye of Europe.

                When authentic African art comes into question, what does it mean to be authentic, or to whom does it have to be authentic?  Authentic African art is always authentic only to the outsiders of Africa, particularly to Europeans. In other words, the authenticity of so-called African art is just one to the eye of Europe. And what is supposed to be essential to its authenticity is something like: the composition is very flat and has no dimensional orders; colors are very strong, men and animals are often used as motifs, and so on.  These characteristics of authentic African art are resonant with negative words like primitive, savage, disorder at the deepest level of the feeling. 

                If so, by imposing such negative words on Africa, the West tries to make sure its own identity is made up of positive words like civilisation and order. This means that African art, often one-sidedly represented by the West, has always been nothing other than an objectified and form-given desire of the West.

                The exhibition, An Inside Story: African Art of Our Time, was virtually the first trial in Japan to introduce the historical development and a general idea of contemporary African Art to the Japanese public. The implication of this exhibition was much greater than I had expected.  The major national newspapers in all Japan, like the Asahi Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the Sankei Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun assigned a large space for the article reporting the exhibition, and a major TV network with national coverage, NHK, made a one-hour special program on the exhibition. I am very proud that this exhibition contributed a lot to the deepening of Japanese people’s understanding of African culture and art.

Images of Other Cultures

I mentioned above the political power of the exhibition as a style of representation.  And I said the general interest in that political power has been increasing rapidly in Japan, too, in the stream of exhibitions from “Primitivism in 20^th century art”, “Les Magiciens de la Terre” to “Africa Explores”. But most of those who accepted these discussions with a keen interest in Japan were anthropologists. They have a special interest in this problem in terms of cultural representation at museums of ethnology or natural history. Unfortunately, this problem about the political power of cultural representation was not widely shared among Japanese curators involved in exhibitions at art museums. They never tried to be skeptical of the universality and validity of art as a style of narrative.

So I made up my mind to start to excavate the traces of images or views towards

other cultures in modern history in collaboration with Prof. Kenji Yoshida at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, who kept the same interest with me.   He is an anthropologist specializing in the culture of the Chewa in Zambia.  Our collaboration was to produce a good result of another exhibition entitled “ Images of Other Cultures”.  The exhibition was made possible under the mutual collaboration of the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, The British Museum and the Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, starting from the National Museum of Ethnology in September 1997 then travelled to the Setagaya Art Museum the next year. This exhibition was a very ambitious and provocative one, trying to rethink the modern history itself from the Japanese viewpoint through excavating the traces of images or views towards other cultures inscribed in objects produced by the various cultures of the world such as Africa, Oceania, Europe and Japan. The exhibition was totally composed of four parts. In the first place, the Part 1 tries to inspect how the West looked upon the other world from 17^th century to the end of 19^th century, in the period the West was aiming to possess the whole world. In particular, we reconstructed minutely in the Part 1 the exhibitions of Africa, Oceania and Japan from the galleries of ethnographic department of the 100 year-old British Museum.

                Then in the Part 2, the main focus was how Africa, Oceania and Japan looked upon Europe in those days. Next comes the Part 3 in which the Japanese perception of Africa and Oceania was revealed.  Here the self-portrait of Japan is to be revealed, which had been identifying herself with the West before she noticed, and had the same view towards other cultures as the European one. Finally in the part 4, the whole world of our time appears before us, living together under interdependence.  Thus the fact revealed by this exhibition is the fact that modern history one-sidedly represented by the West forms a firm hierarchy and its top is occupied by the West. And also another fact is brought into light. It is that this hierarchy is never based on any proper reason. The very message, or the very essence of this exhibition was the radical criticism of Enlightenment. What reasonable ground does Europe have when it tries to enlighten non-Europe?  This is nothing other than the very question the exhibition poses to the world.

Another Way: Africa Africa 

                On the other hand, soon after these exhibitions, another way of introducing African contemporary art began to appear.  The exhibition “Africa Africa” held at Tobu Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1998 was one of the typical exhibitions in this trend.14 The trend was, in a word, that of Les Magiciens de la Terre. That is to say, covering mainly the artists picked up by Les Magiciens de la Terre, its main theme was to follow the aftermath of this epoch-making exhibition. In other words, this line of exhibition is the faithful reproduction of the exhibition Les Magiciens de la Terre.  The curator of this exhibition is a Japanese freelance curator whose main field is French contemporary art, and probably this exhibition of African contemporary art was planned as an extension of set models. The motif of “discovering”, which has been repeated so often about African art, appears unconsciously here again.  

The Georges Adeagbo Phenomenon

Let me end this presentation by taking up Georges Adeagbo, an installation artist from Benin, West Africa. He is maybe one of the most popular artists in terms of African contemporary art, well known for producing site-specific installationS using so-called junk. His name had been spread out among the specialists through the magazine Revue Noire since mid 90’s. As for me I saw his works for the first time at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1995, when Africa 95 was organized. Then I had the opportunity of seeing him in Dakar in 96, when he joined the exhibition for anti-Aids campaign. At that time I was working for the exhibition “Images of Other Cultures”, I had the intension of inviting him to join the exhibition. This idea, unfortunately, did not come true, for I invited Ms. Sokari Douglas Camp, a Nigerian born and London-based artist, but later I unexpectedly saw his name in the poster of a public museum in Japan. He was invited to Japan to make an installation in July 2000.15

                There was a preceding story to this. An event took place in Venice Biennale in 1999. Adeagbo appeared suddenly and silently in Venice to make an installation, then soon disappeared. An unknown artist from Africa appears like a touch of breeze, then leaves.   And the theater is Venice. A tremendously excellent representation for the narrative of African art. It would be needless to say that he attracted a lot of attention from the art world. Several years before that, when I talked about Adeagbo to some people in the Japanese art world, nobody showed any interest in him, but now he is a hot topic there.

                From this example, I can point out at least two problems. One is the power of such European institutions as art museums or Biennales as a rating power. Once an artist or an artwork passes through this kind of rating system, he or it gains prestige or gets authorized as art.  The second is that African art is represented mainly from the commercial interest which always searches for something new to consume with no attitude of respecting and understanding African culture and art, though this is not peculiar to Japan nor to African art.

What can be seen in common is that notorious and traditional attitude stressing only tropical and exotic aspects by primitivizing African culture. Anyhow, this phenomenon around Adeagbo, being clearly a variation of the story of discovering I mentioned above, should be placed in the stream of Les Magiciens de la Terre and Africa Africa.

                Now we can say we have two major streams in terms of the representation of African contemporary art in Japan.   One is taking up African contemporary art from the critical viewpoint towards the modern history. From this viewpoint, the framework of art itself, just one of many institutions in the modern history, is to be criticized. On the other hand, the other stream is the idea of trying to discover unknown African art from the viewpoint of modernism. By this way, the recent prosperity of African contemporary art is nothing other than a glorious triumph of Modernism. Perhaps you have already noticed, I myself have been involved in African art of our time from the former viewpoint, and hope to continue that way.

For African Art of 21^st Century

Then finally, we have to ask ourselves what we can do for African art of 21^st century?  If African art is satisfied to be placed on the margin of Eurocentric modernism, it has only to keep on waiting to be addressed by the European artworld. If not, then there is just one imperative. It is the imperative that Africa represents its own culture and art steadily, and above all, willingly. Moreover, it has to search for the possibility of alternative narrative to that of art. I don’t have any idea at the present stage what it will be like. But I am sure it should be found through African people’s willing endeavor to represent their own culture. To be on the margin of modernism, or to find another way? This is the problem 

not only for Africa, but for Japan and Japanese art.  Anyhow, African art of the 21^st century is nowhere but just in the hands of Africa and its people. 

Notes

1     See Gyuichi Ota “Shinchokouki”(The Life of Nobunaga Oda), Vol.14  In 1581, Nobunaga, hearing of the news that the Christian Mission visiting Kyoto from Portugal included an African, invited them to Honnou-ji temple to see.

2       Screech, Timon “Oedo Ijin Ourai (Strangers in Great Edo of Japan),”Maruzen, 1995  pp.46－50

3       “Curious Dolls from Asia and Africa”  An exhibition at the Sankei Kaikan, organized by the Sankei Shimbun from May 15 to June 11, 1955.

4       “Today’s  Eye: From Primitive Art”An exhibition organized by the National  Museum of Modern Art from June 11 to July 17, 1960．

5       This collection was inherited to the National Museum of Ethnology opened at the site of Osaka Universal Exposition in 1970.

 6       An English word museum means both of Hakubutsukan (museums of natural history, ethnology, etc.) and Bijutsukan(museums of art) in Japanese. There is a relatively clear gap between the two in Japan. Though it is difficult to explain the difference  clearly, generally, the pieces exhibited in Hakubutsukan are accepted to be specimens, and ones in Bijutsukan artworks. Consequently the pieces in Hakubutsukan are supposed to be object of scientific study rather than of aesthetic meditation

7       This exhibition was organized by Dr. Kenji Yoshida.

8       “African Sculptures: Carlo Monzino Collection,”1993 This exhibition traveled the Gumma Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts and other several museums.

9       Ousmane Sow is known as an artist with a unique policy. He never tries to participate in any exhibitions with the title of “Africa.” Insisting on being not an African artist but an artist, he rejects to be confined into the framework of African Art in the international art market. But looking at the site assigned to him in Tokyo, his policy does not necessarily seem to be successful. 

10     This exhibition, besides the fact that it was planned and organized by Senegalese Government, has two points worthy of note．One is that not masks nor god statues but modern works such as paintings, sculptures, tapestries were presented, and  another is that it was held not at department stores but at museums.

11      I have written this point in several other places. (see ‘possibility of  Narrative’in “Images of Other Cultures,”Yoshida ＆ Mack, eds, NHK     Service Center 1997, etc.) To avoid misunderstandings, I write it again here. I never like to say that gravestatues or coffins are not worthy of so-called art. On the contrary, I mean that confining them into the framework of art can erase their  spiritual richness such as a slight humor.  I like to insist that “ they might be richer than art.”(p.266 & 273). Though a Japanese calling himself Colin Kobayashi or so criticized me in his  interview with Jean-Hubert Martin (“Misuzu”Oct. 1998, vol. 451) that I ignored artistic aspects of gravestatues by Sunday Jack Akpan or coffins by Kane Kwei, it is apparent now from the above points that his criticism to me was based on misinterpretation and is irrelevant.

12     This exhibition travelled totally 6 museums in Japan; the Setagaya Art Museum, the Tokushima Modern Art Museum, the Himeji City Museum of Art, the Koriyama City Museum of Art, the Marugame Inokuma-Genichiro Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Art, Gifu.

13     The name Free School is my own coinage. They are sometimes referred to as Free Studio.

14     Organised by Tobu Museum of Fine Arts, The Japan Foundation, and The Asahi Shimbun.  This exhibition was organized on the occasion of the 2nd Tokyo International Conference on African Development held in October 1998.

15     This was the exhibition “Georges Adeagbo: An Encounter of Africa and Japan”organized by the Toyota City Art Museum. (June 27- Sep. 24, 2000)

This article is the text of the Commemorative Lectures given by Yukiya Kawaguchi

Curator, Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, at the National Museum, Enugu,

University of Benin, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, and the National Gallery of Art