From Dessau to Tokyo

After the opening of Japan to the West, from the mid-19th century an image of Japan was conveyed to Europe by means of presentations in major world expositions, travelogues and photography. This was received with great enthusiasm by the European avant-garde searching for new forms of expression. In the early 20th century, contacts between artists, stays abroad and a mutual receptiveness intensify the exchange of knowledge between Europe and the Japanese avant-garde.

Henry van de Velde was one of many artists who were preoccupied with the arts and crafts of Japan and he regarded these as a source of inspiration for his own work. Claudia Delank has set out in great detail how the Japanese aesthetic was received in some instances at the Bauhaus, too ^[1]. Its influence is most obvious in Theodor Bogler’s 1923 design for a combination teapot with side handle – a classical Japanese teapot design (Kyuzu).

In 1922 the painter and critic Nakada Sadanosuke became the first Japanese person to visit the Bauhaus Weimar. At this time Nakada was living with a group of Japanese painters in Berlin and, after visiting Weimar, he was one of the first to report in the Japanese press on the objectives and work of the Staatliches Bauhaus^[2].

The first Japanese student at the Bauhaus was the painter Takehiko Mizutani. After completing his studies at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, in 1926 he received a bursary to study in Germany and initially attended the Reimann School in Berlin. In 1927 he enrolled at the Bauhaus Dessau, where he attended the preliminary course taught by Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy and subsequently worked in the furniture workshop and the building department. Mizutani left the Bauhaus in 1929 and returned to Japan in 1930.

The most well-known of the Bauhaus’s Japanese students include the married couple Iwao and Michiko Yamawaki. Iwao Fujita, as he was called before he married Michiko Yamawaki, the daughter of a Japanese tea master, had been trained in architecture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and, after completing his studies, moved in avant-garde circles. In 1930 Iwao and Michiko Yamawaki headed for Germany and studied at the Bauhaus Dessau from 1930 to 1932.

Here, Iwao not only trained in architecture under Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer, but also increasingly turned his attention to photography, attending classes with Walter Peterhans. After completing the preliminary course, his wife Michiko trained in the weaving workshop under Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers. When the political pressure on the Bauhaus intensified in 1932 and the move to Berlin was imminent, the Yamawakis returned to Japan. They took with them not only numerous pieces of work, furniture and books, but also two looms, which Michiko subsequently used in her Tokyo studio in her work as a successful textile and fashion designer.

Iwao established his own architecture office and, in projects such as his studio building for the painter Kotaro Migishi or the villa he designed for himself and his wife, combined modern forms with traditional Japanese interior design^[3]. As ‘moga’ and ‘mobo’ (modern girl and modern boy), the Yamawakis presented an image of the Westernised fashions and lifestyles that they had picked up in Europe^[4].