A Lesson

Depicted is a scene of a music lesson, full of the ambience of Tokyo’s shitamachi area. The bright sunshine pouring in through the reed screen illuminates the room in a refreshing manner. It was the artist’s graduation work, done when he was 24.

When Kaburaki Kiyokata saw this work at the second Hakubakai (White Horse Society) exhibition, he said, “I was happy that I had the feeling of an actual scene you might find anywhere in the Meiji era around then, where you become friendly even with people you just happen to meet.” This style, which has captured the familiar shitamachi ambience of the Meiji era, drew empathetic responses from not just Kiyokata but from many of Shirataki’s contemporaries. Within a backlighted interior scene overflowing with the bright summer sunshine, Shirataki has organized his picture by the interaction between the placement of his figures, the spector’s viewpoint, facial expressions, and objects in the room. Particularly in regard to the facial expressions, we feel a sense of actuality, for the mouth of the teacher who seems to be saying somethig and the face of the girl singing with knitted brows, for example, seem to reveal their emotions. Shirataki was studying at Yamamoto Hosui’s private art school, Seikokan, but after it was entrusted to Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichiro and converted into the Tenshin Dojo, he became Kuroda’s pupil. In 1896, the previous training he had received in painting was recognized, enabling him to enroll as a third-year student in the course of Western painting of the Tokyo Fine Arts School. A lesson is Shirataki’s graduation work, painted while he was a student at the School. We can feel Kuroda’s influence in his interpretation of interior and exterior through the relationships generated by backlighting and in his way of bringing this out effectively in the picture. (Writer : Naomi Sakonju Source : Selected Masterpieces from The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music: Grand Opening Exhibition, The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 1999)