This is my very first personal blog posted on this site! Here, I will
talk about my experience visiting the "春夏秋冬 / Four Seasons Nogizaka46"
exhibition back in September 11th, 2021. I will try to explain each exhibit
briefly and also talking about some of my thoughts about it. You can use the
table of contents below for easier navigation, since this article will be
quite long. It should be more convenient to read in a desktop or tablet screen
as well. So without further ado, let's begin!
↑ JR Ueno station and the National Museum of Nature and Science right in
front of it.
↑ Another fellow Nogi fan is found...
↑ In front of the main exhibition hall (Honkan) and the Hyokeikan.
What is "Four Seasons Nogizaka46"?
Briefly explained, "Four Seasons Nogizaka46" is an art exhibition in which 7 set
of replicates (yes, replicates) of Japanese traditional arts, each
contains imagery of flowers related to the Japanese four seasons.
These arts are part of the Japan's national treasures. For the most part, the traditional arts are in form of illustrations
drawn on folding screens (apart from one exhibit).
"Huh? So what does it have to do with Nogizaka46?" you may
ask... Well, each of the traditional art is paired with a contemporary
art. These contemporary arts are mainly in the form of large size video
screening (apart from one exhibit set), in which a Nogizaka46 member is featured as a visual imagery for
contemporary interpretation of the said art. The interpretation can also
be metaphorical, and are shown using several aspects including the dance,
the costume, and also the background music accompanying each video.
This event is opened from September 4th ~ November 28th, 2021. It is held
in the Hyokeikan building, the very first museum to be opened in Japan,
back in 1909. It is located in the complex of Tokyo National Museum, and
is only opened for special exhibitions, such as this one (more on Hyokeikan). Tickets for this exhibition must be booked online through Lawson
ticketing system, and then paid and retrieved at Lawson convenience
stores. It costs 1,800 JPY / person for general visitors, while
high-school students only need to pay 1,000 JPY. The normal ticket fee to
get inside the museum complex is 1000 JPY for adults, 500 JPY for
university students, and free for high-school students and those
younger.
Getting to the Museum
Going from campus dormitory, I use the JR train line to reach the JR Ueno
station. Surely many have heard about Ueno park and its surrondings, and I
myself have been going to Ueno park several times, but that day I realized
that I never went to the north side of the park. Hence, after getting out
from the station I am quite surprised to see what is essentially a huge
complex of museums and cultural related stuff.
I wait a bit for my friend, let's just call him "Bacon". He's the first
fellow Nogi fan I've ever met ever since I came to Japan, and we are
still hanging out a lot of times ever since. We walk through the park to
reach the Tokyo National Museum, a bit further north from the station exit.
Arriving at the entrance gate, and after going past the officer with
infrared thermometer who didn't even bother to wait for the device to beep,
we arrive at the courtyard of the museum, and straightly welcomed by
Asuka.
Of course, we don't waste time to take a pic with the giant banner there.
Afterwards, we went to the Hyokeikan to begin the tour around the
exhibition. We went there and welcomed by the staffs, who for the better or
worse used a lot of "keigo" (formal Japanese) to explain stuffs 😁. Quite
surprisingly, we are allowed to take pictures on almost every exhibits, as
long as it is without flashlight. Recording videos are not allowed.
The Exhibits
Here, I will talk briefly about the concept of each exhibits and bits of
my comments about them. To give a better context, you can refer to the
MyNavi video linked below for the visual idea of the exhibitions, and also
the members reaction video for some behind the scene commentaries.
Some explanations are also adapted from the exhibition catalog book (sold
as one of the goods). Links to online catalog of the traditional arts
displayed, and some other necessary informations are also included.
1. Spring 01 - Saito Asuka
Art : Merrymaking Under the Cherry Blossoms (e-museum)
Flower : Sakura
Moving into the gallery, we are welcomed by some kind of a vertical
blinds (or is it called slit curtains?), where a video mainly focused on
Asuka's face is projected. Because the front is made of blinds, the screen will look solid if you look at it slightly from the
sides. But if you look at it straight ahead, another big screen behind it, which
is oriented about 45 degrees relative to the blinds can be seen. It goes
with the concept of the visualization, which is "Expression of
perspectives in Japanese art", having the two videos layered up together,
but only one can be seen clearly from a certain point of view.
In the back screen, a video of Asuka's dancing around is projected. She actually danced right
at the entrance under the dome (reaction vid min. 2:18). Asuka's dance is showing someone who looks really having fun
(merrymaking), and in some shots there are confetties blowing around her,
as in expressing Sakura petals scattering around. Her dance is as
expressive as ever, and I guess most of us know how pretty her smile
is.
2. Spring 02 - Endo Sakura
Art : Flame (Tokyo National Museum catalog)
Flower : Wisteria
The traditional art itself is a portrayal of Lady Rokujo from the The
Tale of Genji, which due to her strong jealousy becomes a lingering spirit
in the story. So I guess the title "Flame" here is more about the jealousy
itself. The kimono she wears in the illustration has a pattern of Wisteria
flowers. The drawing is put face to face with the screen for Sakura's
visualization, which are distanced about 2 meters from each other. So,
it's like having the original static drawing on one side and the dynamic
imagery on the other side.
The theme here is "Bewitching Beauty". From all the visualizations, I
think hers is the 2nd best out of the exhibits. The dress she wore is
tailored perfectly to exaggerate her dance movements. The wind blown
around her to make her hair flows is also quite intense, and somewhat gave
me the imagery of dancing flames, although in the catalog it is only said
that it represents curvy look on the original drawing. The thick makeup
also exaggerate her facial expression really well. Near the end of the
video, she looks back over her shoulder and gave an intense glare. I guess
the idea is to combine the "bewitching" element and the "jealousy" element
at once. In the members reaction video (min. 5:15), Sakura said that she also
used wires for some flying scenes.
A bit of trivia, but Wisteria is 藤 (read:fuji) in Japanese. Same as the 藤 in 遠藤さくら. Although, that also applies to 齋藤飛鳥, and if they were
actually playing with names, putting Sakura for Sping 01 exhibit should
make more sense 😅.
3. Summer 01 & Autumn 01 - Kubo Shiori & Yamashita Mizuki
Arts : Flowering plants of summer and autumn (e-museum), and Wind God and Thunder God (e-museum). These two artpieces comes as a set / pair.
Summer 01 Flower : Lily, Nogi Member : Kubo Shiori
Autumn 01 Flower : Kudzu (wiki), Nogi Member : Yamashita Mizuki
In traditional Japanese folding screen art (and Chinese as well I
think), there is this concept of having a set of artpiece consisting of
several folding screens (say for 2 sets in a pair, they call it 2曲1双),
which is the case for the exhibition here. Using the same idea, the
visualizations for Kubo and Mizuki are put face to face around the
traditional art.
Kubo's art represents summer, and also her performance theme is "Rain".
Summer in Japan, is always accompanied with rainy season and lots of
thunderstorms (hence, the season with worst humidity ever). I believe it
can also be correlated as an imagery of the Thunder God. On the other
hand, Mizuki's represents autumn, and her performance theme is "Wind",
as autumn is typically the most windy. This also correlates well
with the Wind God imagery. As a long time Nogi fan, the fact that they
put Kubo-Shita pairing here is a nice trivia.
The underlying idea of the visualizations here themselves is "instants
/ captured moments". Both Kubo and Mizuki are performing their dances
twice taken from the same camera angle, but with different costumes on
each take. For each of them, the two takes were all taken by high-speed
cameras, and then the cuts are made such that each subsequent frames
from one video are interchanged with the other one (hence, "instants").
Its like looking at two different performances at the same time. Of
course, my phone camera couldn't keep up with the high frame rate, so
taking a good pic here was impossible 😅. This is the last exhibit in
the first floor.
4. Autumn 02 - Ikuta Erika
Art : Flowering plants in autumn (e-museum)
Flower : Ominaeshi (japanese wiki, there are some English sites explaining it as well)
Going up to the second floor, we are welcomed with Ikuta's visualization.
I believe this one is the longest in size. It is not without reason,
because the traditional art used for the basic concept is also pretty
long. The traditional art is made of a set of two folding screens, each
with 6 panels. The interesting part here is that if you arrange the two
folding screens such that they are connected on each end, the drawings
will become a complete loop. Hence, the theme for the visualization is
also "Loop / Repetition".
Like the folding screens, the visualization is also divided into two long
screens side by side. What's being repeated here is the visualization of
Ikuta from laying down~waking up~arms reaching to the front~then fall back
down again. The scene was taken from several camera angles, which are
switched continuously between the left and right screen. Time by time, a
random panel out of the 12 from the traditional art will show up at a
particular location. Interestingly, this is the only visualization which
features the traditional art in the video.
The background music here is also special on its own right, because it
was a recording of Ikuta playing an improvisational piano duet with the
composer for the piece (reaction vid min. 8:02). Also, we can hear her high-note humming as well. Ikuta herself also
said that the sounds are not just put as it is, but edited in several ways
such as played in reverse. To be frank, I couldn't notice any of it during
my visit 😅.
5. Autumn 03 - Kaki Haruka
Art : Beauty looking back (Tokyo National Museum catalog)
Flower : Chrysanthemum
The traditional art featured here is a drawing of a woman looking back
over her shoulder. The kimono she wears has a pattern of Chrysanthemum
flowers. In the explanation for this exhibit it says, "There must be a
reason as to why the woman is looking back, and people who saw this
drawing back then must also have their own imagination about what it was",
and the visualization here is trying to represent those
imaginations.
There are 5 display, 2 on the left, 2 on the right, and one in the
center. Each are distanced such that the center is the farthest away, and
then kind of a zig-zag for the left and right ones. The idea is that there
is an imagery of Kakki looking back over her shoulder on the screen at the
very back, recapturing the moment in the traditional art, while the other
4 screens, are showing abstract imageries to represent people's
imagination on what she is seeing.
While the imagery of Kakki herself is beautiful, not to mention the only
one that is taken outdoor in somekind of a lake, this is the one I'm
having a hard time to understand what it was supposed to show before
actually reading the description. The fact that the traditional art itself
is so small in comparison to the visualization and was placed behind the
farthest screen didn't help either. I didn't take a picture at all here
since it was too crowded, and the screen where Kaki is projected is just
too far away (see MyNavi video min. 1:55).
6. Four Seasons - Hoshino Minami & Yoda Yuuki
Art : Birds and flowers of the four seasons (e-museum)
Flower 1 : Camellia, Nogi Member : Hoshino Minami
Flower 2 : Peony, Nogi Member : Yoda Yuuki
Honestly, at this part I kinda chuckled because they seemed like giving
up already in trying to correlate the traditional art and the contemporary
art 😅. If anything, this part is more like Sony's tech' expo. They
prepared 12 sets of Sony's new Spatial Reality Display ELF-SR1
series, which allows you to see a 3D image/video with naked eyes
(amazing). The technology incorporates a camera which tracks your eyes
position and orientation relative to the screen, which are later used to
determine which image/video angle to project.
There are 12 sets, each representing one of the panels of the folding
screen used for the basis. The theme here is "Dioramatisation of Time" (is
dioramatisation even a word?). In each screen, we can see a diorama which,
somehow, related to a particular season. They are placed in order from
spring to winter, so about 3 dioramas per season. Inside the diorama, we
can see mini Hoshino and Yoda moving around, which are so damn cute.
The environment themselves are generally made using 3D modelling
softwares, and the imagery of Hoshino and Yoda are taken in a studio using
green screens with 3D cameras. I saw some making-of pictures before, and
maybe there are even making-of videos as well. This is the only exhibit in
which we are not allowed to take pictures (you can still see some clearly
in the MyNavi video). In addition, each diorama also features projection
of Nogizaka46 song lyrics, to which they also didn't forget to put a panel
showing the copyright information registered in JASRAC 🤣.
7. Winter - Umezawa Minami
Art : Furisode made of white crepe fabric with plum tree, standing screen, and
falcon patterns (it's more of a description then an artwork title
😅) (e-museum)
Flower : Plum
This one is my favorite exhibit out of the bunch, and the only one
where the traditional art is not in form of drawings / illustrations,
but a Furisode (long-sleeved kimono). There are several displays in
different sizes assembled together, such that you can see the exhibit
from any side of the room, while the Furisode itself is placed in the
opposite end from the entrance to the room, so it's like the screens
are keeping the Furisode a secret from the viewer. The collage-like
structure of the displays is inspired by the how the patterns on the
Furisode is made up from several repetitive images. This is my
personal favorite.
One thing that comes to mind straight away : "Ume looks gorgeos". The
coat that she wears may look like some kind of make-shift clothing at
first, but for me it is very artistic. Something that you can expect a
J-RPG game character would wear. Her tall strature sure also helps.
The somewhat gypsy-like hair-styling also fits, and they gave her a
hair accesories which adds a bit accent of snow.
The theme here is "Surreal Deception", and the surrealism is taken in
form of several videos of Ume herself doing a dance
routine taken in different sizes and from several camera angles, which are then layered up on top of each other. It also plays with
your mind with having different Ume(s) popping up in places, when you
are still trying to focus on just one. Hand movements are predominant
in the choreography, which is said as an imagery of branches of a plum
tree. Technology wise, all of the footages was taken using a 12 MP
video camera (reaction vid min. 14:45, forget 4K MV 😂). Between the dances, there
is one insert video of Ume laying on her side, scrolling from her feet
up to the head, which boasts the camera quality where you can see
Ume's beauty mark near her upper lip in Ultra-HD resolution
😅. Ume's section marked the end of the exhibitions.
Message from Aki-P
Before entering the goods store, right after Ume's section, there is a
plank where a message from Aki-P to the visitors. This message is also
written in the last page of the exhibition catalog, which reads as follows
:
It is such an honor to have Matsushima Matsumoto-shi, the curator of
Tokyo National Musem reached out to me, giving the chance to use the
presence of Nogizaka46 as a way to express appreciation for the Japanese
arts.
As a professional lyricist, I think about what should the artist sings and dances at the present, which can reach the heart of the audiences. In other words, my job is to interpret the everchanging trends into the appropriate language for the artist.
I can't express how grateful I am to have Nogizaka46 introducing you into flower themed Japanese arts, and giving them suitable "interpretation" for the new generation. I hope through this, we helped to spread the idea from the Cultural Property Center of Tokyo National Museum that "Japanese arts is actually a part of your daily life!".
Akimoto Yasushi
As a professional lyricist, I think about what should the artist sings and dances at the present, which can reach the heart of the audiences. In other words, my job is to interpret the everchanging trends into the appropriate language for the artist.
I can't express how grateful I am to have Nogizaka46 introducing you into flower themed Japanese arts, and giving them suitable "interpretation" for the new generation. I hope through this, we helped to spread the idea from the Cultural Property Center of Tokyo National Museum that "Japanese arts is actually a part of your daily life!".
Akimoto Yasushi
Goods Store
The goods store sells all the goods listed on the website, so I won't
bother describing everything here (store page). Supposedly, all these items can only be bought in-store, and in order
to get into the store you must go through the exhibitions, which means you
need a ticket. I think online sales might happen once the exhibition
period ends though. For each ticket, there is a limitation where a person
can only buy 5 of the same type of items, or 10 for small items sold as a
random picks, like tin pins and magnets. There are of course the limited-edition of standard idol goods like photocards, posters, and
keychains. I know some international fans in Twitter are doing a P2P service, so
supposedly they are in Japan too. Maybe you want to check that, if you're
interested.
My target here is only to buy the exhibition catalog. I think it is
worthy as a collector's item. I also didn't regret to buy it because it
contained a quite detailed description of each exhibit, both for the
traditional one and the contemporary one. It also contains a lot of stills
from the visualizations in high resolutions which is surely way better
from my own tries to photograph the actual exhibit. Apart from that, there
are some photoshots that are not released in the exhibits with the theme
of "The Intersection Between the Daily Life of Nogizaka46 with the
Environment". You can say this is the very first Idol Photobook that I ever bought
😅. I only wonder why some photos in that section look so grainy. Not a pro
in photography myself, so I'm not sure if that effect is intended or just
purely mishaps due to an enforced image enlargement or improper ISO
setting.
While I do have some photocards included in CD purchases, I'm not a
photocard collector myself (don't know what to do with them...). So
instead I want to buy something functional, and was thinking about getting
the mug. However, thanks to Bacon who pointed it out, I ended up buying
the Japanese style teacup. The design is also more artistic where 40
different flowers petals with an active member's name written in stylized
Katakana at the center of each one of it. Plus, it is also a bit cheaper than the mug 😄.
Next to the store before the cashiers, there is panel with all member
photos with some already signed by those who had visited the
exhibition. We can't go back to take photo here once we queue up to pay, so we just
take a quick, unprepared shot, because many other people are also waiting
for their turns. At the cashier, we can choose to either get a shopping bag
made of cloth or a plastic bag. Either one costs extra yen anyway, so I
choose to get the shopping bag.
Overall Thoughts
The Negatives :
1. The exhibition halls are not large enough
Given that most exhibits are in the form of large-scale displays, most of
spaces in each exhibition hall are covered by the installations for the
exhibits themselves. This leaves little to no space for everyone to actually
move around and enjoying the exhibits from different angles. It is quite
easy to imagine how it feels like, if you look at the Asuka's exhibit in the
MyNavi video. Instead of being able to calmly enjoy each artworks and trying
to catch every detail, we are kind of forced to continue moving to the next
section once the video ends. Of course, no one will actually complain if you
choose to keep standing around and rewatch the video, but the sensation of
having many people staring at your back is not so comfortable 😁. If you are
in Japan and planning to visit soon, I would suggest to come in the
weekdays.
2. Allowing visitors to take pictures is a bad idea
If you ask me, there is actually a very little value into taking a picture
of a video in the first place, apart from having some memorial photos (or
for blog article like this one 😅). But the main issue here is because we
are in Japan, where all the smartphones sold locally are tailored such that
the camera shutter sound cannot be silenced! So imagine having 30-40 people
taking multiple pictures at the sametime. I myself is lucky enough to bring
use the smartphone I bought back home, so it has the silent camera (which
sometimes make the locals confused whenever I asked them to help me taking
my pics).
3. Bad accoustic
I believe the halls themselves are not designed to have a good accoustic
quality in the first place. Hence, the background musics accompanying the
visualizations entirely relies on additional speakers, which are not echoing
too well inside. This is very prominent at Ikuta's visualizations, where
both the piano and the humming sounds like crackling. Combined with the
camera shutter sounds, we simply are unable to enjoy the visualizations to
its fullest.
4. The traditional arts are seemed like an afterthought
Although each contemporary arts made for this exhibition themselves are
supposed to be visualizations / abstractions of its corresponding
traditional art, not to mention the idea of getting young people to
appreciate these cultural heritages, the placement of the traditional art
themselves are not strategic enough to make people pay attention to them.
Having the folding screens put at on side of the large scale videos of
Nogizaka46 members, which do you think any everyday Nogi fan will pay
attention to? Combined with the fact that each exhibition hall is not able
to accomodate a large group of people, many will just skip these traditional
arts and move on after watching the visualizations once or twice.
The Positives :
1. The visualizations themselves are fabulous
It goes without saying that the production quality of the visualizations are
high, despite whether they are closely following the theme of the source
material or not. Apart from the ultra high-definition cameras used to take
the footages, it is also easy to acknowledge that they are not playing
around with the costume design and direction for the screenplay. Performance
wise, I really appreciate the artists that managed to bring out another side
of Sakura.
2. It gets young people coming to the museum
Of course, I'm not saying that there are no young people that enjoys
museums, but it was quite amusing to find lots of young men coming to a
museum on the weekend. There were some girls too, but during my visit the
ratio of boys coming there were a lot more. I noticed several international
fans as well (mainly the Chinabros). Some people are actually care enough to
read the panels explaining the traditional arts and taking photos of
them.
The ticket itself allows you to visit the main building of the museum as
well, so it is a 2-in-1 package. Me and Bacon did walk almost through the
entire main building after that (took us about 1 hour or more) and there are
lots of interesting things to see, not just cultural stuffs but also things
like relics and even more modern stuff like the past instances of Tokyo
Olympics.
3. They take international visitors into account
We might assume that since it is held in Tokyo, they might not preparing
anything in advance should international visitors come in. However, that is
not the case. Although it's not much, on the signboards around each exhibit,
they have prepared descriptions of the each exhibit in 4 languages :
Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean.
4. The goods are great
There is this jokes within the Twitter community and my friends in Nogi
Discord chat groups that the design of Nogi goods are kinda trash-tier 😅.
For this exhibition, I find the designs of the collectibles are
well-thought. The idea of having flowers with member names inside it is
pretty fresh as well. Functional things like calendar and clear files are
also having good designs. Kinda surprised that they even sell small
chocolate cakes. My favorite still stays with the exhibition catalog though,
since it sure is a rare print. They also use glossy papers for each pages,
which I believe should be waterproof (though I wouldn't try...).
5. Another recognition for the brand of Nogizaka46
By August 2021, Nogizaka46 has reached its 10th-year anniversary. A feat
that for one sure is made possible by the fact that the group's concept
involves continuous audition and graduation cycles. However, even with
addition of fresh faces every now and then, the group can easily fall into a
cycle of rinse and repeat which can ended up with inability to gain new fans
or public recognition.
As Aki-P himself said in his message, the curator asked for Nogizaka46 as a
representative (you can say ambasaddor, and surely also the appeal point)
for this event, which shows that even after 10 years the brand of Nogizaka46
is still going strong. This adds to the list of instances where
Nogizaka46 serving as representatives in the public sectors, such as blood
donation campaign, several campaigns with the police such as fraud
eradication and bicycle theft prevention, and hepatitis awareness campaign
to name a few. Moreover, the collaboration with the museum this time is
possibly the one with largest appeal to the general public, at least within
Japan.
If anything, the fact that the tickets for the Four Seasons Nogizaka46
exhibition can only be reserved online through Lawson is kind of a
misopportunity, because those who haven't know Nogi but happened to visit
the museum might actually interested to find out what's inside, and then
ended up knowing them. However, I also understand that the event is also
tailored in such way to prevent large crowds gathering inside the exhibition
hall at the same time, partly due to the hall capacity, and partly due to
the measures against corona virus.
↑ Taking a break with Bacon.
Overall, I really enjoyed visiting the special exhibition, plus the main
hall of the museum itself more than I expected. I hope it might help to give
you and idea on how it goes inside, and perhaps if you happen to be in Tokyo
before November 28th, 2021, you might be interested to give it a visit and
see for yourself. Plus, I realized that through the process of writing this
blog, I find the enjoyment in writing an original content by myself, which
is different from just translating stuffs.Thank you very much for reading,
and perhaps I can share with you another story some other time!!
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