北川民次

Kitagawa Tamiji, after several years in the United States, was active as a painter and educator in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Upon returning to Japan in 1936, he settled first in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, and later in Seto, Aichi prefecture. He then produced oil paintings and prints that combined a warm gaze toward ordinary people with sharp social criticism. This artist also created picture books and was involved in producing murals. Born on January 27, 1894, in Ushio, Goka-mura, Haibara-gun, Shizuoka prefecture (present-day Ushio, Shimada city), Kitagawa Tamiji was the youngest of eight children in a landowning farming family that also ran a tea-processing business. His eldest brother, Yonetarō, who later became head of the family, was an important figure in Shizuoka’s tea industry and had traveled to North America to explore possibilities for expanding tea exports. While attending Shizuoka Municipal Commercial School (now Shizuoka Commercial High School), Kitagawa developed an interest in literature and art. After graduating in 1913, he entered the Fourth Preparatory Course (Commerce) at Waseda University. During this time, he met, at the lodgings they shared, and was taken under the wing of Miyazaki Shōgo (n.d.), a promising young painter who had graduated from the Department of Philosophy of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Waseda University and exhibited in the first Fusain Society Exhibition. Kitagawa also frequented the home of playwright and poet Akita Ujaku (1883–1962), who lived nearby, forming connections with people around the university involved in art, literature, and theater. In 1914, Kitagawa left the university and, with the help of his brother Tsukui Ikuhei, who was then living in Portland, Oregon, moved to the United States. The following year, in 1915, he worked at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. He then moved to New York, in 1916. Though, as an Asian, he sometimes faced discrimination, he found employment in a stage set design workshop. From 1918 to 1920, he intermittently attended evening classes at the Art Students League, studying under John Sloan (1871–1951). It was during this period that he developed key aspects of his later artistic approach—his focus on the lives of ordinary, resilient people and his pursuit of rigorous compositional structure inspired by artists such as Cézanne. The approach and methods that are consistent aspects of Kitagawa’s subsequent work show that he learned a great deal from Sloan at that time. He also became friends with Kuniyoshi Yasuo (1889–1953), who was studying at that school at the same time, and began to be interested in art education. After traveling from New York through the southern United States and Cuba, Kitagawa arrived in Mexico in 1921 almost penniless. His savings, artworks, and diaries from his years in the United States had all been stolen in Cuba. Consequently, the only known works and references materials by Kitagawa date from that year on. While traveling from village to village among Indigenous communities as an itinerant painter and vendor of sacred images, he continued to create art. In 1923, he held his first solo exhibition at El Nuevo Japón, a Japanese-owned store in Mexico City. Inspired by the spirit of cultural revival following the Mexican Revolution—often referred to as the “Mexican Renaissance”—Kitagawa went on to develop friendships with a wide range of artists, including major figures in the mural movement, including José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), Diego Rivera (1886–1957), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974). In 1924, Kitagawa enrolled in the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (National School of Fine Arts), then quickly transferred to its experimental branch, the Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre (Open Air School of Painting), located at the monastery in Churubusco. While engaged in painting, he also joined several of his fellow students, including Francisco Díaz de León (1897–1975), in developing plans for open-air art schools for Indigenous children. Three such schools were established in 1925. Kitagawa taught at the Tlalpan school, where Díaz de León served as principal. Deeply inspired by the distinctive visual sensibilities of Indigenous culture, Kitagawa painted with great energy during this period. In 1928, he held a solo exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. That same year, the art magazine “Forma” (no. 7) featured his works prominently. These included “Worker Reading a Book” (1927, Koriyama City Museum of Art, Fukushima) and “Donkey” (1928, Ehime Prefectural Museum of Art), which are noted for their strong composition and sincere depiction of their subjects. When the open-air schools faced the threat of closure, Kitagawa participated in exhibitions organized by ¡30-30!, a group formed by art school principals advocating printmaking as a democratic medium close to the lives of the people. He married; around the time of the birth of his first daughter, Kitagawa produced one of his major works from the Mexican period, “Festival in the Cemetery at Tlalpan” (1930, Nagoya City Art Museum), which evokes the cycle of life and death. In 1932, he was appointed principal of a newly established Open-Air Art School in the small city of Taxco, Estado de Guerrero. The school attracted attention from art educators in the United States and elsewhere and welcomed many visiting observers. Among the artists who visited Kitagawa in Taxco were Kuniyoshi Yasuo, Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), and Foujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968), with whom he maintained lively exchanges. In 1936, after twenty-two years abroad, Kitagawa returned to Japan. He settled in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, and, on the recommendation of Foujita Tsuguharu, participated in the 24th Nika Art Exhibition, where he presented large, dynamic works such as “Festival in Taxco” (1937, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art), originally conceived as studies for murals. His work earned him a nomination for membership in the society. At the 25th Nika Art Exhibition, in 1938, he exhibited what would become one of his signature paintings, “Song of the Ranchero” (1938, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), depicting singing and dancing figures rendered in brooding gray tones. That same year, he met the art critic Kubo Sadajirō (1909–1996), who would become his most important patron throughout his life. With Kubo’s support and drawing on his experiences in Mexico, Kitagawa planned to establish his own art school, but that idea never came to fruition. His passion for education instead found expression in the creation of high-quality picture books. Despite wartime conditions, he managed to have “Mahafu no tsubo: Setomono no ohanashi” (“The Magic Jar: A Tale of Pottery”; Sankyōsha, 1942) and other books published. Two decades after the paintings for it were completed, his picture book based on a Mexican folktale, “Usagi no mimi wa naze nagai” (“Why the Rabbit’s Ears Are Long”; Fukuinkan Shoten, 1962), finally saw the light of day. In 1943, during the war, Kitagawa was evacuated and settled in Seto, Aichi, where he lived until 1968. There in the postwar years he devoted himself energetically to art education, writing, and creative production. In 1949 and 1950, he and his assistant organized the “Nagoya Zoo Children’s Art School” at Nagoya’s Higashiyama Zoo, offering summer classes for elementary and middle school students. Deeply aware of the challenges of teaching art to Japanese children growing up under unique social restraints, he reflected on his life in Mexico and his work at the open-air schools in “E wo kaku kodomotachi” (“Children Who Paint”; Iwanami Shoten, 1952). During this same period, public interest in art education was growing, promoted by the Sōzō Biiku Kyōkai (Creative Art Education Association), led by Kubo Sadajirō, with whom Kitagawa was cooperating. Kitagawa’s book became a long-selling title. After revisiting Mexico in 1955, then traveling through the United States and Europe, Kitagawa finally had the opportunity to be involved in creating murals. With the aim of conveying messages of hope for the future to people in all walks of life through art in public spaces, he created the original pictures for mosaic murals at CBC Hall in Nagoya (1959), Seto Civic Hall in Aichi (1959), the former headquarters building of Kagome Co., Ltd., in Nagoya (1962), and the Seto City Library in Aichi (1970). He was deeply involved in the murals’ production process, frequently visiting these sites. Kitagawa’s tableau, “A Corner of a Mexican Market” (1956, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), opened new horizons. His work “Sucking” (1964, Nagoya City Art Museum), received the Excellence Award at the 6th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan. His later painting “Summer Homework” (1970; Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art), a sharp critique of rigid educational practices, continues to challenge viewers with its probing questions. In 1971, while hospitalized due to illness, Kitagawa began writing down a series of aphoristic reflections. These writings were later published as a limited-edition volume titled “Batta no Tetsugaku” (“The Philosophy of the Grasshopper,” Unac Tokyo, 1973), accompanied by 31 illustrations—etchings and lithographs featuring grasshopper motifs. A second, simplified edition followed in 1974. For Kitagawa, the grasshopper symbolized the common people, the grassroots people. It also held deep cultural associations with Mexico. The motif reappears in one of the oil paintings from his late years, “Grasshopper and Self-Portrait” (1977, Shimada City Museum, Shizuoka), in which he depicts himself raising a hammer, embodying both struggle and vitality. In 1978, Kitagawa announced that he would lay down his brush; he passed away on April 26, 1989. Major posthumous retrospectives have reexamined his distinctive and wide-ranging achievements; they include the “Kitagawa Tamiji Exhibition” (Nagoya City Art Museum and Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, 1989), the “Kitagawa Tamiji Retrospective” (Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Kasama Nichidō Museum of Art, 1996–1997), and “Kitagawa Tamiji Retrospective: From Mexico to Japan” (Nagoya City Art Museum, Setagaya Art Museum, and Koriyama City Museum of Art, 2024–2025). (Tsukada Miki / Translated by Ruth S. McCreery) (Published online: 2026-03-13)