Thursday 16 April, 2026
6:00pm BST - 7:00pm BST
In person lecture at Norwich Cathedral Hostry and online via Zoom.
50 min lecture followed by Q&A.
Free and open to all, booking essential.
To check your time zone conversion if you are joining from outside the UK, click here.
To attend in person, please email sisjac@sainsbury-institute.org or call +44 (0) 1603 597507 to book your place. Zoom booking is available at the bottom of this page.
Doors open at 17:45. Please note that in-person spaces are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
This lecture forms part of the Japan Studies: Past, Present and Future series in collaborations with the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Speaker
Eve Loh-Kazuhara (Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow 2025-2026)
About the Talk
The southern Japanese Amami islands are celebrated for their pristine white beaches and emerald-blue seas yet the artist Tanaka Isson (1908–77) painted them differently. Venturing deep into the islands’ forests, he spent countless hours observing wildlife, waiting for elusive migratory birds to appear and making meticulous sketches. From these intimate encounters emerged enigmatic landscapes and otherworldly botanical sketches often bathed in backlighting. This sensibility echoes Japanese novelist Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s (1886–65) writing on finding beauty in shadows.
Isson moved to the Amami islands from mainland Japan after a series of career setbacks, determined to make a fresh start. Living frugally and largely in isolation for nearly two decades, he focused on painting the islands’ nature. He had hoped to stage a comeback exhibition in Tokyo but his sudden death ended that dream. The islands’ residents, however, refused to let his work be forgotten. They came together to organise a local exhibition and championed his legacy, gradually bringing his paintings from obscurity to popular acclaim and national attention.
What does it mean when an artist is recognised not by institutions but by the people who lived alongside his work? This talk invites audiences to consider how artistic legacies are shaped through resilience, community and belated recognition, and what Isson’s paintings reveal about the islands seen from within and emerging from shadows.
About the Speaker
Eve Loh-Kazuhara is a scholar of Japanese visual cultures, specialising in Japanese painting (Japanese-style painting, i.e., nihonga) in the postwar period. She is currently the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow (2025–26) at the Sainsbury Institute where she is working on her book on postwar Japanese painting and the nihonga landscapes of Tanaka Isson. Prior to this, Eve taught at the National University of Singapore, University of the Arts Singapore and worked in museum interpretation at the National Gallery Singapore as part of the inaugural team behind its launch.
Image: Tanaka Isson’s Paintings in exhibition at Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, Paris, in 2018. © Graziella Antonini
The Third Thursday Lecture series is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Yakult UK.