The Book the Museum Director Made: 『岡本藝術』

There is a particular problem with visiting the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum in Aoyama. The house is small — one hour, and you have seen it. But it leaves you curious about a man whose career ran sixty years, and the house can only show you a corner of it.

The shop has an answer for this, and it is a better one than most museum shops manage.

Why This Particular Book

The book is 『岡本藝術』 (Okamoto Geijutsu — roughly, “Okamoto Art”), published by Shogakukan Creative on 3 March 2015.

What makes it worth singling out is who assembled it. The editor is Akiomi Hirano — and Mr Hirano is the director of the Memorial Museum itself. He is not an outside critic who was commissioned to write an introduction. He runs the house you have just walked through, and he has spent his working life as a producer of Okamoto’s legacy.

So the book is not a general survey that happens to be sold at the museum. It is the museum’s own director setting out, in order, what he believes the work amounts to. If you enjoyed the house, this is the natural next thing to open: the same curatorial voice, with far more room.

What Is Inside

Around 400 works, arranged chronologically — from his years in Paris in the 1930s through to the end of his life in 1996.

The range is wider than most people expect, because Okamoto refused to stay inside one category:

• Paintings, including the pre-war Paris period
• Sculpture, including the works you may have stood among in the museum garden
• Magazine cover art — he did a great deal of it
• Product and public design — the side of him that produced everyday objects, not only monuments

Because it runs in order, you can watch the work change. That is the thing a single room in Aoyama cannot show you.

The English Question — Honestly

This matters, so let me be precise about what I can and cannot promise.

The publisher states that work titles and commentary are translated into English and printed alongside the Japanese (「作品名、解説文を英訳し、和文に付記します」). That is unusual for a Japanese art book, and it is the reason this one is worth carrying home rather than photographing in the shop.

But please read that claim for exactly what it says. It covers the titles and the commentary on the works. It is not a promise that the whole volume — every essay and column — is bilingual. I have confirmed the publisher’s wording; I have not read every page in both languages. If your reason for buying is to read long-form writing about Okamoto in English, please treat that as unverified.

For looking, identifying, and understanding what you are looking at, it does the job. That is what most visitors want from it.

One Practical Warning: It Is Not Light

The souvenir books I usually recommend slide flat into a suitcase and weigh nothing. This one does not. It is A4 format, 208 pages — a proper art book, with the weight that implies.

If you are travelling with a tight baggage allowance, plan for it: buy it at the start of a trip and it becomes something you carry for two weeks, or buy it at the end and check your remaining allowance first. It is worth the kilo, but it is a kilo.

Price and Where to Buy

At the time of writing, ¥3,190 including tax. ISBN 9784778036058.

You may also find it in the museum shop itself, and on the art shelves of the larger Tokyo bookshops — Kinokuniya in Shinjuku, or Maruzen in Marunouchi. Unlike most of what the Memorial Museum sells, this one is not shop-only.

How to Have It Delivered to Your Tokyo Hotel

Amazon Japan and Rakuten can both deliver directly to the hotel where you are staying. Ordering a few days before your flight home works well — you collect the package at the front desk. Set the shipping address to the hotel, and add the hotel name together with your guest name exactly as it appears on the reservation.

• Please check with your hotel in advance that they will accept packages for guests
• On Amazon.co.jp, the English display toggle is at the top right of the screen. Rakuten is a Japanese-language site, so your browser’s translation feature is the easy way through

Where It Came From

This book sits at the end of a small house in Minami-Aoyama that Okamoto lived and worked in for forty-two years, one street behind the Omotesando flagship stores.

→ Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum: Art Is an Explosion, One Street Behind Omotesando

If you have not been yet, go first and buy the book afterwards. The house is what makes the book make sense.

Who Is This For?

Anyone who came out of that small house slightly rattled and wanted more. It is also a good gift for someone at home who likes twentieth-century art and has never heard this name — which, outside Japan, is almost everyone. The English titles mean they can actually use it.

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