午夜剧场

In 2004, after finishing 42 years of life as a company employee, I transferred as a third-year student into the Faculty of Letters, Department of Aesthetics and Science of Arts, which had been my long-held wish. This was because I believed that in order to conduct full-scale research on my maternal great-uncle, Léonard Foujita, it would be better to have a basic understanding of aesthetics and art history.

Foujita, whom I affectionately called "Bancho Jiji" (Grandpa of Bancho) when I was a child, had his studio in Kojimachi Rokubancho at the time. When I entered elementary school, despite the shortage of art supplies due to the intensification of the Pacific War, he gave me a wooden box of 55 professional-grade oil pastels as a gift to celebrate my enrollment. This became an unforgettable memory for me, and after Foujita left Japan and passed away in France after the war, I eventually felt a desire to properly research him.

On the other hand, there are now almost no people left who had direct contact with Foujita and knew his personality or the events that occurred around him. Therefore, as part of the last generation to know Foujita during his lifetime, I began to feel that it was my mission to record "notes" regarding him and leave them for future researchers. Once I returned to being a student and began full-scale research on Foujita, primary materials such as reminiscences, diaries, memoirs, letters, and photographs related to Foujita began to be sent to me from relatives and others.

Then, in 2016, the diaries and photographs bequeathed by Foujita's widow, Kimiyo, to the Tokyo University of the Arts University Art Museum were made public. The materials I had collected up to that point also served to complement the materials bequeathed to the museum. These "notes" are a compilation of those materials woven together. Therefore, this book is not a specialized academic work on Foujita's art. Based on the primary materials collected so far, it is an omnibus-style record of fragments of Foujita's life, staying as close to the facts as possible.

Through episodes that have never been told before, I hope to provide even a small glimpse into Foujita's way of life—a man who never settled for temporary success and continued the creative destruction of his painting styles. I would be happy if those who like Foujita's work could read this with the feeling of chatting while taking a walk with him.

Tsugutaka Fujita

Kyuryudo

258 pages, 3,500 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.