From 16 to 20 June 2025, a small group of researchers led by Dr Eugenia Bogdanova-Kummer (Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures) travelled to Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, to conduct archival research into the private collection of the prominent avant-garde calligrapher Morita Shiryū (1912–1998). The Morita archive has had a fragmented history—at times separated and then reunited—retaining traces of complex emotions and relationships surrounding him.
Morita Shiryū lived with his wife, Morita Setsuyo, for about twenty years, and they had two children. Although Shiryū eventually left the family, Setsuyo and the children maintained a deep respect for him as an artist. Shiryū’s works and documents were later passed on to his children, son Tsutomu and daughter Tomoko, who sadly passed away in 2023. Tomoko reconnected with her father only in the final years before his death in 1998. Following Setsuyo’s efforts, the family not only safeguarded the original materials but also received a substantial volume of additional documents left behind at Shiryū’s residence and storages.
Today, Tomoko’s four daughters—Hiroko, Chikako, Utako, and Yasuko—are working together to make this significant family archive accessible to the public. The archive and art collection were partially examined by Dr Bogdanova-Kummer and Kuniko Matsui (Sannomaru Shōzōkan) last summer. This year, the objective was to complete the initial cataloguing and sort the contents into boxes. Although the archive has yet to find a permanent institutional home, this preliminary step provides a valuable overview of its scale, contents, and condition. We also conducted interviews with family members and former students of Morita Shiryū to further contextualise the materials and held discussions with experts in art archives.
Day 1
On the first day, the team—comprising Bogdanova-Kummer, Matsui, Olivia Butler (Sainsbury Institute), and Kimihiko Nakamura (University of Osaka)—was warmly welcomed by Shiryū’s granddaughters and given a tour of the house. We were both excited and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the collection.
Morita Shiryū seemed to have kept everything: private photographs, calligraphy utensils, summer greeting cards (shochū mimai), works by his countless students, energy bills, taxi receipts, business cards (the list goes on). As we began sorting the materials into categories, we uncovered particularly significant documents, including correspondence with original Bokujinkai (est. 1952) members and prominent Euro-American abstract painters from the 1950s. That day, Bogdanova-Kummer, Matsui, and Nakamura also conducted interviews with Chikako, Utako, and Yasuko. We were grateful for their openness and enthusiasm in preserving and sharing their family’s story that might otherwise remain untold.
Day 2
On the second day, Jiyeon Wood from the Cambridge University Library, and Yoshiko Suzuki (Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art), a curator of Pierre Soulages and Morita Shiryū (Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, 2024), joined the project. Together, the team assessed the condition of both artworks and archival materials.
Meanwhile, Bogdanova-Kummer, Matsui, and Nakamura interviewed former students of Morita Shiryū, including Inada Sōsai, as well as Hidai Kazuko (daughter of pioneering avant-garde calligrapher Hidai Nankoku) and Takahashi Susumu, author of the recent monograph Hidai Nankoku (2024). These discussions offered insights into Shiryū’s artistic networks and teaching circles. All interviews were recorded with the participants’ consent, with technical support from Olivia Butler.
Day 3
On the third day, Hideki Kikkawa (Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties) joined the team to discuss future possibilities for the archive. We considered steps toward transforming this private collection into an accessible research archive and a long-term preservation.
Day 4
On Thursday 19th June, Wood and Nakamura continued sorting materials into categorised boxes. Together with Chikako and Yasuko, they also visited the Bokujinkai office to consult additional reference materials, including Morita’s diaries and photographs taken during his travels in Europe. That evening at 2–3am (!) local time, Dr Bogdanova-Kummer delivered the Sainsbury Institute’s Third Thursday Lecture live from the Morita archive house, blending archival tour and scholarly insight into an innovative, engaging presentation (see also Matsui’s report on the talk). With Olivia’s support on the technical front, the lecture captivated the audience and prompted a lively Q&A session, featuring responses from Shiryū’s granddaughter, Chikako.
Day 5
On the final day, Dr Ryoko Matsuba (Ritsumeikan University) joined the team to lead in-depth discussions about digitisation and copyright. Her expertise in digital archives helped clarify potential budgets and timelines for digitising high-priority materials. By evening, we had finished sorting the boxes, weighed each one (a vital step for future transport logistics), and renumbered them accordingly.
It was an intense week—physically demanding with all the heavy boxes and fragile objects, and emotionally resonant with the deeply personal materials we encountered. There is still much to do before we can fully grasp the breadth and significance of the archive. However, this process should never be seen as a dull task of classification. As Dr Bogdanova-Kummer emphasised in her lecture, and as this trip demonstrated, archives should not be seen merely as static repositories, but rather dynamic spaces for collaboration, scholarly communication, dialogue, and discovery. Thanks to the granddaughters’ generosity and Dr Bogdanova-Kummer’s expertise and her international network, the Morita Shiryū archive is already attracting interest from scholars, curators, collectors, and students around the world. The team feels privileged to help facilitate this momentum and is committed to continuing this collaborative work. Our goal is to ‘activate’ the archive, long dormant in Uji, and make it as accessible as possible to global audiences.
Kimihiko Nakamura
PhD student, University of Osaka; project member of the Sainsbury Institute’s Archives of Postwar Japanese Art in Europe
Jiyeon Wood
Head of the Japanese and Korean Section, Cambridge University Library
This project was generously supported by the Toshiba International Foundation.
