Sadly for the Institute, Ryoko leaves us this month to take up a newly established professorial position in Kyoto in a new Department of Art and Design at her alma mater, Ritsumeikan University. Ryoko has been with the Sainsbury Institute since 2018, when she curated our first major foray into the world of digital arts, with an exhibition at the Forum in Norwich to coincide with the 200th Third Thursday Lecture, delivered by then Japanese Ambassador to the UK, His Excellency Koji Tsuruoka. Ryoko had already spent several years at the British Museum where she was an important member of the Late Hokusai Project led by then Head of the Japanese Section, Tim Clark – her book, Mad about Painting, was named one of the New York Times best art books of 2023. She was also co-investigator on the Manga exhibition project with our Research Director Nicole Rousmaniere, co-editing the accompanying book with Nicole, and organising the associated conference at the British Library. While at the Institute, Ryoko has embedded the digital in all that we do, leading our Digital Japan research strand and coordinating our internal Online Publications Group, which ensures that our digital footprint (including this e-bulletin) is in alignment with our social media, and laying the groundwork for our developing digital hub of Japanese art-related resources.
Ryoko was key in our Covid-necessitated transition to online activities, which of course include our Third Thursday Lectures, opening them to a new global audience, and our online summer programmes. Ryoko has fostered a lively network of curators of Japanese materials in UK museums, working with, among others, the British Museum, National Museums of Scotland, Chiddingstone Castle and Maidstone Museum to digitise their collections, making them accessible to much wider audiences, and at the same time training up a new generation of students as digital curatorial assistants. At the same time, Ryoko has maintained a dynamic research profile, winning grants from the British Academy and elsewhere to pursue her research into the craft of traditional Japanese papermaking, so essential to her ground-breaking work on early modern print materials. Ryoko played a major role in our 25th anniversary events: conceiving, designing and delivering exhibitions at Wells Maltings and the Shoe Factory in Norwich. Ryoko has become a familiar face to our Third Thursday audiences as she has both organised and fronted the lecture series, and has delivered a major component of our Ishibashi Foundation-funded Digital Futures project.
We are pleased to say that Ryoko will continue to be a valued member of our Sainsbury Institute community, and will be playing an important role in our new major initiative which we are launching at the end of this month, our Ishibashi Foundation Network Leader Fellowship Programme in Japanese Arts. We have greatly enjoyed having Ryoko with us in Norwich and London over the past few years, and thank her for her inspiration, enthusiasm, friendship and infectious laugh. We wish Ryoko every success with her new adventures.
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Although Ryoko officially joined the Institute in 2018, she has been a familiar face at our activities from as early as 2006.
Since being a staff member at the Sainsbury Institute, Ryoko has undertaken an impressive array of projects, particularly relating to the digitisation of collections in museums and archives across the UK and Japan. This has played an important role in making collections increasingly accessible to researchers across the world, and forming a central part of the Institute’s Digital Japan research strand.
Ryoko has also been instrumental in forming and consolidating the networks of the Sainsbury Institute with colleagues, partners, and organisations.
In 2024, Ryoko organised three exhibitions as part of our Japan in Norwich anniversary programme. Two exhibitions focused on the work of Hokusai, bringing high-resolution replicas of his works from the Hokusai Museum in Obuse to the UK for the first time. The exhibition Tanzaku displayed original works of art created in the intimate surrounding of the tea salons of 19th and early 20th century Japan. The exhibitions were accompanied by a series of well-attended events, including an international symposium, gallery talks, tea ceremonies and scroll mounting demonstrations. You can read more about the exhibitions here.
