The China National Art Museum has received a batch of ancient and modern Japanese art works donated by Li Pingfan, a retired veteran art editor with the People's Publishing House of Fine Arts in Beijing.

This is the first time the national museum has received such a large collection of donated Japanese art works, including 137 Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, 218 modern Japanese prints and 546 works of Japanese Ex Libris, or bookplates, according to museum curator Yang Lizhou.

"After our panel of experts carefully examined them, we concluded that the donated works are authentic and very valuable," Yang said.

A grand exhibition featuring the donated Japanese works along with 190 selected works of Chinese ink and color paintings, sketches and decorative paintings on ceramics by Li himself is being held at the museum.

The exhibition will run until February 15.

Born in 1922 in Tianjin, Li learned both traditional and Western art styles from an early age, and since the mid-1930s has devoted most of his energy to the art of printmaking.

He moved to Japan and worked as a teacher of fine arts in 1943, and in his spare time collected a large number of Japanese works of art with his own savings.

In 1950, Li returned to China working for the People's Publishing House of Fine Arts.

Since the 1950s, Li has played an active role in promoting the art of printmaking in China by holding numerous lectures, and training programs across the country, as well as promoting cultural exchanges between Chinese and Japanese artists by arranging artist visits and exhibitions.

He also acted as editor-in-chief of the academic Art of Print-making magazine in the 1980s.

The most remarkable among the exhibits are the Ukiyo-e prints. The art of Ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") originated in the metropolitan culture of Edo (today known as Tokyo) in ancient Japanese history, when political and military power was in the hands of the shoguns. The country was almost virtually isolated from the rest of the world, according to Li.

The Ukiyo-e print is an art genre closely connected with the pleasures of theatres, restaurants, tea houses, geishas and courtesans from the city, which even during that period was considered heavily populated.

Many Ukiyo-e prints were in fact posters, advertising theatre performances and brothels, or idol portraits of popular actors and beautiful teahouse girls, experts say.

But this more or less sophisticated world of urban pleasures was also animated by the traditional Japanese love of nature.

Some Japanese Ukiyo-e artists have exerted considerable impact upon landscape painting all over the world.

(China Daily January 29, 2004)