森口華弘

Born December 10, 1909 in Moriyama-chō, Yasu-gun, Shiga prefecture. His real name was Heishichirō. He entered the studio of the “yūzen” dyer Nakagawa Kason, III in 1924. Kason had studied Nihonga under Tsuji Kakō and was the principal figure in a “yūzen” dyeing studio that produced Maruyama painting school style designs. Kason specialized in a painterly dyework style called “musen yūzen,” literally line-free “yūzen” which does not employ “itome” resist lines to outline motifs. Kason’s studio conducted the entire production process, from design draft to dyeing and finishing. Moriguchi lived with the Nakagawa family and studied “yūzen” dyeing techniques, while also studying under Hikita Hōshō, a disciple of the Nihonga painter Kikuchi Hōbun. In 1934 Sakata Tokusaburō, his mother’s cousin, gave him the art name (“gō”), Kakō, combining the “ka” 華from his teacher’s name with the character “kō” 弘, to expand, with the sense that he would go on to spread his teacher Nakagawa Kason’s style. Moriguchi was able to use a trial and error process to devise his own method of “norioki” resist work which the Nakagawa studio had been sub-contracting, while also learning how to use “gojiru” soybean extract to fix colors and heighten color effects. While earlier forms of “yūzen” dyeing used many colors, he sought a unified effect through the use of a single color by studying color, motif, and composition. In 1939 he set out on his own on the basis of this technical training and his study linked to the development of his own style. Around 1940 he noticed that some of the garments displayed in the Tokyo National Museum used “makinori撒糊” sprinkled resist paste techniques, and this led him to begin studying a technique whereby the entire ground was used, as in “makie” 蒔絵 lacquer work. His “makinori” 蒔糊 dyeing technique, written with the “maki” character found in the lacquer technique “makie”, became almost synonymous with Kakō’s name. Oyama Yuzuruha said that as a result of his survey of prewar Tokyo National Museum collections and prewar Tokyo National Museum exhibition catalogues, prewar “yūzen” dyeing only used “chayatsuji” for its resist. Thus it is unclear what Kakō saw at the Tokyo National Museum that he called ‘makinori’ 撒糊 dyeing technique” (Oyama Yuzuruha, “Moriguchi Kakō ga katatta ‘Tōhaku densetsu’ no yukue,” “Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo” No. 602, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 2013). In 1941 he was made the chairman and technical division director of the Marukawa Kōgei Dyestuffs Company. However, the 1940 so-called Seven-Seven Prohibition of the manufacture and sales of luxury items, the 1942 Enterprise Readjustment Law, as well as the deployment of company workers to military factories meant that it was impossible to continue “yūzen” work and the company was disbanded in 1943. That same October he was conscripted by the military to work at Kyoto Kikai Co., Ltd., where he was employed until October 1945. In 1946 he was finally able to return to his own work. In 1952 he became a member of the Kyoto Kōjinsha, and as well as working on preserving and handing on traditional crafts, he also focused on his own creative activities. The Kyoto Kōjinsha was a group of artists working in textiles, ceramics, metalwork, lacquer, and other craft fields that was established in 1950 when the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties was promulgated. In 1953 the group joined the Tokyo Kōjinsha to form the Nihon Kōjinsha. The Nihon Kōjinsha’s aim was to conduct surveys on traditional craft technology and their head office was located within the Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education’s Cultural Properties Division. However, the Nihon Kōjinsha then disbanded after the following year’s formation of the national scale group, the Japan Kōgei Association. As an artist, Moriguchi had three works displayed in the 1955 Second Nihon Dentō Kōgeiten (Japan Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition), namely, three “yūzen” dyed “hōmongi” style kimono “Mandarin Ducks” (National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto), “Pines” (whereabouts unknown), and “Early Spring” (1955, National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa). “Mandarin Ducks” is in the earlier “yūzen” dyeing style, “Early Spring” is in his own creative style, and “Pines” falls between those two styles. Of the three works, “Early Spring”, with its bold overall composition made up of “makinori” areas and negative space, its stylized plum blossoms and trunk expression, was awarded the Asahi Shimbun Prize. For Moriguchi that award was a clear opportunity to proceed with his own creative style. The following year he entered “Fragrance” (1956, National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa) in the Third Nihon Dentō Kōgeiten where it was awarded the Protection of Cultural Properties Committee Chairman Prize. He effectively conveyed a sense of depth in “Fragrance” through layered “makinori” dyeing. The single old plum tree at the hem, with its numerous interwoven branches extending laterally, ably expresses his superb artistic sensibility. That same year he was made a regular member of the Japan Kōgei Association. He held his first solo exhibition at Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, Tokyo in 1958, and then continued to hold annual solo shows in the same venue until 2003. In 1960 he was named a director of the Japan Kōgei Association, in 1962, a permanent director of the organization, and then the vice-chairman in 1970. During that time, in 1967 he was named The Holder of an Important Intangible Cultural Property: Yūzen, in 1971 was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon, and in 1980, The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette. As Japan’s premier “yūzen” dyeing artist, Moriguchi was invited to display works in exhibitions at various museums. These exhibitions included the 1982 “Moriguchi Kakō Ten: Yūzen: Ningen Kokuhō” at the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, the 1985 “Gendai Senshoku no Bi: Moriguchi Kakō, Munehiro Rikizō, Shimura Fukumi” [Kimono as Art: Modern Textile Works by Kako Moriguchi, Rikizo Munehiro, and Fukumi Shimura] at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the following year, “Moriguchi Kakō: Ningen Kokuhō, Yūzen no Waza Tokubetsuten” at the Museum of Modern Art, Shiga. “Makinori” is normally mentioned when Moriguchi’s work is discussed, but he also created works in other methods. These include “Rays” (1964, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) and “Fragrance of Four Seasons” (1959, National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa) which used “norioki” methods such as “itome” and “sekidashi,” “Flowing Water” 流水 (1959, private collection) whose bold composition is a contemporary reinterpretation of classics that shows the influence of Rinpa (Rimpa) and other styles, as well as “Crisp Autumn” (1964, National Crafts Museum, Kanazawa), whose closeup view of a single chrysanthemum blossom across the entire kimono is a splendid summation of his monochrome work. Indeed, Moriguchi can be said to have established the contemporary realm of “yūzen” dyeing. (Daichō Tomohiro / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2025-01-06)