2024/6/13: Yasuhiko Yoshikazu Exhibit Hyogo (兵庫県立美術館)

 

Went to the Hyogo Prefecture Museum of Art  (兵庫県立美術館, Hyōgo Kenritsu Bijutsukan) for Yasuhiko Yoshikazu: Divine Animator and Draftsman.

I first heard of him from his episode of Urasawa Noaki's Manben neo NHK E TV series. This showed his astounding draftsmanship, even at 76, were he didn't need to do any rough working lines, and just drew the scene. Started characters with their eyebrows. He also didn't storyboard anything first. He put that down to originally working as an animator, where there was no time for rough line work. He had only later become a "history based - truth is stranger than fiction" manga creator.

It was his original manga pages that I wanted to see. The kind of thing that wasn't on display at Nagano san's Nagoya Exhibit I attended last month.

Hyogo is almost a 2 hour train trip, using normal (not the Shinkansen) trains from home. I had to switch from Express to Local trains a few times to get there in a reasonable time.  It isn't that far on a nice day, and not that expensive, under 3,000 yen. I don't know exactly what each leg cost, as I only check how much money I have left on my travel card when I exit a station, and soon forget what a leg actually cost. 

The Hyogo Prefecture Museum of Art has a frog wearing a hat on the roof. The place is also referred to as HAT. A 10 minute down a slight slope walk or so from Nada JR station. This is my second visit. The first was in 2018 with my wife to a Ghibli exhibit.

The only photo I took in the exhibit was of this cartoon he did of him self on the VIP visitor message board.  He signs all his work YAS, a detail like that is interesting to me.

This was because no one else was taking photos and almost all the works on display are in the massive 415 page show Catalog book. So I bought that, and just stared in awe at his draftsmanship, penwork and brush stroke technique on display in the original artworks. Lots of original pages with screen tone and speech balloon text, and original watercolor covers.

He had wanted to become a Mangaka, but that originally didn't work out for him, so he became an animator instead, and later animation director.

He was an animator for the original Gundam, Crusher Joe and other things. Many of his storyboards, key frames, concept roughs, character designs and painted illustrations were on display from these productions. These were probably what many visitors were focused on, and had that nostalgic pull for them. I haven't seen any of them.

He eventually lost interest in animation and returned to his first love, creating his own manga.  I think it is because he didn't own the IP of the animation he worked on, that he isn't so widely known outside Japan. Or maybe because it was Gundam he worked on?

I attend these exhibits to inspire my own creations. This exhibit certainly did that and was truly awesome. So much work on display from a single creator. Wonderful.  Luckily there were benches to rest my weary legs for the last half of the exhibit . 

I really love that I can get to these far flung Art Galleries incredibly cheaply and quickly.

Travelling by train is just so very convenient in Japan, and I listen to music all the way. I actually had Freak Kitchen's new Everybody Gets Bloody on constant repeat for much of it. Thank you IA.

Next exhibit planning to attend is GIANT ROBOTS, that gets to my local THE MUSEUM OF KYOTO second week of July. Only 35+ minutes away.

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